Waiting there was a pot-bellied man, or what used to be a man, wearing boxer shorts, white stockings, and a light collared shirt. Mr. Boxer Shorts lumbered across a front lawn, his paunch jiggling like a water balloon, absently kicking aside an oscillating sprinkler, which was still dutifully spraying a wide sheet of water across the lawn.
Mr. Boxer Shorts stepped into the street just as the Ford pickup rounded the corner. He held out his arms as a desperate man would do to try and flag someone down, but he was well past saving.
Just before Mr. Boxer Shorts was mowed down, Eva had time to notice the same dark spots on his skin that she saw on the zombies on the prior street. In his case, they were across the insides of his arms, neck and left cheek.
The cab jerked and bounced as the truck rolled over Mr. Boxer Shorts. He was indeed a large man.
Eva felt herself getting sick, held her breath a moment until that unpleasant, woozy feeling subsided.
“Can you try not to do that?”
“It was unavoidable,” he said. “The guy jumped in front of me.”
She said nothing, only continued to hold her head.
About a quarter mile east from the turnoff that would take them onto the service road, they approached another smoke-filled pile-up: a large cluster consisting of eight or nine cars and several corpses lay scattered amid the wreckage. Still strapped in their bucket seats, zombies squirmed and beat their hands wildly about. As they passed the wreckage and since there was no imminent danger, Drew slowed and steered deliberately to avoid rolling over the corpses.
5
They bore southwest on U.S. 1.
“I think I ran a red light back there,” Drew said, trying to lighten the mood. Eva hinted a smile, said, “I think they’ll let you off with just a warning.”
On the right was a corner drug store. It wasn’t anything like what you might find in an Edward Hopper or Norman Rockwell painting, nothing so quaint or nostalgic as that, despite its small town location. The days of old Main Street America had already begun their unsparing march into oblivion. The front of the drug store had predominantly floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded with brushed steel walls and a stark white panel stretching across the top of the facade. Mounted in the center of the white panel was a ubiquitous sign whose logo was known throughout the pre-apocalypse world. It had about as much charm as cardboard box.
It dawned on Eva that they needed to think about stocking up on provisions such as food, water and, of course, medicine. She noticed the scrapes on her husband’s neck and hands were turning an angry red. He needed antibiotics, but the Drug Store was full of zombies, and she assumed that if this drug store were infested then so would be the rest in town. They needed to find a place that wasn’t in such a populated area.
They needed to find a place in the boonies.
U.S. 1 widened from two to four lanes, and with that change so too changed the surrounding landscape from five-and-dime stores, chrome and neon diners, and antique shops to strip malls, motels, automotive body shops and gas stations.
He turned onto the off-ramp that sloped down to the service road.
The day was finally coming to a close. Sunlight shifted from hazy green into muddy hues of browns and yellows.
The service road ahead was empty as Eva predicted.
Regarding her with a thankful smile Drew said, “Nice call.”
“Thanks,” she said tiredly.
Of the handful of zombies they passed in the increasingly rural expanse, Eva noticed yet another new development. The zombies started to scratch themselves, not light scratching either but really going at it, scratching hard enough to tear clothing and even skin. She thought she saw spots of blood on their clothing, but the Ford exited onto the ramp leading to the service road before she could have a better look.
Eva recalled when she contracted poison ivy, the summer of the Great Itch, as she would regard it years later. She had been fifteen at that time and on a family hiking trip through winding paths in the Berkshire Mountains. She was never the outdoorsy type, different from Candace who played little league softball, loved to fish and was a Girl Scout troop leader. Candace had urged, practically begged, Eva into going on this trip when all Eva really wanted to do was hang out with friends.
“C’mon,” she pled. “It’s no fun without you. Pleeeeease!”
It hadn’t taken much urging to get Eva to cave. Candace was always good at persuading. It was a natural gift, and was part of why she excelled in everything she did. It was also what Eva envied and admired about her.
That Candace had long since disappeared replaced by a confused, sad woman. Somewhere between her teen years and the first year of law school, when she had given up Yale for glass rocks in New Mexico, Candace had gone from Supergirl to Superlost. With a string of failed relationships that included that asshole Beau (who put the moves on Eva right inside her sister’s dorm room) she spiraled downward.
Outdoor trips meant dealing with outdoor annoyances: bugs, spiders, hairy critters of all kinds, critters with sharp teeth and disease, the heat and humidity and God only knew what else. What was worse, however, was that this was a family gathering on a Saturday, and to fifteen year old Eva, family gatherings like this one, consisting of trail hikes in the morning and lunch in a shady picnic area in the afternoon, felt like punishment to her. In short, family gatherings were so booooooring.
On that day, the weather was stiflingly hot. Temperatures rose to the mid 90s. In an effort to stay cool, Eva stripped down to her bikini bra, unaware of the poison ivy around her.
Before she could tie her t-shirt around her waist, she heard Candace saying, “Come on! Let’s go!” and was whisked away by her arm. The trail sloped gently upward. Eva felt her legs growing heavy. “Slow down,” she said. She heard her mother calling out to them, her voice sounding tiny in the distance. “Don’t go too far!”
