“They were all dead, weren’t they?” asked Rickey.
Melissa shook her head. “I wish they were. Some of them were. There were people scattered everywhere. Mostly regular people like me, but a few soldiers were mixed in. The rest were gone. I didn’t know where. But here and there someone would cry for help or just make a pained noise. If that were all— I would have stayed. I would have helped them. I’m not a cruel person, you know. I do care what happens to people—”
“I know,” said Rickey, squeezing her hand.
“But there were Infected still walking and crawling around. I don’t know how so many turned all at once. There weren’t any that I could see when we got to the gym. I don’t know if they came from other rooms where they were being kept, or if the violence that started in the gym made some of them who were barely holding on finally let go. But there had to be half a dozen that I could see. Every time someone cried out, one or two of the Infected would scramble toward them, crawling over other bodies to reach them and the person would scream and eventually fall silent again until the process repeated with someone else. I knew they’d find me sooner or later. The girls’ locker room was just a few stairs away, but I didn’t know what was inside or if there was another way out if I closed myself in. I wasn’t even certain it was unlocked. I stood there, staring at the door, I don’t know how long. I think I was in shock. Or maybe the disease was starting to set in. But eventually, I noticed an Infected looking at me. Her mouth was drooling thick, syrupy blood and her eyes were glazed over. She was probably full, but I didn’t know how it worked then and I panicked. I bolted for the door and got lucky. It was open and I was able to lock it behind me. There was a small shower of pounding hands on the door afterward but the Infected gave up quickly. They had a whole gym of easy prey. It wasn’t hard to find the back exit.
“It took me a while to realize I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t even know where my car was— and I didn’t have the keys anymore anyway. If the military couldn’t keep us safe, where was I supposed to go? Who was I supposed to trust? I wandered around the school, looking for anyone still sane. I found one of the military trucks and there was a radio set sitting in the front seat. I climbed in and listened all night as the world crumbled. In the morning, I climbed out, but I took the radio with me. And I just started walking. There were lots of cars that day, but nobody stopped. I didn’t expect them to. I wouldn’t have. It was very cold. Ben’s apartment was the closest place I could think of, so I headed there. It took almost all day and I was headed in the opposite direction from most of the traffic. I was too upset to be scared. I’d killed all those people.”
Rickey sat up from where he’d been lounging on the warm moss. “What? You didn’t kill anyone. Well, maybe the soldier in the drill press, but he would have killed you if you hadn’t.”
“No, I killed all those people. They would have been safe, maybe for weeks, maybe for good, if they’d stayed in their homes. They were far apart, an Infected would probably die of exposure before it wandered to the next house to attack someone. They’d have been okay, except I had to follow the stupid rules. Never questioned, never argued, just did as I was told. And they paid for it.”
“Hey,” said Rickey leaning close to see her face as the sun drained into the dirt, “If it wasn’t you, they would have found someone else to deliver the evacuation notices. Another mailperson, a soldier, it didn’t matter. Maybe you saved some of them a few days because you convinced them to go instead of being shot in their homes. You don’t know. It wasn’t your fault, any of it. And if they were here, they’d tell you that.”
Melissa shook her head. “That’s easy for you to say. I can’t believe it, even now, after everything. And even if I could— what I did to Ben is undeniable.”
“Did you— were you in love?” asked Rickey, leaning back a little to give her room.
Melissa smiled. “I thought I was. I don’t think he was. Not really. We were— we were comfortable. Friends, mostly. A compromise to keep both of us from being lonely. But nobody deserves what I did to him. Not even if we were mortal enemies. He shouldn’t have let me in. His building was a mess. There was furniture strewn everywhere, poking out of doorways, flung across the lobby, like everyone had packed up and left. I was worried he had too, but you could hear the occasional radio or television on behind some of the doors so I knew somebody was still around. I got to his apartment and knocked. I had a key, but I always knocked first. I never wanted to be surprised by what I found him doing. I was such a fool. He wasn’t sure about letting me in. He shouldn’t have. I wish I’d turned around and walked away, but I called to him, told him it was me, that I wasn’t sick but I needed help. He wasn’t a bad guy, just scared. He let me in as soon as he knew it was me. The soldiers had already been there, but he said there’d been a fight in the streets and they’d left with the rioters filling their trucks. Nobody came back. I didn’t tell him that the rioters were probably Infected. What was the point? We were safe. I told him what had happened but neither of us admitted that I might be sick, that I’d been exposed. We just pretended it was a close scare, that I was okay. We stayed quiet a few days, but Ben didn’t keep his kitchen stocked very well. Neither of us did, really.
“We went to the grocery store on the third morning. I’d recovered enough to try, and things on his street had been quiet after the soldiers left. We thought maybe the worst was over. The streets were still pretty busy, but there were signs of things collapsing everywhere. Long before we reached the store. It was subtle at first. Unplowed side streets that had gotten slushy, or a car parked in a tow away zone. Here or there an object forgotten. A shoe, a hat, a suitcase or backpack. It got more obvious as we got closer. Shopping carts were abandoned on sidewalks and some of the smaller shops had broken windows. Alarms were left blatting in competing screams and people ran by us without paying any attention to them. There were even police, but they didn’t seem to be stopping anyone from looting. I think they were looking for active Infected.
