“Let’s do it.”
Downstairs on the worktable next to the patched boat is an old, beat-up, paint-splashed radio. Tanis opens the plastic case and pulls the wires from the circuit board and connects them directly to the diode and the power supply—which will work thanks to the generator.
With Hana’s help, he spends the next two hours remembering how the radio fit together. Finally, static flows through the speakers.
Before they have a chance to find a signal, the gate at the end of the walkway rattles loudly. It’s being kicked or something. Hana runs to the window. Tanis is right behind her.
There are five people at the gate, trying to get in.
Hana pulls out her pistol and watches them.
Chapter 1.17
Ben
In the Batter’s Box
Ben has been running longer than he thought possible for his fat ass. His cells burn at every level and he can’t hear anything around but the thumping of blood in his ears. He stops and gasps for breath. His hands find his knees, and he throws up again. He’s never thrown up as much as he has over the past three days. He begins to think about how nice it would be to ditch these dudes and go home. He would stock up on food and water and maybe find some more weed in someone’s closet. He’d stock as much booze as he could find and fade out until the end of all time.
Markus and Ian comes back.
Ian reaches for Ben, but he waves him off. “I can’t run anymore.” Ben gasps “Just can’t do it, dude.”
Markus looks around, wheezing like a steam engine. “And on the seventh day, God rested.”
They don’t get to rest. Some bitch starts yelling from the roof of a six-story building. She’s got a kid hanging onto her leg.
“Help!” she screams. “Hey, help us!”
Ian and Markus run to the building. Ian flings the door open like an idiot. Bunch of do-gooders gonna get killed trying to rescue some dumbass chick and her snot-nosed kid.
Smoke pours from the front door. The building is an inferno, and Ian isn’t a fool. He runs back to the middle of the street and yells, “Use the fire escape!” She screams so loudly Ben expects the windows to shatter. “I can’t!”
Three walkers inhabit the fourth-floor fire escape platform. They’re dumbasses for sure. They don’t know how to climb ladders, so they pace back and forth like caged tigers. Well, fuck, if she can’t fight off a few of those ugly things she’s gonna get everyone killed for sure. “Leave them!” Ben yells. “She’s a goner!”
No one hears him. He watches Ian slip off his huge backpack and dash down the alley. Hero Ian pushes a dumpster under the fire escape and jumps on it like some kind of cat. After pulling the ladder down, he climbs up to the first platform. Markus watches and prays.
Maybe God would turn that walker into some weed so Ben could smoke it. Now that would be a miracle. Ben looks up to the dark clouds. “How ’bout it, God?”
No response.
The glass door across the street falls from its hinges and smashes on the stairs. Walkers overflow the steps like a gaggle of writhing snakes coming down from their den. Ben takes a quick count. Six walkers, eight, no, ten. He runs to Markus’s side as more appear out of the traffic jam, hatching from the silent vehicles, wobbling like baby birds.
“Hey, yo, can I borrow your bat?” Ben asks, feeling quite vulnerable. Markus looks and sees the walkers lumbering toward them.
“You need your own weapon, son,” Markus says. He points to the alley where the dumpster was. “I saw a two-by-four over there. Make expedient use of that.”
Ben finds the wood and stands on the sidewalk like he’s in the batter’s box.
More and more stupid walkers lumber toward them. There’s a crowd building up. “Come on, Ian!” Ben yells. “This shit is gonna go down any second!” He counts twenty-one ugly bastards now. He waits at Markus’s side. They’ve got minutes before they’re surrounded. Thirty now. More stumble from buildings, alleys, and side streets. He fucking stops counting. “Dude, come on!!”
Ian yells from the fourth-floor fire escape platform. “Heads up!” He tosses the walker off the platform. The walker hits the ground and kind of explodes like a water balloon. Black shit goes everywhere. “Ahhh!” Ben cries. Some crap gets in his mouth! Markus is spared, conveniently sheltered by Ben. “You’re welcome, dude,” he snips. “Your Bible seems to be workin’ for you at least.”