“We won’t,” Candace shouted back.
At some point they stopped to catch a breath. “C’mon,” she said snatching the t-shirt from Eva’s hand.
“Can I have my shirt back?”
“Only if you race me.”
“What? I’m not going to race you! It’s like a thousand degrees out here!”
“Then you don’t get your shirt back.”
“Cut the shit, give it to me.”
Candace pointed to a spot ahead of them. Sitting about 200 feet away, off to the right of the hiking trail, was a large granite boulder. It had been deposited there during the last great ice age, over 10,000 years ago.
They heard their mother calling again, “Wait up, you two!”
“Race me to that rock. Winner get a dollar, loser pays.”
Eva started back down the slope. “Keep the shirt.”
“Ohmygod, you’re chickening out, Eves? I don’t believe it! Are you really going to let your little sister win?”
“You didn’t win anything!”
“I automatically win, which mean you owe me a dollar.”
“I didn’t agree to -”
“You owe me a dollar, you owe me a dollar,” she chanted in a grating, seesaw fashion. It was annoying as hell, but it worked. Eva accepted the challenge. You little shit, she thought grudgingly.
They assumed a sprinter’s starting position.
“On your mark,” Candace instructed.
“Get set…”
They both crouched, readying to spring forth from an imaginary starting line.
Although Candace was athletic, Eva outsized her by six inches and longer legs. She guessed it was why Candace posed the challenge in the first place; to prove to the world that nothing, not even a bigger foe, could intimidate her.
Eva was faced with a decision. Either try her damnedest to win and revel in little sis’s defeat, or throw the race and be done with it.
“Are you ready Eves?”
Eva nodded. Both girls stared at the path ahead with laser focus. Now things were getting serious. There was a moment of tense stillness. Then, jus
t as Mom and Dad were coming up to them, Candace shouted.
“Go!”
They broke into a sprint, kicking up tiny clouds of dry dirt behind them. For the first twenty feet they were at a dead heat, and then Eva began to pull ahead.
She felt herself being pushed, then heard Candace shout something. She turned, caught a glimpse of Candace stumbling.
Eva tottered on the edge of the path, struggling to stay on her feet. Unfortunately, while trying to keep her balance she brushed against bushes and plants, some of which turned out to be poison ivy.
When Eva regained footing back onto the path she discovered that Candace had taken the lead.
She pushed me, Eva thought angrily. That little bitch! That cheating little bitch!
Eva kicked into high gear and quickly caught up to her.
Candace threw nervous glances over her shoulder.
Eva wished for the little cheater to try shoving her again. Just try it! I’ll make sure you eat dirt. However, she hadn’t tried again.
Shoulder to shoulder Eva saw a look of utter desperation and struggle on Candace’s face, her sandy brown ponytail swinging wildly like a windsock caught in a storm.
Eva felt a tug of pity in her chest. For the first time she saw a chink in her sister’s armor, and Eva began to fall back.
It did not end as a close race. No photo finishes here; no need for instant replay. Candace reached the granite rock by a solid two to three paces ahead of Eva. She did a little victory dance, mugging at Eva. Eva grinned.
Candace cheered, “WHOO-HOO,” pumping her fists in the air. Yeah! I won!”
“Nice job,” Eva said placidly.
“You owe me a dollar!”
Eva nodded. “I’ll pay you when we get home.”
Candace put a hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Cheer up, Eves,” she said, and clapped her on the shoulder. “You’ve lost to the best.”
“I sure did.”
“Sorry I tripped up a little back there. Must’ve been a branch I didn’t see.”
“Branch my ass,” Eva wanted to say but held her tongue. In the end, it was just a stupid little race, and now it was over.
They walked together back down the hiking trail to meet their parents. A long silence passed between the two winded girls. Eva thought of her little sister and the desperate look on her face. It made her want to hug Candace. She put her arm around her.
“Eves?” Candace asked handing the t-shirt back to Eva.
“Yes?”
“You didn’t let me win on purpose, did you?”
“No.” she lied. “Why would I do that?”
At first it felt like a couple of mosquito bites on her right side below the ribcage, small but intense itching that seemed to subside with only a few casual swipes of her fingernails.
However, later that night Eva discovered that she couldn’t lie on her side without aggravating the bites. She tried to sleep on her left side, but the coverlet also proved to be an irritant. She tried sleeping on her back, which was annoying in itself, and, to her growing concern, the itching resurfaced.
She noticed that scratching the itch produced a more intense sensation, a sensation that brought goosebumps to her skin. The mosquito bites felt like they were spreading. The itching was encroaching onto the stomach area. She began to doubt she had mosquito bites at all, but something else. Something worse than mosquito bites.
By morning her entire abdomen looked like a topographical map of some alien continent, red, inflamed, and as bumpy as the surface of cauliflower.
