36 Hours (19 page)

36 Hours

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Hannah and Amanda. Amanda is Ashlie’s best friend. All the pictures were sunny, laughing. In one my father laughed with a bunch of her friends. In another my mother was fixing lunch as I emptied the dish-washer. Les’ voice cracked as he talked. “Where are the rest of them?”

“Rest of who?”

Pause. “You know?”

I closed my eyes. “She’s all. Dad is in the garage. Mom is downstairs.”

“How are they?”

“Dad was sick. I killed him.”

He was curious, but didn’t want to press. The tension, so thick.

“Mom killed herself. Dad had bit her. I saved Ashlie before he got to her.”

Les lowered his head, then raised it. “What happened to Bryon?”

“There were a lot of them in the woods. I’m lucky to be here.” I faced him.

“And thanks, too.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Thanks for coming here. For being here for me.” I pointed to Ash. “And for her.”

“There’s no place I’d rather be.”

I nodded, and leaned over Ashlie, shutting her window and locking it tight. Through the branches of the maple tree I could see columns of parched smoke rising from the stretching suburbs and Main Street. The door across the street was thrown off the hinges, and one of the windows was broken. I drew the blinds tight, wanting to close it off. Anything to forget, to play like it wasn’t real. I could do it nowhere better than here, in my own home. Ash stirred, rolled over, opened her eyes. She looked at me, half asleep.

“Austin? What time is it?”

Les didn’t move.

I knelt down next to her. “How you feeling? Your sick bucket is empty.”

“I feel like puking. What’s that on your shirt?”

I shook my head.
Dad’s blood, Ash! I killed him! I hacked him to death!

“We’re painting the living room.”

“Les?” She leaned up in bed, looking at him. Les looked at her with deeppitied eyes. She said, “What are you doing here?”

He managed a fake smile. His voice crackled. “Helping.”

“I didn’t know we were painting.”

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“Dad…” I choked up, closed my eyes, pushed it down. “Dad’s been wanting to do it for a long time.”

“Where are Mom and Dad?”

I pulled the covers back over her. “Go back to sleep.”

She nodded and rolled over. I ran a hand through her hair. She muttered,

“Scratch it.” This time, I didn’t protest, but scratched her head. She grunted and fell asleep. I stepped back, to Les: “Let’s go. Let’s let her sleep.”

We left the room and shut the door. I went into my parent’s bedroom, into the closet. Rummaging between my dad’s work shirts and mom’s blouses, and opening boxes filled with photo albums and alumni awards from college and wedding gown and tuxedo. It was shoved against the corner of the closet. A red cross covered the vinyl sides; opening it, I told Les, “Mom used to be a nurse. She worked in downtown Arlington.” I opened it up and searched for some gauze. A white bundle was rolled up; I took it in my hands and left the closet. Les ducked in and grabbed some antiseptic. His hands slightly shook, but I didn’t say anything. We went back into the hallway, down the steps. A mirror on the wall reflected my face, and until then I hadn’t noticed how haggard I looked. Bags formed under my eyes. My hair – had it grayed? – was thrown this way and that, a storm in the sea. Red-brown splotches of dried blood covered my t-shirt. I saw this, and tiredness swept over.

“Give me the gauze,” Hannah said. She took it and said, “Ams, open up the wound.” I stood by the pantry and watched as Amanda removed her hand. Les side-stepped in front of me, blocking my view. Amanda grimaced as Les dumped some antiseptic into the wound. Amanda said something low under her breath; Les shook his head, said, “It’s okay…” That I heard, but everything else was in harsh whispers and stale growls. I touched Les on the shoulder: “Move.”

He numbly stepped aside as Hannah drenched the wound in gauze, swinging it over and over Ams’ arm. Red stains already dribbled on the gauze; the cloths were soaking in blood, and a pool of blood trickled on the island counter-top. Ams’ arm was streaked with blood, as were Hannah’s hands. It looked like a scene from a Vietnam-war movie.

“How much blood has she lost?” I asked.

Hannah responded, “She’s fine. A lot, but not bad. See, there’s still color in her face. She’s not paling. Do you feel faint?”

Amanda shook her head
No
.

“See?”

