by Sarah Langan
Aran! Alice! her mind screamed, because it would always scream those names, for the rest of her life.
As he reached into the desk drawer, she bumped her knee against the coffee table. He spun around, fast, and pulled something from his belt loop. A hammer. She held her breath. He looked under the broken glass coffee table and she almost shouted, “Don’t swing!” But he didn’t see her. He turned back around, opened a drawer from his desk, pulled out a set of jangling keys, and left the office. He was whistling the same tune, and now she remembered it: “Feel Flows.” It had an eerie quality amid the silence, like a hospitalwide requiem.
She got up and started out of the office. He was headed for Admitting. She knew she should walk in the opposite direction. He’d gone mad—she could tell by the way he moved too carefully, like he hadn’t figured out that that the whole world was already broken. But then again, he wasn’t infected. He was a rich doctor, too. He might have a boat. She followed him. The halls were so dark that she slid her feet instead of lifting them in order to keep from tripping over the soft objects (Aran! Alice!) that lay on the floor.
Funny, the people who died from infection didn’t get eaten. The only bodies left were the ones with swollen necks and bloody rashes. Maybe they didn’t have a taste for their own kind. He was standing near the window. It was raining a little, so the light that came through the windows looked wet. On the ground was Dr. Wintrob’s secretary, Val. Lila recognized her rubber band ponytail. She wasn’t dead, just infected. Her chest was moving and her lips were red. Strange that she’d come here, of all places, to sleep. Maybe it was where she felt most safe. Or, like Lila, a small part of her had been looking for Dr. Wintrob, hoping he’d tell her what to do, and forgive her what she’d already done.
Aran! Alice! a voice inside her screamed, and she wished she could reach inside herself and flip a switch, because she was beginning to remember their faces.
Dr. Wintrob stopped whistling. He shoved Val’s body with his sneaker. Then he pressed his hammer against Val’s forehead. He tapped once, lightly. Flesh against metal; it sounded like a slap. “Just kidding, Val. You know I’d never hurt you,” he said. “Guess Canada wasn’t such a good idea after all.” Then he walked ahead, still with a bounce in his step.
At Admitting, he used the key from his desk to open the cabinet. Took out a few bottles of something, then locked it shut again. It alarmed her that he’d done this, instead of breaking the glass and taking what he needed. It meant that unlike everyone else, he was still following the rules.
Dr. Wintrob turned and saw her. She stopped. The hall was dark, and it was just the two of them. She swallowed and thought about running, but he might have a boat. Better yet, he might hold her hand and tell her that she was having a bad dream. Alice! Aran! When she left them yesterday, she’d forgotten to close their eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Dr. Wintrob, because it was all she could think to say.
“How are you, Ms. Schiffer?” he asked. She was wearing a sweat suit, but suddenly it wasn’t warm enough. She nodded at him, because she was too frightened to speak.
“Lovely to hear it.” He pulled the hammer from his pocket again. A chunk of hairy scalp was embedded in its sharp end. “It’s dark in here. You like the sun, do you?” he asked.
She nodded. He came closer, hammer in hand. He held it tightly in his fist, like he meant to do harm. “I came here for penicillin.” She rolled up her sleeve and shoved her arm out, like evidence.
He tried to touch it with his free hand, but jammed inside his fingernails was dried blood. Without thinking about it, she drew back. He acknowledged the slight by cocking his head, but for now at least, he didn’t strike her. “Lovely body on you, Ms. Schiffer.”
“I know,” she answered.
The two of them stood, while around them at least twenty corpses lay sprawled on the floor. Pieces of bones littered the hospital like dust. They littered her lawn, too. And Micmac Street. The infected were playing knick-knack paddy-wack.
“Do you want something?” Dr. Wintrob asked.
Normally she might have grinned at him and told him he must have seen some awful things. My, Dr. Wintrob, aren’t you brave! she would have said with a come-hither grin. Instead she motioned at the orderly slumped in his chair, and then at Val, and the rest of the infected. “You know most of these people, I guess,” she said.
