In the Lone and Level Sands

by David Lovato

  “That’s perfect!” Daisy said. “Art had some paint in his closet back in the office. He kept putting off repainting, thank God!”

  “Let’s go!” Jason said. The three rushed back inside and down to the corner office.

  “What’s the news?” Evan asked as they entered.

  “They didn’t even get close to seeing us,” Jason said. “But we’re going to paint a big old ‘SOS’ sign on the roof. There’s paint in the closet.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” Evan said.

  “Are the stairs c-clear?” Eugene asked.

  “Crystal,” Daisy said.

  Jason went to the closet and opened the door. After a moment of searching, he found a five-gallon bucket of reddish-brown paint and a clean roller brush leaning against the wall. He grabbed them and came out looking as determined as ever.

  “All right, let’s go back up there!” he said. “Let’s get this paint down before we miss another chance out of here!”

  46

  In the Community College

  Max could hear the distant, muffled sound of a machine gun.

  “Where do you think they are?” he said. He and Ortiz stood against the wall of the library building, waiting for Lou and Johns to catch up. Max’s face was throbbing, his brain was still trying to adjust to the temporary loss of half of its vision and all of its depth perception, but he had at least calmed down.

  “I’m sure they’re fine, wherever they are,” Ortiz said. “Just be patient. They had the mess hall and an extra building, after all.” He could read the look of worry on Max’s face. “We’ve been through a lot together. I know those two can handle this.” That made Max feel better about Johns and Lou, but it also made him feel all the more incompetent.

  A few more minutes passed, and then Max saw movement across the courtyard.

  “Is that them?” he asked. Ortiz looked through his binoculars.

  “Sure is, and they’re giving us the signal to proceed.” Ortiz waved back, and then readied his gun. “You ready for this, kid?”

  “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Max said.

  “Don’t worry so much. Look, what happened back there, you had no control over it. You did your best, and you did a great job, considering your lack of experience. This here will be a piece of cake. And, with time, you’ll keep getting better. We’re doing this to help people. Remember that.”

  Ortiz turned and opened the door. He stepped inside and checked the corners, and Max followed.

  “Dead ahead!” Ortiz said. A group of zombies began shambling toward the two. Max and Ortiz opened fire, dispatching them with ease.

  “It’s dark in here,” Max said.

  “Turn on your flashlight.” Ortiz indicated with his own. Max turned on the light at the end of his gun and looked around. They could hear gunfire coming from the floor above them.

  There were only a few classrooms in the building, and all were on the ground floor. Ortiz and Max cleared them out. Max couldn’t tell if he was doing better on his own, or because Ortiz stayed within a few feet of him this time. He wanted to believe the former, but he was glad to be having an easy time either way.

  Max and Ortiz left the classroom wing and entered a lobby. A vending machine near the door had been smashed open, and glass and snacks (some partially eaten through their wrappers and some completely untouched) littered the floor.

  Ortiz kneeled down and picked up an unscathed Snickers bar while keeping his gun fixed on the door at the other end of the lobby. “If I had to guess, I’d say most of the zombies in here starved to death.”

  “Then where are the bodies?” Max said. A noise to their left drew their attention, and their aim. A small set of automatic doors had slid open, and now revealed a sunny summer day. After a moment, they closed much slower than they’d opened. “Holy shit, this place has power!”

  “It must be on a generator,” Ortiz said. “Remind me to take care of the automatic doors later. We won’t be safe if the doors are letting zombies in on their own.” He unwrapped the Snickers bar and took a bite, then started toward the door at the other end of the lobby.

  “I wouldn’t eat that,” Max said.

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t know what it might… do.”

  “Look, kid. I don’t know what these things are. I don’t know how they got here, and I don’t know what makes them tick. I’ve seen enough to get that if they bite you, it’s all over. But I’ve had enough of their blood get on me, get in me, to see that it has no effect. I’ve had them spit into my mouth, but I’m fine. You had a nice run-in with their fingernails, but you’re all right.” Max’s face throbbed at the very mention of it, and he found himself hoping that his wound wouldn’t scar. “Point is, besides the fact that I’m positive this candy bar won’t turn me into a zombie, the second we let ourselves give in to fear, to the point where we can’t even enjoy the little things we still have, we may as well have already become one of them.” Ortiz opened the door and stepped through.

  There was an elevator and a set of stairs in the next wing. There didn’t appear to be any zombies, and it was deathly silent.

  “Lou? Johns?” Ortiz said. There was no reply. Ortiz turned to the elevator and hit the call button. It lit up in a bright shade of orange. Ortiz aimed his gun at the elevator door. “Keep your aim on those stairs, and watch for movement.”

  Max could hear the elevator approaching. Then, he heard the bell, the doors opened, and Max sensed movement. He turned as Ortiz lifted his gun, and both of them aimed into the elevator. Lights shone in Max’s face as Lou and Johns aimed back from within.

  “Thank God,” Johns said. “You’re okay.” Everyone lowered their weapons.

  “Upstairs is all clear,” Lou said.

  “So’s the downstairs,” Ortiz replied.

  “This building has power,” Johns said.