“We parked pretty far from the store, not wanting to risk it getting stolen or crashed into, and we sprinted into the store. There were no carts left, no baskets and we could hear a fist fight somewhere in the back. Other people skittered around the store like startled roaches, barely looking at us. Ben wanted to turn around, but we needed food. Most of the produce buckets were empty in their displays, so I took one and handed him one.
‘Just get anything,’ I told him, ‘don’t fight with anyone, it’s not worth it. Just grab anything edible.’ I didn’t wait for him to agree, just ran down the aisles. It was a large store and I started to panic as aisle after aisle was just empty beige metal shelves. I didn’t even look at what I was picking up, I just grabbed anything, any can or box that was left, anything that had rolled underneath the bottom shelf or been pushed back into a deep corner. There was nothing fresh left. No meat, no dairy, no fruit. I managed to fill my produce bucket and Ben was following close behind. There was nobody at the register. I was so stuck, so tied to the idea of the rules that I stopped anyway. I wrote down my name and address and made a list of what we took. Ben kept begging me to go, but I stopped and did it, and tucked it into the register.
“It was just long enough for another woman to come up and try to grab our baskets. Ben punched her in the face and she reeled back. I shouted at him, but he grabbed out buckets and pushed me toward the door. We ran out of the store with the woman yelling after us. We dodged a few more people in the parking lot, but they were still hopeful about the store and didn’t make a real effort to take our food. I yelled at him the entire way back to the apartment. He told me things had changed and I needed to be realistic. I didn’t listen. We holed up in the apartment again and pretended it had never happened.
“We were okay for another week, until the power went out. I was starting to feel slower, though, like I was moving through molasses or like I wasn’t sleeping enough. I had trouble following the news reports before the power went out
and Ben would have to repeat himself a few times for me to understand when he was talking to me. He thought it was just stress. I let him. But I should have known. It was almost night time when the power went out and it got cold really fast. We could hear people leaving around us. There couldn’t have been that many left, but the people that were still sane enough were fleeing. ‘We can’t stay here,’ said Ben, ‘we’ll freeze to death.’
‘Where are we going to go?’ I asked, but I’d started slurring and it was hard for him to understand me.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe the fire department? Or the hospital? They must have generators. And if not, they can tell us where to go.’
I tried hard not to laugh at him, but I was already losing control. ‘The hospital? Have you been watching the news? They were overrun days ago.’
He asked me what I suggested, but I had no answers for him. We held on for a few more hours, shivering under all the blankets he had in the place. Finally, I agreed that we’d have to try something. We sat in the car for a while, listening to the radio, trying to figure out where to go. The broadcasts were confused. The airport was out, we knew that. And the reports from other cities really weren’t any better than what we were seeing. Finally, he just started driving. Said he was going to an old legion hall on the edge of town. Used to go there for boy scouts, when he was little. He said there was a wood stove, if nothing else. I was too slow to argue much and he thought I’d been drinking because of the slur. It was probably best he didn’t rely on my judgment by then anyway. It was far away and it was easy for me to fall asleep. But Ben didn’t have enough gas. He must have passed dozens of stations. I can only assume they were all out of gas in the panic. Or they just didn’t have power to pump it. Either that or he just didn’t realize how low he really was. He stopped at this big truck stop on the highway. Its lights were on and he figured they must have a generator and gas. But it turned out to be like a lone lighthouse, a giant flame to every moth in the area. I woke up as he parked in front of the pumps. I was groggy, and I remember being angry for no real reason. Frustrated that we had stopped maybe. Not happy to be with him, I guess. Really, for no reason. There were a lot of people milling around the front of the station. We thought they were just looking for supplies. He got out and swiped his card. I watched the people, bored and frustrated. The card beeped. He tried it again and I watched a few people turn their faces toward the car at the beep. It was too far to see details. The card beeped again. Ben swore and swiped it a third time. More people looked over. An electronic voice informed him loudly to come inside. It was the voice that did it. The people were like a herd of gazelles or something. They all turned at once. Ben wasn’t paying attention. He opened the car door and told me he was going inside.
‘Get in,’ I told him.
He just laughed. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the card. I’ll just pay inside.’
People were shuffling toward us.
‘Get in!’ I wanted to yell, but I was so scared I just managed a squeak.
He shook his head. ‘We need gas, Mel. We aren’t going to make it another ten miles without—’
I grabbed his arm and yanked him inside. He fell into his seat and I could tell it hurt. ‘Shut the door!’ this time, I did yell. The first Infected were only ten feet away or so. He slammed the door, still not understanding. ‘What on earth is the matter—’ he started.
I just banged my fist on the automatic door locks with one hand and pointed with the other. He finally looked and I saw his face go gray under the orange station lights. He started the car, but it was too late. We were surrounded and the Infected began pounding on the car, shaking it, rocking it back and forth.
‘Shut it off,’I said, ‘if we’re very quiet maybe they’ll forget we’re here.’
