Her voice teases, and I find myself holding back a smile. “There’s the right way to go and the wrong way to go. And that can change based on many variables, which are always open for lively discussion.”
Rose laughs—a great big Ha! followed by a giggle. “I like this guy,” Sam says. Even with my stomach in knots, there’s a peacefulness in the car. Sam and Rose are easy to be around, and I have to admit I like them so far.
The road spits us into a three-way intersection. From here, the wooded hills end and become streets with sidewalks and houses on smaller lots. No teeming metropolis by any stretch of the imagination, but crowded enough that I set my gun on my leg.
The first houses look fine, but as Sam turns left and makes his way down the quiet street, we pass a car with an open driver’s side door. Blood splatters the gray interior. The white ranch house just ahead is ransacked, and the breeze blows the curtains through the broken windows. Two houses are charred, and a group of six zombies stands at the unburned house next in line, sniffing around the front picture window.
Sam slows. Rose’s breathing picks up. “You think there are people inside? Should we check?”
“No,” I say, pleased that Sam says it along with me.
“We can’t leave them in there.” Rose’s voice is pleading. The zombies notice us and begin to leave the window one by one. “Just stop the car for a second.”
“Don’t you dare get out,” Sam growls.
“Really, Daddy? I’m not out of my mind.”
Sam slows on the incline. This street is a continuation of the hills; north, west, and east of here flatten out. Rose rolls down her window, then leans out and waves at the figures who stumble steadily toward the car. They’re different than the ones a week ago, which were fresher, more like walking corpses. These have grayer skin with more missing patches of flesh. Knotted hair. Dirtier clothes. Maybe they’re decomposing, as the radio said they would. The stench through Rose’s window is up there with the worst things I’ve ever smelled, but if it’s a sign we’ll soon be rid of this madness, I’ll gladly take it.
“Give them another minute, then pull to the top of the hill.” Rose waves out the window again, which has them redoubling their efforts to reach the car. One hobbles on a foot twisted almost backward. I’m amazed he can walk until he falls and begins to crawl.
“Holy shit,” Rose says. “That’s Ms. Kelly. Remember Ms. Kelly from the girls’ middle school? She taught Social Studies.”
The woman Rose points out looks familiar, but I can’t say for sure. Her blond hair hangs limp, and she wears leggings and a sports bra, as though she was mid-workout when she died. Sam pulls to the top of the hill when the zombies are ten feet away, then over the top when they close in again.
When the group crests the hill, Rose says, “Okay, go.”
Sam drives slowly, the bodies trailing in the distance, and he swerves to avoid the truly dead bodies in the street. Rose leans her elbows on her perch between us. “We got them away from that house, so if someone’s in there, they can escape. See? We did our good deed for the day, and it cost us nothing except a few minutes of our time.”
“Rose is a bleeding heart on legs, Tom. She—” Sam brakes as we pass another abandoned car, this one with all four doors open wide, and he breathes out, “Oh, Jesus.”
Rose covers her mouth. The car seat in the back is strapped in, as is what remains of a child. Two legs, with sneakers still firmly attached, are the only recognizable parts. The rest is a mess of dried tissue and bone. The head is gone.
My stomach flips before it rights itself. I breathe deep to keep it there. “Imagine having little kids right now?” Rose whispers. I shake my head. Whatever led to abandoning a child in the backseat of a car is too horrific to imagine.
The enclosed reservoir—a rectangular structure built into the hillside—goes by. The concrete surface is open to the public for skateboarding and roller skating, and the astronomical society holds monthly stargazing events there. Sheila always wanted to go, and I’d always meant to take her. Another regret I’ll have to live with until I join her in whatever comes next.
Something pounds the window of a red and white house to our left. The sound of breaking glass comes when it’s out of sight. Aside from garbage and random pieces of clothing—a shoe here, a hat there—the next downhill blocks are quiet.
