Five days to find Arquin, or the harbor if that didn’t pan out, and what if the harbor didn’t have Zyllevir? Zaley didn’t ask. If the harbor didn’t have pills, Corbin was out of time. They didn’t have a gun with which he could shoot himself rather than go feral, and she couldn’t shoot him with the bow. Her weak right arm wouldn’t allow that, nor did she believe she could do it even if she had the physical strength. He’d end up dying some way, and then she’d be alone. But if she were infected, it wouldn’t be long before she followed him into death.
She dozed, and he woke her up when the feral sounds were gone. They crept out of the farm and slipped up the freeway. A pile-up blocked the southbound lanes and pushed them into northbound. Walking and walking and walking . . . She was in disbelief when they came upon a sign announcing Petaluma. Somewhere west of this city was the base, if it actually existed.
The farm had eaten up a lot of their travel time, and the sky was turning from black to gray. The hunt for Arquin would have to wait for tomorrow night. They bypassed two off-ramps when ferals howled below, Zaley worried they were going to miss this city altogether, and got off at the next one into a downtown area. Walking upon the overpass, they crouched at a lone truck going down the freeway.
A massive shopping center was on the other side of the overpass. A man appeared so suddenly at the edge of the lot that Zaley almost screamed. Corbin lifted his bow as the man lifted a gun. An older guy in a baseball cap, he said, “Ferals, Shepherds, or militia, if you’re any of those, we don’t want you here.”
“We’re not any of those,” Corbin said.
“You sure?”
“We’re sure. We’re high school students,” Zaley said.
“That doesn’t mean you aren’t any of those things, kid. What brings you to Petaluma?”
“Just looking for food and a place to crash,” Corbin said. It was on the tip of Zaley’s tongue to snap that it wasn’t any of this man’s business why they were here.
“There’s a shelter close by, but it only takes women,” the man said. “A soup kitchen, that’s two blocks off. It’s open at dinner everyday, and every other day for lunch.” He examined Zaley with a degree of concern. She had misread him and was glad that she hadn’t snapped. “Go to the shelter. It’s down a little farther on Washington. You’re safer there. Iron Fists go through here now and again. They cause problems for women.”
She wanted to ask about Arquin, but it could label them as Sombra Cs. They said goodbye and went down the sidewalk past a city pool and a library. Zaley searched the surroundings for suitable shelter as the sky held steady at its deep grayish color. Trashed restaurants, a closed gas station, train tracks with weeds growing on them, and an empty field . . . There was a grocery store complex past that, which they had to enter when a feral lurched into the road. A woman shouted, “He went that way! Quick!”
“I thought they didn’t want Shepherds here,” Zaley whispered.
“They could just be killing ferals,” Corbin said. Cutting down the driveway between a nail salon and a Cool Spoon, they followed a path to a bridge over a river. The middle of the bridge was chewed out. Corbin leaped the gap first and put out his arms to catch Zaley. The bridge groaned when she landed and they hurried off it. Down by the water, something prowled in the shadows.
They ended up climbing a flight of stairs in a commercial area to a pizza restaurant on the second floor. Beneath it was a store called Christmas Wonderland, the windows unbroken and trees decorated inside. Compared to what Zaley had seen over the last months, Petaluma was remarkably whole. Windows were bashed in at a lot of places, but fire hadn’t claimed too much.
She was nervous going in, but there was no one in the restaurant. It was just a sea of dusty wooden tables and chairs, and placards advertising Tuesday Specials in a precise line on the bar. The lock on the door was busted, so she dragged over a chair and hitched it under the knob like she had once done in her bedroom at home. Corbin paced from room to room to make sure they were alone. The floor squeaked under his feet. It wasn’t a big place, just a tiny banquet room, the main floor, the bar, the kitchen, and restrooms. The banquet room still had a HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FLYNN banner on the wall.
They had done well this night, despite the interruptions. Sharing a meal on the floor in the big room, they rose to their knees and peeked out the windows as a screeching feral went by. A gunshot rang out after it was gone. Then they returned to their food. Corbin breathed in deeply and with relish. “This place hasn’t been open in ages and it still smells like pizza.”
