All Our Tomorrows

by Peter Cawdron

  Out of nowhere, David becomes all chirpy and says, “Oh, Haze. I almost forgot. Happy Birthday!”

  “Birthday?” I ask, screwing up my face. I’m stunned.

  “It’s your birthday, right?” he says, smiling. “Jane told me. She said she wanted to get back to spend the day with you. It was all she could talk about.”

  Although I note that mentioning Jane while seeing her near death is a bit of a downer for him.

  “I guess it is,” I say, mentally trying to keep track of days and dates. I’m not even sure which day of the week it is.

  “So it’s Wednesday?” I ask, wanting confirmation. David nods. “I guess that means I’m seventeen.”

  David smiles, but doesn’t say anything else. He has a big cheesy grin on his face. I’m tempted to think all my friends are about to jump out from behind the overturned tables and crushed filing cabinets, yelling, “SURPRISE!!!”

  “So,” David asks. “What are you going to do for your birthday? Other than get eaten?”

  We both burst out laughing.

  We have to laugh.

  Laughter is defiant.

  Life laughs at death.

  “I wish I could take a picture of this,” David says, gesturing toward the mass of zombies outside. “Look at all your friends. They’re all here to wish you a Happy Birthday.”

  “The cameras!” I say, feeling a rush of adrenaline at the sudden mental connection.

  “Cameras?” David asks with a confused look on his face.

  I’m about to explode with excitement. “The scientists. They saw us. All of us. They saw the cars we rolled down the hill.”

  “So they have cameras and spacesuits?” he says, waving his hand up and down at my torn, bloodstained suit.

  “Yes. They wear these. The zombies leave them alone. Zee can’t smell them when they suit up.”

  David listens. He’s smart. He might look like a dumb jock, but he’s not.

  “They have a car,” I say.

  “Do they have an army?”

  “No.”

  “How many?”

  I feel embarrassed to reply, saying, “Five. Counting Steve.”

  “Steve?” David’s face lights up. It’s crazy. I just assumed he knew. He has no idea. “Steve’s alive?”

  “Yes. Yes. He’s hobbling,” I say. “But he’s doing fine.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  David smiles, shaking his head. I can sense the relief he feels just having me here. He’s been trapped on this floor for almost two days now. He must have lost hope, thinking he’d never see anyone human again. And suddenly, here I am. And now I’m telling him his best friend is alive.

  “You know what we used to call him, right?”

  “No,” I say, not aware the boys had a nickname for Steve, but I’m guessing it’s not entirely complimentary given Steve’s not the most muscle bound guy in the commune. Being of Asian American descent, Steve’s scrawny by comparison with David.

  “Shark bait!”

  I laugh.

  David laughs as well.

  “Not enough meat on those scrawny bones,” I say fondly.

  “Haha. No. There’s not … Damn. Steve. He made it! That’s good. I like that.”

  There’s resignation in his voice, relief that someone will make it out of this alive even though we won’t.

  “So this car?” David asks. “Is it like a Hummer or something? A big nasty four-by-four with a grunty V12 engine? Big, fat, off-road tires? Bull bars? Armor plating? Tell me it’s got a goddamn Gatling gun mounted on the roof.”

  Somewhat diplomatically, I wait for him to finish, knowing my response is going to take him by surprise.

  “It’s an electric sports car.”

  “What?”

  “With no doors!”

  We both burst out laughing again. If we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Oh, how I’ve missed David and Jane. It’s good to see him smiling.

  This is the end. As much as I want to fight—there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a matter of time, and time is on Zee’s side. We both know it.

  “The cameras,” I say, my mind grasping at straws, resurrecting a thought from moments ago. “Steve can see us.”

  “Are you serious?” David asks. “Like right now? In here?”

  “No,” I reply, looking along the street. I can’t make out any cameras on the side of the mall, but I know they’re there. Jackson, or was it Ajeet? One of them said there was another camera further down this street in the other direction. A traffic camera. I see it over by the freeway off-ramp.

  “There!”

  David follows my gaze, looking where I’m pointing.

  A traffic camera sits on a tall pole facing the intersection.

  “And he can see us from there?” David asks.

  “Yes,” I reply. “Although he probably doesn’t know we’re in here. He probably thinks I’m dead.”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” David says. He jogs over by Jane and picks up a baseball bat. The tip has broken off, but it’s still useful as a club.

  “Nathan!” I cry.

  “Yep. Found him up in that office.”

  David walks up to one of the windows and swings the bat with all his might, striking the glass roughly in the center. Thousands of tiny shards of glass explode outward, showering the zombies below the building in a hail of safety glass. Large sections of the window still hang in place, so David methodically knocks them out of the window frame, sending glass crashing into the zombie horde.

  The zombies react as one, howling and screaming, crying out in rage. Seeing us, they surge toward the building, crushing each other, their arms outstretched above them. It’s as though they think they can reach us if they can just stretch a little further.

  David holds onto the aluminum frame and leans out of the window, waving with the baseball bat. I wave too, hoping Steve can see us. I don’t know why, but it fills us both with joy to know he’s escaped and that he can see us. There’s nothing he can do for us. Nothing anyone could do for us with thousands of zombies clamoring for our blood, but it feels good to be seen.

