Resurrection: A Zombie Novel (11 page)

“I don’t know. Not a lot. They have a pretty small crew during the winter. My buddy left at the end of the summer. Most people leave then. The ones who stay are hard-core. Everybody goes a little bit crazy. My buddy says they have a name for it. They call it going toast.”

Going toast
. Hughes liked that. Going crazy was going
toast
. He wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but he liked the sound of it.

Everyone left in the world was probably going a little bit toast.

Carol? Jumping at her own shadow and cleaning everything over and over? Toast.

Annie? Toasted, for sure. The biggest catastrophe in the history of the species had just laid waste to the planet, and the poor girl couldn’t remember a bit of it.

Parker? That guy was still in the toaster.

And Lane? Lane was
burnt
toast. Burnt and black and stinking up the whole kitchen.

Hughes was sure he’d go toast himself soon enough. Somehow he hadn’t already. Mostly because he didn’t feel anything anymore. Then again, he could be kidding himself. Maybe feeling nothing was his own way of going toast.

He couldn’t help but wonder if his family might still be alive if they lived in New York or Chicago or Houston instead of Seattle. Because the only places in the world hit harder than Seattle were Calcutta and Moscow.

That’s where it started. In Russia. Some dinky Arctic research town in Siberia was the first to get hit. A scientist up there was bitten by what everyone thought was a rabid fox. The guy
turned
and then bit his doctor. Since he was the only doctor around, they flew him to Moscow for treatment. The doctor bit a dozen passengers on the plane. He ripped a woman’s throat out with his teeth before a mob jumped him and bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher. After they emptied the plane, it was absolute mayhem at Moscow’s international airport.

No one had a clue what was happening, and it took the Russian authorities much longer than it should have to shut everything down. They might have managed to contain it had they understood, but they did not understand.

Most of the Russian infected stayed home, but someone in Moscow who got bitten but was otherwise initially fine flew to Paris. Another boarded a plane to Seattle. A third flew to Cape Town, and a fourth to Mumbai. And it spread like a motherfucker from there. Quarantines were impossible. Governments everywhere were two or even three steps behind.

Since the plague’s insertion point in America was Seattle, the East Coast had more warning. Things might be a little bit better over there. Local governments could be two or three steps ahead. By the time the virus spread through Oregon and reached California and Idaho, the U.S. government knew what was happening. Containment was no longer possible, but at least they knew what was coming. New York, Miami, and Boston might not have had a single case before they knew what was coming. Maybe the Army was out in the streets. Northeastern Canada could have cut itself off completely for all Hughes knew. The Caribbean islands almost certainly did. Puerto Rico and Cuba might still be intact.

But Seattle was the worst place to be. Hughes’ family stood no chance, not only because they lived at ground zero but because of his wife’s … situation.

Sheila had been depressed for years. She went weeks in a row without leaving the house or even getting out of bed except to use the bathroom. Hughes earned just enough from his job that she didn’t need to work, so when Tyler was born, they agreed she should spend at least a few years taking care of their son. But it wasn’t long after she became a stay-at-home mom that she sank into a personal hell from which she never emerged.

Hughes never did figure out why. It wasn’t because she stayed home. He hadn’t forced her. He wasn’t that type of guy, and it was her idea anyway. She seemed to love it at first. She took more pleasure in taking care of that boy than anything else. But something switched on or off in her head and sent her spiraling into a void.

Sheila’s morbid depression frightened their son Tyler. He was too young to understand it. Hell, Hughes didn’t understand it either. At least he was an adult and knew these things sometimes happened to people, but he had no idea how to explain it to a six-year-old. Tyler did his best, though, to handle it stoically. He didn’t cry, didn’t complain, didn’t needle his mother about it. He was going to be just like his father. At least he would have been had he survived.

Hughes guessed she had some kind of chemical imbalance that altered her personality, but she never had a brain scan, never saw a doctor who did anything more than prescribe pills. And one day she just pulled the sheets over her head and never got up again, at least not for long.