There are two more, and they don’t want to be tossed off the fire escape. Ian struggles and fights, kicks and punches. Finally, another goes over the rails.
Markus pulls Ben out of the way. “Our escape is closing, Ian!” he yells.
Markus and Ben back into the alley, which is really fucking stupid because there’s no way out. Another dumpster and a twenty-foot-tall fence box them in.
The last walker goes over the side. It crashes to the ground, forcing Ben and Markus farther into the alley. The crowd stumbling toward them closes off the entrance. “Shit, man. Where do we go?”
Markus and Ben climb onto the dumpster by the fence.
Ben looks up at Ian. Seeing their way out, the woman and the boy fly down two flights of stairs. Fire erupts from the window facing the fifth-floor stairwell. The woman and her boy can’t climb down to Ian. The window behind them shatters, and black smoke engulfs the two.
“Hurry! Toss the boy to me!” Ian yells. They’re only one platform up.
“No!” she screams, choking on the smoke.
“Do it or die!”
The woman holds the boy over the metal railing and lowers him into Ian’s arms. Then she climbs over the railing and drops onto him. She lands on him hard, knocking the wind out of him.
At the same time, the walkers get closer to Ben and Markus, but they hesitate for some reason. Maybe it’s the fire inside the ground-floor windows. They don’t like fire.
Ian, the boy, and the woman scamper down the fire escape to the bottom like Mario, Luigi, and Toad. Ian lands on the dumpster, takes the kid, and sets him on solid ground. He turns, as the lady, who’s a bit on the plump side, jumps into his arms again.
The walkers must smell them. They’re so close they collectively lunge.
Ian, the kid, and the woman evade the fumbling undead and run to Ben and Markus. “We go over the fence.”
Ben had a feeling that was the way they were going, but he was hoping for an alternative.
Ian and Markus help the kid and the woman over the fence. The kid makes it fine, but the woman bombs the pavement. She screams bloody fucking murder.
The walker horde reaches them. Ian takes Ben’s two-by-four and, with Markus, start batting heads like they’re playing croquet or some shit. Ben leaps up the fence like a god-damned teenager running from the coppers. At the top of the fence, Ben turns to go down the opposite side when he catches a glimpse of the alley he’d just left. Hundreds of walkers jam the space between the brick buildings. His heart stops ticking for a moment.
A tall, thin walker moves faster than the others. It has a radar fix on the survivors. Ben drops to the pavement. Ian and Markus jump down to the safe side of the fence, and run to the main road. Ben waits, getting one last look down the alley. He expects to see the bastards leap-froggin’ over the fence, but they don’t. Through the slats he can see that they don’t really know what to do with the dumpster. They aren’t climbing on top of it, just pancaking into it. Dumb fucks. Ben is about to turn and run when he sees that tall, thin one climb onto the dumpster and stare through a gap. He looks with his eyes, even though they don’t exist anymore. Those worms see Ben, he knows it. The walker cries out and awkwardly climbs the fence. The others follow his lead. Monkey see, monkey do.
Ben runs and catches up to Ian and the others. Walkers pepper this street, too, but they haven’t condensed yet so it’s easy to weave around them.
A window on the third floor of a building shatters, and a walker jumps from the building trying to land on the survivors. He gets close but misses. His body explodes on impact.
Again, Ben gets soaked and Markus remains dry. Kamikaze bastard! Then another fucker falls from above, splashing his guts on the concrete.
Ben slips on blood and body parts. He thinks he’s going to barf again. NO! he orders his stomach. Stop with this throwing up shit! More fuckers fall and splatter around. One almost hits him, but he dodges it. Popping like they do is weird, like they’ve built up pressure inside their bodies. Ben knows dead bodies bloat up, but they don’t look bloated.
They sprint past an ever-growing crowd of the most fucked-up, sorry sacks of walking corpses anyone has ever seen. Two blocks away, with the walkers behind, they slow to a fast walk. Ben’s hot and dizzy and just doesn’t have a high tolerance for pain.
