Along with our experience the night before, the bridge incident made me aware that we needed some sort of weapon for protection. I found a solid dead branch downed on the side of the highway, tested it for weight and comfort, snapped off some errant parts, and began using it as a walking stick. I figured at least I’d have something in my hand if anything rushed at us. Rosa found another stick, a little smaller, for herself.
Around midday, we reached the Capital Beltway. The one-time world-famous border between the U.S. political establishment and everyone else. We passed through the complex cloverleaf — there must’ve been 12 lanes of pavement — threading around and through several huge pileups of cars. There was a tractor-trailer on its side that looked to have been carved out for shelter, now abandoned. Inside the trailer, we could see a small table with a bowl on it, set for a meal. The view immediately made me recognize how hungry I was. What an oversight. I had no idea what to do. Look for supplies nearby? Try to forage or hunt? Every possibility seemed absurd or dangerous as hell. Not having the first clue what native plants to eat, or how to hunt, we made our way toward some of the large buildings that lined the highway. It took most of the rest of the day to find anything edible, but finally, a couple hours before sundown, we stumbled into a bit of treasure trove.
In a parking garage, a beat-up old Nissan two-door sedan had crashed into one of the support beams. The driver, long dead and unidentifiable, clearly had been torn up by a zombie. On the passenger seat, there was a cardboard case of canned beans, wrapped in plastic. Rosa had the bright idea to pop the trunk. There we found other canned goods, bottled water, and even a can opener. The poor dope’s emergency prep kit didn’t help him, but we both silently gave him thanks.
We opened two cans of refried beans, each of which had a strange taste but were edible. They were similar to a bean paste we’d get in rations from time to time back in the city. We ended up scarfing down a can and a half each. We found a slightly ripped backpack and several fabric shopping bags, loaded up as much as we could carry, and scouted around the parking garage for a place to sleep. It looked like it would rain, so we ended up sleeping on the landing at the top level of the staircase because it was indoors, was the cleanest place we could find, and had working doors that hopefully would provide at least some barrier. Thankfully, other than the rain, the night was uneventful.
9
“Are you sure?” Rosa asked suddenly, during our second day of walking.
“About...?” I asked.
“This. Me. The Oasis.”
I stopped walking, and looked around at the repetitive landscape of 95 South. Border trees and pavement. Cars and trucks huddled in clusters, sometimes abandoned, sometimes crumpled together in a wreck. “Yeah.” I didn’t need to think about it, but I did anyway. “Yeah, I am. Well, I’m sure about you. The Oasis? We’ll see. To be honest, I think you’re in for a disappointment, but I hope you’re right. Even if there is an Oasis, it’s a big world; it might not be where you think.
“But you and I both know we can’t go back anymore anyway. You were already marked and grabbed by the government, so you show up and you’re done. Me? At this point, I’ve gone missing from my job, my apartment, my neighborhood. It’s enough to cause a lot of suspicion. Even if they didn’t take me right away, it wouldn’t take long. Besides, as easy as it was to get out of the city, I seriously doubt we could get back in. You saw that line of cars back there, piled up outside DC. They don’t just throw open the doors for anyone who walks up. Particularly people that are wanted by the law in the first place.”
She looked away. “You... you gave up your life for me and my crazy ideas, you know?” The weight of knowing this was evident on her face.
I shrugged, grinned. “Eh. I’m 63, I live alone in a walled city full of paranoid people, and I’m a pharmacist for the government. Mostly I just count little colored pills all day long. This is actually an improvement.” She laughed. I don’t think we ever talked about it again. It was settled.
“But I do need to ask.” I gave her a sidelong glance. “How’d you crash that car?”
She stopped and smirked. The same smirk I saw outside the FDC that first day. “Men, even men who wield the power of the government, still don’t understand women. We can just do crazy things, and you all... believe it.” She laughed. “I screamed that the handcuffs were burning my skin and they bought it. And I suppose their ego told them I was too small to cause trouble. But once the handcuffs were off, I just had to reach out and pull the wheel. That’s it.”
I chuckled. “Smart cookie,” I said, admiringly. “You could’ve died in the crash, you know?”
“Wasn’t I dead already?”
10
We walked all day. It was warm, and carrying our supplies made it a lot harder. We continued south, trudging along the wide swath of pavement formerly known as Interstate 95. I guessed the width of the road to be about 25 feet, three lanes for cars, shoulders on both sides, but still our forward progress could be slow. In addition to the abandoned or wrecked cars in various stages of decomposition, the road itself could be trouble; cracks, divots, and potholes made us careful with our steps, and in places where there were bridges, we saw several crumbling sections that we had no intention of testing with our body weight. Along the sides of the road, trees grew with what I could only assume was renewed vibrancy, no longer suffering through the toxins of human pollution. Bushes and tall grasses clogged the sides, from the forest to the edge of the road, and often sprouted up onto the pavement via cracks and holes. We had an overall sense of great vulnerability. Walking was slow, zombies could appear at any time, and places for them to hide in ambush were everywhere.
