I could hear the woman in the gallery having a discussion on the phone, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. I sat down at the computer and typed in the address for CNN.
This event was the only news. Every article and every video was about Canton B. I clicked the play button on a video at random. It was shot in Knoxville, Tennessee. The city was burning. In another video from Little Rock, Arkansas, people tore at each other like wild animals. In another from a small town in South Carolina, the dead lay in the streets like a Matthew Brady battlefield photograph.
I pressed play on one more, and the masked woman stepped into the doorway of the office. She watched the monitor over my shoulder. In the clip, bridges were being blown up.
“They’re trying to contain it,” she said. “They’re bombing every bridge and ferry on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The South is screwed.”
“What the hell?” I said to myself.
“My brother will be here in half an hour,” she said, “Here’s your phone.”
She put it on a shelf just inside the door then stepped out.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
”I’d rather not say,” she said, “things being what they are.”
“What are things that you can’t give me your name?”
”Again, I’m not trying to be rude, but if I gave you my name, it might give you a way to find out where I live. It’s the only safe place I know.”
“How could this happen?” I said, turning back to the monitor.
“Have you been in a cave or something?”
I looked up at her, and quickly reviewed the past few days in my head.
“Well,” I said, “let’s see…Today is Thursday. No visitors yesterday. We had snow and ice on Tuesday, and the museum is closed when the schools are closed. I’m also closed Sundays and Mondays. No one came in on Saturday….other than me, you are the only person to step foot in here since last Friday.”
“Hell,” she said, “Working here’s a friggin’ cake walk.”
I stared at her. She probably thought I was offended, but really I was thinking about how I could have been so unaware of what had been happening. I thought back. When I wasn’t here, I was at home….
“When did this all start?”
“The craziness started in the U.S. on Monday down in Florida,” she said. “They stopped all air traffic after that, except for military. But it’s been spreading north anyway.”
I looked down and noticed her bare feet. One of them was bleeding a little.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said looking at her feet. “I knew better than to come into town today dressed like this, but we didn’t expect this shit to go down until Saturday at the earliest. It spread quicker than they said it would.”
“You need the first aid kit?”
“Yeah,” she said, “And shoes if you got them.”
“Can’t help you there,” I said trying to muster a smile.
“Please use the rag,” she said.
I put the rag over my face and went to the supply closet.
When I returned, she had removed her coat and hat, pulled my chair out of the office and was sitting in it examining her bleeding foot.
“It’s not scraped much,” she said. “It’ll be fine, but it’ll be sore for a couple of days.”
I stood away from her and held out the kit and a wet towel. She took them.
“Thank you,” she said, “I’m not as bitchy as I seem.”
I didn’t respond. I just stepped past her and leaned against my desk.
“That shit on CNN is all old news,” she said. “What you need to be thinking about now is where to go from here.”
“For me this all just happened. I don’t know…”
She had been cleaning her foot with the towel, and stopped.
”This is serious,” she said. “Ain’t nothing going to ever be the same. All those people out there killing each other–they ain’t getting better.”
“There’s no cure?”
She shook her head and went back to cleaning her foot.
“That shit on the news ain’t helping anybody now,” she said. “You remember the ice storm don’t you?”
She was referring to the 2009 ice storm. Around here if anyone ever says “the ice storm” that’s what they are talking about.
“Do you remember how everybody acted over that?” she said.
I nodded.
“That was nothing,” she said. “This right here--this that’s happening today--this could be the end of everything we know. Its going to be like the wild west out there pretty damn quick. Maybe worse. The wild west wasn’t full of zombies.”
CHAPTER 3
Zombies?” I laughed.
“What else would you call them? They ain’t the undead, but they ain’t right neither.”
“How long do they have?” I asked. “How long before the disease kills them?”
“It doesn’t kill them,” she said. I noticed her looking into the other room. She stood and walked into our permanent collection. There was an old Red Cross nurse’s uniform on display in the corner.
“There’s some shoes,” she said, “and about my size.”
I followed her, and she raised her tobacco stake to make sure I didn’t get too close.
“You can’t wear those,” I said. “They are part of the display.”
She picked them up, stood on one leg, and compared them to a foot.
“They might be a little big,” she said.
“They’re part of the display!” I said.
“Who cares now?”
“I care,” I said.
“Don’t you get it? This doesn’t matter anymore. All of this,” she waved her stick around, “all of this is junk. Nobody wanted to see it before, and they sure don’t give a shit now. I’m taking the shoes.”
She sat in the floor and after blowing the dust out of the decades-old shoes, slipped them on her feet.
If everything I’d seen and heard today was true, then she was right. I could still hear the muffled pops of gunfire outside and people yelling.
“So what happens to them?”
“What do you mean?” she said, tying the laces.
“The sick people. The crazy people.”
