by M. Van
My heart had left my chest and settled in my throat. My body ached where I felt the safety belt dig into my ribs. My face felt as if it belonged to someone else, and I couldn’t breathe.
“Mars,” I struggled to say. Next to the ringing in my ear, I heard panting, and something shifted. I moaned when his weight on top of me moved.
“I’m all right,” Mars said.
“That is great, Mars. Now get off,” I groaned. I registered an apology, but shots being fired in the cabin drowned out his words. I heard a few loud thuds followed a crack and Decks’s shouts for Elisabeth to get out. Mars cut me out of my seatbelt, examined my eyes for a second. At least I think he did, because my vision was all over the place. I had to blink away his second and third head.
“Out the front window,” he said and ushered me past the front seats.
With some effort, I climbed to the front. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw Mars had opened his passenger door. He braced himself against the seat to push himself up out the opening and sprayed bullets at our unwanted guests. Someone grabbed my arm, forcing me to follow it, and then pulled me to the ground behind a concrete barrier.
“Mars, get your ass over here,” Decks shouted. It wasn’t long until I heard boots pound on the asphalt, and then a body slammed onto the ground next to me.
After that, for all I knew, World War III had broken out. I covered my ears as the massive onslaught was unleashed. Large caliber guns plowed the interstate, grenades were launched, and explosions filled the early signs of dusk. I was determined not to think of the zombies being ripped apart and the fact they had once been human beings. Instead, I found Mars, who grinned like a little kid. His smile was infectious, and I smiled back.
“It’s like the Fourth of July,” he said when he draped a protective arm around me.
“I’ve never celebrated the Fourth of July,” I said. He gave me an incredulous look.
“Well, that’ll have to change.” His strong arm pulled me toward him. For a brief moment, I indulged in the contrast of feeling safe while the world around me was going up in flames.
I couldn’t tell whether we had sat there like that for an hour or mere minutes when I let Mars pull me to my feet. The gunfire had died down, but the smell of sulfur coated the air. He gazed at the barricade of soldiers and trucks with pride. Dazed, I glanced over the men with heavy weaponry who occupied an overpass.
I came back to my senses when searing heat radiated off my cheek. The back of my hand came back sticky and covered in blood when I touched it.
Mars leaned in to take a closer look when he saw me wince. He withheld a grimace, but the concern in his eyes told me it wasn’t pretty. “You’ll be fine,” he said.
With an arm around my shoulder, he guided me up an incline away from I-678 to the overpass. I leaned into him, my head on his shoulder. I was never one for the girly, touchy-feely thingy, but now all I wanted to do was melt into Mars’s strong body. My strength faded in his arms. I had trouble placing one foot in front of the other. Of course, I blamed our little excursion, and it had nothing to do with me being ill.
Mars waved at a soldier running to us. The patch with a staff and two snakes around his upper arm indicated he was a medic. For some reason, it didn’t make me feel better.
I spotted a few soldiers heading down the I-678 and pointed it out to Mars. “What are they doing?”
“That’s cleanup,” he said. I watched the men who were wearing canisters on their backs. When fire burst from the weird muzzled weapons they carried, I recognized the flamethrowers. It made me uncomfortable to watch, and I turned to the medic. The man, who had the intensity of a seasoned soldier, looked me over as Mars stayed close. The medic drew his gaze from me. I noticed he locked eyes with Decks, who nodded before the medic turned his attention back to me. Too tired to care, I directed my gaze at the buildings that stood on the other side of the interstate. I winced when a pain shot up my arm.
“What the hell was that?” I asked the medic. Agitation filled my voice.
“Just a vitamin booster,” he said, “to keep your strength up.” When he avoided my eyes, I pulled my arm from his grasp and left him standing. There was no love in me for people giving shots without announcing them or for people giving shots in general.
I caught sight of Elizabeth from the corner of my eye. She sat on the railing that separated us from I-678, down a small overgrown drop, wrapped in a blanket, with a pair of untied boots at her feet. She actually smiled. I gave Mars a nod and walked toward her. Decks looked deep in conversation with some other soldiers, but he nodded when he spotted me. I returned the gesture before I reached a hand out for Elizabeth.
