by Ray Wallace
Then, nothing.
Until...
"We've got movement."
The car had appeared out of the south, traveling at high speed. When it got close enough, Deandra and her fellow soldiers had waved their hands, motioning for the driver to slow down and pull over to the side of the road. But it had showed no signs of slowing down.
"It's going to ram the gate," someone said.
That's when Deandra's training—hers and no one else's, it seemed—had taken over. She'd aimed her rifle then fired off four rounds in rapid succession before the vehicle finally slowed and drifted to a stop. Two of the other soldiers had approached the car as she stood there, mind blank in the aftermath of what she'd done. The soldiers had stopped along either side of the vehicle which made a hissing sound as steam drifted up from under the hood. They had opened the doors to assess the situation inside, backed away after a few moments and returned to the barricade, wearing grim expressions.
"Dead," Deandra had been informed. "Both of them."
"Both of them?"
"Yeah. A man and..."
"Go on. Say it."
"A young boy."
Later, she found out they hadn't been infected either.
"Probably just scared," the sergeant had informed her. "The guy must have panicked. You had no way of knowing. Don't beat yourself up over it. You did the right thing."
The right thing? she wondered as she lay there, staring into the darkness. She wanted to believe it, tried to will away the awful feeling that had taken up residence inside of her. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.
One thing's for certain. I'm a killer now.
Thursday, September 3rd
The road unfurled before them, a black strip cutting its way across a fog-shrouded landscape. For the past twenty miles or so, Eric had driven without encountering a single obstacle—no abandoned cars, no military blockades, no roving packs of the undead—that would have forced him to slow down in order to pull around it or turn back and find another route entirely. He could only hope his good fortune would continue. This was the third car he'd driven since leaving Simon behind. The first had gotten stuck when he'd been forced to do some off-roading, the second discarded when it ran out of gas. At the time, it had been easier to just use a different car as opposed to going through all the hassle of transferring the fuel from one vehicle to another.
He drove at a reasonable rate of speed, afraid of what might appear out of the fog, what he might run into if he wasn't careful. Besides, it wasn't as though he had anywhere to be, had any sort of schedule to follow.
Amanda shifted in the passenger seat where she'd been dozing off then reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You manage to get some sleep?" he asked her.
"A little."
She turned to check on Mitchell who lay with his eyes closed across the back seat.
In recent days, the three of them had done their best to avoid major population areas, taking back roads whenever possible. Slowly, they'd made their way north across a plague ravaged land, taking in the sights of a collapsing civilization: the dark houses, the empty ball fields, the burned out buildings, the clogged and cluttered roads. There were a myriad other signs, too: overgrown yards, broken windows, dead bodies. Each one of them a reminder of the fragility of mankind's accomplishments, the ease with which they could be torn down.
"Where are we?" asked Amanda once she'd ascertained everything was fine with Mitchell.
"North Carolina. Near the coast."
A half a minute later, the fog cleared and their surroundings became visible in the morning sun for miles in every direction.
"Look," said Eric, motioning toward the passenger side window, the view it offered of the beachfront property and the ocean beyond.
"It's beautiful,” she told him. “I've always wanted to live near the water."
"So why don't we?"
He drove a few more miles before turning onto a side street that took them even closer to the ocean. The houses here were modern, obviously very pricey affairs, the abodes of wealthy locals and the vacation homes of even wealthier out-of-towners. They passed several widely spaced houses and a marina where a number of cruisers and small yachts were docked.
“That one,” said Amanda, pointing toward a white, two-story affair with a long, empty driveway out front.
Eric agreed that it looked like a good choice. Gravel crunched and popped underneath the tires as he pulled up and parked near the front of the house. For a few moments, he stared at the place, looking for signs of movement through the windows, any hint there might be someone inside—of either the living or the undead variety. Then he reached under the seat and pulled out the handgun he kept hidden there.
"Wait here," he said before getting out and approaching the house's front door. Once there, he decided to go with the direct approach, raised his hand and knocked.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
After knocking a second time, he tried the doorknob.
Unlocked.
Looks like someone left in a hurry.
Inside, he flipped a light switch. Nothing happened. No big surprise there.
Going from room to room, he slowly, carefully made absolutely certain the place was deserted. When he'd finished his search, he opened the sliding glass doors at the rear of the house, stepped onto the wooden patio and gazed out over the ocean. The house had been built on a rise, offering a spectacular view of the beach below and all of that endless blue beyond. Pulling the briny scent deep into his lungs, he listened to the sound of the waves spilling onto the shore, the cry of a seagull hovering above the endless undulations of the water.
Yeah, this will do nicely.
With the hint of a smile on his face, he turned and went back inside.
