by Ray Wallace
Glancing at the window, she saw that night had fallen. When last she'd looked, sunlight had streamed in through an opening in the curtains. She was tired, so tired, having slept very little in recent days. That combined with the stress of her vigil had left her feeling wrung out and hollow inside. Throughout the day, she'd found herself nodding off in her chair, forgetful of the knife in her hand. And now, as her head slumped forward once again, she fought to keep her eyes open. But the effort was a futile one. Exhaustion won out, and she drifted away into the sweet oblivion of sleep.
How long she stayed there, she had no idea. She only knew that the sounds of Joseph's suffering had taken on an altogether different tone when she returned.
He lay on the bed, staring at her, arms straining against his bonds, eyes wide, red, and unblinking. A low moaning sound escaped him as he bared his teeth in a twisted parody of the smile that had once warmed her heart. And she knew… This person, this thing, lying before her was no longer the man she loved.
“Oh, Joseph,” she said as a tear slipped free from the corner of her eye and left a glistening trail down her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
She stood, slowly, like a woman much older than her fifty-seven years, holding the knife out before her.
“God, give me strength...”
With a wordless cry, she drove the knife into her husband’s throat. The moaning stopped but he continued to fight against the ropes, continued to look at her.
She recalled the words of the man who'd spoken to her outside the hospital as she searched her purse for her keys, after she'd gotten Joseph into the car: “A shot to the head. If you want to make sure.” She also recalled the look of pity in his eyes.
Realizing that the knife had been a mistake, she left the room, made her way through the kitchen, and opened the door to the garage. For the first time in her life, she wished that she owned a gun. But she didn’t, and now she had to find another way.
When she returned to the bedroom, she held a hammer from Joseph's toolbox in her hand.
A shot to the head.
With a whimper, she raised the hammer—
If you want to make sure.
—and brought it down with everything she had.
Then she did it again.
After the third time, Joseph finally stopped moving.
Monday, July 6th
The sound of something banging against the window brought Eric up and out of sleep. He blinked his eyes in the darkness, trying to fully extricate himself from the dreamworld through which he'd been running, the voice of his sister chasing after him:
Why did you leave me?
Propping himself on an elbow, he looked at the alarm clock next to the bed: 4:42 AM.
Bang... Bang... Bang!
He got up—dressed in the shorts and the t-shirt he'd worn to bed—and approached the window. The blinds had been closed, preventing him from seeing outside. Only the slightest bit of light crept in from a nearby streetlamp. Someone was out there, hitting the glass. What he heard did not convey the hard, sharp rap of knuckles but the heavier, flatter sound made by an open hand.
Bang!
He flinched, expecting the glass to break. But it held.
For how much longer, though?
Not wanting to turn on a light and alert the person—or persons—out there to his presence, he circled around the bed in the dark, found his shoes, slipped them on, and exited the room. He'd left the television on in the living room, audio muted. It was showing the same piece of footage he’d seen earlier of a mob looting a local strip mall. Nothing but bad news on the TV these days. Internet, too. And it showed no signs of getting better anytime soon.
A few days earlier, he'd gotten the tire iron out of the truck, brought it inside, set it next to the front door where it leaned against the wall. Grabbing it, he took a quick peek through the window next to the couch, saw no one in front of the house. And so he opened the door and went outside for the first time in several days, making his way toward the side of the house through the warm, muggy darkness.
“All right, motherfucker,” he said, rounding the corner and brandishing the tire iron in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
An old lady stood there in a tattered robe and a pair of slippers. She slapped at the window one last time before turning and looking in his direction. In the dim lighting, her eyes appeared to be completely black. Alien. From deep in her throat, she made a low, growling sound, and took a lurching step toward him.
She's one of them, one of the undead they've been talking about online. Put her down.
He couldn’t, though. The very thought of attacking her with the tire iron, taking a swing and cracking her upside the head repulsed him. Instead, he backed away, didn't let her out of his sight until he reached the front yard. Once there, he noticed a number of people—had to be close to ten of them—in the street a few houses down, moving toward him. They appeared to be in no particular hurry, as if they just happened to be out for a leisurely stroll in the middle of the night. For a fleeting moment, he thought about asking them for help. But the way they moved—limping, staggering—changed his mind.
Probably not the neighborhood watch.
Less than a minute later, after running back into the house to grab his cell phone, wallet, and keys, he got into his pickup truck, started the engine and drove away.
Tuesday, July 7th
Dear Diary,
I haven’t eaten in two days now. I’ve never imagined being so hungry. Is this how the people they show in those TV commercials feel? The ones asking you to send money to help starving children in Africa? Do they feel like this all the time? How awful.
I keep thinking about the meals Mom liked to cook, the ones she’d make every couple of weeks. Lasagna. Meatloaf. Baked chicken and scalloped potatoes. I can't stop thinking about fast food either. What I wouldn't give for a McDonald's cheeseburger. French fries. Apple pie. A vanilla milkshake.
