by Ponce, Jen
Maybe it wasn’t as bad in the rest of the country. Maybe the rural areas weren’t as hard hit. It could be a matter of escaping Omaha and then we’d be golden.
God, I hoped that was true. I hoped it with every fiber of my being as we kept driving into the terror-filled unknown.
6
Then
It took us another hour to make it fifteen blocks and I was about to suggest we find a place to hole up for the night when Lana spotted the emergency lights. “Over there! Police, I think.”
It was two in the morning and my eyes were gritty with the lack of sleep. Our passenger hadn’t said much since she’d spun out her tale of sorrow. Her grief had filled the silence as we navigated the dangerous roads, then wet sobs, then nothing. She wasn’t asleep, I could tell that from brief glances in the rear view, but she wasn’t exactly with us either. Her heart and attention had been left behind with her dead son and boyfriend.
The road was clear, though cars were piled up in front of the blockade of emergency vehicles and blue and red lights. “Are they letting people through? Or just keeping us from leaving?” My hands tightened on the steering wheel at the thought of being forced to stay in this chaos.
“We won’t know until we ask. Oh!” She clutched at me when they open fired on a man who stumbled out of a nearby storefront. He dropped without a sound. “Was that … one of them?” she asked, the wobble in her voice telling me she wondered what I wondered.
“Surely it was,” I said, though I wasn’t sure about anything. What if they were shooting anyone who neared? What if it didn’t matter if he’d been one of them or not?
The cops’ shadows bounced frenetically in the strobing lights of their cars. They shouted things we couldn’t hear and were at work building up the barricade as the men on the SUVs kept watch. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there, not confident at all that we wouldn’t be put down with the same efficiency as the man now bleeding out on the street.
One thing I was sure of: they didn’t know we were here. I’d turned our lights off to keep from announcing our presence to every one of them out there and as long as they didn’t get advance warning, they weren’t fast enough to block our passage. One or two or even five or more weren’t too much of a problem, but crowds of them were. We could only run over so many before the SUV would founder, get caught up on bodies and trap us. “What do you want to do?” I was aware that our brake lights were a shining red beacon, so I put our car in park and waited. “I need some sleep. We all do. But I’m not sure where we could go that’s safe.”
From the backseat, our passenger said, “I know a place. Wouldn’t trust these guys not to shoot first and lie about it later.”
I glanced back at her and caught movement. They were coming, drawn by the shot, probably. A few dozen, their songs just now audible in the night. “Where?”
“Turn into that parking lot and go out the right-hand side. My auntie has a house up there. She lives alone. Has a fence. Good security.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “If she’s one … one of them, she’ll be easy …” She swallowed. “She’s in a wheelchair.”
Lana and I were silent at the implications. Lana reached back and took the young woman’s hand. “Thank you. I’m sure she’s fine.”
The woman shrugged, but she didn’t pull her hand away.
I put the car into drive and pulled across the road into the parking lot, the monsters hooting and hollering after us, plaintive cries of, “Don’t leave me!” following us as I maneuvered around cars to the street beyond. We heard gunshots as we drove away.
The aunt’s house was scrunched up tight with its neighbors like Rod’s and April’s was, but there was a tiny garage for us to pull up in front of so we didn’t have to park on the street. I turned off the car and we sat in silence listening to the motor tick as it cooled. None of us wanted to get out even though we didn’t hear any of them right now. We didn’t see any either, but we watched for movement.
Finally, Lana reached for her door.
“Wait.” I squinted up at the dome light and find the switch to turn it off. “Okay. Ease the doors shut just until they click.” We slipped out and pushed the doors shut. Even the click sounded loud to my ears and I was sure we’d see them come screaming out of their hiding places, singing about our deaths, but the street—or our immediate vicinity at least—stayed quiet.
Our passenger—I really needed to ask her name—had a key and she let us in with shaking fingers. The small hallway was quiet and bare but for a small table placed under a mirror. A framed picture of a smiling family sat on the table, along with a blue vase and single, plastic flower. Our companion touched the frame with her fingers before turning to us. “I’m going to go knock on her bedroom door. Living room is in there. Bathroom over there. Kitchen.”
“Do you want us to come with you? In case …” Lana asked, and the woman shook her head.
“I need to go. If she’s sleeping, I don’t want to scare her with a bunch of strangers in her room, you know?”
We knew. Lana went to the bathroom and I went to the living room, cozy with faded, flower-patterned furniture and doilies draped over every stationary surface. A bookcase held religious books, more pictures, and various knickknacks of the ceramic angel persuasion. An old painting of Jesus hung above the couch, his eyes rolled up to heaven, his palms pressed together.
Everything was as neat as a pin as my grandmother would have said. She would have liked this place. It resembled her living room, except her religious poison of choice had been Catholicism. She had pictures of the Virgin Mary, candles, and a decidedly starved-looking Jesus hanging from a cross above her bed.
I’d always thought that was creepy, her obsession with the suffering of her savior. That and his bony hips jutting up from the strategically placed material draped to preserve his modesty. I’d always wondered what his dick looked like too, a question I managed to keep to myself. One, my grandmother wouldn’t have approved of me thinking about Jesus’s penis and two, she might have thought there was hope for the lesbian sinner that was her granddaughter. Dicks weren’t something I was normally obsessed with, except when they involved deep, religious ponderings.
