I wished the shaking would stop as I tried to focus on how long this was going on. I started counting and got to sixty , I knew we were way past three minutes, at least.
The window I once stood by popped like a firecracker and shot glass through the room, narrowly missing me. I backed up into the bathroom and cried out in fear.
I sat on the shaking ground and wished I was already with Lou. Finally the shuddering ground went still, but I could hear frightening sounds outside.
Sirens, car alarms, buzzing, and shouting. It was mass chaos.
And all I kept thinking was, finally.
Finally people were noticing that shit wasn’t right. Our world was changing and we were screwed.
I stood up and tried to compose myself. The emergency lights in the hotel came on and my room phone rang.
I braved the shattered glass and answered.
“This is the front desk,” the girl said, sounding eerily calm. “Are you in need of emergency services?”
I looked around the room and nodded. “Yes. No.” I shook my head. “The window burst and there’s glass all over. But I’m not hurt.”
“Oh good. When things calm down, we will come by to clean up.”
I wouldn’t be here that long.
“I’m leaving today. No need to come clean now.”
“Just be careful leaving the parking lot. There’s downed wires and accidents.”
It was time to get in my car and leave this all behind me. The closer I got to Lou the easier things would be for me.
I quickly changed my clothes, trying to calm my pounding heart, and brushed my hair and teeth. I wasn’t hungry but I ate anyway knowing that I needed nourishment. I stuffed another granola bar into my mouth and pulled my bag onto my back.
I put on my Converse and carefully walked over the glass to the door. I checked the room to make sure I had everything when I noticed my phone on the side table.
I couldn’t leave without that.
I crunched my way to the phone and unplugged it and shoved it and my charger in my bag when the rolling and shaking came back. The force was so strong it threw me to the ground, onto a million shards of glass.
“Shit!” I screamed.
The shaking stopped in seconds leaving me lightheaded and pissed off.
My arm was covered in glass. Some shards were sticking in me and others were so small that they just laid there.
Now I needed emergency services and I didn’t have time to wait for an ambulance that wouldn’t come here any time soon.
I went outside and saw people were congregating in the parking lot. There were only five people or so. Some were bleeding from their heads and others were just crying.
“Oh wow!” A girl with a Spanish accent said. “You okay?”
Oh, I’m fine I just have glass all over me.
“Not really,” I answered sarcastically. “Any idea how to get this out of me?”
She came over instantly and looked at it carefully.
“I have an idea. I’ll be right back,” she said before she took off toward the office.
I looked out at the freeway and noticed it was at a stand-still. Great.
I wouldn’t be getting out of here that way. I would have to do back roads and hope they weren’t blocked by anything; otherwise I would be stuck here for a while.
I didn’t notice any Lifeless attackers anywhere. Although we were standing around in the open just waiting for something bad to happen.
“Did anyone of you notice anything else weird lately?” I asked the group of people.
They all looked at me like I was crazy.
“You mean besides earthquakes in Virginia? No. I think that’s weird enough, lady,” the guy with his head bleeding all over the concrete said to me.
I tried not to be offended by his attitude and turned around. At least that meant no one had been attacked here yet. Hopefully it was getting better and maybe the attacks stopped.
The girl came back holding an emergency kit, water bottles, and packing tape.
She gave the kit to the guy with the head gash and water to the others. Then she came to me with the tape.
“Uh… what’s that for?”
She didn’t answer as she pulled a long strand of the tape off and told me, “Hold up your arm.”
I did as she said and she placed the tape onto my arm. When she ripped it off, she took my arm hair and some glass.
It was actually pretty genius. She did it again and again until most of the glass was out. She repeated it on my clothes and my face. I had no idea I had that much glass on me but I stood still and let her work.
When she was done she bandaged my arm and my face.
“You’ll live,” she declared.
“Thanks. Are you a nurse or something?” I asked, as I checked out my arm bandage. It was perfectly placed and taped.
“Or something. In my country I worked at the hospital. But here I need to go back to school to work at the hospital. So I clean rooms now.”
I shook my head. What a shame.
“Too bad because you’re smart. I bet you’ll make a good nurse someday.”
She shrugged and then went to work on the guy with the bleeding head.
Leaving now was as good a time as any. I grabbed my stuff and checked on my car. It was thankfully okay, without any debris. Other cars didn’t fare so well.
I put my backpack in the front seat with the food. I needed to put some distance between myself and Virginia today. I had to make it to Tennessee tonight.
6
I saw the sign for Maryville and almost drove off the road I was so excited
I pulled over and called Lou to tell her about Virginia and the earthquake shortly after I left the hotel. It was a good thing that I did because she was able to tell me about a side road to get out of there and to Maryville without traffic.
I made it here in five hours without stopping. I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t know if there were other Lifeless around or if there was anything else weird happening.
