In the Lone and Level Sands (7 page)

11

On the Bus

It was the last bus of the day. Zoe sat near
the back, her headphones pumping Manchester Orchestra into her
ears, her arms rested on her messenger bag. The sky was darkening,
and Zoe closed her eyes to block out the stinging blur of the
passing streetlights. The bus stopped, let a few people on, and
then progressed along its route.

Zoe was barely able to hear the screeching
tires over her music. She opened her eyes to see a blur of lights,
and then felt the impact. Zoe lost all sense of direction as the
bus flipped onto its side. It rolled over the sidewalk, flipping
and turning the people inside like rocks in a polisher. Zoe saw a
splash of red across several windows as the bus rolled over someone
on the outside. It continued down a small grassy hill beyond the
sidewalk. The windows shattered and bits of glass were hurled
everywhere, along with the people. Someone slammed into Zoe, and
she hit her head on something or someone. Her headphones coiled
around her neck, still plugged into the MP3 player in her
pocket.

Finally, the bus came to a stop. The last of
the glass tinkled to the ground, and the screeching of tires and
screams in the distance faded, along with Zoe’s remaining vision as
she blacked out.

****

When Zoe woke up, daylight was seeping into
the bus, which was on its side. There were bodies everywhere,
strewn about like dolls, all of the visible ones lifeless.

Zoe was lying on the side of the bus, where
a window had been but now was an uncomfortable metal frame with the
hard ground filling the gaps where there was no glass. A body had
come to rest on top of her legs, and she had trouble moving
them.

Her head hurt, and there was a welt around
her neck from where the cord to her headphones had rested all
night. Her messenger bag was under her, still wrapped around her
shoulder. Glass was everywhere, and Zoe had a few scratches and
scrapes on her hands and arms. She felt a stinging pain in her neck
and assumed it was also from the glass.

She wondered why it was day outside, why no
one had reported the crash or come to help. She began to slide her
legs out from beneath the body when she heard something.

“Uuuuhh.”

Zoe was about to call out to the stranger to
ask if he needed help when she looked again at the body she was
struggling to crawl out from under. Its throat was torn out, and
blood was caked everywhere. It looked as though the person had been
partially eaten.

Had an animal wandered into the overturned
bus? Whatever the case, she didn’t want to alert whatever was
making those shuffling and groaning sounds. She began to slowly
pull her legs out from beneath the body.

“Grrrr… Ah!” Zoe winced at the loud and
abrupt end of the grumble. She paused for a moment, felt a bead of
sweat run down her face, and realized she had been sweating for a
while; it was hot in the bus, especially beneath a pile of bodies,
cold as they had grown.

The shuffling grew closer. Whatever was
making it sounded only a few rows away, making its way along the
side of the bus, possibly checking each row for something living,
something moving. But what was most disturbing was that it sounded
very much like a human.

Zoe finally wiggled one leg free, and
couldn’t help but grimace as she carefully set it down on the face
of the body pinning her down. She felt apologetic, like she should
say something to the poor soul, though logic told her it would mean
nothing, now.

“Braaah!” the voice said, now closer than
ever. Zoe thought it might be only inches away, and then she saw
the shadow. It was definitely human, and it was definitely close.
She stopped moving, her trapped leg raised slightly (as she was now
afraid to lower it), her muscles stretching uncomfortably. She
closed her eyes and held her breath.

She played dead.

She felt the thing find her, then. It was
crawling, and placed a hand right on her side. She tried not to
flinch, tried not to wince. The thing grunted, and Zoe had an image
of it turning to look at her face, to figure out if it had seen
movement. She fought the urge to take a peek and see exactly what
this thing was and what it was doing.

The thing crawled on, pressing hard into
Zoe’s stomach as it crawled over her, sniffing and grunting as it
went. Finally, Zoe opened one eye and saw the thing’s legs as it
moved farther down the aisle. She waited a few minutes that felt
like they’d never pass, and then opened her eyes. The grumbling
went a bit farther down, and Zoe continued struggling her way out
from under the body, trying not to make any sudden movements,
hoping the thing wouldn’t turn back and see her. She pushed away
the thought of what would happen when she finally did get out from
under the body. The thing was, after all, still on the bus, and it
wasn’t going anywhere.

