The doctor had drifted away. His feet took him to the edge of the water, where he stopped and saw a canoe from the past with a father and his two children gliding effortlessly under the warm summer sun. Maybe Emma was right, but there was as much of an opportunity that she was wrong and the doctor could not ignore that possibility. The not knowing was as distressing as anything else. And getting this close to his home and his wife only made all of the emotions that much more powerful. He needed to know.
On the far side of the lake, near a docked floatplane, he could see a group of twenty or so people milling about with the unmistakable stilted gait of the undead. Getting everyone’s attention, he pointed across to them. From this distance, the ghouls were not much of a threat, but their presence suggested that there was a possibility that more of them could be near, so Neil said to all of them, “This place isn’t safe. Let’s catch our breath and get back on the road. We still have a bit of traveling to do.”
Claire said with a bit of a whine to her voice, “But we just got here. They’re all the way over there. Can’t we wait for just a bit? It doesn’t even look like they know that we’re here. Look at them. They’re just standing there.” Looking over at them more intently, Claire winced a bit and shook her head. She had to admit. Even from this distance the walking dead were horrifying.
Neil, looking over at them as well, countered, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I want to gamble with everyone’s lives for an extra breather. Do you?”
Claire shot him an ireful look but didn’t say anything. Neil, however, took the hint. He said, “What does everyone else want to do? We can wait for a bit and try to stay out of sight or we can get back on the road. I’m good either way, I guess.”
Claire was a little surprised by the last thing he said because he sounded sincere. She looked at everyone and said almost apologetically, “I’m not trying to be the opposition here. I just think that maybe we should take our time when we can. If we’re always in a hurry we might, I don’t know...”
Neil was nodding the whole time, while everyone else just stared, listened, and waited. Finally, Claire said in exasperation, “Oh, never mind. Neil, you’re probably right.”
Quickly, Neil spoke up, “No, I think you’re onto something Claire. If we don’t need to be rushing, then maybe we shouldn’t be. We have to conserve all our resources, including our own energy. It’s not just about whether my legs are tired or not. It’s about all of us. I would like to add, however, that we also are contending with time and the days are getting shorter. We can’t afford to dawdle.”
Meghan finally asked, “So what are we going to do?” And to Neil she asked, “Dawdle? Really? Who uses that word anymore?”
Neil ignored her ribbing and answered the serious question by looking at everyone with the question in his eyes rather than in his voice. Danny and Jules shared their own idea by fishing out some granola bars from their backpacks.
Dr. Caldwell, seeing the decisiveness of the children, said with a smile, “Finally, someone with some true, honest sense about them. Rome burned while Nero fiddled. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t eat a bit while we figure out what to do.”
The quick snack effectively ended the debate; though not the vigilance. The perils of a common day were anything but common any longer. Not too long ago, the worst to expect was a frightful but typically not life threatening encounter with wildlife or perhaps having an unsavory vandal break into one’s car while you were away. It had been quite a turn the world had taken.
Neil and Claire stepped away from the others to talk. Quite contrary to what she was expecting, Neil said that he appreciated the fact that she didn’t just complain. When she disagreed, she offered reasonable alternatives. She was glad that he didn’t think of her as another Art, someone who seemed to contradict the opinions of others solely because they weren’t his opinions. She didn’t want to be that kind of person.
The creatures on the opposite side of the lake, in time, started to move slowly around the far shore. It appeared that they had caught the scent of some prey nearby and were drawn to it. Jerry watched them as they began their instinctive trek and warned everyone that it may be time to be going again. In very short order, they were back out on the highway, leaving Mirror Lake behind them.
Chapter 63
The North Eagle River Exit from the southbound Seward Highway is as nondescript of a stretch of inclined pavement as any other in the world; just a short road that led to a longer one. Why then, was everyone feeling so much anxiety as they approached it? No one spoke, which wasn’t necessarily a strange thing as of late, but it also seemed as if they all were afraid to breathe for fear of upsetting some menacing presence that was just out of sight. From the highway, all you could see was the top of the road. There was no hint about what might be lurking there above.
As they, as if on cue, all stopped and waited, Jerry asked the ragged column, “We ready? Doc?”
They nodded as one, a chorus of heads signaling its silent consent. All eyes, however, were firmly on Dr. Caldwell. Their apprehension, aggressive and raw, was for him. They all knew what to expect and yet they all held onto the hope that there was still hope.
Starting with Neil, they pumped rounds into their shotguns and handguns. Jerry opened the bolt on his rifle and checked that a bullet was there. He locked the bolt back into place, loading the round, and then said, “Let’s do this.”
There was no bravado in their pace. Taking long, slow strides, they climbed the hill with all the vigor and enthusiasm of a sloth. When they did finally crest the incline, none of them were ready for the scene that opened up in front of them.
The Fred Meyer grocery store that once sat at the end of the road was now a twisted mess of steel girders and crumbling concrete, more resembling a modern art sculpture than a former retail outlet. A fire that devoured it from inside out had ravaged the store. This skeleton of a structure was attended to by a few dozen of the loitering undead, waiting outside the forever barred doors of the store like the dead waiting for their ride across the River Styx.
