Cindy sighs and sits down at the kitchen table, the candle flickering in front of her. She bites her lip like she does when she’s afraid and determined not to show it. “Stupid of him to keep going back there,” she mutters.
I touch her shoulder and sit down next to her. “It’s not stupid. You’d do the same thing,” I tell her. “You’re just like him. You both just want to do what’s right. You want to help.
“Wanting to help people isn’t stupid.”
She raises her eyes to mine and smiles sadly. “We’re just wonderful people,” she says, sarcastic.
“Yeah. Pretty wonderful,” I agree, offering her the bottle of water. She takes a drink, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Yuck.” She wrinkles her nose.
“Tell me about it,” I say. Then I offer, “Look. Let’s give him an hour. If he’s not back, we’ll go to the hospital and check on him. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Cindy nods, clearly perked up. “I’m probably just overreacting, anyway.”
***
Cindy
Getting to the hospital is easier than I thought it would be. Nick and I decide to take bicycles—easier to outrun Shamblers and to get off the streets and into hiding, if necessary—but with the desolation of what used to be my hometown, we could’ve taken the M5 undetected. With the hospital only a few minutes away, Dad is always taking his chances either on foot, by bike, or his car, if the streets appeared quiet on that particular day. Today it appears he’s taken his car. I don’t really blame him. It’s cold out.
The sun’s getting low, but we still have a couple of hours until dusk. My nose runs as we bike along, and chilly air makes my eyes water. The dead world lies ahead of me blurry and unfocused.
The stink of the dead and the odors of everyday human life is gone—exhaust from the automobiles, perfume or B.O. from people passing by, the grease of food cooking in the restaurants, smoke from fireplaces—all gone now. I smell the briny ocean, although the Atlantic lies a mile to the east of where we are.
I haven’t been on this street since my last trip to the hospital, the night Audrey was bitten. There’s a supermarket with the entire glass front crushed in. Trash has blown out into the nearly-empty parking lot—soda cans, potato chip bags, candy wrappers. A couple of cars remain in the lot, covered in a heavy blanket of grime and dust.
The BBQ restaurant Dad loved is boarded up as if for a hurricane. The familiar “CLEARED” sign has been sprayed on the plywood that covers the front entrance.
Here and there, cars and trucks sit abandoned, covered with filth, forgotten. On the far side of the street, we spot a Shambler, teenaged boy. He’s wearing a Palm Dale High football jersey, jeans that are falling nearly to his knees, and one sneaker. He stumblers with every other step because his pants.
“Nick. Stop,” I say, pulling to a halt.
Nick coasts to a stop next to me and we watch the kid, who’s lurching along directionless, mouth agape, whitish eyes dull. His thick hair is screwed up into filthy spikes, untouched for quite a long while.
“Is that Tommy?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m whispering.
“Yeah,” Nick answers. “It’s Tommy. He’s number twelve.”
several emotions hit me all at once. There’s sadness for yet another one of us gone. There’s the fear that either Nick or myself will be the next one. And finally, there this dark, wretched feeling that I’m witnessing a weird kind of justice. Part of me always felt it was Tommy Barker’s fault that Audrey was infected.
Karma’s a bi-otch, they say. And so am I.
Tommy stumbles on, no puffs of breath floating upward from his lips in the cold air as it does for me and Nick. Noticing how a seemingly living human is not breathing is one of the most jarring aspects of the N-Virus victims. That in itself proves they are indeed the walking dead.
I watch Nick’s face as he watches Tommy stagger away from us, but I can’t read his expression. Finally, I just put it out there. “He deserves it.”
Nick shrugs. “Maybe. But do any of us really deserve that?”
I push off. “Some of us do. What about those soldiers who took your Mom. Surely you must believe they deserve this kind of ending. After what they did to you?”
“I suppose so,” Nick says, peddling along behind me. He doesn’t sound convinced. Nick’s a lot more forgiving than I am.
