by B. T. Wright
Once past the wall, he came to a door. He knew the window would give him a view of the direction he’d just run from. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to see, but he was ready to know. In the back of his mind a hopeful thought lingered that maybe these things couldn’t see that far in front of them, and that they had lost him when he ran from the fence. But his experience back in his neighborhood when Tom blew the SUVs, and they’d all gone running for it squashed that optimistic thought.
Jake eased open the door. Being quiet at every turn had already become second nature. It was even brighter in the room because of the concentrated lights of the night coming in the window. It was a children’s room. He could tell by the decorations. The small bed filled with stuffed animals. Not more than a day ago, a child had played happily in this room, no idea the nightmare that was coming. Jake looked to his right and saw maybe the creepiest thing he’d seen all day. A curio cabinet full of spooky dolls. Every eye, it seemed, was focused directly on his own. Why anyone would want a bunch of dolls looking at them while they slept was another of life’s incredible mysteries.
The irony of the dolls creeping him out in the situation he was currently maneuvering through was comical, even in such an intense moment. However, the closer he came to the windows, and to being able to watch what the infected were up to, the humor of the situation quickly faded. The first thing he saw out the window was the top of the hotel in the distance. He couldn’t see the rest of it because of the trees, but the parking lot he was hiding in was just to the right of it. With every step he took toward the window, more of the street below came into view, and it was immediately apparent that he had made a massive mistake.
He had underestimated them.
They had doubled back for the rest.
There was a sea of infected just below him. They’d come by the dozen. All the hairs on his body stood on end. His heart raced and his stomach dropped. These things no longer needed light or sound to draw them to a location––they were clearly communicating with each other. Instinct made Jake’s hands holster his pistol and pull a fresh AR-15 magazine from his pocket. He locked the magazine in place and loaded a round into the rifle’s chamber. But he didn’t have the weaponry to survive a battle with this many infected.
Jake was now standing at the window, looking out over the mass of infected. They weren’t hostile. It was as if they were a platoon of soldiers, patiently awaiting their orders. Not moving at all. Dead still. Until they weren’t.
In one motion, the infected mass below him collectively moved their heads upward until every single one of them was staring through the window at Jake. There was something beyond fear that sparked inside him. Beyond any reality his brain was meant to comprehend. For a moment, he was lost. He couldn’t move. It was as if they were sucking him in somehow, and all he could do was stare back at them.
The front door is open.
Finally, a rational thought squeezed through the distress.
All of these things are out there waiting for you, Jake, and the front door is open. What are you doing? MOVE!
Jake shook his head and snapped back to the cold reality. His body caught up with his mind. He turned from the window and rushed out the bedroom. He sprinted across the balcony and practically flew down the stairs, sliding into the door and slamming it shut. He turned the deadbolt––not that it would do any good––then took a deep breath to settle his nerves. Once again, the only advantage he had over them was to outthink them. He’d underestimated them once––he wasn’t going to do it again.
His first thought was the garage. If there was a car in there, with the keys in it, he could make a break for it. In hindsight, it was what he should have done the moment he walked through the door for the first time. But he hadn’t, and now he was going to have to make something happen. Even if there was a car, or even better some sort of SUV or truck, he couldn’t just back out, because there were too many of them standing at the front of the house to run over them and keep going. Backing over them he’d probably be okay, but once he tried to go forward again, he’d be stuck. Especially if it were only a passenger car.
Before he could take the time to check the garage, he needed a plan to get them to move. He knew he was going to have to do the exact thing he didn’t want to do. He was going to have to make them come in the house. But how?
Fire.
Would they still be attracted to it? It was very possible the answer was no. Did he have a choice? Also no. Jake sprinted under the balcony, into the living room, then made a left into the kitchen. The stove was gas, a lucky break. He turned all six available burners all the way to high. Fire rose from the stovetop and he began digging through the drawers. That’s when he heard the first thump against the door.
They were coming.
The first drawer was silverware. The second was full of measuring cups and stainless kitchen tools. The third held what he needed––towels. He grabbed them with both hands and threw them on the fire. He noticed drapes hanging above the window that overlooked the backyard and he yanked them off the rack and tossed them atop the now heavily flaming stove. When he did that, he also noticed for the first time that something was in the window. Two black eyes staring at him, the fire flickering inside them.
That’s when he noticed the window was open.
And that’s when he heard the front door burst inward.
Jake reached the knob and set the oven to bake.
The infected in the window began to reach through. Jake raised his gun, but before he could squeeze the trigger, the monster hissed something at him.
“Amy.”
34
When Emily, Elaine, and Elaine’s assistant Jennifer walked into the room, Karen––the infected woman–– was just sitting quietly and staring off into space as if watching a movie in her mind’s eye. Elaine and Jennifer had to suit up before walking in. Against their protests, Emily did not.
Elaine said, “Jennifer, can you get me her vitals from the time she spoke to you?”
“I have it on my tablet. Let me pull up the video to get the right timestamp.”
“What are you looking for?” Emily said.