The one day in her life when Sheila should have stayed in bed was the first time in over a month that she went into the living room and opened the curtains to let in some light.

Five of those things burst through the window.

She knew what was happening out there. Hughes had told her, but she paid little attention. News of the plague didn’t seem real to her clouded mind, as if it were just some story on the radio. It had to be seen to be believed, and Sheila hadn’t seen anything. It didn’t fully register for Hughes either until he went to the hardware store for supplies and found the door ripped off its hinges, the shelves stripped down to leftovers, and one of those things hunched over the body of the store clerk.

Or maybe Sheila just didn’t care. Perhaps she surrendered. Surely it must be easier for a morbidly depressed person to face the fact that the world was circling the drain. Sheila’s world had already circled the drain. Maybe she was suicidal there at the end. Opening the curtains was just her way of taking a bottle of pills. Hughes had to admit that was possible.

But he never wanted to know for sure because he’d never forgive her. One of those things damn near took Tyler’s head off before Hughes put a bullet through its spine.

His poor boy. Tyler fell to the kitchen floor, convulsed like he was being electrocuted, and bled out in less than a minute. At least he didn’t suffer for long, and he died before he could turn. Hughes didn’t have to put his boy out of his misery, nor did he have to shoot his boy to defend himself. Hughes doubted he could have done it. Unlike Sheila, his survival instinct was still intact, but if he’d had to kill his own son, even in self-defense, it would have been the second-to-last thing he ever did.

Sheila wasn’t as lucky as Tyler. She, too, was bitten, but she was bitten in the back while running into the bedroom. Hughes popped the one that bit her and finished the other three off in the hallway, then he barricaded himself next to his wife in the bedroom and did everything he could to make her last hours comfortable. He waited until she slipped out of consciousness before suffocating her with a pillow.

He buried them out in the yard before he left town.

Hughes hadn’t grieved yet. He had not even started. That particular circuit in his head had switched off. A whole series of pathways in his brain just went dark. He noticed it happening. The emotional part of his personality went into sleep mode and stayed there.

Maybe something like that was what happened to Annie, only she lost her memory instead of her feelings.

Hughes knew his emotions hadn’t died, though. They were just resting. They would be back.

Lane will be one lucky bastard if he dies one way or another before it happens.

*   *   *

Annie’s first night since she woke in the forest didn’t go well. Lane had designated a place for everybody to sleep, and she and Carol were sent to the floor near the restrooms. He promised everyone that he’d ease up when they got to the island and could spread out, but Annie didn’t believe him.

She lay on the cold floor next to Carol. They covered themselves in warm jackets and used fleece sweatshirts for pillows.

It’s too bad, she thought, they couldn’t spend the night in a motel. There had to be one nearby. But of course it wouldn’t be safe.

She felt comforted by the fact that she could see. Lane had placed a candle in one of the checkout aisles, no doubt so he’d know if anyone tried to sneak around. She didn’t like his reasons, but she approved of the results. The stuttering shadows on the ceiling and walls reminded her of more peaceful times.

But she thought the light, faint as it was, might put them in danger since the boards didn’t reach all the way to the tops of the windows. If sunlight could get in during the day, candlelight could get out at night.

She was more afraid of the dark, though. She hadn’t yet seen the total darkness of night in a world with no power. She couldn’t remember seeing it anyway. She’d have to experience it for the first time all over again, and she wasn’t ready for that. Even the tiniest sounds would freak her out. She thought about taking the ring off her finger and letting her hand breathe, but she didn’t want to lose it on the floor so she just twisted it.

Carol was lying next to her. The poor thing was even more of a wreck, but her presence still gave Annie comfort.

“How you holding up, Carol?” Annie whispered.

“Okay, I think,” Carol said. “Thanks.” Carol did sound okay, especially under the circumstances. Maybe Annie’s presence was helping her too. “How are
you
holding up?”

“Okay. I’m a little bit numb.”

