“Please, be careful!” the young woman called down. “And don’t lose that pink pack - that one’s mine!” Her teeth flashed white in her face as she smiled.
Nowen lifted a hand and turned away from the hospital. From here her objective was hidden but she knew which way to head. She moved slowly through the small parking lot, all her senses straining for anything out of the ordinary. The buzzing of insects and the cries of a great many birds drifted through the silence. She slipped around a van that advertised a painting service and stumbled into a black mass of flies that covered something on the ground.
The flies lifted up in a dark veil and revealed two dead men in painters’ whites. One was hanging face down from the open back of the van. The other lay on his back on the ground. Maggots writhed in his empty eye sockets and spilled from his nose. The heat was drying him like leather, pulling his face tautly over his skull so that he grinned up at the indifferent sky. Blood from his savaged neck had pooled under his body, mixing with the blood that had poured from the other man in the back of the van.
In one withered hand was a length of pipe, clotted with blood and hair on one end. Nowen knelt among the flies and the smell of death and gently eased the pipe from the dead man’s grasp. She hefted its weight in her hand, then stood up and left the flies to their feast.
She reached the alley and the chicken wire fence and moved toward the street. Her view of the street ahead was narrowed by a small tan building on one side and a stand of trees on the other. The end of the alley was blocked by a dusty green station wagon that had crashed into the trees. Over the top of the car she could see other cars and storefront windows.
Reaching the small building she dropped to a crouch and moved close to the wall, the stone cladding rough against her side. She reached the cover of the station wagon and looked carefully around the rear bumper.
The street was a landscape of death. Bodies were scattered like broken toys on the street itself, on the sidewalks, on top of cars and protruding from shattered store fronts and piled in doorways where people had sought sanctuary in their last desperate moments. Flocks of crows and ravens and buzzards picked at the corpses and squabbled amongst themselves.
And everywhere were Revs, making their slow, aimless way up and down the street.
Nowen did a quick count. There were at least forty Revs between her alley and the next block south. To the north of her position there was just a handful visible. To reach the gas station she would have to cross open territory, with only a few abandoned cars for cover. There were no Revs between her and the station right now but their wandering could change that at any moment. She gripped the pipe tightly in her hand and went for it.
She slipped around the rear bumper of the station wagon and darted toward a white convertible that was slewed sideways in the street. Dried blood spilled down the driver’s side door. Crouching next to the car, she listened for any sign that the Revs had noticed her. The wind brought the rich smells of ruined bodies to her but no noticeable change in the shuffle of footsteps. She raised her head and took a quick look north and south. So far, so good.
A deep breath and she was running across an open span of pavement, hunched over as far as she could and still maintain her balance. A furniture truck offered the next cover, and Nowen crouched by the back wheels and wiped her brow. The heat was more intense out of the hospital’s shadow, and between that and the tension of this venture sweat was pouring down her face.
An empty police car parked at the curb was her next goal. Again a quick run, and again a quick look around. Someone returned her gaze. Her heart skipped a beat and she froze, watching the Rev that was watching her. It was a woman, dressed in a sleek navy blazer and skirt. The once-carefully coiffed hair was a rat’s nest over the vacant face, and dark stains covered her mouth and chest. The Rev was a strange bluish-grey color, like a moldy piece of bread. She was on the edge of the larger southern group of Revs, some sixty feet away, and as she stared and swayed Nowen held her breath and waited.
Finally the Rev turned her attention elsewhere and Nowen dropped to her knees gratefully. The muscles in the back of her legs twitched and jumped as they were released from the half-crouch. She crawled to the back of the car and scanned the gas station.
The building looked to be in good shape. None of the windows were broken, and there was only one Rev she could see from this angle. He was dressed in some type of coveralls and stood on the far side on the station by an ice machine. Debris from tipped over trash cans littered the ground. There were no abandoned cars here and she would have to make a long dash with no cover. Nowen drew her legs up beneath her and ran.
