“Flight. Freeze. Fight,” Theo said. “That was a dangerous gamble, but…" His pride was obvious in his tone and Jaimie wished he had stood to defend his family instead of his sister.
Jack’s face was white, her lips bloodless. “You scared the hell out of me!”
Anna held the broken bottle up, her own blood dripping from lacerations on her fingers and down her wrist. “I was thinking bottles would be easier to break, like in a saloon fight in an old Western.”
Jack made a worried noise but Anna assured her the cuts were minor. Anna dropped the bottle to the sidewalk, jittery and high on adrenaline. “You know what else I was thinking? I’m tired of being pushed around and how I’ve always hated bullies. I stood up to kids who bothered Jaimie in the younger grades, but I never really stood up to a bully in high school. Now I wish I had.”
“With a broken bottle?” Jack asked.
“The preferred method of making high school kids miserable was dodgeball, but making shanks in shop class would have prepared us better for the apocalypse.”
Jack laughed and embraced her daughter.
“Clowns versus Crazies,” Theo said, putting an arm around Jaimie.
“Advantage: crazies,” Jaimie said.
Anna and Jack startled and looked to the boy.
“Jeez, Jaimie!” Anna said. “At this rate, pretty soon we’ll be having full conversations. We’ll start chatting over brunch and you’ll regale us with stories of action and adventure.”
Jack’s eyes were wet but she was smiling (which confused Jaimie.) “All these years of therapy,” she said, “and all that was missing to make progress was the constant threat of death and dismemberment. I can’t wait to have a real conversation with you, Jaimie. I want to know what you’ve been thinking all this time!”
“Mostly Jaimie thinks about words,” Theo said. “It’s all Latin and quantum versus particle physics in that skull.”
And I think a lot about you, Dad, Jaimie thought. I think about you.
Theo regarded his son with a tight smile. He didn’t have to speak to communicate with the boy. Not since Kansas City.
I know you’re afraid, Jaimie. We’ll figure it all out. Maine and the Gateway await.
A million legs creeping in shadowy settings
The muscle car did not return. As the rain began, Anna found a door down an alley. It was locked, but the door was old, hollow, light and easily forced. They slept in an abandoned print shop. The computers in the front office were dark. Even if the internet still worked somewhere, the machines were unconnected. Their cables had been salvaged for some other use.
There was power here, but they kept the lights off since the front window might cast a glowing invitation. The wooden floors were uneven and creaked with every step. It was the Spencer’s first night with a roof over their heads in a long time.
They couldn’t lock the door behind them once they had broken in, but Jack found some twine and secured the door as well as she could. Theo suggested Jaimie shove two heavy filing cabinets and a desk in front of the door, which the boy did at once.
The horrors they’d seen on the road — the abandoned cars, the empty children’s car seats and the smells and the scavengers — had erased their sense of time. It seemed so long since they left Kansas City. They had fixed their eyes on the horizon and walked and ate and slept in a mechanical cycle. Was it Tuesday? Sunday?
Did the calendar date matter anymore when there were no appointments to worry over? Times to eat and sleep were marked by belly rumblings and keeping a wary eye for sundown.
“Sundown,” Jack said. “We’re terrified of getting caught out in the dark unprepared. My God, we’re in a vampire movie and I’m Vincent Price. Or Will Smith. Or Charlton Heston. Oh, my God!”
“Be Will Smith, Mom,” Anna said.
“He dies at the end of that vampire movie.”
“They all do.”
“Oh, my God!”
Jaimie didn’t look up from tightening the laces on his boots. “Advantage: Vamp — ”
“Shut up, Ears. Will Smith played a soldier and a doctor, right? I Am Legion?” Anna wanted to know. “Dad made me watch it.”
Jack’s eyes were glassy. “Legend. I Am Legend. But you should have seen The Last Man on Earth. Loved that movie.”