“We made it,” she said as she got up. “We actually made it.” Her wide smile was uncanny. She opened her arms to take me in an embrace, which I didn’t think was very British, and I hated it, but after today, I didn’t care. I stepped closer but froze when I saw an arm rise as if it had clawed its way out of the depths of hell. The arm belonged to a remaining zombie that had climbed the steep incline along the road, unseen in the overgrowth. My throat caught when I tried to shout Elizabeth’s name.
“Look out!” I shouted instead. Her face contorted at the tug of her blanket. Elizabeth screamed at the top of her lungs and reached out to me. I grabbed her hand.
“Let go of the blanket,” I yelled. She didn’t. As she tripped over her untied laces, the zombie brought her further off balance. She squeaked as she tumbled backward over the railing. All my energy depleted, I couldn’t counter her weight. With a firm grasp on my wrist, she took me along with her.
We rolled down the incline as our bodies entangled with the zombie’s. Dirt caught in my mouth, and I could feel the uneven ground and the overgrowth jab at my body. After a short drop, I felt the impact of the road at the bottom and another when Elizabeth landed on top of me. Pain shot through my limbs, and I let out a disgruntled moan. I was back on I-678. I was really starting to dislike this particular piece of road. My head hurt from where it had hit the asphalt, and I couldn’t breathe with Elizabeth sprawled on my chest. She looked at me with fear-crazed eyes.
“Move,” I croaked. As before, she froze on the spot. I heard its growl before I saw the figure rise over us. It was a young woman in a red dress that looked half-decent because of the blending colors. I screamed at Elizabeth to get off me, desperation filling my voice. The red dress fell on top of us. Elizabeth’s body shuddered. The pressure of the two women on top of me crushed the air out of my lungs. Elizabeth’s warm dark blood ran down my neck. I squirmed to get out when pain shot through me. The woman’s teeth sank into my shoulder. My flesh tore, and I screamed in agony. All my strength left me, and I closed my eyes. This was it. All this shit had to happen just for me to end on goddamn I-678.
Shouts and the pounding of boots reminded me I was still alive. From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman in the red dress shuffle in the direction of the overpass. With a disgruntled shudder, she retreated into the shadows. I pushed Elizabeth’s limp form off me, refusing to look into her terror-filled eyes. My body shook as I sat up. Pain radiated from my neck down to my shoulder in shocking waves. My head spun, either from rolling down that incline or the loss of blood. Next to me, Elizabeth’s body went rigid. Her chest rose and fell in sync with her ragged breath. The encounter hadn’t killed her, although she stared at me with milky white eyes. Her nose lifted to the sky, and her jaw flexed as she struggled to get up.
Footsteps drew closer, pounding on the asphalt. Elizabeth’s nostrils flared when her head jerked in their direction. She snarled, baring teeth before a gunshot went off. Elizabeth’s skull cracked open. I jerked backward. Gravel dug into my hands when I scrambled over the tarmac. My back collided with something hard. Dazed, I looked up at Decks, Mars, and three other soldiers. The expression on Mars’s face told me enough. I stared at them in shock. Decks ordered everyone to keep a distance, except Mars, who kneeled down beside me. Those jade eyes held me with such focus. The pain
that reminded me of what had happened found company in relief. The knowledge I had found my easy way out seemed bittersweet. Mars’s eyes, filled with concern, made me feel as if it was okay. I could live with him being the last person I saw on this earth.
“Well,” Decks said expectedly.
“Eyes clear,” Mars replied. Decks shook his head in confusion, his rifle lowered. I didn’t dare move. I just looked at him, both of them—two men I had met only hours ago that felt like a lifetime. I guessed time had finally caught up with me. I nodded at Decks as if I were ready. Ready for the bullet that would end my life. But who was I kidding? No one is ever ready for this.
With a grim expression, he returned my nod. However, his finger avoided the trigger.