“It’s a good smell,” Zaley said, swiping a menu from a table. “I’ll have the extra-large pizza, double crust with extra cheese. Garlic bread and salad and a soda. Want to splurge on dessert?”
“Yes! Do they have meat toppings for my half of the pizza?”
She skimmed down the options. “Ham, pepperoni, sausage, hickory-smoked bacon, beef, chicken breast. Which one?”
“All of them stacked six inches high. What’s for dessert?”
“We can have cheesecake, chocolate cake, cookies, ice cream, or something called a Lava Bomb.”
“All of them,” Corbin said in delight.
“We’re going to weigh five thousand pounds.”
He moved closer to her and whispered lasciviously, “Then we’ll roll each other to Arquin and have a lot of squishy sex.”
Zaley laughed, keeping her voice down as he kissed her neck. She had come across a condom in one of those cubicle drawers and squirreled it away in her pocket without mentioning it to him. It was a little creepy to take a condom that someone else purchased and planned to use for sex, but this was a make-do world. They’d done nothing more than feel each other up for the last weeks. Zaley was fine to wait before they made love again. Sex overwhelmed her so much the first time, but the contentedness of holding off was starting to wear down. It felt so good when Corbin touched her, and they were only going to get better at sex by having it.
But not on the squeaking wooden floor of a fucking pizza parlor! Even on a bed of towels and spare clothes, it squeaked every time they shifted their weight. That gave them the giggles and detracted from the mood, yet the silliness of their situation added to it. She breathed in pizza and laughed as he gave up on kissing to blow raspberries along her stomach. Who knew how many tens of thousands of people had sat in these chairs, eating their meals and asking for the check, and now Zaley was rolling around on the floor with her shirt hiked up and Corbin ripping fart sounds against her skin.
Then he climbed on top of her and gave her a real kiss, like he’d forgotten his Sombra C. His tongue pressed into her mouth and she accepted it eagerly. Everything in her mind stilled. Then he drew away to give far more chaste kisses to her cheeks. She was about to tell him about the condom when he asked, “Do you want first watch or second?”
“Whatever you want,” Zaley said amiably.
“You’re doing it again.”
She smiled and he kissed her chin. It was a bad habit to give in to whatever he wanted (her mother’s yes, dear to her father echoed in her head and disturbed her), and Corbin wouldn’t let Zaley get away with it the second time around in their relationship. “I’ll take first. I’m still feeling pretty awake.”
“Good, I’m wiped out.” As he lay down to sleep, she packed up their uneaten food. That was a lesson they’d learned many times over since leaving Cloudy Valley. If a problem raised its ugly head and they had to split fast, any of their belongings not currently in use should be packed up tight and ready to go.
He was unconscious in a minute. Nothing was going on outside when she peered out the window. She killed time with reading the menu, changing her order a dozen times to the imaginary, infinitely patient waiter, and paced around to look at the pictures on the walls. In the waiting area was an old local newspaper. Taking it back to the window to read in the growing light, it occurred to her that the very audible squeaking from her footsteps might travel down to anyone below in the Christmas store. I
t was better to stay in one place.
If the date on the newspaper indicated the day the restaurant had closed, that was in March. Most of the articles were cheerfully oblivious to the world at large. Fatima Gonzalez, 32, had gotten arrested for public drunkenness and indecency at a city park, where she took off her shirt by the playground and yelled obscenities at toddlers in the sandbox. A new stoplight was being installed at a dangerous intersection. Teenagers were suspected in a fireworks explosion in an empty lot between homes. Food For the Elderly needed volunteer drivers, and begged for donations. There was little to no concept of the alien world coming up fast.
A letter to the editor reflected more rancorous feelings. The Petaluma Shepherds were being a bother during drop-off and pick-up times at local elementary schools, interfering with traffic, knocking on windows for saliva checks, and freaking out the kids. The angry father who authored the letter was refusing to comply with a neck and trunk check and encouraged others to do the same. It had degenerated into fistfights and stand-offs with weapons many times at multiple schools, and people were going to get killed over this if the police didn’t put a stop to it.
