by Smith, Aaron
Danielle waited for the sergeant to wave them onto the ramp to the highway, and then drove Brandon away from the city where he’d lived his entire young life.
Terence Trumbull watched them go, glad for once to have saved some lives instead of taking them. As he double checked his weapons and ammo and steeled himself to go back to the hunt, he tried to remember where he had left off on his count.
“We’re dangerously close to losing power in most of the city,” Lieutenant Klein told Colonel Peterson and the several other police and military personnel around him in the high-rise command center. “We’ll still have wireless communication, of course, and we can manage to keep things flowing, at least as well as we have so far, in daylight—but once night falls we may be, for lack of a better term, fucked!”
“This set of events has already turned disastrous,” Colonel Peterson said. “The number of dead and/or infected is still undetermined, property damage will be in the billions, it’s all over the news worldwide and it only seems to be getting worse. I’ve lost contact with half my troops. All kinds of government agencies are getting closer to moving in and doing something drastic. And there’s no way the president’s reputation won’t suffer from all this chaos. This could be a bigger disaster than Katrina and cost us more lives than 9/11. This might turn out to be the biggest disaster ever on American soil. And, Klein, I don’t expect to be in charge of the army part of this much longer. There are generals en route, a lot of them. I’ll be down on the streets with the men soon … and I’m beginning to think that’s where I’d rather be.”
“In your opinion, Colonel,” Klein asked, not sure if he really wanted an answer, “just how drastic of a series of steps is the government going to take with this crisis?”
“Honestly, Lieutenant,” Peterson looked down at the floor as he spoke, “if all we see is a complete military takeover of Chicago, you can count yourself lucky. I expect much worse, much worse.”
Doug came out of the bathroom fully dressed. Kacey was waiting, sitting in front of the TV mesmerized by the repeating loop of disastrous news from Chicago. She was dressed now, in well-worn jeans and a T-shirt. She turned her attention from the TV, stood, smiled at Doug, and grabbed her keys and handbag.
“Are we ready?”
“Sure,” Doug said, following her out.
Kacey drove faster than Doug would have liked, taking some desolate, wooded back roads and hugging several perilous turns as they went on and on down the tree-lined paths that wound like serpents through those under-populated areas of northern Illinois. The woods finally parted and there was indeed a highway entrance hidden out there among the green. Kacey merged easily into the stream of traffic and sped along, smiling and enjoying the drive. The driver’s side window was open a few inches and Doug found that he liked the way her hair moved with the breeze.
They had coffee and waffles in front of them half an hour later. It would have been a pleasant morning together if not for the dual sounds of the restaurant’s TV droning on about the Chicago Zombie Plague—as the networks—and the chatter from the other customers had now more or less officially named it. Doug’s mind was going in three directions at once. He felt sorry for those who hadn’t escaped Chicago. He felt gratitude toward Kacey Sherwood for taking him in, both as a friend and a lover. But also, he felt his shadow-self become increasingly intrigued by the reports of death and destruction in Chicago, almost as if taking nourishment from it. What if it became too strong, he wondered? What if he lost control? What if his shadow-self came to the surface here? What then?
Doug told himself to stop worrying and ignore it. He shoved a forkful of waffle into his mouth and realized Kacey had been saying something. He nodded, pretending he’d heard every word.
“… So what I mean is, you don’t look at me like other guys have, if that makes any sense.”
“Well everybody’s different,” Doug said, trying to recover. “And you’re not like other women I’ve met either.”
“So what are you hiding, Mr. Clancy?”
“What do you mean?” Doug was caught off guard.
“Well, you’re just weird, Doug. Don’t get insulted, because I don’t really mean that in a bad way, but you have a strange life if everything I know so far is true. I mean you don’t seem to have any family, at least none that you give a shit about, and no girlfriend and I don’t know about friends but you don’t seem worried at all about anybody in Chicago even with all that’s happening there and you just kind of seem like a big blank slate of a person. There, okay? I said it. Am I right? Or do you really just have no life?”
