“No…but I’m less and less sure about the things I do and don’t believe in. I think, right now, I believe in something more than just us. That together, we are something more than just three people who happened to bump into each other. We just….” Chase struggled for the right word and not finding it, gave it his best effort. “We fit.” In the corner of his eye he saw Sonya nodding.
“We do,” Sonya said. “I don’t know if it’s fate, or just because we happened to find each other and that’s the way it was. The way we came together, the way we are, well, maybe it could happen to anybody. But it didn’t. It happened to us.” In the firelight it was hard to tell, but Chase thought Sonya was blushing.
“Or it was God,” Marilyn said. “I believe that. I don’t expect you to, but that’s how I was raised, and that’s what I believe. But it’s more than just how I was raised. I’m more than just what my parents and church taught me. I went beyond that somewhere, somehow. I just think…well, I don’t know what I think. But I feel that way, too.” She looked at Chase. “For you it’s all about thinking and logic. For me, I’m okay with just feeling.”
“There’s something to that,” Chase said. “I try to figure it all out. I try to make it all make sense to me. But sometimes it does seem to be just about feeling.”
“I guess I should say something about what I’ve been feeling, then,” Sonya said. “I’m scared. Plain and simple. I’m scared that we’ve come this far, been through what we’ve been through, and we’ll get down here and not find my dad and something will happen to you guys.” Chase could see she was crying, although he didn’t hear it in her voice. “I don’t care what happens to me…no, that’s a lie. I do care what happens to me. But it’s my risk to take. I really care about what happens to you guys though, because if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be down here.”
“I kinda think if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be anywhere,” Marilyn said. “I believe in God’s guiding hand, but I don’t think he does it all. Some of it is up to us. And you guys made the choice to take me in. You took care of me, and you helped me find a purpose, and you are guiding me, too. I know it’s what God wants me to do, but it’s what I want to do, too. And that’s a wonderful feeling for me. So if something happens to me, I chose it. And I’m glad to be here.” Marilyn put her arm around Sonya’s shoulders.
Chase struggled for something to say, something that sounded as good, something as wonderful as what Marilyn had just expressed. He felt the same way, if for different reasons, but he felt more, too. Now he did. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he knew he was attracted to Sonya as more than just a friend. He had never felt quite this way about anyone. Saying it would be hard, and maybe now was not the time. He just hoped there would be a right time and place, and that it wouldn’t be too late. He wanted to say something about wanting to see her happy, and that he was willing to take the risk of coming down here just for the chance of hearing her laugh, of seeing her smile a big, goofy, uncontrollable smile. He wanted to tell her that a world where she couldn’t ever be completely happy wasn’t a complete world for him. But he didn’t. Instead, he leaned into Sonya from the side opposite Marilyn and put his arm around her waist hoping she would understand what he meant by it even though he wasn’t completely sure he did.
Chapter 5 – Marilyn
The closer they moved to I-75, the worse the creepers became. The roads weren’t packed, but rarely were they out of sight of at least one creeper. Even on the back-roads. Marilyn was glad when they finally stopped, finally found a place where there wasn’t that constant reminder. Their camp was an old, empty farmhouse, abandoned long before the creeper plague. It sat well back from the road down a long, sandy drive they would have passed except it was getting close to time to look for a camp. They had been hoping for another power substation or fenced in area because of the locked gate at the end of the drive but had found the farmhouse instead.
Despite being empty, and apparently having been empty for some time, the house was in pretty good condition. The roof looked to be solid. The paint was faded, but the windows were still unbroken for the most part. The ones that had been broken were neatly boarded. After several weeks of summer the weeds had grown up around it, but there was a flag-stone walkway to the front door. The door was not locked so Marilyn entered, Honey close by her side. They walked through the empty rooms, Honey’s toenails clicking on the floor. Marilyn looked around. She tried to imagine when this had last been someone’s home. Tried to imagine when it had been new and couldn’t.
