One of the dangerous patients had gone south and hidden in a backyard of a home daycare. Five children found him in the morning, when they ran screaming into the playhouse. Three survived. One was infected. More of the patients headed north and were still being rounded up by emergency workers. The bulk ran west with the Shepherds hot on their heels, and the wooded area let out right at the community center. They’d come into the party. Zaley did not remember any of this.
Is it true the number of newly infected we’re hearing from the holiday party?
It’s true, Selby. Preliminary reports are in the dozens. Cullers opened fire on the escaped Sombra C patients in a room full of kids. It breaks your heart. All it takes is a drop, one tiny drop in an eye or mouth, a paper cut, and they had nowhere to hide.
Also dead are cullers themselves, killed in friendly fire, by Sombra C patients, and by police officers: Larry Chale, 33, Lawrence Meathen, 29, Robert Eggert, 40, Anastasia Fellows, 25, Michael Abel, 28, and two more who remain unidentified. Police have three men in custody, Damian Wing, 21, Jeffrey Parro, 27, and Shawn Rumanski, 32. Though cameras at the rehabilitation center show many more cullers on scene, all three have refused to speak with authorities about their companions in this night of blood-
Then Zaley knew why the cop asked about Dad’s whereabouts. They thought he might have been one of the cullers. The bullet that tore her arm apart could have come from one of her father’s guns. Maybe the biggest one he kept in his bedroom, sending a fat bullet through the air and into her flesh. If not Dad’s gun, then one of the guns of his ridiculous Shepherd friends. Not content to do their paces, they had become cullers of the human flock.
The roommate turned off the television. Zaley shifted to relieve her aching arm, and the monkey clashed and giggled. Mom jumped up to see what was wrong.
“Dad shot me,” Zaley said blankly.
“Your father did not shoot you!” Mom hissed. “He was at a party over at his friend Jake’s. They’re Shepherds, not cullers! They’ve all been interviewed by the police, none arrested, and Jake’s neighbors confirmed they were there!”
Without her cell phone, Zaley felt naked. There was no other phone in the room. The nurses would not tell her if anyone else from Cloudy Valley High was in the hospital, as that broke privacy laws. Mom wouldn’t let Zaley borrow her cell, saying there was time for that later and she had to focus her energy on getting better. Focus it how? She was just lying there.
Only from the television did she get updates. Two of the three missing students turned up in Salmon Park, shaken and dehydrated but otherwise uninjured. Search parties continued to hunt for Brennan. Stephen Chang was interviewed at home, where he was recovering from a concussion. Zaley’s heart jumped to see a familiar face. “Brennan and I were running away from the battle in the park, and then we got separated somehow in the woods. Please keep looking for my friend. You gotta shout loud for him. He’s a little deaf.”
“That must have been terrifying,” said a voice off-screen.
Testily, Stephen said, “Of course it was! We were just trying to get to the party and all of a sudden there were zombies and cullers everywhere, driving us off the road! We thought we were going to die out there.”
The camera cut to Brennan’s mother, who sobbed into a microphone and pleaded for prayers and candle lighting. Zaley missed the soft, shaking glow of her tealight. It was in her backpack, and that was in Micah’s car. Where was Micah? Zaley knew almost every person on the list of the dead, either Welcome Mat members or acquaintances from classes, and she was treacherously relieved that the list did not name her closest friends. But if they were home and safe, surely they would have tried to get in contact? Maybe Mom was intercepting them, happy to have Zaley pinned to a bed and under control. Or it could be that some of them were part of the unnamed dozens who contracted Sombra C. Zaley didn’t want to think about that.
After Mom went home for the night (thank God for the break from her stifling attentions) a nurse came in. Zaley asked a little breathlessly, “What happens if someone comes to the hospital with Sombra C?”
The nurse checked over Zaley’s arm. “We have a special floor upstairs to treat patients coming in with health complaints who also have Sombra C. You have nothing to be concerned about.” Having the dressings changed was painful, and Zaley’s stomach turned to see the clear plastic adhesive with a smear of blood bubbled beneath it.
