by Lukens, Mark
At the other end of the basement, an old furnace stood, probably long-dead and inoperable now. A countertop and metal sink ran along another wall with a network of copper pipes running along the ceiling above it.
“We could use some of this wood to bar the doors shut,” Ray suggested.
“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “That’s a good idea.”
It was getting dark now, almost too dark to see down in the basement without the flashlight. Ray grabbed a few shorter pieces of two-by-six pieces of wood and took them up to the kitchen with him.
When he was up in the kitchen, he wondered if it was a good idea that both he and Josh were in the house together. Maybe one of them should have stayed out by the SUV with Mike and Emma. What if some rippers came? What was Mike supposed to do? Honk the horn? It wasn’t like Mike could pick up a gun and shoot at them.
He felt sick at the thought of leaving the two of them unprotected while he and Josh had searched the house. He would have to be more careful next time. He was going crazy trying to predict every little danger, trying to see in advance things that could go wrong. He just wanted to rest for a few hours from the constant tension, the constant fear; he just wanted to rest his body, and most of all, his mind. He wished he didn’t have to think about contingency plan after contingency plan. It was driving him crazy, but he couldn’t help it, it was just how his mind worked. Maybe when they got to Doug’s cabin it would be better.
No, he couldn’t let himself get his hopes up. Not yet. They just needed to get through tonight and he had to try not to plan too far into the future just yet.
When he and Josh were back at the Chevy Trailblazer, Ray helped Emma out as Mike and Josh carried a few boxes of food, water, and blankets into the house. Ray wanted to talk to Emma outside before they went in, and it seemed like she sensed that, waiting beside the Trailblazer.
Ray watched Mike and Josh go inside the house. Josh said something that Ray couldn’t hear and Mike laughed, some kind of joke that Josh had just told. Ray felt that twinge of anger as he listened to his son laugh at Josh. It almost seemed like Mike was looking up to Josh like he was some kind of hero. If only Mike and Emma knew what the guy was really like.
“I don’t trust that guy,” Ray told Emma as he kept an eye on the doorway to the house.
“He’s a good man,” she said.
“He’s a criminal. I’m sure of it. I think he took some kind of drugs out of that truck earlier, and he just jimmied the lock of this house in about ten seconds, like a professional burglar.”
“We’ve all done things we regret,” Emma told him. “We’ve all got our demons.”
Ray didn’t say anything. He wanted to argue that he didn’t have his demons. He’d always been the responsible one, the protector, the one with the level head. He had always towed the line and played by the rules. He’d always tried to do things right. He grew up in a poor neighborhood, around a lot of bad elements. And maybe Josh had grown up in a shitty neighborhood, too. But that wasn’t any excuse. You made your own choices in life, and that was all it boiled down to. He wanted to argue these points with Emma, but he didn’t. He didn’t feel like arguing—he was too tired; he just wanted her to know who and what Josh really was.
Emma touched his shoulder. She seemed to sense his frustration. “He needs to be with us.”
CHAPTER 13
Josh
Twenty minutes later they were all inside the house. Ray and Josh had braced a few pieces of wood against the door as best as they could. Josh had suggested they nail the boards in place, but Ray didn’t want to—he was worried the banging noise might attract any nearby rippers. And of course Ray was right about that. Ray seemed to always be three steps ahead of every situation, always thinking ahead, analyzing different scenarios, weighing options. Josh wished his mind worked like that, but he rarely saw past the day he was living; it was one of the reasons he’d gotten into so much trouble in his life, he’d made too many impulsive decisions without thinking about the consequences.
They lit a battery-powered lamp in the fading daylight of the living room. Mike draped a gray T-shirt over it to dim the light a little, but it still gave them enough light to lay down a few blankets and open some cans of food.
After a meal of canned beans, crackers, canned fruit, and a pack of cookies that they split, they all sat back, somewhat full. It was cold inside the drafty house but not freezing. The wind had picked up a little as the night came.
Josh looked at Mike. “My nephew was about your age. What are you, twelve? Thirteen?”
“Eleven,” Mike answered with a smile.
“Eleven? You’re pretty big for an eleven-year-old.”
“I’ll be twelve soon,” Mike said, glancing at his father.
“When?” Josh asked.
“In November.”
“No way,” Josh said. “When in November?”
“The twenty-sixth.”
“My birthday is the nineteenth.”
Mike beamed at the coincidence.
Josh glanced at Ray again, who seemed perturbed that he was talking to his son, but Josh didn’t care. It seemed like anything he did bothered Ray, so he wasn’t going to start tiptoeing on eggshells.
“Yeah, you remind me of my nephew,” Josh said to Mike. “His name was Kyle. He was sick a lot. He had Type 1 diabetes and had to take insulin. He also had asthma pretty bad. But he never complained about it. He was a tough kid.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“He loved the Pittsburgh Steelers,” Josh said, and he felt the sudden ache of loss. He felt like crying, but he swallowed it down. “He loved video games, too. He was always playing Zombie Takeover.”
“I played that,” Mike said.
“When?” Ray asked, a little surprised.
Mike realized that he’d just revealed a secret to his dad. “Uh, only a few times. Down at Eric’s house.”
