How could Micah have post-traumatic stress anyway? While she was currently in a confinement point? Austin thought that Lorna really pissed off Micah, but no, she wasn’t pissed off. The girl was just one more problem to be handled, and a fairly easy one at that. One day Micah would turn her out of the lodge without feeling any glee about it. Nor would she feel relief at the solution to the problem; other problems were surely coming down the pike.
Zaley was a problem.
It wasn’t Zaley so much as it was what she brought with her. The four of them had come to the confinement point on the same day as the boy named Colin. They had had hidden pills, and he had not. All possessed quite small infections, but the disease loosed from Zyllevir was taking a predictable course in the boy. Now he was relegated to the outside restroom. He didn’t cry or complain about this; Colin didn’t grasp where he was any longer. Sometimes he responded to his name, and other times he just stared blankly. He dribbled drool and piss. They could never clean him off enough to keep up.
The occupants of the outside restroom governed themselves. If they didn’t want someone that they judged too messed up to be in there, it was their task to expel him or her. In a day or so, they would turn out Colin. Or he just might not show up at the sorting late one afternoon. Often people wandered away into the trees during the days, wanting the shade to rest their eyes, and never came back. The one that stuck with Micah was a thickset older black man who self-sorted. She had waved him in, seeing no lurch and that he was still talking with little hesitation. He stopped at the open doors and said, “I look fine. But I don’t feel fine . . . my mind has great gaps in it and they’re getting bigger all the time. I’m feeling angry for no reason. So excuse me.” He shook his head about the restroom and went outside. She hadn’t even known his name.
It was common knowledge that the four of them had sneaked some Zyllevir inside. Not a lot, just enough to buy them a few extra weeks of health and sanity. No one begrudged them this. But they could not live on and on behind the fence, month after month with Zaley slipping them drugs, without people starting to question what was going on. Of course, all of the people doing the questioning were going to die. They could still pass on to the newest arrivals how odd it was that these four refused to succumb to their Sombra C.
Every time the gate to the South Bridge opened, the game changed.
Even the guards could notice suspiciously familiar faces below. Gosh, those four zombies have been hanging around an awful long while. What’s going on with that? Micah didn’t worry so much that Zaley would be discovered as she did that the observant guard would help usher the four of them into the next world in a barrage of bullets.
Three of them. She worried for three of them. She didn’t care for herself. All she wanted was one nighttime rove on the hill. Then this would stop.
Zaley wasn’t there at breakfast. The Shepherds had to have shifts for kitchen duty like they did with the watchtowers. Micah collected her breakfast and peered past the Shepherd. Behind the guy was a corridor leading to a kitchen. A tremendously fat girl with thin blonde hair and bright pink makeup was walking by with a bin of plates in her arms. Was it real? It could have just been a movie screen in there.
The switchblade was back in her pocket. It had been too heavy to carry last night, and this morning she was too light without it. Austin hadn’t wanted to return the blade, and promised to hold onto it for another day. But the blade was her weight to carry, and it was a mistake to have let go of it even for a second to a trusted friend.
When breakfast ended, she helped Casper up to prayer circle. This was how she kept the web strong. He was losing words fast and it was frustrating him. He wanted to tell her something. His brain still worked, but the connections to his speech were being severed. She patted his arm in consolation. Grimacing, he tried again. “After . . . after the circle, Mi-Micah . . . please . . .”
He was asking to join the translucent family around her. “Yes. We’ll take a walk.”
“N-no. I won’t have you . . . do that for me. Will you . . . walk me . . . to the fence?”
Yes, she would do that for him. She would far rather do that. If he died by her blade, this sun in their darkness, people would remember. That death only worked against her. It was a relief that that was how he wanted to go. Clarissa’s pained, greenish-brown eyes were still so bright in her mind. In her last moments, the girl had known that Micah lied.
