Movement on the street caught her attention. A stray German shepherd stuck its head out from behind a parked car. A smaller dog, maybe a shih tzu, crouched behind it. They’d obviously been waiting for the monster to leave too. The shepherd sniffed the air before cautiously moving out toward the middle of the road, where it stuck its nose into a pile of newspaper. When it raised its head, it was chewing something. Plenty of garbage for the animals these days.
“There are other survivors out there,” she said suddenly. “There have to be. We can’t be the only sane people left in the world. It would be nice to find them. We’d be stronger. We don’t even have any weapons.”
“We’ll find others eventually.”
She took a sip of water. Her throat was always dry these days. “We should be looking for them. Sending out search parties. It wouldn’t be too hard to do.”
“It would be suicidal. You said it yourself, we don’t have weapons.”
“Then we’ll get some.”
She yawned, and tried to cover it up by coughing.
“You’re tired,” Jack pressed.
“I just don’t feel like sleeping right now.”
“Who do you see when you close your eyes?”
Aries shot him a look. “That’s personal.”
“I see Ms. Darcy.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
And a million others.
It wasn’t sleep that she feared. It was the time before sleep when she rested her head down on the pillow. She couldn’t turn off her brain; it became an open invitation for all the events she’d witnessed over the past weeks. There were too many thoughts, and this was the prime time for them to creep their way into her head. Closing her eyes meant seeing and imagining the bodies of both strangers and the people she loved. Their screams echoed like a scratched record on an endless loop. She wanted sleep. She wished desperately for it to come to her. But she couldn’t clear her head. She didn’t know what tricks to use to make it all go away.
She blinked several times to try to ease the soreness from her eyes. Clutching the blanket, she pulled it back over her shoulders. “Where are the others?”
“Second floor. They’re trying the laptop again, but I think the battery’s about to die. Personally I would have given up on it a long time ago. It’s broke, can’t be fixed. Thing’s useless anyway without the Internet. Colin’s on the roof. He said something about needing fresh air, but I think he’s just tired of the smell. Can’t say I disagree with him. I wish we had drugs. If my head gets any stuffier it’s gonna explode.”
The building in which they were hiding had a foul odor of mold and fried eggs. It had been the brunt of bad jokes over several sleepless nights. What smells worse than ten-day-old maggot breath? This place. What smells worse than Colin’s feet? This place.
They laughed silently in the darkness. You had to laugh if you wanted to live. But you did it quietly. Who knew what lurked in the shadows outside?
Six of them lived. Colin, Joy, Jack, and Aries were the only ones lucky enough to make it out of the school alive. They’d met up with Eve and Nathan a week later. They were a brother-and-sister team that managed to survive inside a 7-Eleven by hiding behind a bunch of boxes in the store room. Together they were six. Alone they were, well, alone. She remembered what Daniel said to her before he disappeared. Groups were a bad thing. People do stupid things when they’re together. She disagreed. Being part of a group gave her strength. She’d never have made it out alive if it hadn’t been for her friends.
Daniel. Was he out there somewhere, hiding in an abandoned grocery store or holed up in some earthquake-ravaged building like hers? She thought about him often, more than she’d ever admit. She wondered if he was still alive or one of the numerous corpses that littered the streets like the aftermath of some bizarre death parade.
When they’d escaped the school and ran blindly into the street, she’d been surprised that the group automatically headed toward the bus stop and the grocery store. Her heart exploded in her chest when she recognized the overturned bus, knowing that her best friend was still trapped inside with Daniel’s jacket thrown over her. It would be her final resting place; no one was coming to give her a proper burial. Thankfully they ran straight past. No one thought of taking cover there.
Luck was on their side and they found shelter in someone’s garage. They huddled in the darkness, listening to the screams, waiting for someone or something to open the door and find them. It was a miracle they made it through without detection.
“They’re going from house to house,” Jack informed her during the first night. It was three a.m. and everyone was dozing except the two of them. Jack was peering out through the window, cautiously.
“Who?” she asked. A waterfall of cold ice ran its way down her spine.
“Six or seven of them,” he said. “They just dragged someone out into the street. She’s in a bathrobe. Oh God, there’s a child, too.”
Aries joined him at the window. She couldn’t help herself.
“Are you sure you want to see this?” he whispered.
She nodded and he pointed farther down the street where she could see the group of people circled around and tearing apart their victims. A soft cry involuntarily left her lips, and she covered her mouth with both hands.
Jack put his arm around her and pulled her close. She buried her face in his chest for a few moments before anger overcame her. No. She wasn’t going to cower. She’d have to be stronger if she wanted to get out of this alive. Pushing away from him, she forced herself to watch the group finish up their job before moving on to the next house.
“They’ll get here eventually,” she finally said.
“There’s a car cover in the back,” Jack said. “We can hide under it.”
“We need weapons,” she said.