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“I’m convinced,” I said, turning around. “You’re the nurse expert. Does she need sugar?”

“Food would be nice.”

We hadn’t eaten since the cold chicken in the grocery store. Now as I opened the pantry door it stood out like a gold mine. Hannah and Les crowded beside me. We hadn’t realized how
hungry
we were. Seeing the Hoe-hoes and Twinkies, the strawberry pop-tarts and chocolate mini-brownies. My eyes fell to my stomach, still a little round, but not a blimp as it
had
been. What was the point of dieting now? I grabbed a Twinkie, nutty-bar, and two packs of strawberry pop-tarts. Ams just sat on the counter. Hannah rummaged through the fridge, but everything was lukewarm. She opened up a container of ice cream, smirked, and threw it in the trashcan.

I opened the silver pack of pop-tarts, said to Amanda, “Not hungry?”

She shook her head. “The chicken made me sick. Too cold.”

I shrugged. “Fine by me.”

I didn’t notice till later how both Les and Hannah had frozen when I asked Ams if she was hungry. Lots of things didn’t come to me later, outstanding anyway. Like how Les had blocked my view of Amanda’s wound, and how Hannah worked so hard to convince me she was okay. None of this registered. I just walked through the dining room and into the living room, sitting on the couch, facing the fireplace. Charcoal logs draped the inside. We’d had a fire a few nights ago, something special. Ashlie wanted to cook hot dogs, but it was raining, so Dad had dragged in fire logs and lit the place up. Hannah stayed with Ams in the kitchen. Les came out to me and sat down with a sandwich.

“Isn’t the cheese and turkey warm?”

“They’re warm when I pack my lunch.”

“Packed,” I reminded.
It won’t ever happen again.
We didn’t talk forever. Then Les asked, “When did you get here?”

“A few minutes before you.”

“What took so long?”

As I ate the pop-tarts and the nutty-bars, I told him of the chase to the police station, the horrors we there observed, and I told him of the holocaust at North Park, and the vicious chase up St. James, where Chelsie’s dad was consumed –

half due to me, sadly – and I made a frantic escape to my own house, crawling through the doggy door to safety – and I didn’t forget the nightmare I Anthony Barnhart

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encountered downstairs and the beast salivating over my sister. Could all that have happened? It was all so surreal, so unbelievable. I woke up this morning at six o’clock, a suicidal Mom shaking me from the last peaceful sleep I’d ever taste. “Les… what would I have seen, had I stayed?”

He looked at me while he talked, though sometimes his eyes would drift over my shoulders and into the kitchen behind me. I know now what he was looking at. “Maybe twenty minutes after you left, there was a diabetic. He started going into coma or shock or whatever it is diabetics do. He needed some sugar – the levels were low. No one had any food, so we decided he could venture down into the store if he really wanted to. He couldn’t – he was very weak and could hardly stand. So a construction worker volunteered. We let him out and he went down through the meat lockers, out into the store. We locked the door and watched from the windows. By then the people down there – the sick ones – had left the store, going through the broken bay windows. He grabbed some food and was making his way back when one of them came from the baler room. He tried to fight him off, but he got bit really bad in the neck. Blood was spraying all over the shelves, the wine bottles, the dairy products. He finally grabbed a wine bottle and smashed it against the infected’s head. But the sick didn’t go down. He – well,
it
– came at him again; the construction worker took a piece of the shattered glass and drove it into the infected’s eyes. He ran back to the door; they were about to open it, but we told them not to. He’d been bitten, we said. That was a… a life sentence, in most cases. And this was really bad. He was bleeding all over the place. We told him to go into the meat department and get bandages, but he was being all irrational. It was the sickness. His personality was changing, his emotions swinging. He started hammering on the door. We thought he was going to get in. Then it all stopped. Silence.”

Ams and Hannah were listening; Hannah was trying to feed Ams a banana, but Amanda wasn’t buying.