Carefully, slowly, Zoe got her leg free and
sat up. She took a deep breath and just barely peeked around the
edge of the seat and into the aisle. The thing appeared to be a
man, indeed crawling on its hands and knees, sniffing at the bodies
as it passed. It was a few feet away, and it grunted and groaned as
it went.

Zoe looked around. The bus was totaled, and
no one else on it appeared to be alive. She suddenly felt silly for
fearing the man so much; he was probably in shock from the crash,
in need of assistance.

“Excuse me?” she said.

The man snarled as he turned. He looked
straight at her with something oddly unfamiliar about his eyes,
very human but not right, somehow. And there were entrails hanging
from his mouth.

He reached for her, and she dove backward.
He reached again and grabbed her leg. Zoe kicked the man (if it
could be called such) in the face, and his head snapped backward,
but he made little sound, and didn’t loosen his grip at all. Zoe
kicked again, and her leg was freed.

She looked around. The bus’s main door was
on the ground and would be of no use to her. The emergency hatch on
what was once the roof of the bus had been twisted, crumpled
inward, its hinge rendered worthless. She looked at the back of the
bus, and the emergency exit was hidden from view by a pile of
bodies.

Zoe looked up and saw a window with a bright
red handle, another emergency exit. She reached for it, and the
thing reached for her.

Her hand grasped the latch
and she pulled, setting off the bus’s alarm. The horrible ringing
only added to her splitting migraine. The window gave way and fell
into the bus (landing on the man’s head, which was closer than Zoe
had taken the time to notice) and a wide-open hole was left in its
place. Zoe stood up, her muscles aching, sweat pouring from her
face. She dove for the hole, making it halfway out as the man
wrapped his arms around her waist. Zoe struggled, but his grip was
tight. He opened his mouth, and it looked as though he wanted
to
bite
her.

She didn’t wait to see if she was correct.
Zoe jerked upward, slamming the man’s head against the wall of the
bus. He was dazed, but went for another bite. Zoe did it again, and
then again. Finally the crazed man let go.

Zoe kicked and shoved with her legs, both at
the man below her and at the bodies strewn everywhere, finally
hoisting herself through the emergency exit and onto the outside of
the bus. She pulled herself completely out of the hole, slid
forward and over the edge of the bus, and landed hard with her
hands outstretched, then rolled a little because of the uneven
ground. Not looking to see if the man was following, she crawled
forward a few yards, up the grassy hill, toward the street. She
finally made it to her feet, stumbled a bit, and then rushed up the
hill and collapsed in the road, where she vomited.

Zoe gathered herself and looked back at the
bus. The man had made no attempt to follow her, and she imagined
that he went back to wandering back and forth along its side.

She turned then and saw something her eyes
had seen earlier but her brain had refused to comprehend, finally
discovered why no one had come to their aid: The cityscape was a
wreck. There were cars crashed and in flames, clothes and paper and
various belongings strewn in the streets and sidewalks, broken
glass everywhere. Farther down the block the remains of a plane
were scattered along the street, like the pilot had aimed for an
emergency landing on the road, taken out many cars and people in
the process, and left only the streaks and smears of blood trailing
behind to tell the tale.

There were a few people around, but for the
most part they wandered aimlessly, reminding Zoe of the man on the
bus. Some were eating the remains of other people. Zoe would’ve
vomited if she hadn’t already.

Zoe had spent her life waking up from
nightmares, alone. This day had finally brought a minor change: She
had woken up into one.

But still alone.

12

In Blackwater Falls

After dinner, Sara stood up and gathered the
dishes. Ben offered to help, but Sara refused because he was a
guest, and an injured one at that. When Sara finished up, she and
Fred showed Ben and Charlotte to the guest room.

“You both can stay in here,” Sara said.
“Make yourselves at home.”