Luckily for them, the murderous mob never checked the garage. By the time they reached that house, dawn was breaking in the sky and the killers must have been exhausted. They broke down the door of the house across the street. Aries clung to Jack when one of the monsters threw a helpless woman through the living room window. After checking to make sure she was dead, the killer casually wandered back inside and closed the door. They must have decided to rest, because the house grew quiet.
Aries spent the entire day believing she’d be dead by nightfall. But when the mob resumed their killing spree that evening, they miraculously skipped their hideout.
The rest of the block wasn’t so lucky.
Three days later Aries and her friends moved on. Mostly because they were hungry and if they stayed any longer they’d be too weak. They slipped out under the cover of night.
There were dead bodies everywhere. It was almost impossible to move without hitting a hand or stomach. Joy stepped on someone’s fingers, accidentally breaking them beneath her boot. She threw up on a discarded book bag. Everyone huddled around her, but not out of concern. They were terrified that the noise might draw attention. Although Joy was on the verge of hysterics, she managed to keep it together. But she was more cautious where she stepped from that point on. They all were.
There was blood. It may have been dark outside, but Aries could see the endless splashes of dried liquid on the cement.
It was the longest walk she’d ever endured. Every time they heard a noise they jumped in the bushes or took cover behind a car. When people screamed or called out for help they turned and walked in the opposite direction. A body still oozing fresh blood put them into a full-blown panic, but only because it meant one of the psychotic humans was close.
Eventually they made it to the downtown core, where they found Eve and Nathan. They spent the night under the Granville Bridge, where they crawled up onto a cement pillar. It was cold and miserable, and Aries spent the entire night afraid to close her eyes. She couldn’t get past the fear of falling asleep, rolling off the bridge, and hitting the dark waters below.
The next evening they found the apartment block. Set above a restaur
ant, it had no way inside on the first floor except for two giant iron doors with heavy-duty locks. The windows on the second and third levels were broken, and a corner of the roof had caved in during the earthquake, but it was secure. A dropped key by the steps gained them access. No one else was inside.
It became their haven.
The building wasn’t exactly livable. Many of the apartments were empty; it seemed the place was undergoing renovations when the earthquake happened. The few places that had been inhabited were sparsely furnished. They found a bit of food in the cupboards and the rest they managed to scrounge by sneaking out in the dead of night to the convenience store down the street. After a few weeks of living on chocolate bars and bags of chips, they were starting to get jittery. The sugar rushes were wearing down their bodies and tripping out their minds. Aries was tired all the time, and she was positive the others felt the same way. She knew there were other shops farther into the city, some maybe as close as a few blocks away. But getting to them would be risky. They were all running short on bravery these days. Maybe after a few days of starving, they’d change their minds. But it hadn’t happened yet.
All they did was sit around and wait. The building was damp because of its age and all the rain. The lack of windows meant a constant draft they couldn’t escape. Her body constantly felt soggy.
If they found other survivors, they’d be stronger. They could form a community. They’d be able to divide the responsibilities better and get more organized. It would be good to find a doctor. Even a police officer. They could learn more about self-defense. They could learn to protect themselves. The bigger the group, the tougher they’d be. Maybe eventually they could find a way to communicate with other cities.
If they could find a way to share their stories they might be able to find a way to defeat the monsters.
“Maybe I will take a break,” she said. Forcing herself to stand, she ignored the strained ligaments and pulled the blanket off her body and draped it over Jack’s shoulders.
“Good,” he said. Sniffing at the scratchy wool, he made a face. “This is disgusting.”
“Better than nothing,” she said. “I’m gonna go make some coffee. Do you want?”
“Caramel macchiato with extra foam. Double shot of vanilla, too.”
“Black it is, and if you’re lucky I’ll stir it with a Twix bar.”
Jack laughed. “You’re on.”
She paused at the door, keeping her face hidden from his. “Sometimes when I close my eyes, I’m afraid of my mind going dark. Like I’ll wake up changed into one of those things.”
“If you were one of them, I think you’d know it by now.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know how any of this works. Why’d they change in the first place?” She turned to face him, and her eyes found his.
“You’re right,” he said. “We don’t know. But I’m going to continue believing that no one else is going to change. Otherwise I’ll just drive myself crazy wondering. I can’t live that way.”
She nodded. “You make sense. I don’t remember you being this sensible back in school.”
“I’m shockingly intelligent sometimes.”
“I see that. One Twix bar coffee coming up for you.” She left him by the window and headed down toward the kitchen they were using. No one was there, and she poured some bottled water into a pot. Placing it on the Coleman stove, she turned on the gas. They were running out of propane. Soon this luxury would be over too.
While she waited for the water to boil, she leaned against the counter and stared absently out onto the street. It was empty, but she couldn’t help but think of all the people she hoped were still alive. She often thought about her parents. Were they safe? More than anything else in the world she wished she could stop by her house and see if her Mom and Dad were waiting. Their faces were strong in her memory. She imagined the reunion several times a day, the surprised, relieved looks she’d get when she walked through the door. She’d give anything to curl up in her bed with her warm blankets. Her bed was the unreachable dream.
