by Hamrick, R M
Osprey Point and the quarantine location were south. Audra couldn’t resist surveying the opposite direction. The road rambled into a fallen neighborhood of modular houses, and from there, fields.
Osprey Point south. North not.
Audra felt the pull. Almost like a panic. She wished for something else, anything else. And north was that.
If she returned to Osprey Point, she’d only watch her friends lose their last battles. Battles against the horrendous virus that had taken out so many. Family losing family. Friends. Lovers. She held Haleigh’s and Eliza’s correspondence in her bag, but she didn’t need to read it to know it was just apologies, sadness, and regret. Eliza’s drawing would just wrench the father’s heart in two. It was better off undelivered. Their act of writing goodbye was for them — so they could move on.
What if Audra moved on?
Who would she find? Who could she be? Lost in the questions, not in the answers, Audra inhaled dry cold air and exhaled clouds of moisture. She stole another glance in the direction Osprey Point did not exist.
She would go there.
After Osprey Point’s defenses fell and the quarantined consumed themselves, it would all be gone. She’d have no choice but to leave and never return. Current temptation be damned. The inevitability provided a certain amount of comfort.
She didn’t have to go now.
She’d be going later.
She began her jog south, enjoying the tattered road to her temporary home.
* * *
With the safety of the light, and then the cover of darkness, Audra risked the roads back. She enjoyed the opportunity for straight, undeterred running. She flew through the day and far into the night, only stopping for watercress and accessible oyster mushrooms to fuel her. In her journey, she had purpose. She knew at her destination it wouldn’t be so clear. So here, despite her race, she rested.
Audra took the overgrown exit ramp for a trucker’s rest stop: a gas station and a motel for those who could no longer maintain their lane. The sun peeked over the pines — the time when drivers would leave motels like these, not arrive at them. She slowed to a jog as she turned the corner, giving a wave to the figure atop the gas station.
A quick-thinking resident had fenced the motel’s parking lot when the outbreaks began; however, that hadn’t saved its occupants from threats within. Soon zombies wandered freely inside. Audra had scouted out the motel many times before, as had many others. They had come to the same conclusion she had — clearing the parking lot, picking all the locks, and disabling everyone inside would be an intense feat.
But when Audra needed a place to separate their healthy from their potentially sick, it became necessary to finally clear the old motel of its zombie inhabitants — if only to replace them. And clearing wasn’t nearly as difficult as convincing the previously infected to migrate the few miles from Osprey Point. It was an especially hard sell for those who had received their treatment from Lysent. She, like all the others, hoped Lysent was truthful in their claims that their antiviral was unaffected, but the risk was too great. Overlooking Lysent-cured could cause Osprey Point to fall like all the others.
Audra pulled on the heavy gate. It screeched, metal against concrete, like a rooster’s strangled call just before the sun’s arrival. She estimated the distance and slipped through the gap. Her pack caught on an aluminum barricade panel, sending it rattling in the cold air. So much for a quiet return.
Hushed voices paused as Audra made her entrance. The light hadn’t quite slipped over the fences, but Audra saw a small wood fire going in the modified grill. It cast shadows on two women.
The parking lot held a few moldy chairs and rotting tables from select rooms, and scattered blue plastic water barrels. Audra smiled at the new addition — a metal picnic table, no doubt collecting dew. The two-story motel formed a U shape around the lot with each room’s exterior doors facing the center.
Apparently recognizing but not acknowledging Audra, their voices started up again, heated and arguing. Audra recognized Ryder’s sharp angles of ears and jewelry. Her petite figure with minute curves was also telling. Bradley’s broad shoulders shook with emotion.
“I run high in the morning,” Bradley pleaded.
“You didn’t run high yesterday morning,” retorted Ryder. Audra was surprised by Ryder’s abrasiveness. Her diplomacy usually earned her few arguments.
