“It’s a long story — ”
Dahlia cocked the hammer.
“But I’ll tell you the part I guess you already know.”
“It’s called confession. Tell me about the pilot and her family.”
“When I got out of New York, like I told you, I tried to protect the family I was with. The cannibals were everywhere. We circled back down Wall Street, trying to get to the plane. It was a miracle we made it.”
Dahlia gritted her teeth and stepped forward, moving the muzzle’s cold steel down an inch, slowly. The barrel’s tip came to rest against the bridge of his nose.
“Tell the version where you’re not the hero.”
His body trembled. “Okay! Okay! When we got to the plane, there wasn’t enough room for all of us! You have to understand, seeing all those things come out of the ship, taking Wall Street — ”
Dahlia jammed the muzzle into the bridge of his nose and the iron sight cut him, bringing fresh blood. “Tell me something new.”
“I pulled her kids from the plane. I made them run, to get the zombies to follow them. To get those monsters away from the plane.”
“But you were the monster on that little plane, weren’t you, Gus?”
He closed his eyes and nodded, sure she’d pull the trigger. “She…the pilot —”
“The children’s mother, you mean?”
“Yes. The children’s mother…she would have killed me for sacrificing two of her children. To make sure she wouldn’t crash the plane, I kept the smallest one with me. The girl was a toddler, but I told the pilot to help me escape or I’d snap the child’s neck.”
“And you would have, wouldn’t you, Gus?”
“To get away? I would have done anything. Yeah.” He squeezed his eyes tight and waited to wake up in Hell.
Instead, Dahlia pulled back and walked away.
“Anything else?”
Sure he was dead whatever he said, Gus told the truth. “I got Carron to shut up the old lady.”
“Mrs. Bendham? Lieutenant Carron killed Mrs. Bendham? That, I didn’t know.”
“She challenged my authority and I had to, you know, keep the group…um…”
“Cohesive?”
“Right.”
“You suck.”
“Well, that’s what I did. I’m sorry.”
“I hear you saying sorry. I don’t feel you’re sorry. How does that murder really make you feel?”
“It was bad.”
“Do you feel bad, though?”
He hesitated. “I feel bad about the kids.”
“Hmph. Confession good for the soul, Gus?”
“I don’t feel better.”
He opened his eyes. Dahlia stuffed clothes into her backpack. “Your salvation awaits in the East, Gus. You have work to do. The messenger gave us all jobs.”
Gus slipped to the tent floor and sat, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I thought I could make up for those kids if I could just…I wanted to be what I pretended to be. I wanted to do the right thing.”
“You were doing the right thing, but only when it was easy.”
“I just realized…you aren’t talking in rhyme, anymore. As long as I’ve known you — ”
“I only play like that when I’m happy or at least happyish. Priorities got rearranged during the night.”
“You said salvation —”
“Shut up. Here’s what’s happened. The boy told all the families with kids to wake up, pack up and leave your cult. They’re off to find a safe place. Maybe that’s your Promised Land and maybe it’s just someplace far from you. Either way, you won’t get a chance to sacrifice children again.”
“And the rest?”
“We’re all headed East.”
“But the roads — ”
“We drive. Then we walk. Eventually we drive again. Or fly. Whatever it takes to get East. South by Southeast from here actually. It’s a long way. We might get further instructions. I’ll get the orders and you’ll do as I say.”
“Does everybody know about me? About what happened in New York?”
“Yes.”
He moaned and began to cry harder.
She stood over him, watching and waiting. “Pack a bag with what food you can carry. We’re traveling light and going as fast as the road will allow. You’ll meet the messenger again.”
“You’re going, too?”
“I’m the new leader. I’m to make sure you get down East. You’ll finish the trip without me and, no, I don’t know what that means. All I know is, the war is waiting on us.”
“The war?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Who?”
“You know who. He came to you once. You were supposed to keep Lieutenant Carron from following his family. When Carron left…well, congratulations, you’ve got a new job now. I’d say it’s kind of a promotion, all things considered.”
“Does everybody who goes East…are we all…?”
“The damned? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t feel like I deserve the same fate as you, that’s for damn sure. And plenty of nice people don’t happen to have children.”
“Yeah! Wait! What about Larry? He went with the families! He doesn’t have kids! Larry’s gay!”
“Larry went with the families to guard them. I’m going with you to make sure you get where you’re going and what you deserve.”
“What if I say no?”
“Then I shoot you between the eyes and you never get a chance at redemption.”
He looked up, eyes red, cheeks wet.
“You have to understand, Gus. You aren’t important anymore. You’re just another soldier drafted into something that’s much bigger than you. I know that’s hard for you to imagine. You’re not the key to God’s plan, after all.”
“Oh, no, no, no…”
“I know, I know. Worst fear realized. You’re just a guy. That’s what all soldiers are in the end. The question is, are you going to be a stand-up guy, or are you going to die the piece of shit liar who kills kids and old ladies to save himself?”
“It was really only one old lady.”
Dahlia pulled the her pistol from its home in her holster and pointed the weapon at his crotch. “Won’t take a second. Is this what you really want?”