The light was hurting him too much to sit in the grass, so she walked him over to the shade. Ripples of upset went through the rows of people at their reverend in the trees. Casper squeezed Micah’s arm and said, “W-warn them . . . if they want to shake . . . hands or speak . . . one last time . . . say goodbye . . . warn . . . tell them. Tell them . . .”
“I’ll tell them.” Micah walked through the circle. All eyes were fastened to her. She stood beside Elania, who was waiting for the last people to pull up a patch of grass. When they settled, Micah asked, “May I?”
“Go ahead,” Elania said.
Facing the congregation, Micah said, “Casper has asked that I take him to the fence after morning services. It’s time. He asks for your prayers, and please visit over at the shade and say goodbye if you’d like.”
The circle lasted a long time. After every religion there had been acknowledged, Elania skipped the sermon and directed anyone who wanted to say goodbye to the shade. The line was enormous. Tears ran, hugs were given, and by the time it was done, six other people in the shade and three in the sunlight had decided that they were going to the fence, too. They would die with their reverend, let him lead them one last time. It saved Micah ten possible requests for blows of the switchblade.
If one person was brave, others also found the will to be brave.
They were a motley group of nine to join Casper, four women and five men, all different races and ranging in age from fifteen to sixty-nine. A college student. A cashier. A professor. A mail carrier. A high school sophomore. A home health care aide. What they had in common was that none of them had come to the confinement point with a greater than twenty-eight percent infection, all of them were completely controlled by Zyllevir, and they were done with this hellhole.
Micah had planned to escort Casper on her arm, but the others held onto him, to each other, and walked through the trees down the western side of the hill. Everyone followed to bear witness. Someone began to recite the Lord’s Prayer and it raced through the crowds. Micah walked among them and listened. It was interesting to her how people didn’t attend prayer circle just for the portion that was relevant to them. The Christians and Muslims did not get up and walk away when Elania spoke to the Jews. The Jews and Wiccans never quit the scene when Casper was addressing the Christians. Everyone was respectful of the other languages for God, and they sat from start to finish. Even a man who was an atheist attended every morning, to sit in the peace and acceptance. There was no proselytizing, or snarky comments about Jesus freaks or witches. People came to connect to Spirit in the way that had meaning to them, and in quiet understanding that others did it differently. The one zombie Shepherd who castigated Elania as the Antichrist had caused an outcry among every faith and lack of faith there.
Austin took Micah’s hand when they stopped skidding down the hillside to walk on a flight of stairs. She allowed this, as he was believed to be her boyfriend. It was one of the few shreds of humanity she let others see, closeness to a guy, and it was a lie. That pleased her, a tiny fuck you to everyone. You think you know me? You don’t know a thing. His hand was cold in hers.
Corbin and Elania were mixed in with the crowd. He was carrying his bow. The oldest of the nine going with Casper was Jewish, and the balding man lurched around to wave to Elania when the Lord’s Prayer finished. She raised her voice to deliver his prayers. He blew her a kiss in gratitude and lurched down the next step.
March of the zombies. Bodies were strewn around, bloating and stinking. The steps were steep, and those in the lead had to go slowly wit
h their stiff knees. Everyone bottlenecked behind them and waited patiently. As Elania wrapped up her words, a hymn broke out from another throat and raced through the people. Austin was crying and Micah whispered, “Oh, Aussie.”
“It’s ugly. It’s beautiful,” Austin said.
The ten in the front reached the path and everyone gathered tensely. The water was shallow here by a watchtower. The guards were all the same to Micah, who rarely looked up to them. Like the street of San Francisco bustling with cars, the guards were part of a backdrop. This one was a guy. He was looking at a cell phone.
Casper faced the huge crowd on the hillside and stairs. When he held up a hand, silence fell. Even the birds quieted and the breeze held back. In a trembling voice, he said, “It has been . . . an honor. May God . . . may God . . .” His eyes trailed away and they waited. He returned to himself and said strongly, “May God be with you!” Then he walked into the water.