She read through the newspaper twice to make it last. Then she looked outside. People were going by, gazing through store windows. A boy climbed through the shattered window of a dark gymnasium and stood on a treadmill there. His two friends chortled as he ran in place and pretended to press buttons on the display. Then he climbed out and they went on their way.
It was going to be warm in here soon. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Corbin turned over in his sleep and the floor squeaked beneath him. She watched him for a long time. He had such a handsome face. If Arquin didn’t exist and there was no way into the harbor . . . well, they’d definitely be using the condom. She wasn’t going to let him go without being close like that one last time.
And why, why had someone had a condom in his or her desk at work? Because they were planning on having sex there? The person had to be having an affair. If not, the condom would have been at home in the bathroom or bedside table. It was such a weird thing to find among the pencils, breath mints, and sticky tabs.
A rumble came up the street. She peeked out the window to a sturdy green truck going slowly. In the back were soldiers in fatigues and helmets. A second truck was following it. Arquin. There was a base around here somewhere. Zaley exclaimed, “Corbin!”
He was so deeply asleep that he didn’t move a muscle. They had to find out where those trucks were going! She ran over the squeaking floor to the door. Jerking the chair out from under the knob, she called out Corbin’s name again as she let herself out.
Then she fled down the stairs and dashed by the Christmas store to the road. She reached the sidewalk just in time to spot the second truck turning left. Zaley ran after it and whirled around the corner. The trucks were ambling west. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she was disappointed to not see Corbin coming after her.
She sprinted after the trucks, pushing her aching legs to keep going past businesses and then homes until the vehicles passed out of view. Neither to the left nor right, they had stayed on this road until they were gone. She stopped and bent over double to breathe, her hands on her knees. Her heart was beating so fast that it made her lightheaded, and excitement was making her lightheaded, too.
As she collected herself and turned to go back, she realized how stupid she had been to run out alone. She was several blocks away from the pizza parlor. No one was around, but that could change. No blade, no stick, she had nothing. Had the trucks weaved around the roads with her trailing behind, she’d be lost by now. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Getting good grades in school didn’t always translate to being smart in real life, and all her A’s and B’s didn’t mean shit if a militia member or crazed feral appeared on the sidewalk.
She had to get inside. Running with her side throbbing and her throat raw, she was almost to the stairs when Corbin cried out her name. He ran up the block from the other direction, the quiver at his waist and the bow in his fist. “Zaley, where-”
Someone shouted on another street and they bolted up the stairs to the pizza place. Once barricaded inside, she staggered to the bench in the waiting area to sit and said, “I saw two trucks full of soldiers-”
“Don’t ever do that again,” Corbin said in a low, furious voice. “I woke up and you were gone. Gone, Zaley! I didn’t have any idea where or why.”
“I’m sorry. It was stupid. I wanted to know where they were going. It gives us a head start tonight.” The bench was too hard. She crossed the room and collapsed on the bedclothes. “Please don’t be mad. I’m already mad at myself. I just wasn’t thinking.”
Flopping into the bed, which was a tight fit with both of them, he laid his hand on her belly. “So they’re here. They’re really here.”
“Heading straight west. They have to be going to their base.” Despite the scolding that she was giving herself, she was giddy.
Weeks of less than ideal amounts of sleep were taking their toll, and they passed out. She woke up with a jerk in the too-warm room hours later. People were speaking. Looking around the room frantically, she only calmed down when it became clear the voices were from outside. Cautiously, she looked out. Three men armed with clubs stood at the broken window to the gymnasium. They were checking the shadows for ferals.
Finding none, the men crossed the street and peered in the stores. They made their way to the Christmas store and then to the foot of the stairs. One started up and another said, “Just check the hallway. They won’t go in the restaurant with those big windows.”