“They stay that way.”
She stood and walked around in her new shoes.
“From what they said on the news, the disease fries the brain,” she continued. “Higher brain function is shot to hell. The neo-cortex, the limbic system…they get fried…not completely, but enough. They’re like animals now, but not scared like animals. They’re aggressive….dangerous.”
“They’re still people,” I said.
“They’re not in there anymore,” she said pointing to her head, “Their memories, reason, compassion…they’re gone. All that is left is a human body inhabited by a….by a rabid dog.”
She noticed me wince at that.
“I’m just saying what the doctor said on the news yesterday when he was warning people to stay away from them. Right now, they’re contagious. If you get too close, if they bite you…whatever. I don’t know how it is after the virus has messed them up. You could be contagious right now, even if you aren’t acting like them.”
“Maybe you’re contagious,” I said. “I’m divorced. I don’t have kids. I haven’t been close enough to catch anything from anyone for a week…except you. I haven’t even been to buy groceries.”
“Jesus,” she said, “don’t you have a social life? What are you, one of those porn addicts or something?”
“Listen,” I said, “I know you keep saying that you don’t mean to be rude, but you are. Of the two of us, you are more likely to be infected than I. You were out there rolling around on the ground with one of them.”
She sighed, and looked down at her new old white shoes.
“You’re right,” she said. “And you helped me. I am thankful. You have been very…kind.”
; That was better.
“When my brother gets here, you can’t come with us, but….”
“Why would I want to come with you?”
“Good,” she said, raising a hand to stop me from getting offended. “But I still want to help you with a little advice.”
I shrugged, “Okay.”
“Get a plan. All those people out there…they all have jobs. What happens when they don’t show up to do their job? How long do you think we’ll have electricity or food shipments or internet? How long after these services are gone before we get them back? It is a scary thought. It could turn into the Dark Ages again. Can you handle that?”
“I am not a kid,” I said, “I don’t need the internet. I like it, but I don’t need it.”
“The internet is more than music videos and porn, hon. Go in your office right now and start printing off hard copies of everything that is important, and I’m not talking about financial statements.
“If you don’t know how to purify water, find a website that will tell you how, and print it out. If you don’t know how to store food, find out how. Print out manuals for shit…guns, generators…stuff like that. Print until the power goes out or you run out of paper. If you have an extra computer, get them both going.”
“Are you serious? There is no way I can do all that…”
“Do what you can. I’m helping you the best way I know how. I’m divorced, too. I’ve had to move in with my younger brother. He’s just a little older than you.” She moved over to one of the shorter display pedestals and sat on the edge of it. She wasn’t supposed to sit on those, but I didn’t say anything.
“My brother is one of those survivalist types,” she continued. “He’s got lots of guns and food and stuff like that stashed away for occasions like this. I always thought he was a nut, but when the ice storm happened, he was ready. While everyone else was without heat and electricity for nearly a month, we were warm and watching TV. He’s ready for anything. He’s ready for this, as crazy as that might sound.
“He has binders full of stuff at home. Most of it seems ridiculous…I mean, why would I need to know how to operate a forklift? Why would I want to make soap or butcher a pig? Since I’ve been watching this stuff play out on the news, I’ve been seeing how this stuff might come in handy very soon. Knowledge is power. How-To knowledge will be the most important. It might be a while before help comes. If this thing jumps the rivers, then help might never come.
“Start with the important stuff like water, food, and shelter, then work your way out from there. Shelter shouldn’t be a problem…there will be thousands of empty houses, but definitely learn about water. Where will you get it? When the power goes out, the water will eventually stop coming out of the tap.
“Electricity would be a good one, too. If nothing else learn how to wire a generator into a well, then you could pump water and store it so long as the generator is running. In fact, you should be filling every available container in this building with water right now.”
I was kind of dazed. So much to do…
“Do you know anything about any of this stuff?”
“I try to plant a little garden every year,” I said, “and I have a subscription to Mother Earth News.”
She rolled her eyes, but then composed herself.
“Okay,” she said, “that’s a start. Just go from there.”
We stared at each other.
“Electricity and the internet–their days are numbered. So, I’d get right on that if I were you.”
What she said made sense, but I didn’t know where to begin. I started toward my office, and then turned back to her.
“I don’t understand,” I said, “if everyone was informed, then why are so many people in town today?”
“I can’t speak for everyone else, but I was at the bank closing my accounts. We thought it might be a good idea to have a large amount of cash on hand in case we needed to leave. We might be able to pay our way across the river. Now I see we will need to leave soon, but I never got my money.”
“Your brother should be here by now.”
“He was at Wal-Mart trying to get some extra food before everything got bad,” she said, “He told me it was crazy there. He’ll be here.”