Friday, September 4th
For several days now, the zombie had been consumed by the hunger tearing at its insides. Within the environment where it found itself, there was no opportunity to give the hunger what it wanted, what it demanded of him.
Soon... soon...
The promise was not conveyed through words so much as a combination of simple imagery and basic emotional triggers. Once the human known as Casey had died and come back to some semblance of life as one of the undead, it had found itself incapable of understanding anything resembling verbal communication. The voice—for lack of a better term—spoke to the zombie on a primal level, communicated with the ancient, reptilian section of its brain, non-verbal commands it had neither the intellect nor the motivation to either question or disregard.
For now, you must wait...
And so it waited.
Very little daylight penetrated the depths of the lake, amounted to nothing more than a minute dissolution of the darkness when the sun claimed the sky in the world above, accompanied by a slight warming of the waters. Then, eventually, the blackness and the deepening chill would return as the day grew long and the night settled in. The zombie took little notice of these subtle changes to its surroundings. The hunger was all that mattered, after all. And the end of the waiting.
Soon...
It could sense others of its kind out there in the darkness, more of them arriving all the time, adding to their numbers. The call had been heard far and wide, the command obeyed without question or reservation. The zombie didn't worry about competition from the others. The voice had assured it there would be plenty of the warm, wet meat it needed to feed upon, that a great and glorious feast awaited.
Experiencing something akin to impatience, the zombie shifted its weight back and forth, pulled one foot and then the other free of the mud into which it had been sinking one slow inch at a time. A small creature flitted by in the darkness, stirring the water near the zombie's face. Turning its head, the zombie saw nothing and forgot about the encounter moments later. There was no place within the limited confines of its mind for such petty recollections. It wanted to feed, needed to feed, thought about nothing beyond this simple and basic truth.
/>
Wait...
Time passed. The zombie held its position as did all of the others, letting their numbers grow. The more of them there were, the more effective they would be in tracking down their prey and appeasing the mighty hunger that burned inside of them all.
The zombie had spent several days in the cold, the dark, and the wet. It wanted nothing more than to push onward into the shallower waters that lay ahead, the dry land even further on, to sink its teeth into the first warm body it came across.
Soon... came the single unspoken promise once again. Soon...
Saturday, September 5th
Rachel heard a voice from outside the room where they'd been keeping her, thought it might be one of the guards bringing her something to eat. Thinking back, though, it didn't seem like enough time had passed since the last time they'd fed her. She had no clock in here, no watch, only a thin slice of sunlight making its way past the sheet of plywood over the window to let her know of the passage from night into day, from day into night.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's lunchtime already.
The door opened and she discovered she hadn't been wrong.
A large man dressed in a pair of jeans and a collared shirt filled the doorway. Hands clasped behind his back, he walked over and stood before her. She looked up at him from where she sat on the edge of the bed, reading a book: Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. She'd always been a bit of a science nerd, had been surprised when her request for reading materials had been fulfilled, the books brought to her from the local library according to the “Property of..” stamp used to mark the inside covers.
"I trust you haven't been treated too harshly," said the man, leveling a strong, steady gaze at her.
A second man closed the door, leaving Rachel alone with her visitor.
"I suppose it could be worse," said Rachel, setting the book down beside her. She found it impossible to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, even though she knew that, as far as being a prisoner went, things really could be a lot worse. For starters, they hadn't thrown her into any sort of actual prison. No, they'd brought her to a single story house, to a bedroom with a boarded over window and an adjoining bathroom. Then they'd placed an armed guard outside the door. They'd fed her and brought her the books she wanted. So, all in all, except for the being-held-against-her-will aspect of the whole experience, it hadn't been that bad.
"I'm Pastor Lewis, by the way," the man told her.
"The guy in charge around here?"
The pastor smiled. "I've been known to offer a word or two of guidance when necessary."
I bet you have, thought Rachel but she kept it to herself, waited to see what the man had to say.
"One of my men is sick. One of those who apprehended you. He shows all the signs of having fallen victim to the plague you and your friend brought among us."
"We warned them." She could feel herself getting angry now. “And we didn't bring the plague to you and your people... your followers... whatever. As you said, we were apprehended. We had no intention of—"
The pastor raised a hand, cutting her off.
"You carry the sickness with you although you yourself are not sick. How is this possible? Has some sort of treatment been developed?"
Rachel shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of."
"Then how..."
A shrug. "Blind luck? Some sort of natural resistance? All I know is that I was sick and then I got better. Same with Howard. And now we seem to be carriers of the disease. He told me as much when I first met him. Looks like he was right."
Pastor Lewis stared at her for several long moments. Then he held his right hand out to her, palm up.
"Spit on it."
At first, Rachel didn't think she'd heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
"Go ahead," he said. “Spit on my hand.”
“Why?”
