When the birds called, he tried to imitate them. There was nothing else to do but sit and think, warble and slowly die. Some people went walking, but it was dangerous to do that. Many just stayed in the lodge and only came out for meals. Mrs. Nakamura did that after prayer circle, where she bowed her head respectfully no matter the religion being voiced. She spent her days on one of the sofas, watching the fire burn out and the twins play in the great room. Their father only let them play in there and on the grass in the sunlight while he stood watch. Elania’s range wasn’t much larger than that. The horrific welcome they had received upon arriving here had scarred her. Even though the kings were gone, she carried the pole with her and never wandered. She asked Corbin to keep an eye on her, and for Austin to do so when Corbin couldn’t. If they were elsewhere, she stayed near Micah.
If they were freed tomorrow, would she always be afraid to be alone with strange men? That could be how deep the scars ran. She said that one could not be female in this society and not have a little fear. Whereas Austin just passed a guy on a sidewalk at night, Elania passed that guy and gripped the keys in her pocket. Austin was lost in his own thoughts; Elania was nervous and hoping for the best. You just never knew. That was the difference between being male and female. And on the hill . . . she had always had that normal edge of fear, yet here it was no longer an edge. Here the threat was on a wholly different, massive level, and she was shrinking in response. She marked men for who was safe and who was unknown. Corbin and Austin, Jerry the twins’ dad, Casper the reverend, the old guys Harv and Merv, the college guys Jesse and Samson, they were safe. The last thing on their minds was scoring one last piece of ass.
Austin didn’t like to see her shrinking, living in fear of dead kings. He didn’t like to think that he had ever been a stranger on the sidewalk making a girl nervous. He wished they could have seen into his heart that he wasn’t a threat. He was just thinking about homework or his job, or how if he plucked up the courage, he’d one day join a Gay Student Union at college and meet guys like him.
A man walked under Austin’s tree, cautious to check the shade before going forward. Being in the lodge all day and all night was very boring, which was why a few took the risk. Corbin was one of those, stretching out as Elania shrank in, daring zombies to kill him or the guards to blow him away for fun as some did.
The wind rustled through the trees, carrying the stink of the hill to the greater area of the park. People had to smell it and wonder what it was. The shit and the rot, the heaps of garbage . . . one day it would be the decay of Austin’s body that people smelled. He thought of a family looking for a place to have a picnic. The woman flapped out a blanket and as the fabric lowered, her nose wrinkled. “Ugh! It stinks!” Then they found somewhere else to eat.
The virus was laughing to find Austin untended. That was what he heard in the wind.
Some people asked Micah to kill them. The first one had been an old man, who asked one night to die before he went feral and hurt someone. Micah agreed to give him that in the morning, when everyone went down for breakfast. She respected his wish to never become what terrorized them.
In daylight, the reverend came to the man and prayed with him since he was a Christian. People hugged him and shook his hand. Then Austin watched Micah and the man walk away, and she came back alone. The bloody blade she had wiped off on the man’s shirt, but specks of it were still there and she scrubbed it away with tufts of grass. The whole day she seemed fine, but that night he put his hand to her cheek and felt it wet with tears. She was so controlled that she didn’t even shake to cry. Rolling over, she buried her face in his chest and whispered, “He said thank you. Those were his last words, to thank me for killing him.” She hadn’t cried for the kings. They deserved to die.
“It was quick,” Austin said.
“Aussie, when you’re dying, those last seconds last an eternity.” Three times altogether she had done that now, for the old man and a woman named Daffodil, and after that a second man.
Other people committed suicide by climbing the fence, forcing the guards to shoot them. That was what Austin was going to do. He should pick which part of the fence he wanted to go for, a place that gave a guard a clean shot. Then his body would slip to the strip of grass between the fence and the water, die and putrefy and ruin picnics.