“Kacey … do we really have to go down this road?”
“So you are hiding something!”
Doug said nothing. He fumbled with the sugar packets, dumping too much into his coffee.
“You’re going to make me guess, huh?” Kacey kept on talking. “It must be a big dirty secret then if it’s got you so nervous. Okay, here goes! You’re a fugitive? You’re wanted for not paying child support? Witness protection program? Or … maybe you’ve got some horrible sickness and you’re dying and I’m your last fling before you say goodbye to the big cruel world!”
“Kacey, that’s enough!” Doug said. “Look, maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I just can’t let you in the way you want to be let in. This is all a mistake. Let’s pay the check and you can take me back to the diner and I’ll get in my car and leave you alone.”
“Doug, don’t be an asshole!” Kacey begged, but he picked up the check and headed to the register. She stood and followed him with tears beginning. She knew she had dug too deep and now he was running away.
They rode in utter silence back to the Mirage. Neither gave an inch or said a word. Kacey parked next to Doug’s car. She fished his keys out of her bag and handed them over. Doug got out and slammed the door. He got into his car and shot out of the lot faster than he should have. Kacey sat alone for a few minutes, felt like sobbing but couldn’t, willed her hands to stop shaking, and went home alone.
Danielle and Brandon finally made it past the worst of the tangled mess of traffic leaving Chicago. It was still on the slow side but they were at least able to see the movement now and the thickest of the crawl was behind them. As the traffic thinned out even more, Brandon renewed his pleas for a bathroom, and now he was hungry, too. Danielle could no longer deny him and she had now noticed the gas gauge dropping perilously low. She pulled the car into a gas station with a convenience store and public restrooms and they took care of business. It did feel good to get out of the car for a short time.
Danielle filled the gas tank, and then led her young charge into the building. Brandon hit the bathroom first and then sat happily munching on the small, single serving box of Apple Jacks that Danielle bought for him along with an orange juice. Danielle firmly ordered him to stay put on his little bench while she went into the ladies’ room. She had no real need to use the toilet, but locked herself in the stall to have a few precious moments of solitude. She sat down —it looked clean enough for a public restroom— and let the events of the day run through her mind. It hit her like a truck at full speed. The place she had lived was no longer what it was, spinning faster and faster into a nightmare land of chaos and death. Claire was dead; her friend, her roommate, a person she loved and felt safe and comfortable with was gone, torn to pieces by things that had once been human but had been reduced to walking engines of animalistic rage and bloodlust, and finally put down like rabid dogs by a soldier who happened to come along at the right moment.
Now Danielle was alone except for the little boy who had been thrust into her hands, a responsibility she had never wanted and wasn’t sure she could handle. She buried her face in her hands and let it out. The tears ran fast and felt hot on her cheeks. But she soon remembered Brandon and knew he needed her, at least until she could find a place for him in his now lonely world. She tore a length of toilet paper from the dispenser and mopped the sadness from her face.
“Enoug
h crying,” she whispered to herself. Grief and desperation was a waste of time now, she knew. Maybe Terence Trumbull had been right when he’d chosen to tell her about what he’d been through in Africa. She was on track to be a doctor, to heal and save. She had the mind and will to help those who needed it. Maybe this mess in Chicago was her baptism by fire, the chain of events that would test her ability to cope with the unexpected and the disastrous. She had to keep her head screwed on straight, for her sake, for Brandon’s, and maybe for the rest of the world. She stood up, marched out of the ladies’ room, and tried to stay strong.
“Come on, Brandon,” Danielle said, taking the child by the hand and leading him back to the car. The empty cereal box went into the garbage can and the orange juice, still half full, went with them.
Chapter 12
The bus was full as it left Chicago and headed up I-94. Most of the passengers were strangers, desperate people taking advantage of what might have been one last chance to get out of town alive. They packed in, tight as sardines, and rolled out into the unknown that had to be better than the bloodstained streets they were leaving behind. They were young and old, male and female, rich and poor, with two things in common: fear and hope.