Les stared into space, reliving the moment in his mind, replaying it like a game announcer: “We all just stared at each other. Then out of nowhere was a large sound, a big whack and thud. He was hitting the door! One of your coworkers was standing by the door, asking if he was okay. No response. Just hitting the door. He had turned. No question about it. We started crawling out from the roof. The door splintered; I was one of the last people out, and got my legs onto the roof just before the door came down. Someone else tried to escape, but the infected bit into his leg. He screamed and let go and fell down on top of Anthony Barnhart

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the poor guy in the wheelchair. He tried to fight off the infected, but the infected tore chunks of flesh out of him. And the whole time – the
whole time
– the fellow in the wheelchair just watched, almost disinterested. Then the infected went off on him, and he just let it come. Resigned to his fate, I guess.”

“Made his peace with God,” Hannah said from the living room.

“Something like that,” Les remarked. “And the guy with diabetes, he was screaming. Couldn’t move a muscle. Real y bad diabetic. We heard his screams as we ran across the rooftop, then the screams were cut short. The infected got him. Wel , the screams drew infected from the rest of Clearcreek Plaza, across State Route 73, and from Main Street. We thought we could handle it on the roof, but they were able to climb on top a truck and onto the roof. One of the women with us vaulted off the roof and onto the pavement, running for her life into the buildings of Main Street. I don’t know how she’s doing. Probably not too good. We jumped down from the rooftop as the infected were closing in. We got inside the Jeep and started the engine. There were five or six of us, packed all tight, and I got us out of there, onto state route 73. We hit a few infected; you’ve got bloody spots on the fender.”

“Makes me happy,” I said.

“The infected can’t keep up with the Jeep. It’s too fast – by the time they hear it, we’re gone. So we made it okay to Clear creek-Franklin, but that road was hemmed off by police barricades. Maybe it was one of the first sources of infection here in Clearcreek? So we went left to Tractor Supply, past Papa John’s, where we used to get pizza all the time with the toppings that would slide right off, then into the parking lot of Wal-Mart, China Garden, Kroger. Two of the three other people with us wanted out there. They said Wal-Mart was a safe bet – had food and guns and blankets, everything you could want for survival. I stopped and told them to hurry the heck up. They got out and slammed the door. Hannah was riding shotgun and she shrieked. I looked out her window and there was this girl, maybe six or seven. Her jaw was all bloodied up with skin ripped off and shredded muscle dangling from a mouth and swollen tongue. Her placid eyes stared at us and she pressed blood-stained tiny palms against the door. We’re talking Pret y Princess gone to Hell. We hit the gas as hard as we could and I think we rolled over her foot. But she just watched us leave; the other two people got into Wal-Mart and locked the doors before she could follow them in.”

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“Wal-Mart,” I mused. “Sounds pretty safe, now that I think about. Guns are nice.” I didn’t tell them about the pistol. Had they seen it? I don’t think so. I didn’t want them getting their caution-friendly hands all over it. It was
mine
. One bullet left.

“No,” Hannah said quietly. “All the supermarkets and places are probably flooded by the infected. If you want to be safe, go somewhere small. Like a house. Like
here
.”

Les: “All of lower Clearcreek was a madhouse. There were infected on the streets, walking around, rambling with no purpose. Accidents all over the place with broken windows and twisted wrecks. I don’t think we saw a single living soul. There were bloody spots on the ground where people fell – then got back up again. We went up that one road with Tom Katz and Grasser Tire and Holiday Inn. Most of the apartments were smoking rubble, probably from a fire earlier. We drove through the country – there aren’t many of them out there.”

He paused, chewing on his words, then, “I was thinking, if we could get out there… We saw some homes, and they were locked up and barricades… the infected tend to stay in the urban areas, and maybe if we can get to the country, into the woods or something, maybe then we can get away from all this…”

“North Park woods were-“

“North Park woods is a tree line,” Les energetically proclaimed. “I’m talking farmland. I’m talking out where the infected won’t wander, where there isn’t any food.”

“Don’t you mean shortage on people?”

Les shrugged. “It’s grotesque. But you know it’s worth a shot.”

“How do you expect to get there?” Flicked the nutty-bar wrapper to the floor.

“Drive?”

“We have the Jeep.”

“I was running a dash above empty on the way to school.” So long ago. An eternity. Hours were eternities. “And unless you have the genius idea of stopping at a gas station to take a spare few minutes to refuel while being attacked on every side, sure, good plan.”

“Do you have any gasoline in the garage?”

“Yeah. For the mower. Let’s ride that into the countryside.”