He stopped smiling. He ran his hands over his face, and when he finished, he looked more familiar. He went back to the cabinet, opened it, grabbed another couple of bottles, and gave them to her. She put them in her purse without looking at them. “Lock yourself up somewhere,” he told her, “until this passes.”
“It will pass?” she asked.
He shrugged and nodded at her purse. “One way or another.” Then he popped a pill into his mouth. As he crunched on it, he moaned, like it tasted better than a Milky Way, and she realized that the guy was an addict.
He reached out like he was going to pat her shoulder, but then pulled back, and patted the hammer in his jacket pocket instead. “I’m sorry about your kids…”
It took her a moment. She didn’t remember. Aran! Alice! And then she knew why her wrist was infected. Sawing Alice’s head with that scalpel had reopened the wound.
His voice got gruff. “My kid is sick, too.”
“Sorry,” she said, even though she wasn’t. She didn’t care about his kid, or even him. She only cared about Aran and Alice, who were dead, weren’t they? Yes, she’d murdered them.
Dr. Wintrob began walking. She watched as he left the building. She wanted to follow him, but he’d gone mad, so instead she walked in the opposite direction.
The air was still and rank. She followed the red tape to the blue, and then to the yellow. She got to the front door, and then remembered: Alice and Aran were here, too. She forced herself to look. They weren’t her children anymore. Just messy shells. She took some sheets and laid them across the mess. The sound of the sheets opening was like flapping wings, and she hoped it was their souls, set free.
Then she backed out of the hospital, and into the day.
She left Aran’s bike and walked to Micmac Street. Store-front windows were broken, and wooden doors splintered wide. She walked inside them, and took what she needed: rubbing alcohol, Tic Tacs and shaving cream. A brass knocker shaped like a lion for the front door, and gold wrapping paper and bows, because it was always someone’s birthday. A pretty necklace for Alice. She dropped them as she walked, like a trail of breadcrumbs, because her arms were so full.
She cried as she walked.
Aran! Alice! If it weren’t for her, they’d still be alive. They’d be living with their father, who surely had gotten out by now. Who surely was on the island where they used to spend their summers, eating fresh blueberries and combing the beach for shells.
But if he loved them so much, why hadn’t he come for them? Because he was dead, or worse: He’d abandoned them. So maybe he wasn’t such a good father, either.
Her wrist was hurting so she opened her purse. She opened one of the bottles and swallowed a pill, then remembered to look at the label: penicillin. Then she took out the second bottle and gasped: cyanide.
It will pass?
One way or another.
She tossed the bottle on the ground and kicked it. Then followed where it landed, and kicked it again. And again, until the plastic split open, and with her feet she crushed the pills into dust. It was only then that she realized that even though her children were gone, she wanted to live.
FORTY-ONE
Choke
Where did I go wrong?
Meg heard Fenstad’s car pull out of the drive Monday morning. Maddie had been quiet for hours, which was a bad sign. She didn’t want to think the worst. If Maddie was hurt, her intuition would tell her so. Problem was, her intuition was telling her something. She was afraid that Maddie was dead.
She’d been lying in the same position for hours. Her arms were numb, she coul
dn’t wiggle her fingers, and long ago she’d given up fighting her way out of these bindings. The knots were impossibly tight. Still, something was wrong with Maddie. She could feel it. And there was the other thing she didn’t want to think about. This might be her last chance to get away before Fenstad came home and killed them both.
He’d stuck a wad of something in her mouth before tying the gag, and though she hadn’t seen it, she was fairly certain that it was one of his dirty tube socks. It tasted…bad. The cotton had expanded with her saliva and was now working its way down her throat. She was beginning to have trouble breathing. She’d lost feeling in her arms and couldn’t move them, so she leaned forward, hoping the extra weight might eventually rip the sheets and set her free.
She thought about her dad on her wedding day, and the thing he’d said. He’d summoned her to the formal dining room, and even though it was a rainy day, he’d sat with the lights out, in the dark. He was supposed to be her official witness, but at the last minute he’d refused to drive her to the justice of the peace. The rest of her family, afraid to defy him, hadn’t come, either.
