Mass Extinction Event (Book 9): Days 195 to 202

by Cross, Amy

  Before I can answer, I hear Riley coming through from the main part of the restaurant.

  “Do my clothes smell?” he asks. “Seriously, that asshole naked guy keeps claiming that I -”

  Stopping suddenly, he stares at Katrina as if – for a moment – he can't actually believe what he's seeing.

  “You!” he says finally. “What are you doing here?”

  “Delightful,” she replies. “You guys sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

  Thomas

  “This is better than sex,” Katrina says a few hours later as she chews another mouthful of burger. “It's better than anything else in the entire world. It's like sheer ecstasy in my mouth.”

  “You're weird,” Riley mutters. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Those are my burgers!” Mikey yells from his position over on the far side of the restaurant, where he's still tied to a column. “Every one you eat, I will take back from you in flesh once I'm free from here!”

  “He sure talks a lot,” Katrina says with her mouth full of meat. “Does he not understand that he's in a bad position right now?”

  “Shut up and eat some spiders!” Riley calls over to him.

  “And why are there so many spiders here?” Katrina asks. “It seems like they come out more at night. They're kinda gross.”

  “So we're setting off in the morning, right?” I ask, trying to keep the discussion focused on our plans. “First light, we're out of here.”

  “Why go anywhere?” Katrina replies. “The way I see it, we've got it sorted right here, at least for a while. We've got food, we can get more water, we just have to deal with the spiders and the naked guy. Other than that, there's no reason to leave.”

  “I'm going home,” I tell her.

  “And what do you think is gonna be there? Your family?”

  “My sister. Maybe.”

  “Sitting in the front room, waiting for you?”

  “Maybe.” I pause for a moment, as I think back to the moment when I left the farm a few months ago. “Actually, we burned it down.”

  “Seriously?”

  For a few seconds, I can't help remembering how it felt when I stood and watched the house burn. Mom's body was in there, and Lydia's too, and at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. Even now, I know that we had no other options, but for the first time I'm starting to realize that there's only a burned husk waiting for me. 'Home' is just some land now.

  “It doesn't matter,” I tell the others finally. “It's still my home.”

  “At least there are no more zombies,” Riley mutters. “That's gonna make things easier.”

  “Huh?” Katrina says, turning to him. “What do you mean?”

  “The lack of zombies is kind of useful,” he points out, not unreasonably. “You know? Zombies? Scary rotting people who want to eat our brains?”

  “I know what a zombie is,” she replies scornfully. “I saw one two days ago.”

  “They're all gone,” Riley says.

  “I don't think so, buddy,” she says. “While I was following you guys, I kept way back from you. There was a zombie wandering along. Maybe you didn't see it, I guess it would've been far back and behind from your perspective, but I sure noticed it. It was moving real slow, it only had one leg, but it was a zombie.”

  “That's impossible,” I tell her. “The zombies are all gone now.”

  “Says who?”

  “They're just gone,” I continue, starting to feel a little irritated. “We were in New York until a few days ago, and everyone there knows that there are no more zombies.”

  “Maybe not in fancy pants New York,” she replies, “but there are still some dotted around.”

  I shake my head. She's nuts.

  “I'm not lying,” she says firmly. “I mean, sure, there aren't as many of them as there were before, but I've seen a few lately.” She pauses, and I can see a hint of fear in her eyes. “The truth is,” she continues, “I've seen more and more over the past week. They definitely seemed to vanish for a while, but it's almost like they're... I dunno, waking up again.”

  “That makes literally zero sense,” Riley points out.

  “I'm not here to explain it,” she replies. “I'm just here to tell you what I saw.” She pops the final part of her burger into her mouth. “There are still zombies out there. Deal with it.”

  “I'll kill you all!” Mikey shouts in the distance.

  I look at Riley, hoping that he'll make some crack about Katrina being an idiot, but instead he looks worried. Truth be told, I'm worried too, and I guess deep down I knew the zombie situation was resolved a little too easily.