I got her excited response and after we hung up, I turned up the radio and headed back on the road. The back way into Maryville was beautiful. The scenery made me almost forget about all the crazy stuff I saw.
The water was so blue and crisp that I wanted to jump into it. I saw people splashing around in it and some were fishing. I wondered if the water was freezing in the April weather.
People were going about their lives like normal. It was like nothing bad was happening. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the proverbial ‘end of the world’ wasn’t occurring. Perhaps it was terrorists like the girl on the radio predicted.
But that didn’t explain what Lou saw, a man crawl out of the ground.
I shivered just thinking about it. I didn’t know how she handled that without losing her mind. I hoped I didn’t have to see that. I might crap myself if I did.
The song on the radio ended and a man’s voice came on.
“This is News Now on Radio 101.3. Reports of small earthquakes have been reported along with the desperate attacks of looters in the area. Weird stuff is happening out there, folks. Officials are urging people in the upper east coast to stay off the roads and stay indoors if at all possible. Some states have already declared a state of emergency due to the recent earthquakes. New York to Virginia are among them. But we haven’t felt anything more than tremors here in Tennessee. Some attacks have been reported but it doesn’t seem to be anything like what they are seeing in New York. Just stay safe out there everyone.”
New York. I wondered what they were seeing there and how bad it was getting. I wondered how Sam was doing and if he was safe in New Jersey.
I shut off the radio and focused on my whereabouts. The twisty road was making me nauseous and I rolled down the window for fresh air. I never liked
driving these hills. I got severely sick from motion sickness whenever Lou took me up here to visit Cades Cove. I always made it there, but it was a rough drive up.
Lou would always pull over whenever I needed her to, without any complaint.
This time, though, I was on my own and I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going until I made it to her house.
Finally, I reached her street and pulled off of the twisty backroad. She had the perfect place. It was tucked away in the hills, away from the main streets.
Her long driveway was suddenly too long. I wanted to just get to her already. As I got closer she came out of the house. I noticed right away that her hair was longer and that she was holding a shotgun by her side.
I put the car in Park and practically ran to her.
She pulled me into a tight hug and sighed.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I can breathe now,” she said. “How was it?”
I held up my bandaged arm in response.
“What the hell happened?” she gasped, as she looked me over.
“Earthquake’s suck. That’s all I can say,” I said. “It murdered the hotel window and this is the aftermath.”
I left out the details of how I almost forgot my phone and fell on the glass. She didn’t need to be reminded of my severe clumsiness.
I reached up and touched her red hair. “Love the new hairstyle, Lou. Very sexy.”
She sighed and rolled her green eyes at me. “You are too much, you know that? Only you can notice my damn hair when shit is hitting the fan.”
“I gotta be honest, Lou, I’m not seeing a whole bunch of crazy now that I’m out of the upper states. I didn’t see any of the Lifeless in Virginia. People around here are acting like it’s just another day in the south,” I admitted.
She grabbed my upper arm, careful not to hurt my injury. “Kami, just ‘cause it’s not out in the open or people aren’t panicking doesn’t mean it’s all right. The smart people who know what’s going on are getting on out of here or going into their bunkers. The others are oblivious and will be the ones who are caught in the aftermath,” she said. Then her eyes got real serious. “We need to be the opposite of that. We need to get moving. It’s time to get out of here.”
I nodded. I didn’t see what she did, but of course she always had a knack for seeing things that normal people couldn’t. She was talented at looking for abnormal in a sea of normality.
There were times we would be at parties that seemed to me like typical frat parties that held no danger when she would come running to get me. I would be furious at first because she made me leave, then I would hear about how someone was starting a fight or the cops were on their way. She just knew when shit was going down. She had a sixth sense for catastrophe.
“I trust you, Lou, I really do. But we are missing a member of our rag tag group. And I need to know what exactly is going on here. I feel like you may know more than me.”
She looked away and toward the outline of the trees. “Let’s get inside.”
Lou’s mom, Ida, was laying on the recliner in the living room covered up to her neck in a large blanket. She had been fighting a losing battle with cancer for the past two years. It soon traveled from her colon to her pancreas, and they just found out it’s in her bones.
Cancer was a motherfucker and no one deserved to die this way. Ida, once a strong and able bodied woman, was now a shell. I had seen her only five months ago and she was walking around, talking and drinking with Lou and me at the bar. She didn’t let the news of the cancer get to her. She was full of life, unlike the woman before me.
Lou had brought her up to New York because she said she wanted to see the city before she died. We took her everywhere we could think of; Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and even the Empire State Building. After we had done it all with the woman, she declared that New York City should be renamed, New York Shitty. She hated it.
I couldn’t help but laugh at her new name for it. Ida said whatever she wanted and did whatever she felt like doing. She was a woman who no one would change and she didn’t belong to anyone but herself.
“Oh look who it is,” Ida said as she watched me come into the house just then. “The City Girl. How the hell are ya? See anything outside that looks dead?”