Markus lets the woman hold on to his arm and she’s got the kid’s hand. “Are you guys okay?” he asks. “What’re your names?”
She’s plump but has a cute face, brown hair with dyed blond streaks. Ben looks at her huge boobs and then at her designer nails. He’d do her. He stops himself from thinking about that. Millions of people are dead and walking around with roots in their eye sockets, and he’s thinking about banging this fat chick.
“My name is Rice,” the woman says, out of breath. Everyone is out of breath. “This is Andy. He’s my nephew.”
“You guys don’t feel sick?” Ian asks.
Rice shakes her head. The boy doesn’t speak. His brown hair is matted with crap, and he’s got dark circles under his eyes. “When the news said there was something in the water making people sick, I locked us inside my apartment. When they said it was harmless. . . I don’t know. . . I didn’t believe them. I didn’t trust the radio reports.”
“That was smart,” Ian says. “They should have been able to quarantine the city. I’ve seen the government’s contingency plans on the Internet. The ones that direct the armed forces in case of a biological attack. First order of business is to blow the bridges and tunnels to isolate the infected. If that fails, they firebomb the infected area. So far, no firebombs, so they must have succeeded in making a quarantine line. All we have to do is get there, spend some time in isolation and move on with our lives.”
The group continues walking. If Ian is right, then Ben will be hitting the drive-thru somewhere very soon and finding something to watch on HBO.
Markus nods. “They had plans, but it was for an identifiable viral attack on the city. What they found was some kind of bacteria in the water. Those tap-water pipes fed other areas besides Manhattan Island. To control this outbreak, they’d have to seal off a five-hundred-mile area, including parts of Jersey and South Brooklyn.”
“And it would have to be done in two days. That’s millions of people behind the lines,” Ian adds. “Tens of millions.”
Markus points to a group of walkers on an intercept course. “We have to run again.”
“Shit,” Ben says under his breath.
They start jogging, thankfully, at an easy pace. It’s so hot. Ben’s sweating badly.
“If they blew all the bridges then we should find a boat,” Ian suggests. “Getting off the island is our priority.”
“Unless those ugly walkers can swim,” Ben mentions.
“I know where we can find a boat,” Markus says. “Every year I do a youth retreat at a place called Swindler’s Cove.”
Chapter 1.18
Markus
Sunny Day in Tunisia
The flight to Tunisia is short, the landing rough. Markus always breathes a sigh of relief when the wheels touch the runway, especially after flying over water. The stewardess hands out pamphlets warning travelers of a Taxi scam. It lists toll-free help numbers, which he’s thankful for.
The airport is international and not a place he’d want to get lost. Signs in Arabic and French are in the majority and he has no idea what they say. However, he’s equipped with a Tunisian travel book that translates most of the signs, and he has a mind to hire an interpreter. He hears French, mostly, but some English as well. The place bustles. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to find his way out of the airport.
Markus assumes that this land, being just north of the Sahara Desert, would be hot and dry, but he feels a cool breeze, inhales ocean scents, and beholds a bright blue sky. It’s only seventy-eight degrees, and lush palm trees and vegetation are everywhere. The fresh air helps him to relax. He’s on a grand adventure, after all, and he’s got God on his side.
There’s a slightly familiar sign, pointing to the taxi area. Markus approaches the nearest cab. The driver leaps out, runs up to him, and takes control of the bags. He leads Markus to his yellow, twenty-year-old taxi that is an unfamiliar make and model. Rust creeps up from the bottom edge, and the tires are worn to the wire.
“Merci? Hello?”
“Hello, sir,” Markus responds, taking the bait.
“Where are you going? I take you anywhere. You like ocean?”
Markus gives him a paper that lists his hotel and hops in. The interior smells of incense, and there is a lavish rug laid on the dash.
“Yes, hotel first, okay, no problem.” The roads are old, narrow and maintained. Small cars and motorcycles zip everywhere. Even worse than in Italy, the traffic rules are mere suggestions. The buildings are dusty, cracked, and tightly packed. But there is a style, a feeling to them. They all belong together in an isolated architectural standard that makes such bygone cities seem so beautiful.