“I just want to see if there is any bump in heart rate, or anything we can measure when she spoke. See if there is emotion there, or if it’s just some sort of synapse incident.”
“You mean you want to know if the name ‘Amy’ has an emotional meaning to her.”
“Basically,” Elaine said. She then walked over in front of Karen. “Amy.”
There was no movement.
“Karen,” Elaine tried again. “Does the name Amy mean something to you?”
Nothing.
“Amy. Amy. Amy,” Elaine repeated.
Emily didn’t know anything about behavioral science. However, she imagined that if you wanted an emotional response, you had to try to speak with emotion.
“Elaine,” Emily said. “Do you mind if I talk to her? Maybe someone she hasn’t spoken with before will help?”
“By all means. I’m willing to try anything.”
Emily walked over to a chair and pulled it over in front of Karen. The closer Emily drew to Karen, the more pronounced her veins seemed. Like blue streets on a road map. The blackness of her eyes up close was chilling. Nowhere in any of Emily’s medical background had she ever heard of anything that could turn eyes completely black. Florescent lights in the white room were gleaming off of them, and Emily could see her reflection dead in their center.
“Hi, Karen.” Emily felt awkward. She had no idea how to do this, but she was the type that always liked to dive right in. She had always been the first to volunteer on dissecting days, and always the first to jump off the steep cliff at Lake Chickamauga where she’d grown up just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. So, she dove. “My name is Emily, and I would love to get to know you. Can you tell me what happened to you?”
No response from Karen, and no laughing from Elaine and Jennifer. One out of two wasn’t bad.
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry this has happened to you,” Emily continued. “Where are you from?”
“This isn’t going to work,” Jennifer spoke up.
Elaine shut Jennifer down, “Just give her a minute. And give me those vitals.”
Emily settled in with the approval from Elaine.
“No jump in vitals,” said Jennifer. “No waver in any of them since we hooked her up.”
Emily turned to Jennifer. “So she does have a heartbeat? She isn’t dead?”
“She isn’t a zombie, if that’s what you mean,” Elaine answered. “At least not in the George A. Romero sense.”
Emily nodded. She didn’t know whether that was good or bad. She supposed it could be great news that the infected stayed alive, if they did happen to find a cure one day.
“Karen, do you know a woman named Amy?”
Karen didn’t even blink. Hadn’t since Emily sat down.
“Is she your sister? Your daughter?”
Emily looked over to Elaine. Elaine nodded for her to keep trying.
“Why is Amy important to you?”
This wasn’t working. Emily got up and walked away from Karen. She couldn’t stare into those soulless eyes for another second.
“Maybe it was just a fluke that she said it. Are we sure it wasn’t just a noise that sounded like Amy?”
Jennifer said, “It was Amy. Plain as day. I can play it back for you.”
Emily was about to tell her it wasn’t necessary, but she was interrupted by a frantic knocking at the door. All three of the women in the room jumped. There was a man in the same air-tight suit as Elaine and Jennifer pounding on the glass air-lock door. Elaine rushed over and let him in.
“Jesus, Dan, you scared us to death. What the—”
“John Doe spoke. Can you believe it? He spoke!”
Dan’s face was red inside his helmet. He was clearly worked up.
“So did Karen,” Elaine said. “What did he say.”
Dan whipped his head over to Karen. He was wild eyed. He apparently had never seen such excitement in his line of work before. “She spoke?”
“She did,” Elaine said. “Now what did John Doe say, Dan?”
“I––I have no idea what it means, but he just said the name Amy. That’s it, nothing else, just Amy. Plain as day.”
The three women shared a bewildered look. What just moments ago seemed like something of a fluke didn’t seam anything of the sort now. The word Amy definitely meant something. But more disturbing was that they both had said it.
“When did he say it?” Emily said.
“What are you thinking, Emily?” Elaine said.
“What did Karen say?” Dan said.
“The same thing. Amy,” Emily said. “When did your John Doe say it?”
“Wait, Karen not only spoke, but she said the same thing as John? You’re joking.”
“We’re not,” Elaine said. “Now answer Emily’s question.”
“When did he say it? I, well, just a few minutes ago, I guess. We wanted to play the video back to make sure before we came and told you.”
“No, Dan,” Emily said. “I mean, when exactly, to the tenth of a second, did John Doe say the word Amy?”
Dan looked over at another man that was standing just inside the door. “Craig?”
Craig pulled out a tablet and moved his covered finger around. For a few seconds, no one said a word. They were all lost in their own spinning thoughts.
Elaine broke the silence. “Jennifer, pull up the exact time when Karen spoke.” Then she turned to Emily. “What are you thinking, Emily?”
“Well, it’s not a coincidence either way, right? There’s no chance two different infected would say the same exact name out of coincidence. That alone means we are dealing with much more than a virus, if we didn’t already know it.”
“Okay, I agree. But what does the time matter?”
“It may not.” Emily was quiet for a moment as she tried to gather her thoughts. “But it might give us a clue as to how big this thing actually is. A clue into its significance.”