Meghan, a former manager of a sister store in Anchorage, breathed, “Jesus,” a sentiment they all shared.
Looking through his scope, Jerry said, “I don’t think they know we’re here.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Neil said quietly. “C’mon, let’s get our asses outta here before they ever get a chance to find out.”
Looking at Dr. Caldwell, Emma asked, “Which way is home?”
Dr. Caldwell, hearing that familiar word with more warmth and promise than ever in his life, said hopefully, “We live down that road a bit and then up.”
Claire asked, “Up. What do you mean by up?”
Gerald, who rarely spoke, said to everyone’s surprise, “Maybe we should work out the details somewhere else folks. We may be wearing out our welcome.” He pointed toward the zombies in the parking lot who were starting to show signs of agitation, likely brought on by the new scent of prey.
They were already walking when Neil asked the doctor, “You sure you want to go there, Doc? I mean...” He trailed off before he regretted suggesting anything.
Dr. Caldwell answered plainly without looking at him, “I have to know.”
“Yeah. I guess I would too.”
They moved as quickly and as quietly as they were able onto the adjoining road that led away from the former Fred Meyer and its grey-skinned loiterers. They were on the Old Glenn Highway with newly constructed houses on either side of them. Like in Anchorage, developers were desperate to clear and build on every available parcel of land, taking the maximum advantage of the limited prospects for such development.
Many of the housing subdivisions had winding streets that sloped down away from the main road on which they were walking. They also passed a growing number of the seemingly requisite features of suburban America: strip malls. Restaurants, tanning salons, specialty clothing stores...you name it, you could find it. They seemed to be everywhe
re, like invasive species of plants fertilized with our collective and insatiable demands for new gadgets and the latest gizmos. These buildings now sat idle, waiting for the next big sale.
As their elevation increased, the wind temperature noticeably decreased. No longer was it merely nipping at their cheeks and noses. Their legs and arms were starting to feel the cold through the layers of pants and jackets they all wore. Breathing too was becoming more of a chore.
They veered off the main thoroughfare and started up a road that very clearly continued to climb its way fairly steeply up the mountain. The pavement still in the shadows was icy and slick and their exhaled breath became much denser with the plummeting air temperature.
Dr. Caldwell’s house was on a section of road that had started to twist and wind, trying to cut the steepness of the angle of incline. Each step was more and more laborious as they continued up. Access to his house came from a small road, without a road sign to announce its name. From off the main path of traffic, the narrow street meandered discreetly, using both a sharper than average turn and a large rock to conceal its very presence. Such a street would play hell with pizza delivery drivers.
The five or six houses on the street all sat on the left side with the right side offering an unobstructed view of the valley that cut itself between two Chugach peaks. They all stalled as they started down the doctor’s street to soak in the scenery.
Neil said, “Jeez, Doc. You sure know how to pick a neighborhood. Look at that view.”
“I have Val to thank for that.”
“Which one’s yours?”
“The fourth one up.”
They walked slowly, hopefully toward the beautiful residence, the earth-toned facade looking peacefully out onto the quiet street and welcoming panorama. The first thing they noticed was that the front door was still closed, which was a good sign that they all noted to themselves. A nice Saab coupe was parked in the driveway, obviously his wife Valerie’s car.
Jerry looked in the driver’s side window and saw the keys still in the ignition. The car door was unlocked, so Jerry reached in to remove the keys. The car had been left running until it had burned all its fuel. Jerry didn’t bother to mention that, as that was definitely not a good sign at all. She wouldn’t have just left her car running unless she was surprised. Jerry thought to himself that she could have been surprised but had enough time to run away to safety. He rose up from the car and tossed the keys to the doctor.
Dr. Caldwell caught the keys with a metallic jingle and held his hand up, the keys dangling, for a second or two longer. He looked at the keys without saying a word. With the reluctance of the condemned walking up to the gallows, he dragged his feet up the wooden stairs of the front deck. He unlocked the door, something that helped to stoke the dying embers of hope in his heart, but before he could open it Neil stopped him.
Trying to hide his own apprehension toward the possibilities of what they may find, he said, “You may need to know, Doc, but let us check things out first. Please? We don’t know what we’re gonna find in there.”
At first wanting to protest, Dr. Caldwell consented with a nod and stepped onto the far side of the spacious front deck. The flowers in the planters, though struggling against the cold, still did their best to show their colorful smiles. He said after seeing them, “She’s gonna be pissed at me for not bringing her flowers into the garage. She’s been taking care of these things like they were children. I’m sure I’ll be in trouble for that, despite the whole end of the world thing. There were just certain things that I had to get done, no excuses. I guess I’ll move these things down there in case she hasn’t noticed yet.”
Neil and Jerry both forced a nod and a smile and then turned their attention to the task at hand. They opened the door slowly, trying not to create any noise at all, but of course, the hinges creaked and moaned as the door opened. Dr. Caldwell said as he lifted the first planter, “Yeah, I was supposed to get some W-D 40 on that too.”