The others went in after him, some singly and others holding hands. The rest spread out under the trees to watch. Austin’s grip on Micah was painful. She needed the pain from it as much as he needed the comfort. Glancing over his cell phone at the splashes, the guard shouted, “Get the fuck out of the water!”
Casper yelled and all ten of them began to run. They lifted their legs as high as their knees allowed and shouted. People broke from the trees to follow them, another five, another ten, leaping from the path to the water. The guard dropped his phone, lifted the gun, and fumbled to blow a whistle. It made a shrill, babyish toot and fell from his lips.
The Jewish man crumpled beneath the water in the first spray of bullets, as did two of the women. The rest kept running for the strip of grass on the other side. Everyone yelled on the shore, both wordlessly and chanting GOGOGO. Jerry hefted his daughter Emmeline into his arms and said, “I love you, sweetie.” She buried her face in his neck and shoulder, crying. To his son, he said, “Ready, buddy?”
“We’re going to be with Mom,” Willy said solemnly, and they ran into the river.
The gun chattered frantically to thin the surge moving to the fence. One after another they were falling, blood flying through the air and figures dropping to the water. Two more people broke from the trees and Micah took a step in reflex after them. She wanted to run, but Austin was holding her fast. When she struggled to get away, he said, “No!”
If Zaley hadn’t been there, all four of them would have run for the fence. In that instant, Micah hated her for coming. This could have ended. She wished that she had never met Zaley Mattazollo, who was fucking Micah over and didn’t even have the decency to know.
Willy fell, a bullet relieving him of the top of his head. Jerry fell after him, Emmeline spinning out of his arms. She crashed into the water and lifted her head, raising a hand to those on the shore and wailing for help. Lorna dashed from the trees, demanding, “Don’t shoot!” to the guard as she charged in to save the girl. Bullets sent them both under the water. It was turning red.
The game was changing. Micah had to rework the threads of the web.
The reverend clambered out of the water to the grass as a second guard scurried up the ladder to the watchtower. Those on the shore yelled for Casper and the eight coming up behind him. Then it was seven. Six. Hands thrust into the links of the fence, shoes wedged into the diamonds, and everyone howled at the fence being mounted.
Five.
“Shoot! Shoot!” one of the guards was shouting in hysterics.
Although Micah hadn’t struck the killing blows with her blade, those dead in the water and on the grass were rising from it in translucent forms to join her family. Justin wore a grin at how freaked out the guards were; Clarissa had covered her ears from the loud blasts. Grandpa Cloud shook hands with the old Jewish fellow and Daffodil beckoned to the women. Lorna rose from the water with the girl and Jerry pulled up the boy.
None of it was happening. But Micah saw it in her head as clearly as she saw the massacre with her eyes. Bodies were moving along in the current. A second gun chattered out of step to the first.
Three.
Then it was only Casper. His back was bloody, a bullet having grazed beneath his shoulder blades. It wasn’t stopping him. Still scaling the fence and they screamed, “GOGOGO!” in unison for him. Another person ran into the water and the idiot guards swung their guns away from the one climbing the fence to kill the man who was still at a distance from it. He fell, bullets riddling the water to keep him down.
Casper reached the top and threw out his tattooed arms to embrace Golden Gate Park. The guns swung back and filled him with bullets.
And when he fell, it was on the other side.
Micah was screaming in the chorus. He had gotten out. Died out there and it wasn’t a backdrop, it was a real world that she had lived in and one to which she wanted to return. Her hippie mothers, her occasionally cool older sister, Harbo in her neighbors’ backyard, her stupid high school, Dale Summit’s windshield, college applications and her V-6 and Pizza Whippers . . . It was the world where the weight of a blade wasn’t riding her back and the web had someone else at the center testing threads for what burden they could bear.
Casper had gotten out.
