The Remnants of Yesterday

by Anthony M. Strong

  “You will see them again,” I said.

  “Maybe.” She fixed her attention back on me. “In the meantime though, I guess you’re stuck with me.”

  “Well, there are worse people to be stuck with,” I replied. “Clay for a start. He’d probably have shot me by now.”

  Clara laughed, her eyes lighting up for a moment, before a shadow fell over her face. “Why don’t we go back inside? It’s probably not safe out here.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking coming out here on my own.” I reached out and gripped the barn door, holding it open for Clara to enter first.

  It was at that moment, as I was about to step back inside, that the phone in my pocket vibrated.

  I looked at Clara, startled. “I think I just got a text.”

  “What?” She swiveled around, her eyes wide. “I thought the phones weren’t working.”

  “Me too.” I pulled the device from my pocket and turned the screen on, typing in the password. The text message icon now had a bold number next to it. “I do have a new text.”

  “Well?”

  “Hang on.” I opened it, waiting for the message to come up, and then read it, once to confirm who it was from, the second time to absorb the words, and then I turned to Clara. “We need to wake the others.”

  24

  NEW HAVEN

  GO SOUTH

  VIRUS SPREADING

  “What does it mean?” Emily looked down at the phone, her brow furrowed.

  “It means I was right.” Clay said. “Goddamned idiots in Washington went and started something they couldn’t finish.” He paced back and forth, a vein in his forehead throbbing. “I bet it’s the Koreans, or the freaking Chinese. I knew it.”

  “Now hang on,” I said. “We don’t know anything.”

  “We know plenty,” Clay replied. “Virus spreading? That can only mean one thing. Biological warfare.”

  “That’s just jumping to conclusions,” Clara said. “We’re as much in the dark as we were yesterday.”

  “No, we’re not. Those things, those zombies, they are infected with a damn virus.”

  “And it’s spreading,” Emily said. “At least if you believe the text message.”

  “On the face of it we have no reason not to.” Clara looked at me. “Are you sure it was your brother who sent it?”

  “Sure as I can be.” I picked up the phone. “It’s from his number.”

  “Does New Haven mean anything to you?” Clara asked.

  “No.”

  “It would be nice if the message gave us a bit more information,” she said. “The only New Haven I know of is in Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut seems logical, given our location,” I agreed. “And Jeff might be there if they evacuated New York.”

  “Which would explain the text.” Clara looked hopeful.

  “Kind of,” Clay said. “But it doesn’t explain everything.”

  “What?” I looked at him.

  “How come your phone works when no one else’s does?” Clay narrowed his eyes. “Seems mighty odd to me.”

  “I don’t know. When I charged it at the school there was no service.”

  “And now?”

  “A weak signal. One bar.”

  “One bar, huh, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. Have you called the number back?” Clay asked. “Replied to the text message?"

  “First thing I did. The text bounces back undeliverable, and the number just gets an automated message. The call cannot be completed at this time.”

  “And yet somehow you got that text through anyway,” Clay said, narrowing his eyes.

  “I never said I had all the answers.” I wasn’t sure what Clay was getting at, but he was starting to annoy me.

  “We’re getting off point here.” Clara positioned herself between us, sensing the change in mood. “The real issue is what do we do next?”

  “I say we do what the phone said and go south,” Emily piped up.

  “I agree.” I was getting tired of the discussion. “We should head toward New Haven. If this message is from Jeff, then he must be there already. It must be safe.”

  “There’s no guarantee the message meant New Haven, Connecticut.” Clay seemed determined to argue. “Seems like a waste of time if you ask me.”

  “Well we’re not asking. Come with us, or don’t. No skin off my nose.”

  “Easy there fella.” Clay turned to Clara. “Sensitive one ain’t he, your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” Clara shot me a look. “But he’s right. We can’t stay here, and New Haven seems as good a place to go as any.”

  “If you’re smart, you’ll head toward the border.” Clay said. “Canada.”

  “Why on earth would we want to go to there?” I asked, wondering if Clay had lost his mind. “What makes you think Canada will be any different from here?”

  “Of course it’ll be different. It’s Canada.” Clay drew a breath. “Whatever this is, this thing that’s happened, the chances are that it was an attack on the USA. We’re always poking our noses in where they don’t belong. Maybe someone got mad and poked back. Canada is probably just fine.”

  “If it is, and that’s a big if, they will have closed the border by now. What are you going to do? Waltz on up there and ask them to let you in?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good luck with that.” I turned to Clara and Emily. “I vote we make our way south, go to New Haven.”

  “I agree,” Clara said.

  “Me too.” Emily nodded.

  Clay looked us over, as if trying to figure out if we were really serious, then shrugged. “Hey, it’s you’re funeral.” He turned and stomped off, then returned a few moments later with a pistol. “If you’re hell bent on going south, you’d better take this.”

  “I don’t know.” I hesitated.

  “Just take it numbnuts. You’re going to need something to defend yourselves.” He pressed the gun into my hand. “When this is all over I expect you to find me and give it back, comprende?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well alright then.” Clay grinned.