Counting losses and summing sorrows
The Spencers plunged forward, single file and resolute, rarely talking. The highway was a long chaos of metal. Worse, there was still rotting flesh. Torn t-shirts fashioned into masks did little to diminish the smell. They walked on the side of the road that was upwind so the stench of decay blew away from them. Each small blessing had a caveat. When it did not rain, the sun intensified the rot, the stink and the flies. When there was enough wind to carry away the foul smells, the same wind buffeted them, slowed their progress and tired them faster. Despite their precautions, blisters nagged at them.
Jack thought to cut hiking sticks for the journey. She vaguely remembered that walking sticks improved the number of miles covered each day.
Anna worried their use would increase their exercise burn so they’d have to eat more calories. Her mother insisted she use the sticks since, if anyone turned an ankle on the uneven ground, they would all be marooned.
Amid the hulks of vehicles, they could usually find enough to eat as long as the forager was equipped with a strong stomach and a can opener.
At a turnoff, the Spencers camped back from the road, resting an extra day. Jack insisted it was to search for a wagon or a pram to ferry what supplies they could scavenge. However, that was an excuse. The road wore her down. Jack couldn’t keep up the pace. She would have preferred a month of rest.
Anna found a shopping cart from the parking lot of an empty grocery store outside a nameless village. However, she abandoned that idea in the time it took for her to wheel it back to their camp. A shopping cart’s tiny wheels were useless on the soft shoulder of the road. Even i
f they were able to find a wagon, they would have to push or pull it around abandoned cars and up and down embankments.
Jack rubbed her aching shoulders. “We’re still carrying too much. Even if we found the perfect wagon or something, I suppose we’d just try to carry more and that’s not the way to go now. Speed’s more important than comfort.”
Theo pushed to take fewer breaks and nagged his wife that Carron was coming. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
“O-kay! O-kay!” It became Jack’s mantra, each syllable punctuated her next step. Left, right, left, right. When she focused on each step, she could block out all her sorrows. Eventually, the road became a meditation.
Jaimie listened and fell into his own rhythm, left, right, left, right. No one noticed when he slipped in and out of sleep, eyes open. He had always stood in two worlds: what others assumed was reality and within his autistic perspective. Now, when the demands of The Way of Things pulled him from one plane to the next, he sleepwalked through the apocalypse.
The only place he wanted to stay was in the birch forest of the Nexus, safe among the trees on the cool moss.
* * *
To Jaimie, his father looked stronger. He wasn’t washed out anymore. It was as if the nearer he got to Papa Spence’s farm, the larger and stronger he grew. Theo held Jaimie’s hand all the way, squeezing tightly when the boy couldn’t sleep and felt too tired to go on.
* * *
Anna slowed a little to walk beside her mother. “Do you think the virus really matters to anyone who’s still alive? I mean, we’ve all been exposed by now, haven’t we?”
Jack gave a minute shrug, kept her eyes on the horizon and walked.
“Jaimie’s muttering and whispering more, Mom. Have you noticed?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think that’s about? I can never quite make out what he’s saying.”
“Sub-vocalization.”
“What?”
“It’s what he’s doing. You know…muttering, whispering, talking under his breath. He never used to do that. It drives me nuts. Must be the stress, but we're under stress, too. I heard him say the word, ‘Wilmington’ last night. That was loud and clear. He was crying in his sleep.”
“Mean anything to you?”
“What do you think?” Jack asked, irritably.
“Sometimes I think he’s having a thousand conversations in his head. Once in a while I think I understand him, how his brain is a machine with too many gears. It’s like he’s working on really tough math equations in the middle of a loud factory. He’s at the center of it all, but…I’m not sure what the factory makes. In his sleep, sometimes the Latin comes out pretty loud, but — ”
“We don’t have the key to his lock, Anna. If I couldn’t open him up before, I sure can’t do it now. All I can do for now is focus on the next step.”
Anna watched her mother. She looked too lean. Her cheekbones stood out and her arms looked thinner, popping the sinews in her shoulders and forearms. She would have looked healthier but for her hollow eyes and the slash of black dirt smeared across her face.
Jack had become quiet — almost as quiet as Jaimie. They used to be so different, but traveling along this road, mother and son often shared something Anna couldn’t define. They both appeared to be listening to music she couldn’t hear.
“How many miles do you figure we make in a day now?” Anna asked.
“Not enough,” her mother replied. “Carron’s back there. He’s not going to let it go. As soon as the lieutenant can get away from Xavier, he’ll be back on our trail. Part of me doesn’t want him to let go. I want to gut him myself. He and his raiders…they took everything from us that matters.”
Anna looked at her mother a long time before giving a slight nod and slipping back into single file. She let Jack lead so her mother could set the pace.
The end is coming for me and thee
“Long time, no see.”
Dayo startled as Desi wrapped his arms around her from behind and put his stubbled chin on her shoulder.
Dayo put her hands over his, drawing on his warmth. Desi was always warmer than she. As she stood in the stern of the Earl of Burton, she gazed at the water. The Atlantic roiled green and blue, spotted with whitecaps. The two-masted schooner, newly built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, cut through the water under full sail.
