“Make her come back, Mom,” Jacob moaned.
Meg didn’t respond. She hugged Ramona and Jacob and let her tears flow. She didn’t know how long she remained like that, but Ramona’s skin already seemed cooler. Sonia had done a thorough job of cleaning Ramona’s face, and now her daughter looked almost healthy and wholesome. Even the mottled marks seemed to fade, leaving a faint pinkish glow.
A surge of hope raced through Meg. She’s alive. And didn’t her chest just rise and fall?
But when Meg put her face next to her daughter’s, no breath of wind stirred her hair as it did when Ramona was an infant. No pulse throbbed in her neck, and no blood circulated through her tiny fingers. Mister Grizz tumbled from her grasp and lay by her side, as forlorn as any of them.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
Meg’s head roared with anguish. Worst of all, she couldn’t escape the idea that she’d caused this—she’d brought this horrible disease home and exposed her precious children to it. And she herself had survived its symptoms, but her beautiful daughter had been too weak or vulnerable or just plain unlucky to be immune.
Sonia put a gentle hand on Meg’s back. “I’m so sorry.”
Hannah knelt beside them and joined in the comforting, commiserating hug. Even Arjun and Sydney pressed closer in sympathy. Only Rocky remained aloof, standing by the door, probably thinking of his own child many miles away.
While the world would always remember this Easter weekend as the beginning of an awful apocalypse, Meg would only be able to think of her own unbearable loss. She felt detached from her body, as if she’d disintegrated into a thousand pieces that now floated over the scene of her daughter’s death. She would never be whole again.
Had she loved enough? Had she given all she could? Had she appreciated the gift of every moment with Ramona?
She could never be sure, and that brought fresh pain.
And Ian…he’d missed this.
She wondered if she would ever see him again, and a sick part of her took solace in the fact that she’d never have to say, “I let our daughter die of the Klondike Flu. The flu that I carried five thousand miles just to share with the ones I love.”
Bizarrely, part of her mind worked on the words of an obituary that would never be printed. Ramona Autumn Perriman, age eight, passed from this world…
Jacob was talking to Meg, his head buried against Ramona’s chest, and she realized she couldn’t go all the way, she couldn’t split from this world to escape the pain no matter how much she hated being here.
“What, honey?” she whispered, her throat dry and cracked from misery.
“She’s not dead.”
“We’ll always have her. She happened. That love can never go away.”
“No, I mean she’s moving.”
Then Meg felt it, not daring to believe because of her earlier false hope. And it wasn’t just a perception. She saw it. Ramona’s fingers wiggled and flexed.
Meg called her name, patting her face and brushing strands of hair from her forehead. The pinkish hue had given way to a moribund shade of gray. The mottling that had marred her daughter’s flesh returned with a vengeance, as if the blood vessels beneath threatened to burst through her skin.
Meg fought the urge to recoil from Ramona. She understood death on an intellectual level, as a scientist, but when it came this close to home, rationality no longer applied. Even though the animated part of Ramona had departed—the soul, the spirit, the personality—Meg would cling to whatever she could get, even if it was this cool, discolored husk.
“She’s alive, Mom!” Jacob said with delight.
Ramona’s eyes and mouth opened.
And Meg realized what the others, aside from Jacob, already knew.
Her daughter was not only dead, she was a deader.
Ramona’s gaze fixed on Meg but didn’t see her at all, not as a mother. No, hunger gleamed in those opalescent irises. Those eyes weren’t Ramona’s. They were burning pits glaring up from some horrible yawning abyss.
Their ache was unnatural.
Supernatural.
Sonia backed away and Rocky touched Meg’s shoulder. “It’s time.”
“No.” It would never be time to let go.
“You don’t want to see her…you know,” Sonia said.
Jacob looked up with bleary red eyes. “What? We need to help her.”
Meg gave her son a sad shake of her head. “We can’t help her.”
