“He lives!” Karen jested, placing a hand on Kurt’s leg.
Kurt felt his forehead damp with sweat. He tried to focus on Karen, at first seeing just her blurred outline. She slowly came into focus as his breathing calmed. “Where are we?”
She had a soft smile on her face. Though Kurt noted that it didn’t seem genuine. More like the smile someone gives when they’re hiding something that they’d rather not speak about. The kind of smile that Amy had given Kurt the day she had tried to be strong and tell him the news of their parents.
“Safe… That’s the main thing, Kurt.”
Kurt saw then that they were in a neat room. The type of room that Linda might have once called a ‘catalogue room’. It was a fair size. On the walls were hung a series of gentle paintings of blurred colours and shapes. There was a nightstand lined with an assortment of trinkets, and a large furry rug in the centre of the floor.
Something moved, making a clink of china on metal. Kurt turned and noticed, for the first time, another woman sat next to Karen. She was pouring tea from an ornate teapot. The steam rising reminding Kurt of the smoke that simmered off Lazarus. She looked at Kurt, and he immediately knew who this woman was. The replica of Karen, maybe a few years older and with her hair draped over her shoulders.
“Glad to see you’re awake,” Beth Cooper said. “I’d near thought you were dead when they carried you through my door.” Kurt noted how even her voice had that same easy tone as her sister’s. She offered Kurt a steaming cup, he took it. He noted the biscuits piled on a little plate and his stomach rumbled. “Welcome to Durham.”
Kurt frowned.
“You must have been exhausted,” Karen said, reading his confusion. “You fell asleep in seconds – so did your father. But we struggled to wake you.”
“You arrived yesterday evening,” Beth said, eagerly taking over from her sister. “When Miss Hutcheons carried you through the house, you were limp as a fish. I figured you were dead, or close to it at least. Maybe that strange mist we’d heard on the news had finally gotten to you? The only thing that saved that thought was your snoring. I figured dead people don’t snore.” She stopped for a moment to laugh at the thought.
All day and night? Kurt had been asleep for a day and a half? How was that even possible? Even after late nights when Kurt had stayed awake until 2am reading he had never slept that much. Kurt thought hard to remember his visit to the Deadspace. The place Karen and Beth wouldn’t understand. It had seemed like only a couple minutes in there. But then, hadn’t Kurt once been taught that deep, vivid dreams that felt like a lifetime could occur in just a few moments of sleep? Could the Deadspace work in reverse? A moment in the dark land actually becoming minutes, or even hours in the real world.
He just didn’t know. All he could think of was Amy’s voice behind the blurred porthole of the door.
Karen reached over and rubbed the back of his shoulders. “It’s going to be okay, Kurt. You’ll see. We’re all tired and sick but it’s okay. We’re going to get better. We’re going to survive this craziness. You, me, James…” Karen’s words caught in her throat. Kurt’s mind threw him back to the rowboat, the ferals dead on the shore, Steve’s head shaking as Kurt asked where James was. Unable to comprehend that another person could be dead.
Kurt shook away the memory. He drank down the tea in one, paying no attention to the temperature as it burned at his throat, yet removed the dry taste that had lingered since he had awoken. “Where is Officer Hutcheons? And Steve? Where are they?”
“Your dad—”
“He’s not my dad.”
“Steve is somewhere downstairs with David,” Beth said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And Officer Hutcheons shot out at first light this morning.”
“She’s gone?” Kurt asked, remembering how she had saved his life. Thinking that maybe it would all be hunky-dory if they had someone with the heart of a lion on their side. He hadn’t been sure of her at first, but she sure had proven her worth at the docks.
“Well, not gone. She went out to the Scotland Police Department. Said she’d try to see the extent of the damage over this side of the water. Maybe wrangle a group of survivors together to help work on whatever the hell is going on.” Karen checked her watch. “She should be back soon, actually.”
“Why didn’t she just radio them or whatever policemen do?”
“She tried. But…”
“But there was no answer,” Beth finished.