Sam eases up on the corner of a city park, where he slows at the sound of banging metal. The fenced tennis courts at the top of the park come into view, and with them the source of the noise. Someone shoved zombies into the space, wound chain around the gate to keep it locked, and then torched them. As plans go, the intention was better than the outcome. Blackened figures hit the fence full force. Their eyelids and hair are burned away, leaving behind charred, melted heads and round staring eyeballs. Their clothes are mostly gone. Only a few lie on the ground, done in by fire. The rest are something from a horror movie, black flakes floating into the air as they start up a cacophony that gives me goosebumps.
Sam turns onto a parallel block. This one is crawling with them—in the streets, outside on lawns. He guns the car and speeds past the bodies, past houses that’ve been ravaged and chunks of devoured people on the streets.
“Holy shit,” Rose says, sounding awed.
I expected town to look bad, but seeing my expectations fulfilled is unreal. The destruction, the barrenness, leave no doubt things have changed irreparably. It’s only taken a week to wipe out the city I’ve known for over forty years. If it spread—and I fear it has—the entire world might look the same.
A church’s parking lot is full of cars and the undead. People may be in there, but leading away that number of zombies will cause us to bleed from more than our hearts. Rose doesn’t suggest it, and Sam speeds up, swerving around a dark-haired woman and a little girl, both of whom watch the car pass with bared teeth.
We fly over speed bumps and around the island in the center of the intersection meant to slow traffic. More people lived here, and it shows in the broken windows and splintered wood of the houses. There was looting. Fights.
Twenty zombies follow us. They’re falling behind, but more join every few houses. By the time we reach our destination, it might be too dangerous to leave the car.
Rose clenches her knife in a fist on the console. Sam presses the pedal to the metal, shoots up Oak Street to the next avenue, then races down until he bumps up the curb to the sidewalk and stops sideways near the porch steps of Rose’s office. “Think I lost ‘em for now.”
The street is silent. Most of the large old houses on this stretch of blocks are now businesses, and, based on their intactness, none holds anything interesting to looters. I don’t know a ton about houses, but I know this is a historic home, with fancy wood trim and thick columns that meet the stone porch, painted in shades of brown and yellow.
Rose jumps out and scurries up the steps. Sam and I join her on the porch, where she holds her keys at the wood and glass door. She has a few freckles on her cheeks I’ve never noticed, but now they stand out in stark relief as she tries the knob. It swings open.
We step inside. It smells of furniture polish, not decaying flesh. The foyer and staircase are a dark honey-colored wood, and the rooms to either side are offices with large leaded glass windows. Beyond the stairs and front desk, in the larger main room, two couches and a few easy chairs are arranged in a square, with a beverage station against the wall. The coffee table in the center is covered with glossy magazines.
“Hello?” Rose moves into the living area with her knife aloft. “Ethan?”
She walks past the couches and peers into a couple of rooms in the back, then disappears through a door. Sam and I find her in the kitchen. Someone was here, and they ate a good bit of food. Wrappers and empty packaging litter the table and counters. Candy, granola bars, string cheese, crackers, Capri Sun drinks, soda—all the things you might offer clients or their kids to keep them happy.
Rose heads the way we came, then
mounts the stairs. On the second floor, she checks every room, then stops in a larger room with two desks. More wrappers on one workstation. A picture of Rose and the kids sits on the desk, taken maybe ten years ago at the coast, and they all smile as if having the best day of their lives. Ethan’s side of the room. Rose glances at a blackened spoon on the wood surface. Off to the side, a cottony substance is pulled apart into white fluff, and a lighter sits nearby. Ethan’s drug paraphernalia. That she can view it so dispassionately speaks volumes about their relationship.
“He was here,” she says. “He would have hidden it, unless he left in a hurry.”
Footsteps and groans come from the street. Sam leaves for the hall and returns quickly. “They’re by the car. Maybe three dozen. We’ll have to wait them out.”
Rose curses softly, then turns to me and whispers, “Sorry.”
I shrug. My eye is caught by something above the other desk. Rose’s desk, which has only a picture of Holly and Jesse—another telling sign. The bulletin board above is plastered with business cards and reminders, but one glossy sheaf of papers has pictures of a large house and land. One shot is of a stretch of meadow, where white-capped mountains rise behind grass and flowers.
“That’s my house,” Rose murmurs. “Take it down and look if you want.”