Okay, I have to stop. My stomach just growled really loud.
At least the sink and the shower still work, which means I won’t dehydrate. Just starve to death.
Where is everybody? Are they all sick? Or worse?
I have no idea what happened to Doctor Anders or if Mom and Dad are still alive. I've stood at the window for hours on end. Over the past two days, I haven’t seen a single person go by. The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure everyone's dead. Because if Mom and Dad were still alive, I know they would have gotten me out of here by now. If not them, Doctor Anders or somebody else would have come for me. They wouldn't have just left me in here, starving like this with nothing to do but watch the same movies I've already seen, read the same books I’ve already read.
And talk to you, Diary.
I swear, you’re the only thing keeping me sane right now, from just completely freaking out. Writing this stuff down, being able to put it all into words, it helps with the worrying. With the fear. It's still there, sure, but not as bad as it would be, I'm certain of that.
What would I do without you, Diary? Probably lose my mind. I think if I stay locked up in here too much longer, though, I might end up losing it anyway. That is, if I live long enough.
Wednesday, July 8th
Simon whistled as he followed the sidewalk, gun in hand. He’d been waiting most of his life for an opportunity like this, an opportunity he had no way of knowing would ever present itself. How could he seriously imagine that such events would ever come to pass? But they had. And he couldn’t have been happier. Even if he died tomorrow, he’d still have had this one shining moment when he'd been able to give himself over utterly and completely to the urge that had been eating at him for... Well, for just about as long as he could remember.
Ten years earlier, when he was all of seventeen years old, he had killed a man for the first time.
The urge had been there for years but he’d resisted its call.
I'm not ready, he would tell himself. Not yet.
He’d lacked conf
idence in his abilities, not only to kill effectively, but—just as important—to get away with it. As he got older, though, his strength and confidence grew. And, eventually, an opportunity presented itself which he could not pass up.
He’d been on a date that night with a girl from school named Cassandra Baker. They’d gone to a movie, had grabbed a bite to eat afterward. This was the third time they’d been out together, and this time she let him kiss her when he dropped her off in front of her house. He’d wanted more but had been willing to wait. If nothing else, he was a patient young man. Fending off the particular urge he'd known for so long had taught him all about patience.
So there he was, cruising through Brandon, Florida in his father’s car at ten-thirty in the evening. He drove along State Road 60—the six lane road that cut through the heart of town—toward the neighborhood where he lived with his parents. Halfway there, he saw a young man walking backward near the side of the road, arm extended, thumb pointing upward.
Simon didn’t even hesitate. He turned on the blinker and pulled into the gas station on the corner.
Moments later, the hitchhiker opened the passenger side door and hopped in.
“The name's Gerald.” After thanking Simon for the lift, he asked, “So where you headed?”
“Not far,” Simon told him. “A few miles down the road. It’ll save you some walking, though.”
Traffic was light and it took only a few minutes to cross into Valrico, to hang a left at a side road and pull into a subdivision still in the early stages of construction. A good place to park and smoke the joint Gerald had on him.
Simon experienced a sense of excitement and anticipation.
Tonight's the night...
He parked the car, the skeletons of unfinished houses standing to either side of the road. Then he and Gerald got out, stood leaning with their backs against the side of the car. Simon was late getting home at this point, knew his dad was going to be pissed. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything right then except for the opportunity that had been laid out before him.
The late November air was cold enough for Simon to wear a jacket, one with an inside pocket where he kept the hunting knife he'd stolen from a sporting goods store a few weeks earlier.
While hitting the joint, Gerald talked about how he’d decided to leave the stale and boring life he’d been leading, to get out and have some adventures while he was still young.
He held the joint out for Simon to take it.
“Dude, I really appreciate the ride.”
That’s when Simon pulled the knife out and buried most of its six inch blade into the side of Gerald’s neck. Blood spurted up the arm of his jacket and across the side of his father’s car. He stepped back as Gerald fell to the ground, stood there and watched him twitching and dying in the moonlight. When it was finally over, Simon knelt down and pulled the knife free. Taking off his jacket, he wrapped the knife in it, set it on the passenger side floor of the car. Then he got in and drove away, stopped at a car wash on the way home, rinsed away the evidence of his crime.
Lying in bed that night, his back tender from the whipping his father had given him for coming home late, for taking the car without permission, he thought about how good it had felt to finally give in to the urge he'd been living with for so long, to drive the knife into the side of Gerald's neck. He was already looking forward to his next murder, thought about all of the things he might do differently, the ways he could make it better.
His handiwork got plenty of attention from the local media over the next few days. Those were long, nervous days as he waited for the police to show up and arrest him. But it never happened.
Ten years went by. During that time, he took advantage of the opportunities that came his way, honed his skills, became more adept at covering his tracks. And through it all, the urge never left him. In fact, it only seemed to intensify.