The crew of sixteen had been on a mission to get supplies for their village. However, each crew member’s dreams had been disturbed by a boy with mirrors for eyes. He’d asked them for a ride for his friends.
“Look for the mad monk by the Bluenose,” the messenger told them.
When the crew discovered they’d all had the same dream, they set sail for Halifax immediately.
As their seaplane left Bro Bob and the Europeans on a dock in Halifax harbor, The Earl of Burton appeared in the Narrows. The Bluenose, Nova Scotia’s most famous ship, was not in her berth. The Earl of Burton docked in her stead and welcomed their passengers with wary, haunted glances.
“Thank you for coming for us,” Brother Bob had said by way of welcome. “I wasn’t sure someone would come.”
“Are you kidding?” the first mate said. “We’re afraid to sleep. We’ll make yours a fast trip to Maine. We’ll scout Halifax for supplies and then we’ll get you there quick.”
That had pleased Dayo. She’d felt that, whatever was coming, having the messenger on their side was a good omen. Now, as they approached Poeticule Bay, she wished the wind would die and the sails would go slack. She wanted — needed — more time with Desi.
“I love boats,” Dayo said. “I never thought I’d be on so many ships in my life, but it’s the only place I’ve really felt safe since London.”
“I know.”
“I never liked boats before.” Dayo leaned back into Desi and let her temple rest against his jaw. “Boats made me think of an old elevator in our first flat in London. It must have been the oldest elevator in all of England. It shuddered and made strange grinding sounds like it had never been oiled. I was afraid of it. Whenever we got on it, I tried not to think of the deep well stretching below me, waiting to swallow me up when the cable snapped.”
“It’s hard to not think of something,” Desi said. “Try not to think of a wild-eyed zombie or a white-eyed vampire coming to kill you, for instance. That’s all you can think about when you try not to.”
“Then think of something else. The girls still asleep?”
“Yeah. They couldn’t get a wink last night until late. Bro Bob kept them up telling ghost stories.”
“They’re too young for that.”
“Not ghost ghost stories. Stories about the people he’s known. They’re all dead, but his ghosts seem like they were pretty lively when they were alive.”
“Mm-hm.”
“He talks fast, which is good because he has a lot of stories to rattle off. Mostly he talks about his time as a chaplain in the army.”
“Why’s he telling the girls that stuff?”
Desi didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was smaller. “He’s trying to keep the ghosts alive is all. When my da died, I couldn’t shut up about it for a month.”
“That a maudlin Irish thing?”
“Don’t believe the hype. It’s a father-son thing. It’s universal.”
“I still don’t understand why he’d want to tell little girls about the dead.”
“Remembering makes them breathe. Bob tells a good story. They enjoyed it. I did, too. But…to answer your question, I think he’s telling the girls tales of his life because he thinks, if anyone survives, Aasa and Aastha will.”
“That’s up to me, so they will.”
“Fair-bitchin’, they will. You been out on deck long? Your side of the bunk was cold.”
“I’ve lost weight, but we’re both too big to share a bunk on a sailboat.”
“Schooner.”
“Whatever. The wall’s col
d against a bare ass. I like how quiet and clean a sailing ship is, but it’s not built for couple’s comfort.”
“When all this is over, what shall we do?”
“For starters, a bigger bed. Maybe I can find a man who doesn’t keep all the sheets to himself.”
Desi leaned in and nipped at her neck. “A vampire! They stay up nights, I understand. Or sleep upside down, hanging in a belfry!”
Dayo giggled. “And me without a belfry.”
“Your problem is you like a man in uniform.”
“Then why are you always so ready to get out of your uniform whenever we have a private moment?”
“My point is, vampires? It’s all about the capes. Terrible fashion sense. Not for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A nice, big cape with red silk lining might feel nice against the skin.”
“Nah. It’s terrible. Sure, they look good, but the vampire’s breath kills faster than its teeth.”
“That bad?”
“Positively fecal! Ask yourself, is that what you’d truly be wanting?”
She pushed his head away. “I want a small house. A log cabin, maybe. One big room with a wood stove and a garden in back and a view out front. A place where you can see strangers coming, but strangers never come.”
“Aye. But one room with two girls won’t work for us that well.”
“Two rooms, then. One for Aasa and Aastha and me and one for you. If your snoring gets worse, we’ll have to build a barn for you. Far away.”
This time he nipped at her ear. “Zombie!”
A whale spout broke the surface far astern. Desi smiled and pointed. “The whales following us again.”
“Not the same as chased the Amundsen, surely?”
“Not the same whales, no. I doubt they're much at tracking aircraft traffic between Carbonear and Halifax.”
“Not the same, but maybe their friends found us. It’s like they’re watching and waiting. Escorts maybe.”
“Maybe. Maybe vampires are allergic to whales. Keeps the baddies away.”
They both chuckled.
This Plague of Days OMNIBUS EDITION: The Complete Three Seasons of the Zombie Apocalypse Series Page 74