  David asks, “Can he respond in some way? You know, wiggle the camera or something?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Most of this stuff is so old it barely works, but he’ll be looking. I know he will.”

  I’m glad Steve knows I’m still alive. There’s something satisfying about cheating death. That death will never be cheated is lost on me in the moment, and I feel as though I’ll live forever.

  “Wait a minute,” I say, getting excited. “We can talk to him!”

  “How?”

  I undo the chin strap on my Snoopy Cap, pulling it from my head. A small cable dangles from the back of the cap.

  “This. There’s a microphone and earpieces—headphones.”

  I rush over to my backpack, adding, “We just need power. If I can reconnect the life-support unit, we can talk to him.”

  There are a variety of plugs and hoses on the back of the life-support pack, but none that look even vaguely familiar, and I remember Elizabeth plugging something in behind my neck. With my hand reaching back over my head, I feel a small plug under the collar ring. It’s a similar shape and size to the plug on the cap. I clip the two ends together. There’s about half a foot of thin, loose cable, so I gently pull the cap around to where I can see the two plugs and ensure they’re locked.

  “Okay,” I mumble to myself, looking at the mess of cables and wires coming from the life-support system. “Something has to power this thing.”

  One by one, I hook up the cables I so desperately wanted to tear from my suit not more than five minutes ago. David watches me intently. I guess he thinks I know what I’m doing. I don’t, but one of the umbilical-like cords causes the tiny LED lights on my wrist controls to glow.

  Power.

  “Hello?” I ask, holding the earpiece up and speaking into the microphone. “Is there anyone out there? Can anyone hea
r me?”

  There’s no response.

  “Steve? Elizabeth? Ajeet? Anyone?”

  David watches me with intense concentration. It’s not possible for him to hear anything, so he’s looking for the faintest sign of contact in my facial expressions.

  “Hello?” I ask, not sure if I’m talking to myself.

  The radio crackles.

  “Haze?”

  “STEVE!” I cry out, almost jumping for joy.

  David sits next to me on the edge of the desk. I turn the cap inside out so he can hold his ear against one of the tiny speakers.

  “Oh, Steve,” I say, not sure what to say next. I hadn’t thought this through beyond simply making contact. Just hearing his voice is enough for me. “Steve. David’s here.”

  “David?”

  “Yes,” I say, turning the microphone to one side so it sits near David’s lips.

  “Hey, buddy,” David says. He’s grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  “And Jane?” Steve asks.

  “She’s here,” David replies.

  “She needs help. She needs medicine,” I say, feeling the desperation of the moment.

  “Did you retrieve any of the tablets?” Steve asks, which is uncharacteristic of him. I expected more concern for Jane, but I understand the importance of these tablets to the scientists around him. I wonder if they’re whispering in his ear.

  “Yes,” I say. “David has a box of them.”

  Steve says, “We need those tablets.”

  “I know.”

  The radio crackles.

  “Hazel, listen. Are you there?” Steve asks.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “This is important,” he says. And for a moment I’m confused. I get that the tablets are important, but I sense that’s not what Steve’s talking about. We’re surrounded by thousands of zombies. Everything’s important. One missed detail and we’re dead.

  Steve speaks methodically, articulating his words so nothing is lost over the radio waves.

  “Jackson. He’s here with me, but his mic’s broken. He figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” I ask.

  “We saw you,” Steve says. He’s breathing heavily. His mouth must be close to a microphone.

  “On the traffic cam?” I ask. “When we broke the window?”

  “No,” Steve replies. “I mean, yes. We saw you climb on the roof to escape. We saw when you broke the window. You waved, but that’s not what Jackson saw... It’s you, Haze.”

  “Me?” I ask.

  “They’re after you.”

  “Oh,” I say, laughing. “I think I’ve figured that one out by now.”

  “No,” Steve replies, and I can hear the frustration in his voice. He’s trying to explain something without scaring or upsetting me. “We watched the video from the hallway, while you and I were moving through the ducts. Remember?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “The zombies. They were reaching for you.”

  There’s something about the way he says, “you,” that makes my blood run cold.

  “They weren’t reaching for us. They were after you. Just you.”

  David and I look at each other, listening intently to what Steve’s describing.

  “Not all of them. And this is important. Jackson says it’s important.”

  I can hear the muted, muffled sounds of someone talking in the background to Steve.

  “He says roughly half of them were after you.”

  “I don’t understand?” I say.

  “Remember the old ones,” Steve says, panting between breaths. At a guess, he’s on the move. “I saw them, remember? Back when my dad had us camped with the National Guard. The old ones were directing the herd.

  “And then a couple of days ago we saw another one. Remember? She stood by the corner as we rolled cars down the hill.”

  “I remember,” I say, not liking where this is leading.

  “You killed her,” Steve says, breathing heavily. It’s as though he’s running. He’s in a spacesuit, he must be. I start to say something. I want to ask where he is, what is he doing, but he cuts me off, saying, “Remember? I was there.”