We saw some people, survivors and stragglers, but they were extremely guarded. The first one made himself known to us before we saw him, signaling that we wouldn’t be sneaking up on him. As an exit ramp arced its way off to our right, we saw him standing on the rise beside the highway. Crossed in his arms was a long gun. Although he was some ways away, I could feel him stare at us, unmoving, until we continued out of sight. We kept turning back, keeping an eye on him the whole time until he was hidden from view; this was someone who had made it. Had lived. Outside the city. It warped my mind to consider it.
No one seemed to want to make contact with us, and we felt it was best to stay out of their way, too. My God, these people had survived on their own outside the wall for years. How the hell had they done it? The mortality rate must have been sky high. We didn’t see any children, but almost every person we encountered stayed their distance, eyes locked on us, and most of them showed a gun. The meaning was clear. Stay away.
Rosa and I were incredulous at these first signs of human life. We had surmised there must be someone out here, but we’d of course grown accustomed to life in the city. Living out here? It was like another world. Like those TV specials I’d seen before the outbreak, where a “lost tribe” was found on some remote island, trapped in a life generations or centuries out of date. The people we saw on the road looked completely different from us. Rather than exhibiting the sleek look of synthetic clothes and rigorous attention to cleanliness, they wore what appeared to be hand-made garments of woven fabrics and animal hides. Where our clothes were bright white or bold primary colors, theirs were subdued earthen tones: browns, greys, greens. We saw at least one man, maybe 35 years old, with a missing arm. I imagined countless ways it might’ve been lost, as we walked on.
Finding a relatively safe shelter at night was our biggest issue. Apartment buildings, we learned, were no good. Too many people on top of one another, making them hotbeds for infection. In one high-rise apartment building we checked out for potential shelter, we didn’t find anyone alive, but had a close encounter with a zombie. It came at me unexpectedly from behind the front desk. I had to club it with my stick. His head made a cracking noise and he fell, blood spraying everywhere on the marble floor. Rosa threw up. It was traumatic for me as well, but not because of the blood. As a d
octor, my promise had always been to help people. Here I was putting one down like a sick dog. Needless to say, we didn’t stick around.
Our food held for the time, but we scavenged for more whenever possible. So many people had hoarded so many provisions in the early days of the disease that it was still possible to find small stashes. Mostly we weren’t too hungry and avoided trouble. But spending so much time looking for food, water, and shelter made the journey slow.
Two days out from the Beltway, as we were looking for shelter for the night, our luck changed. It started to rain, darkening the bright afternoon. Our visibility diminished significantly. We scanned the area for options, then discussed what might be worth checking out. The rain must’ve made us hasty. We set our sights on a high school, hoping we could lock ourselves into a classroom. As we approached the school, we saw small wind turbines spinning atop the building in the increasing wind. I felt a glimmer of hope that the place might even be making electricity.
“You don’t think...?” Rosa asked.
“I seriously doubt it,” I said, shaking my head. “But we could always find out.” Electricity, I let myself think, might mean hot water.
A side door to the school was unlocked but closed. I told myself that was a good sign. If it had been sitting wide open, I might have been more wary.
Inside, we picked a hallway at random, stood quietly listening for any signs of trouble, then opened the door to the first classroom on the right. We got about two steps in.
Looking at them, you would have thought it was a normal day of school. Eight or maybe 10 teenagers — just kids — were sitting around the classroom. After that initial false sense of security passed, I realized they were all diseased. How had they lasted in here? How had they not torn each other to bits? In the seconds before all hell broke loose, I saw that one corner of the room was a bloody mess. I guess they had turned on each other, at least once or twice, and that was how they’d survived. Maybe this had been some sort of refuge or evacuation point for them before they’d changed.
One of them, a girl with dirt-caked, blondish hair, turned toward us with milky eyes. For a heartbeat, she seemed locked in a dream. Her head swayed, milky eyes gleamed. Rain tapped its irregular beat on the cracked, grimy windows. Then lightning struck somewhere nearby, and Rosa gasped. The spell was broken. With a shriek, the girl zombie leaped up, throwing herself toward us. The others saw the focus of her rage and joined the attack. Rosa backpedaled out of the doorway, back into the hallway. I don’t know what she hit, but she tripped, falling backward. I stepped back directly onto her foot, twisted my ankle trying to avoid going down myself. The girl zombie was upon me and I swung my walking stick. Her face imploded, and she fell. Even in the rush of the moment, the guilt of killing this child hit me like a brick. I killed someone, again. In an instant, my mind dreamed up the life this girl never got to live. I hated myself, our world, our lives.
But there was no time. Another zombie, a boy, bounded over the girl, came at me. I couldn’t swing in time. Just before he got to me, Rosa’s stick came up and took him through the throat. He fell on top of the girl, partially blocking the doorway. The other zombies scrambled to get through. I had half a second to help Rosa up, and then we ran. I realized she was crying. Down the hallway, a random left turn, hoping to put distance and a closed door between us and the infected. Hoping we could escape the chase. My ankle hurt like a son of a bitch. Rosa seemed unhurt, but she sobbed as she ran. She helped me, dragging me by the hand as fast as possible. Thankfully, we still had our sticks and backpacks.
