They all looked at the scruffy man who let them in and he just stared at them. Finally, he said, "Cooper."
"Thanks for letting us in," Ramon said. "You saved us."
Cooper nodded.
"You wouldn't happen to have any rubbing alcohol, would you?" Sarah asked. "To disinfect my son's knees?"
He shook his head. A moment of silence passed, then he looked at the three of them and said, "Hungry?"
"Starving!" Ramon said.
"Me too," Isabella chimed in.
He looked at Sarah.
"No thank you," she said. She ate only a couple hours earlier, but with everything she and David had been through after that, her appetite was drained.
Cooper nodded and disappeared into the second room, switching on a flashlight. Sarah stood near the doorway and kept an eye on David lying on the bed, sleeping soundly. She didn't trust Cooper and she didn't want him near her son when she wasn't around.
She could hear him rustling around in the walk-in closet and he returned a moment later with two cans of baked beans. He twisted a can opener onto each of them then handed one to Ramon and Isabella with a tarnished spoon and kept the other for himself.
Ramon opened his big backpack and pulled out a portable gas stove. Apparently it was the hot item among travelers in the apocalypse. He heated up the can of beans Cooper gave him and offered to do the same for his can, but Cooper declined.
They sat around on a few splintered chairs while Cooper tucked himself away on one in the corner.
Even the littlest things he did gave Sarah the creeps, and she could tell by the looks Ramon and Isabella periodically gave that they got the same vibe. The zombies gradually stopped banging on the door and went away, realizing their food was gone.
"So how do you get in and out of this place with so many zombies around?" Ramon asked him.
"I don't leave."
"You don't leave this room?"
"Haven't for six years."
They were all stunned.
"Six years?" Ramon said. "Where do you get water?"
"Rain."
"Where do you do your... your business?"
"Window."
Sarah glanced over at the window past the beds and shuddered.
"Well... what about food?" Ramon asked, trying to find some reason that he would have to leave his room.
"Plenty of food," Cooper said. "Stocked up."
"Surely it can't last forever," Ramon said.
Cooper didn't say anything and just sat in the corner, eating his beans and watching them.
Ramon and Isabella exchanged a look and they turned their attention to Sarah, the three of them striking up their own conversation. They could sense each other's discomfort being stuck in the room with such a shifty person, and it didn't help that he didn't take his eyes off them. Maybe Cooper just didn't trust them either.
"So how did you and your boy end up here?" Isabella asked Sarah.
"We were trying to get out of the city," Sarah said, "but we ran into a big group of zombies out in the streets and came in here for safety. Turns out it wasn't much better."
"Where were you heading?" Ramon asked.
"Over to a place in North Carolina," she said.
"Noah's Ark," he said.
"You know about Noah's Ark?" she asked excitedly.
"That's where we're headed. We were on our way out of the city, too, and we decided to stay in here for the night. Big mistake, I guess."
Isabella got an idea. "Assuming we all make it out of this hotel in the morning, did you and your son want to travel with us? It would be safer that way." She looked at Ramon for approval and he agreed.
"It would be good to have some extra muscle," he said, smiling. "I saw the gun in your belt."
Sarah laughed. "Not that I know how to use it."
"That's okay," he said. "I'll show you as we go. We'll all get there in no time."
"So how did you hear about Noah's Ark?" she asked.
"A lot of people around here talk about it. Lots of stories."
"Have you heard from someone who's been there?" she asked.
"No, not personally. Just sort of one person tells it to another, who tells it to another, kind of thing."
One of the fears that chewed away at Sarah since they began their journey was the thought that maybe Noah's Ark was just a myth, and that she and David would get there only to find an empty field. "Do you think it's real?" she said.
"It has to be," Ramon said. "Why would so many people believe in it if it wasn't?"
She nodded. "Maybe you're right. In the morning, we'll all go together and find out. If you don't mind us tagging along, that is."
"Not at all," he said. "Sticking together is a good idea."
"So where did you two come from?" Sarah asked. "Are you from Roanoke too?"
"No, actually," Isabella said, "we're from Spain. Our father had cancer and he was getting treatment in a good hospital in Chicago. He was beating it, too. It was his birthday, so we flew out to see him. We got there the day the infection happened. We didn't realize what was going on until we got close to the hospital. There were bodies everywhere. People eating other people. When we found our father, he was one of them. He looked like he was buried and dug up. I remember crying and pleading to him over and over, trying to get him to remember that we were his children, but it was like he didn't even know us."
"Oh my God," Sarah said. "What happened to him?"
"I don't know," Isabella said. "We ran and we never saw him again."
"We've been stuck here ever since," Ramon said. "We drifted around for a while, trying to find somewhere safer. We decided that we should head for the coast and get out on the water... see if we could find an island somewhere. But when we got closer, we kept hearing people talk about this safe place in Durham, so we headed there instead."
"So, is your boy's father..." Isabella started.
