by Joe McKinney
“Niki,” he said, shaking his head. “You haven’t been paying attention. I know you’ve seen a quiet street suddenly fill with zombies. You’ve seen that, right? You’ve seen one zombie turn into a stadium full of them in the blink of an eye. Haven’t you ever wondered how that happened, how they converge on a victim so suddenly, so completely?”
She didn’t answer.
“Yes, you have, haven’t you? I can see it in your face. You’re wondering how it happens. But I know the answer, Niki. I know because I can see what connects them. I can make them do anything, go anywhere. And I can do it without ever leaving this room.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Like calls to like, Niki. A virus will invade a host, but it won’t make its presence known until it has sufficient numbers to control the host. We’ve known that for a long time, even though we’ve never understood how it works. I still don’t. But I can use it, Niki. If I concentrate, I can make a zombie in Los Angeles walk into the Pacific Ocean. I can make a crowd of them in Mexico City come north. Viruses are like that. No matter where they are in the host, they can communicate. It’s not telepathy, or pheromones, or any of that shit. But it happens just the same.”
He stopped there, watching her.
“You know what I think you need,” he said. “You need a demonstration.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t do anything but stand there. And yet, somehow, he delivered a message to the zombie behind her. It suddenly slammed itself against the bars of its cage, snarling, pounding on the metal.
She staggered to her feet and turned to watch it.
The zombie tried to tear a strip of iron with its teeth. It clamped down on the metal and tore at it, even after shattering its teeth. And when that didn’t work it jammed a shoulder into the gap and pressed hard.
An uninfected person would have given up, but the zombie pushed and pushed until it bent the bars, stripping the flesh from its shoulder as it forced itself out of its cage.
“Oh my God,” Niki said, backing up.
“He left here a long time ago, Niki.”
She turned to look at the Red Man. He smiled back, then gestured toward the cage. One of the strips of iron snapped from its rivet and clattered to the floor. The zombie, a huge flap of bloody skin hanging loose from its shoulder, slid through the newly opened gap and dropped face-first to the floor, its right arm snapping beneath it.
With its skin hanging down around its waist like a skirt the zombie rose to its feet.
“No,” Niki said. “No.” That’s a man, she thought. How can he still be alive?
It took a few faltering steps toward her, smearing the ground with blood. The zombie was less than five feet from her when it stopped and turned its diseased face toward the Red Man. It was swaying in a circular motion, barely able to keep its feet.
“He will walk a thousand miles more, if I want him to,” the Red Man said.
“Loren, stop it, please.”
“Then tell me where I can find Don Fisher?”
“Herculaneum,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She couldn’t bring herself to look at anything but her own boots. All the fight had bled out of her. “I was supposed to meet him in Herculaneum this morning. He’s probably still there.”
The Red Man smiled. “Better and better, Niki. My zombies will move through Union Field, and then we will go looking for Dr. Fisher.”
“What?” she said, aware of the fear in her voice but unable to stop it. “You can’t. You said you just wanted Fisher.”
“I do want Fisher, Niki. And when you’re ready to give him to me, I’ll take him. But you’re still lying to me. You have three days to give me what I want. It will take at least that long for my zombies to gather at Union Field. If I have not heard the truth by then, it won’t matter—not for you, or for Fisher.”
With that, he turned and strode out of the room. And when the black shirts turned out the lights, the only sound she heard was the exhausted breathing of the dying zombie on the floor just a few feet away.