The breeze of her movement tugged at her clothes as she flew. Almost before she knew it she was through the front door of the station, letting it close softly behind her. She was assaulted by the stink of rotten food immediately and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. This wasn’t the scent of human bodies returning their substance to the earth, but instead a fetid soup of meat decomposing in plastic packages and milk souring in plastic bottles. The station had lost power some time ago, and in the darkened interior the heat collected in the air like an incipient rainstorm.
The station was large, with the checkout counter to her right. Four long aisles of merchandise, everything from cat food to cupcakes to motor oil, ran the length of the floor. Along the back and sides of the store were glass cases of drinks, juices, pre-packaged sandwiches, and a hot dog machine that still smelled redolently of roasting meat.
Quickly she slipped the backpacks off and pulled the pink one out. She headed for the liquids, filling the pack with bottles of water. When it was as full as she could get it she zipped it shut and slipped it on, the weight straining at her shoulders. Next up were bags of beef jerky, chips, crackers, and nuts, these going into the blue pack. On another aisle she found battery packs and threw a couple of them in. By this time the blue pack was full. She closed it, and then drew a short length of bed-sheet from her pocket. This she looped around the shoulder straps and drew it taut, then knotted the ends together to form a carrying handle.
Nowen stood up, balancing the weight. In her left hand was the blue backpack, in her right was the pipe. The unrelieved heat in the station and the chemical odor of the rotten meat was overpowering. Every breath she drew in felt tainted and corrupt, and nausea threatened to overwhelm her. She hurried to the front door and surveyed the street. Her luck seemed to be holding - there were no Revs nearby.
Her hand was on the door when something grabbed her from behind. Instinctively Nowen tossed her head back, connecting with a hard surface. The grip relaxed and a low moan told her it was a Rev. She whirled to face the thing, bringing her make-shift club around in a wide arc. The Rev, a man in shorts and a ball cap, had recovered quickly and he moved within the circle of her swing. Her blow missed. Again he moaned, louder this time, and raised ragged hands toward her.
She lunged forward, leading with her shoulder. The impact sent the Rev stumbling backwards a few feet. Nowen turned and shoved through the door and then leaned back on it, forcing it closed. She had to move, now - the door wouldn’t keep the Rev from following her. She ran toward the police car, glancing south down the street as she did. And froze.
Drawn by the noise she had made, or the moans from the dead man, or perhaps some other sense entirely, the mass of Revs was looking at her. A great moaning came from them, an unearthly noise that rose and fell like an ocean wave. They began to move toward her, the sight of fresh prey increasing their shuffling pace to almost a jog.
From behind her Nowen heard more moans, the northern group responding to the call to hunt. She spared a glance back at the station in time to see the grey-skinned man fall against the door, pushing it open. Damn. Damn! One option left - get back to the hospital.
She ran, a full-out sprint. The Revs answered her challenge with another ululation, hungry in its intent. Reaching the green station wagon that blocked the alley she threw the blue pack over the top of the c
ar and then moved to the hood and pulled herself up. Her palms were sweaty and she slipped on the hot metal, falling back to the street. The undead were moaning constantly now, and she could hear similar sounds coming from further away as other Revs picked up the call.
Nowen hoisted herself up on the hood again and then up to the roof. She looked behind her. The Revs had reached her, a group a sixty or more strong, and as she looked down on them she could see that Flux had spared no one. From the very young to the very old, from black to white and every color in between, the hungry mob were united in their desire to reach her. Bloody hands grasped for purchase on the slippery metal side of the car. Their jaundiced eyes were locked on her, tracking her every movement, and their jaws chewed the air in anticipation.
Nowen turned her back on the crowd and jumped down to the alley. The station wagon was proving to be an adequate block, but she wasn’t going to hang around to find out how long it would last. She scooped up the blue backpack and ran toward the hospital.
