by Betts, M. E.
"No," Shari said meekly. She sighed, staring at the ceiling as she spoke. "I can't help but feel like it's my fault. Daphne--my friend--tried to tell me it was a bad idea to split up, but I insisted. And now--well, now I have to live with this on my conscience."
"I hate to say it," Phoebe said, "but it doesn't look good for them. If they were alive and well, odds are that they'd have shown up here by now."
Henry turned to stare at her, his gaze reproachful.
"I'm not trying to sound heartless," Phoebe said, "I'm just brutally honest. I'm sorry." She looked back at Shari, her features softening. "Hey, we were about to have some dinner. You hungry?"
Shari shrugged. "A little, I guess." She squeezed her eyes closed, rubbing them vigorously. "I mean, not really, but I know I probably should eat."
"Follow me," Phoebe said, leading the way out of the room and down the hallway to what Shari supposed had once been an employee break room.
"It's not exactly a gourmet kitchen," Henry said, nodding toward the kitchenette spanning the width of the room, "but it's much better than nothing. Phoebe and Anthony scavenge for food, and I work my culinary miracles...as best I can with a microwave, at any rate."
Shari turned to Anthony, smirking. "Nice to meet you, by the way."
"Same here," Anthony replied. "Hey, no hard feelings about me pointing a sniper rifle in your direction, right?"
Shari shook her head, waving her hand casually. "I'm still here, right? Still in one piece. You guys were about as civil as anyone could expect you to be, given the circumstances. You can only trust people so far these days, far enough to coincide with the distance most of us can sling a piano. I'm under no illusions about that."
"Glad we're all on the same page," Anthony said, sinking down into a cushioned chair at a circular table in the middle of the room. "So Phoebe and the professor tell me you guys are trying to make it to Wisconsin. Any particular reason?"
"Yeah," Shari said, "we think the cold should make the zombies less of a threat. It doesn't seem like their circulation is working anymore, which means they should freeze solid in the extreme cold. Their winters are more severe in northern Wisconsin, and they come much earlier." She paused, shaking her head. "I mean, we're not doctors or scientists, so we're not one-hundred percent sure about any of the physics of the undead. Just making educated guesses based off of observations."
"Sounds like a solid enough plan," Anthony said. "I mean, you guys made it this far, right? You came from what, Kentucky?"
Shari nodded. "I lived in Central City. I was on my way to Carbondale to see my parents for Easter when all this started, but I never made it. I was lucky enough to get stuck on a farm in Crittenden County, which was very sparsely populated." She reflected back on her days on Fauna's farm, the incubation period which had prepared her to face the new world she was getting to know. "I was already well on my way to being a different person when I left there just a handful of weeks ago." She snorted. "If you asked me April 20th what I'd do in a zombie apocalypse, I'd probably have said, 'Stick my head in the sand and either die, or wait for it to be over.' I used to be a librarian...I'd never shot a gun, never held a bow in my hands. The thing about this whole scenario, it forced a lot of us to either evolve, or lay down and die."
"Yeah," Phoebe said, "and you guys have been out in it. I mean, we've had to venture out, but we always have the sanctity of the station to come back to. You guys must be pretty hardened, if you've been traveling and winging it."
"I suppose we are," Shari said softly. "I never thought much about it, but yeah...we've improvised, stayed where we could, when we could."
"It's one hell of a way to live," Anthony said. "If you want a break from that lifestyle, you're more than welcome to come to Chicago with us. I'm sure we could use whatever knowledge and skill you're willing to share."
"I can't," Shari said. "I need to find my friends. I can't just leave them. Even if it's a worst case scenario...." She paused, her eyes far away as she continued speaking. "Even if they're dead, or...or undead....I can't just leave without knowing. Wherever they are, whatever happened to them, I'm at least partially responsible."
"I can understand that," Phoebe said. "You've been through a lot with them. But you should know that we're leaving here the day after tomorrow, so just think it over. Do whatever you think is best."