  “I remember,” I repeat.

  “Haze. She was their queen. You killed the queen.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s why they want you,” he says. “You’re their queen.”

  And with those few words, the growling and snarling beneath us fades into the background. The realization of what we’ve been dealing with finally sinks in. Goosebumps rise on the back of my arms.

  “Haze? Hazel?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m still here.”

  “At the commune,” Steve says. “They weren’t trying to attack you. They were trying to rescue you. And me. Somehow, they relate me to you. If you’re the queen, I guess I’m the king or the bishop or something. When they couldn’t get you, they took me. They used me to draw you in. They’re smart, Haze. Just a different kind of smart. Jackson says it’s a hunting instinct. Like baiting a trap.”

  I can’t speak. My throat chokes up at the thought of being attacked that night. I have to swallow in order to keep breathing.

  “Jackson figured it out. I told him everything that happened. We reviewed the footage from the mall and compared it with the footage from the attack in the ducts.”

  “I saw it too,” David says from beside me, taking me completely off guard. “When Hazel was attacked, the zombies turned on each other. Some of them attacked her. Others fought against them.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” I say, staring out at the horde still swelling in the street outside.

  “It’s not every zombie,” Steve says. “They nest. They move in hordes. In tribes is the way Jackson describes it. Those in the mall. They’re the ones. They think you’re their queen.”

  I’m stunned.

  “Haze?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to get you out of there.”

  “No shit,” I reply.

  “I’m already on my way.”

  “No!” I say. I don’t want Steve risking his life for me.

  “Doyle’s got about an hour of charge left in the Tesla. Jackson and I are with him. We’re going to draw them away.”

  “No, Steve,” I repeat. This is all too much. I need time to process this information, to figure out what to do next. Life is unfolding too quick.

  Steve ignores me, saying, “We’re going to distract them. Lead them away from you. Get to the far side of the intersection and Doyle will pick you up.”

  “We could cut through the warehouse,” David says. “Draw them into a bottleneck. That would negate their numbers as they can only follow single file.”

  “There are still too many,” I say. “There are hundreds of them. Thousands of them. They would flank us on the road, coming around the front of the vet clinic.”

  My hands are shaking.

  “Steve. You can’t come down here. There are just too many of them.”

  There’s silence for a moment, and I get the impression Steve has deactivated his microphone. He must be talking to Doyle and Jackson.

  “Just sit tight,” Steve says. “We’re a few minutes out.”

  Doyle speaks. There’s a slight hiss with his transmission.

  “Do you have a good view of the horde? Is the approach clear?”

  David and I drag the NASA backpack over by the shattered window and rest it on a desk.

  I say, “Still thin by the mall. The bulk of them are to our left. They seem to be coming down from the freeway.”

  “Not good,” Doyle says.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Jackson says, they’re from a different tribe.”

  Steve says, “Get Jane ready to move on our signal.”

  “Your signal?” I reply. “What are you going to do.”

  “Just—be ready.”

  “Steve,” I say, but there’s no reply. “Steve?”

  David look
s at me with sadness in his eyes. His face is somber. It’s as though he knows more than me.

  “I’ll get Jane.”

  “The tablets,” I say. “We need to take them with us. They’re important. The scientists need to test them. They need to understand how they work.”

  David pulls a crumpled packet from his pocket and shoves it in my hand. It’s a pack of ten tablets sealed in tinfoil. I pop a couple in my mouth, saying, “For good luck.”

  “For good luck,” David says as I drop a couple of tablets in his hand. He knocks them back and then jogs over to Jane.

  David stuffs dozens of packets into his pockets and then lifts her up, getting her ready to move.

  “Steve,” I say into the microphone. “Talk to me.”

  “Can you see Doyle?” he asks, and I watch as the stripped down Tesla rolls slowly and quietly up to the intersection. Zombies stumble past ignoring him. Doyle’s wearing a new suit, one that’s more lightweight.

  “Yes, yes,” I say, but Doyle’s alone. “Where are you?”

  “Jackson and I are to your left,” Steve says. “Look along the street, over toward the freeway.”

  In the distance, two astronauts walk down the broad avenue, passing invisibly between scattered clusters of zombies as they approach the horde. Glints of sunlight reflect off their golden visors. Their white spacesuits and thick boots are strangely out of place on Earth, more so than the zombies ambling around them.

  “Steve?” I ask, feeling my heart starting to rush. “What are you doing?”

  Sweat beads on the back of my neck. My hands shake.

  Zombies growl below me, swaying in the vast crowd, reaching out their hands toward me, but I’m not afraid of them. I’m afraid of what Steve is about to do.

  “Haze,” he says. “We need those tablets. This horde is not going anywhere. There’s only one way we’re getting you out of there.”

  “No, no, no,” I say, getting to my feet and dragging the NASA backpack to the edge of the window frame so I have a better view of him. I hold onto the aluminum frame and lean out, watching as the astronauts come to a halt at the top of a small rise.

  “Jackson modified a couple of industrial chainsaws to run on electricity. Should last five to ten minutes. We will buy you the time you need.”