We travel in silence, the hospital looming ahead of us, shadowy, most of the windows black against a graying backdrop of a cloudy late afternoon sky.
***
A voice inside my brain screams something isn’t right as we approach the hospital’s front entrance. There’s less than two dozen cars scattered around the parking lot, and aside from Dad’s Lexus, most appear they haven’t moved in months. Around the big sliding doors, the weeds have gone out of control. The once-immaculate landscaping has gone to hell. Sprigs of brownish grass shoot up between cracks in the walking path. Everything is so eerily silent that I can hear my heart thudding inside my chest and pulsing in my ears. My throat clicks when I swallow, as if I’ve eaten a mouthful of dust.
Something is burning—the rubber and plastic stink hits rises as we move closer to the building.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I whisper, wanting Nick to tell me that I’m just paranoid. That I’m nuts. Anything but that I’m right.
After a moment, Nick answers, “Difficult to tell from here. It’s probably because there’s no light.” He doesn’t sound very positive.
We ditch the bikes twenty yards front the front doors. It’s impossible to detect movement inside—this entrance is also the emergency entrance and covered to shield people from bad weather at the drop-off. It’s as black as a cave there, weak overhead lights flickering like broken butterfly wings, never long enough to break the darkness.
We walk the rest of the way, and I’m chewing my bottom lip and fighting the urge to break into a sprint toward the door. Nick senses my unease and takes my hand. “Slow. Okay?”
So, he thinks something is off, too.
The sun is low and hidden behind the building, making it even colder in the shade. I shiver, and Nick squeezes my fingers tighter, trying his best to comfort me. Under the arched awning leading to the front doors, the lights flicker again, accompanied by an dry, electric buzz.
“Stop!” Nick hisses, yanking my backward.
Then I see it.
Sprayed across the glass doors is one word. “CLEARED.”
“No!” I pull toward the doors, but Nick holds me back, his grip on my hand becoming painful as my fingers crush together.
“Don’t! They could still be in there.” Nick pulls me away from the doors and behind the skeletal shrubs that line the base of the building, snagging our coats on the prickly branches. “Shhh.”
We wait a moment, but there’s nothing but stillness and silence. My eyes tear up, and I blink hard to clear away the blurriness. My stomach clenches, nausea hitting in waves. Even when I first saw Audrey and her stupid mangled leg, I’ve never been so stricken with dread. I wish I could run away, back home, and just start things over, rewind back my life to nine months ago.
But we have to go and see. We have to see what we already know, just to confirm it.
“Come on,” Nick says, and we move around to the rear of the hospital. My mind races—in a few moments, we’ll go inside and there will be Dad, in his coat, looking tired and pissed that we’ve shown up because it’s too dangerous to stray very far from our house. He’ll be fine. He’ll be alive, and there to keep me safe like he always has been.
The emergency ambulance entrance is partially blocked by a fire and rescue truck that has been vandalized and stripped. A front tire is missing, a hose hangs from the gas tank like a thin, limp tongue lolling out onto the ground. The rear doors hang ajar. Everything that can be taken has been taken from inside.
We creep around toward the back door, scanning for movement, people living or dead.
The automatic s
liding doors are stuck, leaving an opening about a foot wide. Nick peeks inside, then forces the doors apart. We step inside to a deserted, dim hallway. Overhead, the fluorescent lights hum and flicker, the threat of complete uninterrupted darkness very real.
My mind races. Why does Dad continue to come here?
We move down the hall, more afraid than cautious. The only sounds are our sneakers padding dully on the floor and our breaths coming too fast. I want to vomit, I’m so afraid of what we’re going to find. I silently curse Mom for taking our gun, something I’ve done on a semi-daily basis since she vanished.
We make a right turn into the main hall E.R. waiting area—empty. The last day I volunteered, months ago, when the N-Virus was still something we all thought we’d beat, pops into my head. How crowded it was. The stink of the sick.