Neil, allowing a very slight but uncomfortable chuckle to escape, said, “Don’t worry about it, Doc. We can get to it later.”
The house was a split-level of sorts with stairs leading away from a smallish entry area just inside the front door. The nature of the lot, as it was with all the houses on the street, was that it sloped sharply. The result was that the upstairs back door and the front door were both at ground level, with a large part of the foundation buried in the ground.
The stairs in both directions were carpeted with pristine white carpet. Out of habit, both men leaned down to unlace their boots so they could take them off, as was custom in Alaska. Neither of them got very far in the process and both came back up smiling at one another.
Jerry smiled and said, “Habits.”
Neil responded, smiling as well, “Yeah, some just take longer.”
The downstairs was dark and foreboding, so the two men opted to look upstairs first. Neil said to Meghan, “Watch our backs. There may be something downstairs that we can’t see.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just stand here with your gun ready and watch for anything that might come from down there. Danny, help Meghan.”
Danny already had his rifle in his hands. His nod was eager and appreciative.
The large living room into which the stairs led was at the front of the house, its oversized picture window staring like a thankful eye at the view. From the living room, they walked into a formal dining room with a dark, formal dining table of finely polished hardwood. The room was separated from the kitchen by a slatted wood door that allowed some partial view of the room on the other side. They could see the outlines of cabinets and counter tops and the grouted lines of the tiled floor. They could also feel a cold draft that found its way from the kitchen and into the dining room through those same opened slats.
Jerry pushed open the lightweight door and let Neil through. Neil said in a hush, “So far so good.”
They stepped into the kitchen, seeing the first evidence of things being amiss. The phone, an older model still mounted to the wall and sporting a long, coiling cord, was off its cradle and lying on the floor. And then they saw more than they wanted. The sliding glass door that led out onto the back deck was shattered into countless sharp prisms on the floor. They rounded an island of counters and a chopping block and saw the unmistakable brownish streaking stains on the tile and leading out the missing back door.
Someone, most likely Dr. Caldwell’s wife, had been attacked and brutalized as she was dragged outside, probably kicking and screaming as evidenced by the house slipper lying on its side next to the wall. The white, fuzzy slipper too, had been spattered with gore on that long ago morning. It didn’t appear she had gone down without a fight though. There was a large kitchen knife just outside the broken door and on the floor inside were two grey, very male looking fingers, or parts of fingers anyway. Any other attacker would have been discouraged and chased off. As it was though, her assailant likely didn’t even register that it had lost two of its digits and just continued its assault with its remaining eight.
Neil swallowed hard. “Poor Doc.”
“Yeah. How d’you think he’s gonna handle this?”
“How would you?”
“What can we do?”
The two men returned the phone to its proper place on the wall and tried to clean up the stains on the floor but the stain was too old and the floor too porous. In the end, they elected to try and cover as much as possible with a rug they retrieved from a bathroom down the hall. The rug did its best to conceal the grisly remains, but the forensic pathologist’s playground was larger than the rug’s meager capabilities.
It seemed they were in the house for the better part of a day but when they came back outside they learned they’d only been in long enough to allow Dr. Caldwell to move his wife’s planters.
From in front of the garage, he looked up at Neil as the two men emerged. Neil drew in a deep breath and shook his head. He wished he had better
news, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
Something happened to the doctor’s face then. Once vibrant and energetic, disguising his age and wisdom, all at once his eyes lost their vitality and the stubble on his cheeks suddenly looked more ragged and silver. His skin lost its elasticity and chose to hang from his jaw rather than tighten itself across his cheekbones. In that blink of an eye, he became an old man.
When Neil and Jerry re-entered the house, this time with the others in tow, they felt more like intruders than before. As they ascended the stairs, each looked over his shoulder to the trailing Dr. Caldwell as if to get permission to continue. They were guests, after all.
Dr. Caldwell sat down on the overstuffed, plush couch that was situated perfectly to catch both the view and the fireplace in the center of the wall opposite. There was no television in this room. There was, however, an antique console stereo system with a precision turntable. The stereo was part cabinet, part stereo, and part center speaker. It was a piece of furniture in and of itself. In racks to either side of the stereo were neatly ordered collections of vintage vinyl albums and more recent compact discs. This was a music lover’s altar.
Emma observed all of this as she circled the room, holding an approach pattern as she prepared to make her landing on the couch next to the doctor. She didn’t want to presume to know his feelings or his needs one way or the other. She could just float from point of interest to point of interest in the room, sharing the space without actually invading his. He could be alone, if he chose, without being isolated in his grief.
Finally, he said, “Do you wanna sit down?”
From in front of the window, Emma turned and admitted, “I don’t know what I should be doing here. I didn’t want you to be alone but then I didn’t know what I should do and so I just...” She had to stop because her sobbing was making her speech unintelligible to even her. She took in a deep breath and finally said, “I should probably just go. I’m really screwing this up.”
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