by Russ Melrose
The basement felt pleasantly cool. I'd memorized the route I'd chosen and studied the surrounding neighborhoods. In case I ran into any problems, I picked an alternate route. I would leave nothing to chance. I would leave at first light, long before the morning sun crested the mountains. The extra time would allow me to reach the underpass before the valley got too hot. Whenever I planned things out with precision and detail, I always felt better.
It was evening and I already felt tired. The day's emotional roller coaster ride had worn me out. I could have easily drifted off to sleep, but I didn't want to go to sleep too early. At least that's what I told myself, and it made perfect sense. Staying awake another hour would be best. But even as I thought about staying awake, I could feel my resolve waning. I set the iPad down on the floor and let gravity have its way with my eyelids. They fluttered dreamily for a few seconds before drifting all the way down. And then I let the velvety darkness sweep over me.
Chapter 8
The Call
I woke with a start but not all the way, my mind and body were still pleasantly numb as if I were just coming out of anesthesia. I had been sleeping deeply, drifting peacefully in a nebulous haze and feeling pretty wonderful. And while I was aware of a vague memory of a shrill sound, the sound had faded so quickly, it was as if the sound had never existed. A compliant part of my mind reasoned that the sound wasn't real and never had been—nothing more than an illusory dream fragment. Relieved, I sank back into the soothing darkness. But the shrill sound returned, unrelentingly insistent upon being heard.
This time I woke in a panic. As much as I could, I focused on finding the source of the sound. My mind was still foggy. The room was immersed in long shadows being cast from a nightlight across the room. I scanned the room twice before I saw it. A landline phone sitting on an end table across the room. I'd seen it earlier but never gave it a second thought. There was another one upstairs. I stumbled off the couch and lumbered across the room, going as fast as I could while trying to maintain my balance. The phone began to ring again but I picked it up, cutting off the irritating sound as it trailed off into a faint echo.
I stared uncomprehending at the handset cradled in my hand. How could I have been so stupid? I noticed the phones the first day but never grasped the danger associated with them. I treated them as if they were part of the decor, nothing more. It was the first time I'd heard a phone ring since the first weekend after the attack.
I wondered how long it would be before the infected arrived. They had to have heard the high-pitched ringing.
A faint whisper was coming from the handset. I raised it up to my ear and heard a woman's voice, "… is that you, Grandfather?"
It was strange to hear the voice of another human being. I found it exciting and annoying at the same time. I was tempted to say hello, but I was too embarrassed. How could I explain what I was doing at her grandparents' home? Part of me knew I wouldn't have to explain if I just hung the phone up and disconnected the line.
"Are you there, Grandfather? Grandma?" she whispered quietly. "It's Sarah. We could … um … we could really use your help." There was a note of forced supplication in her voice. She was struggling to ask for help.
I could hear a young girl's excited voice in the background. "Are they there, mom? Are they there?"
They were in trouble, and one thing was clear—the woman hadn't wanted to make the call. I couldn't help but wonder why she would hesitate to ask for help from her own grandparents.
Then, quite unexpectedly, before I knew what I was doing, before I could stop myself, I heard a familiar voice saying, "They're not here."
The other end of the line fell silent for several seconds. Then her voice returned. "Who are you? What are you doing there? Where are my grandparents?"
I didn't want to have to explain who I was or what I was doing in her grandparent's home, but I had to say something. "I needed a place to stay for the night …" I told her, as if it adequately explained my presence in her grandparents' home. Then I said the only thing I could think of to finish off the sentence, "… and I could tell no one was home."
"Where are my grandparents?" she asked.
"I don't know," I whispered. I tried to reassure her. "The house looks fine. Everything's in its place. Nothing's been disturbed. It doesn't look like anything happened here." I was nervous and rambling incoherently, not making a lot of sense.
And then I continued, unable to stop myself. "There's just one car in the garage. It's a Cadillac. If they had two cars, they must have left in the other car." I tried to make her feel better. "They might still be okay," I said.