"Yeah," Sarah said. "It happened the night the zombies spread to Roanoke. We were on our way to the hospital because I was going into labor, and we got attacked on the way." The memories were still vivid to her. "He died right in front of me."
"That's horrible," Isabella said.
"I got away and I gave birth to my son. He's been the only thing that's kept me going."
"I know what you mean," Ramon said. "I hope someday we can make it back to Spain somehow and see our mama and cousins. I don't even know if they're still alive. Maybe this thing spread to the whole world."
"What's that?" David asked.
They all looked over at him, surprised. He was standing in the doorway between both rooms and pointed at what seemed to be the bathroom near the entrance they came in. The door was shut and a large padlock secured it.
The three of them looked at it, none of them noticing it when they came in.
"David, it's not polite to ask that," Sarah said.
Cooper was still in the corner, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. "It's private," he said in his scratchy voice.
Sarah got up and brought David back to the other room.
"Hey, you still need your rest, kiddo," she said. "How are you feeling?"
"My knees hurt."
"I know, honey. Just try not to touch them and get some rest."
"I heard everyone talking, so I came out."
"I'm sorry. We're all going to go to bed now, I think. Aren't you tired?"
He yawned. "Yeah."
"Well lie down, honey. I'll join you in a minute."
"Okay."
She put him back to bed and went into the main room. She told the others that she was going to go to sleep and they all agreed. Cooper offered Ramon and Isabella one of the beds next to him in the main room, and Sarah joined David in the second room.
Cooper blew out the candle and they were all in darkness.
Sarah held David in her arms as she fell asleep. She was still worried about Cooper, but she had the gun tucked into her pants if anything happened, and Ramon was armed, too. The
locked door David pointed out weighed on her mind. It could have stored something as innocent as the man's invaluable family heirlooms, but she got the feeling he didn't have any family, nor any friends. The mystery of it scared her.
But it was just one sleep and they would be on their way. They just had to make it down the fire escape and this nightmare of an encounter would be over. Then they could continue to Noah's Ark and never have to worry about any of this again. The last thought on her mind before she dozed off was whether Noah's Ark was real. And she decided it was. It had to be.
Her eyes snapped open, feeling as if she'd been asleep for a while. It was still dark, and she was dazed and confused and looked around the room. Everything was quiet and David was resting peacefully. The faintest traces of moonlight came through the window and danced around the room. Shadows were everywhere, and in her weird dream state, they seemed darker than black and as evil as they come. They closed in all around her, and the room she was in felt like a coffin. Her lungs seized up and she felt like she was going to die, but that was stupid; she was fine and she knew it. She just had to find that realization and bring herself back to reality. Just as she did, her eyes settled on the doorway between the two hotel rooms.
A tall figure stood there, shrouded in shadow. It watched her. It breathed heavily, and even though she couldn't make out any of its features, she could feel its eyes wandering all over her body. She had no idea how long the figure was standing there, but it felt like an eternity. It just watched her.
She fell asleep again.
When she woke up again, dawn had broken over the horizon and brought the first warm rays of sunlight across her skin. A sweet smell filled her nostrils, like breakfast sausage or ham. She smiled and opened her eyes, rolling over to David.
He was gone. The room around her was empty.
She sat up. "David?" She threw the covers off and went to the main room.
The two beds next to her were empty and she was about to have a heart attack before she saw David standing in the kitchen, talking to Cooper while he cooked breakfast.
"Are you okay, honey?" she asked him. "You scared me, you should've woke me up."
"I'm okay, Mom. I feel a lot better. I was just talking to Cooper."
"Where's Ramon and Isabella?" she asked.
"They left," Cooper said.
"Left where?"
He shrugged. "Want some breakfast?"
"No, that's okay."
Truth be told, all she wanted was to get out of there. The fact that Ramon and Isabella up and left without her and David was perplexing. They seemed okay with the idea—in fact, it was Isabella's idea originally. Maybe they just couldn't stand to spend another minute with Cooper and let themselves out. Or maybe Sarah really couldn't rely on anyone, after all. She found herself getting upset by the turn of events, but at least if they had left, that meant the zombies outside must have cleared away.
She mentally went through the plan of leaving down the fire escape and continuing south. They lost all their supplies in the street and there was no way she was going back to try to get them, so they would have to start over. All they had were the pistol and the clothes on their backs. Cooper's rainwater didn't appeal to her, but his stock of food did, and she knew where he kept it.
"Say, do you mind if I take some more clothes for the road?" she asked Cooper.
He grunted and continued cooking.
She slipped away into the other room and went to the walk-in closet. He said he had lots of food and she figured he wouldn't miss a few cans.
Some shelves stretched across the walls above the clothing racks, but they sat empty. On the floor beneath the clothes, there was a small pile of food, maybe twelve cans in total. It was the only food in the closet.
She didn't understand. He said he had plenty of food left, but there was barely any. Maybe he had more in the locked room. She picked up a few cans and bundled them in a shirt from the rack.
