by Guy James
Now she found it, stepped into it—ran into it—and from within it, from within that place, a world—Lorie’s prior world—of insurmountable obstacles, of barriers, of challenges, of uncertainty and intermittent fear, vanished, not only ceased to exist but was wiped from the history of existence, made to erase and undo itself so as to make Lorie incapable of recalling or even understanding the former state of things from within the oneness that she had grasped.
In a split second, the world around Lorie had shifted into something different, had unfolded into a vast expanse in which sounds were muted and the pace of time was meted out by Lorie’s breath.
It was a world in which the cold could not be felt as discomfort, where its concept was not meaningful other than as a reference point for behavior.
Nothing was insurmountable in this world. There were no challenges. There was no uncertainty. Fear was inconceivable. And because these very concepts had become inaccessible to Lorie, their memories could not grip her and pull her backward.
She ran.
Detail was everywhere. Everywhere. It was a world so precisely measured and laid out that Lorie could now see its seams—the seams by which the very fabric of reality was held together. They were so beautiful, so perfect and natural, and in exactly those places where they should be, where they had always been. There was a silence in those seams, even amidst the zombie apocalypse that had become Lorie’s world. There was a knowing silence there, and Lorie found her mind focusing on it, dialing into the frequency that was there—that had always been there, and that always was.
Lorie had attained a state of effortlessness without a concept of effortlessness. It had to be that way, because concept and state cannot occupy the same space. She understood all of this intuitively, deep within a state that is sought by many, but achieved by few. It felt as if there had always been this space within her mind, and it was the most natural space to be in and experience, and yet she had never been there, but now that she was, she knew that she had always known of its existence, and of the means by which to access it.
This is what she had come to the park behind the school for. This is what she had come to New York for. This is what she had been born for.
Every event in Lorie’s life now clicked into place. In her mind, she skipped backward in the sequence of events that had brought her here, back to a time decades before she had been born. She could see things there in black and white: men and women, children, nature, the turning of the world, and the plagues. Lorie understood that there was always a plague of some sort in the black and white shades, always a scourge that fed on life, that needed to feed on life, and that life needed to have feed on it. The harsh aspect of the concept did not reach her. It could not reach her now, because the portion of her mind that was required for such a connection to be made was gone.
70
SVEN, JANE, AND LORIE’S APARTMENT, SUTTON PLACE, NEW YORK
Jane sat in front of the computer in the den and logged into the forum that Sven had set up. The expression of horror on her face grew by the second. Posts were pouring in from terrified New Yorkers who were now trapped in their homes, separated from their loved ones, and living out a nightmare that most had not believed would come to New York.
The posts reminded Jane of her own potential loss, or, as she had begun to fear, a loss that was already in the past, but as yet unconfirmed. And though the posts reminded Jane of Sven and Lorie, the activity on the forum helped pass some of the excruciating waiting time.
The activity on the forum also made her proud.
The forum, outbreak preparedness, and the multi-faceted warning system were the product of Sven’s experiences, and the rapidity with which he had pushed through his initiatives—aided by Harry, of course—had saved countless lives. New Yorkers who had taken Sven seriously were now alive, posting on the forum, and planning their survival for the remainder of the outbreak. They were working together to survive.
Cities across the country were on lockdown, bracing for the final pandemic. Scientists and researchers around the world were scrambling to determine the outbreak’s source. Jane knew that finding the source of the virus was the most important piece of the puzzle now.
She glanced at the primitive-looking flip phone that lay next to the computer’s keyboard, as she had been doing every few seconds since she’d sat down. She had placed over one hundred calls to each of Sven’s and Lorie’s apocalypse phones, which they were supposed to carry with them at all times.
“It’s the circuits,” Jane told herself for the thousandth time. “The calls just aren’t getting through. Sven and Lorie are fine. They haven’t contacted me by email or messaging yet because…because…”
Gritting her teeth, Jane looked back at the computer screen, refreshed the main page of the forum, and read the new posts that had just come in.
One of the fastest growing threads was a collective effort by laypeople to determine the source of the infection. Jane read the latest posts. New Yorkers were preparing and discussing food lists that described what they had eaten in the past few days, searching for commonalities and safe foods. They were also putting together separate lists of foods that they had seen people who subsequently were infected eat, and the posters were cross-referencing the lists in an impressive attempt to pinpoint a food that carried the virus.
“Assuming it’s in the food supply…” Jane said for what must have been the hundredth time. She thought of the stock of survival foods stashed throughout the apartment. She was hungry, but had no appetite.
A separate thread, spearheaded by virologists who were at the forefront of their field, was aimed at the same goal: to determine the source of the infection. The professionals disagreed with the laypeople on a key point, insisting that given the size of the epidemic, the virus was unlikely to be foodborne. Were it foodborne, they argued, the contaminated food source would have to be as ubiquitous as water to produce the extent of the infection in New York. The scientists were discussing the idea of the virus being airborne, having been released in certain highly populated areas.