As morning gave way to afternoon, the itching grew to unbearable levels. There was a war happening on the surface of her skin. The two armies facing off were itching versus scratching, and the effects of the battle were disabling. So sensitive to the touch was her skin that scratching was akin to setting a blowtorch on it. Yet at the same time scratching also provided explosive relief, a relief that was almost beyond words, a relief so great as to cause her body and mind to momentarily seize up in a feverish shroud of heat and goosebumps. The mere act of scratching was an experience that gave new meaning to the phrase “pain/pleasure principle”.
“Don’t scratch, Eva, you’re going to spread it!” her mother had cautioned.
“I can’t help it!” she cried.
By the third day the rash had already spread to her chest and down to her lower pelvis.
Calamine lotion helped a little but only during application because the coolness of the topical ointment felt good on her skin. However, this reprieve was short lived. Within fifteen minutes, the itching would return starting with a taunting, tickling sensation in a single spot. The tickling would soon erupt in another area, and another, increasing exponentially and randomly like tiny electrical circuits being switched on, until once again her skin felt like it was being nipped by a million crawling ants. Eva had never cried as much as she had during those two weeks of itchy hell.
Now, as Eva leaned her head against the bucket seats thinking of how horrible her experiences with poison ivy had been, she flashed back to the image of the zombies scratching themselves and thought with a mixture of horror and pity that their suffering must be great. Whatever poisons fueled their itching seemed to be on a scale no lesser than cataclysmic. You didn’t need special equipment or a degree in nuclear medicine to know radiation played a role. Good God!
Timing between the big flash to signs of physical deterioration followed too closely for them to be coincidental.
“You okay?” Drew asked.
She nodded without saying a word.
“What’s going on with them?”
“You noticed that too?”
Nodding his head he added, “Do you think it has to do with the flash?”
She gave him a look, “What do you think, Drew?”
“I think they’re suffering the effects of some kind of radiation poisoning. Don’t you agree?”
She nodded in agreement. “You took the word right out of my mouth.”
They reached the end of the entry ramp and veered onto the service road.
The service road was flanked by a vast stretch of forest on the left, and patchy scrubland on the right.
Above, the sky almost appeared normal with whispers of violet pushing through the dull, greenish hue. The first stars began showing through the darkening canvas.
Eva said, “Question is, why weren’t we affected?”
Drew considered this, then said, “I think we both have an idea why.”
“The MRI accident, right?”
“Yes. When the machine exploded, we were exposed to some kind of electromagnetic field, force, or whatever you want to call it. You saw it.”
She nodded. “We were glowing with it. Scared the crap out of me. I thought we were going to be cooked alive.”
“It was warm,” he said, “but not that warm.”
She shrugged.
“I think that gave us protection, like a shield.”
“An electromagnetic shield, right?”
“Well, yeah. That would explain why we’re having so much trouble getting electronics to cooperate, like our cellphones. But...”
She waited.
“It’s also why we’re not...like them.” He added, “We were protected.”
The sun began to sink behind the low-lying gray hills in the distance, hastening the arrival of dusk. Streetlights came on. Once taken for granted, such expected occurrences now provided immeasurable comfort for Eva. She wasn’t sure how long the power would last, a few weeks, perhaps, maybe a year if they were lucky, but for the time being, the sight of those tiny bright dots twinkling through the dark hills like artificial constellations gave her a sense of what was going to become a rare commodity in this new world.
However, the service road on which they drove had no streetlights, which Eva felt glad about. Better to remain in the dark. The new world was apparently turning into a world of opposites. In the old world it was better to be in public places where there were lots of people -
i.e. safety in numbers. In the old world it was better to avoid dark places. Now the cover of darkness was essential to survival.
They had about a half an hour of daylight left, 45 minutes before headlights were absolutely needed. When Drew mentioned this to Eva, she advised him to keep the headlights off. “We’ll be spotted ten miles away.”
He nodded slowly. “I understand what you’re saying, but how am I supposed to see where I’m going?”
She fell into a long silence. They were exhausted. Driving with the headlights on even under normal circumstances in such a state is taxing enough, but to drive in total darkness would be treacherous if not impossible.
“So what do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
“How long before this road ends?”
“I don’t know,” he said shrugging. “Ten, twelve miles.”
“And then what?”
“It’ll fork off onto I-95 toward Warwick, near the hospital.”
“Populated areas, in other words.”
“Yes. Probably in either direction, yes.” He knew where this was going. “You think we should pull over.”
She nodded.
“I’m against this,” he said.
“I think we have to.”
“What, and get stuck in the middle of nowhere?”
“It’s better than getting stuck in monster land! And what do you mean get stuck?”
“I mean that I almost couldn’t get the truck started. Remember the electromagnetic shield and the interference it has on electronics?”
“But you did get it started.”
“Yeah! After like a hundred tries! I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that again!”
“Drew, it wasn’t a hundred tries and I do believe you’ll it’ll start again.”
“Maybe.”
“And anyway, sooner or later we will have to stop to rest, and now I think is a good time.”
He paused to consider. The longer he thought, the more she made sense. “We should keep truck idling then.”
“Do we have enough gas?” she asked knowing that they didn’t. They were getting edgy, and a lot of it had to do with exhaustion. There was no point in getting into a shouting match when knowing that sleep was the only remedy.
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