"I'm gonna go out first thing in the morning to try looking for them again," Shari said. Her mostly empty stomach rumbled as Henry made his way to the table carrying a pot of steaming food.
"Just a couple boxes of Skillet Helper," he said, "fresh from the microwave."
Phoebe set out four plates, scooping heaping spoonfuls of noodles, sauce, and potted beef onto each plate. She opened a mini-fridge, taking out four cans of carbonated juice. "We'll have the fancy stuff tonight," she said, smiling as she handed Shari a can, "in honor of the occasion."
"Thanks," Shari said, popping the tab and enjoying the fizzing sound. She guzzled down a few gulps, then dug into the plate of food before her. "So," she said through a mouthful of food, "how exactly did the three of you wind up in this building?"
Phoebe smirked, pausing to swallow her food before she responded. "Well," she said, "to answer that question, I'd have to explain a little bit of my background. You see, I used to be a student here at U of I. I was majoring in computer science, in my second year. I graduated high school at sixteen, then started college the following semester."
"So you're what--eighteen?" Shari asked.
"Yeah," Phoebe said, "as of this past February. Anyway, the asshole dean kicked me out in April for allegedly hacking into people's email accounts."
"Allegedly?" Henry interjected. "I could have sworn you had admitted to it. And those email accounts happened to belong to university staff, including the dean himself."
Phoebe glared at him, narrowing her eyes. "Okay, I did it," she said. "Moving on...he kicked me out, and I happened to have some dirt on him, some very personal dirt that his wife--and the university itself--would have found very interesting."
Anthony let out a hearty laugh. "She hacked the dean's email account and found out he was sleeping with a male student," he said, "which, as you can imagine, is a major no-no."
"So," Phoebe continued, "I was in here, in this very building, on the morning of April 21st. I planned to use the station's frequency to make a very public service announcement about what the dean had been doing. Even though a lot of people were gone home for Easter, I know a lot of the students still listened to the web stream. But, well...as you can imagine, by the time late morning rolled around, no one gave a damn about the dean getting it on with a student. The world was already unraveling, and--" She sighed. "I never got to have my revenge."
Shari raised her eyebrows. "You know," she said, "you've got a skill that will come in handy quite a bit nowadays."
"I know," Phoebe said, grinning a devilish grin from ear to ear. "I plan on using it, too...especially with no one around to stop me."
"What about you guys?" Shari asked, intrigued by the anecdote, looking in turn at Anthony and Henry.
"As for myself," Henry began, "I came in here early that day. Most of the rest of the university staff was off for the weekend, getting ready for Easter. I teach--taught--radio theory, so the station has always been my baby, as it were. I came in just to make my usual early-morning rounds before the morning D.J. came in, then I planned on going over to my sister's house to help get the place ready for company the next day. However, upon arriving in the building...." He paused pointedly, glancing over at Phoebe. "I discovered that the place had been infiltrated by a certain rogue former student. I called campus security, and it happened that Anthony was working the overnight shift. He showed up within a couple minutes, and well--you get the rest. We left once to go to Urbana, just east of here, to check on my sister, but we found the place deserted with no clues left as to where she went. Other than that, we haven't left the building since then, except to scavenge when we're
in dire need."
"My family is in Nebraska," Phoebe told Shari, "so I never really entertained the notion of trying to find them. Hell, we didn't even want to try to make it as far as Chicago without some weapons, which we now have, courtesy of you."
"And me," Anthony said, "I'm just a bachelor security guard. No wife, no kids. At this point, even if i left here, I wouldn't really know where to go, other than to follow these two knuckleheads around. We're family now, isn't that right?" he said, grinning at Phoebe and Henry. "The hacker and the professor, they're the only family I need."
Henry snickered. "Would everyone please stop addressing me as the professor? I swear, I'm going to have to resort to calling you two Mary Ann and the Skipper."
Phoebe threw her head back, letting out a loud belly laugh. "Didn't you have a red-haired friend? She gets to be Ginger," she said, turning to Shari. "So what about you and your friends? Did you know them before the apocalypse?"