The man came all the way up. The doorknob turned and caught on the chair. Zaley’s hand was reaching out to shake Corbin’s shoulder when the floor creaked outside in the hallway. The man was walking back to the stairs. He thumped down them and all three men walked away.
Then Corbin woke and kept watch while she slept until mid-afternoon. The room was broiling by then. The fans hanging down from the ceiling were a mute taunt without electricity. She moved the bed into the kitchen, which was bright from a skylight but not as hot as the rest of the restaurant. It didn’t smell badly either, as the shelves of the cabinets and refrigerator were bare.
It was late afternoon when they heard another rumble. Corbin went out to look and came back thrilled to report a pair of military vehicles had passed by. They turned at the same corner the ones from earlier had. But it was still too early in the day to follow, so they waited for the sun to set.
At last it did. Setting out into the purple evening, they traced the route of the trucks as far as Zaley had seen them go, and then continued down the same road. Many of the offshoots were to dead-end residential roads, so the trucks couldn’t have turned in there. Most of the homes had their curtains drawn, and every third or fourth had broken windows. It had to be terribly hot in the closed-up homes without fans or air conditioning, and usually upper-story windows were open. So were ground story windows, if they were protected by bars. One house was an island in an ocean of tomato plants, the bars themselves dressed in foliage and no walkway existing to the front door.
An old man sat in a recliner at the very next house, turning the page of a book with candles on tables and stands all around him. It was strangely beautiful, the orange aura of candlelight. “Huh,” Corbin breathed. “Even now, some people are wasteful.”
Zaley took a second look at the man and the scene lost its beauty. He should have read by day and saved those candles for when he had actual need of them. He also should have spent his time constructing a curtain out of blankets or towels, or stolen from the abandoned homes where curtains were waving in the breeze beyond smashed windows. And even now, some people were stupid. The glow from his living room was a beacon to a feral.
They walked by a boarded-up junior high school and returned to a residential area. Space grew between the homes, fields of tall grass bracketing them. A fire had swept through in one pocket between small hills, bringing every structure on the parcel of
land down. Beyond it, a farm was closed off with a fence. Warning signs of dogs weren’t just for show. They barked and growled ferociously at Zaley and Corbin. An answering growl came from somewhere else. But it didn’t repeat, and they couldn’t tell where it had hailed from.
“Look at this,” Corbin said at a split in the road. Apartments were abandoned across the street. He shined his light upon the pavement. Thick tire treads lay on top of one another like ribbons. “Do you think they turn here? This is heavily traveled.”
“I don’t know,” Zaley said. “It seems reasonable.” Glancing at the street sign, she added, “It goes west. I remember that much from the maps.”
They followed the tracks. Hills rose and fell around the rural road. A pond sat stagnant. There was so little shoulder that they had to walk on the road itself unless they wanted to scale the fences that lined both sides. There weren’t any more tracks on the cement, but the only avenues off the road were to long driveways that led up to ranches. Attached to the mailboxes were signs. NO FOOD. NO TRESPASSING. Broken down vehicles were parked crossways in two of the drives to block anyone from entering.
Zaley kept an eye out for signs about Laguna Lake. The Sombra Cs in Sausalito who told Corbin about this military base had mentioned that. There were barely any signs for any reason, only reminders to slow down on the curves and steeper grades. Missing their maps, she crossed her fingers for another pair of trucks full of soldiers to wind by and determine once and for all that she and Corbin were going the right way.
They walked along under the rising moon and startled at a moving shape in a field. Then Corbin whispered, “Cow.” Still lumps in the field proved to be dead cows.
Twin lights shined on a distant hill, accompanied by an abrasive sound. The person behind the wheel of the vehicle was driving with a hand on the horn. Finding it weird, Zaley and Corbin slipped over the drainage ditch to a fence. They climbed over a fallen part of the boards and landed in grass. Chickens roosted in a neat row nearby where the fence was whole and God did Zaley covet that protein. At the smell of rot, she breathed through her mouth and went with Corbin to a thicket of trees past the field. Evening had turned into early night.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 148