“That’s because I was up for a few hours before breakfast time. I just rolled out of bed. You can’t take my temperature right after I roll out of bed…” Bradley trailed off, her voice souring. Perhaps she was realizing there was more than breakfast at stake.
“Good morning, what’s up?” asked Audra, placing herself between the warring women. She ran her hands along her pack’s straps before deciding to put it down.
“She has a temperature of a hundred-and-one,” said Ryder coolly, washing the offending thermometer.
Bradley had journeyed toward Osprey Point alone when she was bitten. Audra found her just one mile off with a note in her pocket. Audra couldn’t help but think she might need to write another note soon.
“And I’m telling her I always sleep hot. I’ll cool down in a couple hours - well, unless you guys rile me up!” Bradley’s face looked rosy, from her fever or anger Audra wasn’t sure. But Bradley knew the protocol. Keep all doors closed. Temperatures taken every morning. Fevers stay in their rooms.
“A hundred-and-one doesn’t sound like sleeping hot, Bradley,” said Audra softly. “How do you feel?”
“Scared that you’re going to lock me away because I came to breakfast too soon!” she shouted.
“OK, OK, look,” said Audra, throwing up her hands in surrender. Tensions in the motel were high enough without people waking up to a yelling match. “It’s just one reading. If you are sick — any kind of sick — maybe you shouldn’t be out here. Get your breakfast and take it to your room. In a few hours, we’ll take another temperature. No biggie. We just want you to be healthy and we want to keep germs — all the germs — to a minimum.”
Bradley huffed but began picking her rations. Audra didn’t address the fear in her eyes. Bradley just needed to come to terms with what was happening. The group didn’t claim to know much about the reversion process, but Lisa had been sick for a few days before she turned and attacked people at Osprey Point. They hoped those were measurable symptoms heralding a reversion. It also could have been just a coincidence.
“How are things here?” asked Audra dumbly.
Ryder’s narrow shoulders fell to an even sharper angle. The rising sun illuminated the bags under her eyes. She reached for a ring in her ear, spinning it around.
“Both Jia and Mary are sick, like bad sick. I think we’re about to confirm the virus’s reversion course. They were also the medical assistants. So now, all of this is on my and Gordon’s shoulders.”
And eventually Gordon would be gone too.
“Satomi?”
“She won’t come. Also, she’s better off trying to solve this from the lab. We’re a lost cause here.”
Ryder was far from the bubbly engineer who had hiked to an abandoned laboratory to save the world. Her optimism had fallen away to reveal someone very human. Ryder inspected her medical accoutrements, neatening their perfect rows along the table.
Audra couldn’t draw up any words of comfort, just, “I’ll let Gordon know to run blood work on Bradley.”
Pulling the bottle from her pack’s main pocket, Audra didn’t bother to take her bag to her room. Truth be told, she couldn’t recall which room was hers at the moment. Instead, she climbed the concrete exterior stairs to the second floor. From there, the sun glared but didn’t warm the air. It would be another cold night this evening. Audra knocked on the door marked 13. No one else had wanted the room. Gordon thought it seemed apt.
“Come in,” came his distant voice, husky and muffled.
Finding the door unlocked, Audra opened it and flooded the room with soft light.
<
br /> “Audra!” shouted Gordon, jumping from the small bucket where he was rinsing his face. “Did you find them?”
Gordon bounded over to her, his squared face wrinkling in both excitement and worry.
“Yes, yes I did —”
“Are they OK?” he asked before Audra could add anything to her answer.
Her nod yes sent his knees dropping to the floor. He was still almost as tall as Audra in that stance. His tawny skin matched the color of his thin-framed glasses, which turned askew as he pulled his large hands to his face. Audra unscrewed the canister and wiggled out the note. He immediately straightened his glasses, ready to receive the note, choking back tears.
Audra busied herself by pulling the curtains open as he read. All the rooms looked the same. Faded peeling floral wallpaper in greens and yellows. Defunct flat-screen TV. Dressers in various states of decay or destruction from their previous zombie tenants. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gordon’s fingers run over the smoothness of his daughter’s drawing.