"No," Shari said, "I met Daphne about a month ago, and we started traveling together. Then the two of us found Hugo earlier this week in southern Illinois."
"So he's the sole survivor you talked about meeting in Illinois?" Phoebe asked.
Shari nodded, and Phoebe's eyes became momentarily clouded by the gravity of the situation, which Shari realized was uncharacteristic for her.
"Damn," Phoebe murmured, "we really are screwed as a species, aren't we?" She scooped the last spoonful of Skillet Helper onto her spoon, standing as she brought the food to her lips. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to crash for the night."
"Do you guys usually take turns keeping watch at night?" Shari asked.
"I'm always the night guy," Anthony replied. "Then they let me go to sleep in the morning."
"I'd be happy to keep an eye on things," Shari said. "I think it's the least I could do." She felt self-conscious as the words left her lips, realizing the offer may raise suspicion. They don't know if they can trust me, she told herself. They won't just go to sleep with a stranger watching them.
Anthony shook his head. "No need," he said, "but thanks for the offer. You're welcome to keep me company if you like, though. A second pair of eyes never hurt anything."
"I think I'll retire for the evening, as well," Henry said, rinsing his plate in the sink. "If you go out into the hallway," he said, turning to Shari, "there's a room two doors down on your left. There's a couch in there, I'll leave a blanket on it for you."
"Thank you," Shari said. "For everything. I was lucky to run into you guys."
"No problem," Henry said as he exited the room. "Have a pleasant evening."
"Night," Phoebe said over her shoulder, following Henry out of the room.
"Good night," Shari called after them. She turned to face Anthony once the sound of Henry and Phoebe's footsteps receded down the hall. "It's just you and me," she said.
"Yeah," Anthony said. He stood, sipping the last of the juice from his can. "You wanna follow me up to the roof?"
"Sure," Shari said, rising from her chair. "It's not like I have anything else to do, and I doubt I'll be able to sleep." She followed him out of the room, down the hallway, and up a flight of stairs to the third floor.
"I spend my nights up here," Anthony said, leading her up a second flight of stairs. "Makes for a pretty good vantage point. Most of the other buildings on this block are only one or two stories."
"You guys were in the right place at the right time, huh?" Shari said as they stepped out onto the roof and into the cool night air.
"I guess you could say that," Anthony muttered. "As right as it could be, under the circumstances." He settled down onto the floor of the roof, and Shari knelt next to him.
"I know you were a security guard and all," she said, lighting up a smoke, "but I don't imagine you'll turn me in for smoking on campus."
Anthony snickered. "Only if you don't pass that my way," he said. "Then I might have to overstep my bounds and confiscate it, too."
"Fair enough," Shari said, grinning and exhaling as she passed it to him. "Night shift in the apocalypse," she murmured, pausing to take in the silence enveloping the area. The entire sky was blanketed with innumerable stars and the very visible, late summer spiral arms of the Milky Way. "Is there anything on Earth as oppressively lonely?"
"Not in my experience," Anthony concurred. "And mind you, I've worked a lot of third shifts in my time."
"It's like being alone in your mind," Shari whispered, twisting a lock of hair absent-mindedly. "Like there's no one else on Earth, even when I know my friends are sleeping not too far away. It's like living alone in a nightmare."
"So I'm not the only one who feels that way," Anthony said. "It's nice to have some company, though. Makes it a lot more bearable."
"Yeah," Shari said, sliding her hands behind her on the cool, smooth cement of the rooftop and leaning her weight back onto her arms. "If the end of the world has taught us anything, it's that humanity--the company of our fellow human beings--is the bottom line. It's the last thing left to fight for."
"Yeah," Anthony said, "unless you happen to be one of those--what do you call them? Sadists?"
Shari nodded. "But I don't think they count as people."
"I just don't get it," Anthony said, shaking his head. "There aren't a lot of people left, but resources...the world is full of resources, with only so many people to make use of them. Weapons, food and water--there's more than enough of everything to go around."