They were silent for a few moments. They both seemed to want to talk, but didn’t know what to say. Annie figured she should start with the basics. “How did you meet these guys?”

“Hughes found me on the road. He was on his way down to Portland. I was on my way up to Seattle. The roads were so jammed with cars that everyone had to walk. And then—”

Annie heard Carol swallow hard.

“It’s okay,” Annie said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“I probably should talk about it.” She sounded a little more sure of herself now. “I’m not usually like this.”

“What did you do before?”

“I owned a restaurant in the Pearl District in Portland.”

“Wow.”

“You know that part of town?”

“No, but it sounds fancy.”

“It is. It’s an old warehouse district that was gentrified by artists back in the ’90s, then upgraded again by people with money. It’s like SoHo in New York. Very prestigious, very expensive. Well, at least it was like SoHo in New York. Now I guess it must look like this place.”

Annie listened to her own breath. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears and the blood rushing into her head. She wondered if the Pearl District was as quiet as this place, or if it was loud because it was overrun with infected people.

“We were attacked,” Carol said.

“In Portland?” Annie said.

“No. On the road. Me and Hughes. Everyone, actually. There were thousands of us. We all had to get out of our cars and walk. I stayed on the right side of the road. Everyone did. Those going north walked on one side and everyone going south walked on the other side. Like we were driving, you know? You drive on the right side while oncoming traffic is on the left.”

“That’s when you were attacked?”

“We heard screams up ahead. The screams must have been a half-mile away at first, but they were loud. Incredibly loud and coming from the north. Everyone on my side of the street stopped. It was a pedestrian traffic jam. Then I started to get pushed the other direction. People who had been walking north were running south. People on the other side of the road were running now too. We weren’t going in two directions anymore. We were all running in a single direction. South. Away from the screams.” Carol paused, then continued. “It was those things. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. A whole army of them pouring out of Olympia.”

Annie could only imagine how terrifying that must have been. No wonder Carol was such a disaster.

An army of those things. Pouring out of Olympia.

Where her sister Jenny lived.

“I ran down the middle of the road,” Carol said, “where it was a little less crowded. There were cars, but less people. That’s when I saw Hughes. He was on the other side. I ran over to him because he looked like the kind of man who might protect me. You know? And he did. I might have thought he was scary if I saw him at night out by myself, but a big guy like him was exactly what I needed right then. So I ran up to him and grabbed his arm like it was a saving banister. He let me. As if what I’d just done was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We should get in one of these trucks and get down.’ So we did. We found an unlocked SUV with tinted windows and we got inside and locked the doors. He got on the floor in the back and I crouched down in the front.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Annie said. “Lucky about those tinted windows, I guess.”

“It was a good idea. It’s the only reason I’m still alive. But that’s when it got really bad.”

Carol stopped talking. Annie wasn’t sure if she had paused or if she didn’t want to continue. Annie wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to push it. If Carol owned a restaurant in a prestigious part of Portland, she must normally be a competent and capable person, but now she was shattered. Like everyone else.

“I couldn’t see anything,” Carol said. “I didn’t dare sit up to look out the windows. It didn’t matter that they were tinted. Tinted windows aren’t like one-way glass, you know. You can sort of see through them. I didn’t want anyone or anything to see any movement inside. But mostly
I
didn’t want to see anything outside. And it’s probably a good thing I didn’t because if I could have seen what I was hearing, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Carol stopped talking again and Annie said nothing. Carol would either tell her the rest or she wouldn’t.

The silence felt a little bit awkward. Annie wanted to press Carol for more, but she didn’t. Finally, Carol finished her story unprompted.

“The screaming kept getting louder. Those things were screaming and so were the people. First people were screaming in terror and then were screaming in pain. They were being eaten alive, Annie. It was happening right outside the truck. They were being slammed against the side of it. There was this constant
banging
. The side window above my head cracked. I thought those things knew we were in there and were trying to bust their way in.”