“Yeah. Please.” Ben impulsively set aside his book, dashed over, and gave her a hug.
She ruffled the boy’s hair. “You look after everyone, Ben.”
He nodded, and let her go. “It’ll be okay. I think it’ll be okay until you get back. I have a feeling.”
“I hope your feeling’s right.”
“C’mon,” Jackson called in a sharp voice. “Let’s roll!”
She joined him at the base of the stairs. Olivia was already there, holding onto his left arm, her eyes wide and terrified. He motioned again, and they headed out in silence toward Z’s car, still parked near the Baptist church where she and Margo had found Jeff.
“Keep talking to a minimum,” Jackson had instructed them before leaving. It had sounded like a war strategy meeting. Perhaps it was. “We don’t know what’s out there. Most of what we’ve run into so far has either been of uncertain motives or else outright hostile. We can’t afford to get separated from each other, or cut off from the car or from a means of escape. Always keep that in mind. We’ve been lucky so far, and we can’t count on it to hold out if we get attacked again. Keep your eyes open.”
The day was bright, with only a few wisps of clouds streaking an otherwise cobalt-blue sky. A fresh sea breeze, tangy with the salt smell of the ocean, caressed her cheek.
Come on, the breeze said. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing out here. It’s all perfectly safe. Indeed, they saw nothing and met no one as they walked down the shaded sidewalk of Ben’s street, past the empty houses.
“The silence,” Olivia whispered as they turned the corner, and saw the car in the distance, still parked with all of the other cars whose owners had vanished, among the piles of fallen clothes and dropped purses and briefcases, the lost pieces of ended lives.
“Be quiet,” Jackson whispered through clenched teeth.
“I can’t stand it. I can’t. It’s going to kill me.”
“Silence won’t hurt you.” His voice was modulated, but it sounded like it took effort. “But there’s no telling what you’ll bring down on us if you don’t shut up.”
Olivia let out a whimper. “There could be a monster hiding in every one of those houses. Can’t you feel all of their eyes on us? Hungry eyes.”
“Enough.”
She subsided, but held onto his upper arm like grim death.
The four-block journey to the car felt as if it took far longer than it should have, and even Zolzaya was completely unnerved by the time she opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. Olivia gave her a heated glare as Jackson got into the passenger seat beside Z, but said nothing as she herself climbed in the back.
Great. Whether she wanted to or not, Z had gotten pulled into some kind of stupid love-triangle situation. Oh well, if Olivia wanted to manufacture jealousy to be upset about, let her.
Z turned the car around and maneuvered it back out onto the street heading east. Jackson and Olivia would have to sort this one out on their own. No way was she going to bring it up.
Shoreline Regional was four miles up the coast, but the drive through Furness to get to the on-ramp to Highway 1 took almost a half hour. There was a massive pile-up involving a lumber truck that completely blocked Eighth Street, one of the main north-south arteries, and it took three tries to find a detour around the blockage. Highway 1 itself was amazingly clear, although more than one car had run through the guardrail or over the edge of the steep bluffs and rested in ruins on the rocky shore below.
Not a forgiving road.
At least the owners were already gone by the time the cars went over the edge. With luck, they didn’t have any passengers were left behind to watch the car, suddenly driverless, spin out of control, go over the brink, and out into the empty air…. But that was a horrifying enough thought that she put it out of her mind.
The hospital was a squarish, angular building, faced in white stone, and from a distance, looked like it was built from Lego blocks. It sat at the high end of a long, broad entry road, overlooking the ocean, with a landscaped front lawn shaded by towering eucalyptus trees and broad, shaggy-barked sycamores.
Zolzaya put on her turn signal, and then laughed at herself. “God, old habits, you know?”
“Not for much longer,” Olivia said from the back seat. They were the first words she’d spoken since she’d gotten into the car.
Jackson gave a harsh sigh, and rolled his eyes. Dammit, couldn’t he cut the poor woman a break? He had a weak point himself, however he wanted to be Alpha Dog. Everyone had a weak point. It just remained to be seen what Jackson’s was.