There’s a different smell now. It’s coppery, ripe, familiar, unpleasant.
We find the first of the murdered behind the nurses station—pretty Jolee has been shot in the head. Her eyes are wide, staring upward toward the ceiling. Drying blood frames her head like a wretched halo. Her expression is somewhere between horror and relief.
“Damn,” Nick mutters, pulling me away. “They’ve been here.”
I want to press my face against his chest and cry for her. What a goodhearted, funny, hard-working woman she was. The unfairness of it all.
I want to believe that Dad got out. That he is hiding somewhere, but my heart is breaking. I know what’s awaiting me.
The few people who are left—the uninfected—have been executed as if they were Shamblers. It’s hateful and indiscriminate. There’s nobody coming to save us. They’re just there to end things. Maybe their gift to everyone is making sure death is quick and final instead of a kind of horrible limbo.
Unable to control myself, I scream for my father. “Dad, it’s me. Please come out!”
“Don’t, Cindy. We don’t know for sure—”
“Dad,” I call out again.
There’s a male nurse lying in the middle of the hall. Drying gobs of brain and bone scatter the wall behind him. I never knew his name, as it seemed he was always leaving as I was coming in, but I remember his dreamboat smile.
I tear my hand free of Nick’s and start running, calling Dad over and over. I throw open every door I come to.
“Cindy. Don’t be crazy!” Nick calls, sprinting after me. “This is too dangerous.”
I ignore him and crash through the door leading to the stairway. I race up, taking two steps at a time. I’m crying, my nose clogging with snot, my eyes again becoming hot and swollen. I’m shaking all over.
On the second floor are patient rooms and the pediatric ward. Smiling giraffes, dancing elephants and insanely happy lions decorate the walls, but the ward is empty. No kids. No staff.
My frantic running slows to a jog. I’m puffing through my mouth, crying uncontrollably. The nurses’ desk on this floor is deserted. The supply closet next-door has been pillaged.
I throw myself against the first door I come to and find an empty bed. The same with the next. Nick trails me, the gun up and ready.
“Dad?” I call again, no longer really expecting a response, but hoping for some sort of miracle.
Most rooms appear untouched for quite a while. Some have been cleaned, others left with beds unmade, sheets and pillows stained with blood. I.V. bags hang half-empty, lines left dripping slow.
In the next room, an extremely elderly woman lies, her head off her pillow, one side of her skull crushed in. Blood is like spilled paint around tufts of cottony white hair and running down the side of the mattress onto the floor.
I do not step all the way into the room. There’s nothing inside that I want to see up close.
It’s two doors down that I find the things that will always haunt my nightmares.
Dad. My poor, gentle, beautiful father. My hero. My protector.
He’s slumped over a vague shape in the bed, a youngish man, emaciated, and obviously in the last stages of a terminal illness. The young patient has a small, perfect bullet hole in his temple, as though the muzzle of the gun was placed right against his head. Blood has sprayed onto the opposite side of the pillow where the bullet came through in a mess of blood, bone, brain and hair.
Dad’s missing the left side of his face. His right eye is cloudy, staring at nothing. His glasses are on the floor next to his loafer, one lens cracked.
His hand is entwined with the hand of the young man.
I approach slowly, my mind not grasping what I am seeing. “Dad?” I touch his shoulder and know he’s been gone for hours. There’s no warmth under my touch, only cooling, stiffening flesh.
He’d come to the hospital this morning with the intentions of mercifully helping this young man out of this terrible world. But in the end, he’d tried to protect his patient from the terror of dying at the hands of those soldiers.
I press my face against my father’s shoulder, unmindful of the thickening blood under my sneakers. I breathe in the faint scent of his cologne and the smell of the laundry softener on his lab coat.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper.
Nick wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly against his chest. I feel his hot, damp tears against my cheek as they mix with my own.
Chapter 25
April 18
Nick
Cindy was broken.