I needed to stop talking.
The line was silent. I didn't have any idea what she was thinking. Then she suddenly asked, "Is there still food storage in the garage?"
"Yes. There's plenty of food and water."
"We need food," she said matter-of-factly. And she said it as if I were responsible for providing them with it. While she was doing her best to mask it, I sensed an underlying desperation in her voice.
"If you're not too far away," I told her. "Maybe you could find your way here. You could travel through backyards. That's how I travel. I'm going to leave in the morning. I could leave the back door unlocked for you."
She paused for several more seconds, and then she said, "We live too far away."
I wasn't sure what she thought I could do for her, and I was getting concerned. The infected had to have heard the phone ringing. They would be searching for the source of the sound. It was only a matter of time before they showed up. I had to get upstairs to see if they were coming. I might have to leave at any moment.
"We're out of food," she whispered urgently. "We need food. Can you help us?"
I didn't answer her. It wasn't as if they lived next door and I could take food to them. Sure, I wanted to help them, but I was two days from getting out of the valley and getting away from the Swimmer. I realized I should have been feeling a moral imperative to help them, but I felt conflicted. I vacillated between feelings of compassion and a nagging visceral fear.
I felt compelled to say something. "Where do you live?" I asked her.
"We live at 2885 East Craig Drive," she said, sounding hopeful. "It's around two miles or so from my grandparents' home."
"Craig Drive?"
"It's about 3600 South," she said.
I did some mental calculations and determined they were about nineteen blocks from the Josephsons'. Not that far away. But it would still take at least two days, most likely three to reach them.
I shared my calculations with her, hoping she would see the need for a better option. "I don't know," I said, a hint of doubt in my voice. "Could take me three days to get there."
"We can't wait that long," she said, no longer trying to hide her desperation. "We haven't eaten in two days. You could be here in ten minutes if you drove. You could put some food in the Cadillac. All you'd have to do is find the key fob. We need your help. Could you please help us?"
She was determined and insistent. A part of me wanted to hang up, but I stayed on the line.
Even if I helped them, driving around the valley was an insane idea. And if it were that easy to drive around the valley, she could have driven here herself anytime. Then I came up with what I thought was a reasonable alternative. "Maybe you could find a neighbor to help you," I suggested.
"What? A neighbor?" she asked, incredulously. "You expect me to go around the neighborhood knocking on doors? Even if I could, what makes you think they'd have extra food?"
She was right. It wasn't realistic. I was trying to find a way to help her that didn't involve me. And then it occurred to me that Alex wouldn't have hesitated. He would have driven straight to their home to bring them food, infected be damned. Alex wouldn't have blinked an eye. But I wasn't Alex.
A wave of exhaustion swept over me, hitting me like a rogue tidal wave. Its heaviness overwhelmed me and I felt incredibly fatigued. I had a sudden, desperate need to get
off the phone and end the conversation. I found talking to her to be exhausting. And that's when I told her what she wanted to hear. "I'll come tomorrow," I told her. "Late afternoon. I'll find you some food then. But I can't drive. If I tried driving, I'd never make it. There's too many infected out there."
I'd essentially told her what she wanted to hear so I could get her off the phone. I did want to help but getting there tomorrow afternoon was a pipe dream.
She didn't answer right away as if she were mulling over her options. But she didn't really have any. Then she said, "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"It's all right," I told her.
"My name's Sarah," she said, as friendly and cordial as a Jehovah's Witness. "Sarah Josephson. My daughter's name is Becky. Rebecca. But she doesn't like being called Rebecca."
It appeared we were fast friends now. I thought it odd they both had biblical names. Coincidental too. My mother had named me Jacob. Jacob was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. A pretty prominent guy in Old Testament days, renowned as a bit of a schemer. Robbed his brother of his birthright, something like that. His name translated means, "he deceives." And while I was no relation to the biblical Jacob, it occurred to me that I was deceiving Sarah with my promise to come to her home tomorrow and bring them food. Of course, my mother didn't name me after the Jacob of Old Testament fame. She named me after one of her high school boyfriends.