“Hell of a thing to tell people,” Jane whispered. Her voice was hoarse, the product of a dry throat. She was thirsty, but had no desire to get up and get water.
She glanced at the flip phone again. Still nothing.
She looked back at the screen and began reading the missing student thread again. Fortunately for the majority of students and parents, the virus had broken out after school hours, after most students had already returned home. Unfortunately for Jane and for parents of overachievers who had stayed after school that day, the school safe rooms had been tested, and had failed.
Enraged parents, many of whom had children who had stayed after school at Stuyvesant High School, were filling the thread with posts about Sven’s extreme and inexcusable failure to provide a workable safe room option. They knew about the nightmare that had taken place at Stuyvesant High School earlier…a number of terrified students who were trapped inside the main safe room as infected overtook it managed, in their final moments, to contact their friends and relatives, to say goodbye.
The thread upset Jane to no end. The problem was so complicated and the solution was not capable of being perfected given the limited amount of information that everyone had been working with.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. Of course there was a risk of infected in the safe rooms, we don’t have a way to screen them out except by sight.”
The more Jane read about the safe room criticisms, the more she began to feel that they had always been doomed to fail—not just the safe rooms, but Lorie, Sven, and her. Fighting against a virus, an undead piece of code that had evolved—or been made—to vanish after it took its victims…how could they have ever thought they could win against something like that?
For all Jane knew they had brought the virus back with them, and it was just undetectable.
“We are to blame,” Jane said. Her shoulders slumped lower. “This is all ou
r fault.”
She picked up the loaded Beretta 92FS that she had placed next to the keyboard earlier. It was the one she had used in Charlottesville—the one that she had been forced to use. There was no gun law in the world that could separate her from it, New York City and its politicians—save Sven—be damned.
“We killed all of these people,” Jane whispered. She rested the gun on her knee. “In surviving and wanting a better life. We killed them, all of them, out of selfishness. We carry it. That’s how we survived. That’s why the virus left us alone. We are the virus.”
71
Jane turned away from the computer screen. She ground her teeth and stood up. Then she left the den and walked into the dining room, carrying the gun. She stood by the window and took in the view of the East River.
Snow hurtled through the air in a relentless descent into the East River. Gusts of wind beat the surface of the water, bending and stirring it, setting the river to toil under the air’s will.
On the waves rode debris: soccer balls, torn cardboard boxes, shower curtains, paperback books, packing peanuts. The motley group of items bobbed and dived, reemerged, and repeated its ritual, without making any progress while Jane watched.
On Roosevelt Island, one of the smaller high-rises was burning. The streets that Jane could see on the island looked vacant. Her eyes searched for movement, but other than water-swept items and the blaze, there was none. There were some lights on in the apartment buildings on Roosevelt Island, but Jane could not see any movement there either. The night felt owned by the virus in an even stronger way than if the infected had been visible right outside Jane’s window.
Watching this scene unfold through the high-grade, double-paned window, with little sound accompanying it, seemed surreal. It filled Jane with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that if she didn’t act now, didn’t do something now, all—all that they had fought so hard to secure—would be lost.
“Even if we are the virus,” Jane said to the river, “and we did all of this, there’s no turning back now.” Her face looked as vacant as the scene developing before her eyes. “If we are the virus,” she said, her voice quavering, “and we did all of this to survive, we’re not going to stop now. We’re going to live through this…this, and whatever’s next.” Jane’s face hardened and she turned away from the window.
She returned to the living room and stood in front of the TV for a few moments, expressionless and swaying. Her mind sputtered for a moment, then she went into one of the bedrooms. There she pulled duffel bags from under the bed and from out of the closet and stacked them on the bed. She opened the bags and arranged their contents: her cache of weapons, legal and not. Methodically, she checked the guns, magazines, boxes of ammo, the knives, the body armor, and the other tools of war she had begun to stockpile ever since the move to New York.
On the bedspread, Jane laid out the three identical companions to the gun that she had brought from Charlottesville. The sight of the guns laid out like that, in a row, reassured her.
For a moment, she missed the Smith and Wesson .460 XVR Magnum Revolver in all of its single action glory. The gun had saved her life in Charlottesville countless times, but, if she was to be fair, so had the Beretta. And the Beretta was more practical—it was lighter, required less reloading, and even a shot as bad as Sven could be taught how to handle one effectively.
Remembering Sven’s inadequacy as a marksman made Jane miss him even more, so she rifled through her stockpile more rapidly.
There was enough firepower in their apartment to start and win a small war, so long as the war was confined to their one block radius, but what Jane needed now were the lightest and most necessary items.
More important than the weapons were the filters for the masks. There were so many of them, but now that a New York City outbreak was no longer an unlikely possibility but a reality, the numerous packages of filters seemed lacking.
