Infection: Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (15 page)

Officer Ivanoff, still looking in disbelief at the still open back door to the house, responded sluggishly. He scanned the yard twice, looking for any predators, and then got out. Dr. Caldwell, flipped the switch on the edge of the rear door, so as not to be inadvertently trapped again and then started inside. He stopped, thinking better of it for a moment, and then asked, “You coming? I could use some backup if we run into anything in there.”

Looking at the car for a moment before he answered, the police officer, still trying to hide even from himself the shame that was threatening his thoughts, “Yeah, I’ll be right behind you Doc.”

The three of them spent a quiet several hours together in the upstairs living room of the house. The only sounds in the entire house were the rhythmic ticking of a wall clock and the frantic voices of impromptu news anchormen and women on the television. As night came, they decided that it would just be more prudent for them to sleep in the car. If any of them would be able to sleep at all that is.

They grabbed a few blankets from a hall closet and made themselves as comfortable as they could in the confines of the small sport utility vehicle. When any of them did sleep, it was in fits and starts. There was no real rest during any of that first night for any of them. They merely counted the hours down until sunrise the next morning. There was still something hopeful about a sunrise. Nothing really changed for them, but the sun coming up the next morning at least implied that some things could still be counted on. It was the wait for that sunrise that was the most agonizing for all of them. The longer autumn night was torturous, harboring teasing shadows and alarming sounds.

Settled and comfortable enough to talk for a moment, the survivors in the boarded up house sat together in the living room. At first, the only sound was a collective sigh of relief. The room was filled with questions, though no one spoke. They looked at one another, not knowing where or how to begin.

Meghan broke the stalemate. She asked quite simply, “What is going on out there?”

Everyone’s eyes looked from one to the other until all eyes were looking at Jerry. He didn’t like this one bit. He wasn’t accustomed to being the guy with the answers. Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure that his answer was the right one. What happened if what he thought he knew was actually wrong? And even if he wasn’t wrong, could he believe it either? He was thinking those exact thoughts when he began to speak.

“You all’ve got to understand that I’m no authority on...well, on anything really. I’m a high school drop out who went back to school to get my GED and some training so that I could get a job. That’s all. I don’t have a degree in nothin’. I’m just a Nurse’s Aide.

“I don’t know a lot, but what I do know is movies, video games, books, and music.” Neil thought to himself that he could tell already that he liked this kid. That list of interests just secured the deal. Neil was also fairly certain that the “kid” wasn’t the dullard that he was painting himself to be though. Jerry may have lacked confidence, but he wasn’t intellectually impaired.

Jerry continued, “I think what we may be dealing with out there are zombies.”

Kim, leaning against the wall, stood upright and asked, “You mean, those monsters that gotta eat brains and walk around like this?” and she did an imitation that more resembled Boris Karloff as
Frankenstein’s Monster
as she moaned “Brains.”

“No, not like that at all. If it’s easier to believe, just think of them as people that are infected with a deadly and very infectious disease. Only, the infection in these people kills their sense of restraint, of morality, of family, of right and wrong. These people are completely and utterly incurable.

“Oh yeah, and the disease, it makes them impervious to pain. You can shoot ‘em. You can stab ‘em. You can burn ‘em. You can cut ‘em in half. You can run ‘em down with your car. You can do just about anything you can think of and it won’t stop them. They might get knocked down or slowed somewhat, but don’t be fooled, there’s only one way to bring them down.”

Tony asked, “Is this where you tell us that the only way to kill them is to put a bullet in their heads and then burn their bodies under a full moon?”

“The first part of that is right anyway. The only way to put them down permanently is destroy the brain. Severe blunt trauma, like a hammer to the head, would work, but it may take more than one whack and you may not have that kind of time. The best thing is to get them from a distance with one of the guns that Neil grabbed. Good thinking, Neil.”

Neil was standing in the kitchen now. He was drinking from a bottle of water, but really he was hiding behind the water the way some speakers hide behind a podium. He, like Jerry, wasn’t accustomed to being in the spotlight. His bottle empty, he went to the kitchen sink and re-filled it from the tap.

Kim asked, “How does the infection spread?”

Danny, sitting quietly and taking everything in, answered, “The bite, right? It’s in the bite. If you get bitten, you get the infection and die and then turn into a zombie. Isn’t that right Jerry?”

Jules nodded and added, “I think that’s what happened to my brother Martin. Does that mean Martin is in heaven with Grandpa?”

Rachel said, “God I hope so sweetie.” Then to Jerry, “So what can we do?”