Markus’s hotel is as nice as anything in the modern world. It’s five stories tall, looks brand new, has fresh paint and lots of decorative lighting. Reflective glass panels arch over part of a warm lobby with plants, rainbow-colored lights, suited employees, and a comforting smell. Western-style popular songs play on a flat-screen TV.
The bellhop helps Markus to find his room and sets his suitcase on the bed. There’s satellite TV, a refrigerator, and a small kitchen sink. It’s perfect for an old man.
At the unique hotel restaurant, he feasts on curry lamb steak and a tasty yam and red bean stew. Markus finishes his tea and moves to the bar to have a drink. Just then, the stage off to the right lights up and a beautiful olive-skinned woman takes the microphone. She sings in French next to a keyboardist and bass player.
Markus waves the barkeep over. “Monsieur, Je voudrais vodka et tonique veuillez, merci beaucoup,” He orders in the worst French possible.
The barkeep slides over a vodka tonic. It’s wonderfully strong. Later, Markus asks, “You speak English, young man?”
The barkeep nods.
“I would like to learn more about Islam and the history of this area. Where would you suggest I go?” Markus yells over the singing.
The barkeep cleans a glass while he answers in a thick accent, “I’m not Islamic. I’m Catholic.”
Markus is taken back by his answer. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“Not everyone here is Muslim. There are Protestants and Jews as well. This is a tolerant country, contrary to what the West says.”
“I’m sorry for my assumption. I’m a preacher. I’d like to learn about how this area was affected by the Crusades. I’m on a learning expedition.”
The barkeep gives Markus a phone number to the local parish. He finishes his drink and listens to a few more songs before deciding to retire for the night. He tips heavily, feeling embarrassed by his ignorance. Markus prides himself on not being just another ignorant man from the West.
He calls Marian from his room. Immediately, she pleads, “You need to come home, Markus. I miss you. It’s not the same. I . . . I want you with me in my bed.”
“You have to be patient with me.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I have to. The other night someone broke into the house. They didn’t steal anything, just rifled through our things. They left a card on your desk. It has flames on one side and your name on the other. What does it mean?”
So they’re harassing my wife. Anger swells inside Markus and he grinds his teeth. “My flight is in three days. Until then, stay with your cousin. Don’t
tell anyone where you are going and stay inside. You’ll be fine. God has a plan for me and for all of us.”
“How do I fit into this plan?” Her voice quivers, which gives him anxiety. She’s usually his rock, but she is cracking under the pressure he’s brought on her. He knows he needs to end this. It is the only way their lives can return to normal. “Four days and I’ll be home. It’ll be okay, so will you. I love you.” Markus hangs up the phone.
The city lights are sporadic, but plentiful. A cool breeze filters into his room from the open window. Pacing, he admits that his wife needs him at home, but he also needs to see this through. Three days is not a long time. Three days and this ends.
The next day, Markus leaves the hotel and is surprised to see the taxi driver he’d met outside the airport waiting for him. He’s quite pleased as he finds the familiarity comforting. They drive to a Catholic church on the outskirts of downtown Tunis. The church is a small building with an ornate front entrance and a tall roof. Other than that, the building is unobtrusive and quaint.
Markus is met by the priest. “Hello, my name is Christian. It is nice to make your acquaintance.” Christian happens to be a tall, thin, young man with light-blue eyes and shortly trimmed dirty-blond hair. He wears a cassock that starts at his neck and hangs to his toes.
“Nice to meet you, Christian.”
He shakes Markus’s hand loosely. “So, you here to learn about the Crusades?” His English is surprisingly good.
“I’m interested in the history of King Louis IX.” The two move to a desk inside the church office and sit. Papers overflow the desktop, and books are stacked along walls bereft of proper shelves.
“Pardon my mess. Our library has a leak in the roof.” He sits, the rusted old chair squeaking loudly under his insignificant weight. “I can show you our local records. However, you might have more luck in the Great Library at the Vatican.”
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