“Home sweet home,” Chase said. “At least for tonight. I’ll grab the gear. Let’s sleep in here. Should be safe enough from creepers if any should wander back this way.”
“Doesn’t seem likely they would,” Marilyn said. “Fences up and down through here, and we closed the gate back. But yeah, this seems safe enough.” To her, it felt more than safe. There was something about this old farmhouse. Maybe it reminded her of her grandparents’ place. The old fashioned light switches. The glass bowl light fixtures. The cracked linoleum in the kitchen and the well-worn hardwood floor everywhere else.
Sonya followed Chase out, and Honey followed Sonya. Marilyn was left alone in the house. She stopped and listened. She could hear their voices outside, low and muffled. Inside was a silence broken only by a bluebottle fly bumping against a windowpane in an unseen room. She breathed deeply, taking in the musty smell of a space that had been long closed off. It was hot. She felt the sweat running down between her shoulder blades. She decided to investigate the upstairs rooms. As she walked through the house, she stepped quietly. The house was so quiet it seemed wrong to profane it with noise.
The stairs were steep and narrow. Very little light found its way from the windows downstairs into the interior of the house, and only dim light came down from above. Marilyn considered turning back, waiting, but realized there was nothing to be afraid of. The door had been closed. There were no creepers inside. Unless…one had gotten trapped. Her imagination got the best of her and she paused on the stair, one foot raised to take the next step. No. There was no reason for a creeper to be in here. Besides, Honey would have reacted.
At the top, Marilyn emerged into an open room with one window. The afternoon sunlight filtering through the dirty glass was partially blocked by Virginia creeper growing on the outside of the house. One wall, the wall without the window, slanted inward with the roof’s angle. The house had been divided up here. An open doorway directly in front of her showed her a room very similar to the one in which she stood. Another doorway to her immediate right opened into a slightly larger room with an old metal bed frame against the interior wall. She peered through the doorway and saw a closed door which she assumed was another room very like the ones she had seen already. They had probably all been bedrooms. Downstairs, the heat had been oppressive. Upstairs, the heat was almost overwhelming. She realized she was panting, drawing in the hot air and releasing it in shallow gasps. She went to the window and opened it, sticking her head outside to catch fresh air. A loud buzzing sound startled her, causing her to jump back in alarm.
Opening the window had disturbed some paper wasps who had built a nest under the eaves outside. They buzzed angrily outside the window, but didn’t seem inclined to come in. She didn’t blame them. She left the window open. Just opening the one window had seemed to cool this room appreciably, or at least to relieve some of the pressure of the rising heat. Marilyn thought she should open another window, maybe catch a breeze through the upper floor.
As she passed through the doorway to the adjacent room, she thought she heard a noise, a sound just at the edge of audibility. She paused and listened more closely. Nothing. Maybe it had come from outside where she could hear Sonya and Chase still talking. Maybe it had been a mouse. She opened the window, wary of the possibility of more wasps, but there were none. She continued to the third room, the third window. This one was stuck and she struggled with it for a bit, and even when she was able to op
en it, she could only open it part way. Still, this seemed to be the magic window, the window that allowed the breeze to come through. She stood for a moment enjoying the movement of the air across her sweat slicked skin. Then she remembered the closed door behind her. One more window, then she would go down to see what was taking Chase and Sonya so long. Maybe they were talking. If they were, it was about time. She realized she needed to give them some space, but opportunities to do so were few and far between.
The door wouldn’t open. She turned the knob, an old metal one, rubbed smooth and free of paint by long use. Although the knob rattled around and felt loose, she thought she felt it working, but when she pulled the door seemed to catch and wouldn’t move. She studied it for a bit, and Marilyn realized it was locked somehow. There was no place for a key in the door plate. There was no dead bolt. She wondered how it was locked. Then something occurred to her.
“Hello?” she said quietly, feeling slightly silly. “Is someone in there?” And then she heard a slight intake of breath. Someone was in there. Someone alive. “Hello? My name is Marilyn. I have two friends outside. We won’t hurt you,” Marilyn said, wondering at the same time if she should be worried about being hurt herself.