“You weren’t supposed to be playing those kinds of games,” Ray said, but there wasn’t much force behind his words. It seemed like something Ray felt he was supposed to say as a dad, an automatic reaction left over from the normal world they used to live in.
“I played Zombie Takeover with Kyle sometimes,” Josh said, trying to steer the conversation away from Mike’s slipup. “Kyle’s mom, my sister, she didn’t like him playing it, either. She always said it was too violent, but he used to tell her that he was practicing for the zombie apocalypse.”
They were quiet again, but Josh still wanted to keep the conversation going. He wanted to talk, wanted to hear them talk. He wanted to pretend for just a little while that this was somehow normal. He looked at Ray. “So, this place we’re going to, it’s a cabin?”
“I think so.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“No. Like I said before, I wasn’t that close to Doug. Nobody at work was.”
“But he must’ve liked you a lot if he invited you and your family to his bugout cabin.”
Ray just nodded.
“Bugout,” Josh said and chuckled. The word sounded funny to him.
Mike laughed again—a forced laugh, like Mike was looking for any kind of excuse to laugh, any reason to feel good for a few seconds.
“Doug was always talking about the End Times,” Ray said. “He said he had stockpiled supplies at his cabin in West Virginia. Food. Water. Medical supplies. Guns and ammo. He said he wanted to stockpile guns and ammo before the government took them away from us.”
Josh just nodded. “Well, at least the place will be stocked.” He wondered if Doug would be upset that Ray had brought other people with him besides his family, but then again, there was probably a good chance that Doug had either turned into a ripper or had been killed. There was a good chance this Doug fella hadn’t even made it to his own bugout cabin. There was also a good chance that other people had already found Doug’s cabin in the woods—rippers or other survivors; either way, it could mean that the place was already ransacked and cleaned out of suppli
es. Josh wasn’t going to mention this, but he was sure Ray had already thought of that; Ray seemed to think of every possible scenario.
“So, you were an accountant at the CDC,” Josh said, still trying to keep the conversation going. Emma wasn’t saying much; she was already lying on her side and for all Josh knew she might already be sleeping.
“Yeah,” Ray said. “Just a number cruncher.”
“You never heard anything about this plague or what it could be?”
“No. We worked in the accounting office.”
“We’re going to a place called Avalon,” Mike said.
Ray gave his son a sideways glance, obviously not happy about his son revealing information.
“What’s Avalon?”
“It’s a place that . . .” Mike’s words faded away. Either he didn’t really know what Avalon was, or he had sensed his father’s disapproval.
Ray sighed like the cat was already out of the bag. “Last Friday, when everything kind of . . . kind of fell apart—”
“When the shit hit the fan,” Josh said.
Mike burst out laughing again.
Ray frowned, and Josh knew he needed to bite his tongue before Ray finally snapped.
“Last Friday,” Ray continued, “the banks closed, the ATMs stopped working, the stores closed, the utilities were shut off. I went to work, like I said before, and our offices were closed. Our supervisor, Craig, hadn’t shown up for work. We all tried to call him but he wasn’t answering. Craig and I had become pretty good friends over the last few years, and he called me when I was on my way back home. The phone was breaking up, but he told me to get to his house. He said he had some answers there. He said something was happening to people. But then the phone was breaking up so badly that all I could hear were the words rose and Avalon. We eventually made it to Craig’s house, and to make a long story short, I found the password to his laptop written on a piece of paper taped behind a painting of roses in his office. I looked up the files on his computer and I saw what Avalon was—it seems to be a place, some kind of government research center down in northern Georgia.”
“You know exactly where this place is?” Josh asked. He was torn between excitement and suspicion—the last time he’d been at a government facility, the FEMA camp, it hadn’t gone so well.
“There was a map on the laptop. I couldn’t print it out, so I drew it in a notebook that I took with me. Like I said, I don’t know exactly what kind of place Avalon is, or what they’re doing there, but I have to assume it was somewhat important or Craig wouldn’t have mentioned it to me on the phone or had a map to the place in his computer.”
“We should go there,” Josh said. “Maybe they’ve got a cure or something.”
Ray shook his head and sighed like he was about to deliver bad news. “It’s almost winter now. We can’t drive that far in the winter. This isn’t like a twenty-four-hour trip down the interstate anymore.”
“We can make it there.”
“And what if it snows?” Ray asked with an edge to his voice. “There’s no one to plow the roads now or put salt on them. What if the roads are blocked up with wrecked vehicles, miles of abandoned cars? And what if our vehicle breaks down? What if we can’t find a place to stay? What if we freeze to death out there? Or starve?”
Josh hadn’t thought of that. Once again, Ray was three steps ahead of him. He looked at Emma and it seemed like she was awake now. “What do you think?”
“I think it would be wise to wait through the winter.”
“But what if there’s a cure down there?”
“I think we are immune,” Emma said. “I think everyone that was going to turn has already turned.”
“But what if they can cure the rippers?” Josh asked. “Turn them back into normal people?”
“If that’s true,” Ray said, “then I’m sure they’re already working on it.”