Some of them tried to converse with those sitting near them, the jittery, halting and sputtering sort of exchanges common among the mutually nervous. Smiles were forced; laughter was short, quickly lost optimism. They were all terrified about the unknown future and struck by the loss of home. Yet they were all glad to be leaving and had been relieved when the soldiers at the last Chicago checkpoint had looked over each and every one of them before waving them on their way, satisfied none among them were carriers of the thing that had sent the city spiraling into horror.
But no amount of inspection can catch everything. There could have been a thousand soldiers at the checkpoint and there was still no guarantee that any of them would have spotted the Band-Aid on Rose Piermont’s arm. Even if they had, it may have aroused no suspicion, for the wound it covered was a slight one and it sat in the bend of the elbow where a doctor might draw a sample of blood. Yet the wound was there and had not been caused by a doctor’s syringe, but by the jagged point of a damaged fingernail, a nail attached to the left middle finger of an Empty One as Rose Piermont, divorced woman of thirty-six, ran through a small cluster of the walking dead trying to make it to the bus before it left her neighborhood. The Band-Aid had come from Rose’s purse and she had boarded the bus with the all too common attitude of, “It won’t happen to me.”
Rose sat in the very back of the bus, beside a very fat Asian man. They did not chat. Rose was squeezed in next to him, a bit uncomfortably, but at least she had the window. It was not hot in the bus; the air conditioning was fine. Rose closed her eyes after a while and began to run song lyrics through her mind in lieu of the iPod she’d left behind along with the new pet cat she had already started to miss. She hoped zombies didn’t like the taste of kittens. That was her last thought of her own as she started to nod off to the Stone Temple Pilots in her head.
By the time Rose opened her eyes again, more than an hour had passed, although she no longer had any way of knowing that. The fat man never knew what hit him. One second the woman beside him was asleep, the next she had bitten off his ear. He felt the bite, the shot of pain like none he had known before, and cried out and rolled off the seat, curling up into as close as a man of his girth could come to a fetal position, hand clutching the wounded side of his head. The screaming of the other passengers began and the Empty One formerly known as Rose leaped over the fallen fat man and struck the next person she could reach.
The aisle between the seats ran red with blood. Screams cut through the air and flesh was torn and people fell. The driver went into a state of shock; he kept driving, blocking out the screams and the smell of blood and bodily fluids and wastes released from dying bowels and bladders. His eyes locked on the road, his hand held firm on the wheel, and his feet on the pedals. All he knew was the road ahead and the movements of the bus, for he could not bear to think of what was happening in the space behind him.
The effects of the Ether-virus varied from victim to victim. It had taken hours for Rose Piermont to go Empty, and the fat man still rolled around on the floor, his mind intact but wracked by terror and pain. But in some of the others, the change happened quickly, the mind went blank, the hunger took control, and Empty Ones began to feed on those not yet bitten and on each other. The driver, wearing earbuds, was oblivious and just kept driving.
Danielle and Brandon drove on a while longer, the radio on but mercifully playing music instead of grim news reports. Danielle kept the volume low so she could talk with Brandon, who was regaling her with the sort of stories that seven-year olds are fond of telling, particularly the ones involving embarrassing incidents that happened to other people, classmates in most cases. So Danielle rode along I-94 listening to the saga of The Day Peggy Brinkmeister Peed Her Pants in Class.
“You know, Brandon,” Danielle said, stifling a laugh and trying her best to sound like an adult, “I know it might seem funny when other people do something embarrassing, but imagine how poor Peggy must have felt. You have to be careful what you say in situations like that. Feelings are easy to hurt and friends are valuable.”
“But it’s just Peggy Brinkmeister!” Brandon tried to brush away the advice.