He smelled so bad even now. No showers, no soap, no toilet paper, no deodorant. He hadn’t been able to shave. Having facial hair was weird. All of the excitement in being able to grow it was really so he could shave it off. His nails were bitten down, his teeth serving as clippers, and that was pretty much all of the personal grooming in which he’d engaged. Some people tried to bathe in the river, but there was so much garbage on it and so many bodies floating around within the blue. Several bodies had gotten caught on rocks or logs at the bottom. A body of a woman was trapped near the North Bridge, facedown with her long red hair making eerie streams of kelp, one arm splayed out and the other crooked under her face. Now and then, bored guards shot people taking baths and laughed. They were a bunch of assholes playing sharpshooter. Some didn’t shoot but yelled at the women, “Hey! Show off your tits!”
Austin didn’t bother much with their details. They were just rotating black and white and tan faces on the watchtowers, mostly men and a crazy, chubby one that everyone avoided wherever he was posted. Unless you wanted to get shot, which sometimes people did. Then they sought him out. One woman had shouted, “Fuck you! Fuck you, fat ass! Can you even see your dick? Bet you can’t!” until the blast of a gun silenced her.
Where had Austin sat in his classes before Sombra C? The front, the middle, the back? Maybe that was the first thing the virus was eating, something relatively insignificant. A rock tumbled by the tree and he looked down to Micah, who shielded her eyes from the sunlight to see him. “We have a new arrival.”
That was his cue to climb down. She hated that he held more sway just by virtue of being a tall black guy. But the kings had found out the hard way not to dismiss Jubilee Eclipse Camborne, the former Cool Spoon employee and almost-valedictorian of Cloudy Valley High School.
The reverend met them at the stairs. He went to the bridge daily to welcome new arrivals, so they saw a friendly face at the end of the world. The new guy was named Adelfo. He looked mean, a wiry frame, slits for eyes and thin lips. His jeans were ripped and bloody at the knees, and he smelled vaguely of marijuana. That was how long Austin had been here, that he could ferret out the scent of pot from the overwhelming cascades of decay. Micah and Austin, Elania and Jerry stood at the entrance to the lodge and checked Adelfo over. He was nervous, and licked his lips as Casper made introductions. His eyes lingered on the switchblade and poles.
Then Micah explained the rules. There were one hundred fifty people or more sharing the great room, and everyone was to be treated with respect. If he forced himself on someone, he would be put out for the zombies to finish off. Pleading wouldn’t change her mind. It never had before. Keenly, she added, “What were you in for? Assault?”
“No, man!” the guy said, his voice a frightened squeak as someone hooted in the trees. “Drugs.”
“How did you know that he was in prison?” Austin whispered when the bell rang for dinner.
“I didn’t. Shot in the dark,” Micah said.
They went to the stairs. Austin was losing weight; they were all losing weight on those twice-daily television dinners. They came out still frozen or lukewarm, rubbery pasta and tough meat, chunks of corn solidified in the middle. But he ate it all. Incredibly, a couple of new arrivals tried to stay in shape by jogging the path around the river, and then they were sad. The only water was from the bottles they got at breakfast and dinner. The toilets were still mostly working in the lodge restrooms, but the sinks sprayed out filth. No one was about to drink from the river with the bodies in it.
This evening, the meal was single serve six-ounce thin crust pizzas. Some people picked off the pepperoni slices since they were vegetarians. Only
new ones did that. Others were more than willing to take them. Austin wanted to eat slowly and make it last, but they had to get inside. Most of the faces around him were different ones than when he had arrived. He’d watched the others start to blink at the sunlight, develop greater and greater lurches, and go silent. Forget how to get to the North Bridge, forget how to uncap their water bottles, forget how to lower their pants before they peed. Animal sounds infiltrated what words they had left, there were the irrational bursts of anger . . . it didn’t always happen in that order, but it happened.
One night soon, he would be roving around this mountain of tears while people shook and shivered in the lodge from his cries. The virus laughed and laughed within him, the freeze of Zyllevir softening its shackles. He listened to the laughter as he helped Mrs. Nakamura up the stairs. Everyone was congregated at the doors to the great room to be sorted.