CHAPTER 15
It was shortly after daybreak and the light was struggling to break through the mists and white vapors that clung to the marshlands on the Illinois side of the river. Though he had been in good spirits as they powered away from Herculaneum, a night of rain that had never really been more than a thick, cold mist had left Jimmy Hinton feeling sober and uneasily alert. As soon as possible, for fuel was worth almost as much as blood these days, he’d cut the motor and let them drift downriver along the Illinois side, where they were less likely to encounter any patrols from Ken Stoler’s compound. He knew it was unlikely Stoler’s goons would come this far, for they were rapidly approaching the Red Man’s domain, but one could never tell what Stoler might do. The man was an enigma. So they went on through the drizzly, miserable night, and for a while they traveled parallel to a dirt road that ran along the riverbank. They hid whenever possible in the thick overhanging cottonwoods because the banks were crawling with the infected moving south through the streams of mist, as though they were responding to some kind of migratory impulse, a Pied Piper call that only they could hear. Several times they’d turned as a body to regard the Sugar Jane as it drifted past, and on one such occasion the sight of all those eyes glinting in the darkness had been enough to drive a half-drunk Richardson down into the cabin, muttering something about apex predators. Now Jimmy Hinton was alone once more, regarding the feeble morning light and the white, cloudlike puffs of mist and fog that drifted like wraiths through the stands of rushes and out over the wetlands. The place was utterly desolate and darkly sinister with the threat of the infected lurking somewhere out there, their hungry moans echoing through the night.
He had pulled the Sugar Jane into the dead water under a towhead and broke up the outline of her hull with cottonwoods and young willow branches, like a latter-day Huck Finn. The process took a lot of work, especially for a man his age, but the unusually large amount of northbound river traffic they’d seen, and his jangled nerves, in his mind, justified the added caution. On a normal night, with the darkness so complete that you couldn’t see the water when you looked over the railing, it wasn’t unusual to hear the Bedouins on other boats beating on pots and pans or calling out to each other in friendly salutations. They’d touch off a candle and raise a light to each other as they passed. It was the custom of the river. It was good etiquette. But there had been none of that on this trip. In fact, a day before, just hours after they’d hustled away from Ken Stoler’s people up in Herculaneum, they’d seen a trawler much like their own steadily chugging upriver. Jimmy had hailed the pilot, a thin, bald black man, with a friendly wave. But one look at the stark and strangely haunted emptiness in the man’s eyes had caused the smile to shrink from Jimmy’s face and his hand to fall to his side, his fingers curled into his palm as though to pull the hail back from whence it had come. Jimmy had stared after the man as they passed, his face a pale yellow in the guttering candlelight, and the man had stared back at him, never saying a word. The man’s haunted expression never wavered, and it had unnerved Jimmy in a way that he couldn’t quite identify.
Since that disturbing moment he’d seen a steady stream of traffic moving upriver. There had been other encounters that were equally unsettling, and those encounters, coupled with the crowds of infected moving south through the desolate Illinois swamps, had prompted him to take to hiding in the daylight, as they were doing now, moving only when they had the cover of darkness to conceal them. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, but he had survived a long time by listening to the warning bells in his head, and they had been ringing loudly since that first encounter with the black man with the haunted eyes.
Pausing to look over the screen of tree branches he’d made, his mind wandered as it sometimes did back to the time before the outbreak, and for one glorious moment he could once again sense the intoxicating smell of his infant granddaughter, and hear the infectious burbling of h
er laughter. Warmth spread through his chest. His world was perfect, inviolate, his spirit soaring on a thermal uplift of a memory so complete it eclipsed everything else around him.
And then the sound of a motor somewhere out on the expanse of the river knifed through the happy shell of his daydream, and his eyes opened to the misery of the present.
“I love you, baby,” he said, fetching a deep sigh. “I miss you.”
And then he went below.
Jimmy Hinton stopped at the bottom of the stairs and surveyed the cabin.
Gabi was sitting on the couch. The fat girl, Avery Harper, was seated on the floor between Gabi’s knees. Gabi was combing the girl’s hair and laughing at something the older woman, the college professor, had just said. He almost asked Gabi to come topside and help square away the deck just in case the mist actually turned into rain, but seeing her with the other women, talking, laughing, he realized it had been too long since she’d shared a little friendly conversation with another woman. Poor thing didn’t have anybody else but him to talk to most of the time, and Jimmy knew he wasn’t that entertaining.
