Among the Living (36 page)

Bob wanders over with gun in hand, and it is obvious he helped out. She tries to smile at him, but he just stares at her in horror. Then she leans over, plants her hands on her knees and vomits everything out of her stomach.

Bob looks away but rubs her back.

Standing up, she wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. Without warning, she leans over and throws up again. Big gasping breaths rattle into her chest as she tries to breathe through the burning puke.

“You okay?” she asks when she recovers.

“Yeah, I did that over there. Not very manly ...” He tries to keep it light, but his eyes are cold and haunted. His hands shook as he touched her a moment ago, and they shake still. In fact, his whole body is quivering as if in pain, but she can’t do anything for him now. The pretense that they will ever be more than friends is gone forever, cleared away on the edge of her twin blades.

“I don’t understand what you did out there, how you walked into that mess, that hell, and hacked people down. I had the honor of standing back and picking them off with my pistol,” and he shows her the gun. His hand shakes so badly he can barely hold it up.

“But you got up close and personal. I don’t know how you did that. It was so brave and so stupid at the same time.”

“I know,” she sighs and looks at the bodies, at the blood, the parts. People are streaming past now. Some run, others walk with kids in hand or at their sides. Women hold babies to their chests, strollers forgotten.

A man runs past, bloody from a head wound, but his eyes are bright and alive.

The soldiers try to keep track of who is whom, try to catch a glimpse of everyone’s face as they stream past like a river of flesh. The older guy with the bullhorn is calling out his litany from before. “Raise your hands, show us you aren’t one of them,” but he can’t keep up with the influx of people.

“What are you, Kate? I thought I knew you, as a friend, and I won’t lie to you, because I don’t give a damn anymore. I wanted us to be more than friends. I wanted to tell you so many times, but I was scared and I know you don’t like men.”

She tries not to laugh out loud at the last, because she certainly does not like men.

“Bob, look at me. I can’t ever be what you want. I’m the person you just saw.” She pauses to collect herself. She glances at the ground and then back into his eyes. “I’m the one who is a monster, not those poor people out there who are infected.”

He continues to study her and then nods once as if he has convinced himself of something. He wanders over and helps up a woman who has stumbled to the ground. A man walks toward him as if in a daze, and then a fresh ocean of people streams into the road.

Drivers have given up any pretense of getting through the mess, and many have abandoned their cars in the middle of the four-lane road. Most cast their eyes away from the bloody bodies, the puncture wounds, the separated body parts, the heads that look like dropped melons. Some hold their children close and try to shelter them from the sights and from the pain. There are still shamblers on the loose, and some of the men pick up weapons and go to work.

There are screams in the distance from the direction of the Seattle Center, then more from the center of town. It seems Seattle is under siege, and Kate doesn’t know what that means for her. She sets her eyes on the sun that rises over the Puget Sound and walks toward the water that stretches into the distance. She has no particular intention in mind except to lay eyes upon the sea. Her two friends strip off their camouflage shirts to reveal thick, white, sweat-stained t-shirts beneath, and under the baleful gaze of some of their colleagues, they follow her.

Erin grabs my arm and starts pulling. I don’t need much more encouragement, but it comes anyway, in the form of gunshots. The men and women who were sent out to protect the population instead begin slaughtering them.

The deaders drop like flies under withering gunfire, but like all gunfire, it is impersonal, and the moment the trigger is depressed and the gun bucks, there is nothing they can do to alter the course of the small hunk of lead. Some innocents wander into the line of fire or are mistaken for deaders. Some fall to the ground when the shooting starts, and others run in every direction like a flight of frightened crows.

Bullets punch into flesh, tear at muscle and appendages. I want to scream at the men to be careful, to watch what they are aiming at, and to look out for children even though some of those are attacking.

The deaders reach the front line just as more vehicles arrive, smashing through stopped cars and trucks, careening off taxis and buses. One is a Humvee with a machine gun mounted on top. As soon as it stops, there is a great pounding that shakes the ground as it fires into the crowd. I look away as the big gun rips off chunks of people, leaving bloody holes behind. I don’t know how many are hurt or dead. Many lie in heaps, some crawl toward loved ones, and some pull cloth over gaping wounds, screaming in pain and horror.

The men on the front line take the assault by shooting point blank at the attackers. Some strike out with knives and the butts of their guns when they have to. One of the men goes down with two deaders on him, and I am nearly tugged all the way around the corner when I see her wade into the fight and save him.

She is slight but moves with confidence as she unwraps a pair of swords. She swings them around her body in a pattern that does not look too complicated, yet she does it with so much grace that it is beautiful to behold.

“Mike, we need to go!” Erin tugs at me so hard that I nearly stumble over a curb. I can’t take my eyes off the female warrior. She is as beautiful as the blades she wields.

The first deader is on her, and she swings the longer sword around so fast that it is a blur. The guy falls away with his neck half off his shoulders. There is an enormous spurt of blood that sprays the concrete around them, but she seems to be able to predict the path and step out of the way.

She moves forward to swing at a larger man and slashes twice, once with each sword. She glides around him, and I see her true face for the first time. She has delicate features, a small head with a little button of a nose perched below vaguely Asian eyes that arch naturally. Her eyes seem lit from deep within. Her lips are parted, and I think she is smiling.

“MIKE!” Erin breaks my reverie.

We stumble away from the madness and head down Broad Street for a block as others run or walk before us. There are people poking their heads out of businesses and restaurants as the gunshots become louder and closer together. There is screaming behind us, something with which I have become far too familiar in the last few minutes.