The two fell quiet. Karen looked at her knees. There were bruises covering her legs, and a couple of scrapes from the splintered edges of the wooden jetty. A moment later, Beth said something about breakfast and disappeared down the stairs.
Kurt sunk his head back into his pillow and stared at the ceiling. When would the madness end? How could the world turn upside-down in a matter of seconds? He wasn’t sure why but as they had ridden to the ferry in James’ car, he was almost certain that the spread would have stopped at the river crossing. That somehow the mist wouldn’t have been able to reach its tendrils this far south-west. Durham was around three hours by car from the crossing. Would the chemical have made it this far too? Were Kurt and the others trapped in this house? An island in a sea of infected? More than that, if the mist had come this far, how had Beth and David kept themselves safe?
Karen whimpered. Kurt sat up, grunting from his aches, and placed a hand on her knee. He realised that if he was hurting… if his life had been turned upside down, then Karen’s would have been rinsed like a towel. The only man she had ever loved, dead. Brutally destroyed by mankind turned rabid.
“I’m sorry,” Kurt muttered pathetically.
Karen looked up at the boy, wiped her eyes. “It’s not your fault. There was nothing anyone could have done.”
“What happened?” It was a bold question. “How did you escape?”
She took a deep breath, fanned back more tears. “It was all thanks to Steve.”
Karen proceeded to tell Kurt of the battle on the jetty. How, by the time she had shimmied up onto the deck, James was still fighting. Too many ferals were near him for him to get a good shot with his pistol, so he had resorted to clubbing them with the handle. His clothes were torn and his flesh was bloody but still he fought on. Karen had tried to take aim and fire but had been too afraid that she might accidentally catch James. Steven had appeared, taken the gun, and shot several slugs into James’ attackers.
But it was not enough, and Karen watched in horror, oblivious to the desperate roars of Steven keeping the ferals at bay, as James was ripped into nothing more than weaves of meat and bone. She had wanted to run to him then, wanted to throw herself over him like he was a grenade that only she could stop exploding. But Steven had pulled her away, his words falling on mute ears. That was when they had seen the man running for the boat on the other side of the shore. Steven had dragged Karen first, until an exceptionally nimble feral had dived at her leg, grabbed her ankle, and threatened to sink its teeth in. Steven shot the feral outright, picked her back up, and the flight instinct had kicked in.
“Without your dad, I wouldn’t be here now. I wouldn’t have been able to see my family.” She bit her lip, tears threatening to fall again. “And where would we be without family?”
“He’s not my dad,” Kurt said sternly.
Karen seemed to whimper for a moment, then realised who she was talking to. The foster kid. “I’m so sorry… I never meant—”
“Forget it,” he batted it away.
“I remember Linda telling me once that you have a sister. Is she…?”
“Alive?” Kurt said bluntly. When Karen looked abashed he adjusted himself and his words were kinder. “Yeah. She moved to Ohio not long before I came to Virginia.”
“That must have been tough?” Karen moved to the edge of the bed.
“It was. We’d somehow managed to keep together since Mum and Dad died, and we thought we’d manage to forever. But I guess sometimes that’s not always pos
sible. We still keep in touch, though.” Kept in touch… “We promised we’d speak every other day once she moved. It’s pretty easy now with laptops and whatnot.”
“And how long has it been since you last heard from her” Karen asked. It seemed an innocent question on the surface, but Kurt could tell that she was digging. That there was a hint in her voice that thought that maybe, if the world was falling to pieces, that Amy had somehow been caught up in it too. Of course, had Kurt not heard her cries so recently in the Deadspace, he might have thought the same himself.
“She text me the evening before you found me,” he lied. “Before I…”
“Forgot your phone?”
Kurt nodded.