Jane tucked the Beretta into her waistband, grabbed a number of replacement clips and replacement filters, and went to the foyer. She stuffed the supplies into her jacket pocket, and pressed her mask tightly to her face and fastened it. Then she put on her jacket and took the Beretta out of her waistband.
“That should do for a while,” she said, holding the gun aloft, ready for action. “At least for this neighborhood.”
Jane wrenched the door open and burst into the hallway, her gun drawn. She looked in both directions. The hallway was clear.
She turned back to the apartment door and locked it.
“Even if we are the virus,” she said, “I don’t want any of those things in my apartment.” She then barreled down the hallway, toward the stairs.
72
CITY HALL PARK, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Zombies surrounded City Hall as if in protest. Instead of signs they clutched dismembered body parts: arms and legs with exposed bones and dangling veins and cords of flesh, lower jaws, throats, vertebrae—the zombies may as well have been crowding around the entrance to an undead anatomy symposium. At frequent and irregular intervals, the zombies bit into the human parts that they held, apparently unaware of the fact that there was no complete human connected to the part, no human left to infect.
Lorie stopped half a block away, ducked behind a shuttered, standalone newsstand, and scanned the throng for weak points. She had run to this vantage point along the seams of the world, the unseen joints that bent and gave way under the force of humanity’s collective will.
At first, positioned behind the newsstand, she saw no weaknesses in the throng enveloping City Hall. She continued to watch, letting her mental overlay shift and filter its way through the gaps among the tightly knit mass of zombies. Every few seconds, the overlay would find a momentary way through—a scraggly line tracing a path through the undead—and would wink out almost immediately, broken by the zombies’ movement. Sometimes, the overlay would be pulled onto the seams that Lorie saw. When this happened, the overlay would hang there for a few seconds before snapping back to a path through the zombies.
She watched the zombies chew and tear the human body parts that they had stolen, and interpreted this behavior as an imperfection in the virus’s directives, a kink that was not yet worked out, but, she suspected, was being worked out at this very moment—or had been. At this point, Lorie gathered, further perfection of the virus would gain it little, if anything at all. Lorie could feel that the virus had evolved and grown stronger, much stronger than its ancestor that had animated the Virginia outbreak. It had taken on marked improvements, except for an increased breakability in its hosts. This was a tradeoff that Lorie assumed evolution had seen fit to make. She saw this evolution in the zombies’ increased aggression, the improbably rapid spread of the virus, and now, with her increased level of awareness, she sensed that New York City had become the viral epicenter of the world.
The imagery of it was clear in her mind: zombies walking and crawling on the ocean floors and sea beds, where they could maintain their viral state indefinitely in the moisture, walking and crawling until they found land, emerged, and took new human prey. The virus would spread. It would spread throughout the world until only a few human survivors remained.
Lorie examined this scenario in her mind, turning it over and over again to look at all of its angles. Her mind took it in as a cold fact that must be accepted at face value. It was reality, neither good nor bad, but the nature of the world and the next measured point in the progression of the human sequence.
The zombies encircling City Hall churned as if in a feverish dance, and Lorie could see the same ritual being played out numberless times in cities and towns throughout the world, both in the past and in the future. The force that now drove events was capable of many forms, and this—the zombie plague—was yet another. Lorie arranged the many forms next to each other in her mind. She could make no comparison among them. She was unable to judge which was better or worse. They just were, as she just was.
Lorie looked to her right, at
a space beside the shuttered newsstand. There she pictured a whirlwind of newspaper shreds that spun faster and faster in the air, its tattered black and white components rising against the falling snowflakes, confronting the storm.
Abruptly, Lorie broke her focus, jumped up into the air, and grabbed a thick, two foot long icicle that was frozen to the newsstand’s roof. The icicle snapped free. Lorie spun in the air and guided the icicle on its path as if it were a thing without weight and as if airborne maneuvers was a skill she had mastered in another childhood.
The icicle gained speed and tore through the air. It only traveled a few feet before it pierced the gnarled eyeball of a zombie who had been creeping up on Lorie. The force of Lorie’s strike sent the point of ice six inches into the zombie’s head.
The zombie staggered backward, the larger portion of the icicle sticking out of its eye, and fell into the street.
Lorie had landed in a crouch and was surveying her handiwork. All she said was, “Stealthier now, too.”
She was beginning to straighten when she saw it—another seam, one that was meant for her.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she broke into a run.
At first, the path led toward City Hall and the zombies surrounding it. Lorie did not yet see a path through them, but she remained calm. She was certain that one existed or could be made, even if it was not clear at this moment where or how.
Then the seam veered violently and unexpectedly off course. Unsurprised, Lorie followed it, gaining speed. Her back was now to City Hall, and she was running west. Lorie continued, unquestioning, to follow the route that was plotting itself out in front of her as she ran. Her mind was at ease in the notion that she would turn back toward City Hall in some roundabout way that got her to where she needed to be, through an alley or tunnel of whose whereabouts only a subconscious portion of her mind was aware.
