Coyote (12 page)

They all stood gaping. Even the dog was transfixed by the carnage in front of them. Then, in one section toward the middle of the gym, the bodies started to gently heave, as if they were a sea of flesh. The dog began barking and growling, as the others started to back slowly toward the door. Something was moving beneath the pile. Something was rising up from among the bodies. Casting her eyes across the pile, she could now see movement in several places, a slow, surging kind of movement. Many things were rising from the pile.

“Go!” she shouted, breaking the others from the morbid spell that had held them in place. They all turned, running out the doors to the gymnasium. The dog was the last out, backing out as it barked at whatever was beneath those bodies. Then it came tearing past the rest of the group as they ran down the hallway.

Having no real plan or direction, they followed the dog. It skidded around a corner and headed for the main doors, which had swung closed behind the group when they entered. It leapt at the doors, pawing and pushing at them, and soon coming in contact with the bar that worked the latch. As the door moved, the dog shouldered it the rest of the way open and disappeared into the night, the rest of the group straggling after it.

They ran across the parking lot and down the street, passing six or seven houses before they slowed, stopping to bend at the waist, pant, and look behind them. Nothing pursued them. They looked at each other, each silently asking the other what that it was that had been moving amongst the pile of corpses back there.

Predictably, it was Bait who spoke first.

“Zombies!” he almost yelled.

“What?!” said the Mule and the Professor almost in unison.

“Fucking zombies! I knew it! Every other weird thing is out there in the world, and now it’s fucking zombies coming to get us!” He seemed seriously rattled.

“I don’t think so,” said the Professor. “Did you actually see anything?”

“I saw zombies, I tell you! The fucking bodies, moving around crawling up out of there… Shit!”

“I don’t know
what
was in there,” said the Mule. “All I saw was that
something
was moving around in that pile, and then I got out of there. Never saw anything come out.”

“Me too,” said Leanne.

“I don’t think any of us really saw what was in there,” said the Professor. He looked down the street from where they had come. “Personally, I think I’m fine with that.”

“I tell you, man, it’s zombies!” responded Bait. “I know it.”

No one came up with a good explanation of how hundreds of bodies ended up in that place, or what may have been in there with them. Finding out would have meant going back, and none of them had the stomach for that. It was just as well—there was no chance that anything burrowing in a pile of bodies was going to be good news.

A lot of things were like that in the early days—strange things, bad things, with no good explanation. All that could be done was to witness and to move on.

---

As the adrenaline produced during their flight from the gymnasium-cum-abattoir drained from their bodies, they each began to feel how tired they were. It was time to bed down for the night. They were tired, and it felt somehow just
wrong
being out in the streets on this deserted night. It was the same spooky wrongness they had felt in the motorcycle shop—even at night, the streets of a town should have the occasional car or pedestrian, the occasional parking dog. Here, there was nothing. The whole world was haunted by this emptiness.

No longer interested in what might be around them, they picked a house to bed down in by the simple expediency of heading for the first house they saw that had the front door open and swinging in the breeze, but no broken windows. (It was surprising how many houses along this street had broken windows. Another mystery.)

It was a two-story house, and they filed up the porch and trooped in. She did have the good sense to send the dog in first, but it sensed nothing amiss. When they were all in, the Professor closed the door behind them, wedging it shut with a stuffed chair, and the others headed into the living room. They settled into whatever chairs and couches they found with a collection of sighs and groans.

Looking around, she guessed it must have been the house of somebody’s grandmother. There were knick-knacks lining all the shelves, pictures of several generations of children all along the walls, and, to top off the image, lace doilies on the end tables and on the arms of the couches they sat in.

After a few minutes of welcome rest, she became restless. She felt too exposed, sitting in the living room, looking out the bay windows onto the dark street outside. She pushed herself up out of the chair she had fallen into and looked around. After entering the front door, they had turned right, attracted by the chairs and couches of the living room. To the left of the front door was a set of stairs leading to the second floor. She went up the stairs.

What she found was just as unremarkable as the rest of the house. The stairway came out toward the back of the house, facing the doors of two bedrooms. They looked rather un-used—probably guest rooms, maintained in the hope that the grandchildren would visit someday. A hallway ran toward the front of the house. On one side was a railing looking down into the stairwell. On the other side was a door to a bathroom, followed by a door into what turned out to be a rather large master bedroom, taking up the front corner of the house. In this bedroom was a large bed, a sitting chair and chest of drawers, and, against the far wall, a fireplace. Everything was pristine and undisturbed. No clothes on the floor and the bed neatly made. She wondered where the grandmother had gone to—what had happened to her. Was grandma back in the gym at the high school? But she cut that thought off. She would never know, and it didn’t matter anyway.

Curious, she wandered over to the fireplace. It was a gas fireplace, and she saw that there was a pilot light still burning. Somehow, the city’s supply of natural gas was still flowing, evidently not needing any maintenance or intervention from humans in the last few months. She wondered how all the people working for the gas company would feel about this evidence that their jobs may have been truly unnecessary.

Squatting in front of the fireplace, she turned an iron knob and the fire sprang up in a cheerful imitation of burning logs, providing a flickering illumination to the room and, soon, adding warmth to what she now realized was turning out to be a chilly night.

Standing, she took herself back downstairs. The others were still in the same positions she had left them in, except for Leanne, who she could not see. The noise of a cupboard closing at the back of the house made her assume that Leanne was in the kitchen, probably scavenging some food.