“I’d love to meet her some day. If she’s anything like you I bet she’s a lovely young lady. Who knows? Maybe once all the dust has settled, and you’ve made yourself at home here, we can go find her and see if she wants to join us?” She picked up a picture frame that showed a young Karen and James on their wedding day, the image in monochrome. It seemed Beth had all sorts of pictures of family scattered about her house. “James and I always did think of ourselves having a family some day…”
But that was enough for Karen. She stood, clasped a hand to her mouth and left the room. Kurt heard her moments later close the bathroom door.
He sat for a moment thinking things over. The idea of seeing Amy again stirred butterflies. But a passing comment from a woman he’d met only a couple days prior telling him to set up shop and call this place home felt raw. There wasn’t a chance on Earth he was staying here. He had to get to Amy. He had to save her.
Not only that, but the story of the jetty didn’t sit right with him. It grated against him like salt on an open wound. That Steve had turned out to be the big hero on the jetty, saving Karen’s life, should have made him happy. It should have filled him with a kind of relief that his foster father could be relied upon to be there when needed. Could be the big kahuna and be there for them all.
But where was he when Kurt had really needed help?
The man was a write-off in Kurt’s mind. Wrap him up and return to sender. He ain’t fit to be a father.
Not that Kurt needed one anyway.
All that he had taken away from the last few days was just how unreliable adults could really be. That maybe they weren’t the big rocks in people’s lives as they say they are. They cry and moan and forget and hurt. Damn, they’re worse than the kids, almost as bad as the ferals.
Where would we be without family? Kurt sniffed.
As Kurt got himself dressed his thoughts went once more to Amy. Her voice. Her smile. Wondering just how much happier he would be if it was just the two of them in this new world, alone.
And how the hell he was ever going to find her.
25
For a kitchen filled with six people, there was surprisingly little conversation after Kurt came downstairs and placed himself at the table. Beth was the only one bringing any noise as she darted between chairs, stocking up plates, refilling juices, washing up as she went. The image of a perfect suburban housewife. But as Kurt looked around at the faces of the unfamiliar folks he had somehow been lumbered with, he could tell that each person was having their own internal conversations, eyes glazed, deep in thought. He was surprised to see Sabrina was back, considering he hadn’t heard her arrive.
David Cooper, Karen’s brother-in-law and Beth’s husband, was the only person that looked as though he had had a decent night of sleep. Trapped in his own little bubble, he held his newspaper wide, eyes flicking through the columns. Occasionally he’d pause to scoop a mouthful of cereal, or to crunch on a triangle of toast, but otherwise, he acted as though he was alone at the table. Not another soul around. Just another day in paradise, ‘Fetch me my coffee, Wilma, SportsCenter is on in five and I’ve got bucks down on the Patriots covering the spread.’ Kurt liked this, he supposed. The idea that David could be the one person untouched by the madness and that life somehow found a way to go on.
When they’d finished eating, they thanked their host and moved to the living room. A spacious room, ornately decorated with patterns and glass ornaments that wouldn’t look out of place in a palace. The Coopers must’ve been doing alright financially, though he couldn’t fathom what their livings would have been. They each took a seat on a plush sofa or armchair, and Kurt found a spot cosied on the floor next to a fluffy white Maltese dog that licked his face excitedly.
They sat in silence while Beth finished up in the kitchen, each exchanging sideways glances. Despite the early morning, David helped himself to something strong and brown from a crystal bottle and poured it into a tumbler.
Beth came through with coffees on that same silver tray from Kurt’s room, and placed it in the centre, then took her seat next to David.
“Well. Now that we’re all present and awake,” she winked at Kurt, “shall we hash all this out?”
Sabrina leaned forward, grabbed her coffee, leaned her elbows on her knees. Across from him, Steve sat cross-legged, looking a little worse for wear. His hair was scruffy, and he looked like he’d hardly slept.
“First things first,” Karen said. “Sabrina…? Any news from the station?”