They’ll never accept you, he told her the day she’d announced her engagement. They might be polite, but behind your back they’ll call you the shiksa. I’ll pay for your wedding, but only a proper one, in a church. Trust me, Meg. I love you more than anyone else. I know what’s best. Break it off.
But she hadn’t trusted him. Her first act of rebellion against Frank Bonelli had been the only one. Wearing a smart white suit, she drove herself to the justice of the peace that day, and he never spoke to her again. Now, twenty years later, here she was tied to a bed, trying to decide whether she had the strength to attack her husband, and if so which weapon—a pair of fabric scissors or a blunt object—she should use.
Where did I go wrong? her father’s memory asked, and she shrugged, and wondered that, too.
That’s when she saw Albert Sanguine. He smashed the window with his fist and crawled inside. His gown was open to reveal skin so pale it was blue. He was a large man, and with each step he took toward her, he got bigger. By the time he got to her bedside, he was towering over her.
She tried to scream. Cotton slid further down her throat. She gasped but couldn’t get any air. Suddenly she was choking on a dirty sock. He leaned over her, and she remembered the way he’d sent her flying into the plastic wall. She remembered the sound it had made, and the crack of her ankle. She would have struggled more if she hadn’t been trying so hard to breathe.
His hands were gentle, but not deft. She didn’t know what he’d done until she saw the necktie that had held the sock in place in his hand. Still, she wasn’t quite sure. She was gasping, but nothing was happening, and the harder she tried to breathe, the farther the sock slid. There was a weight on her hips suddenly, but she didn’t know why. Her eyes were closed, but even if they’d been open, she would have been too panicked to realize that he was sitting on her to hold her still.
He squeezed her jaw until it opened. Then his hand was in her mouth. She tried to bite him. She couldn’t breathe! He held her chin with one hand, and with the other stuck his meaty fingers down her throat. She tasted salt. Sweat. She dry-heaved, and out came something long and wet. Cold air burned her throat. She gasped, and this time was greeted by air. It rushed her lungs and filled them.
Albert dropped the sock in front of her so she could see it. Her saliva over the long night had expanded it into a foot-long snake.
“Stop fighting!” he hissed. Then he coughed a full, watery cough, and began untying the knot at her left wrist. His fingers worked slowly. He was different now. His Tourette’s was gone, and his eyes were black. He was infected, clearly. But it was daytime. Why wasn’t he sensitive to light like the rest of them?
“They’re sleeping, but she knows I’m here. She’s watching through my eyes. I can feel it,” he said. He turned his head and coughed. A ream of phlegm splatted against her sheet.
“She’s after the survivors. She’ll come for you tonight.”
Meg’s right wrist came loose. Numb, it fell from the bedpost. She tried to pick it up and place it in her lap, but she couldn’t even rotate her shoulder. Her hand was purple and swollen, like something that has been under water for days.
Like a gentleman, he gestured at her other wrist. She nodded her permission, and he began loosening the knot. He smelled like the others, like rot. “What are you?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse.
He didn’t answer for a second, and stopped work on her wrist. She wondered if she’d made a mistake. If, like Fenstad, she’d said the wrong word and flicked a switch inside him, and now he would pounce. She flinched, in expectation. It occurred to her that among her laundry list of problems, she was officially a battered woman.
“When I was little I heard it in the woods,” he said. “My brain, the way it works, and the way the virus works, they match. More than Lois, or anyone else. So it called to me. I could hear it, even though nobody else could. It got stronger when the sulfur fed it after the mill fire. It wanted me to dig it up but I wouldn’t. But then a little boy found it, and brought it back.”
He looked at her, and she nodded. Her throat was too raw to speak.