“Are they safe there?” asked Gordon, not looking up from the drawing of his family together in a grocery store.
Audra waffled long enough for Gordon to turn his attention to her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice deep.
Audra explained the scarcity of guards and Kayle’s death. She also told him of the women who look after their section of the store, coloring them more as caregivers than knitters with knives. Honesty while not inciting Gordon into rushed action. Truth was, Haleigh and Eliza had survived this long without him. Audra was fairly certain they could continue to do so.
“Maybe they could live at Osprey Point? I could visit if just for a while.” His half question, half wish hung in the air.
“They wanted to come see you,” admitted Audra.
Audra had considered the option, but with Larange Greenly marking Osprey Point as the poster child for the rebellion, it was no safer than here. Best not to get them involved in any way.
Gordon’s lips quivered with a small smile at her words. He frowned as Audra answered his question with a shake of her head. He didn’t push the subject.
Audra hated to pull him back to reality, but duties remained. “Bradley had a fever this morning. We told her we’d check it again in two hours, but I imagine she’ll need to be added to the list for regular blood work.”
“Bradley. Got it,” he replied with sad resolution.
CHAPTER FOUR
TURNED
When Audra exited Gordon’s room, she noticed the sun had finally decided to grace the entire complex in light. She also noted that she was approaching twenty-four hours without sleep. A dull headache had settled in the back of her skull. She knew it would radiate upward the longer she stayed awake, until it wrapped around and impacted her vision. She would rest. Later.
Ryder was busy with breakfast screenings, trying to get temperatures before the early risers consumed hot beverages. Marcos appeared to have fallen back asleep on a half-padded chair. It was difficult to tell with the waves of rich black hair that framed and often covered his face. Audra joined the tiny mob around the grill and managed a generic motel mug filled with pine needle tea and a scratchy blanket that had been warmed by the fire. Initially Audra hadn’t been sold on the motel, but its amenities were surprisingly helpful.
With more people awake, the gate didn’t sound quite as loud as Audra slipped out with her sights on the gas station. Audra had worried their location was too close to the highway. And really, it was. But the neighboring gas and convenience store with its flat roof had convinced her security could be manageable.
When she and Dwyn were scouting and first climbed up the metal cage surrounding the ladder and reached the pea gravel roof, the space felt oddly vacant and even otherworldly. It had taken a moment for Audra to realize why.
The space was untouched.
The interior of the gas station had been raided several times over just as the rest of the world. But the roof had remained a spot the end hadn’t touched. The last person up there had been experiencing a different universe. Maybe his biggest concern was greasing a stuck vent. In his world, the sick didn’t walk around and consume their brethren. The sick stayed home, ate soup, and watched TV.
Undisturbed as the world fell, places like this had become rare.
And Audra thought most unfortunate.
An unused resource was a reminder that someone else hadn’t made it to that point. Perhaps if the roof had been more accessible, someone could have escaped a herd. They could have enjoyed a few more quiet nights with a warm fire and a chance to gaze at the stars. Instead, the unmarked roof showed no history of campfires and the gravel remained unfussed. Anyone nearby had found another means of evasion or had been overrun.
The roof was an excellent watch spot. From the vantage point, Audra and Dwyn could see inside the motel’s fences, its gate, the highway, and both ramps.
“This will do,” Audra had said.
And finally the resource was used.
Having found the key to the ladder inside the gas station, it was now easy to traverse to the top. Audra managed the metal rungs one-handed. Her peace offering was in the other hand. The roof was still a mostly empty and serene place, but now the white gravel had been marked up with campfires, and some weather-resistant odds and ends were scattered about.