Sabrina nodded, “It depends if you mean that little news counts for actual news.” Bruised bags lumped up beneath her eyes and her skin was pale with a fine film of sweat. “I’ve tried patching through to my boys over in Jamestown, and for a while all I got was static. The station is set a short way from the ferry, and I’m guessing the ferals had to have come past the building to get to the water, so I’m not holding much hope. There was a point when I thought I heard voices on the other end, but that didn’t last long at all. Now I can’t even get that. It’s just silence. Same pretty much goes for everything east and north of here. Though, of course, I don’t have every possible frequency to contact. And the same pretty much goes for the Durham PD too.”
“There was no one at the DPD?” David asked, as casually as a ‘Doing anything nice this weekend?’
Kurt leaned forward, suddenly interested.
“When…” Sabrina stopped, looked at Kurt. “Should we really be discussing all this around a kid?”
“Kurt’s been through just as much, if not more than the rest of us,” Steve said suddenly, a little overly emotional. “He deserves to be included.”
Sabrina nodded, continued: “Okay, fine. Well, the station was empty. A couple zombies outside that were easy enough to pick off. But inside? No damage, no mess. Just… empty. I checked the control room, the Chief’s office, all of it and it came up empty.”
“So what you’re saying is that we’re fucked?” Steve said. “No police? No authority, nothing?”
“Look, what do you want me to say?”
Beth tutted at the cursing. David smiled as if he were settling in for the morning’s entertainment.
“I don’t know,” Steve continued, throwing his arms in the air. “I’m not a hotshot cop, don’t you guys have some sort of emergency beacon signal?”
Sabrina shook her head. “No, Mr Car Salesman… we don’t have emergency beacon signals. This isn’t Thunderbirds. I can’t just press a button and assemble the troops. If they’re not at the station it’s going to be one of three reasons. One: they decided to run and kneel next to their beds with their families until the apocalypse is over. Two: they’re already off somewhere doing their best to serve and protect. Or three: they’re already dead. Eaten and converted into zombies like, what seems to be, most of the fricking state.
“Plus…” Sabrina went on, “I could hardly stay for long there and check every nook and cranny. By the time I got to the Chief’s office I could hear more outside and ran to my car. There were already close to fifty zombies surrounding me. So I got the hell out of there.”
“They’re not zombies,” Kurt chipped in. “Zombies are slow and dead. These aren’t that… these people, they’re…” he thought of the man who had rescued him, the words he had said, “they’re
feral.”
“Are you saying these things heard you?” David asked, stroking his chin, his gaze piercing.
“Not entirely. It could’ve been the flashing red light on the PD roof. It could’ve been the gunshots from the ones I took out on the way in. I think it’s safe to say that might have drawn them.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “You shot… again? Didn’t you learn anything from the ferry—”
“So you’re saying that we have no way of telling if we’re safe, or how far the toxin has spread?” Karen interrupted, earning an unfriendly look from Steve.
The little Maltese hopped onto Kurt’s lap. He found his hand idly combing through the thick locks of white.
“That’s about the flavour of it,” Steve said, running a hand through his greasy hair. For a brief second, Kurt felt a pang of pity for his step-father. “Even the radios are telling us nothing special at all.”
“What are they saying?” Beth asked.
Steven took a deep breath in as though the question pained him to answer. Luckily, David cut in front. “There’s not a lot to it really. Local radios – the ones that are brave enough to keep functioning – are pretty preoccupied with the bigger picture, when they work at all. Focusing on describing the ferals, listing the dead, etc. A couple times we heard ferals attack live over the airwaves. Can’t be much security in the small town radio biz.
“The larger stations are also either down, or just use sweeping generalised updates. Things like: ‘We have yet to assess the extent of the damage’, or ‘It’ll take some time until we get a clearer picture’. And don’t even bother trying the internet. There’s been a state-wide ban on internet services due to some smart-alecks posting morbid pictures and videos of people turning. But the good news is that the entire west coast seems unaffected. Central US seems fine too. It sounds like the spread may even have stopped at our sisters’ doorsteps in South Carolina and Kentucky. Could be that Virginia and North Carolina are the lucky ones to have been on the receiving end of it all.” He took a long sip of his drink. Kurt had never been good at reading sarcasm and wondered if David really thought that that was good news.
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