The Remnants of Yesterday

by Anthony M. Strong

  “Don’t be so modest. It’s a big deal. Is it out yet? Would I have heard of it?”

  “No, and no,” I said. “I only found out three days ago. The visit to New York was going to be a double celebration. My brother’s new baby, and my first published book.” I squirted body wash into my hands and rubbed it into my hair in lieu of shampoo.

  “Bummer. Sorry about that. Awful timing.”

  “Story of my life.”

  “I’d love to write a book,” Clara said. “That’s why I came here. This place has the best literature program in New England.”

  “It’s a good thing you could afford it.”

  “Are you kidding? I couldn’t afford this place in a million years. I worked my ass off to get a full scholarship, and I still ended up working in that shitty gas station four nights a week to survive.” She turned the shower off. “Are you done in there?”

  “Almost.” I rinsed my hair off and grabbed the towel.

  “Good,” Clara said. “I’ve been thinking. We should stay here tonight.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” I wanted to reach New York and find my brother. This felt like an unnecessary delay.

  “Come on, it makes sense. We spent last night on the floor. I don’t know about you, but I hardly got a wink of sleep, especially with Walter tied up out front. We’re exhausted. We have comfortable beds here, and as much food as we want in the school kitchens.”

  “Well…” I still I felt we should keep moving. On the other hand, a good night’s sleep did make sense.

  “Just one night. We can use the time to plan our next move.”

  “One night.” I pulled my boxer shorts on and stepped from the shower.

  Clara was already dressed. She eyed me for a moment, her eyes dropping briefly to my boxers, and then she turned toward the door. “Great. We’ll stay here tonight, and move on in the morning.”

  I was about to answer her, but at that moment the lights flickered once, then twice, and went out.

  15

  THE ROOM WAS PLUNGED into darkness. The only light came from a small frosted glass window set high on the far wall.

  “Shit,” Clara swore.

  “I was afraid this might happen.” I had held out some small hope that things might not be as bad as they seemed. If the electricity was still on then it meant there was someone keeping it that way. This latest development seemed to squash that idea.

  “I can’t believe it. How much worse can things get?”

  I sensed that Clara was nearing a breaking point. “It doesn’t matter. We can still spend the night here. It’ll just be a bit darker than I would have liked.”

  “I hate the dark,” Clara said. “I always sleep with a nightlight.”

  “Maybe we can find a flashlight or something.” I pulled the door open. “Come on, why don’t we go back to the room. There’s no point in staying here.” Clara stood still for a moment, as if she was unsure what to do, and then pushed past me into the corridor.

  We walked back to her dorm room, neither one of us speaking. When we arrived, she flopped down on the bed, starring sullenly at the ceiling.

  I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a tee shirt, and then made myself comfortable on the other bed.

  The silence was like a gulf between us, a chasm that I couldn’t cross. I wished there were something I could say or do to make her feel better, but it was hard to think of anything positive to say about our predicament, so instead I said nothing.

  We were still like that, lost in our own thoughts, when the first scream pierced the air.

  Clara jumped up, a look of terror on her face. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” I had assumed we were alone in the college. It appeared I was wrong.

  The second scream was worse.

  “That sounded like it came from the quad,” Clara said.

  I ran to the window and peered out.

  At first I didn’t see anything, but then there were two figures, a male and a female, running out from between the buildings and bolting across the open space. They looked scared. A moment later I saw why. A group of fifteen or twenty men and women entered the quad. They moved fast, making a beeline for the couple. One of the pursuers, a large guy in a yellow tee, pulled ahead, closing the gap.

  “Oh my God, I recognize some of those people.” Clara was at the window now, her face pressed against the glass. “That guy in the yellow top, he’s in my creative writing class. I think his name is Ben.”

  The fleeing couple reached the center of the open area. The smaller of the two, the girl, turned to glance over her shoulder. As she did so, her foot caught on something and she toppled forward, hitting the ground hard.

  The guy stopped and hesitated for a moment, then raced back to help his stricken companion.

  “You have to help them.” Clara looked at me.

  “I’ll never get there in time.”

  “Please, we can’t just leave them out there like that.”

  “Alright. But lock the door behind me.”

  16

  I TOOK THE STAIRS at a breakneck pace, jumping down the last four steps onto each landing and catapulting myself down the next flight. By the time I reached the bottom I was winded, my lungs burning. I ignored my discomfort and raced across the lobby to the door leading to the quad, and threw it open.

  Somehow the male had managed to pull the girl to her feet, and by a miracle they were still ahead of the mob, but not by much, and they were now moving away from me, across the grass toward the main building.

  “Hey, over here,” I shouted, waving my arms in a desperate attempt to draw their attention.

  They turned in my direction, and for a brief moment I saw confusion on their faces, then they appeared to reach a mutual decision that there might be safety in numbers. They took off toward me at a clip, weaving in a wide arc to avoid their pursuers.