“What are you thinking about?” Lana asked as she joined me on the couch.
“Religious dicks,” I said.
“Seriously?” She leaned into me and I put my arm around her. “If I’d known the apocalypse would turn you straight, I wouldn’t have ordered one.”
I squeezed her gently. “I’m still gay for you.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Nope.” I kissed her forehead. “I haven’t heard any screams or songs. That might be a good sign.”
As soon as I said it, the woman appeared in the doorway, her face wet with tears but looking hopeful. “She’s okay. I surprised her, but she’s okay. Told her …” She shook her head as if she couldn’t say the words. “Anyway, she said you can stay here until you figure out what to do next.”
“Thank you.” Lana stood and went to her, hands out. She gathered the woman into a hug. “We’re so grateful for your help.”
“You saved me,” she said. “Least I can do. I’m Tonia.”
“Lana. And she’s Deena, though I call her Dee.”
I waved lamely. “Thanks, Tonia.”
She nodded. “My auntie’s name is Trinie. It’s a family thing,” she said and I guessed that meant there were more people with T names in her family. “There’s a small room upstairs you can use. It’s really small, you know, sorry.”
“That’s all right. It’s safe and that’s what matters.”
I used the bathroom and went up the steep, narrow stairs to the bedroom. Tonia wasn’t kidding. The ceiling was sharply slanted and the bed was a twin, an old twin with a rounded, lumpy mattress.
It looked amazing to my tired brain. “Dibs on the spot against the wall,” I said.
“I’m going to end up on the floor, aren’t I?” Lana took off her s
hoes and socks, wiggling her toes at the freedom. “I don’t know if I can sleep.”
“Have you tried the boys?”
She nodded. “Check yours too.”
I did, but there weren’t any new messages.
Didn’t mean anything except that they were busy or the service had been disrupted.
“They’re fine,” she said, as if reading the turmoil in my head.
I nodded. “They’re fine and we’re getting to them.” I tapped out another message. “I love you guys. We’re coming. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t go out. Stay safe. I love you.” My fingers hovered over the screen, shaking with my need to write more, to send them a fucking novel about how much their mom and I love them.
When I looked up, Lana had tears in her eyes. “I’m so scared.”
“Me too,” she said quietly. “Me too.”
7
Now
The world is askew. She lays on the ground, panting, the thing that tried to kill her draped across her, no longer animated. When she blinks again, the garage comes into focus and she remembers what she’s supposed to be doing. Finding a car, finding a ride, finding a way back to her kids.
She shoves at the thing on top of her, its weight heavy, its flesh mushy. A finger sinks into a rotten spot, into cold, decayed flesh and she gags, furiously wiping the finger on the thing’s dirty clothes. Gagging, she sheds her backpack and finds the wipes that she put in last so she wouldn’t have to hunt for them. She cleans her finger, then soaks it in hand sanitizer, then cleans it again even though nothing remains on her skin.
It can’t make her sick, not its blood, not its fluids. The only thing that works is a bite and it didn’t bite her, but still she scrubs until her finger is red and irritated. Panting, she realizes she’s lost herself in panic again. She counts to ten and puts the wipes away, shoulders her backpack and unlocks the car door. The car smells good, like new, in-transit stickers in the front and back windows. The leather is cold as she settles in, her pack on the seat next to her. Its better than the old truck. It’ll be quiet if it starts.
She finds the garage door opener and brushes her finger over the button without pressing it. No point pressing it if the car won’t start, but it does and then she finds herself frozen again.
She could sit here and let the carbon monoxide fill the garage. She could end things painlessly right now. There’s no reason to believe the boys have survived when so many have died. There’s no reason to push herself another three hundred miles only to find tragedy or worse, nothing.
A look at the gas gauge tells her she has plenty of gas to do it. Plenty of time. She could go peacefully, not torn apart like so many others.
The radio crackles, startling her out of her trance. She pushes the button, ashamed of herself, and the garage door rattles upward. As it does, she fiddles with the radio dial. Static, more static, and then … “—gency broadcast in progress. This message is being broadcast by the Kootenai County Sheriff’s department. We ask that you remain inside—” She clicks it off. Same broadcast different story. They heard it when shit first hit the fan and had actually believed it when it told them the emergency would end shortly.
It hadn’t.
She doesn’t get more than twenty feet from the house when she sees the first one of them step out of a house on the corner. An older woman, her white hair wild on her head, her mouth agape. “Help!” It could have been her grandmother. Long white gown, what looked like a rosary clutched in her hand. “Help!” she calls again.
No blood on the woman’s face, no rips or tears in the fabric. She could be real, could be human. She slows, stomach knotted in worry and doubt.
“Help me, please!”
The old ones, the ones made when the outbreak started, they can’t articulate full sentences. The new ones can and they often look normal, especially if their bite is somewhere inconspicuous. She’s learned that all too well.
A quick glance around tells her they are alone, at least for now.
