by Cross, Amy
“I'm sorry about your friend,” he calls after me.
I glance back at him.
“What was his name again?” he continues. “Oh, that's right, Thomas. I'm sorry about Thomas. It must sting a little that he left without saying goodbye properly. I guess some people just don't know how to be a good friend.”
“I'll get over it,” I reply, and this time I walk away before he has a chance to say anything else.
Elizabeth
“Are you all set for the rededication ceremony?”
“I'm fine, thanks,” I reply, picking up the pace a little as I hurry past the guy in the street.
“Give me a few minutes of your time,” he says, starting to walk with me. “The ceremony is going to be a kind of festival. It's grown so much since it was originally announced. The city governors have decided that it's time for us to celebrate the end of the bad times.”
“The end?” I reply, raising a skeptical eyebrow as I chew another chunk of bread and start crossing the street.
“They're going to use the festival as a moment to officially announce the end of the crisis. There are some thoughts on giving the day a new name, like Victory Day or Survival Day, something like that. Do you like either of those names?”
Reaching the other side of the street, I turn to him.
“Tim,” he adds nervously, holding a hand out.
I shake his hand, but I'm feeling distinctly uneasy about this whole situation.
“There have been no zombie sightings for ages,” he continues, “and everything seems to be settling down. We're making good progress on the buildings, and there's no disease or pestilence. Meanwhile, you know, we're hearing good things from other cities around the country, and we're even starting to establish a strong, reliable food and water system. That's really a massive achievement, when you think of where we were even a couple of months ago. So that's why the festival is going to mark the official, final end of the crisis. We're going to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what, exactly?” I ask cautiously.
“The fact that we didn't go extinct!”
Staring at him, I realize that he's serious. He has a kind of lost, puppy dog aspect to him, like he really believes everything he's saying to me. As far as he's concerned, we endured six months of horror and now everything's magically getting back to normal. The scary thing is, I know he's not the only one.
“We barely have enough food,” I point out.
“That's better than not having any at all.”
“Some of the water's still contaminated.”
“And some of it's not!”
“We're still finding dead bodies in some of the buildings. And just because we haven't seen a zombie in a while, that doesn't mean the threat is over.”
“I think you'll find that most of the experts consider the virus, or the sickness or whatever it was, to have died off.”
“That's just a theory.”
“I know it's hard to believe,” he continues earnestly, “but it really looks like we've made it out the other side. I mean, listen to the crowd.”
Looking over my shoulder, I realize that people are clapping in a nearby park. I've spotted a few of these gatherings over the past few days, and to be honest they make me feel a little uneasy. It's not that I'm opposed to optimism, of course; it's just that the past six months have taught me to be extremely wary of people when they're in crowds, and I'm worried that we might all relax too much and let things slip. Sure, we're doing pretty well, but we're so not out of the woods yet.
“Do you wanna come with me?” Tim asks.
I turn back to him.
“To the festival, I mean.”
“Oh, I think I'm alright, thanks,” I reply.
“Cool. It was just an idea. It wasn't, like, a date or anything.” He swallows hard. “Unless you wanted it to be.”
“I actually already have plans,” I lie. “You're really sweet, but I think I'm going to be on a work shift during the festival anyway.”
“Oh, no, everyone's getting the day off.”
“Not everyone. I'm going to volunteer.”
“Oh.” He stares at me, and then he takes a step back. He's clutching the sides of his clipboard tight, almost as if he's using it as a prop to stem some of his nervousness. “Well, that's very commendable,” he adds finally. “We need more people like you, I guess.”
“I'm not sure about that,” I reply. “I'm really just going to be doing my job. Enjoy the party, though. I'm sure it'll be great.”
“Yeah,” he says, and then he hesitates for a moment. “I'm sure it'd be better with you there,” he adds, “but you've gotta do what you've gotta do. Maybe I'll see you around some time, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth?
As he walks away, I find myself trying to remember whether or not I actually told him my name. I don't think that I did, but then maybe I'm forgetting something. For a moment, I consider the possibility that he's some kind of psycho stalker, that he might even be the serial killer that Julius was talking about, but I quickly put those ideas out of my mind. I figure Tim's just a nice guy with his own story going on, and I hope he's happy. I just don't particularly want to bump into him again.
I turn to leave.
“Elizabeth?”
Startled, I find someone standing just a few feet away, and I feel a flicker of shock as I realize that it's someone I've been avoiding over the past few weeks.
Elizabeth
“I thought I spotted you a few times, in the distance,” Jonathan Kendricks says as we wander along the street. “At first I told myself it couldn't be you, that the odds of running into someone I recognized were ridiculously small, but... I guess there really aren't that many people here in the city, so it's not as unusual as it would have been. I'm just glad to see a familiar face after all this time. How have you been?”
“I'm okay,” I reply, a little stiffly. “Just heading off to work.”