“Please. Indulge me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Um… All right…”
After working up some saliva, Rachel leaned forward and did as he told her. Then, as she watched, he brought the hand to his mouth and licked it, made a show of swallowing her presumably infected spit.
"Only the blessed can be a part of my army, those who are resistant to the Devil's plague." He paused, apparently considering his words. "Or those who have overcome it. I need to know that those who follow me, every single one of them, are among the anointed by God, that they are impervious to this scourge the Dark One has sent among us. If there are those who never got sick because they never came in contact with the disease, I have to find out. Do you understand what I'm saying here?"
Rachel had a pretty good idea. And she didn't like it, not one bit.
"I think so."
“Good... good..."
He went to the door, knocked lightly on it and waited for it to open. Before he left, he gave Rachel one last look and said, "I need to think on this. To pray. To seek the Lord's guidance. To be sure..."
Then he was gone, the door closing behind him.
With a sigh, Rachel grabbed The Fabric of the Cosmos and tried to immerse herself within its pages once again. But she couldn't concentrate, decided to give up after re-reading the same paragraph three times.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Sunday, September 6th
Susanna opened her eyes, certain that something had awakened her, tried to figure out in her confused state what that something might be.
Muffled popping sounds from somewhere in the house.
She threw aside the blanket and climbed out of bed, turned on the bedside lamp and waited for her eyes to adjust to the light. According to the clock next to the lamp, it was 3:38 in the morning. Which meant she'd been in bed for more than three hours, dead asleep for most of that time. Once she'd made her peace with Zander's death, once she'd been able to fully accept the reality of the world she now lived in, sleep had come fairly easy once again.
The popping sounds repeated themselves. When she realized exactly what they meant, she was glad of her decision to ditch all mind or mood altering chemicals, of her ability to stick with that decision.
She went to the closet, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, stepped into her boots, tightened and tied the laces as quickly as she could. Then she went to the nightstand and opened the drawer, grabbed the handgun from inside—the one she kept fully loaded, of course. After checking to make sure it was ready to be fired, she pushed her hair back behind her ears, took a deep breath and headed for the bedroom door.
Outside, dim lighting filled the hallway. With the weapon gripped in both hands, she approached the elevator at the end of the hall then decided to use the staircase instead, located behind a door that opened silently on well-oiled hinges. Moving as stealthily as possible, she descended toward the house's main floor some thirty feet below.
"No... Please, don't!" she heard someone pleading.
Crack! went the sound of a gunshot followed by laughter—the tight, strained laughter of a madman.
Or someone drugged out of his mind.
Lawrence and his “boy toys” had been partying far too much and far too heavily over the past week or so. It had reached the point where Susanna had seriously started to consider leaving the estate. But where would she go? And what would she do once she got there—wherever “there” might be? At the moment, she wished she'd considered the idea a bit more seriously because, from what she could hear, someone had obviously gone off the deep end.
"Lawrence?" she said as she continued to descend one careful step at a time. "Ramos? Davide?"
The laughter had stopped, leaving nothing but silence from below.
She reached the bottom of the staircase, heart beating heavily in her chest. As she stood at one end of the ground floor's main room, she took in the familiar sight of the sprawling couches, the plush carpeting, the gaudy artwork covering the walls, and the semi-erotic statuary in each corner. Lawrence had always had a flair for the peculiar, had never shown any reticence
in flaunting it. According to him, this had led to a falling out with his "terminally conservative” parents when he was a much younger man.
"Lawrence?" she said once again, liking the silence even less than the laughter preceding it.
"Lawrence isn't here."
Ramos sat on one of the couches, kicked back with his feet up on the glass table in front of him, its surface littered with pills, powder, and glass bottles of varying sizes.
Susanna aimed her gun at him, moved toward him slowly, oh, so slowly, loathe to take her eyes off of him, to look anywhere else. Something on the floor called for her attention, though. Reluctantly, she lowered her gaze, took in the sight of the body lying sprawled across the carpet, dark stains forming erratic patterns around it.
Davide.
And there, a little bit further away, another motionless figure.
Lawrence.
Ramos smiled. "It was time for them to go. Lucky them, huh? To leave this place. This awful place. To find a way out of here. Out of this... this hell."
The smile disappeared as he lifted his arm, showing her the gun he'd used to kill Lawrence and Davide.
"Don't," said Susanna, the word a pained exhalation.
"You can go too if you want." Ramos waved the gun back and forth.
“Don't,” she said once again.
“No?” Ramos shrugged. Then he pressed the barrel of the gun against the side of his head. “It's easy." He laughed. “The easiest thing in the world.”
The sound of the gunshot filled the room, there and then gone in an instant.
“Don't...” she said for a third time, proving the word's complete and utter lack of power.