“But new ones?” Zaley asked, looking away to avoid vomiting. “New cases? Do they get their stamps here and then get sent home?”
“Oh, no. They’re shuttled into San Francisco for stamps; we don’t have the technology to do it here at the hospital. We’re very careful. Our waiting rooms are sterilized every day, and we perform saliva tests on a regular basis. So don’t worry! You aren’t going to catch Sombra C in here.” As the nurse rounded the bed, the monkey clashed and giggled.
Wanting to throttle that stupid toy, Zaley asked, “Could you take that one away when you go, please? Or turn it off?” The nurse took it away.
Her right arm felt dead yet pinpricked at the same time. The doctor visited for a whirlwind five-minute check-up of her arm. She would have to wear a sling for five to six weeks to let the muscles start growing back. After checking on the swelling, he asked how Zaley was and Mom answered, “We’re fine!”
Zaley couldn’t even die right. It wasn’t fair that she’d gotten herself shot after all and then lived. Lived to continue this going-nowhere life. Pleased with her progress, the doctor said that the physical therapy department would be in touch to set up an appointment for late January. Also, she was going to be discharged tomorrow. Then her job was to rest and enjoy vacation. Zaley smiled politely while Mom nodded with enthusiasm and talked about all of the presents waiting under the tree.
When Dad came for a visit, Mom said, “Show Zaley the pictures of your party, honey! You had such a good time. There are so many Shepherds in that little club now that they had to split up into three houses to celebrate.”
Did you shoot me? Zaley wondered. Was that you among the cullers?
But Dad had pictures of his Shepherd party, and how could he have been at Murdoch or the Welcome Mat celebration when he was so out of shape? She wanted to snatch his phone away to call Elania and Corbin, but she only looked obediently at scenes of merriment. In a foreign living room was a tree and lights, a wooden Christmas pyramid on a coffee table with heat rising from the lit candles to the propeller. Dad was engulfing a slim white recliner in the center of the shot, a big smile on his face and a beer in one hand. The other hand was making a fist with a two over his heart. Men and women were crouched around him, all giving the same symbol and their eyes bright with happiness. So he had been at a party. Not shooting up the rehab and chasing zombies into a roomful of teenagers. The proof was right there in his phone.
Brennan had been found, staggering out of the woods and collapsing on a lawn. The reporter said that he’d had an encounter with a Sombra C patient from the west wing, and the second reporter shook his head grimly. Zaley looked out the door when people went by, hoping to see a stretcher with Brennan on it. Even though she barely knew him, she could not stop herself. She was that hungry for a connection back to school. But he wouldn’t be on her floor, not if the patient gave him Sombra C. Even now he might be in a shuttle going north for a stamp.
She watched the news while Mom was in the bathroom, and when Mom came back and wanted to turn it off, Zaley refused to give over the remote. Four Sombra C patients from the rehabilitation center were still unaccounted for, three from the west wing and one from the east. The news showed the capture of the east wing resident, who had walked all the way home to Penger. Police raided the house and cuffed ten members of the man’s family for trying to shield him. His mother’s screams were caught on a microphone (He’s only 41%! Leave us alone! He’s only 41%!) as the house was shaken down. The man was led out, discovered hiding in a closet with his young son. The child was ripped wailing from his arms t
o be taken for testing; his father was marched to a squad car to be transported to some other secured facility.
Blue Hill, Cloudy Valley, Salmon Park, Penger, and other nearby communities were on high alert. One west wing patient was known to be somewhere in Salmon Park, because she attacked nighttime joggers passing by an unlit playground. That area had been shut down for a search, residents warned not to leave their garages open or houses unlocked, nor to let their children play outside unattended. Armed guards hired by stores stood around in Salmon Park’s downtown to protect holiday shoppers. Police requested that no Shepherds or volunteers join in the search of the woods. The three cullers in custody were still refusing to speak. Their families had been interviewed, shedding little light as two were long estranged, and the mother of the third said her boy wouldn’t hurt a gnat.