  The mob turned and followed, shambling along at a surprisingly fast pace. I watched them advance, saw their slack jawed expressions, and suddenly thought of my encounter with Walter back at the gas station. He had that same vacant, dead eyed look as these people.

  The lights were on but nobody was home.

  If they caught this couple, I had a good idea what they would do.

  “Come on. Hurry up,” I shouted.

  The couple ran head long toward me, closing the gap. Unsure what else to do I stepped outside, aware that I was now in as much danger as they were.

  The mob was right behind them now, with yellow shirt, the guy Clara had identified as Ben, still leading. He stretched his arms out, hands grasping at the air inches from his prey.

  The man maneuvered himself behind his companion, using his body as a barrier between her and the mob, and then gave a mighty push. She stumbled forward into my arms.

  I gripped her arms and retreated, pulling her back through the door, and then turned to reach out for her companion. But just when it seemed I might be able to drag him to safety, Ben gripped him in a horse collar, and yanked backward. My fingers brushed his outstretched hand, just for a second, and then he was gone, consumed by the flailing arms of the mob.

  For a moment he was lost, before I caught a glimpse of his struggling body within the mass of crazed people. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they surrounded him, clawing and gouging, his anguished cries of pain mingling with the sound of ripping and tearing and chewing.

  “Rob.” The girl screamed her companion’s name, tears flowing down her cheeks. She tried to push past me and get back into the quad, but I held on tight, wrestling her back inside.

  Ben broke away from the pack and turned, fixing us with bloodshot, dull eyes. His yellow shirt was not so bright anymore, but had taken on the copper red color of blood.

  He took a step toward us.

  I slammed the door.

  17

  “THEY KILLED ROB.” The girl sobbed, hysterical. She sat on the edge of the bed and rocked back and forth, her head in her hands. She would
have been a pretty girl under different circumstances. Her cropped dark hair perfectly complimented an oval face and deep hazel eyes. I guessed she was twenty years of age at most. Her lithe build and toned features, along with the polo shirt bearing a hockey emblem, meant that she probably played sports.

  “We can’t stay here.” I glanced out of the window. The mob was still there, milling around the quad, walking in erratic circles. Occasionally one would bump into another, and then a mild scuffle would break out until they veered away from each other. They reminded me of the dodgem cars at the fair. Except dodgems don’t try to eat you.

  “Well we can’t go out there,” Clara said. “Not unless we want to be next up on the menu.”

  “Agreed.” It didn’t look like any of them had attempted to break through the front door yet, which I’d secured with a hefty wooden bench dragged from the other side of the foyer. How long that would last was anyone’s guess. “There must be another way out of the building, a back door.”

  “There’s a service entrance that leads to the dumpsters. It’s on the other side of the building.”

  “We can slip out that way. If we’re lucky they won’t even see us.”

  “And what if we’re not so lucky?”

  “Then we run like hell.”

  “This is totally screwed up.” Clara pulled a face.

  “Yeah, it is. But nowhere near as screwed up as it will get if those-” I searched for the right words, “those crazy things get in here. They might be acting dumb right now, but I for one don’t want to wait around until they get hungry again.”

  “Which brings me to my next question. Just what the hell happened to them?” Clara paced back and forth. “I know some of those people. I went to class with them, partied with them. They were nice people. That guy in the yellow top asked me out just last week.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now.”

  “Don’t tell me what matters. They ripped that poor guy to shreds. They were eating him. First Walter, and now this.”

  “Hey, keep it down.” I motioned toward our guest.

  “Sorry.” Clara lowered her voice. She met my gaze. “I’m scared.”

  “Me too. But I’d rather move on and take my chances than wait in here. I might be wrong, but I don’t think those things out there are in any hurry to leave.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Does it matter?” I felt a pang of disappointment. It would have been nice to have a comfortable bed for the night, but none of us would be able to sleep with the pack of Crazies right below us. Besides, who knew when they would pull together some collective brains and go looking for another way inside? “It’s not safe here anymore.”

  “It will be dark in a few hours.”

  “I know that. All the more reason to leave now while we still can.” My eyes settled on the torn lump of ragged flesh and bone that was all that remained of Rob. The Crazies seemed to have finished with him. They also seemed to have forgotten about us, at least for now.

  “What about her?” Clara glanced toward the girl. “We can’t go anywhere with her in that state.”

  “You’re right.” I turned to the girl and knelt down, taking her hand. “What’s your name?”

  “She looked up, her face blotchy where tears had cut streaks through her makeup. “Emily.”

  “Pretty name.” I squeezed her hand, speaking softly. “Listen Emily, it’s not safe here, we are going to find somewhere else to stay tonight. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” She sniffed and rubbed tears from her eyes.

  “Good. That’s very good.”

  “Rob’s dead.” Her bottom lip trembled and I sensed I was losing her.

  Clara knelt by my side. “Was he-” She paused, searching for the best way to ask. “Were you in a relationship?”

