by Ann Christy
“What about the neighborhood?” Charlie asks, still watching the field and the moving figures in the distance.
“We could. It was empty. At least, I think it was. But this place was empty before too.” I wave my hand toward the field and the few in-betweeners there to make my point.
He nods and looks at the moon. “We’re going to lose that long before the sun comes up. The neighborhood might be our safest bet.”
What a world it is when a neighborhood that’s been overrun at least once, partially burned and with a mysterious line of deaders lying across a street can be seriously considered our safest bet. But, it is.
“Okay…first house with a roof and we stay on the roof. Yes?”
He nods. “Deal. And I’m putting the light on as soon as we get past the shopping plaza and out of range. They might see a glow, but I doubt it if we just use the forward light and keep it pointed low.”
There’s nothing more to say and we’re both going to need to focus if we’re going to make it. I nod and put my feet back to the pedals. The sound of our bikes is much louder to my ears after having it stop for a minute. It seems loud enough that it should draw anything nearby right to us. Both of us are very careful never to leave our feet still on the pedals or push backwards, which would make the clicks of the disengaged gears sound out. It was a terribly hard habit to break, but it’s natural now for the most part. Only at times like this, when the silence is so vast and big, does the need to be careful rise again in our minds.
Crossing the intersection going into the neighborhood is almost too easy. Whoever cleared out this area did a good job and for whatever reason, new afflicted aren’t moving back into it. Perhaps the green spaces and the fields beyond are so much more tempting that this place is simply second fiddle in the in-betweener neighborhood choice algorithms.
Our lights pierce the darkness in a narrow cone that seems almost too bright to follow with our dark-adapted eyes. The trees take away our moonlight, so we really have no choice, but the white light does make everything outside of those cones darker by comparison.
We weave a wide path, shining our light on each house in turn. Burned, really burned, covered in graffiti with no door, deaders on the porch. Our choices are pretty bad. The first house on the second block looks good, so we stop and check it out from the street. A few deaders in another lawn—one of them wearing a floral robe I remember from our trip out—rustle at the change in their surroundings, but they don’t move overmuch and I’m pretty sure they can’t see us.
The door is boarded shut, but it’s an easy climb up onto the front porch roof using the railings and a little muscle. An upstairs window is broken, but the big ragged shards remaining are intact, which means it’s unlikely there’s anything too mobile inside. Any in-betweener left inside would have come out of the window the first time a noise disturbed them. That would have broken away any big shards of glass in the process.
I peek into another window, shining my light through the grimy glass between the slats of board someone nailed up across the window. A face—or rather, the remains of a face—turns slowly in my direction. A withered and desiccated hand moves with sloth-like slowness across the floor. A quick shift of my light shows the bedroom door is closed and I’d bet, locked or barred in some way from the outside. The collection of picked clean bones all over the room tells me that this woman ate everyone she could get to in this house and has probably been here, slowly drying away into what she is now, ever since.
I hear noises from below us when we clamber up onto the roof of the house, careful to spread our weight as we go in case it’s weakened. A few shingles have been lost, particularly at the edges, but the center seems sound so we sit there, close together to hold in some heat.
“This is cozy,” I say, then want to pull the words back into my mouth. Cozy?
“Sure, if you’re fond of chilly rooftops with a deader just below. Very cozy. You want me to try to get out a sleeping bag? We could wrap up in it,” he offers, his hand already going to his backpack strap.
I’ve long since admitted to myself that I have a major crush on Charlie, even though I know it is absolutely absurd given our situation. The idea of dying a virgin is bad, but the idea of dying because I get pregnant is even worse, so there’s no way I’d ever do anything. I’m equally sure that Charlie knows how I feel and is careful not to encourage me. Whether he feels the same as I do about the dangers of relationships or just isn’t interested, I have no idea. So, while the idea of cuddling up with him inside a sleeping bag—even if it’s just for warmth—sounds great in one way, it’s the last thing I want to do in another.
I settle for the pragmatic choice and say, “No. I don’t want to have to gather anything up if we have to move quickly.”
He seems relieved at that, so I swallow away my disappointment and ask him for a water bottle instead. He grabbed two of the smaller ones from our bikes and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. I didn’t bring any and since I was the first one up onto the roof, I didn’t have a chance to go back and correct my error.
We sip water and listen to the rustling of leaves and deaders on the ground around us. My stomach growls loudly and he hands me a handful of radishes he digs from another pocket. They’re warm and a bit slimy after being next to his body, but their sharp smell tells me they’re fresh.
“From the trays. I didn’t know if we’d get more food,” he says and plucks one from my still open palm. They’re crunchy, so we’re both careful to bite through the edges slowly to keep the noise down. I know they’re only going to give me a gut-bomb later, but for now, they’ll keep my mouth and my stomach busy.
After a while, the moon sets, but a lighter grey lifts the absolute darkness at the horizon, and I know dawn isn’t far off. We won’t wait until the sun rises entirely because all we need is enough light to see our way with a margin of safety. And even though the lifting light allows me to see the slowly shifting deaders on the ground below, I’m happy.