At the edge of the parking lot she looked up to see the open window from which she had climbed down earlier. Safety was so close now. But there was movement very near in the parking lot, and as she watched four Revs came from behind the painters’ van and staggered toward her.
Nowen tensed, every muscle and tendon drawing tight as a bow string. Strange thoughts flashed through her head, quicksilver and wild. These creatures had invaded her territory. They were a danger to her den, and they must be driven off or killed. The pack dropped unnoticed from her hand as she leaned forward, a deep feral noise rising from her chest and thrumming through her throat. They moved toward each other, the living and the undead.
She met them in a flurry of movement, the metal pipe rising and falling to smash against skulls and arms and ribs. There was a feeling that she stood outside her body and watched it do these things of its own accord. She moved like a dervish, cracking a skull so the brains spilled through, then leaping aside to avoid a bite before swinging around to deliver a crippling blow to another Rev’s legs. A face rose up before her, grey-lipped mouth yawning wide, and she slammed the pipe against the slack jaw. Teeth and blood exploded from the Rev’s mouth. She grabbed the back of its head, her fingers sinking into a greasy tangle of hair, and drove the pipe into a yellow eye. She could feel the bone of the eye socket shatter, and the Rev fell back in a lifeless heap. And then it was over and she stood panting in a pile of broken-limbed bodies, wreathed in the foul smell of the undead.
Nowen raised her shaking hands before her eyes. They were coated to the wrist in blood and dead flesh. She checked the window again - it was still open and still empty. She moved to the shade of the painter’s van and pulled a bottle of water from the pink backpack. Quickly she cleaned her hands and then ran her wet hands over her face and through her short hair. There was blood on her shoes and splattered across her clothes, but there was nothing she could do about that. She picked up her packs, then paused and looked at the interior of the van. A ladder caught her eye, and she pulled it out.
At the base of the hospital wall she propped the ladder up and saw with a kind of weary joy that it reached the top of the tier. She climbed up with her packs, pulled the ladder up behind her, and did it all over again until there was only one more floor to go.
“Hey!”
Nowen looked up, squinting against the overhead sun. Jamie was leaning out the window, smiling and waving excitedly. “You’re back!”
Nowen raised her hand in return and felt on her face, for the first time since she woke up in her hospital room, a smile.
Nowen lay on the cool sheets of her bed that night. She and Jamie had splurged a little on the food and spent some of their precious water on sponge baths. Jamie told her that she had watched Nowen’s journey until she got into the station. Then Dr. Westrick had called with questions about the pregnant woman, and Jamie had been stuck on the phone for half an hour. By the time she had returned to the window Nowen was almost back home.
Across the room Jamie snored lightly from her own bed. Nowen looked up at the dark ceiling and replayed the fight in the parking lot over in her head. She could have easily avoided the Revs, she knew. They were slow and the cars provided obstacles to their movement. And yet, she hadn’t. A primal urge to protect her den? home had taken over everything in that moment. She had relished the violence of her actions, the speed with which she moved and delivered death, had exulted in the slaying of the intruders.
The words were so much stronger now. They beat against the locked door of her memory, and she wondered what crouched in the shadows behind that door.
Who am I?
Now
Nowen paused at the top of the snow dune and raised her goggles, taking in the view. She stood atop a massive drift that had built up around a wrecked eighteen-wheeler. Her perch was at the edge of a large frozen sea of a parking lot. Wind-sculpted waves of snow rippled around other abandoned vehicles and lapped against the walls of the big-box store that stood like a lonely island below. Overhead the sun rode high in the cloudless sky.
She stood in the silence, closed her eyes, and breathed deep. For once the wind wasn’t blowing, and for once she wished it was. The wind could carry sounds and smells to her, warning of potential dangers or unseen hazards. She exhaled and breathed deeply again, tasting the purity of snow and the freshness of meltwater. The snap of an icicle breaking free somewhere came to her ears. She opened her eyes, re-adjusted the goggles, and shoved off with her ski poles, leaping the short distance to the ground.