Her arm throbbed and the nurse was late with more medication. Zaley gritted her teeth and bore it, refusing to ask for help in reaching the call button, which had slipped over the side of the bed. Being cut off so completely from her friends was far worse torture than her injury. The medication came to dull her pain and irascible feelings. Mom got the remote back. Hating to sink to this level but realizing it had to be done, Zaley mentioned that a phone case on the shopping channel was cute. It was baby blue with fat white polkadots and smiling cat faces, something for an eight-year-old. Mom liked the pink one better. Yet the seed was planted.
Three of her fingers did not move. Zaley pinched them to test for sensation. That was still there. She could not make a fist. Then her arm vanished altogether and she woke up, frantic to see that she still had it. Yes, it was there. Her fingers had some feeling, but did not move very much. Along the outside of her right hand, just below her little finger, she could not tell that she was touching herself at all. Oh, fuck. She was right-handed! How was she going to take notes in class?
What did an intelligent young woman do? An intelligent young woman learned to write with her left hand; she recorded lectures on her phone to play back later since she couldn’t keep up. Asking for a piece of paper and pencil from a nurse, Zaley sat up in bed at three in the morning to make wobbly letters with her left hand on the stand. Her handwriting had been better in kindergarten! The paper shifted under her palm, messing up the clumsy attempts at her name, and she pinned it down with a glass of water. Zaley. Zaley. Zaley. She wrote out the alphabet and numbers to thirty, determined to do this every day until she was proficient. It felt wrong in her brain to write with her left hand. Sometimes the letters came out backwards.
Seeing her activity on the next visit, the nurse said, “Draw, too, honey. My nephew had an awful fall from a ladder years ago, and that’s what he did while his dominant arm healed. Stick figures, trace, buy a coloring book and markers. Everything you did when you were small and learning for the first time.”
“It feels so weird,” Zaley said.
“That will ease up. You’re making new neural connections in your brain.”
Zaley liked how that sounded, new neural connections. She probably still had coloring books in her closet. But it would take effort to dig them out. Easier to ask Mom to buy some art supplies for the preschooler she wanted Zaley to be anyway.
An intelligent young woman would take every opportunity to practice strengthening her left hand. Foil was securely fastened to the plastic lip of the fruit cup at breakfast. Every time Zaley tugged the tab, the foil and plastic lip moved together. Picking it up, she wrapped her left hand around the cup and tugged at the foil tab with her teeth. It tore open and spilled liquid on her hospital gown. Zaley set the cup down and daubed at the material with the napkin. Her armpits smelled. But she’d gotten it open, dammit, without help.
The incident was already fading from the news, the lead story of Blue Hill now a runner-up behind fresher horrors. A man had died from sepsis, from trying to cut the stamp from his neck. A fire was raging north of Los Angeles. Blue World Air lost a plane over the Atlantic, killing all three hundred people on board. A culler in Washington had been tied up, tortured, and infected with Sombra C. A tiny, refurbished community in Oregon had opened, only accepting people with the virus. Mom stole the remote when she came in and Zaley wanted to scream. Whoever pulled the trigger should have gotten her through the heart. The head. The abdomen. Something that she could not have survived.
She was discharged two days after Christmas. Not allowed to walk out of the hospital and that was a final indignity to be rolled along. Mom practically dashed to punch the elevator button, to open the car door, to close it. Zaley sat back in the seat while her father complained about how long the discharge had taken. He had the party pictures in his phone, yet she did not trust her own eyes. As Mom got in, Zaley said to her father, “Did you know cullers were going to attack Murdoch?”
He spluttered. Mom closed the door and said, “What’s wrong?”
“You ask that question again!” Dad bellowed.
Steeling herself from his anger, Zaley said, “Did you know cullers were going to attack Murdoch?”
“Rosalie Grace!” Mom cried. “Of course he didn’t know!”