“What do you mean, Olivia?” Zolzaya tried to force her voice into tones of pleasant interest despite her annoyance at Jackson.
“Gasoline.We were able to fill some canisters before the power went out so we could keep the truck going. But once we’ve used what we’ve got, that’ll be it for cars. Forever.”
That was a disconcerting thought. “There’s got to be a way to get some from gas stations. It’s in tanks underground, right? Siphon it from the spouts.”
“For a while. But even that’s going to be gone at some point. We’d better be ready to change how we do things, because it’s gonna change for us whether we want it to or not.”
“At least we’re not in Minnesota or Alaska. Or Finland. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like there once winter comes?”
“People survived in inhospitable climates once without modern conveniences.” Jackson spoke in clipped tones that made it clear he expected this to be the end of the conversation. “They can do it again.”
“There’ll be a lot who won’t make it, especially in industrialized countries.”
“That’ll weed out the weak ones. Natural selection in action.”
Jesus. “Oh, for god’s sake, Jackson. You may be right, but you don’t have to sound so pleased about it.”
“What I feel about anything makes no difference. Neither does a bunch of pointless talk.”
Zolzaya pulled to a stop in front of the hospital’s broad, glass-fronted doors, and set the car into park with an angry shove, then rounded on Jackson.
“Look. I appreciate your making sure that Lissa and the others got back safely when they were injured, but you’ve made it clear in a hundred other ways that you honestly don’t give a rat’s ass about any of us. I get it, okay? You’re all about survival and commanding the troops and whatnot, and if Lissa had died, she would have been another battle casualty. No more, no less.” She paused, her eyes locked on his. “But let me make this abundantly clear. You’re not my boss, and I’m not one of your foot soldiers. You’re not going to get me to stop talking to people because you’ve decided that we’re playing some kind of post-apocalyptic war game with you in charge. I do have to wonder, though. If you think that we’re as weak and useless as all that, why pal around with us? Get back in your big, jacked-up, shit-kicker of a truck, and take off into the wild blue yonder. We’ll manage fine without you.”
Jackson stared at her, his angular face set and his eyes hard, like pieces of flint. “You liberal hippie types never have had a scrap of sense. I leave, I give you three days, tops, before you’re all dead.”
“I’ll take three days caring for the people around me over years taking orders from some Mad Max reject who thinks he has all the answers.”
Jackson opened the door. The sound of the ocean was distant, and the silence loud in their ears.
“We’ll see,” he said in a flat voice, and again he was unassailable, a cliff against which her anger could break and be thrown back without any effect at all. “For now, we have a job to do.”
Zolzaya got out, and Olivia followed, giving her an odd, yearning look of what? Gratitude? Friendship? Awe? But she said nothing, and jogged ahead until she caught up with Jackson, once again putting her hand on his arm.
The sliding door in the front of the hospital stood partly ajar. An interior door was shattered, lying in sparkling shards on the polished marble floor of the entryway.
In the reception area were several piles of clothing, including some medical scrubs lying tangled up with stethoscopes and nametags and clipboards with patient information sheets. A dropped cup of coffee had dried into a glossy mahogany stain. Its odor, like old toast, still hung in the air, mixed with the ubiquitous sharp smell of antiseptic. A little farther away was a woman’s dress, collapsed like a parachute, and near it a toddler’s bright yellow fuzzy zip-up pajama suit, one empty sleeve across a brand-new plush bunny, lying with its blank, smiling face turned toward them.
They tiptoed across the reception area, their feet making dull, muffled thuds no matter how silently they tried to walk. Even her breathing was loud in Zolzaya’s ears. The whole place was hollow, an echo chamber, collecting their sounds, sending them bouncing crazily off the polished floors and sterile white walls.
A long hallway disappeared into shadow directly in front of them. Just before the vanishing point was a sign with several arrows pointing to Outpatient Services, Medical Imaging, Cafeteria, and Pharmacy.
Jackson silently indicated the sign, and headed toward it without waiting for a reply.
