Feral Blood

by Siara Brandt

  Lise shook her head. “Did you ever stop to think that that’s the reason we’re still alive? That the vaccine has nothing to do with people surviving and everything to do with what’s been happening?”

  “I don’t believe that,” Mirin replied. “At least with a vaccine people had hope. Here you can’t get a shot even if you want one.”

  “People were saying- ” Lise began.

  “We let a lot of hysterical people convince us of something we had no proof of,” Mirin interrupted her. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I’m convinced now that we should have gotten the shots. How do we know things aren’t fine back home right now and that vaccinated people aren’t getting sick?”

  “Everything isn’t fine,” Lise replied.

  “You don’t know that,” Mirin argued. “You have no way of knowing what’s going on beyond this town. All we’ve heard are rumors. There’s no power, no internet, no phones.”

  “For those very reasons, whatever this is, Mirin, I think we can assume that it’s bad. The last we heard was that people were dropping like flies and that emergency rooms everywhere were so crowded that they were turning people away, that the government was designating refugee camps where people could go and wait for their shots. Does that really sound like a good idea to you?”

  Mirin didn’t answer, but Lise interpreted her silence as a yes.

  “We should have gotten the vaccine when we could,” Mirin repeated stubbornly.

  Floris nodded her head, agreeing. So did Linwood.

  Lise tried reasoning one last time. “But we didn’t and we’re all okay. There has to be a reason for that. Even before all this started, Bron had told me- ”

  “Bron,” Mirin said, her tone scoffing. “From what little I’ve heard come out of the man’s mouth, I’ve already figured out that the man is delusional, or he’s some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist. Or both. He couldn’t possibly know anything more than we know. He was just guessing.”

  “We all have to do some guessing,” Lise told her sister. “We don’t have any choice.”

  Lise knew how lost Mirin was without her cell phone, her laptop, her checking account. It was hard for her to cope in a world where things like technology and possessions didn’t matter because she had learned to rely so heavily on them.

  “God willing, we’ll get through this and- ” Lise began.

  Mirin rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to hear about God again. If there was a god, he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen.”

  “I think we allowed this to happen to ourselves, not God. I believe He’s kept us from destroying ourselves for a long time.”

  The only answer was silence from Mirin. Linwood wasn’t saying anything, either, so Lise knew the conversation was over.

  “The road will be the most dangerous place to be,” she said, even though they had talked about this subject before.

  Her mother picked that moment to walk into the room. She looked at each person in turn. “You told her?”

  When everyone nodded, her mother added, “Well, now that you know, the only smart decision you can make is to go with us.”

  “I don’t think that’s the smart decision at all.”

  “Regardless of what you think, Lise,” her mother said. “I believe they’ll have more resources in the city for dealing with things like this.”

  Everyone nodded again, agreeing with her.

  Mirin, of course, had to have the last word. “You can stay here if you choose,” she said. “Believing the worst. I would rather believe that whatever is wrong is on its way to being fixed. Mom does, too. And so does Linwood. We don’t want to believe that things are so bad that we have to live like this forever. We all know you don’t believe in vaccinations, Lise. You didn’t believe in them even before this all started. But we want to get back to civilization. We want to get our shots.”

  Chapter 11

  Kellan Laird lived like a hunted animal, searching for food on a daily basis while trying to avoid the dangers that were lurking everywhere. He had left his wife in the room where she had died. He had stayed in the house for a while, half mourning her and half being afraid of her, wrestling with the fact that she was caught in some netherworld between life and death and that it was his responsibility to do something about it. But every time he tried to have the courage to make a decision, he was assailed by all the memories he had of her, things as simple as the sound of her voice when she told him she loved him and the scent of her hair, or the feel of her arms around him. Her laugh.

  While part of him believed that putting her out of her misery would have been the merciful thing to do, he just couldn’t do it. She was a human being, not some wounded animal that needed to be put down. So he just left her like that in the house that she had loved, agonizing over it but knowing it was the only decision he could make.

  How long she would go on in that state, he didn’t know. What she was aware of and not aware of, he could only guess. Did she remember him? Her reactions didn’t indicate any kind of recognition at all. In fact, whenever she would see him through the window, she looked like she wanted to tear him to pieces. She might be a human being, but her actions were more like those of a rabid dog than a human being.

  He was alone now, more alone than he had ever been in his life. He’d lost everything he’d had to lose. It was amazing how unafraid you got when there was nothing left to lose. There were others like Luce everywhere he went and they were just as feral and aggressive. He might not be afraid exactly, but he didn’t have a death wish, either, so he didn’t take chances going into buildings anymore when he could help it, not after he’d been attacked on more than one occasion and barely escaped with his life.