The guns swung to the trees. Suddenly Austin was dragging her up the hill, Corbin and Elania hurrying along at their sides as the guards unloaded their guns blindly into the canopy. Someone fell. The rest of them sprinted up the steep stairs and the hillside until they were back on top in the sunlight. Laughing, crying, raging, screaming, calling for God to throw open those pearly gates, rubbing sore shins, and Micah walked away as they settled in for another prayer circle.
Her family was all around her save Casper, who had died on the other side where he wasn’t trapped. No part of his soul was captive on the hill, and the image of him with his arms thrown out was seared into her retinas. Bloody and viral and radiant.
In her early days of captivity, she had plotted ways to escape but hit the same brick walls. In the places where the guards couldn’t see as well, Micah watched them look over the sides of their towers to speak to people beyond the tarps. There were guards on foot below. Then there were the bridges. The gate to the South Bridge opened for new arrivals nearly every afternoon. If they rushed it . . . but multiple guards brought in those people, and all of them were armed. Zombies bottlenecked on the bridge were essentially fish in a barrel. That left the North Bridge, which led to no gate whatsoever. Just a heavy glass partition with a bucket.
Zaley had gotten them into this mess, supplying Zyllevir to keep them alive, and Zaley was going to get them out. She had to do more than pass in pills through the bucket. Micah didn’t have the time to wait for the world to pull its collective head out of its ass. At any second, she could lose control of the confinement point. Many of her strongest threads were now floating around the river, and her greatest thread was free on the other side of the fence. He had gotten out. That was the biggest fuck you of all.
She picked up a piece of bark. Zaley should have stayed away since Micah hadn’t shot her to death after all. Finished high school, gone on to college and gotten a job, met a guy and popped out a couple of Sombra C free kids. Had a nice life. Instead she’d interfered. Micah should have been able to choose death today, rather than stand on the shore as others won their freedom.
What had been Casper’s final thought? Or had he just reveled in the sprawl of the park beneath him? The trees, the pathways, a road in the distance . . . They hadn’t been able to take away his one last look upon the world. Now they were stuck cleaning up his mess, afraid to get his Sombra C on them.
If Zaley passed a semi-automatic through the bucket, Micah could shoot down a guard and get everyone over the fence. Shoot the guards on the other side and run . . . but the bucket wasn’t large enough for a big gun.
Your friend was only trying to help. That was Grandpa Cloud as she cut the blade across the palm of her left hand. Micah knew that. But keeping her alive couldn’t mean keeping her alive on the hill.
Unless the Army was coming, or some other solution was on its way, then Zaley couldn’t expect them to live indefinitely in a confinement point. If there was no plan, she had to let them go. Micah dipped her index finger as a paintbrush into the oozing blood cupped within her palm.
When it was time for dinner, she walked down to the North Bridge and took her seat on the railing. Resolutely, she looked away from the glass. She couldn’t stand to know yet if it were Zaley on the other side. People filed past her. The current had brought some of the newest bodies to the bridge. She stared at Jerry, who had gathered his beloved children close to run into the hail of bullets. His last protective act had been to make sure they died together. So he didn’t become a monster and scare them. So a new king to come to power didn’t abuse his babies when they were alone. Micah’s position was tenuous, precarious, limited . . . he hadn’t trusted it. He couldn’t, and neither could she.
The line came to an end much more quickly than it had at breakfast. Up in the watchtower, no less than three guards were standing there to keep an eye on the zombies. Everything was calm. It was actually dead quiet.
Micah assisted a stumbling woman down the length of the bridge to the glass. It was Zaley in there. She was every bit a Shepherd except for her eyes, which held too much concern. Food came through for the woman, who pulled it out clumsily and stood there for a moment in a blank space. Then she got down to the grass, hands reaching out to her.
Another water bottle and microwave meal were placed in the bucket. Micah pressed the bark to the glass and waited for Zaley to look up. It was real on the other side, the room that the Shepherds stood in to dole out meals, the corridor and the kitchen. Somewhere there was a parking lot where these Shepherds left their cars, beds that they slept in, desks where they’d sat as students and drive-thrus they crept through for burritos.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 98