I pull the pushpin and leaf through the papers. Pictures of the interior of a giant house. Walls of windows with an expansive view, bedrooms, a sauna and private hot spring pool, gardens, and trees. Outbuildings. The accompanying text says the property is self-sufficient with solar and geothermal power, and the price makes me whistle. “Fifteen million dollars?”
Rose flaps a hand. “That’s chump change. Want to go halfsies?”
I smile. The pictures show shady spaces under aspens, oaks, and pines, a carpet of green near a pond, and even a river that winds around two sides of the massive property. It includes an orchard of sugar maples and fruit trees. “Since when do sugar maples grow in Idaho?”
“Since some rich jackhole fancied himself a farmer and decided to plant them. I looked it up one day—sugar maples can grow in Idaho, but you have to water them in the summer.”
“Easy enough with that river.”
“Exactly.” Rose taps her temple and tips her finger toward me, as though congratulating me for having half a brain. “It has a main house, a barn, and six guesthouses on close to a hundred acres. That valley is a microclimate, so you can plant more than you can in other areas. I called the listing agent and pretended I had an interested client, and she told me every little detail. Doesn’t it look perfect?” I inspect the papers again, and Rose sighs. “It’s stupid, I know. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it. My plant-killing abilities are unparalleled.”
Honestly, it looks like a dream. It is a dream; Rose’s dream. Improbable, but maybe she needed that the past few years. A place to escape to, if only in her mind. “It’s not stupid,” I say, unsure of what else to add—definitely not what I was thinking.
Rose takes the sheaf of papers and tacks them in their place. She gazes for a moment, then pats them with affection. “You never know,” she says.
The woman makes me feel like a downright curmudgeon.
18
Rose
We brought small bags with water and food, but, like geniuses, we left them in the car that’s now surrounded. The zombies don’t appear to be doing anything other than standing around. They sense people somehow—by sight, sound, and possibly even smell—but they don’t sense anyone in here. Yet.
I leave the couches where Tom and Pop sit and head into the kitchen. One forgotten, rock-hard cereal bar lurks in a drawer with the cooking utensils. I set it on the counter and spin in a circle, catching sight of familiar gray fabric pooled on the seat of a chair beneath the table.
Ethan’s gray jacket. The one he wore when I saw him last. I snatch it up and drop it just as quickly with a small squeak. It hits the table and slides to the floor, bloody side up. A lot of blood, and it’s dried to a deep brown crust on the chest and all down the arm. I cover my mouth. Maybe he was injured. Or bitten.
The door pushes open, and Pop rushes in with Tom just behind him. “What happened, Rosie?”
I point to the floor, a coldness creeping out from my middle, and try to say it’s Ethan’s, that he was wearing it that day. I must manage because Pop crosses the room and takes me in his arms. “He could be okay. It might not be his blood.”
Pop hasn’t smoked in years, but he still has the comforting smell of unsmoked cherry pipe tobacco. It tells me I’m safe and loved and that, at least in his eyes, there’s nothing I could do that would make him love me less. I sink into him, tears overflowing. Even if I wanted Ethan out of my life, I didn’t want it like this. Injured, alone, dead. I thought I was prepared to lose him, that I’d given up on him once and for all, but maybe I haven’t completely. He would’ve come home if he were able. I’m sure of that. I’d believed he’d squeak through like he always does—the man could score drugs in a convent. And now I’ll have to tell Holly and Jesse that if we’d only come sooner, we might have seen him, might have saved him.
I pull myself together, then cross to a tissue box. I can’t change the past, but I can make sure I return home to my kids. “I’m okay.”
Pop’s lined brow pronounces him skeptical of that. Tom stares at the coat on the floor, and I avert my eyes while I pass into the living room. They follow, sitting delicately on the furniture, as if I’m a bomb waiting to explode. With tears, most likely. I blow my nose and then look to the water cooler. It’s dry as a bone, as is my mouth, and I know for a fact the office was overdue for a water delivery.
“Great, now I’m thirsty,” I say. “We could make a run for it out a window, but then we’d have to run home.”