  The longer he stayed out in the open, the riskier it was. Not only were the undead roaming the streets. The living were out there, too. The worst of them, having realized that murder had no consequences anymore, did pretty much what they wanted to do. Desperate for food, they ganged up and prowled the streets, using the undead for target practice, justifying their behavior by telling themselves they were doing good by eliminating any threats to themselves and to others. Killing the dead desensitized them until it wasn’t much of a step when they crossed another line and began killing the living, too. Eventually their numbers dwindled, because in some cases they even killed each other off. Their excessive drinking became a problem, too. It caused them to become careless and carelessness had lethal consequences in this world.

  Driven by necessity, Kel had decided he had to search the building for food. It wasn’t a food store, but someone might have left something behind that had been overlooked.

  He pushed the door open slowly and winced at the slow creak which, to his ears, sounded louder than a gunshot. It was much darker in here than on the street and he had to wait for his eyes to adjust, but even in the semi-darkness, he could see the tops of their heads over the counter. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it didn’t take him long to realize that it was two kids. Two terrified-looking kids.

  He could see the gleam of their eyes from where he stood. And then he could hear what they were hiding from.

  “Stay on the floor,” Kel mouthed, giving them a palm-down hand signal at the same time.

  In spite of that, one of the kids rose up slightly and whispered back to him, “There’s two of them.”

  Kel squinted hard at the dark opening that led to another other room for a long tense moment, and then he asked in a low Clint Eastwood voice, “Anything else I should know?”

  Linwood was lost.

  The country roads were like a maze, winding everywhere through the mostly-deserted landscape. On the seat next to him, tucked halfway under his leg, was an old map with a big brown stain across most of it. Torn almost in half, the map was badly worn, but Linwood considered himself lucky that he had found the map under one of the seats. Otherwise they wouldn’t have a prayer of figuring out where they were going. He was well aware of the fact that being lost i
n this world was a much more frightening prospect than being lost just a couple of months ago. He couldn’t help but be aware, not after all they had been through already.

  Lise had warned them to keep off the main roads, that there might be ambushes set up by people who wanted to take what they had, that with no law to stop them, desperate people were capable of things they wouldn’t have been capable of just a few short months ago. Too late, he realized that Lise had been right, because that’s just what had happened. They hadn’t gotten far from Lise’s house - they were maybe an hour out - when they came to a barricade of cars blocking the highway. What followed was a truly harrowing experience. That they had all escaped with their lives Linwood counted as a miracle.

  They’d had most of their food and almost every container of water stolen. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were down to one car now. The other one had been ‘seized’. So had their two cans of siphoned gas.

  Once they were safely past the blockade, they wasted the rest of the day going nowhere, arguing about what they should do next. Everyone agreed on one thing at least. The highways were too dangerous. It was just as Lise had said, although nobody would openly admit that she had been right. It was Linwood who brought up the option of going back to Lise’s house, but the rest of them refused to even consider that. Mirin especially didn’t want to go back, which in her mind, would be the same as admitting that Lise had been right all along and that they had made a mistake.

  Driven in part by Bayley, both Mirin and Vonley steadfastly refused to even consider turning back. They were absolutely committed to returning to their home in the city. Period. But Linwood was beginning to have serious doubts about whether they were going to make it or not. Every town they had passed through so far was overrun by the undead. That’s what he was calling them now, even in his own mind. They avoided populated areas whenever they could. Sticking to the backroads and avoiding anything that even looked like a highway, they continued heading north.

  The first of the undead that they had encountered, after leaving Lise’s and after the ambush incident, was when they stopped at a gas station. They knew the pumps wouldn’t work without electricity, but they stopped anyway in hopes of finding some food and gas cans because theirs had been stolen.

  Linwood belatedly prayed for guidance, for food and water, and for gas which they needed as much as they needed the food. Being stranded in the middle of nowhere was a terrifying thought for Linwood. If they didn’t find gas soon . . .

  Then they didn’t have a chance of making it. It was hard to tell what might hold them up next. The undead. More thieves. Car trouble. Even the weather.

  So many worries made for long sleepless nights for Linwood. It was too risky to drive in the dark. He had already found that out. Not only could you not see what was out there, but he was afraid their headlights might be seen and make them a target again. So, for two nights, they had slept in the car with the wind rocking them all night long. The weather had turned miserable almost immediately after they had left Lise’s. There was no other word to describe it. Dark and cold and overcast, the skies wept as rain kept falling off and on.

  Which meant that Linwood quickly learned how difficult it could be to sleep in a cold vehicle all night long. Besides the cold, there were cramped legs and a stiff neck to add to his misery. Not to mention the snoring. And the smell. Unwashed human bodies, he had discovered, were awful-smelling things. He hadn’t gotten any real sleep, just uncomfortable brief snatches that he was sure left him feeling worse than not sleeping at all. He wasn’t only beginning to think they shouldn’t have left in the first place. He knew they shouldn’t have left in the first place.