  I looked down at the pistol, solid and heavy in my hand. It seemed we were now armed.

  25

  “DO YOU THINK he’ll make it to Canada?” Emily asked as we walked along.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so.” We’d left Clay behind at the barn several hours before and trekked over the fields, finally linking back up with the highway. Much as I wanted to avoid the Interstate, with it’s mangled cars and dead bodies, it was also the quickest way to travel. My one concern was running into more Crazies, and the closer we were to civilization the more chance we had of encountering them. Despite this, the day had so far proved uneventful, and the Interstate, which seemed clogged with cars the last time we walked it, was surprisingly free of vehicles. We went long stretches with barely a wreck to be seen, much to my relief. When we did come across a vehicle or a pile up we gave it a wide berth, wary of what, or who, might be lurking out of sight.

  “We shouldn’t have left him there like that, all alone,” Clara said. “It’s not right.”

  “He made his choice.” A part of me wished Clay had decided to come with us. He seemed to know his way around firearms, and that shotgun of his would come in useful when we ran into more Crazies, which I was sure we would. On the other hand, I found myself leery of him. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on, but I had a feeling he would be bad news if we stuck with him too long.

  “Even so–”

  “I didn’t like him,” Emily said. “He didn’t make me feel safe.”

  “Me either.” It seemed I wasn’t the only one who had taken a dislike to Clay.

  “You know, he did give us a gun.”

  “He did. I’m still not sure why.” I reached down to my belt and touched the handle of the pistol. In my pocket I had a handful of bullets, which Clay gave to us as we were preparing to leave. Since I wa
s the only one with any firearms experience, I kept the gun, while Clara took the tire iron. Emily found a wicked looking old rake with three curved tines at the back of the barn and decided to keep it. It was rusty, and the handle was snapped off half way down, but it was better than nothing.

  “Maybe he felt bad for us.” Clara hitched her backpack higher, repositioning it.

  “Maybe.” It didn’t matter. We were walking in opposite directions.

  “How long do you think it will take us to get to New Haven?” Emily asked.

  “It’s a pretty long trek.” I had been wondering that myself. “Several days, at least.”

  “I wonder if there are other people out there like us, people that didn’t get infected with the virus?”

  “I hope so.” There were several towns along the way, surely someone must have survived. The big question was, whether the survivors would be friendly. Even Clay came out pointing a gun at us, and if there were Crazies running around people might be tempted to shoot first and ask questions later.

  “There are other survivors,” Clara said as we approached yet another off ramp, this one blocked by a semi–trailer that had veered from its lane and jack knifed, spilling pallets of building materials across the road. “Look.”

  I followed her gaze. At first I didn’t see anything, but then my eyes settled on a motel a few hundred yards off the exit. On the roof of the office, a bed sheet was spread out, with one word written across it in big bold lettering.

  HELP.

  26

  THE PINELAND COURT MOTEL looked like it hadn’t received a fresh coat of paint in thirty years. The rooms, arranged in three blocks around a central parking lot, looked drab and old, with ugly under window air conditioners and walkways enclosed with rusted railings. Several of the bedroom doors stood open to various degrees, revealing black, murky interiors. A neon sign, now dark, sat atop a long metal pole next to the road. I wondered if it would work even if there were any power, which there clearly was not. It seemed like the whole state was out.

  Next to the motel, attached by a short connecting corridor, was a restaurant as dilapidated as the rest of the place. A painted sign mounted on the roof identified the place as Donny G’s Steakhouse and Diner – open 24 hours seven days a week. Faded posters in the window advertised such fare as $6.99 steaks, Meatloaf Tuesdays and a $3.99 cheeseburger. Ordinarily I avoided places like this, but right now, a cheap steak from a greasy spoon sounded like heaven on earth.

  The buildings appeared to be deserted. Apart from a couple of cars in the parking lot, and another with its front end crumpled into a lamppost in front of the restaurant, there was no sign of life. As we walked closer however, it became clear that something bad must have gone down at some point over the last two days.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Emily was the first to see the dark red smears on the glass doors of the registration area. Beneath them, on the concrete, a long wide streak led into the road and abruptly ended. A lone tennis shoe, once white but now stained crimson, lay on its side in silent testimony to the violent place the world had become in just forty-eight short hours.

  “I think so.” I hoped that whoever owned the shoe didn’t suffer much, but I had a feeling that they probably did. An image of Rob flashed into my mind, and his agonizing screams as he was torn limb from limb by the Crazies in the college quad.

  “It might not be safe here.” Clara looked around, nervous.

  “The blood’s not fresh, this happened a while ago,” I said. “And anyway whoever wrote that message on the roof might still be around.”

  “Or they could be the owner of that blood.”

  “A distinct possibility.” She had a point. Still, it seemed that we should at least try and find out. Besides, there was a restaurant next door, and that meant we could stock up on food and water, which we desperately needed. I stepped past the abandoned shoe and pulled on the office door. It rattled but didn’t open. “Locked.”

  “We should just take what we need and move on,” Clara said. “There’s no one here.”