Some day I’m going to screw up, he told himself. Some day I’m going to get caught.
But, again, it never happened. And after the chaos that descended on the world with the arrival of the superflu, he was starting to believe it never would.
An old man with a noticeable limp appeared on the sidewalk ahead of him. Still whistling his song, Simon's finger twitched on the trigger of the gun he carried. Even at this distance, Simon could see there was something wrong with the old man's eyes.
Which means no one will mind when I put a bullet between them.
Thursday, July 9th
Eric cursed as he approached another roadblock. He'd recently crossed the border into Florida, driven ever onward by a growing compulsion to reach his sister’s home and see for himself what had become of her. Alive or dead, he needed to know. All of his phone calls had gotten him nowhere. When he dialed her number it always went straight to voice mail, and for several days it had proven impossible to get anyone from the police department or any of the local hospitals on the phone.
“We’re sorry, all lines are currently busy…”
Back when he could actually speak to someone, they’d had no information for him anyway, no record of anyone with his sister’s name having received medical attention since the superflu outbreak. Which probably meant…
He didn’t want to think about what it probably meant. He needed to know. And if there was anything that could be done, he had to do it. His love for his sister demanded it. The guilt he felt might have had a little something to do with it, too. Every time he managed to fall asleep, the dreams were there, waiting for him.
Why didn’t you help me, Eric? Justine would ask him. And Bill: Why didn’t you get sick? Why were you spared?
And he would tell them, over and over again, “I don’t know… I don’t know… I don’t know…”
The night the old woman had shown up at his house and started banging on the window, he’d driven south for about an hour, found a little roadside motel, had spent what was left of the night and most of the following day there. He tried to make his phone calls, to no avail. At dusk he'd headed south once again, figuring it would be better to drive at night, that there would be less traffic to deal with. If all went well, he figured he could reach Florida in less than twenty-four hours—or split the trip over two consecutive nights if daytime traffic was too heavy. He'd turned on the radio, tuned in to a talk radio station, listened as callers described their encounters with the rising numbers of the walking, hungry dead.
“I watched them…” said a man with a Spanish accent named Edgar. “I watched them as they surrounded a woman and her… her baby…”
The talk show host had interjected, told him to take a deep breath and relax.
“Yeah, okay,” The caller had cleared his throat. “So... The dead people... Had to be four or five of them. When they surrounded the woman, she started to scream. I was right there, maybe twenty feet away, but there was nothing I could do. 'My baby,’ she yelled. ‘No, not my baby.’ And… well…”
The guy hadn't been able to go on and for that Eric was grateful. But the call after that had been just as bad. And the one after that. Then somebody mentioned the road blocks, how sections of the interstate were backed up for miles in both directions. Eric had hoped it was an exaggeration.
Just before midnight, he saw the rows of taillights stretching away before him. It was past one in the morning by the time he reached an exit ramp. After that, he stayed away from the interstate but still managed to run into his share of closed roads and detours. At one point, he’d had to drive around an entire city where they weren’t letting anybody in. Eventually, he made his way through Georgia, then down into Florida where—Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! said the voice in his head, doing a pretty good Gomer Pyle imitation—he found himself stopped at another roadblock.
“For fuck’s sake!”
He was tired, hungry, and in serious need of a shower. Not to mention a change of clothes. This really was the last thing he—
Pop! Pop! came the unmistakable sound of gunfire from up
ahead where he could see the blue and white lights of police cruisers flashing in the darkness. Eric backed up, turned around, and headed north for about a mile, used his phone’s GPS to plot another route to his destination. All the while he asked himself just what, exactly, he was doing here, what he planned to do when he reached his sister’s house, whenever that might be.
What if she’s not there? Or what if she’s dead? What will you do then?
“Cross that bridge when I get to it,” he said aloud, knowing it wasn't much of an answer.
But it was the only one he had.
Friday, July 10th
A storm had rolled in shortly after nightfall.
Amanda sat on the couch in the living room watching Mitchell play with one of his action figures on the floor in front of her. The TV was on. Lately, she kept it on pretty much all the time, hungry for news of the world beyond the walls of her apartment building. For the most part, the news wasn’t good. The flu continued to spread. People continued to get sick and die. And then they'd come back to life—or some semblance of life. None of the scientists could seem to agree on exactly how this was happening, on how an alien microorganism—there was no doubt as to the plague's origins at this point—could animate dead bodies in this completely unprecedented way.
A few days ago, the CDC had finally released an official statement affirming that the dead were, in fact, coming back to life. Also, these dead folks, these “zombies” as people had taken to calling them, were prone to violence. And they did seem to have a rather strong desire to ingest the flesh of the living. It was theorized that the consumption of living tissue might be needed to replace the rapidly necrotizing cells of these reanimated corpses.