“You aren’t Collectors?” The voice came from close to the door, so close that Marilyn stepped back, startled. Before she could answer, the woman on the other side of the door answered herself. “No, of course you’re not. Collectors don’t knock. They just come on in and it’s away you go.” A slight rattle announced the door was being unlocked, and then it opened, revealing the person inside.
Marilyn guessed the woman to be in her mid-thirties, but guessing wasn’t easy. She looked like she had been through a few rough days. She had curly strawberry blonde hair, a little matted now, and long enough to pull back and tie off at the back of her head. Under the lines of sweat through the dirt on her face, she was pretty. Classically pretty. High cheekbones, blue eyes. She was probably at least mid-twenties, but no more than forty. Her clothing was torn and stained. Despite the heat she wore a denim jacket and blue jeans. Under the jacket she wore a t-shirt with a saying on the front, but Marilyn couldn’t make out what it said.
“What’s a Collector?” Marilyn asked.
The woman looked at her curiously, suspiciously. “How do you not know?” Marilyn thought her confusion must have been apparent on her face because the woman’s tone changed. “Oh. I’m glad you ran into me before you ran into them, though I don’t know how you could have made it this long without running into them. They’re--” The woman stopped as the door downstairs opened and the fear came back to her eyes.
“Marilyn?” Chase called from below. “I didn’t know if you wanted to cook or not. Did you want to see if you could find something?”
“It’s okay,” Marilyn told the frightened woman. “They’re friends.” She raised her voice, shouted back down the stairs, “Yes. I will cook something. And get out the extra plate.”
The woman’s name was Audrey Collins. She said it just like that, “I’m Audrey Collins.” Then she had paused, as if waiting for some kind of recognition. She had been living in Tampa but was originally from Chicago. She talked about herself as Marilyn prepared dinner. Marilyn found some purslane in what must have once been an old flower bed close to the house. She was slightly put off when Audrey followed her outside but didn’t help. She quickly washed up at an old hand-pump well that amazingly still worked and darted right back inside. The woman was afraid to stay outside, afraid they would be detected to the point that she almost begged Chase to move the Humvee into a sagging outbuilding that might once have been a stable. He gave in. Only when everyone was inside did she seem to relax a little.
“I hate this state. I can’t help it. Even before the end came. Everyone was supposed to love Florida. ‘Go to Florida,’ they said. ‘It’s beautiful.’” She made a sound of disgust. “They didn’t mention the heat and the bugs, and all the other stuff. And then this happened.”
“So why are you here?” Chase asked. He was busy cleaning their weapons, loading them, filling magazines, making sure they would be available if they needed them. When we need them, Marilyn told herself. She couldn’t imagine they would get through the next few days without using their weapons. There were just too many creepers, and it was only going to get worse.
“Career. Broadcast journalist. Tampa-St. Petersburg is…was, I guess, a really good market. Almost top ten. Definitely beats Omaha,” she said.
Sonya looked up sharply, studied the woman. “I thought I had seen you before. Channel 14 in Omaha, right?”
The woman laughed. “Yes. That’s right. You saw me in Omaha?” Sonya nodded. “What are the odds?”
“Pretty slim, I guess,” Sonya said, looking troubled.
“So what is an Omaha girl doing down here in Florida?” Audrey asked. “Are you all from Omaha?”
Over dinner, they each shared a short version of their story with her and told her about the mission to find Sonya’s dad, although Marilyn was pretty sure it was more than that now. It was survival, and it was a purpose. She didn’t say it aloud, especially not to Sonya, but she thought the goal of the quest had maybe become secondary to the quest itself.
“And you came down here?” Audrey looked around at them in disbelief. “You know this is where it all started, right?”
“We had heard something like that,” Chase said. “But that’s not a reason to stay away, is it?”