The door to the pharmacy was unlocked and opened at a push. Immediately inside was a rumpled suit of clothes topped with an absurd tartan cap, bright orange and blue and cream plaid. Zolzaya stepped over it, not wanting to touch it.
Only three days, and they were already reverting to our ancestors’ fearful reverence for the belongings of the dead. This hospital was full of ghosts, watching us. Would they reinvent religion, so they could sleep at night, so they could keep the ghosts at bay?
Behind the counter were two more sets of scrubs, one with a nametag attached and facing upwards—Amrita Ramakrishnan, Licensed Pharmacist. The photograph showed a smiling young woman with ebony hair, dark skin, and laughing brown eyes.
Gone. Like the rest of them, all gone, with no reason, and no explanation to link which ones were taken and which left behind.
The door into the supply room was locked, secured with a card-key reader. Jackson, unsurprisingly feeling none of Zolzaya’s reluctance to rifle through the belongings of the dead, knelt next to Amrita Ramakrishnan’s empty clothes and felt the pockets until he found what he was looking for.
“Will it work if the power’s out?” Zolzaya asked.
“Could have an internal power source of some kind. Battery or something. One way to find out.”
But sliding the card through had no effect.
Jackson wasted no time considering his next option. He tossed the card key aside, then picked up the cash register from the desk, yanking wires and cables from the wall as he did so, lifted it over his head, and threw it through the window of the supply room door.
The crash sounded horribly loud. Olivia gave a whistling intake of breath, and turned her head away. “What about not alerting anything that we’re here?” she whispered.
Zolzaya shrugged, and followed Jackson into the stockroom.
“There are bags over here,” he said. “Grab anything you think sounds helpful. I know a lot of antibiotics end in -mycin and -cillin. Take anything with names like that. Anything you recognize as a painkiller too. And we need IV supplies for Margo. We can find the medical library and see if we can get a drug reference guide and first-aid manual when we’re done here. For now, if it looks like it might be useful, take it.”
Into bright yellow plastic bags labeled Shoreline Regional Hospital: Leading With Innovation, Serving with Compassion went ampicillin and amoxicillin caplets, bottles of Percocet and codeine and oxycodone, tubes of antibiotic and silver nitrate salve, plastic bags of lactated Ringer’s solution and TPN Solution A, rolls of sterile plastic tubing, needles.
Laden with sacks, they progressed out of the pharmacy and deeper into the shadowed interior of the central corridor. Diffuse light filtered in through the narrow glass panes of office doors, and at the end of a hall, a convex window made of frosted glass. Beneath it, a long directory, barely readable in the gloom, told them that the Medical Library was on the fourth floor.
The hallway forked, both branches disappearing into antiseptic-smelling shadow only twenty feet farther along. But near at hand was a doorway with a darkened sign labeled Stairs, and an up-arrow.
Inside was pitch dark, but they made their way by sense of touch alone, counting staircases. Other than their stealthy footsteps, all Z could hear was her own breathing and her heart throbbing in the stillness. Two flights of stairs, then three, and there was a creak as Jackson pushed a door open into the slate-gray light of another empty hallway.
There was another set of signs on the wall, but they were impossible to read.
“How do we find the library?” Olivia said in a tremulous voice.
And as if in answer, there was a thump and grating noise, like something brushing against a hard surface somewhere near them.
Olivia whimpered and took a blind step backwards. In some instinctive response to have their hands free in an emergency, all of them set down their bags. Jackson drew his gun. Zolzaya simply squinted into the shadows, looking for any sign of movement.
“Don’t move,” Jackson said. “Stay behind me. That’s how we got caught last time. I let Lissa go ahead of me.” His voice turned sharp, dangerous. “Whatever’s up ahead. We hear you. Show yourself. But you should know we’re armed, and won’t hesitate to shoot.”
There was another soft bump, and a padded, tentative footstep.
“If you can answer, you better!” Jackson sounded closer to panic than Zolzaya had yet heard him, here with no options but a headlong retreat down a darkened stairwell. “I’ll shoot first and apologize later, I swear.”