The house is an L-shaped duplex. We can’t get into the other side from here, but if one of us goes out a window, captures the zombies’ attention on the corner, and then climbs back inside while they follow, it might get them away from the car long enough to escape. I leave for a side office, where a glance out the window renders that plan moot. The side street and sidewalk aren’t empty any longer, and if we attract these without drawing the ones at the car, they’ll know we’re in here and likely never leave.
A shadow moves behind me. “Guess we’re waiting it out for now,” Tom says. “Wish we could get our stuff from the car, but there might be some water in the toilet tanks and the water heater, if you have one.”
“It’s tankless,” I say, then smack my forehead when I remember something. “Duh. Come with me?”
Tom follows me to a back room. The old pantry now holds supplies my office manager, Bonnie, buys in bulk. Buried behind a stack of copy paper boxes, I locate two red duffel bags and a five-gallon bucket. I haul them into the center of the space and lift a duffel. “Help me with the other?”
Tom throws it over his shoulder, takes my duffel and throws it over his other shoulder, then lifts the bucket. “I didn’t expect you to carry it all,” I say.
He shrugs and squeezes through the door sideways. Calling Tom standoffish may be putting it mildly, but he still seems like the kind of guy who carries in groceries instead of sitting on his butt inside, who fills your car with gas for no reason other than to be helpful. Kind of like Pop, who stands when we enter the waiting area and attempts to take a duffel until Tom motions him down. “What’s that?” Pop asks.
Tom sets the bags and bucket on the floor. “Don’t know.”
“After that whole thing about the Cascadia earthquake, I had Bonnie get some emergency supplies for the office,” I explain. “I forgot all about it. I don’t remember exactly what’s in them, but they looked good at the time.”
I never told Ethan about them, either. There was so much I kept to myself because he wasn’t around or seemed disinterested. He never asked about that Idaho listing, except to half-jokingly—and half-accusingly—ask if I was leaving him.
I sit on the floor to unzip a duf
fel bag. Tom crouches and opens the other. I pull out gloves and two small flashlights, a pry bar, shovel, glow sticks, and duct tape. Masks, goggles, rope, tissues, wet wipes, water purification tablets, a radio, and more. Tom’s bag is mainly food: vacuum-sealed blocks of something that call themselves Emergency Food Ration Bars and feel more like foil-wrapped blocks of wood, a case of emergency drinking water packaged in small foil pouches, and a first aid kit.
I tear the corner off a water pouch and guzzle it down, then hand one to Pop, who sets it in his lap. I bite my tongue rather than direct him to drink, though his pasty skin makes me think he could use it. There’s no way he can run home, and there’s no way he’s getting in to see a doctor anytime soon. The thought leaves me cold. He can’t die—not now, and not ever. He was always the strongest person I knew, but cancer took a lot out of him.
“You okay, Daddy?”
“Fine, baby doll.” He smiles, and my tension eases. “Just a bit weary. Good thinking getting this to have on hand.”
“The duffels are for ten people for three days.” I point to the bucket. “This one was only for four people, but I liked that it was for earthquakes.” Tom lifts the black plastic lid, and I say, “Look at it closely.”
He pulls the lid apart. “Toilet seat.”
“It has bags and everything, so you can use the bucket as a toilet.”
The bucket’s contents are similar to the duffels, though it also comes with a utility tool to shut off gas and water, candles, emergency blankets and ponchos, a Swiss army knife, a tube tent, and the piece de resistance: a radio/flashlight combo that works on solar and hand cranking. Pop’s battery-operated transistor radio will run out of batteries at some point.
“Anyone hungry?” I hand Tom a water pouch and a wooden-block bar. He seems hesitant to take them, which is silly, although I’d probably feel the same. “Help yourself. It’s all of ours.”
Tom sits on the floor nearby, back against a couch and knees bent. He tears open the water and glugs it down. I hand him another. I’m not a wisp of a thing like Holly, but he’s big enough to make me feel like one. His dark hair has a few strands of silver at the temples, and a bit more in his scruff, but other than that, he doesn’t look his age. Or he does, but he carries it well. Mitch said the same of me, but it’s ridiculous how Tom’s laugh lines are considered distinguished while mine make me a hag. With that thought, I roll my eyes.
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 13