  Emily shook her head. “No. He was the only person I could find after-” Her voice cracked. “They killed him.”

  “I know that, and I’m so sorry. I really am,” I said. “But right now I need you to take a deep breath and keep it under control, focus on surviving. Do you think you can do that?”

  Emily nodded.

  “Fantastic.” I turned to Clara. “Can you find some clothes that will fit her?”

  “Probably. She looks about the same size as my roommate,” Clara said, hopping to her feet.

  “Do it. I want to be out of here in fifteen minutes.”

  “What if we run into more of those crazy people?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” I picked up the tire iron from the bed, where Clara had discarded it when we arrived, and gave it a swing. “I played some baseball in college.”

  18

  WE FLED THROUGH THE side door and down a narrow alley between the dormitory block and an adjacent building, then pushed through a fence behind the dumpsters.

  I was on edge the whole time, but we didn’t run into any more trouble, which was a good thing, because I wasn’t confident that one measly tire iron was as great a weapon as I made it out to be. If confronted with a horde of Crazies we probably wouldn’t fare too well, especially with Emily in tow. She seemed to have pulled herself together somewhat, but she looked like she could have another breakdown at any moment.

  My stomach growled, reminding me that we hadn’t eaten in hours, so I pulled a candy bar from my pack and ate it as we crossed a muddy field behind the college. Clara did the same, but Emily refused my offer of food, just shaking her head and walking along in silence. The thought had crossed my mind, as we were preparing to flee, that our food supplies would be nowhere near enough to keep all three of us sustained for very long. It also occurred to me that the college must have a well-stocked pantry, with better options than chips and chocolate, but I wasn’t willing to risk the time it would take to find and retrieve said food. Having seen what the Crazies did to Rob, the last thing I wanted was to find myself backed into a walk-in cooler with ten or twenty of them clamoring at the door. Something bothered me though, and I asked Clara about it as soon as I felt we were far enough away from the college to ease up a little.

  “How many students attend that college?”

  She chewed the last of her candy bar and pushed the wrapper into her pocket. Even now, with the world gone to crap, she couldn’t bring herself to litter. “I don’t know, a thousand, maybe more.”

  “What about the faculty?”

  “Maybe another sixty or seventy, why?”

  “I was thinking about that mob in the quad. There can’t have been more than twenty of them.”

  “So?”

  “So where was everyone else?” I finished my own snack. “I mean, if there were over a thousand faculty and students at the college when this all went down, where did they go? We didn’t see a soul until that pack of Crazies came onto the scene.”

  “Maybe they left, got out like we did.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. We walked all the way from the highway and didn’t run across a single person. Surely we would have found a student or two somewhere along the way.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Clara asked.

  “Things don’t add up. There aren’t enough people. Remember when we found that car near the off ramp?”

  “Sure.”

  “It was locked.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything, they could have gotten out then locked it.”

  “Why would they? The car was totaled, the airbags deployed. It would be odd to lock the car up and just walk off, leave it there.” I paused for a moment, letting this sink in. “Then there were the cars on the highway.”

  “We saw bodies on the highway.” Clara went pale. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that burned up guy.”

  “Right. We saw some bodies. But a lot of the vehicles were empty. True, some people might have gone crazy and wandered off like our friends back at the school, but some of the cars were so badly damaged, I’m not sure the doors would even open. And how do you explain that the seatbelts were still buckled with no one inside
.”

  All of a sudden, Emily broke her silence. “They disappeared.”

  “Sorry?” As one, we both turned to look at her.

  “They were there, then they weren’t.” She stopped mid step and turned to face us. “I was in the library studying when the headache started. I passed out, we all did, but when I woke up, I was alone. There were at least forty or fifty people in there with me, but they were just gone. Everything else was the same except for them. There were even books dropped on the floor as if people were holding them when they vanished.”

  “Maybe you were just the last one to wake up,” Clara said to Emily.

  “Rob said the same thing.” Emily spoke again. “He was on his dorm floor playing video games with a bunch of friends, and when he woke up he was alone. The other students, his friends, his roommate, all vanished.”

  “Just like the girl in the red dress back at the gas station,” I said. “The one with the BMW.”

  “Come on. Disappearing people?” Clara said, a note of incredulity in her voice. “Aren’t things weird enough without jumping to conclusions like that?”

  “You tell me.” I answered her. “All I know is that there seem to be a lot less people around than there should be.”

  “Listen to yourselves. That doesn’t make any sense. People don’t just vanish into thin air.”

  “People go missing all the time,” Emily said. “Haven’t you ever seen the posters in the supermarkets or at police stations?”

  “Not like this.”

  “Why not? It’s just on a bigger scale now.”

  “And the Crazies? What about them?” Clara said. “How do they fit into all of this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s something else.”

  “Right. And maybe pigs fly.” Clara turned and walked away, trudging down a slight slope toward a copse of trees at the edge of the field, without so much as a backward glance. “Let’s just keep moving shall we.”