And a terrified voice said, “Don’t—don’t shoot me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then show yourself.”
Out from the shadows stepped a tall, heavyset young man, with a round face, oval glasses, and curly hair. His hands were raised in the air, palms outward. He was dressed in doctor’s scrubs. There was something in his face that looked beyond terror, in that hopeless, staring void that was complete despair.
Jackson kept his pistol leveled. “Who are you?”
“For Christ’s sake, Jackson,” Zolzaya said. “He’s a human being. That’s all that matters. Put down the goddamn gun.” She stepped forward, reached out a hand. The man took it, shook it, still looking dazed. “I’m Zolzaya Dubrovna. Call me Z. This is Jackson Royce and Olivia Carr.”
“I’m Gareth. Gareth McCracken.”
“You’re a doctor?”
He nodded.
“Man, you have no idea how glad we are to hear that,” Zolzaya said.
Gareth stared at her, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. “I….” He stopped, swallowed. “I’ve been alone for days. I don’t know how long. You’re the first people I’ve seen, since everyone vanished.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Olivia said. “Try to find other survivors?”
Gareth smiled. It was a smile that was completely without mirth. “Leave? I’ve tried.”
“What do you mean, you’ve tried?” Jackson said. “Walk down the staircase, and out the front door. What’s stopping you?”
“So… so you haven’t seen it, then?”
“It?”
Gareth laughed, a hysterical sound indistinguishable from sobbing. “You’ll see. You’ll see it when you try to get out. Now we’re all trapped.”
10
THE MAN WHO joined them would not speak at first, and seemed to look on them as if he were dreaming. But when one of the travelers said, How long were you lost? he responded, in a voice that was weary and thin, I have always been lost. I only found the path because I heard your voices, and then I saw a man step around a tree.And so I followed. They shuddered, and drew away from him, but he stayed with them; and as he walked, some of his vigor returned, and his back straightened, and his legs strode more steadily on the path.
But even with his addition, their numbers were dwindling, and each of them looked at the faces of his
fellow travelers, wondering who would be next. Every stop to take a meager meal from the food in their ever-lightening packs, to take a sip of water from the skins slung over their shoulders, revealed one more who had silently vanished into the dark spaces between the trees, vanished without so much as a word, a gasp, even a whisper.
—
THERE WAS SOMETHING wrong. Ben was certain of it. And the wrongness wasn’t only outside, where the monsters dwelt. There was something wrong in here—in his own house—among the other people who, like him, had been set adrift in this strange, new, unpeopled world, victims of a shipwreck clinging to flotsam as they watched each other slowly carried apart by the current.
It had been okay until this morning, until the addition of Jackson, Olivia, and Mikiko. And it wasn’t that he simply didn’t like the newcomers. There was something wrong with each of them, something he couldn’t quite identify. But they were a threat as real as the gnashing teeth and razor talons of the monster that had attacked them in the Grays’ house.
Now Z was gone—gone with two of the new ones. As she walked out of the door, Ben had wanted to scream at her to stop, to warn her of the danger, but he thought of Jackson’s eyes, flat as a pair of nickels, turning toward him, a boy who had dared to challenge his authority….
So he’d stayed silent and watched them leave. The others were off in separate rooms, Lissa dozing on the couch, Jeff upstairs tending Margo, Gary in the kitchen rooting around for food, Mikiko—who knew where? She had an almost animal ability to appear and disappear at will. Sometimes she was hugely visible, with her flame-dyed hair, outrageous makeup, and red shirt with its white stripe of sequins down the front, and sometimes she slipped in and out unseen. Hard to imagine how anyone so outlandish could be so invisible when she chose to be.
In fact, had any of them seen her on the road near the library until she waved and said “Hi?”
Ben frowned, trying to remember, but the memory was elusive. Maybe Gary had, but he was the only one. Ben hadn’t, that was for sure. It was like she stepped sideways out of the shadows into full view without making a sound or attracting anyone’s notice.
The Fifth Day Page 22