Nowen sped over the snow-pack, angling for the front of the building. Near the entrance she kicked out of the skis, standing them on end next to a light pole. She approached the sliding doors, where shattered glass gleamed in the entrance. When she had come here two days ago, only one of the doors had been broken. She had smashed the other door and all the windows she could reach, letting the glacial cold in. She stepped through the door, pulling a flashlight from her parka and switching it on. The light beam played over empty registers and merchandise displays. In an open case near the front, long-dead flowers shimmered with frost. The silence inside was more absolute than the silence outside, and the crunch of her snow-covered boots was loud and intrusive.
Nowen moved through the store, studying the department signs hanging from the ceiling until she saw the one she wanted. She turned down an aisle of fabric bolts, stepping over the body of a large woman sprawled across the floor. The Rev twitched at her passing and tried to rise, but the intense cold had slowed the obese woman almost to a standstill, and Nowen didn’t even slow down. She saw other bodies as she walked. Some were truly dead, gnawed bones rising from their shredded and torn flesh. More were undead, but in the grip of winter they were as easily dismissed as their former prey.
Nowen reached her target, the far back corner of the store devoted to camping and hunting. A glass-faced gun display drew her attention, and she looked at the rifles and shotguns and pistols gleaming coldly in the beam of her flashlight for a moment before turning away.
She found an empty shopping cart nearby, and dragged it behind her as she searched the aisles for what she needed. She looked over the sleeping bags before deciding on a sleek black one that advertised that it would keep the occupant warm to thirty degrees below zero. She tossed it into the cart, where it was shortly joined by a multi-tool, several packages of fire-starters, and a hunting knife that came with a handy sheath and belt. She traded her flashlight for the convenience of a head-lamp and threw a couple of spares into the cart, then looked over her cache. Combined with what she had already scavenged from the few houses near her own, she felt satisfied that she was as prepared as she was going to be.
Nowen was almost to the front of the store when a sign pointing the way to the garden department caught her eye. Flux had struck just before the beginning of summer, and the gardening supplies were still on display, waiting for buyers that would never come. On a peg-board wall, next to rakes and hedge clippers, she found a lon
g-handled axe. When she swung it the blade cleaved the air with a low whistle. She hefted it to her shoulder and headed back to her cart.
The sleeping bag went on her back, tied just above the waist. She strapped the knife belt around her hips and put the rest of her supplies in a canvas tote-bag. She slipped the axe handle between the belt and her jeans, grabbed the bag, and left the quiet building.
A light breeze had sprung up, bringing with it a hint of colder air. Nowen looked to the west, where a bank of grey clouds was building up along the Snowy Range. She turned her back on the approaching storm and headed for home.
Chapter Eight
Then
Nowen dreamed.
She is running through a forest. It is twilight. The trees are black strokes of ink against the setting sun. They tower above her, rising so high they disappear into the darkening sky. The forest floor unravels beneath her. Pine needles and dead leaves, small mushrooms as pale as milk, tiny skittering things that flee from her as she flees from something else. A shadow is chasing her, something with glowing eyes and sharp teeth, and it is waiting only for the fall of true night to reveal itself. The dying sun sinks below the horizon. In the totality of her despair she wheels around to face that which is following her and sees-
Nowen shot up in bed. Cold sweat beaded her forehead and her heart trip-hammered in her chest so hard her scrub top trembled. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. The utter, mindless fear she had experienced in her dream was frightening in and of itself. She breathed slowly, trying to slow her heartbeat, trying to wash the remnants of the run through the forest from her mind.
The absence of snoring alerted her to the fact that she was alone in the dark room. A shaft of moonlight fell on Jamie’s empty bed and rumpled sheets. Nowen swung her legs over the side of her bed and stood up. She pulled on a pair of scrub bottoms and went looking for her companion.
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