“But Brandon,” Danielle kept going, “how do you know Peggy won’t grow up to be the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen? Maybe you’ll want to marry her someday.”
“Eww,” Brandon groaned, followed by an imitation of puking.
Danielle smiled; she was glad to find that she still knew how. The pain of everything was still there, and the fear was palpable, but she seemed to have left the worst of it behind in the rest stop bathroom. She felt like life was at least moving forward again, though she had no idea where she was headed now that the city that held all her future plans was a zombie-infested disaster zone.
She kept laughing, face turning red, until her jaw began to ache and she had to stop. Brandon kept giggling as Danielle sped the car up and changed lanes to pass a slow-moving bus.
As the laughter finally subsided, Danielle yawned, blinked a few times, and realized she was starting to get tired from being on the road for too long. Had Claire still been with them, or Captain Trumbull, they could have taken turns driving, but it was only her and a little boy so she had no choice but to continue on. They were on a long stretch of empty road now as the suburban areas had been left behind and this section of Illinois was more rural, greener. No roadside businesses were in sight, just woods and the occasional open space where one could pull over and rest. As much as she hated to stop, she needed to refresh herself before her eyes grew bleary and her back and legs ached any more from driving.
“Brandon, we’re stopping for a few minutes. I just need to stretch.”
Douglas Clancy had been speeding south for quite some time. His mind boiled with mixed emotions, all of them strong. He hated himself for having upset Kacey, but he could not tell her what he was hiding; that would have been far worse than running away. He intended to charge straight back into Chicago; his fascination with the weird turn of events there was almost overwhelming and he could not stay away. How he would get in —the news reported that the military and police had almost completely sealed off the city— he did not know, but a very big part of him needed to see and hear what was happening there. The part of him that embraced the morbid was looming large now and the magnetic attraction of bloody Chicago was irresistible.
The bus driver was frozen, his mind gone blank, not because he had become an Empty One, for his skin had not yet been torn by their attack, but because fear and shock flooded his thoughts. His eyes continued to scan the road ahead and his hands and feet kept control of the large vehicle, but no clear thoughts ran through his mind. The bus kept going, fast and steady, turning at the right moments, straightening and continuing on. The noise behind the driv
er was a symphony of pain and horror. The wheels kept turning, the rolling can of mayhem kept moving.
Danielle pulled the car over to the right side of the road into a clearing of gravel and dirt. She stood for a moment arching her tired back, and opened the passenger door to let Brandon out. The boy jumped out like a freed squirrel and arched his own back, stretching with dramatic exaggeration in imitation. He started to wander around, looking for something to do.
“Stay away from the road,” Danielle warned. Brandon smirked and nodded. Danielle had begun to think of Brandon as being pretty smart for a seven-year old and didn’t think she’d have to worry about him straying into traffic even if the road had been busier than it was. Brandon quickly found a nice sized stick and began to play improvised baseball by batting pebbles around, with sense enough to bat in the opposite direction from Danielle’s car.
Danielle felt good to be out of the confines of the car. It was a warm day, not terribly hot but dry and just cool enough to still be comfortable, with a very slight breeze. She walked for a few minutes, pacing in circles around the car, the sound of pebble home runs and Brandon’s imitation crowd noises filling in the background. As she walked, she realized she was limping a bit. She sat on the back bumper of the car, took off her right sneaker, peeled off the sweaty sock. She wiggled her toes for a minute and cleaned her foot with a disposable wipe. She lifted her left leg now, and twisted off her prosthetic. She peeled off the stump-sock, massaged the end of her leg for a minute and cleaned it with another wipe.
“Cool!” Brandon’s voice interrupted her ritual; he had lost interest in being Albert Pujols and come to see what she was up to. “You’re like a cyborg! You can really kick zombie ass!”
“Brandon,” Danielle looked at him, relieved that the sight of her abbreviated limb had amused rather than frightened him, “you’re too young to say ‘ass.’ Why don’t you say, ‘zombie butt’ instead?”