“I’m still . . . good,” Clarissa said anxiously, and Austin met Micah’s eyes. She allowed the girl in, even with the hesitation. It wouldn’t be long now. Then she would be sent to the outside restroom, or outside altogether if those inside didn’t want to share the space with her. Twice people had had freak-outs in there and killed the other ones. Clarissa had been on the hill at one of those incidences. She was so young and so scared. She thought Micah’s striped hair was beautiful and wanted to do the same to her own. At least for tonight, the girl would be protected from the very thing she was gradually becoming.
“I don’t know who you think you are to make these decisions,” said the college girl with the big mouth after Clarissa made a relieved, lurching dash through the doors.
“If you don’t like my decisions, then you’re welcome to fight me for the honor,” Micah said.
The twins and their father were still fine. All of them bore minor infections and had taken their Zyllevir pills less than an hour before Shepherds stormed their home and killed the twins’ mother when she tried to protect them. She had been the only one in the family who wasn’t infected. Mrs. Nakamura was okay, but her lurch was growing more pronounced. Casper appeared to be doing well, although his right knee was stiff. One of the two guys from the local college seemed to have the virus growing very slowly; in the other guy, it was much faster. When a child in the back wailed, Samson jerked his head around and bared his teeth. The reaction was there and gone in a second, but they blocked him entrance and Micah pointed to the outside restroom.
“Oh dear God,” Samson said in anguish. “Reverend?” Casper came forward to pray with him.
“We should put you out there and see how you like it,” the college girl said sulkily within the great room. She was a gnat that wouldn’t go away, and once Micah had punched her in the face without a word. Austin could never remember her name, nor could he stand how she hung around to criticize. It was all well and good for her to do so when she hadn’t been around with the kings. Then she would respect what Micah had done to change everything. What Austin had done, too.
No. He would not think about it. He wasn’t a killer, yet he had killed. He wasn’t a thief, yet he had stolen. He wasn’t a zombie, yet he was here.
He whirled around heatedly to confront her, Laura or Lauren or Laurie or whoever she was. “You think we don’t know that one night someone in here will be turning us out? That’s where we’re all headed.”
People carried in sticks and bits of wood for the fire. One of the kings had had a lighter, which Micah now carried. At night when Austin couldn’t sleep, he was tempted to block off the chimney and kill them all with carbon monoxide. That was a painless way to go, just breathing it in as they slept until they breathed no more.
He was so afraid to die. He was even more afraid of the days leading up to it, leaving pieces of himself around the hill. Up in the tree might have been the last time he remembered his class schedule. In the lodge tonight was where he could lose his birthday or the knowledge of who the Shepherds were.
People passed through the doors to the great room, one plucked out here and there for the restroom. A woman had a five-year-old who was far more affected than she was, and when Micah said no to the boy, the woman went to the restroom with him. That was how much she loved her son. As he went wild, she would still be holding him. Casper stood at the door to the restroom and gave prayers for anyone who wished them.
“I need to tell . . . you . . . so much,” Samson said, kneeling before the reverend. It had been hard for him to get down with stiff knees. “I . . . cheated. On my . . . SATs. I cheated. On the math portion. I copied . . . off my friend. He was better at it. And when I was . . . in junior high, I keyed . . . Mr. . . . Mr. Sss . . . he was my band teacher. I hated him . . . he made fun of how . . . I played the trumpet . . . so I keyed his car. Someone else got blamed. Suspended. I’m sorry I . . . did that. I’m . . . so sorry. And once . . . once my friends threw garbage at a . . . homeless guy. I just . . . laughed. I was sixteen. I didn’t . . . I never went to church much. I thought . . . it was boring. I look at my life . . . and I’m so . . . I’m so . . . ashamed. I should have been . . . better. I don’t want to go to . . . to hell.”