  “Alright,” I say finally, “so maybe there are still a few zombies. Maybe. That's not the biggest shock in the world. It just means that they haven't all been mopped up yet, but they will be. Things are starting to get back to normal.”

  I look out the window. The sun is starting to set now, casting long shadows across the parking lot, but there certainly aren't any zombies coming this way. I even watch the distant treeline for a moment, in case there's any hint of movement, but there's absolutely nothing.

  “There can't be many,” I add. “Most of them would have rotted away by now. The ones that are left are just -”

  “It doesn't matter,” Riley says suddenly.

  I turn to him.

  “They're slow,” he continues, “they're cumbersome, and they're stupid. Even if there are a few of them still out there, we'll be fine. We can easily outrun them. Hell, we can outwalk most of them! We just have to be careful, that's all.”

  “Say the guys who didn't even notice the other day when one of them was getting close to you,” Katrina points out.

  “We didn't know we had to be watching out for them,” Riley replies. “We do now.”

  “You didn't even notice that I was following you!”

  “Obviously you're extremely sneaky,” Riley says. “To be honest, I'm a little impressed.”

  “You're so lucky I'm here,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Don't you think I deserve another burger for that? As a reward?”

  “You're lucky you got that one,” Riley says firmly.

  “We should make sure all the doors are sealed tonight,” I point out. “Just in case.”

  “Fine,” Riley replies. “Whatever.”

  “And I'll have another go at hot-wiring a car,” I add. “In the morning.”

  “I noticed you seemed to be having trouble,” Katrina replies. “I can do that for you. Hot-wiring a car is, like, one of the easiest things in the world.”

  “Then it's settled,” I say firmly. “We stay here for one more night, and then in the morning we head off. In a car, hopefully.”

  “And where exactly are we heading to?” Katrina asks.

  “Through Scottsville,” I explain, “and on to my family's farm. After that, Riley's going on to Kansas, although you're both welcome to stay at my place for as long as you need.”

  “Ooh, a farm,” Katrina mutters, clearly not very impressed. “How terribly quaint.”

  “Team!” Riley says suddenly, holding a fist out toward the middle of the table.

  “Seriously?” Katrina says, rolling her eyes.

  “Team,” I murmur, bumping his fist with one of my own.

  “You guys are so sad,” Katrina says, offering the weakest, least enthusiastic fist bump ever. “Pathetically sad. Really. It breaks my heart.”

  “You're all dead!” Mikey screams. “Do you hear me? I'll tear you limb from limb!”

  “And can I make one other request?” Katrina says. “Can someone find a sock to shove in his mouth for a while?”

  “Oh man,” Riley says with a grin, “I don't wanna spare a sock, but I do have some underwear I was thinking I should take off some time soon.” We all turn to look over at Mikey. “I don't think he's gonna like it, though.”

  Day 200

  Elizabeth

  “Okay,” Freya says as she examines the
day's work sheet, “so we're going to be going through apartments 101 to 110 today. That's quite a lot, but I'm confident we can get it done. And it looks like it's Elizabeth's turn to draw the short straw and work alone.” She turns to me. “Any problems?”

  “No problems,” I reply, although I realize I sound a little defensive.

  “This looks like it was a nice place,” Lucas suggests, glancing around the abandoned hallway. “I bet you had to be pretty rich to live in a place like this.”

  “All items are to be placed in one of the containers,” Freya says firmly. “I hope I don't have to remind you that if you're caught removing anything for personal gain, that counts as theft. And theft is highly punishable.”

  “We both know that,” I tell her.

  “Nothing ends up in anyone's pockets,” she adds.

  “We get the message,” I reply.

  “I also want to remind you that we're lagging behind this week,” she continues. “Since Monday, we've been underperforming by one apartment clearance per day. Now, our supervisors haven't picked up on that yet, but sooner or later they will, and then they'll start asking us why we're slower than the average team.” She glances at my foot. “I don't think having a disability on our team will be accepted as a suitable excuse.”