“I drank it away. I filled the spaces in my mind that it wanted to live with bread pudding so it couldn’t have me, not completely. It healed me,” he said, pointing at his wound, which was open, but not bleeding, “but only a little. I drink too much to let it change me. I’m always hungry. It waits for me to get tired of fighting.” He smiled at her like the sweet Albert she used to know. “It’s strongest inside Lois Larkin now. She’s using it to hurt everyone, because she’s so angry. I help her, even though I don’t want to. I can’t get free.”
Meg’s wrist finally dropped. He picked it up and began to rub her forearm between his massive hands. She couldn’t feel it, only saw him do it. “I never eat the kills. Only rats,” he said. She nodded, like this was a huge distinction, and maybe it was.
“Are there others like you? Partially immune?” she asked. The feeling slowly returned to her hands. At first it was pins and needles, and then burning pain, and then, finally, she could wiggle her fingers. She smiled. Thank God for small favors.
He shook his head. “Maybe. But who would want to be? My mind and my body, they live together, and they hate each other.”
“Oh, Albert…” she said. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for him, but she didn’t know where to start. He’d been dealt a far worse hand than she had ever imagined, and yet he’d managed. It gave her hope that her family might manage, too.
He seemed to understand, and he nodded. “You have to leave town before dark. I came here to tell you that.”
Meg tried to lift her arms, but they were still too weak, so she sat back in the bed, and waited for her strength to return. “Why are you doing this?”
He smiled, like the answer was obvious. “Because you were nice to me.”
“Thank…” she started, and then stopped, because she didn’t want to cry in front of him, and she knew that if she thanked him she would weep. “What will happen when she finds out you came here?”
He smiled bitterly, and she caught a glimpse of the man he could have been. “She’ll kill me. But I want that.”
“You’ll come with us. We’ll leave together.”
Albert shook his head. “I have to go now, Ms. Wintrob,” he said. Then his voice got husky. “The hunger is never quiet. If I stay I’ll hurt you.”
She knew it didn’t make sense, but she felt ashamed suddenly, that there was something so hard inside her, that from the men in her life she inspired violence.
He spread his bloody arms, and his gown opened farther. Perhaps he did not remember that he was naked underneath. “Get out. Go far away. It’ll make my life worth something, if you get out,” he said, and even as he spoke she could see a mean thing inside him. His upper lip was curled, and his black eyes showed her reflection, the way she imagined a spider might look, wh
en it gets close to its prey.
“Yes,” she promised. How could she not?
He backed out of the room and gave her one final nod. The porch creaked as he descended. She understood then, what it might feel like, to straddle the mouth of hell.
FORTY-TWO
Escape
The inevitable didn’t happen. The infected didn’t come. As soon as the sun rose, Danny Walker packed a bag. Later he would remember packing, and wish he’d chosen better shoes or a warm coat. But instead he stacked chewing tobacco and a pile of socks into a red duffel bag. He didn’t bring any photos, or food, but he wanted some kind of memory of them, so he pulled the to-do list off the refrigerator and crinkled it into his back pocket. On it was written, “Buy ice cream.”
He got into Felice’s car. His car, now. A quarter tank left of gas. It might carry him as far as Portland. He turned the engine and searched for a radio station. Not even the emergency broadcast system was beeping. The entire spectrum was dead air.
He leaned against the wheel and took as deep a breath as he knew how. Yes, okay. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe the whole world was gone, and he was the last kid left, but he still had to leave this place. He still had to try. He just wished someone was with him. He wished he wasn’t alone, and that in the backseat of the car, Felice, Miller, and James weren’t watching him with dead eyes.
He pulled from the driveway. Across the street he saw movement behind the curtains. Alive! Someone was still alive! Screaming Maddie Wintrob. He’d kiss her feet if she got in this car with him. But then his stomach sank. He didn’t want to ring Dr. Wintrob’s bell. The guy had gone nuts. Besides, he’d said that his wife and daughter were infected, and that part might have been true.
Danny put the car in drive and started toward Bedford, where he would enter I–95 at a place that he hoped wasn’t guarded. His windows were rolled up, so he didn’t hear Meg Wintrob’s hoarse voice shouting, “Stop!”