Off to his left, Richardson and Nate Royal were huddled together, talking about something on Richardson’s iPad. The two of them had been thick as thieves since they’d left Herculaneum, Richardson teaching the kid how to use the device.
“I got us hid pretty good,” Jimmy announced to the room. “There’s still a bunch of northbound traffic on the river, but they ain’t gonna be able to see us. Same with the zombies. They’ll probably stick to the road, and it cuts east of here to miss the wetlands.”
Gabi favored him with a smile, but her attention never really left the other two women.
Richardson and Nate didn’t even look up.
“Good to know you people appreciate my efforts,” Jimmy said. He surveyed the room again, waiting for somebody to acknowledge him, but nobody did.
Finally Gabi looked over at him.
“Quit hovering, Jimmy. Why don’t you take a nap? Take your Hush Puppies off and sleep a little. I bet your feet are hurting.” She turned to Sylvia and said, “It’s the gout, you know. We keep looking for Epsom salt for him to soak his feet, but nobody seems to have it.”
“Can’t you improvise something?” Sylvia asked. “Baking soda, maybe?”
“Well, I don’t know. You think that’d work?”
Jimmy opened his mouth to argue, but shut it without saying a word. They had already tuned him out, anyway. And besides, Gabi was right as always. He was exhausted. His feet were killing him, especially his ankles, and the bunk did look inviting.
He slipped off his Hush Puppies, the gentle vibration of the deck soothing the soles of his feet, and walked over to the sink for a cup of water. Richardson and Nate were still murmuring over the iPad. Jimmy caught a flash of a home movie on it, a pretty girl in a simple white cotton dress teaching a group of children.
“I bet you recognize her, don’t you?” Richardson said to Nate. There was a touch of mischief in his expression.
Nate squinted at the dim, grimed-over screen, frowning in concentration.
But then his lips spread open, revealing badly yellowed teeth. “Hey, is that . . . ?”
“Uh huh. Bellamy Blaze.”
“No shit.” Nate let out a whistle. “You’re not shittin’ me, are you? You met her?”
“I thought you’d like that.” For a moment, there was genuine mirth in Richardson’s voice, but it faded quickly. He looked at the screen and his smile turned sad. “Her real name was Robin Tharp. She was one of the ones who escaped the Grasslands with me. Smart lady. A natural when it came to teaching kids.”
Nate laughed. “That girl could swallow a nine-inch cock and smile while she did it. Before the outbreak, I think I had all her movies. Me and her and a case of beer spent a lot of quality time together on my couch, if you get my drift.”
Richardson nodded. He seemed to be looking inwardly now, staring back across years. “She was a good friend,” he said. “A good leader, too.”
“Did you ever—” Nate made that hitching noise again “—you know? Tell me you hit that.”
“No, Nate. Nothing like that. She was devoted to this guy named Jeff Stavers. Jeff was a Harvard grad, but he was working as a video store manager right before the outbreak. You would have liked him, I think.” Richardson turned back to the iPad. “You know what I remember about her?”
Nate shook his head.
“Do you remember me telling you about Ed Moore and how he led us all out of the Grasslands? Well, when Ed died, it was Robin here who took up the reins. Not only was she the schoolteacher for our compound, but she was also our leader. She did a hell of job, too.”
Richardson shook his head. Absently, he ran a finger down the side of the iPad.
“I miss her, Nate. She tried so hard. What happened wasn’t her fault. I remember when we came back and found everybody dead. Those of us who were still alive really leaned on her after that. She was . . . she was just a well of energy. Up before everyone else. Didn’t get to bed until way after everyone else was already in bed, exhausted. But you know what she told me that really impressed me?”
“No. What?”
“She said that the outbreak was the best thing that ever happened to her because it let her start her life all over again. That’s what I wanted to show you, Nate. I think you can probably identify with that, can’t you?”