Ramona bucked and wiggled, hands curling into claws. The vitality was such a mockery of life that Meg almost lost her mind.
She’s alive. But she’s not. What is she?
“Let me take care of her,” Rocky said. “I’ll be gentle.”
“T-take care of her?” Jacob blubbered. “You’re not a doctor.”
Meg didn’t want to say it—not that word, not in connection with her own flesh and blood—but Jacob didn’t see what was happening here. Or maybe he saw and refused to accept it. He was smart. He knew about the virus and zombies and what happened to you if you died now.
And Meg realized she’d have to be strong for the both of them. She couldn’t expect a ten-year-old to bear the weight of what needed to happen. These people were virtually strangers but she’d have to trust them with this task, because she wasn’t up to it.
“We should go, Jacob,” Meg said, pulling him away from Ramona, who glared up at them both, her lips peeling back to reveal her swollen gums. A sibilant rattle slithered from her throat, and Meg didn’t know if it was the remnants of her last breath or some autonomic function of her new biological state.
Ramona struggled to sit up, but Jacob’s weight was holding her down. Her arms lifted and flailed against his back, fingers scratching at his shirt.
“Leave her be,” she said to him, but the boy was bewildered and uncomprehending.
It was only when Ramona snaked her neck forward and parted her mouth did Jacob realize she was trying to bite him. Her face was contorted into a hideous Halloween mask, mocking all the innocent beauty that had resided there in life. Jacob flung himself backward and Meg caught him, scrabbling away from the monster that Ramona had become.
Sonia pulled out the knife Rocky had given her and offered it to Meg. She pictured herself marring Ramona more than nature already had. She shook her head. No way could she go through with it.
“She’s a deader,” Jacob said in a hollow voice, the realization finally hammering its way through the pain.
With the word finally uttered, Meg could let go. Ramona—or the thing that Ramona had become—made it easier by snarling at all of them, rolling onto her side and trying to crawl. She kicked Mister Grizz to the side, meaningless to her now because it lacked flesh, blood, and bones.
“The head,” Arjun said as a reminder.
“I know,” Rocky said, although he didn’t point the barrel of his rifle at the girl.
“It should be me,” Hannah said. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s a virus,” Sydney said. “It’s nobody’s fault.”
“I’ll do it,” Sonia said, kneeling behind Ramona. “I’ve had enough practice.”
Meg nodded in approval. Rocky’s tools were too crude and loud, and that was no way to send her daughter off to…
To what?
Heaven?
Where did deadest zombies go?
Before she could complete the thought or conjure any comforting words, Sonia tossed the makeshift wash cloth over Ramona’s face and slid the knife into the base of the girl’s skull, thrusting upward. The wet penetration of the knife was like a final deep sigh of farewell, releasing all of Ramona’s innocent sins.
Her daughter endured two great spasms and a smaller shiver before collapsing, blood soaking the cloth. Ramona covered Jacob’s tearful eyes. “Look away, honey. It’s not her anymore.”
Meg only hoped they both lived long enough to carry a mental picture of the Ramona they loved, free of the taint of the last two days and with no trace of th
at sneering, slavering thing that wanted to feed on them. She didn’t believe in an afterlife where they would all reunite whole and happy, untouched by their mortal experiences. Would Ramona stop aging in heaven? What era would they be stuck in? Ramona as a child while Meg was a wrinkled octogenarian? Ramona as a zombie angel? She couldn’t accept any of it.
“Come to the window,” Sydney said, bookending her and Jacob along with Arjun to shield them from Ramona’s corpse.
“We’ll handle this,” Rocky said.
Numb, Meg let herself be led to the far end of the room, where she found herself looking outside at the broken city. This was no escape; it only accentuated the living hell her life had become. Ian was out there somewhere in that desolate hellscape.
“I know it’s not really a comfort, but at least she died in a church,” Sydney said.
“You’re right. It’s no comfort at all.” Meg instantly regretted her cruelty. But she felt cruel and wanted to take out her rage on anything she could.