But her house was all the way on the other side of the city. Even if she managed to find a car, it would take hours just to try and navigate around all the stalls and accidents. All the bridges were jammed with abandoned cars. There wasn’t a way in or out of the downtown core. Walking would be impossible. There were too many of those monsters just waiting to snatch up the last of humanity.
It was farther away than the moon.
CLEMENTINE
Dear Heath, I’m such an idiot and now I’m going to die. If there is a heaven, I hope you’re waiting for me.
Lying on her back in the baseball dugout, Clementine held a shaking hand over her mouth. Less than two feet above her, strange voices held a discussion about what they’d like to do if they found a nice young girl.
“Getting harder and harder to find a chick,” one of them grunted.
“That’s cuz you keep killing ’em,” said the other. “I dunno why you had to go and off that pretty brunette. I would have liked to spend some more time with her. Gotta appreciate it: soon good women gonna be a thing of the past. You know I only like the ones who scream, and they’re gonna be extinct like the dinosaur. “
“Better enjoy ’em while we can, then.”
Thankfully it was dark, but if one of them had happened to glance down they might have seen the moonlight reflecting off her eyes.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Hide in plain sight, where they’d never think to look—it was ingenious. She’d exhausted all other forms of safety. The first few nights she’d pulled off the highway and tried sleeping in the truck. But that never felt right. Every time she closed her eyes she’d visualize a hand smashing through the windshield, bits of glass pelting her body as thick arms reached out to grab her hair. Even if she drove down old service roads where the odds of anyone finding her were almost zero, she still heard imaginary noises every time she tried to relax. Saw shadows moving through the darkness. She started looking for abandoned buildings, farmhouses or gas stations where she might be able to lock herself in an upstairs room for a few hours’ sleep.
She ended up bypassing Des Moines completely. It was obvious there’d be no police there to help. She’d seen the squad car half an hour before reaching the city limits. It was flipped over on its back, and the officers inside had been beaten to death, their weapons gone. They weren’t the only victims on the side of the road. The highway leading away from the city was filled with cars, some abandoned, others filled with dead bodies. What happened in Glenmore was happening across the rest of America. On the other side of Des Moines, she ran into a couple of adults who told her that the crazy people were going from home to home, dragging out the hidden and killing them in the streets. After that, houses became a threat too. She couldn’t even look at one without involuntarily shuddering.
No place was safe.
“They’re barricading the main highways too,” the older woman told her before they parted. “Disguising themselves as military. Pulling people out of their cars and shooting them. Up north they were everywhere. Dead zones. Miles of cars filled with bodies. Be careful. Avoid the main roads.”
She continued on, refusing the offer from the couple to join them. They were heading south and she wasn’t about to abandon her goal of reaching Seattle. Her parents were gone, their bodies abandoned with the only town she’d ever lived in. She owed it to them, especially her mother with her eerie premonitions, to try to let her brother know what happened.
But it was slow moving. Getting gasoline could end up being an entire day’s ordeal. Luckily for her, she’d spent the past two summers working at the Gas N Go and knew how to get gasoline out of the underground reservoir. It wasn’t an easy job and often took her hours of surveillance before she even attempted to go near the station.
Avoiding the vulnerable highways was the other major distraction. Many of the service roads weren’t mapped, and often she’d reach dead ends after
driving for hours.
She was on her third vehicle since she’d left her parents’ house three weeks ago. Her original truck she abandoned after she swerved into a ditch while trying to avoid hitting a couple of cows that had wandered into the middle of the road. She took the second car off a lot but lost it in the first major barricade outside of Sioux City. She spent several days hiding in the back of someone’s van, trying to gather enough courage to move on. Eventually hunger and the smell of her unwashed body was enough for her to sneak along the road until she reached what remained of civilization. Luckily for her, most of the area was already abandoned or dead, so she picked up some supplies and a new ride from a grocery store parking lot.
She kept telling herself it wasn’t theft, that the cars and trucks she took weren’t being used and it’s not like the real world existed anymore.
I’m coming, Heath.
She refused to believe he was dead. Naive or not, the hope kept her strong.
Sleeping in the baseball dugout was a good idea. Who on earth was going to come searching for her there? It wasn’t like anyone was going to try to get a team together for a friendly competition. The field was beside a burned-down high school, so she didn’t have to worry about people being attracted to the building. There was no one left alive to hide in it, anyway.
She had a sleeping bag. It was unzipped in case she had to make a hasty retreat. But she’d fallen asleep at the wrong time and been awakened by the sound of the two men walking across the dirt. The chance to escape had been twenty minutes ago.
Now her brilliant idea lay thrown in the mud, and the hope of surviving the night diminished with every second.
They must have heard her heartbeat. How could they not? It was hammering against her rib cage, threatening to tear its way right out of her chest.
“Town’s dead,” one of the voices said above her. Clearing his throat, he spat in the dust, inches from Clementine’s face. Spit bubbles popped in the moonlight.