Austin had heard so many last-minute confessions like Samson’s. One man had wept for cheating on his wife and busting up his marriage thirty long years ago; a woman had grasped her grown daughter’s hand and apologized for not being a better mother. She asked God and her daughter to forgive her. People laid themselves bare before that restroom, unloaded all of the mistakes and regrets they walked around with everyday. Austin wasn’t going to do the same. Once Elania and Micah fell apart, Austin and Corbin were going to the fence. It wasn’t so bad to die if Austin had a friend with him. They’d sat in Welcome Mat together, in classes and in cars and at parties and on sofas playing video games, and now they’d be side-by-side in death.
The little boy cried in the restroom. Several women separated from the group to embrace his mother. With her eye on the sky through a broken window, Micah said, “Let’s move it along. The sun is setting.”
“Give them a minute, for Christ’s sake!” snapped the college girl.
“Austin, put her out if she can’t shut up,” Micah ordered. The girl backed away from the doors, horrified as Austin turned around. Half of him wanted to catch her, force her out the doors and wish her luck in finding a tree with branches low enough to climb. What would she have done with those four gang members? Let them in to fight in this room? Would she allow Samson and the boy to stay in here, risking attacks on people for talking too loudly or moving too quickly, or because of the brightness and crackling of the fire? She reminded him of egotistical Sally Wang, taking over Welcome Mat and thinking that her suggestions for improvements should be accepted without question.
God, what he wouldn’t give to see Sally, were she the one to release them from hell. He would kiss her pedicured feet and never say another bad word about her. But since she hadn’t come, he still had the luxury of his hatred. He clung to it. That was part of his old world, a familiar loathing. Sally Wang, Dale Summit, Rudy French, Mr. Yates, his mother . . . stupid Saylor for announcing that she had gotten into Senner on the day of the airport bombings to brighten everyone’s spirits . . . Austin missed that world.
The doors were closed with Casper the last one inside. The lock was an old-fashioned security bar, a plank settled into brackets. It wasn’t going to hold indefinitely. The pounding had been violent enough to shake the doors in the frame. It would have been safer had the brackets extended to the walls.
People cried. Someone scolded Adelfo to get off Micah’s sofa. Casper prayed in a weeping circle. Lila or Lara or Luna whispered hatefully to another girl about Micah. No, her name was Lorna. She was only two or three years older than Austin, but she acted like it was unfair that she wasn’t in charge of everything, and for no reason other than she existed.
Going to the fire, Corbin sat down and stared into it. As Elania shrank physically, he was shrinking emotionally. Austin could barely get him to speak. Micah was so disconnected, having
shrunk to the size of the confinement point. She never spoke of what was beyond the fence. Her mental borders ended there. They were reducing to basic components that couldn’t communicate with each other. Fear. Depression. Numbness. Despair.
The windows stretched all around the room. Half were so high that no one could reach them. The lower set had been blocked with planks before Austin was brought here. They were makeshift barriers. The nails had hailed from furniture, bashed through the wood and into the walls with rocks. The glass was broken on the other side, and speckles of blood were on the spears and planks.
People settled onto patches of carpet for the night. He heard the thumps of those in the outside restroom blocking the door. That door only had a push button lock, and it was broken. A fallen log had been carried in, one that stretched from the door to the opposite wall. It would be cramped in there tonight with a dozen people too wild for the great room yet not wild enough for the hillside.
“Tomorrow,” said a woman. “Tomorrow I’m going to the fence. I can’t take one more day of this.”
“What if we all raced for it at once and knocked it down?” asked a guy who had come yesterday. No one agreed to join his crusade. Pushing down the fences was not possible. The poles extended down into concrete at regular intervals. The only way over was to be a bird.
Micah shook hands with Casper, as she did every night. That was because people loved Casper unconditionally, and they had a more ambivalent relationship to her. If they saw her being friendly with someone adored and in power, someone who liked her back, it bolstered her position. She had related this to Austin dully, how she worked a subtle manipulation of the public opinion. That was also why she attended morning services, even though she didn’t believe a word of it. It was politics to her.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 92