“There are extra blankets in that closet,”
Fred said. He motioned toward the closed door beside a large
dresser. “And the bathroom is just down the hall.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. As Fred and
Sara left, she walked over to the corner. A picture of a man in his
mid-thirties rested on the dresser. “Must be their son, I
guess.”

“Yeah, probably,” Ben said.

It began to rain, and soon it picked up. The
wind followed suit, and soon a decent storm was beating against the
house.

After they had prepared their bed, Ben and
Charlotte joined Fred and Sara in the living room. Fred took a puff
from his pipe and said, “Hey, how about we turn on the ol’ tube for
a little while?” Angus lay in his bed, and raised his ears as the
sound of the evening news faded in with the picture.

“And the breaking story tonight: We have
Claire Wilson reporting from a local Augusta home. A shooting has
shaken this residential neighborhood. We go to Claire.”

Claire stood in the wind and rain in front
of a slightly rundown house. Her hair was matted down under the
hood of her parka, which she had to hold in one hand to keep from
flying back. Her other hand clutched her microphone so tightly that
her knuckles looked white.

“There have been several gunshots fired.
It’s a war zone here, Brian! I’ve only been here about twenty
minutes, and there have been at least five gunshots in that
time!”

“Uheahhh,” a coworker a few feet behind
Claire said. She turned to him.

“Thomas, cut it out, we’re live.” She turned
back around and continued her report, but a moment later, a scream
interrupted her. Claire whipped around to see Thomas ripping into
another man’s flesh.

“Oh my God!” Claire said. She jumped as
another shot was fired, this one much closer. Thomas collapsed, and
the camera bobbed as Claire and her cameraman rushed in close.
Thomas’s victim was already dead, the rain pushing his blood into
the gutter.

“Get away from it!” someone screamed from
the house. Claire turned and saw a man in the window, rifle in
hand. The cameraman panned over a squad of police officers rushing
to aim at him.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“They ain’t part of the human race no more!
Once you’re bit, you ain’t either, lady! So for God’s sake, get
away from it!”

“You need to get your team out of range,”
one of the officers said, and another began moving Claire and the
cameraman away.

Claire swallowed a huge lump in her throat
and turned to face the camera. The microphone trembled in her hand,
and the cameraman appeared to be shaking as well.

“Well, it seems, Brian, that things are a
bit more complicated than we thought. More information will be
given when it becomes available. Back to you, Brian!”

The image of Claire turned to that of Brian
Hockman and his co-anchor, Brenda Feldtman.

“Well… It seems that something strange is
going on down there.” Brian exchanged worried glances with Brenda.
“When we come back, hopefully we can explain what just
happened.”

Fred muted the TV as it went to a
commercial. It was Sara who broke the silence. “What did he mean by
‘not part of the human race’?”

“Beats me,” Fred said. “I can’t believe what
I just saw. That man, eating another person!”

“Yeah, that was pretty fucked up,” Ben
said.

A window shattered in the guest room. All
four turned to look, and Angus jumped up and ran toward the noise,
barking as he went.

“I’ll go see what that was,” Fred said. He
reached up, grabbed his shotgun from above the TV, and headed to
the guest room.

“Be careful, Fred!” Sara said. “I don’t want
you getting hurt!”

“Don’t worry! I’ll be okay.”

When Fred got to the open door of the guest
room, he saw Angus barking ferociously at a dark figure. Angus was
backing up, little by little, away from the man.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my
house?” Fred’s voice was stern, but he couldn’t hide the fear just
under the surface.

“Uhhh,” the intruder said. He took a step
forward and nearly lost his balance. Fred flipped the light on, and
gasped. It was Dr. Barnum, dripping wet from the rain, and he was
covered in blood that led up to his mouth. It was caked around his
lips and cheeks.

“Dr. Barnum?” Fred lowered his gun. “What
are you doing here?”

Dr. Barnum didn’t answer, but slowly
lumbered toward Angus. Angus backed away, but continued barking and
growling. Barnum drew closer, and when he had Angus cornered, Dr.
Barnum lunged forward and grabbed his front paw. Blood and saliva
dripped from his mouth as he pulled the growling dog’s paw toward
it.