  “We noticed. Let’s not waste it. And we’ll have to remember to get some gas, for the generator.”

  “What happened to the kid?” Lou asked.

  “We had a bit of an accident,” Ortiz said. “My fault, I should’ve been watching him better.” Max felt embarrassed. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine, he wasn’t bitten.”

  “Okay. Next step, then. We need to clear out the tornado shelter in the center of the campus, and then start building a barricade.”

  “We found a city map in the library,” Johns said. “Turns out there’s a lumber yard not far from here. There’s also a steel mill we may be able to find a use for.”

  “Great,” Ortiz said. “I recommend we bring a truck full of plywood back here, first. We’ll board up the glass on the ground floors. After that we’ll work on setting up the walls in rings.”

  “Can we really do this?” Max asked. “I mean, there’s only the four of us.”

  “Hopefully, more and more people will come to take refuge. The more people we have, the easier it’ll be to build bigger and stronger barricades.”

  “That reminds me,” Johns said. “The upstairs has a library and a computer lab. Some of the computers still work. We booted one up and tried to access the internet, but it was no good. There was no connection.”

  “I don’t get it,” Ortiz said. “If the place has power and working computers, why wouldn’t the internet work?”

  “The computers run on Wi-Fi,” Lou said.

  “And Wi-Fi is basically radio waves,” Max said.

  “Radios are all down,” Johns said. “But if we could get radio waves working again, we may just have access to the internet.”

  “We don’t know why they’re even down,” Ortiz replied. “In any case, we can worry about that later. Assuming the internet can even help us, we can just as easily hook one of those computers up to the router the old fashioned way. But again, let’s focus on the present, for now.”

  “Right,” Lou said. “Let’s go clear out the tornado shelter.”

  ****

  With the four of them together, it
didn’t take very long. The sun was still a few feet above the horizon when they finished and met outside in the courtyard.

  “The day is still young,” Lou said. “We have at least enough time to get our first batch of wood and barricade the ground floors.”

  Max was exhausted, but he didn’t want to slow the others down, so he kept it to himself.

  “Should we have somebody stay back here?” Johns said. “You know, keep the grounds free of zombies?”

  “That may not be a bad idea. Tell you what, why don’t you take the kid up to the roof and show him how to use a sniper rifle? Ortiz and I will find a truck and get some wood.”

  “All right.”

  Johns got the equipment he needed from the Humvee, and then Ortiz and Lou were off. Max watched the Humvee shrink as it went along the road.

  “Come on, kid,” Johns said. “They’ll be all right. In the meantime, we’ll head up to the roof of the tornado shelter. There may not be much around to practice on, but I’ll show you how to use this thing.”

  They made their way to the roof. Johns opened a large metal box full of gun parts and began assembling a sniper rifle.

  “The pieces go together like so.” He pressed two pieces of the gun together and twisted, making a loud click!, and when he reached for another piece, the gun stayed together. “Not too complicated. This is the scope, this here will adjust the zoom.” He pointed to a small dial.

  Johns set up the rifle, and Max peered through the small glass disc. He could see beyond the parking lot and into a field down the road. There were a few zombies in it.

  “See?”

  Max tinkered around with the various settings. After that, Johns had him take the rifle apart and put it back together a few times.

  “Okay, seems like you’ve got that down well enough, for now. Let’s try firing. Watch.”

  Johns looked through the scope, adjusted the rifle very slightly. Then, he pulled the trigger. The sound was loud as thunder.

  “You probably couldn’t even see what happened with the naked eye,” Johns said. “I just took one of them out. Now I’ll have you practice on the rest of them out there.”

  Something about the way Johns said that made Max feel upset. He thought back to the HR building, to his frustrated rampage through the classrooms, to the few seconds where he had found himself enjoying the slaughter. He thought back to manning the turret on the Humvee, and back to the apartment building. He thought about the explosion that had taken his family away, and to the days spent scrounging for food and supplies before then. Back to the carnival, back to the lights. Back to before any of this, when the things he was about to shoot were people.

  “I don’t think I can do it anymore,” Max said. Johns looked at him.

  “It’s simple, kid. Look, I’ve got one lined up for you. Well, if he hasn’t moved, anyway.”

  Max took a deep breath and looked through the scope. He was staring at a zombie’s head. It seemed so close, yet outside of the scope, Max could barely make out an outline. He looked back into the scope, saw the zombie, saw its eyes. The zombie would never see him, never even know he was there or what was coming. It would just be there one moment, and gone the next.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Max said. “These things… I don’t know if I can kill them anymore. I feel like I’m losing myself. These were people, once. They kill us, and I hate them, but what if they’re still people?”

  Johns sighed. “What’s really going to boggle your mind is a different question entirely. What if they turn back, someday?”

  Max was sure, then, that he’d never kill another one of these creatures.

  “Max, when you’re in the Army, you’re trained to live in the moment. When you’re in another country, when someone is running at you with a bomb strapped to their chest… Don’t you think we stop and ask ourselves the same questions? Like, ‘what if this terrorist could be educated. What if we could change his mind? What if he could see the error of his ways, and never hurt another person again? What if these enemy soldiers we fight in other countries, in all the time we’ve been around, what if they could be like us, one day?’ Of course it makes things hard, Max. Nobody ever said this was easy. And I don’t think anybody, anybody likes it.”