“I always felt a little bad for not taking you with us when we left New York,” he continues. “On the way out of the city, I remember asking Mallory whether we should turn back. The only reason we didn't is that, well, things were so crazy by then and we got chased away by some packs of zombies. You were always on my mind, though. I remember looking back at the city and thinking of you all alone here. I kept you in my thoughts.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. “I left pretty soon after you guys, though.”
“Oh yeah? Where did you go?”
For a moment, I consider trying to explain everything. The farm. Toad. Rachel. Boston. My father. That creepy hospital. The fight on the train. I quickly realize, however, that it all feels way too insane to put into words.
“Just around,” I say finally. “I lost a foot along the way.”
“I noticed. Have you had that looked at since you got back?”
“It's fine. It's not infected or anything. I was lucky.” We walk on for a moment in silence. “How's Mallory, anyway?” I continue finally. “Is she around?”
When he doesn't reply, I turn to him and I see an awkward expression on his face. Somehow, deep down, I immediately understand what that means.
“Mallory was a good girl,” he says cautiously, “and...”
His voice trails off.
“It's okay,” I reply. “I get it.”
“She was just so utterly unlucky,” he continues. “She got a scratch. That's all it was. But it turned into an infection, and then she just deteriorated so fast. In the old days, she'd have had some antisceptic wipes and she'd have been fine. As it was, she developed a fever. I've been keeping a diary, and I noted down everything that happened to her. She got the scratch on day fifteen, she got seriously sick on day eighteen, and she died on day twenty-three. If it's any consolation at all, we gave her a proper burial. It was very respectful.”
“What about the virus? Did you make sure she wouldn't come back as a zombie?”
“We did.”
“Did you burn her?”
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sp; He seems hesitant again.
“Yes,” he says finally. “It was all we could think of at the time.”
“It sounds like you did the right thing.”
“And she mentioned you a few times, right before she died. She said she knew you'd be fine. She said you were too tough to die.”
“A lot of it was pure luck,” I tell him.
“And now we're back here,” he continues. “I don't know if you've heard, Elizabeth, but I've formed a little group. It's a gathering, really. We consider ourselves to be informed citizens who want to have a voice in the rebuilding process. The people in charge of the city are good, but they've assumed an awful lot of power, and we want to help them out. After all, power corrupts. That's just a basic fact of human life. It stands to reason that we can't abandon democracy, right?”
“Sounds good,” I say cautiously.
“We just want to be heard,” he adds. “The governors are starting to understand that, and the dialogue has been good. The last thing we need is for the old elites to retake their positions of power. This whole crisis has to be taken as a chance to start again. Now that the dangers are over, we -”
“Do you really think the dangers are over?” I ask, stopping and turning to him. “Seriously?”
“There hasn't been a -”
“Don't you think people are getting way too complacent?” I continue, unable to hold back for a moment longer. First Tim was telling me everything's fine, and now Jonathan Kendricks is saying the same thing. “We need to be on our guard, we need to be ready for anything. Doesn't it seem too convenient to you? That the world was brought to its knees by a virus that then died off almost overnight?”
“Maybe we got lucky,” he replies. “Maybe the virus was potent but short-lived.”
“And maybe it's still out there,” I suggest. “Maybe it's just dormant.”
He stares at me for a moment, and then he smiles.
“Why don't you come to our next rally?” he asks. “If you feel the energy we've got going there, Elizabeth, you might start to understand. Nobody's saying that things are back to normal, but at least we're taking our first cautious steps to some kind of proper life. And nobody's saying that we're going to forget all the people we lost, either. Soon, we have to decide how to mark all those lives. There are enormous challenges still ahead, but there's also no harm in looking back and reflecting on how much we've achieved since the crisis began.”
“There need to be barriers on all the bridges into Manhattan.”
“There are.”
“Proper barriers,” I continue, unable to hide my frustration. “We're on an island, we have good defensive capabilities but at the moment our only defense is a few people standing around next to some metal panels. What if zombies come to the city again?”
“We'd have plenty of warning.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“You've been through a lot,” he says with a sigh. “Have you considered the possibility that you're suffering from some kind of PTSD?”
“Are you serious?” I ask. “Who has time for that right now? We're in danger, and we're letting our guard down!”
“Everything's under control,” he says calmly. Too calmly. Way too calmly. “There's nothing wrong with being careful, but there's also nothing wrong with being cautiously optimistic. It's what people like Mallory would have wanted.”
“But -”
“And Henry.”
I open my mouth to reply to him, but the mention of that name makes me stop.
“I met him once,” he continues. “Briefly. How's he doing, anyway? You haven't mentioned him yet.”
“Henry died,” I tell him. “That was a long time ago.”
“As I remember it,” he replies, “Henry was the main reason you didn't join us on our journey to Lake Ontario. Not that we got very far on that particular journey, of course.” He pauses. “I get it. I've lost people too. My wife Debra is almost certainly dead. She's not on any of the lists of survivors. I could run around frantically, trying to find her, or I could accept that statistically -”
“How can you not go looking for her?” I ask.