"I'm Jake," I told her, reluctantly letting go of my anonymity, though I didn't share my last name with her. "We should probably hang up now," I said. "And just so you know, I'm going to unplug the phones after I hang up. It's nothing to worry about. I'll see you and your daughter tomorrow."
"Oh, okay," she said, not really sounding as if it were okay. But what else could she say?
"Goodbye," I whispered. And then I hung up.
I unplugged the phone. Something I should have done the day I arrived. I wouldn't make that mistake again. I hadn't heard any sounds out of the ordinary yet. Nothing at all. I stood quietly for a couple minutes, head bent in concentration, listening intently. The air conditioning had gone off some time ago and the house was remarkably quiet, almost coffin-like. I could hear the faint distant hum of the refrigerator upstairs along with the thin whisper of my own breath, but nothing else.
I felt utterly gassed. Though the phone call lasted less than five minutes, it seemed interminably long. The call sapped what was left of my energy. But no matter how fatigued I felt, I couldn't give in to my exhaustion.
I moved with purpose across the room. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I picked up my iPad and checked the time. I was surprised to find it was only 9:30. I'd actually thought I'd been sleeping for hours. Turns out I'd been asleep for less than an hour. I turned the iPad off and packed everything into my backpack as if I were leaving in the next five minutes, which was a possibility.
I slipped my arms through the backpack straps and adjusted them as I always did for a snug fit, then buckled the front. I headed upstairs, using the guard rail to propel myself up the stairs two steps at a time. I found it lessened the chance of making the stairs creak.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I opened the door and moved into the hallway connecting the kitchen to the living room. The garage door was down the hallway to my left. The main floor wasn't as dark as I thought it would be. A diagonal shaft of moonlight spilled through the kitchen window and lit up the hallway floor all the way to the living room entrance.
I went into the kitchen first and unlocked the back door, then opened it a crack. They wouldn't be coming in the back door. If they came, it would be a frontal assault, and I'd be gone in a heartbeat out the back.
The living room was darker than the kitchen and hallway, but I could still see well enough in the semi-darkness. I disconnected the second phone. It sat innocent as could be on a mahogany end table next to the couch. I was amazed at my lack of foresight with the landline phones. It never occurred to me there would be any need to disconnect them. I never saw the danger.
Because the Josephsons' home had no upstairs level, the picture window would have to serve as my lookout. I cursed myself for breaking one of my cardinal rules. The view wouldn't be as comprehensive as an upstairs window would have been. The day I arrived, all I could think about was getting away from the Swimmer. I convinced myself I'd be okay without the upstairs level just the one time.
I sat cross-legged on the floor near the center of the picture window to get the best view down both sides of the street. I kept my backpack on just in case. There were two matching sheer curtain sections with lacy borders that met in the middle of the window. I pulled them apart to get a clearer view of the street. Five houses to the right was an intersection. There were no street lamps on the street and it was quite dark, just a few random homes with lights on. I couldn't see anything moving in the darkness and I didn't hear any moans. The street was eerily quiet. Maybe they hadn't heard the phones ringing.
My mind drifted to thoughts of Sarah and Rebecca Josephson. I was already regretting telling her I'd be there tomorrow. Traveling nineteen blocks in one day would be impossible.
I suspected Sarah Josephson was an intelligent woman. Maybe very intelligent. She may have been frazzled—who wouldn't be under the circumstances—but she'd had the wherewithal to tell me their names. And that was smart. She'd personalized them in my mind. Sarah and Rebecca. Becky. I was thinking about them—thinking and feeling—and referring to them by their Christian names. I couldn't help but feel an acute sense of responsibility.
I was beginning to understand the source of my feelings. This was about Alex. His death weighed on me, haunted me to the core of my being. And if I helped them, maybe I could feel better about what had happened to Alex. The last thing I needed was the fate of two more people on my conscience.