Josh sighed and nodded. Ray and Emma were right; staying the winter at Doug’s cabin, if it wasn’t already inhabited by others, seemed like the best idea. But if this cabin wasn’t the refuge it was supposed to be, then they would have to think again about driving down to this place called Avalon.
“Besides,” Ray said, “I think there might be another good reason to stay the winter somewhere before heading down to Georgia.”
Josh looked at Ray, waiting for him to continue.
“Maybe a lot of the rippers will die off during the winter,” Ray said. “A lot of them might starve or freeze to death. Or maybe some of them will get pneumonia or some other kind of disease. I mean, they’re still people. I keep thinking of them like they’re animals, and I have to keep reminding myself that they are still human beings with the same weaknesses that we have.”
“That reminds me,” Josh said. He grabbed his backpack and rummaged through it. He found Isaac’s spiral notebook. “After I escaped the FEMA camp, I started making my way back down to Pittsburgh to find my sister and my nephew. Remember when I told you that I got run off the road by rippers in that small town, and that guy named Isaac saved me?”
Ray nodded.
“He threw Molotov cocktails at the rippers to get them away from me.”
“We had those in Zombie Takeover,” Mike said with a smile. “Molotov cocktails.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, smiling at Mike for a moment. “Isaac made a bunch of them. That’s where I learned to make them. But anyway, I ran with Isaac back to his house and we hid up in the attic. The rippers knew we were in the house, but they couldn’t figure out where we had gone to once they were upstairs. There were so many rippers in that town. But Isaac, he was a real smart guy. He acted like he was some kind of scientist or something, and maybe he was in a way—he’d been a science teacher. He’d been watching the rippers from the attic windows before I got there, studying them. The rippers would use a person in the street as bait. They left them right there in the intersection in front of Isaac’s house, ripping off little bits of them, trying to get us to go out there and save him.”
Ray glanced at Mike, then back at Josh, like his story might be getting a little too graphic.
Josh gave Ray a slight nod, indicating that he understood the subtle warning. “Well, Isaac was watching the rippers, like I said. He was writing things down about them in this notebook.”
“Can I see it?” Ray asked.
“Sure,” Josh said. It felt like he and Ray had just mended a bridge, just a small one, just one of the many bridges between them, but at least it was a start. He handed the notebook to Ray who pulled his small flashlight out of his jacket pocket so he could shine it on the pages and study them more closely.
“Isaac noticed that rippers are least active from about four o’clock in the morning to about seven o’clock. Not all rippers are asleep at that time, but it seems like a lot of them are. He also noticed that many of the rippers seem to hunt and live in packs, or large families. They have alphas that seem to run things. Some seem to sacrifice themselves for the group. They kill off the weak and the sick. And he said they’re getting smarter.”
Ray looked up from the notebook, obviously a little shocked. “Smarter?”
“Yeah. Like more organized.”
“That’s strange,” Ray said. “The ones that attacked us in D.C. and at Craig’s house just seemed like monsters, like animals with no order or organization at all.”
“We got away from them using firecrackers,” Mike said, his voice rising a little with excitement.
“You did?”
“Yeah. They thought the firecrackers were gunshots. It was my idea.” He beamed with pride.
“Well, you’re one smart kid,” Josh said. “Smarter than me, I bet.”
Mike’s smile widened even more.
“We noticed that the rippers seemed to have a natural fear of gunshots and fire,” Ray explained. “But the fear of gunshots seems to fade after the first few times.”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Like they’re learning. Adapting. Isaac believed that this plagu
e affected parts of the brain, shutting off the parts that make us human, and all that’s left is the animal part of our brains.”
Ray nodded like that made sense. He looked back down at the notebook pages, cupping a hand over the end of the flashlight so it wasn’t too bright. “What happened to Isaac?” he asked without looking up from the notebook.
Josh didn’t answer right away.
Ray looked at Josh, waiting for an answer.
Josh glanced at Mike then looked back at Ray. “He didn’t make it.”
“The rippers got him?”
“No. He kind of took himself out of the game, if you know what I mean.”
“He killed himself,” Mike said matter-of-factly.
Josh nodded. “Pain pills and whiskey.”
“Was he turning?” Emma asked.
“No. His wife and kids were gone, and I think he just wanted it all to end. He told me he had a car down in the garage that I could take. I tried to get him to go with me to Pittsburgh, but he didn’t want to go.” He looked at Ray. “When you said something about waiting in the cabin for the winter, waiting for a lot of the rippers to die off, that reminded me of something Isaac had said. I don’t know if it’s in his notebook or not, but he said that the rippers might eventually die off, especially if this is some kind of rabies virus that has mutated or was engineered. He said that rabies almost always kills its host. I don’t know if that’s true—”
“It is,” Ray said. “That’s why if this was an engineered rabies virus, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless the plan was to kill off a huge amount of the population.”
“Isaac said it was possible that this rabies virus, or whatever it is, might be slowly killing the rippers, boiling their brains. If not, he said there could be other diseases that might kill them. Like you just said: pneumonia, the flu, infections. He also said a lot of them might starve to death once the easy food ran out. Or a lot of them could freeze to death, especially the ones farther up north.”