“We won’t be able to take her to the lab now,” Decks said. I blinked up at him, confused. What lab? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t get the words to pass my lips. My body sat frozen in place. I wondered if this was what they meant by shock. Mars stood to face Decks.
“We can’t just leave her,” Mars answered. Decks nodded to the soldiers who waited not far off.
“We have our orders,” he said. Mars pulled Decks to the side as he leaned in to speak.
“This is not right. You know it’s not,” Mars said with a painful expression on his face.
“She’s infected. The lab won’t take her now, and we can’t let her live,” Decks replied. They seemed to argue, but their voices merged into white noise and bounced off my ears. At last, Mars shook his head in resignation. He nodded in agreement. They exchanged a glance I couldn’t read as Decks raised his gun. I lifted my chin and tried to face my fate with open eyes but failed miserably.
“I’ll do it,” Mars said.
| 6
He didn’t do it. He didn’t shoot me in the head as he should have. Instead, he pulled me to my feet and yanked me up the incline, along a fence, and down an alley. We passed a couple of those distinct yellow school buses, and he took me around a corner where no one could see us. He set me down on the ground where he wiped the blood from my neck, careful not to get any on himself. He pressed some gauze onto the bleeding gash. The skin had ripped from my neck to my shoulder blade. I presumed there’d be more pain but knew it would come crashing down on me when the adrenaline faded, or not, if Mars decided to take his shot.
“I don’t have time to explain, but there is a chance for you. Your condition might save you—I’ve seen it before,” he said as his tentative hand touched my fuzzy hair. “Protocols are in place to prevent us from bringing infected to the labs, which is probably a good thing for you because I don’t think you would have survived the tests. This is the only chance I can give you. You have to try to make it on your own.”
At that point, my brain had turned to mush, which made me unable to pronounce a comprehensible word. I might have in Dutch but surely not in English. At a loss, I gaped at him.
Mars looked over his shoulder, nervous for the first time since I’d met him, before he said, “Stay clear of the military. In fact, don’t trust anyone.” His voice was calm but his tone urgent. He placed his nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun in my hand. Reassurance filled his eyes while his hand held mine. He must have read the confusion on my face because I wasn’t getting any of this.
“You can do this,” he said with a twinge of glee in his eyes. “You’re even more special now.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said in a whisper. He couldn’t leave me like this, not when I was about to turn into God knows what.
“I really wanted to take you on that date,” he said with a faint smile. After a pause, he kissed the top of my head, stood, and discharged his weapon into the air twice.
“I have to go now,” he said. Then he turned and strode to the end of the alley.
I wanted to shout at him, but the words came out barely audible. “Wait, you can’t leave me here like this.” I glared at his back, but he didn’t even glance over his shoulder.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered when he disappeared around the corner. A gut-wrenching feeling bled from the pit of my stomach. I felt desperately alone.
I winced in pain when I tried to get to my feet but soon surrendered. My muscles felt sore and my body depleted of every ounce of energy. I glanced at the alley around me and then at the gun in my hand. What was I supposed to do, put a bullet in my head? What type of badass, military, for-king-and-country thing to do was that? Well, president or whatever. In the near distance, engines roared, voices yelled, and with a loud thunder, a convoy of vehicles left.
Mars had placed me behind a garbage Dumpster between two buildings. The reddish glowing remnants of the setting sun bounced off the windows of the building across from me. The alley itself seemed to be clear of zombies, although I heard some shuffle by a few times. My mind raced, losing track of time. Was I going to turn into one of those things? Did I want it to happen? I couldn’t shake the thoughts. Hell no, I didn’t want to turn, but that would mean putting a bullet in my head.
Since Mars had left me, I had placed the gun in my mouth twice. The first time, a zombie had strolled by, and I’d frozen. The second time, I hadn’t been able to keep my hands from shaking. If I turned, I wouldn’t be me anymore, so why should I care? At least I hoped it wouldn’t be me feeding on innocent people. I couldn’t bear the thought of those zombies with even the slightest hint of comprehension, trapped inside their bodies, unable to quench the lust for fresh meat.