Anna smiled. “Vincent Price was the world’s first gay action hero in that. Well, first known gay action hero, I suppose. It was — ”
Jack sat on the floor heavily and the warped wooden slats creaked eerily beneath her weight. The color drained from her face. “Too tired. I didn’t…how’d you know a thing like that? I thought you hated black and white movies.”
Anna stared at her mother. “I don’t know. I…I heard you, I think. I just…I thought the first gay action hero thing was funny and I…”
“You beat me to it. I was just about to say that. Weird.”
“But it was as clear as you speaking to me now,” Anna said. "I heard it in my head."
“But…what are you saying? Not with your ears?"
"Um…no. You didn't say it aloud, Mom, but I definitely…wow."
"What’s going on?” Jack asked. “I’ve felt intuitive flashes before but — ”
“But I heard you,” Anna protested. “Like…a voice in my head! I heard your thought. What does this mean?”
“It means more people are dying,” Jaimie said. His voice was eerily deep, as if something or someone else — a weary, older man, perhaps — spoke through him.
Despite their pleading, Jaimie found he could not utter another word of explanation. If they could hear his thoughts, they would have understood how death would pull them together.
* * *
The Spencers were quiet for a long time. Anna tried to read her mother’s mind again, but nothing came.
“Suppose that telepathy,” Theo guessed, “travels on energy flashes between people? What if there isn’t quite enough energy for the whole network at once, like rolling blackouts? The connections are loose and incomplete. Can't complain. The Internet was down a lot, too. Sometimes, before the plague, we had surprising intuitions, like knowing a long, lost friend was finally calling out of the blue.”
“I wish we were the last people on Earth,” Anna said finally. “Maybe God only took the perfect ones and left us sinners to deal with each other as a punishment.”
“I’ve thought about that, but Jaimie’s still here, so that can’t be true,” Jack said.
“Thanks a lot, Mom.”
“I’m joking, sweetie. You’re perfect, too. I just mean God doesn’t work that way.”
“Nice save, but look around. No wi-fi, no Starbucks and no air popped popcorn. No boyfriend. We must be in hell. I’m glad you still believe, Mom. I really am. But how you can be so sure what God is about anymore? I don’t get it.”
Jack sighed. “All I can say is my God is not capricious in his wrath. If He were, He wouldn't be God.”
"Maybe it's not God," Anna said, "but whoever's in charge…well, look around. If humans ran the universe, everybody would live in Disney, work at tropical resorts and there'd be a new Iron Man movie with Robert Downey Jr. every month, forever. Weed would be legal and everybody would live a long, happy, healthy life. We would not be worried about Lt. Carron, or the white-eyed monsters from the Brickyard.”
"In God's defense, we were working on marijuana legalization when the plagues hit." Jack said it sourly, but Anna giggled.
Jaimie wanted his dictionary back so he could palpate the curves of the letters of the word capricious. It is such a good word, Jaimie thought. The dictionary is my Bible.
Jack's head snapped around to Jaimie, excited. “I heard that bit of blasphemy, young man!"
“Me, too!” Anna said. “Great. Even more people must be dying."
They tried again, but no matter how hard Jaimie tried to communicate his thoughts, radio silence. The Way of Things didn't want his family to know the course that
had been set. If they knew, they might try to flee.
A bargain had been struck and fate could not be refused.
Under your bed, fleeing one dim light
Philip Bruce, father of Ed and bean counter with a clipboard, had grown up around guns. He had shot skeet and hunted rabbits with his father. As soon as Ed left with Wilmington's mayor to face the zombie invasion, Phillip took his pistol out of his holster.
He checked the door to the town's stockpile of food. He threw the deadbolt, turned another lock and leaned against the inside of the door. It was steel and solid.
It was locked. He could see it was locked but he pulled on the handle three times to be sure. Three seemed like an unlucky number so he pulled on the handle four more times because everybody who thought numbers were lucky agreed seven was one of the better numbers. His right hand, the one holding the pistol, would not stop trembling.