  Max looked through the scope at the zombie. It hadn’t moved much, and was just standing around, staring at the sunset.

  “And you know what? I’ll bet enemy soldiers even ask the same things about us, sometimes. But that… That isn’t our job. If we could capture every one of these things, teach them to be human, or at least to just leave us alone, we would do that. We always would’ve done that.”

  “But it’s just so much easier to kill them,” Max said.

  “It isn’t pretty, Max. But it’s the only way we can survive right now. In fact, consider yourself lucky. Whatever made these things human, it’s probably gone forever. You won’t have to worry about having nightmares decades from now, about staying awake and thinking about all the things you could’ve done for an enemy soldier besides killing him. But sitting back and letting these things kill others, letting them kill you, that’s just as wrong, Max.”

  Max stared at the zombie’s eyes. They were completely vacant. It stared at the sunlight, and it saw no beauty. Then, it spotted a rabbit. The rabbit rushed by, and the zombie reached for it, teeth gnashing. The rabbit passed, the zombie missed it and stumbled to the ground. Then it stood up and stared at the sun again.

  “I’m sorry, Max. I really am. This is a bad time to be alive. I’ve found myself asking, why now? Why wasn’t I a soldier back in the Revolutionary War? Back in the Civil War, or World War Two? Back when we were actually fighting for something other than our basic survival. And you know what? I don’t have an answer. And I never will. Because I’m alive right now, and that’s all that matters. I’m alive now, and if there are people out there I can save, and if the only way to do it is to kill these things now, and wait a few decades until I’m alone in bed to ask questions… Well, that’s what I’m going to have to do.”

  Max felt his grip on the gun begin to tighten.

  “We have to help people, Max. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. You’re too young for this. You’re too young to have to be a soldier.”

  “I can do it,” Max said. He watched the zombie, let his hand slip from the rifle. The rabbit returned from the tree line, and this time, the zombie grabbed it as it rushed by. The zombie brought the rabbit toward its mouth. Max reached back up and pulled the trigger, and heard the sky split in two. He saw a lifeless body fall to the ground, and a rabbit sprint back into the woods. “But I can’t promise I’ll do it just like you do.”

  47

  In for the Storm

  The rain was strong and the wind was even stronger. Sometime before midnight, it began to hail.

  Ben had a lot on his mind. He thought about what he’d done with Charlotte, and felt a little wrong. He had some feelings for her, but he also felt he was rushing things. He didn’t want to tell Charlotte, he just wanted it all to fix itself. He wanted things back to what they were, whatever that was. But he also wanted to take his time, make sure he didn’t screw anything up.

  He looked over to his side. The outline of the nightstand, a lamp, and the alarm clock came into view from time to time as lightning struck, but with no power the clock was useless. He was glad he had his old sport digital. He pressed a button and it lit up. He couldn’t stand lying in bed wondering how long he had been awake. It was 2:30 a.m.

  “I can’t sleep with all that rain and wind,” Charlotte said. She sounded exhausted. She sat up and leaned against the headboard. The window on her side was covered with a dark sheet. She arched her back in a stretch as she looked at Ben’s shadowy form.

  “Me neither,” Ben said. He rubbed his eyes, then felt his hand over to Charlotte’s.

  Charlotte shivered, even with the covers pulled up around her, so Ben sat up against the headboard with her. He put an arm around her and pulled her close,
rubbing her shoulder with a steady hand. She leaned her head against him and sighed. They sat that way for a solid half-hour before they settled down, with Ben’s arm around Charlotte, and fell asleep.

  ****

  Al woke up and noticed Ruth wasn’t in bed. He was worried at first, but that was just the blurry remnants of bad dreams working against him. He climbed out of bed and went to look for her.

  He found her in the front room. It was dark, save for one candle on a small table by the barred window. The only sounds he could hear were the relentlessly pounding storm, and the quiet creaking of the old rocker. It had been left to her in her grandmother’s will, and she always sat in it when she was unable to sleep.

  “You never can sleep during these storms.” Al approached, his silhouette lighting up briefly with a flash of lightning. Once he moved into the glow of the candle, Ruth could see a smile on his face, so she smiled back. Al sat down in a recliner a few feet from her.

  “I wish I could. I’m so exhausted. I wish the rain would let up soon. Lighter rainstorms are so much more relaxing. Not as much thunder.” Ruth crossed one leg over the other and pushed off with the foot that was planted on the ground. The chair’s creaks became harsher as it rocked harder.

  “You know me,” Al said. “I can sleep through anything. I only woke up because you were gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ruth said.

  “It’s fine, honey.” A bolt of lightning cut through the sky and rain, the room flickered with its eerie white light. “It just goes to show how close we are. I can’t sleep if you’re not there.”

  “That’s really sweet, Al.”

  They sat in silence for some time, and then Ruth spoke again.

  “At least we won’t need any rain for a while.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  ****