‘Sure, when the next poor sucker pulls up and they decide to eat him,” said Ben, but I didn’t care, as long as the next sucker wasn’t us. I twisted the keys so hard they broke. He looked down at them in my hand. I apologized, but it frightened me. I hadn’t realized I was so furious. I tried to calm down, but the shrieks from outside and the constant violent bumps just made it worse and worse.
Finally, Ben said, ‘Look, Mel, we aren’t going to make it if we stay here. I’ll draw them away. It looks like most of them are right around the car now, and I can run fast. You get into that store and lock the door. Open it for me when I come back around. We can hole up there for a while.’
I told him no, that I was sick anyway, that it wasn’t worth risking. I told him I’d draw them away for him, but he wasn’t paying attention. It took a few minutes to force the door open against all those people. I could see his muscles straining to push them away.
‘So stupid!’ I yelled and he leaped out. He didn’t even make it ten yards. I kept yelling, ‘So stupid, stupid, stupid!’ I started fighting the Infected around him, snarling and biting anything that I could reach. The other Infected were slow. I think they’d eaten recently. Most of them backed away rather than fight me and wandered toward the empty car. There was a small knot of them that fought each other over Ben and he pushed them off as best he could. His face when he saw me push through the crowd—” She stopped and sobbed into her hands. Rickey put an awkward arm around her shoulders and waited. “He thought I was coming to rescue him,” she continued, “He was already bitten in several places, his face was bloody but he had this relieved smile as I bent over him, shoving aside the remaining Infected. He reached up an arm, thinking I was going to help him up. I leaned in further and bit down on his throat. I fought it to the end. Denied it until I felt him writhing underneath me, the bristle of his five-o-clock shadow scraping against my lips. There will be others who do the same. Even when they are stumbling. Even when they are slurring. Even when they get hunger pains and start chewing their own skin away. The radio isn’t going to convince them. Nothing will.”
Rickey looked up at the distant radio tower, its dull red light still blinking fitfully. “We have to try,” he said.
Melissa wiped her face. “What happened to the guy that wanted to run away to the west, out into the empty country where something like a Plague could never reach him?”
Rickey smiled and squeezed the arm he’d draped around her shoulders. “The truth is, I’m too much of a coward to run away alone. Or I was when I originally threatened that.”
“And now?”
His smile grew into a grin. “And now I have to stay because you have a crush on me and I’m too gentlemanly to break your heart.”
She punched his arm gently and laughed. They watched the blinking red light for a few moments in silence.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he said.
Melissa sighed. “Maybe for you, you never even wanted to be cured. What do you care if you revert?”
“I care. I just don’t like that everyone was treating the people that cured us like they were some kind of heroes. They were saving themselves. And even if they hadn’t had to, wouldn’t it be just common human decency? If you had the means to cure someone and didn’t, that’d just mean you were rotten. It wouldn’t make you their savior if you did decide to cure them. In the beginning, I was angry. I didn’t want to face what I’d done. Why should I have to? It’s not like I chose to do those things. It’s not like I chose to get sick. I was busy pushing back against the guilt I could see weighing Henry and Vincent down. And against the City, treating us like animals instead of people. It’s our world too. But I care. I don’t want to go back. I’m here with you, trying to stop it aren’t I?”
She nodded and returned his hug.
Twenty-six
Amos backed into the loading bay of the large farm store. He leaned forward as he parked, squinting into the hazy horizon. “Is that smoke?” he asked, but the sky was a drained gray, a bleached bone and Henry couldn’t pick out any smoke. Amos shook his head. “Just paranoid, I guess. Listen, I’ll find the chemicals if you jump one of the sprayers. You’ll need the gas, whatever�
�s left in the tanks will be flat and useless after all this time. I’m not even sure any of the trucks will take a charge at this point, but I don’t have another plan. We just have to get lucky this time.”
He jumped out and Henry slid over into the driver’s seat. “We’ll find a way to make it work. Should have traded spots with Rickey though, he’s made vehicles start that I thought were scrap.”
Amos nodded. “Yeah, but Melissa’s going to need that. Besides, I don’t know if I’d trust Rickey to drive what’s basically going to be a giant explosive back to the Colony without blowing himself up smoking a cigarette.”
Henry grinned and pulled the truck out into the lot. Amos looked around. He’d been here before, for seeds and fertilizer. He’d noticed the chloropicrin the first time. Nobody else had reason to notice, but Amos knew what it was. What it could do, on a bad day. He’d thought about hiding it, but it was a huge shipment. Must have been for the entire county. He’d decided it would only draw curiosity if he tried to move it. Sometimes things hid best in plain sight. What were the chances an old soldier like him would stumble on this particular store anyway? It was even more remote that the soldier that did would want to use it as a weapon. Still, Amos breathed a little deeper when he found the canisters still stacked in the far corner, the dust settling in rings around them, untouched. They just had to get it all back safely. He glanced back toward the open bay door, shading his eyes for a moment, almost completely certain he could see smoke coming from the direction of the Colony.
The 40th Day (After the Cure Book 5) Page 16