“Uh, no. Should I have?” I asked, unsure of whether she was serious or not.
“Well darlin’ no one should be roaming around looking dead now should they? If you do, you shoot it right in the head,” she said as she pointed to her temple. “That’ll stop ‘em right quick. Now get in here and get a plate.”
I nodded and hesitated, wondering if she would let me hug her or not. The last time I saw her she wasn’t as weak or angry. She did tell me I hugged too much, but it was just something I did.
I was always a friendly person, until I moved to New York. That city hardened me to the point where my hellos were cold and sometimes non-existent, and other times I didn’t even say goodbye when I left a room.
I decided then that I was going to be myself once again as I walked to Ida and wrapped her in a hug. She was thin and cold to the touch, but I hugged her anyway. I didn’t pull away quickly or shiver even though I could feel that she wasn’t long for this world.
“Well that was nice, City Girl. Now go and eat,” she said sweetly and ushered me away.
I did as she told me to do and went to find myself a plate of food. I was starved after all.
I loaded up my plate with mashed potatoes and a piece of fried chicken that I knew Lou had made. Her cooking was out of this world. She once made me a Low Country Boil that ruined me for seafood anywhere else. No restaurant made it as good as she did and I couldn’t find Low Country Boil on any menu in New York.
I ate and watched Lou clean up the kitchen without getting a plate for herself.
“Would you please sit down and eat with me?” It was more of a demand than a question.
She stopped and put down her hand towel.
“I can do that.” She sat across from me and filled her plate. “Eat up, because I don’t want leftovers in this house. Can’t have ‘em spoiling in the fridge when we leave here.”
She took a bite of her chicken and chewed while her eyes scanned the living room, no doubt checking on Ida.
“Leave? Why do we have to leave, Lou? We can ride this out right here,” I said as I looked at the stocked shelves.
She put down her chicken and gave me a stare like I was stupid. “Ride it out? What do you think is going on out there, Kami? You think this will just get better?”
I didn’t like her looking at me like I was clueless. She never did that to me before and I found it unnerving. Something was different about my old friend and I wasn’t sure what it was.
“Lou, they’ll fix this. They can put this all back to normal and in time it will get better. It’s nothing like New York City here, and it won’t get that bad if they put a handle on it now.”
“Who’s they?”
“The government. Surely they can fix this right? I drove all the way here from Virginia and I didn’t see anything bad,” I told her, truly believing it to be true.
“You think our government will save us? You think they care about us? Wake up Kami, they don’t,” she said with a cold stare. “And the earthquake that hit Virginia that seemed so minor, well it hit all the way up to Canada and has killed over two thousand people. And the earthquakes haven’t stopped, so that means more death. The government will go and hide in their ritzy bunkers and they’ll leave us on our own.”
I hadn’t known all of that. I didn’t think that the earthquakes had killed anyone but now that I thought about it, it was foolish to think. It had almost destroyed my hotel room.
“I didn’t know what was really happening out there,” I told her honestly. “The radio didn’t report any deaths.”
She shook her
head.
“No, they haven’t been really open about anything yet. They talked about death tolls but not the things walking around killing people. That they are keeping quiet.”
I didn’t want to really think about the Lifeless things out there because I wanted to pretend that they had only been an illusion. I wanted to think that the government would have this under control, but after hearing about how they were hiding the Lifeless and the size of the earthquake, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Lou,” I began. “What’s up with you? I know things are bad and you saw one of them, but you’re different.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, when she opened them she said, “We gotta leave here, girl. We can’t stay because it’s going to get way worse and we have to move while there’s still a chance. You haven’t seen what I have.”
She was right, I hadn’t seen something dead crawl up from the ground and had no choice but to shoot it.
She leaned in closer and her voice changed to a light whisper.
“Remember when I said Ida was talking about the End of Times?” I nodded. “Well, she isn’t stopping her ramblings and it’s freaking me out. She says that she thinks God is mad, just like in Genesis when he sent the flood to eradicate evil.”
She paused and peeked on Ida in the living room, whose eyes were closed.
“She thinks that God has sent a flood to destroy the world and that this time, only those who are meant to survive and who are smart will live on.”
Chills covered my whole body as I thought about what I learned as a kid about Noah’s Arc and how awful it was for those who were killed in the flood. Noah warned everyone that he could, but not everyone listened.
“So are you saying he’s sent a flood of the dead?” I asked, even though the thought of it was utterly impossible.
She nodded and bit her lip.
“I think so. And I think all the earthquakes are just the beginning. I think there will be more to come. I’m not one hundred percent, but this is just what Ida and I have discussed.”
It’s insane to think about our God doing this to us, but it sure explained the dead crawling out of the ground and the lifeless things attacking people. Who else but God could raise the dead?
The Survival Pact Page 4