Wisps of chestnut brown hair peeked out of a bundled blanket wrapped tightly around curves. On a birch log by the fire, Katie sat on guard. Audra offered the white ceramic mug and the woman’s knobby hand emerged from cloth to receive it. She pulled the tea close and let the steam warm her face. Katie, like everyone in quarantine, drank copious amounts of pine needle tea, hoping its vitamin C would ward off any illness. Audra draped the second blanket over Katie’s shoulders, which fell gently with the added weight.
Audra sat on a milk crate next to her. The road and forest were quiet. It seemed the birds and few small animals left in the area were sleeping in. Audra cleared her throat and asked the obligatory question.
“How’s Lisa?”
Lisa had sent Audra into a panic on two separate occasions. The first was their meeting, when Audra stumbled upon her in the woods. Infected, yellow blond hair, and formerly blue eyes — wandering, lost in the world, she looked just like Audra’s sister Belinda. Audra had brought her in as their first outreach and cure. Then later, she was the first to revert. She infected three other people before Audra contained her.
“In pain,” she said, exasperated.
The infection was not a passive thing. Those cured recounted sensations of burning bones and joints that sent shocks of pain with each degree of rotation.
“Sometimes I wish I’d go ahead and revert. Join her. Maybe time would pass more quickly.” Katie tipped her cup and watched some of her tea pour out onto the roof.
So much for her peace offering. Katie’s eyes shot daggers at her. And Audra was out of platitudes, having given them all to Gordon. She had already promised them hope when she brought them to Osprey Point. She couldn’t promise again at the motel.
Audra knew her frustration. She had carried it and the accompanying guilt for years. Your loved one rots in pain. Your progress to save them excruciatingly slow. And some days, you don’t even bother. And that’s the scary part. Katie watched her girlfriend revert and infect others, somehow not getting caught in the scuffle. And now she had nothing to do but perform her guard duties and wait for her dormant virus to take hold. Idle and emotional hands.
After a few moments of foggy silence, Audra stood up to leave.
She would go check the snares. A dinner of meat would improve morale. It always did, until the residents remembered flesh-eating conversion. Then the game wouldn’t settle as well in their stomachs. And their minds would churn as well.
But Audra had nothing else to do either.
* * *
If Audra had been more clear-thinking, she might have realized speaking with Katie in both their sleep-deprived st
ates would be counterproductive. But, Audra didn’t plan to stay at the motel long. And she knew if she delayed the meeting, she’d find a way to leave before it occurred.
Audra promised herself sleep. After she checked the snares.
The cool air dulled the forest smells, but the expanse still felt isolating and peaceful. She knew Katie was watching her from above. Probably pouring out the rest of her tea. But it didn’t matter, Audra would be deep in the woods soon. Her figure fading into pines and oaks.
Four snares then sleep.
Noise at the first snare did not sound like the flailing of a delicious animal. It sounded like a dumb human.
Not another.
But when she approached the area, she recognized Dwyn’s height, his dark curly hair flying in multiple directions. He turned, surprised, then a large toothy grin expanded over his face.
“I thought I’d check them for you. Figured you’d be asleep.”
“No, the snares are my job,” she said curtly, communicating her displeasure.
His dimples disappeared with his grin. He dug his toe into the ground, submitting to her.
If the last twenty minutes had been a bad time to interact with others, these minutes would be worse. She hadn’t meant to be rude in her greeting; she had just hoped to be alone out here. She hadn’t even seen him enter the woods.
“You don’t have to take it all on your shoulders, you know.”
While she deserved a rebuke, there was much more kindness in it than Audra was comfortable with. She knew he meant more than the snares. It’s what Haleigh had said about Gordon.
No one should do this alone.
Audra bit her tongue and instead of replying, started to the next snare. She neither encouraged nor discouraged his following.
He followed as she knew he would.
The next was up over the hill. Her boots treaded softly on the dank pine needles, the crunch of the amber needles gone with fall. Dwyn’s footsteps followed almost as muted. No words between them, she could dismiss his noises as a zombie following her climb. She followed the ridge of the landscape, the dry breeze making her face feel tight. Her headache rumbled toward the crown of her head.