  “I'm not disabled!” I snap at her.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she mutters. “It's a super-power. Whatever.”

  “Let's just get to work,” Lucas says diplomatically. “The more time we spend here, going over things, the less time we have to actually go through the apartments. Elizabeth, are you sure you're okay working alone today? I can switch over and join you if you'd prefer.”

  “Oh, I'm more than fine,” I say, as I grab some boxes from the table and glare at Freya. “I could use a few hours without someone nagging in my ear.”

  ***

  Lucas was right, this building does seem to have been mainly inhabited by people with money. As I limp into the main room of apartment 101, I look around and see some seriously high-end equipment. Back in the day, this place would have been very impressive, although I guess now there's not much call for home assistants and gaming laptops. Still, the circuitry inside that stuff can definitely be used, so I set my boxes down and start disconnecting the various items so I can safely put them away.

  Once I'm done, I head through to the bathroom to check what's left, and then I open the bedroom door.

  I freeze as soon as I see the body on the bed.

  There's a corpse, wearing only a pair of briefs, face down on the mattress. I can't tell whether it's a man or a woman right now, but the air smells putrid and the corpse's skin is discolored. There are no flies buzzing around, but I guess the apartment has been pretty much sealed. There's a strange air of stillness in the room, and after a moment I realize that I actually feel as if I'm disturbing something. Still, it's pretty clear that this person has been dead for a long time, for at least a couple of months.

  I should go and find Freya and make sure that she calls for a team.

  I turn to walk away, but at the last moment I hesitate. Still staring at the body, I realize that there are no obvious signs of injury. So far, it looks as if this person simply settled down on the bed and died, for no obvious reason. Even from here, I can tell that the person was fairly young, and the rest of the room looks to be in decent order. There are no signs of a struggle, there's not even anything to suggest suicide. The body is simply face down on the bed, with its arms outstretched and its hands visible.

  “We now believe the virus wasn't airborne,” I remember us being told in our debriefing a while ago, when I first started working on a clearance team, “at least not in the tradtional sense. You have absolutely no reason to worry about getting sick. Besides, the virus is dead now, so it couldn't transfer even if it was airborne.”

  I know I should follow the rules and report this situation to Freya, and I'll definitely do that at some point, but right now I feel as if I want to get a closer look at the body. I glance over my shoulder, to make sure that nobody's about to come bursting into the apartment, and then I start cautiously making my way across the room. With every step, I'm prepared to turn and run, but finally I get to the side of the bed and I look down at the back of the corpse's head. Now that I'm closer, I can tell that this was a girl around my age. I can't see her face, but she and I even share the same color hair.

  A moment later, spotting a book at the other end of the bed, I lean over and see the word 'Diary' written on the front.

  Opening to the first page, I find an entry dated about a month before the crisis his:

  This is the stupidest punishment ever. What kind of person keeps a diary on paper anymore? Dad says I have to do this for one whole month, or I lose my allowance. He thinks I'll somehow start acting more like him. Well, Dad, if you're reading this, you're wrong. More than happy to waste your time, though.

  Nice. I flick through some more pages and find that all her entries are pretty much the same. Apparently she'd done something wrong and her punishment had been to keep this diary. After a moment, however, I reach an entry dated for the day after everything went wrong:

  Everything's gone. There's no power. I don't know where Mom and Dad are. It's just me and Justin here in the apartment and no-one seems to know anything. This is beyond stupid. I am so pissed off right now!

  I flick through to an entry that was written a few days later:

  I think something's really wrong. I keep telling Justin that Mom and Dad will be back soon, but I think he can tell that I don't believe it anymore. I don't know where they are, but I'd give anything for them to come home. Today Justin and I went out to look for food. The streets are scary. If this doesn't end soon, I don't know what we're going to do.