“I’m not following.” Elaine walked over closer to Emily. “Don’t be shy now.”
Emily nodded. “If they said it at the exact same moment––and I do mean exact––we could be dealing with something much larger than what we know.”
“We’ve established that already,” Dan said. “Nothing in our medical history as humans shows anything like this.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Emily said. “I don’t know exactly what I mean. It’s just that . . . If the times are somehow exact, it would mean that there is the possibility of a hive mentality happening. One consciousness. A singular viewpoint somehow, interconnecting all of the infected.”
“That’s crazy.” Jennifer had to stop herself from laughing out loud.
The look on Elaine’s face was like a laser beam of anger when she turned her eyes to Jennifer. “There is an apocalypse on the surface level, yet you think what Emily just said is crazy?”
Jennifer didn’t respond.
“Emily, what do you think that would mean?”
Emily tried to reel it in a little. They didn’t even know if it had happened at the same time.
“Like I said, I don’t know. But no point in speculating until we know the—”
“2:32.24 am,” Jennifer interrupted.
Everyone looked over to Craig. Craig did something with his index finger on the tablet, and then went white as a ghost. He looked up, his eyes wide, and everyone waited for what they already knew was coming.
“2:32.24 am.”
35
The drone of muffled voices swam in Jess’s head. At least she thought it was muffled voices. It could have been talk radio, but why would her mom be listening to that in the middle of the night? Jess felt the fold of the sheets beneath her. But they didn’t feel like her sheets. She always slept with a fan on for white noise, and she definitely didn’t hear that. She rolled her head around the pillow to stretch her neck as she felt for her stuffed animals. But there were none.
Jess shot straight up and for a moment was entirely lost when she opened her eyes. This wasn’t her bedroom at the house she’d grown up in, but then again, why would it be? She hadn’t lived in her childhood home in more than ten years, and hadn’t slept with stuffed animals in almost twenty. A second later, the nightmare of the situation came back to her. She was in the back of the RV. The voices must be Jake and Tyler.
But Jake wasn’t there.
She gave her face a good rub with both hands, trying to recall exactly how she got there. And where was Amy? Then the memory of the man with the gun outside the RV flashed in front of her, and she remembered feeling faint before he shot her. Did he shoot her? She did a quick assessment of her body. No holes that she could find.
“Wait,” she whispered to herself. “How did I get in here? Are Tyler and Amy okay?”
She saw her shotgun propped against the wall beside the door. She threw the sheets off of her and jumped out of bed. Wobbled once, then regained her balance. Wobbled again, shook her head, and grabbed the shotgun. She opened the door and pulled her shotgun up to a shoot-ready position as she stepped into the hall. Tyler, Amy, the big man with the big gun, and two other strangers whirled their heads around.
“Whoah, Jess! Put the gun down!” Tyler held up his hands and moved toward her.
“What the hell are they doing in here?”
“It’s okay, Jess.”
“It’s not okay!” She pointed to the big man. “He tried to kill us!”
Tyler put his hand on the barrel of the shotgun and pushed it downward. “No he didn’t. I was watching through the window. You started to wobble on your feet, and he rushed in and caught you before you hit the pavement.”
Jess obviously didn’t remember that, as she was already unconscious, but it didn’t align with how the men had forced them to stop, or his demeanor as he’d approached her and the RV.
The big man stood up, t
ook a step forward, and extended his hand. “Bryan. Sorry if I scared you before.”
Jess took a step back. His skin was tanned, and it made his blue eyes look like there were lights on behind them. Amy ran beside him and threw her arms around Jess.
“I’m so glad you’re okay!”
Jess gave a small smile to Amy and patted her on the back.
“It’s okay, Jess. Really,” Tyler said.
Jess looked Bryan in the eye. “Why did you force us to stop?”
“Well . . .” His voice was deep. “We didn’t know exactly where to go after the whole pandemic happened. We figured if a car was driving down the road, they probably hadn’t caught the virus, and maybe they knew somewhere to go. Sorry about the way we stopped you, but it was the only way.”
It made sense to Jess. Not everyone had a contact like Jake did, directing them to a possible safe haven. She softened a bit, but didn’t take his hand. “Who is we, exactly.”
“Like I said, I’m Bryan. The skinny one is Jason, and the ugly one beside him is Mark.”
They both said hello.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” Mark said.
Jess was still trying to let everything sink in. Amy went back to happily eating her meal while the adults worked it all out.
Bryan continued. “We all pretty much just met. But they are good guys. Apparently, Beritrix ended up being a life saver. At least for us. And Tyler was telling me your man Jake kept you from getting it with Beritrix too. Crazy, right?”
“You have no idea what we’ve been through.” Jess was still on edge.
Bryan shifted his weight and took a step back. “No offense, ma’am, but I assure you we do. My wife tried to eat me a few hours ago, and both these guys lost their families. So excuse me if I disagree completely.”
Now Jess felt terrible. Of course these guys knew what she’d been through. They’d been battling this thing the same as her and her friends.
“I––I’m sorry. I’m just playing catch up here. I didn’t mean—”