“She turned,” Jacob said to himself, as if he were all alone in an impossibly bad nightmare.
“It’s over now,” Arjun said.
“No,” Meg said. “No, it’s not.”
On the horizon, the winding pillars of smoke coiled themselves into fat, twisted knots, flames painted their bases in fiery orange and muted crimson. The pillars rose higher and widened into black gyres, taller than the skeletal skyscrapers in the distance. The gyres swayed in a mesmerizing dance, graceful and menacing, and glided toward Promiseland.
The sky darkened. The howl turned into the scream of a giant banshee and the building rumbled and shook. The glass rattled in the window, appearing to bend inward.
“Holy hell,” Arjun said. “Those are tornadoes!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Arjun pulled Jacob away from the window just as a large street sign sliced against the building, sending a shower of glass across the both of them.
Arjun covered the boy with his own body as more detritus whirled through the broken window. The intense wind picked up papers and books and sent them flapping madly around the room. The roar sounded like a freight train churning through the bricks and steel of the church. Arjun shouted for Sydney but he could barely hear his own voice in the din.
The sudden storm was accompanied by a rattling staccato which Arjun thought was more debris striking the building. Then a small object struck him in the back, stinging enough to leave a bruise. More fell around him and he lifted his head to look at the floor. Hailstones the size of fat marbles lay all around him, glistening wet, gray from the smoke clotted inside them.
The shrieking intensified and grit and dust from outside mingled with the trash swirling in the air. Hail drummed against the building and the temperature dropped at least ten degrees. Arjun wasn’t sure if he imagined it or not, but it looked like sheets of flame writhed in the gyres as if torn from the ground and pulled toward the heavens. He kept Jacob’s head covered, forgetting all about the girl that had just turned into a zombie.
My next videogame’s going to have hellacious fire tornadoes. With hail as big as baseballs.
But that was a pointless distraction. No one would want to play games after living through something like this, especially in the survival-horror genre. Games were escapism, made enjoyable because they weren’t real. In the face of reality, all of Arjun’s creative efforts now looked childish and silly. He didn’t have half the imagination of a sociopathic god.
The wind seemed to die down as suddenly as it arisen, and Arjun dared to lift his head. The others were huddled beside the window, covered with melting hail and sodden scraps of paper. Sydney’s eyes were wide with wonder, a small cut above one eyebrow glistening red with blood.
Rocky had dragged the zombie girl into the hallway and now stood by the door. “Everyone okay?” he bellowed over the dwindling breeze.
Several people acknowledged their survival, while Meg sat leaning against the wall, staring past the room and beyond the edge of the world. Arjun could only imagine the pain she was in, but at least her son was safe. The boy wriggled free from Arjun’s embrace and ran to her.
Sydney stood and shook the glass from her clothes. Arjun pointed to her eyebrow. “You’re cut.”
She wiped at it and looked at the blood on her fingers. “It’s nothing.”
“Where the hell did that come from?” Hannah asked. “The sky was clear this morning. And we don’t get tornadoes here in the Piedmont, especially this time of year.”
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,’” Sonia said. “‘Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.’”
“What does that mean?”
“‘The Second Coming.’ A poem by William Butler Yeats.”
“So basically the shit’s hitting the fan and we’re screwed?”
“That’s a less poetic way of putting it,” Sydney said.
“You’ve heard the reports,” Sonia continued. “Earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, riots. All over the world.”
“Zombies,” Arjun said. “Don’t forget the zombies.”
The writhing columns of smoke and dust were gone, rampaging on toward the east, although the brisk wind still scoured the sides of the building. Arjun didn’t have a complete view of the city, but he could see three massive swathes of destruction, buildings flattened and ground to rubble, cars folded like tin foil, and great sheets of asphalt peeled away to reveal raw red strips of soil. Ruptured water mains shot filthy geysers into the air. Utility poles stood warped and wobbly, snipped cables swinging in the air.