  I remember feeling exactly that way. Turning to the next page, I find another entry:

  I don't know what those things are, but they look like zombies. And they're everywhere. At least we're safe in here for now, but we only have enough food for a few more days. I want Mom and Dad to come home, I want everything to be okay again. Justin's hurt his leg and he bled a lot, and I don't know whether I've patched it up the right way. I'm really terrified right now.

  I guess Justin must have been her brother. As I flick to the next entry, I can't help noticing the similiarities between this Elizabeth girl and my own situation:

  Justin's sick now. He's got a fever and he's rambling about stuff. We don't have any neighbors left and I don't know what to do.

  Further down the page, there's another entry, with smudged sections all around. From tears, most likely:

  I think Justin's dead. He's not responding to anything. I keep hoping he's just in a coma, but I think he's actually dead. I need someone to come and help me. I don't have any food anymore. I'm going to stay in here and then go through to the front room tonight and see if Justin's moved.

  Swallowing hard, I look at the next page:

  Everything's going to be okay. I was going to leave the city, but I decided to stay. Leaving is too scary. I don't have any food, and I'm real low on water, but I'll be fine. I keep hearing voices in the other rooms, but there's no-one there when I go and take a look. I don't dare go outside. I'll wait here. They'll be back soon. Maybe they can help Justin.

  I read that entry over again, and after a moment I realize that this girl seems to have been delirious. The entry was made on the day when I left New York. I remember being absolutely terrified around that time, and I so nearly changed my mind and stuck it out in the apartment instead. I guess this girl was in the same position, except she decided to stay.

  I turn to another page, but the final entry in the diary is pretty brief:

  Please help me.

  There are several more pages, but they've been left blank. I guess the girl must have died at that point, all alone here in the apartment. Looking down at her, I realize that this would most likely have been my fate if I'd decided to stay. Our lives seem to have been pretty similar, with the onl
y difference being that I went out there into the world while she stayed behind in New York.

  “Rest in peace,” I whisper, as I feel a shudder pass through my chest.

  I set the diary back down and turn to walk out of the room, but suddenly I spot some birthday cards pinned to a noticeboard. I wander over to take a look, and then to my surprise I see the same name on them all.

  “Elizabeth,” I whisper, before spotting an unopened envelope addressed to someone named Elizabeth Moore.

  I turn and look at the girl again, and I realize now that we were so similar in a lot of ways. We even had the same name.

  “I'm sorry, Elizabeth Moore,” I say to her, with tears in my eyes. “I can't help you now.”

  Elizabeth

  Hours later, I sit in Harrison Blake's old library with a book on my knees, but I'm not reading. I'm breaking curfew by being here, but I don't care. The candle is burning nearby, although it doesn't have long left. Minutes, maybe. And I'm wasting its light, because I'm staring into space and thinking about that Elizabeth Moore girl.

  After leaving her apartment, I told Lucas and Freya what I'd found. I didn't mention any of the detail, and they didn't ask. Bodies are still a fairly regular occurrence in this job, so Lucas simply went and checked the scene while Freya headed off to find someone who could send a recovery unit to the apartment. Somehow, I managed to keep from freaking out. In fact, I actually threw myself into work all afternoon, to the extent that at finishing time Freya – for once – told me that I'd done a really good job.

  Now here I am, sitting alone in the library, and I can't stop wondering what Elizabeth Moore's final moments were like.

  Her apartment wasn't that far from my family's place. While Henry and I were dealing with Bob and all that other stuff, Elizabeth and her brother Justin were just a dozen or so blocks away from us. I guess lots of people were in trouble at that point, and it was pure luck whether or not we met one another. Maybe she was one of the girls I spotted in the distance when I was searching through looted shops. Maybe she saw me and hid, thinking that I might be a danger. In a parallel universe, maybe we met and helped each other out. Would I have taken her with me when I left New York, or would I still have gone alone? Or would I have stayed with her?