Shari turned to look him in the eye. "People are the only truly precious resource left."
"No shit," Anthony muttered in agreement. "And I--well, I'm not proud of this, but I've taken out some sadists."
"Don't feel too bad about it," Shari said. "They give you no option. If it's either you or them, and they put themselves--and you--in that situation, then well...there's only one way to respond to that. I mean, they hunt people like us, and not the other way around."
"True, true," Anthony said. "It's still a shame, that's all."
"I know it is," Shari said. "And I lament it all the time, I really do. All day, every day. There just isn't much to be done about it."
Anthony shrugged. "I suppose you're right."
"So," Shari said, exhaling a cloud of smoke that momentarily obscured the stars before her from her vision. "You didn't have anyone to miss?"
"Not really," Anthony said, "other than my parents and a couple of aunts, all back in Indiana where I grew up. I don't really expect to make it there anytime soon, and even if I do, who knows if I'll find them, alive or not?"
"I know how that goes," Shari said, her consciousness jerked suddenly and uncomfortably back to her failure to determine the fate of her parents.
"Other than that," Anthony continued, "just a few friends from around here, but I wasn't very close to any of them."
"So you were single?" Shari asked.
"Yeah," Anthony said, flashing Shari a shy grin. "You, too?"
Shari nodded. "I was dating a guy when all this started, but I only went out with him a few times." She paused, furrowing her brow. "To be honest with you, I don't even remember his last name."
Anthony snorted in mild amusement. "I've noticed I'm forgetting all kinds of details like that...things from before, that don't really matter anymore. I guess it's the brain's way of clearing out the useless shit, so it can soak up what it needs to survive."
"You're probably right," Shari said. "You ever felt like you're running on autopilot since all this? Kinda shellshocked?"
"All the time," Anthony said.
"It's like there's nothing left but animal instinct," Shari said, turning her face upward to gaze at the sky. As she lowered her head back down, she was surprised to find Anthony's face mere inches from hers as his lips moved in toward her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, experiencing a familiar, tingling warmth in her loins as they kissed. Am I really doing this now, while my friends are missing? she thought, moaning softly as she moved closer to him. As Anthony's tongue explored
the inside of her mouth, she heard a shuffling sound coming from the roof next door to the radio building. "Hold on," she breathed, pulling away from him. She hurried over to the edge of the roof and surveyed the building across the narrow alley. A beam of light from the third-story window where she had dined earlier illuminated the roof of the two-story building next door, where a shadowy figure lurked. She narrowed her eyes, peering through the darkness as she struggled to make out what she was seeing. As the figure entered the beam of light, she recognized him as the sadist she had seen earlier, the one who had escaped--apparently unscathed--into a crowd of zombies.
"Fuck!" she hissed, retreating back toward the door that led to the inside of the building.
"What?" Anthony asked, confused, as he stared in the direction in which Shari had been looking.
"There's someone over there," Shari whispered. "He's been stalking me. I saw him earlier today--don't you see him?"
Anthony stared for a moment longer before he turned toward Shari. "No," he said apologetically, with more than a hint of concern in his voice.
Shari continued to back up toward the door, her heart racing. "I've got to get out of here," she said, turning to flee down the stairwell.
Shari sat until dawn, perched on the edge of the couch with her knees drawn up to her chest. She stared out the window absently as the first sunrays of the morning lurked just below the horizon, where a thin layer of luminescent lavender blended into the star-speckled, deep blue early morning sky. As she observed the sky, her exhausted mind wandering, she was jerked back to the present by the sound of a gun being fired in the distance. She rushed to the window, looking for any visible sign of human life in the nearby buildings or in the streets below. She was still scanning the area when she saw a bright flash of orange light in the sky to the north. The light faded slightly as it floated slowly downward. Is that a real thing? she thought, Or am I exhausted to the point of hallucination? She continued to peer through the window, watching the light, until she heard a knock from outside the door.