Erin starts to run away from her condo, and I stop her by pulling her into an alcove in front of a store that has chairs and office equipment in it. She looks at me, eyes scrunched up.

“Where are we going?”

“That way.” She points down Fourth Avenue at the departing backs of folks on the run. “We can’t go to my place. It will be overrun in a matter of minutes. I say we head for the center of town and hope there is a better law enforcement presence. I can’t believe what we just saw. That was insanity, Mike. How could they shoot those people down in cold blood?”

We start walking again. This time I don’t protest. I go along because I can’t think of a better thing to do. I realize that my mind is not working at one hundred percent; I think I may be in shock.

My mind continues to play tricks with me as I see the bodies fall, the guns firing into the crowd, inhale the smell of spent rounds, hear the sound of shells striking the ground—tinkling in numbers I don’t want to think about. Then I lean over and puke again. Erin pats my back, and I appreciate it even though I don’t want her to see me as weak. I stand up and wipe my mouth with my shirtsleeve and immediately wish I hadn’t done it, since my change of clothes is miles away.

I walk beside her again and catch a glimpse of her from the corner of my eyes. She is crying quietly. Tears run down both cheeks, and when she sees me looking, she wipes them away with stabbing motions as if to clear the things she has seen.

“I can’t handle it, all those people. All those poor people crying out for help, and what kind of a goddamn virus makes people act like that? It’s like they are on PCP or something. They actually wanted to eat each other!”

“Don’t forget that the virus seems to be spread with a bite. Did you see how fast those Asian tourists fell and then got back up and started attacking others?”

“No, I was too busy watching a class of kids—couldn’t be more than ten or eleven, trying to stay together as a group but getting peeled off one at a time as they yelled for help. And the only help were those assholes with guns shooting anything that moved.”

I can understand how upset she is, but I know the National Guard was doing their best under terrible circumstance. As I think of the people falling, we step up our pace, and soon we are a few more blocks into Seattle. I can see the line of proud skyscrapers rising like gods into the sky.

There are clusters of people all around us. Some are on the other side of the street, and some move down side streets. Not that we have any destination in mind, but I can’t help but wonder where everyone else is going. One of the Guardsmen mentioned the waterfront, but I don’t want to be blocked in on one side. Then I remember the ferries, and suddenly that sounds like the best place for us.

“I know what we should do! Let’s get to the ferries, and we can be on Vashon or Bainbridge in an hour.” I have only been to Vashon Island once, and it was a long time ago. Still, either destination will be a dream compared to here.

“You’re a genius!” she exclaims and plants a kiss on my cheek instead of my lips. I’m sure she is thinking of the fact that I threw up just a few minutes ago. Still, I will settle for it. Hell, yesterday I would have fainted dead away if I thought Erin would be kissing me anywhere.

“I have my moments.”

I spot a Chase bank and take Erin’s hand in mine. I pull her with me to the cash machine on the side and dig out my card. I punch in my pin, and it gets rejected. Then I realize I am shaking so hard I mistyped the code. So I try again and it goes through. I quickly take out my daily limit of three hundred dollars.

Erin has the same idea and extracts a load of cash. I don’t pay attention to how much, nor do I glance at her balance. We have been together for one day, and I’m sure the last thing she wants is me creeping around her finances. We walk away from the bank quickly and down a street that was built on a hill. We end up almost running by the time we get to the bottom, from fear or adrenaline, probably both.

We make haste for the waterfront, but there are screams behind us. The thing is spreading, and I hope it doesn’t overtake us.

Two blocks later, we are running along Alaska Way past the piers. The smell of the sea clears my head, makes me feel like I am back in Seattle, no longer in a nightmare. There are boats on the water, but most of them have come to a halt. People are specks in the distance, but they are following events with binoculars. What must they be thinking? Can they make out any of the carnage we just witnessed?

We move briskly. I know from last night that she is in great shape. I have also seen her eat a ton of junk food at work. She loves to eat at Taco Time on a regular basis, and sometimes I have seen her wolfing down a Big Mac. How she does it is beyond me. Sure she has mentioned yoga, but my guess is that she runs or does calisthenics at a gym.

By comparison, I am in okay shape. I do work out but not as much as I should. Still, I eat well and manage to stay off the junk food. My waistline is a bit larger than it should be. I keep up with her even though I’m a little bit winded, so we make good time passing Ivar’s Seafood and the great big pedestrian bridge that crosses over Alaska Way so people can get to Pike Place market.

The other people on the sidewalks have expectant faces. They glance around as guns fire in the distance and helicopters fly overhead. As if to punctuate the fact that something weird is happening, a gray Navy cruiser moves along the coast as if hunting prey. Men stand on deck holding large binoculars as they stare at different points around the city.

We approach the pier for the ferry and take the stairs to the Vashon side, mainly because it is the closest one. We enter, and there is already a line. We aren’t the only ones thinking about getting away from the city in this manner.

“Made it.” Erin’s voice is distant, distracted. She keeps looking behind her as if she expects one of those things to enter at any time.

“I bet they have it under control up there,” I say and almost believe it.

“You think so?”

“Sure, they probably brought in more men, trucks, guns,” and as soon as I utter the last word, I am sorry for it. “I mean they have to contain the thing somehow, whatever it is.”

“What is it, Mike? What causes people to go rabid and bite each other like that? It’s like one of those movies about walking dead things.”

She is standing close to me and speaking in a low volume as if the rest of the people here aren’t aware of what is going on. We are all crowded into a large waiting room, and I spot a soda machine across at the back. Suddenly I am parched, and all I can think about is something ice cold.