Audrey smiled humorlessly. “It’s a reason to get as far away from here as possible. Nobody knows for sure, and I never found enough to say beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I talked to people who said it didn’t just start here. It was started here. On purpose.”
“On purpose? You mean somebody turned the United States and maybe the world into this?” He waved his hand around, indicating everything.
“Nobody came out and said it,” Audrey replied. “But there were rumors. Oh, I know, there are always rumors. Any time anything bad happens, there’s always some shadowy conspiracy behind it. New World Order, Illuminati, even the Masons. I’m not one to believe in that kind of stuff. But this was different. First, there were the Subjects. What did you call them? Creepers? I was one of the first reporters down here to do a report on one.” Marilyn, who was cleaning up the dishes with Sonya’s help, was a little amused by the pride in her voice. “There was kind of a cover up even then. Nobody came out and said anything about reanimated corpses. Drugs, they said. Mental illness. It was always, ‘The suspect was apprehended in an altered state.’
“But there were too many people who saw, who knew it wasn’t either of those things. They couldn’t keep it quiet. And by ‘they’ I mean police, local government. Didn’t take long, of course, before more people were involved and ‘they’ became bigger. At first I thought they were just trying to keep it quiet to stop a panic. There were only isolated incidents. But before anyone could really figure out what was going on, everyone was sick. It all hit so fast. Streets were deserted. Buses didn’t run, power went out, everything in about a week. Then the Subjects were everywhere. I was by myself at first, but I found a few more people. We took shelter in an apartment building. We didn’t call them Subjects then. We didn’t really call them anything. We were too horrified. I guess we just called them ‘they’ and ‘them.’ As in ‘They are coming out earlier and staying out later’ and ‘I think there’s one of them in apartment 314.’ There were five of us. Me, two brothers from the University of Tampa, the woman who lived in the apartment, and a boy who we found while we were out gathering supplies one day. He was about twelve and wouldn’t talk.”
“So why do you call them Subjects now?” Chase asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Audrey said. “But if you don’t mind, can we move this party upstairs?”
“Why?” Chase asked.
“First reason is it’s stuffy down here, and you don’t want to leave these windows open. There’s always a chance a bunch of Subjects will find us. We can
open the windows upstairs and be okay,” Audrey said. Chase nodded his agreement and stood. “Second thing is, if the Collectors find us, and we’re upstairs, we might stand a chance defending the top of the stairs. We have an advantage. They don’t want to kill us. They need us. But we don’t need them. They have body armor and all that stuff, but chances are they’ll just back off and try to wait us out. At least then we’d stand a chance, even if it wasn’t much of one.”
“Collectors?” Chase asked, looking puzzled.
“You said something about them earlier but didn’t finish,” Marilyn said.
Audrey said, “I’ll be happy to finish now. Upstairs.” She pointedly turned and made her way to the narrow staircase.
Marilyn looked at Sonya, who shrugged. She looked at Chase. “Hey, we’re guests in the lady’s house. I guess we do as she asks.” He began gathering weapons and followed Audrey up the stairs. Marilyn gathered up dishes, pots, and the propane stove to carry out to the trailer. Sonya helped her.
“So,” Marilyn began. “You knew her in Omaha?”
“No,” Sonya said, smiling a little. “She was a face on the news. She was at a crappy little station that was kind of a joke up there. They had one guy Dad and I called Blinky because when he talked to the camera he blinked on almost every word he said. But she was better than that. I think it must have been three years ago she was there. Even as a kid I knew she was better than anyone else there. But I could kind of tell she knew she was, too.”
“Can we trust her, do you think?” Marilyn asked.
“I don’t know.” Sonya climbed up into the trailer and Marilyn handed her the gear. The sun was almost down and the dark shadows in the shed made it hard to read Sonya’s expression. “We can listen to what she has to say. She’s been down here. She kind of knows what is going on. I don’t know if we have to believe her. We just take in the information and keep it in mind, I think. True or false, I think we’ll probably find out for ourselves.”
After Everything Else (Book 3): Creeper Revelation Page 4