“Where’s Ramona?” Meg asked, still sounding out of it.
“She’s out in the hall,” Rocky said.
“What are you going to do with her?”
“That’s your choice. If the military or FEMA sees her, they’ll put her on the burn pile.”
Meg leapt to her feet so suddenly that Arjun didn’t even see her move. She balled up her fists and marched up to the soldier. “Nobody’s doing that to my daughter.”
Although Rocky stood a good eight inches taller than the researcher, he backed away alarmed. “Mrs. Perriman, I’d never let that happen. I’m just telling you what they would do.”
“We’re not them,” Hannah said. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. A proper burial, a funeral service here in the church, a pagan life celebration. Just name it.”
“We’ll bury her,” Jacob said, bending over and collecting the teddy bear. “With Mister Grizz, so she won’t be alone.”
The boy’s solemn, determined voice brought tears to Arjun’s eyes, but he blinked them away before Sydney saw them. He’d already been made to look weak, and he couldn’t even stay awake after he’d promised to stand watch. He hadn’t contributed much to the group’s survival, despite all his fictional experience with doomsday scenarios, scavenging, and resource allocation. He resolved to be strong from now on.
With the storm passed, the fires got back to work diligently consuming the city. They all agreed to help bury Ramona and made plans to leave the church grounds. Meg wanted to take Ramona back to their home on the far side of the capitol district, but Arjun suggested the place was likely burned to the ground. He expected her to seethe at him but she just gave a defeated nod of agreement.
“First cemetery we reach, then,” Meg said. “I saw one on Google Maps when I was trying to find this place. It’s about a mile north.”
“We’ll need a shovel or two, but we can scavenge local businesses on the way,” Rocky said.
“What about after that?” Sydney said. “Are we going to come back here? Doesn’t look like it’s gotten much safer out there.”
“We need to come back unless we’re ready to fight off zombies,” Rocky said. “And we don’t have the weapons for it. The Army’s cleared out some territory, but the storm’s probably disrupted things again.”
“The church didn’t seem to get hit too hard,” Sonia sa
id. “We got the worst of it on this side. Looks like it missed us by the skin of our teeth.”
“Reverend Ingram’s going to love this,” Sydney said. “Another miracle. Another sign from God that Promiseland is blessed.”
“If God is so merciful, why did He dump all this on us in the first place?” Meg said.
No one offered an answer. They shook themselves free of storm debris and cleaned themselves as best they could with their scant supplies. Hannah passed out some of the food she’d hoarded, but neither Meg nor Jacob ate anything. Rocky noticed the two-way radio as Hannah rummaged through her pack.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked.
“Finders, keepers. It was in the back of a truck.” She was still in state of anger and shock from Ramona’s death, which hung over the room like a spectral shroud.
“Don’t let anybody see that. I lost mine.”
“Is it any good if you don’t have another one to communicate with?”
“Sure. We can listen in on HQ and find out what’s going on. Here, let me find the frequency.”
Hannah gave Rocky the radio and Arjun stood by while the others made preparations to go outside. Sonia took down a curtain, shook the dirt and glass from it, and went into the hall to wrap Ramona’s body.
“You’ll need to hide your weapon,” Rocky said to Meg. “Only soldiers are allowed to have them in the shelter.”
“How are we supposed to fight off…?”
Arjun saw that Meg was reluctant to say “zombies” or “deaders,” so he intervened. “We’ll be able to find some weapons outside. The tornado probably caused some casualties, and also blew the doors and windows out of a bunch of homes. Given the ratio of guns to people in this country, it shouldn’t take more than three or four stops to get us loaded up.”
Meg held the handgun out by its barrel. “I’m hopeless right now anyway. Anyone else?”
Hannah moved to take it but Arjun stepped in front of her. He plucked the gun by its grip and pointed it to the floor beside his right leg.
“You know how to use that thing?” Rocky asked him.
Arize (Book 1): Resurrection Page 23