“You should move upstairs,” she said. “Down here you are too exposed.” She gestured to the large bay window by way of explanation. If they could see the street out front, then it stood to reason that anything in the street could see them, as well.

However, none of the people downstairs looked excited about moving. They were, perhaps, too tired to really care.

“Upstairs,” she repeated, “Now. There are beds, and also a working fireplace.”

That seemed to do the trick. Each of them stood, gathering their packs and possessions, filing past her up the stairs. As the Mule passed her, she put a hand up to stop him. He did not stop soon enough, and she had to step back two paces, lest he accidentally run into her hand.

Finally seeing the signal, he gave her a bemused look. “Go to the kitchen,” she said. “Help the woman.”

For a moment, it looked like he would protest, but then he seemed to acquiesce.

“Yeah, I guess we could all use some food, huh?” Then he turned to the kitchen.

She, in her turn, followed the others upstairs, where they had gathered in the master bedroom.

The whole group settled into the one room, surrounding the fireplace. Bait and the Professor dragged mattresses in from the other bedrooms.

She turned to the Professor, interrupting him as he was dragging the last of the mattresses into a semi-circle in front of the fire.

“Why bring the mattresses in here?” she asked. “Would it not be more comfortable in the other rooms, to sleep without the chattering and the snoring of other people?”

“Well,” he said, looking rather surprised by the question, “the fire is in here and the other rooms would be cold,” but his face told her that was not the whole reason. She could not understand this desire to huddle in a group, but it was strong in the others. Didn’t they see how much trouble people were? How could they attach themselves so easily to people they had just met? She thought about pointing out how foolish this all was, but she was too tired to care. They all were.

Settled around the fireplace on a collection of mattresses and blankets from all over the house, eating and drinking an assortment of things that Leanne and the Mule had brought upstairs from the kitchen, the scene looked like nothing more than a slumber party, attended by oversized and somewhat grubby children.

It was not a comfortable place for her. This kind of social gathering was just the thing she had avoided in her previous life. She had been a loner and liked it, and she had no plans to change her ways after the Fall, either.

But these people, they seemed to have no sense of the peace and freedom that could be gained from being alone—from avoiding all the obligations and fuss that came when you got close to others. It was like they needed to be a part of a group—a herd instinct rising to the top of their personalities when the comfortable veneer of civilization was stripped away. Why did she not share this feeling? What was so different about her? Was it that she was adopted? Was it the things she had lived through before being adopted?

She put these thoughts aside, as they were unlikely to lead to anything useful, and stood, pacing around the back of the large master bedroom just so she wouldn’t have to sit with the group any more.

She had noticed the woman, Leanne, giving her glances from time to time, and now Leanne rose and followed her to the back of the room. Leanne walked over to her and paused, looking down as if waiting for something.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but…”

“No more ‘I’m sorry,’” she interrupted.

Leanne looked up, startled. “What?”

“You are always apologizing. ‘I’m sorry for speaking up,’ ‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ ‘I’m sorry for being here.’ No more.”

Leanne just looked at her. She did not understand.

“What are you truly sorry for? Are you sorry for being a woman? For being raised as a polite little girl who should not interrupt, make a fuss, or be a burden? That world is gone, and not all changes are bad ones. You do not have to be the weak one, the burden, or the one who apologizes. No more apologizing for who you are.”

The woman still looked at her, but now with a different light in her eyes. “I think I see,” she said. Perhaps she did.

Leanne then looked down again, this time at a few drops of blood on the ground, then up a little, noticing one that slid off of her fingers and down to join others on the floor.

“That’s why I came over here,” Leanne said. “You’re hurt.”

“She is.”

The woman moved toward her, reaching out to take the jacket off. She stepped back.

“She does not like to be touched.”

“Oh, come on. You’re still bleeding from a wound that happened way back this morning. It needs to be treated.” Leanne stepped forward again, reaching out.

She jumped back, sending a hard glare to the nurse. “She does not like to be touched!”

There was silence around the fire. Everyone’s eyes turned to the pair.

Leanne’s eyes got big. There was an apology starting in the woman’s eyes, but then it faded. Leanne frowned. “Do you like to bleed?”

She continued to stare. “She does not mind.”

“Do you like to be weak?”

Anger burned in her eyes as she stared at Leanne. “No.”

Leanne put her hands out to the side. One hand held the medical satchel. “I can fix it.”

She continued to stare at her erstwhile nurse for a moment, and then looked away.

Without another word she shrugged her shoulders, letting her jacket drop down around her hands, and revealing the bandana she had tied around her upper arm earlier in the day. It was soaked through with blood—some old and dark, and some a bright, new crimson. She shifted her stare forward, looking at the wall in front of her.

              Her arms were tense and immobile, muscles standing out under the skin. Her whole body was rigid.

After a moment’s hesitation, Leanne stepped forward to look at the wound. Leanne untied the bandana, looking at the fresh line of blood welling from the wound.

“I’ll need to stitch it,” said the woman, looking to her for permission.

She did not reply.

Then Bait spoke up from behind her. “You can do that? Stitch people?”

“I was a nurse,” she replied. “We had to learn how so we could assist the doctors.”

“Well it looks like you’d better do it now, while you’ve got the chance,” replied Bait. No one else spoke. She still stared forward, tense.