  He didn’t know if he could handle two more days like the ones he had somehow just survived. Two long, grueling days were already behind him, two days in which he discovered that he thoroughly disliked every single person in the car with him. Mirin was a bossy, snobby know-it-all. Her husband Vonley was little more than a trained parrot. Bayley? The only way Linwood could deal with his seething anger there was to try and tune the obnoxious brat out. As for Floris, she was out of her element. Like the rest of them, she was still coming to terms with having her entire world turned upside down. And his mother did what she always did. She criticized and tried in various little ways to pit them all against each other.

  That he was unshaven, dirty, and irritable from lack of sleep only made matters worse. In desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes, Linwood tried to gather up the will to lead them all to safety. Vonley certainly wasn’t going to step up to the plate. This zombie apocalypse was bringing out the worst in everyone. Everyone was exhausted. Everyone was uncomfortable. Soon they would be hungry on top of that. And then if they didn’t find any water by tomorrow, the thirst would set in.

  There was no one he could talk to about it. Floris was out of the question. Mirin had always looked down on him and made him feel stupid no matter what he said. Besides that, she wasn’t a believer. He would have thought that something like a zombie apocalypse would have her re-thinking things, re-evaluating the meaning of her existence. But, no, the only god Mirin had ever worshipped was money and the possessions it could buy. He could see now that she was never going to change. She still clung to the illusion that somehow things would go back to the way they were, that she could get back to her material things without which she was lost. Utterly lost.

  Everyone was stressed and uncomfortable, and as a result there were short fuses. Tempers flared. Since they could only take their frustrations out on each other, Linwood had had a fight with his sister. A bad one. A very heated one in which Mirin maintained that people only believed in God because they were afraid to die, so they made up an afterlife as a result of their fears. She considered believers to be weak and delusional. Which was the same as her calling him weak and delusional.

  He shook his head as he sat there alone, gazing at the barren landscape thinking about it all.

  He wondered if this is how the Israelites had felt when they had wandered in the desert looking for the Promised Land. There had been unbelievers among them, too. He prayed for a sign, something that would tell him what to do, but there were no burning columns, no Moses to guide them. Whatever was behind this zombie apocalypse, he couldn’t help wondering if it was the consequences of a world rebelling. Unlike Mirin, it had him thinking, about things like the wages of sin, and about his own life.

  In the midst of his reflections, he heard, “I need to take a doody break.”

  Linwood sighed heavily. Bathroom breaks were quick stops along the road in the weeds. They didn’t have any toilet paper. No one had thought to bring any along. They were rationing tiny tissues from the bottom of Floris’ purse.

  As Bayley repeated his request, Linwood pulled the car over to the side of the road.

  “Are we lost?” he heard Bayley ask.

  “What do you mean lost?” Linwood could barely keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “Where are we then if we’re not lost?”

  In spite of Linwood’s efforts at self-control, or maybe because of them, the kid worked hard at inciting him every chance he got. Linwood fumed silently, in spite of himself.

  “If you knew how to read a map, we wouldn’t be lost in the first place.”

  “You don’t want to go there, Bayles,” Linwood warned. He couldn’t help himself. The kid did that to him, sent him teetering at the edge. “It isn’t like I’ve seen you contributing anything positive since we left.”

  Or before that, either, Linwood silently added. He waited for a reaction to his words, sure one was coming. But he heard Mirin say, “Just go, Bayley.”

  Bayley got out of the car, after about six more jarring thumps to the back of Linwood’s seat.

  The door slammed shut and Mirin said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

  Linwood ignored her. Mirin had a bad feeling about any place they stopped.

  He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. H
ow could it take someone so long to do their business? Especially when they weren’t consuming their normal quantities of food?

  Again Mirin expressed her worries about the location. Linwood himself couldn’t say for certain that there was no danger. You never knew what was out there. If something happened, and it very well might if Bayley continued to take so long, he didn’t want to have to go out there. He couldn’t see Vonley offering to do it. Which was going to have to change. His father was going to have to start going with Bayley because Linwood sure wasn’t going to accompany him on his doody trips. Bayley had a totally juvenile, totally obnoxious sense of humor about his bodily functions. It was just one more thing that got on Linwood’s already-jagged nerves.

  Finally, Bayley was on his way back. Linwood saw his head first, then his shoulders until his whole body was in sight. Like a lumbering bear, Linwood thought. A very slow, unwieldly lumbering bear, but what would you expect from someone who wasn’t used to any kind of physical activity? Linwood wished he would hurry. They were too exposed when they were out of the car. Just one person put everyone else at risk. If one of those things showed up, what would they fight it off with? For a crazy moment he wished he had a gun but he quickly dismissed that thought. Having a gun in the car would be too dangerous.

  It was Floris’ turn.

  Luckily, Floris didn’t take as long as Bayley. Linwood watched her emerge from behind the hill. As she made her way back to the car, the wind whipped her short hair into her face which was already red as a tomato from the wind. She was wearing a skirt and shoes that didn’t even come close to being practical for a hike in the weeds. She should be wearing sensible pants and shoes but she had refused to listen to him when he had suggested it. She never listened. She’d wear the skirt just to spite him. That’s the way she was. Always fighting against him.