Then she noticed something odd about the clothing. She didn't think anything of it the night before when she grabbed a woman's shirt from the closet of a man who obviously wasn't married, but she saw now that the racks were filled with both men's and women's clothing of all different sizes and styles. And sitting innocently tucked between two shirts was a red bandanna. Ramon's red bandanna.
It all hit her at once. Ramon and Isabella didn't leave without saying a word to her because they didn't leave at all. That sweet smell of cooking meat filled her nose again and she almost vomited. "Oh God," she said.
She dropped the shirt with the cans of food tucked inside and ran back to the other room.
David was standing in the kitchen holding a plate full of the meat Cooper had cooked. He stabbed a piece with a fork and brought it to his mouth.
"David!" she yelled.
He froze, the piece of meat hovering just outside of his lips.
She ran up to him and yanked the fork and plate away from him.
"We're leaving," she said.
"But Mom, can't I eat first?"
She didn't answer and pulled him to the door. Her eyes fell on the frying pan that Cooper was using and saw that it was sitting on the portable gas stove that Ramon had taken from his backpack the night before.
The locked bathroom door stood next to her and there was a towel pressed up against the crack under it. The towel was stained red.
She fumbled with all the locks on the front door, her hands shaking badly.
Cooper grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away. His face was stretched into a mad scowl, his crooked teeth bared and his eyes crazy. He breathed heavily in rapid spurts, a raspy whine coming from his throat.
"Get off of me!" she screamed and shoved him back.
He stumbled against the counter as she unlocked the last bolt in the door and opened it. He grabbed her again and yanked her into the kitchen. David stood watching the scene in horror, not understanding what was happening.
Sarah picked up the hot frying pan and hit him across the face with it. He screamed as his head recoiled and he yanked the pan out of her grip. It skittered across the counter, chunks of fried meat flying everywhere. She grabbed the pistol out of her waistband and he held her wrists. They struggled against each other, his face half-red and blistered, and she twisted the gun and pulled the trigger.
It went off and shot him in the foot. He let go of her and staggered backward, screaming again.
She yanked David into the hallway and took off. He was white as a ghost, but he followed her and didn't ask questions.
The sound of the door slamming shut echoed through the hallway behind them. She looked over her shoulder, but Cooper wasn't following them.
There were no zombies in sight as they rounded each corner, and the fire escape at the end of the hallway came into view. As they neared it, a solitary zombie came out of a room on the left to see what the commotion was.
Sarah knew she couldn't stop running for anything, and she shoved her shoulder into the zombie and knocked it against the doorframe before it could even process what was happening. It hit the floor hard and a forceful expulsion of air was pressed out of its lungs.
They went through the door and were met with the pleasant morning air and sun of the already scorching summer. The metal catwalk they were on led down multiple sets of stairs to a ladder at the bottom that reached down to the street. A few zombies muddled about on the street below, but she could see a clear path at the end of the block leading through a small park and disappearing around the corner of an empty parking lot behind a business complex. They made their way down onto the street and didn't stop until they were safe and out of sight.
Cooper hadn't come after them, and if he was so afraid of leaving his room that he resorted to cannibalism, she doubted he would.
"Did you eat any of that meat?" she asked David, catching her breath.
"No."
"Did you eat any of it?! Tell me!" She was frantic and had to know for sure.
"I didn't, I swear!"<
br />
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her heart slow down.
"Why did Cooper attack you?" he asked. "What did you do to him?"
"We're not going to talk about it."
"I wanted to stay, Mom. I'm hungry."
Her frustration reached the breaking point. "Stop it! Just stop!"
He froze like she just slapped him across the face.
She relented. "If we're going to go to Noah's Ark, you have to promise that you're always going to do what I say and do it when I say so. If I tell you not to ask questions, don't ask questions. Sometimes that's just how it has to be, otherwise we could die. Do you understand? This is serious. I have to know that you understand."
He nodded his head slowly, still scared.
"There will be times to relax and ask questions, but now is not one of them. We have to go. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
"Okay," she said, "let's go." They cut through the business complex and worked their way down a small road, eventually getting their bearings and continuing south, as far away from the hotel as possible.
9
Back on the Trail
They made it to Mill Mountain Park and for all intents and purposes were out of the city—the dangerous part, anyway. The downtown core and what happened in the hotel were behind them. They made their way through a winding trail in the wooded park as the sounds of nature all around them pretended that nothing had happened to the world at all.
In Sarah's limited experience, zombies usually tended not to stray into the woods too much, favoring the flat roads over the harsh footing of the earth, but they still had to remain vigilant. There was no telling when one would show up, and they could come out from behind a tree at any time if you weren't careful.
But for right now, the woods were serene. The sun was bright and poked through the thick tree canopy, casting beautiful glows on nature's bounty. It was a rare treat for David too, who never got to go out into nature much, even on his secret excursions from the house.
The two of them were thirsty and hungry, and they needed to find some water soon. She tuned her ear to her surroundings, listening for running water. The terrain was hilly and seemed like a good candidate for a flow to collect somewhere.
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