I want to get home. I want to get back to Emily.
Six Weeks Ago - Feeding the Bears
“This is so stupid! It’s like feeding angry, wild animals and not expecting them to come back for more,” Savannah says, her voice brimming with disgust. “Eventually, they take a bite out of your ass!”
Still, she hands me another bird from the pile in our bucket.
It’s limp in my hand, but still warm. I poke a hole in its chest and crouch down to wave it in front of one of the tied down in-betweeners. It draws his attention, which seems no less malevolent than it probably was when he was alive. His eyes are light brown, almost gold, and should be attractive, but everything about him screams danger and malice. And that’s not just in-betweener stuff there. He seems to be the most coherent of them as well. We don’t know how long each of them was dead except for the little guy, but regardless of time dead, this one seems the most likely to be able to communicate.
“Where is Gloria? Where is the woman you took?” I ask him, my voice loud and my words slow. His eyes shift for the briefest of moments toward me, but only for a moment, and then the smell of the bird overwhelms him again. His teeth clack together as he snarls for the bird.
“None of these guys is going to get any more coherent, Veronica. You just need to face facts. What happened with your friend—and I’m not sure I believe that story—was a fluke if it did happen. In-betweeners don’t talk. These asshats killed her as soon as they were done with her. We’re never going to find her. Asking dead people is just stupid,” Savannah says, holding out the bucket for me to drop the bird back into.
“Sam was exactly what I said he was. Emily remembers it, too. She did anyway.” I let the sentence trail off and look back at our row of bound in-betweeners so I don’t have to look at Savannah. If the others had their way, Emily would be caged for sure. They’ve even got another one of the desktops—big, heavy ones, the kind meant for the larger desks—waiting just outside the cage, right out in the open. Either
they think I’m really dim and won’t realize that there’s an extra desktop or they don’t care that I know there’s one waiting for Emily.
Just getting them to agree to bring back the in-betweeners as test subjects was hard to do. But, when we wound up not finding Gloria, any lingering doubt I had that they would actually go through with it faded. Just like Savannah, none of them are truly convinced of the existence of talking in-betweeners, but even the most remote chance at getting information was worth keeping them. Any chance at finding Gloria was worth it.
Of course, now they understand the rest of the reason as well. Emily—who so feared becoming an in-betweener that she always made sure she had a weapon powerful enough to blow her own head off if the worst happened—is close to death and volunteering to remain an in-betweener so that we can test her theories. And also, she’s volunteering for me, just in case there is a cure to be found at that hospital and I can get her back. She still believes that the world can be swept clean of infection and she’s betting her own afterlife on it.
Savannah steps up and touches my shoulder lightly. She’s standing up while I’m crouched, so the bucket of dead birds is almost level with my face. I can smell the scent of feathers and blood. It’s nauseating.
“Don’t think about it right now. Let’s just get this over with,” she says.
There’s no easy way to feed these guys. Putting the birds into their mouths is totally out of the question, so the next best thing is to unchain one hand and simply tie a leash to that hand so that it can be re-chained once feeding time is over. I never look forward to it. We do it one at a time and the rest of them go ballistic as soon as the first one eats.
“Right. Let’s get this started,” I say and stand, brushing the gray dust off my knees.
*****
“I say we kill them once and for all. This is horrible and I don’t see the point of it at all. That girl is dying and this is crazy stuff right here. There’s no purpose to it. We know they’ll last for a while and we know that they’ll go deader. And none of them can talk. That was a ridiculous idea in the first place. What’s the point?”
I can tell that Matt is speaking, his voice raised in anger, which is how I heard him. Whoever answers him does it more softly—too low for me to make out the words—but it’s a female voice so it has to be Savannah.
There’s a basin full of fresh water in my hands for washing Emily, so I put it down as silently as possible and tip-toe closer to the warehouse’s open door. Emily is waiting for me in the cage, where she has moved despite my protestations, but I need to hear what’s going on. There’s been an undercurrent of something I can’t precisely define coloring the atmosphere around here for the last few days. I thought it might be just that the in-betweeners are here, but it’s something else. And I’m thinking I might be able to figure out what that something is if I listen to this clandestine conversation.
Staying out of sight, I edge as close as I can and listen. If these people are about to become my enemies, I want to know about it before they decide to let me in on the information.
“What about Emily? That’s what we should be discussing. Once she’s gone, we can get rid of the other in-betweeners and we don’t need to discuss anything,” Gregory says in his studied, ever-reasonable voice.
“What the heck?” Savannah asks. She sounds shocked, like she can’t believe the turn the conversation just took. I agree.
Gregory says, “I’m not a fan of the idea either, but she’s going to die. There’s no getting around that. I say we end it. She’s in pain. It’s not like we’d be murdering her. We would just be ending it a little sooner.”
My gut clenches at his words and my immediate reaction is to run, to get to Emily, to arm myself to the teeth and barricade the doors. I dig my nails into my arm to keep myself in check.
Matt shifts into anger and I flinch back further from the door when I hear his boots hit the concrete floor in a fast beat.