The image of my dad kept popping up in my head, pity strewn across his face. He didn’t have to voice that I wasn’t strong enough. His expression did that just fine. He never hid the fact he thought I was weak. I had trouble picturing my family in a good light, though I knew things hadn’t been all bad. People tend to remember the bad over the good. It didn’t mean that I didn’t love them. Since my diagnoses, all they ever saw in me was a weak, fragile person who they could wrap inside a cocoon as if that would protect me from dying. My mom huddled over me as if I were a twenty-something toddler. My sister had only stopped bringing me food when I slammed the door in her face. The only one who didn’t treat me as if I were made of porcelain was my brother, but then he was never around. At the time, it felt like a good enough reason to push them away. Still, I wondered how they were doing in all this. I pictured my dad in his three-piece suit defending the front gates of his company’s headquarters with a briefcase in one hand, a phone in the other.
The news of the outbreak must have reached home. I wondered if they thought about me. Knowing them, they would have already mourned me. No way their little girl would survive something like this. Maybe I could prove my family wrong. The thought made me contemplate the gun that had turned near invisible. I blinked and noticed it was dark. I looked up but couldn’t see the stars.
“Damn cities,” I muttered. How long had I been sitting here?
My muscles ached when I got to my feet. At the edge of the alley, I peeked around the corner. The streetlights had turned on, although some of them blinked in intervals. I could hear screams in the distance, followed by gunshots. The sounds seemed muffled and distorted to me as if in a dream. I retraced my steps down the incline and peered over an empty I-678. The roadblock had dispersed as had the soldiers. The stench of burned flesh filled up my nostrils. Dark scorched lumps littered the road. Smoke from the burned flesh rose into the night sky.
My butt rested on the hood of a burned-out Prius for a moment while I took in the tall buildings that rose up along the road. My feet moved in a leisurely circle when dismay rushed up on me. What was I supposed to do?
My face felt like a carving of the moon’s surface. My fingers found it sticky and moist. I winced at the touch. I hadn’t given the medic time to fix that.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
My throat closed while panic erupted from my core as the situation started to sink in. I would turn into a zombie, given enough time. I was cold, hungry, and thirsty. Oh God, was I thirsty. On top of that, I was in a country I’d never w
anted to visit. Trust Australia won’t have this many undead. Unlikely to walk into a zombie in the outback.
“Fuck!” I screamed this time. I drawled out the word at the thought of my own helplessness. My voice echoed into the night sky until the darkness replied. A voice shouted an amen, and another offered his services.
At the sound of a moan in the near distance, I held my breath. Don’t lose it. Please hold it together, I kept telling myself. I had trouble drawing in breaths. My head felt woozy. My shoulder burned like fire, and then my legs buckled and sank to the ground next to the Prius. The smell of death in the air made me gag while tears slid down my face. With arms wrapped around my legs, I focused on my breathing. I had no idea what to do.
I raised my head to stare into the darkness and blinked through blurry eyes. What the hell is that? I got to my feet and stumbled to a white Ford Edge with a bag on top of its roof. It was a backpack, and up close, I saw it was my backpack. Mars must have left it. I grabbed the pack, relieved to find two bottles of water, half a dozen granola bars, and a couple of brown packets with a Department of Defense logo. I uttered a silent thank-you to Mars when I read the label: Meal, Ready-to-Eat.
Eagerly, I ate one of the granola bars. After I’d drained a bottle of water, I looked around. Aside from the distant shouts that had followed my own outburst, it seemed quiet. Shouldn’t there be screaming, death, and a lot more gore by this time? It might be that the military had been able to contain the outbreak. However, if so, where were they? Mars had warned me to keep out of their way, but why? He knew I wouldn’t turn, or else he wouldn’t have left the pack. My mind lingered on the conversation between him and Decks about how me being infected prevented them from taking me to the lab. Would they have taken me if I hadn’t become infected? Mars had said I wouldn’t have survived the tests. I shook my head in confusion. I didn’t understand any of this. A distant scream made me lift my head, and I filed the thought for another time.