The old woman’s front door stands open and the old woman’s feet are bare. A strike against her. Surely if she was alive, she would have put shoes on before running outside.
How had the old woman heard her, anyway? The garage door made noise, but it wouldn’t have been loud enough to hear all the way down the block and inside the house.
She brakes and stares as the old woman comes her way. Her face is clear of the black veins that some of them develop as the rot spreads throughout their body. Her hands are free of broken nails and her skin looks healthy. So why does she hesitate over the window button? Why doesn’t she open the door and hustle her inside?
Because of the brush she clutches in her hand, forgotten. Something about that strikes her as weird and so she doesn’t make a move when the woman presses a hand against the glass. “Help me!”
“What’s your name?” she calls, knowing the woman can hear her.
The woman cocks her head like a dog might when hearing something interesting. It’s in that almost alien movement that she has her answer. The woman opens her mouth and flashes yellowed teeth. “Help. Me.” The other hand flies up, the one with the brush, and slams into the window. It makes her jump but of course the window is fine. “Help. Me,” the old woman insists. “Help me!”
She eases off the brake and rolls forward, not wanting to bump the old woman, though she doesn’t know why. Maybe it is because of her resemblance to her grandmother, or maybe she’s just tired of violence.
The movement of the SUV against the press of the old lady’s body spins her, despite its speed. Her legs tangle in each other and she goes down. When she looks in the rear view, the lady is on the ground, hand out, plaintively wailing. Her heart lurches painfully but she keeps her foot on the gas. Turns the corner. Breathes a guilty sigh of relief when the woman is no longer in sight.
Maybe it would have been better to die right away.
This isn’t the first time she’s thought this and it certainly won’t be the last, but as she turns the words over in her head, she thinks back to those first fear-filled hours and wonders if it wouldn’t have been better if they’d gone to sleep in Trinie’s attic and never woken up again.
8
Then
I woke when Lana called out in her sleep. The words were mushy, as they often were when coming from a dreamer’s lips, so I only caught the fear and not the meaning. I lifted myself up onto an elbow and gazed down at her, her brow slightly furrowed. There were fine lines at the corners of her eyes now, and heavier ones around her mouth. Her laugh lines, strong and deep and well-used. I could see the ghost of what she’d looked like years ago, that young woman I’d fallen in love with and I couldn’t help thank my lucky stars I’d gotten so lucky as to be able to grow old with her too.
After her face smoothed out and soft puffs of breath escaped her lips, I eased out of bed and tiptoed downstairs to use the bathroom. My hair was wild, so I wet my fingers and ran them through the strands, glad as always I kept my hair short. When I was finished—though wishing for my toothbrush—I ran into Tonia in the hallway. “Good morning. How’s your aunt?”
She shrugged and tugged at the sleeve of the baggy shirt she wore, obviously borrowed from someone much bigger and older. “Scared. We tried calling my daddy but the phone isn’t working. There’s an emergency broadcast on the radio saying we should stay in the house with the doors locked. That this will all be over soon. Military is coming in, I guess?”
“Is there a radio I can take upstairs to listen to?”
She nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, coming back out with a small radio that looked like it had come right from the 80s. “Just put it back on the kitchen counter when you’re done, okay?”
“I will. Thank you.”
Her hollow eyes told me more than any words could. I wasn’t a hugger like Lana, but I offered one anyway and she took it, squeezing tight for a long while before disappearing into her aunt’s room.
I went upstairs and plugged in
the radio, slowly scanning the dial to see what I could find. The familiar emergency broadcast tones sounded and I leaned in to listen, having turned the sound down as far as I could to keep from waking Lana. “This message is being broadcast by the Douglas County Sheriff’s department. At 7PM Central Standard Time, on October 29th, 2020, the CDC sent word to emergency service professionals across the nation about a fast-moving, highly-contagious disease that causes those infected to become extremely violent and aggressive. They believe this disease is caused by some sort of virulent parasite that is able to restart the human brain and hijack the body’s systems so that it can continue spreading the infection to as many people as possible. The parasite can only be transmitted through bites or direct ingestion of the parasite’s eggs. At this time there is no known cure. Citizens of Douglas County are strongly urged to stay in their homes with their doors and windows secured. Do not go outside. Do not attempt to help the infected. The infected have been observed to use human speech to lure the unwary close in order to attack them. If you or someone you know has been bitten, please quarantine in a room away from healthy survivors. Do not attempt to care for the wounded. We repeat: stay indoors with doors and windows secured. Do not attempt to help the infected. Emergency service personnel are working tirelessly to contain the infection. Cooperate with local police and fire and rescue officers. This message is being broadcast …”
I turned it down when I heard Lana stir behind me. Her eyes were on me when I moved to get my phone. Excitement thrummed through me when I saw the messages. “The boys are all right still. They are inside, doors and windows locked. It’s been noisy out. They’ve heard fighting and car wrecks, sirens too, but they’ve stayed put.” I let out a relieved breath, scrolling through the rest of what Jackson and Tucker both wrote, Lana peering over my shoulder reading too. “They’re safe.”
Lana gripped my arm tight for a second before settling back. “We have to get to them.”