I went in my office and tried my mom’s number again. Still no answer. She lived near St. Louis, so I wasn’t too worried about her yet. I did think about calling my ex to check on her but decided not to.
The woman stepped into the doorway.
“Have you got a trash can in here?” she asked.
I pointed under the shelf by the door where she’d put my cell phone. She picked up the small plastic waste can and removed the bag.
“I’m going to fill this with water,” she said, “Just in case.”
I nodded and dialed another number. It was my friend Blaine.
Blaine, his wife, and two small children lived in a manufactured home out in the county near the little community of Gala. He had a few acres of land, grape vines, fruit trees, some chickens, a pond stocked with fish, and he always planted a big garden. I thought if I needed to stay somewhere until this all blew over, then Blaine’s would be the place to do it. I hadn’t heard from him in more than a week, but that wasn’t unusual.
I knew I couldn’t realistically stay in my little house on 17th Street. I lived over by the library. I had electric heat, and if I had to stay there for very long, I knew I’d either freeze or starve. The woman was right; I needed a plan.
The call went straight to voicemail. I hung up and dialed his home landline. It rang a few times, then the answering machine picked up. This concerned me, but I decided to go out there anyway, and hope he wouldn’t turn me away.
I left the office to have a look out the front of the building, and that’s when the power went out.
“Shit!” the woman said from the back room. “Well, there it goes. Dammit!”
I looked out the window of the front door. That little red truck on the museum sign was still running. I could see faint exhaust fumes coming out of the tailpipe. The driver’s door was still open, and the older man that tried to help me was gone, even his car was gone. Only a dark puddle of his blood and a shoe remained. There were several people out in the streets now. I looked south to Broadway, and I counted twelve standing in the intersection under the stop light. Some where dressed for winter with coats and hats, but there was one man that was completely naked.
“I filled every container I could find,” the woman said. She put the tobacco stick down, and started putting on her coat. “I’ve plugged the sink, and I’m filling it now. Who knows how long you’ll have water. Of course, if it gets cold enough, the pipes will freeze and burst, anyway.”
She went into the office and looked out the window.
“He’s here,” she said, pulling her hat down on her head. “He’s out back.”
I went as close as the doorway to the office. I could see past her through the window and into the parking lot. There was a white Dodge Ram 4×4 pickup idling outside. I could see a man in the vehicle looking at his phone. Then my cell phone rang on the shelf.
“It’s for me,” she said.
I stepped back so she could get the phone without getting too close to me.
She grabbed the phone and went back to the window, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m in the window.”
She waved.
“I see you. The power is out here.”
Pause.
“No, come around front. There’s too many of them back there.”
I could see some of the infected coming around the truck now.
“Watch them, hon. Lock your doors.”
One of the infected women crawled into the back of the truck.
“No! Don’t you dare get out. Just come around front. We’ll deal with her later.”
The truck began to back up, and then Stuart Wall ran at it and jumped on the hood. Then the cop started pounding the driver’s window with his fists.
“Just go!�
� she shouted into the phone.
The truck surged backward and Stuart rolled off the hood. The cop grabbed the mirror and ran alongside the truck, continuing to beat the window, his knuckles bleeding. The woman in the back was joined by a second, and when the masked woman’s brother stopped to shift into drive, the two women fell in the bed. It almost looked comical with their feet sticking up for that brief moment.
“Go, Danny! Dammit, just go!” the woman in the mask was crying now.
Danny went. The rear tires of his big truck smoked as he mashed the accelerator and peeled out onto North Street. The cop fell, taking the mirror with him.
She pushed past me and ran to the front door.
Before I could join her, she had already opened the door and ran outside. I got outside just as Danny was pulling over the curb and into the museum’s parking lot, just barely missing my car. He circled the truck around so the passenger door would be closest to us. The truck jerked to a stop, and the passenger door flew open. The masked woman jumped in and started to shut the door, but one of the women in the back stood and reached around and stuck her arm into the cab. The masked woman slammed the door on her arm, and the infected woman howled in pain, but didn’t pull it out.
By this time, the cop had recovered and was limping around the corner of the building.
“Go!” I shouted, “Just drive!”
The cop grabbed the truck door as Danny put it in drive again and pulled away. The woman that had reached in fell out of the truck as Danny turned onto North 8th Street. She landed on her head and stayed there. The cop continued to run beside the truck, but couldn’t keep up. Danny cut through the corner lot at Jay’s Transmission and headed west on Broadway.
The infected crowd from the intersection were agitated by the commotion with the truck and chased after it. I quietly backed into the museum and locked the door.
I was alone.
There was a splattering sound from the other room. My heart jumped as my imagination told me it was something horrible. I peeked around the corner into the permanent collections. The sound was coming from the back room next to the supply closet.
She’d left the water running, and the sink was overflowing into the floor.
The King of Clayfield - 01 Page 2