In seconds, the other zombie kids were out in the hallway, running after us. But now their rage actually helped us. They fought each other as they tried to follow us. It slowed them down. We took two more turns at random. In the back of my mind, I hoped we wouldn’t just be running into the arms of another classroom of zombies. Rosa tried three doors — two were locked, the third opened. It looked like some kind of office. We skidded inside, closed the door.
Rosa turned and half screamed. Something hit me in the back of the head, hard, and I went down in a total blackout.
11
I wasn’t out long, less than a minute. It was another kid who’d hit me, but human, not zombie. Maybe 16, messy, jet-black hair, wearing a pair of threadbare jeans and a faded red t-shirt that looked washed a few thousand times more than they’d been designed to withstand. He puffed himself up in front of us, maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the metal pipe that I assumed was responsible for the growing lump on my head. A lot of bravado, but why? Then it became clear. From behind a desk, a teenage girl appeared, light red hair, freckles, adjusting the shoulder strap of her black bra under her faded light-blue blouse. Shit. Even in the freaking apocalypse, kids would be kids.
Knowing the zombies were somewhere just outside, I quietly asked, “What’s your name, son?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” he responded. Looking back and forth between us and his girlfriend, switching moment by moment between strong hero and sappy boyfriend.
“Listen,” I said, “we ran into some kids with the disease and they were chasing us. We didn’t mean to barge in on you...”
“You didn’t barge in on anything,” he said, too abruptly.
“I honestly don’t care. The world is a mess. Make yourself happy any way you can. What’s your name?”
“David. David Chen.” Good-looking young kid. Chinese, I figured, based on his name and appearance. Not that it mattered. These days there were only two types of people: infected and not infected. I imagined racism was finally conquered.
The girl was cute, a little pimply. “I’m Siobhan McDermott,” she said. They both still looked like rats in a trap.
“You’re not supposed to be here either, are you?” I asked.
After a moment, David said, “Not really.” Another moment. His eyes widened. “Wait. You ran into zombies? Here in the school?” David’s look of concern made it clear that was unexpected.
I studied him, trying to gauge his reaction. “You thought this place was all clear?”
“Yeah, of course — I mean, it should be.” It was obvious that someone had told him the school was safe. And here I was, a stranger, saying maybe it wasn’t.
Outside, the zombies surged past the door, searching for us. The kid’s eyes bugged out. As much as he might try to be brave and in charge with his girlfriend, he was still green as hell. I guess we all were, really.
“We need to get away from here,” Rosa whispered. “It’s not safe.”
At the back of the office, another doorway led to some unknown place. “We need to go this way,” Siobhan offered, opening the door.
We followed David and Siobhan as they led us through the administrative back ways of the school. It was raining harder outside, the drumming rain punctuated by snaps of thunder and flashes of lightning. After a few dark turns, we came to another door.
For reasons we didn’t then understand, David and Siobhan seemed pensive looked at each other. After a sigh, they opened the door.
12
We stepped into an alien world. In a back room next to the gymnasium, supplies were stacked high. Everything was neat and tidy. Through a glass pane, we could see into the gym. It was arranged almost like a park, with tables and chairs spread around an open space. On the sides of the large room were makeshift enclosed areas that I assumed were for privacy or sleeping or both, their contents hidden behind plywood, fabrics swaths, whatever was available. Outside, the storm raged, but inside, the large gymnasium lights made everything bright and cheerful. Damn, I thought, those turbines do work. The sight of functioning electrical lights kept my attention for another minute before I continued to look around. There were even potted plants arranged to beautify some of the spaces. Dozens of people were there — people who lived outside city walls — talking, laughing, playing, carrying on like life was normal. Here we were, in the land that every living soul in the walled city feared, and not only were people not livi
ng in squalor, fighting for their lives, wrestling in the grip of the disease. They were reading books, playing chess, telling stories. They were just living. It took my breath away.
For a moment, I thought, This is The Oasis. Or if it isn’t, we don’t need any other. Then we met Hector.
He stormed up to us, in a matching dark-grey athletic t-shirt and shorts, with thick, close-cropped black hair, tanned muscles bulging in a show of strength. He blocked us from entering the gym. “Are you out of your mind, David?” he asked. “Have you forgotten the rules?” Looking around, I realized the other people were mostly teenagers. Maybe four or five of them were adults, but young, barely out of their teens themselves. Hector was the oldest person we saw, and he was maybe 30. I could tell right away that he used his age as an advantage with the group. And I could tell right away that he saw me as a threat to his authority.
“They were in trouble, Hector,” David said.
“Aren’t we all? Every day? Every minute?” Hector sounded like he was warming up for a sermon.
“They were being chased down.”
“So what?” Hector snapped. “So it’s okay to jeopardize the whole group because two complete strangers are in trouble?”
“It’s not that —”
Hector interrupted. “Yeah, it is that. It is exactly that. Here’s what’s going to happen. You brought them in. You’re taking them out. The back door. Now, before there’s more trouble.”
“But —” Siobhan started.
Hector turned to her with a scoff that closed her mouth immediately. It was clear that he wasn’t used to being questioned.