“Yeah, you always take the reasonable course, don’t you? You wouldn’t flinch to put any of us down. You’ve got something else in your veins besides blood. You make me sick.”
That anger, that festering wound between them, is flaring to life and I can’t help but smile.
Good, I think. Keep busy fighting each other and leave us alone.
It doesn’t escape me that I’ve already divided us into two camps, with Emily and me firmly in the other. The kids, though. What about the kids? I have to admit that even I’m afraid to let the children near her now. When she asks for Jon, I find myself watching carefully, frightened that she’ll die while he’s near and come back before I notice it.
“Shut the hell up, you two. This is not at all helpful,” Savannah yells, her voice now joining Matt’s in anger. “This has nothing to do with whatever crap you two have been through or done in the past. This is a clear problem of right now. Veronica isn’t reasonable where Emily is concerned, so we need to be very clear and reasonable for her.”
“And the reasonable thing to do is to put her down, or if not, then at least make it so she can’t hurt anyone when she dies and turns. She’s in the cage, but she’s not chained and the door is open all day while Veronica goes in and out. It’s like she can’t bring herself to actually lock it or something,” Gregory says. He sounds like a freaking politician.
“Then that’s what we do,” says Matt. “We tell her that we want the cage locked and we want her at least chained by a leg or something. There’s nothing unreasonable in that. Nothing.”
They go silent for a moment, and it sounds like their conversation is close to ending. I need to clear out before they come out and see me. They aren’t my friends at this point and I’d like to keep the advantage of knowing it. I go as silently as I can, grab my basin and make for the cage. I’d like to get a couple of crossbows and a whole lot of bolts squirreled away in there before they come out.
Today - Never Say Never
I’ve got another flat tire and we’ve used the last of our spare inner tubes. We stopped at a couple of spots where we might have found some—a bike shop we’ve already searched twice and a hardware store of the old school sort—but at both places we came up empty. There’s not even anything left to repair the old one with, though mine is really past repair at this point.
We’re losing too much time, and our passage before stirred up this area, breaking the quiet balance it had before. We keep seeing deaders, the mobile kind, and my arms ache from bashing in heads. But now our time is very limited and my bike will need to be left behind.
We both heard the peculiar scream of an in-betweener a little while ago and it wasn’t too far from us. Distance is hard to gauge here now that we’re back in the city, not too far from the gas station where we sat on the trucks and wondered what would come of our trip, but the hoarse scream sounded nearby.
And worse, it sounded angry and in pain. And female.
Charlie’s face is red-cheeked from wind and sun, but so pale it’s almost green everywhere else. He must have had the same initial thought I did when that sound reached us. Gloria. With so few new in-betweeners being made, it’s a logical thought. Whoever that was, it was human not too long ago or else it wouldn’t still be capable of screaming. I don’t want to know for sure.
Some things we must leave behind, but only things we can replace. The rest, the important stuff, is in our packs or strapped to the bike. Charlie has to straddle the pedals and stand while I sit as far back on the seat as I’m able. This is a lot of effort, but we’re less than ten miles from home now and I’m so anxious to get there that I could almost run it. Or rather, I feel like I could, but I’m smart enough to know that I’d be huffing and puffing and walking after a mile.
The scream comes again almost as soon as we get going, this time closer. The sound bounces off the concrete and glass around us, making it seem as if it’s coming from both behind and in front of us simultaneously.
I hear Charlie muttering a repetitive mantra under his breat
h, “Please no, please no, please no.” His chest is heaving with the effort he’s making to get away from this area, but it’s uneven. I know he’s trying, and failing, to hold back his emotions.
I’ve got my hands hooked into his belt since I can’t reach the handlebars and I need to hang on with both to keep myself steady, but I squeeze enough so that he can feel the change in pressure. I say, “It’s not her. Even if it is, it’s not.”
He nods, but says nothing, keeping his eyes forward and pedaling for all he’s worth. A flash of something catches the corner of my eye. Bright color and motion is all it is and it’s gone by the time I can turn to see it.
“Hurry!” I urge him.
We get to the corner where a bank lies open to the world. At that point, I realize we’re not going to make it out of the area without seeing if it’s Gloria or not. The geometry favors whoever is running behind the bank and not us having to ride around it and avoid the glass.
“Go, go, go!” I scream out, not caring at all anymore if it hears me. I just want him to go. He was too close to Gloria for this to be a situation he can handle. It’s too late to avoid the thing knowing we’re here. The squealing sound is approaching from behind the bank, and I can hear even more clearly that it’s a woman, a woman in pain. An in-betweener in pain.
I’m almost tempted to try to catch her, bring her back and cage her, especially knowing what I know now about Princeton and the potential for a cure. But catching an in-betweener is hard, especially when it’s in a full rage. And we have no dog-catcher poles, no spare ropes and no plan.
We’re almost clear when she runs out from the parking lot by the bank. She’s still wearing the blue sweatshirt she left wearing, but nothing else that I can see. She’s screaming like only new in-betweeners and humans can scream. Her hands are out like claws and she’s running right toward us.