We decided to stay until it starts to turn warm because her mental and physical state was too fragile following her father’s death. She withdrew from me despite all I did to make her feel safe. She was broken and still is. But she’s healing. I see the girl I’ve grown to love beginning to reemerge.
There’s nothing here in Palm Dale now. No military. Few survivors. And those who have survived are afraid and distrustful of each other.
We haven’t banded together like in the movies. If anything, we’ve pulled apart, afraid of having to share or what the others will take.
Ben never told us where the cabin is located.
Going through my things the other night, I found a slip of paper with the name “Colin” scribbled on it, followed by an email address and an Instagram handle. It takes me a few moment of wondering before the light comes on, and I remember who exactly the mysterious “Colin” is.
The nerdy dude from the sporting goods store over at the Palm Dale Mall. I hit him up a few times when the internet is getting a signal, but haven’t gotten anything in return.
Until last night.
When he’s face flashes on the screen of my iPad, I question myself. Is this the same cat from the mall? He’s extremely thin and looks much older. I assumed he was a college kid, but this guy looks like he could be thirty. Still, there’s that shock of bright red hair that I remember.
“Colin?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t appear to remember me, but the mention of Audrey and Cindy kickstarts things.
Long story short, we’re picking him up in two days, and we’re getting the hell out of here. Sure, it may not be smart. He could be a psychopath. But we’re going to have to take that gamble.
We have to find other survivors out there. Ones who aren’t paranoid and selfish. At some point, the world has to wake up and climb up out of the dirt. We need to rebuild.
Maybe this time we’ll get things right.
I don’t want to come across as some kind of self-important asshole, but I’m sure nobody will ever see this besides myself. And I doubt I’ll go back and reread it. Not much I want to relieve or remember about the past year, except for Cindy.
Cindy. For a while I thought I’d lost her. The darkness in our lives had become so heavy that her eyes had lost their light. But losing a father (or a mother, or both) will do that to a kid. And we’re still kids. For all the growing up we’d been forced to do since this things first started, we’re still just kids.
I try not to think of the things we should be doing now. Getting ready for spring break, for graduation. For prom. For college. For getting
out of Palm Dale because we want to, not because we must get out.
I hear Cindy come inside. She’s been out running. She begged me for one last run around the neighborhood. We usually go together—the running has become a therapy for sorts for both of us. We’ve taken plenty of precautions against the Shamblers. A shovel behind one house, a pick axe behind the next. A baseball bat planted among a stand of overgrown shrubs. Usually we don’t need them, but sometimes a Shambler does show up.
Just to remind us why we’re running.
Today, I stayed back to get everything in order one final time—making sure the M5 is still in good condition, then repacking. Colin claims to have supplies and food, as well. Just as long as he’s able to pull his own weight, we’ll be good.
I take a long look at Cindy, drink her in, more relieved that’s she’s back than I let on. Her hair’s coming out of its ponytail in wisps against her cheek, forehead and neck. Her legs slim and toned.
There’s blood on the bottom edge of her shorts and the outside of her thigh. It’s only a few drops, but I notice.
“How was your run?” I ask.
“It was good. A good run,” she tells me, but then adds a little wink.
“Liar,” I say. She’ll tell me what happened later. Right now, it doesn’t matter. She’s with me and that’s all that matters now. That’s all that will ever matter.
She slips her arms around me and her lips brush mine, as soft as a feather. I breathe her in—the heady scent of her sweat, the spritz of jasmine body spray she’s always worn on the back of her neck. For a moment, I’m taken back to that warm late summer day when in September. The only difference is the mud has been replaced with splatters of blood. And neither of us are so innocent anymore.
“I’m just glad I’m back,” she whispers, before kissing me again.
“I am, too.”
*The End*
Other releases by Donna Burgess
Solstice: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse
Darklands: A Vampire’s Tale
Notes From the End of the World Page 16