Jimmy didn’t hear the kid’s reply. He was watching the woman on the iPad’s screen. She was making a dozen little kids laugh over something they’d just read. Jimmy cocked his head to one side, studying the image. He could see it now. She really was Bellamy Blaze, the porn star. A little older, maybe, a little worn down by the weight of leadership . . . but it really was her. He remembered watching her videos on the Internet, the girl bent over the arm of a couch while three guys with huge dicks took turns going at her ass like it was a punching bag.
He felt uncomfortable, sad somehow. It wasn’t her sexual exploits that held his attention. It was the children giggling. The sound filled him with sadness.
“You’re wasting your time with that shit,” Jimmy said.
Both Nate and Richardson looked up at him.
“You said that before,” Nate said. “You don’t like hearing stories about how people came through the outbreak. Why not?”
Jimmy regarded him, amazed once again at the people who managed to live through the apocalypse, and mourning those who didn’t. This guy, he was bland and uninteresting, dumb as the day was long, and yet he was still alive.
There didn’t seem to be any justice in it.
“Ain’t nothing good about what’s gone, kid,” Jimmy said. “It ain’t coming back, so what’s the point?”
“But that is the point,” Richardson said. “So much of everything is gone . . . both the good and the bad.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Jimmy said. “Look at us. Look at what we got here. Ain’t none of us what we used to be. Ain’t none of us got what we used to have. There’s no point in reminding us of how bad things are.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing by saving these stories ?”
“Isn’t it? Tell me. You ever brought back one moment of happiness by saving up all these stories? Have you? Seems to me all you’re doing is dredging up a lot of pointless heartache.”
Richardson put his iPad down on the deck. Nate started to speak, but Richardson put a hand on his shoulder and quieted him with a gentle smile. “It’s okay,” he said to Nate. Then he looked up at Jimmy and said, “Storytelling isn’t about bringing back the past, though you’re right about everything else you said. There’s nothing in these files that will undo what’s been done. The world’s not what it was. There’s no changing that.”
“So what’s the point? Why bother? You’re old enough you should know better than to add cruelty to a world that’s already got too much of it.”
“Yeah—and you’re old enough not to believe that.”
Jimmy let out a huff, unimpressed.
“Do yourself a favor, kid,” he said to Nate, “and get yourself a new teacher. This one ain’t got enough sense to pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel.”
Richardson laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jimmy challenged him.
“That was one of my dad’s favorites,” he said. “That, and you’re running off the reservation. I used to love all the shit my dad used to say.”
Jimmy stared at him for a long moment. “Yeah, well, we old folks are great for that.”
“And yet you’ve totally missed my point,” Richardson said. “You’re wrong when you said all I was doing was adding cruelty to the world.” He held up the iPad. “That’s not what this is. This right here, this is how we rebuild. These stories . . . this is how we make the world anew. Storytelling is our therapy. It’s where we go for healing.”
“Spare me the lit lecture, professor.”
“That’s her job,” Richardson said with a grin as he hooked his thumb in Sylvia Carnes’s direction. “I’m a reporter by trade. My job is to find the thread that connects us. And stories do that.”
Jimmy was unimpressed. He loosened his belt and untucked his shirt and dropped down onto his bunk. Suddenly he didn’t feel at all tired. He felt angry, but not at Ben Richardson, not at any of them. He was angry at himself, angry at his life, angry at everything that had turned out so god-awful wrong.
“I’ll tell you what’s obvious,” he said. His comment was directed at Richardson, but he was staring up at the ceiling. “Humanity was made to suffer. There is no saving us. You’re preaching a fairy tale. The world was made with more cruelty than kindness, and the scales won’t ever balance.”
“Do you really believe that,” Nate asked.
In the morning light that was quickly spreading through the cabin his face looked far younger than it had when Jimmy first met him.
“Yeah, I do,” said Jimmy. “Now lemme alone. I’m going to bed.”
And with that he turned his face to the wall and pulled the covers up to his ears.