When Phillip was twelve, he shot at tin cans and glass bottles in a field behind his father’s house. The summer his father had gout for the first time and stayed home was the time Phillip loved his father most. They shot at targets together every sunny afternoon and that was a bright summer.
After high school, Phillip went away to Champlain College up in Burlington to become an accountant, like his father. “It’s a safe, profitable and secure profession,” his dad said. “Everyone’s afraid of math and getting things wrong. We aren’t afraid and we make it right.”
With no firm idea of what he really wanted to do with his life, Phillip agreed. However, he couldn’t wait to take that education and get a job far from Wilmington. Better job opportunities, and the world, beckoned.
Then Phillip’s plans took an unexpected turn. He got mononucleosis in third year and had to take several months off. If not for that disease and missing a term, he might have escaped to his dreams, at least until the Sutr virus eliminated the need for accountants.
Instead, in his senior year (and a year behind the class he should have graduated with) he met a girl from Plattsburgh at a dance.
Nancy Shannon’s boyfriend of two years had abandoned her by the punch bowl after a fight. Phillip felt sorry for her and struck up a conversation. His mistake was thinking Nancy wasn’t his type. Nancy was smart and funny and uninhibited in a way he’d never known.
By the end of the dance, Nancy had forgotten about the boy she’d arrived with and Phillip was sure her ex was a fool. After another hour, they’d professed their dreams of living in Europe one day. By two o’clock, they were sure they would backpack Europe together upon Philip’s graduation.
With the ex-boyfriend gone and no buses running, Phillip offered to drive her back to Plattsburgh. He managed to wheedle the keys to an old, beat-up Honda Civic from a friend.
It burned oil almost as fast as it burned gas, but with Nancy’s hand on his thigh, Phillip didn’t worry about the cloud of white smoke that hung behind the car.
Phillip drove Nancy back to her parents’ house, but they parked out front in the street. They talked longer, not wanting the night to end.
Their son, Edward Dylan Bruce, was conceived in the cramped back seat of that Honda Civic before the light of dawn could rise to stop them.
Phillip lost his affection for guns because his bride asked that they do something they could both enjoy. Early in their marriage, even in the depths of pregnancy, that common hobby was making love. With practice, they got pretty good at that. Later, as the years wore on, their common interest was bowling. At ten-pin, they excelled even more.
They never made it to Europe. Instead, Phillip did what he said he would never do. He returned to Wilmington to work in the same building, in the same office, his father worked.
At first, Phillip fought with his father, the senior accountant, over petty issues. Then Phillip’s jaw got tight and he stopped fighting. He quietly hated his father until the old man retired.
His father succumbed to the Sutr flu early in the pandemic, back when they still had funerals instead of mass graves and burning pyres of bodies.
Still dressed in a new black suit, Phillip sat at his father’s dining room table and wondered aloud if they could ever eat all the casseroles people brought the family. Then he confessed his secret, only to Nancy.
“Dad’s dead and I am relieved. Immensely. I’m sorry I feel this way. Dad’s dead and I feel like I should be crying. I’m not. I’m a shit.”
Phillip put his head on Nancy’s shoulder and she slowly ran her fingers through his hair. He did cry eventually, not for the loss of his father. He wept for himself because he did not grieve. “What kind of son doesn’t grieve the loss of his father?
“I promise you, Nancy, I’m going to turn Ed around. And when I do, he’s not going to hate me. Ed will never feel about me the way I feel now about my dad.”
Phillip didn’t get to enjoy the relief of his father’s death for long. Sutr-X took Nancy away, too, in the time of burning corpses.
That left Phillip alone with Ed, determined to survive the Sutr apocalypse.
“Don’t worry,” Phillip told the troubled boy, “This isn’t the end of the world. This is only the end of the world as we know it.”
But Philip was wrong. It was the end of the world.
Because Don Tate called him on the walkie-talkie to say the monster cannibals had broken through.
Because Philip unlocked the door in the basement of the town hall.
Because Ed ran downstairs toward his father.