I wasn't sure if I saw him first or heard him. He was across the street, a couple houses down on my left. A loner. And while his soft rasping moans were muted by the thick glass of the picture window, I could still hear him. I couldn't make out details of his appearance, just a dark figure trudging slowly through a neighbor's front lawn. His steps were labored and clumsy and his head nodded erratically as if he had Tourette's syndrome. Every few steps he'd glance to his left or right, head nodding, always searching.
The first time he glanced left, I let the curtains fall back together. And though I doubted he could see me through the curtains in the filmy darkness, when he turned his head to the left a second time, I ducked down out of sight.
I wondered if he'd heard the phone ringing and was searching for its source or if he was just wandering around scavenging for a meal. For five minutes I listened to his mumbled, plaintive moans and then he was gone.
Several minutes passed after the moans had died away before I sat fully upright again. I separated the curtains and checked the street again. It appeared clear. Then I settled in for a lookout vigil. Sitting on the floor with the backpack on felt awkward, so I took the backpack off and set it on the floor next to me.
It was 10:15 when I decided I'd done enough due diligence for the evening. I was exhausted and could barely keep my eyes open. I figured if they hadn't shown up yet, they weren't likely to. There had only been the one stray infected male, nothing more. I was surprised and relieved.
I grabbed the family photo before heading downstairs. I'd need a good night's sleep if I wanted to get going early in the morning. Before I settled in, I checked the Josephsons' address in Google Maps. The address was easy to find, and the route from here to there was simple enough. Of course, these days nothing was simple. But I'd made up my mind. Ever since the call, I'd felt a powerful compulsion to help them, though it had little to do with Sarah and Becky. This was about Alex. This was about setting things right, and I knew there'd be a price to pay.
I packed my iPad away in the backpack and grabbed the family photo I'd brought down with me. I wondered if Sarah and Becky were in the photo. I scanned the faces and tried to figure out who they
might be. I thought Sarah might be estranged from the family, so I looked for someone who didn't seem happy to be there. But they were all smiling radiantly. Faux smiles, perhaps, but smiling nonetheless.
After several minutes, I gave up. I was too tired to even take my shoes off. I grabbed the bat, nestled my body into the couch and let my mind wander. I thought about Alex, then I thought about Sarah and Becky. I tried to imagine their faces, but their faces kept changing. Random images appeared before my mind's eye. I settled in and smiled. I smiled because the nonsensical images were always a precursor to my drifting off into a deep sleep.
Chapter 9
The Long Night
The voice surrounded me like a wandering echo and I couldn't tell where it was coming from. All I knew for certain was that the voice belonged to Alex. "Help them," he said. "Hurry." I was somewhere in the woods near the cabin. The wind howled and I couldn't tell which direction his voice was coming from. It seemed to ride in synchronicity with the blustery wind. Black leaves rained down from the trees and swirled in eddies on the ground all around me. The leaves crunched loudly under my feet and I was terrified the infected would hear me. A chorus of insistent moans suddenly rose above the sounds of the wind. I knew they had to be close by. I abandoned my cautiousness and began to run as fast as I could. Not knowing which way to run, I followed my instincts.
"Hurry," Alex shouted, and a gust of wind pushed me from behind and I ran even faster, but the moans spiraled wildly in intensity. Up ahead I could see an opening, a light-filled meadow. I ran with reckless abandon toward the light. When I got there, the light in the meadow revealed itself as glistening, feathery white snowflakes, falling ever so casually from the blue sky. There was a stone well in the middle of the meadow, and Alex lay on the ground not far from the well. I ran toward him. He was lying on his back buck-naked in the snow, casually cradling the back of his head with the palms of his hands and gazing up at the sky, smiling blissfully. His body was back to normal other than the three bullet holes in his forehead. He turned his head toward me as I approached. "Help them," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the well.