  “Maybe.” I cupped my hands to the glass and peered through, careful to avoid the smeared blood, but the interior was so dark I could make out very little. I turned away from the door, disappointed. “Let’s check out the restaurant.”

  “Finally,” Emily said. “I’m starving.”

  The three of us made our way past the lobby parking area and across a rectangle of patchy grass to the restaurant.

  Clara immediately pulled on the double doors, shaking them. “These are locked too.”

  “We’ll have to find another way in,” I said. Maybe there was a service entrance, or even an open window.

  “No need.” Clara hoisted the tire iron and slipped it into the gap between the doors, just above the lock, and pushed sideways. The doors parted just a little but remained steadfast.

  She pushed again, grunting with the effort.

  For a moment I thought the doors would hold, but then they emitted a mighty creak, followed by a sharp crack, and swung inward.

  Clara grinned. “Voila.”

  “Wow.” I looked at her with newfound admiration. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “My father taught me. He used to jack jewelry stores when he was younger. Now he mostly does bank jobs.”

  “Really?”

  “No, of course not. God you’re gullible.” She punched my arm. “My father is an engineer in Boca Raton.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come on.” She stepped across the threshold into the restaurant.

  Emily followed suit, glancing sideways as she passed me. “So gullible.”

  I stood there for a moment, bemused.

  Clara turned to me. “Well, are you coming or not?”

  “Yes. Of course.” I hurried inside, and instantly recoiled.

  The smell was pungent, a combination of decomposing meat and rotten vegetables. Some of the odor was surely coming from a salad bar on the back wall, still stocked with a selection of lettuce, tomatoes, and several tubs of dressing, though the fare was past edible. Even if it had been in any condition to consume, the swarm of buzzing flies that hovered around it would have been more than enough to put me off. More flies circled a few half-eaten dinner plates on a table near the door behind the hostess stand.

  “Ew.” Emily wrinkled her nose. “It smells like ass in here.”

  “Better get used to it,” I said. “With the power out, any food that isn’t pre-packaged will be going rotten, and it will only get worse. We’ll run into this more and more.”

  “Perfect.” She wafted a lone fly away from her face. “Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “The kitchen must be through here.” I stepped toward a set of double swing doors inset with two small round windows. “If there’s anything useable it will be in there.”

  “We should be careful what we take,” Clara said. “We can only carry so much.”

  “We can ditch most of the snack food we took from the gas station. It’s all sugar anyway.”

  “Not all of it though,” Emily said. “Sugar is good if we need a sudden burst of energy. I watched a documentary on TV last year that said chocolate is a good emergency ration. Soldiers use it as part of their survival kit.”

  “We’ll keep the chocolate then.”

  “And the beef jerky.” Clara chimed in. “Easy source of protein.”

  “Fine, the jerky stays too,” I said pushing through the doors. They swung back in place after us. “But the chips are history.”

  “Suits me.” Clara shrugged. “Too fattening.”

  “Really? You’re worrying about your weight at a time like this?”

  “Hey, I’m still a girl.” Clara replied, wandering deeper into the kitchen. “Even if I can jimmy a lock better than you.”

  “Funny. Real funny.” I saw a long bladed carving knife on one of the prep counters and picked it up, then decided that it was too much trouble to carry safely. I put it down again next to a
cluster of yellowed and odorous raw chicken breasts that never made it as far as the skillet. “There must be a pantry or something around here somewhere.”

  “What about that?” Emily pointed to a heavy silver door set into the wall next to a row of shelves that held commercial sized tins of tomato sauce, mayonnaise, cooking oils, and all manner of salad dressings.

  “That should do it.” A heavy-duty latch secured the door, keeping it closed. I gripped it, depressed the button on the underside of the mechanism, and pulled.

  The door opened easily, swinging outward to reveal an oversized walk-in with metal racks lining both sides. The racks contained an assortment of foods. Fresh produce, vegetables and fruits packed into open top cardboard boxes, occupied one section. Next to that were several blocks of cheese and a large package of grated cheddar, while on the other side meats filled the shelves. Hamburgers separated by small grease paper sheets, steaks in tubs labeled Rib Eye, Sirloin and Flank.

  This was not a pantry, but rather a walk in cooler. The food was in better shape than the stuff left out on the counters, but without electricity to keep the room chilled, it was already starting to go bad.

  However, it was not the food that held my attention. It was the woman crouched in the corner between the racks.

  27

  “HEY, THERE’S SOMEONE back here,” I said, approaching the figure.

  “What?” Clara pushed up next to me. “Oh my God. Is she alive?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Her back was turned to us, making it almost impossible to see if she was breathing. “She isn’t moving. I wonder how long she’s been stuck in here.”

  “Maybe she’s the person who wrote that message on the roof.” Emily craned to see past us.

  “What would she be doing in a cooler though?” Something didn’t seem right. The woman still hadn’t moved, but a sense of unease was settling over me.

  “She could have taken refuge in here when things went wrong,” Clara said, then bending close, she spoke to the woman. “Hello? Can you hear me? Are you hurt?”