Because Don Tate told Phillip that Ed was infected with Sutr-Z.
Because Tate said, “He’s a damn zombie! He’ll kill you if you give him the chance! Be merciful! Kill him quick!”
And Phillip was quick. The muscle memory kicked in, all the way back to the summer Phillip’s father had gout. But Ed didn’t die right away. The shot went through his chest and as he fell in a heap at the bottom of the town hall's basement stairs, Ed managed to say, “Dad?”
A moment later, as his eyes dulled, his son asked, “Why?”
And Phillip thought of how he almost didn’t walk up to talk to the redhead from Plattsburgh at the punch bowl. He held his son and asked, “Why ask why?”
His son’s last breath hissed out.
Edward Dylan Bruce was dead. Nancy had been a huge fan of Bob Dylan. That was the only answer to the question, "why?" It was the only question to which Phillip knew the answer.
Phillip put the mouth of the .38 special into his mouth for one last kiss.
Then he thought of Don Tate.
Phillip took off his blood-soaked shirt and placed it carefully over his son’s face. He left Ed on the cold basement floor of Wilmington Town Hall.
Reading late, wondering who's wrong and what's right?
“Elly!” Don Tate burst through his front door. In a panic, he screamed for his wife again but received no reply.
He found her in the backyard, weeding the vegetable garden with her headphones stuck in her ears. She startled when he ran up and yanked the iPod’s earbuds out.
“Ouch! Don!”
“We’ve got to go!”
“What?”
Elly Tate dropped the hoe as Don pulled her toward the house. “There’s no time to explain. Just, for the love of God, do as I say! We’re leaving in ten minutes. Grab all the food you can and throw it in the truck! We’ve got to get out of here! They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?”
“You won’t believe it! Just do as I say! Once we’re on the road and safe, I’ll explain everything.”
“Okay! Okay! But what about Junior?”
Don Tate began to cry.
* * *
The swarm boiled through the streets of Wilmington. They were weak from the journey, true, but the promise of food energized them enough to lunge and snap at whomever they could run down.
Some of the townspeople froze or could not run. The elderly and lame, the fat and the slow, fell to Sutr-Z first. But running from the horde
inflamed the mob, too, goading them to give chase.
The zombie column stretched out and thinned slightly as the infected surged past Bartleby’s Books. Shots were fired. The infected fell, but the sound of gunfire drew more wrath. The zombies, mindless and mad with hunger, charged. As soon as the bullets ran out, each armed person went down screaming and flailing with useless weapons.
One old man clutched his chest and fell before the horde. His heart burst as he was eaten. Since he was dead, his attackers kept feeding. They swarmed the corpse and didn’t stop tearing until the body was more white bone than red meat.
However, as hungry as they were, the infected did not kill most of those they brought down. Many of those bitten did not die. Instead, they turned. They rose to join the ranks of their attackers.
A few dozen of the townspeople who had tried to defend the town ran, perhaps instinctively, for the sanctuary of the downtown’s white-steepled church. They were all human when they ran in, but one of the infected got in the door, right on their heels.
Rod Skold, a large man who’d played football long ago, made his first tackle in decades. He came at the zombie from the side. Skold came in low and hit her hard with all his weight behind his shoulder.
The infected woman’s head bounced on the polished floor of the atrium. Her limbs went loose as she lost consciousness. Her breath rasped through her throat and she went quiet.
“It’s true what they say about zombies and head trauma.” Skold picked himself up from the floor, grinning. “These old knees — ”
He shrieked like a little girl when the attacker stirred. Several more of the townspeople rushed forward to hold the zombie down as two sisters, Lucy and Providenza, slammed the gaping doors shut on another pair of zombies racing toward them, up the church steps.
The women threw their weight against the door. One of the infected lost a little finger as the metal edge of the heavy door slammed home.
Lucy and Providenza congratulated each other on their quick thinking until they saw the lost finger at their feet. Their faces went white. Lucy vomited. Providenza pressed herself harder against the door.
This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 77