“No right to make a confinement point here,” Dad exclaimed, rather than answer the question. “This is a country of the people, and the people should have a say in a dangerous confinement point being opened in their own community!”
They drove home in silence. It felt like a hundred years had passed since she’d seen her bedroom. Exactly as she left it, minus Chloe Goes Pee-Pee. Tucked into the corner was her backpack, which had been in Micah’s car. “How did that get here?”
Mom was ushering her into bed. “Your friend’s mother dropped it off days ago.”
Zaley slid under the blanket, careful not to jostle her arm, and bit down on a shriek that this information had been withheld from her. “How’s Micah?”
“Well . . .”
“Mom, I’m not two years old! How is Micah?” Zaley exploded.
“She’s a very sick girl,” Mom said while tucking in the blankets.
“You mean she has Sombra C.”
“Her mother is just devastated,” Mom said, and Zaley refrained from the snappish question of which one. Her arm hurt like hell, since it was time for her medication. In her backpack was her laptop, but she could not seem eager to have her backpack or Mom might take it away. Pretend to sleep, get Mom out of the room, and then she could slip out of bed and retrieve her computer.
But her explosion was not going to pass without consequence, and Mom said fiercely, “You never should have been at that party! Look what’s happened!”
“It wasn’t the party’s fault that cullers-”
“To leave me not knowing where you were or what you were doing, to not even tell me you were president of a club at your school!” Mom said in fury. “I had to learn it from your friend’s mother and stood there looking like a fool. What must she think of our family? President and I didn’t know! Why didn’t I know that, Zaley?”
Because it was mine, Zaley thought with hate. Because she never wanted to look up to the opening door in Welcome Mat and see her mother bustling through with a tray of smiley-face cupcakes. Because whenever Zaley in her entire life interacted with friends, Mom stepped in to divert the attention in some way. Because Mom would take it over, take it away, and leave Zaley with nothing. Nothing but her. “You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you! It wasn’t your business!”
Blood flushing her cheeks, Mom said in a rage, “You are my business. That’s what a mother is. I had to get a phone call from the police telling me to hurry to the hospital! You’re my only child, Zaley, you can’t ask me to bury my only child! How could you be so selfish?”
Selfish. When Zaley slept in a bed under a canopy, when her desk belonged to a child and her ancient toys were still in the corner! When she could not go out without receiving a million texts, when she wasn’t allowed to take driver’s ed with everyone else her age, when she didn’t have the autonomy to take care of her own goddamned acne! Mom wante
d to talk about selfish? Zaley said nothing, her thoughts clear in her eyes as she looked around the room. Mom said, “You’ve destroyed your arm for the rest of your life, you missed Christmas with your family, and the only thing you didn’t do was catch Sombra C at that party!”
Her pride unable to bear one more word, Zaley screamed, “Well, I’ll try harder next time! I have a fucking right to my life!” Mom walked out of the room. Now she was going to punish with silence, with tears.
But Zaley had a right to her life, didn’t she? That was the crux of their problem, which one of them owned the rights to Zaley’s life. It was Zaley, who had every right to go to a party on her own and have her arm blown away, a right to contract Sombra C or shoot herself in the face and Mom didn’t control that!
It was a struggle to do everything one-handed, but she would learn how to braid her hair with her toes rather than ask for it to be done for her. Her mind turned over the logistics of hooking her bra, and the solution came readily. She’d just wear her sports bra. Or go without if that wasn’t manageable and wear a thick sweatshirt.
Mom was banging around in the kitchen, and the television blared in the living room while the recliner squeaked. Getting out of bed, Zaley closed her door quietly, unzipped her backpack to retrieve the laptop, and wrestled with the cord to charge it. Then she settled back into bed and got the blankets up without knocking over the laptop. Her inbox was flooded with emails, dozens, hundreds of them, and tears stung in her eyes. They hadn’t forgotten her.
Clicking on the most recent message from Corbin, she read: I hope you’re okay. Please write back.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 31