“Because the odds are massively against her being alive.”
“But there's still a chance.”
“Logically, we would have found one another by now.” He takes a deep breath. “She'd be on a list, and I'm certainly on one. She was in Miami visiting her parents when everything collapsed, and by all accounts Miami is functioning very well these days. The only possible conclusion is that she didn't make it. There's no point getting emotional about that. I've grieved and mourned, and now I'm moving on.”
“That seems so...”
Cold.
That's what I almost said.
That seems so cold.
Then again, who am I to judge? I'm sure I must seem cold to some people.
“I hope to see you soon at one of our gatherings,” he adds, “and at the rededication ceremony in a few days' time. Until then, Elizabeth, I hope you keep safe, and I hope you learn to accept a little optimism and hope into your life. There's a mid-point between the two extremes. Try to find your way there. I'll see you soon.”
With that, he turns and walks away, leaving me standing on the corner of the street. I remember Jonathan Kendricks being a man with a plan, a man with ideas about what everyone should do. I guess he's still that way, but I'm shocked by just how easily he's managed to accept that his wife is gone. And now that I've listened to both him and Tim this morning, I'm starting to think that maybe I'm the one who's getting everything wrong here.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, and the world really is getting back to normal.
Elizabeth
“Elizabeth,” Freya says with a sigh, “I don't mean to nag, but what is this?”
Turning, I see that she's holding up a piece of cardboard.
“It's a piece of cardboard,” I tell her.
“And what's this?”
She turns it around, revealing a strip of tape attached to the other side.
“It's a strip of tape attached to the other side,” I tell her.
“And what are we supposed to do with tape?”
“Pull it off.”
“So why is there some on this piece? And before you deny it, I saw you put this particular piece in the box.”
“I must have missed the tape,” I reply. “I'm sorry.”
“If you miss tape,” she continues, “you've giving more work to the people who sort these items at the main office. They're relying on us to do our jobs properly, so that they can do their jobs properly. Do you understand that, Elizabeth?”
“I do. And I'm sorry. It was a mistake.”
“This is going to have to go on your report card,” she adds. “I'm sorry, but those cards exist for a reason.”
Stepping toward her, I take the piece of cardboard and remove the strip, and then I hand the cardboard back to her before dropping the strip into the box that's for items that can't be categorized. We've been going through yet another apartment, and we're almost done.
“I'm only trying to help you to help yourself,” she says. “There's no -”
“Isn't there a rule about wasting time?” I ask.
She raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“I'll try really hard to remove all the tape from now on,” I tell her, “but I really should get back to work now. I'm almost done in this room.”
“The whole point of rules -”
“I know the point of rules,” I reply, interrupting her. “Thank you, Freya. I don't know what I'd do without you.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
Now it's my turn to sigh, and to roll my eyes as well.
“Freya, I'm only -”
“Elizabeth!”
Hearing Lucas, I turn and see him entering the room. I'm initially relieved, although I suddenly see that he has two men with him, and the two men are both wearing badges that identify them as part of the governors' advisory group.
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“These gentlemen want to talk to us,” Lucas says, and he sounds worried. “You and me, Elizabeth. Now.”
***
“And did you notice anything unusual about the body that you found in apartment 219?” the first of the men, who identified himself earlier as Gregor, asks.
I turn to Lucas, hoping that he'll answer first.
“There's no reason to be nervous,” Gregor continues. “Ms. Marter, we're only asking a few routine questions. A man has been found dead and we want to ascertain the circumstances.”
“I thought he looked quite fresh,” I tell him. “I also thought that, from the way he'd fallen, he might have killed himself.”
“Due to the position of the knife?”
“Sure.”
He makes a note.
“Why are you so interested?” I ask after a moment. “No offense, but we've found bodies before, and nobody's come to visit us and ask us questions.”
“It's just a routine matter.”
I turn to Lucas again, and he still looks worried.
“Did you touch the body?” the other man, McBride, asks.
“No,” I reply.
“Are you sure?”
“Very.”
He, too, makes a note.
“What's this all about?” Lucas asks. “We're just cleaning rooms, that's all. We go in, we sort through the junk, and we get out. I'm sorry that we found that dead guy, but we reported it to you immediately. We didn't do anything wrong.”
“Nobody's saying that you did anything wrong,” Gregor replies.
“And it was just a normal dead body, wasn't it?” Lucas continues. “I mean, I don't know if Elizabeth's right when she says that he killed himself, and frankly it's none of my business. I just want to get on with things and keep my head down and do my bit for the cause. If you catch my drift.”
“Absolutely,” Gregor says, although he's keeping his eyes fixed on me. “Is there anything you'd like to add, Ms. Marter?”
“Nothing,” I reply.
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.”
He continues to stare at me for a moment, before making another note.