Jerry was shocked that everyone was accepting his explanation of things. There was no dissension whatsoever, despite the fact that none of them had really seen one of them up close. None of them except Neil and Rachel, that was, and their moment in the parking lot was over before it even started really; a case of very aggressive hit and run.

“For now,” Neil chimed in, “we treat this like we would any natural disaster. Think of it like an earthquake. We’ll probably lose power and water some time soon. We need to fill everything we can find with water so we have some when the water is completely gone from the tap.

“Look around and try to find flashlights, batteries, and candles. That includes from the stacks down in the garage. I think if we work together, we can all get through this.”

Rachel asked, “How long do you think this will last?”

Tony, walking away from the others and peering out the opaque curtains hanging in front of the windows, said, “I don’t know. How long does it take for the world to end?”

It may have seemed like the world was coming to an end, and maybe it was. For the time being, however, there was still quite a bit to be done. The rest of that first day and into the early evening, they all scoured the house, looking for anything and everything that might be useful.

Danny and Jules found some clothes that fit both of them in a couple of the bedrooms. It was about then that Neil realized that he was still wearing his tie and work identification badge. Of course, his Arrow brand wrinkle-free white shirt was anything but white by then. It was soiled a dull brownish grey with sweat, soot from the fireplace, and dirt from moving the firewood.

He looked at himself in the mirror and laughed. He took off his badge and set it next to Meghan’s keys on a small table in the hallway. He loosened his silk Jerry Garcia necktie and undid his shirt’s top button.

Meghan, surprisingly playfully, said, “
Now
you decide to loosen up a little. Make up your mind. Are you a cool-as-a-cucumber business executive who can handle any situation and still look professional and businesslike? Or are you that guy that only owns five ties, one for each day of the week, and hangs them, still knotted over your closet door so that you wouldn’t have to learn how to actually tie them? It’s hard to get a read on you, mister, changing your appearance as you have.”

Neil looked over at her and realized she wasn’t wearing her Fred Meyer uniform anymore. She’d found some blue jeans and a comfortable brown sweater that fit rather nicely.

He started to say something but was momentarily stunned to silence when she turned toward him, and he felt an overwhelming urge to splash into the warm, inviting waters of her eyes. They were nothing short of intoxicating. He wanted to ask her if she wore cosmetic lenses to allow her to have such exquisitely colored eyes, but it didn’t really matter to him. He was perfectly happy with the illusion for the time being.

And that’s not to say that the rest of her face wasn’t similarly gorgeous. Her skin was smooth and still enjoyed the lingering but fading bronze of the summer sun. Her hair, no longer pulled back in a tight ponytail, was either a light brown or a faint red with strands of golden blonde intermingled here and there, an obvious attempt to make them appear the natural result of exposure to the sun. Like a luxurious red carpet, her smile was full and inviting. He hadn’t seen all or really any of this at the Fred Meyer, and probably never would have under more normal circumstances. He was seeing it now though, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to concentrate on anything else. To further confound his senses, she was surrounded and accompanied by a ravishingly sweet but un-aggressive aroma that made him think of warm summer days.

She was, Neil realized, a very attractive woman. Neil guessed her to be about two or three years younger than him, which meant that she was ten years younger than him at least. He was horrible at those things. He invariably embarrassed himself when drawn into those guessing contests with new coworkers. Age, weight, sexual orientation, astrological sign, political affiliation, or religion did not reveal themselves accurately to him on the biological or metaphysical barometers in his brain. Maybe he didn’t get that part of the brain that permitted such activities. Regardless, she was a very attractive young woman who was smiling at him in the hallway. And she wasn’t just smiling. She was smiling
at him
—at least that was what the faulty barometer was telling him.

Like many guys, when he was confronted with such a woman in tight confines he became tongue-tied and uncoordinated in thought and action. Subconsciously, he was probably surprised that he was still standing. If she got too close to him, he was afraid that the vertigo that he was beginning to feel in that sense of anticipation would topple him over. Starting on more than one occasion to speak, he second-guessed himself and instead stood there silent, waiting for her to initiate the conversation between the two of them. The funny thing about all of his feelings was that he could not deny that he craved them. Watching Lani bounce into the building every morning for more than a year, he had experienced just an inkling of what he was feeling. He had all but forgotten about the butterflies that could dance and twitter in his belly.

There was noise all around them in the house as everyone settled into their accommodations for the night, but in the back hallway, away from everyone else, there was a quiet and somewhat awkward moment between the two of them. It ended when Neil turned around and went back through the door leading into the garage.

Meghan caught him by the arm and said, “Hey, thanks for everything you did for us today.”

Neil shook his head and said, “I don’t think I did anything other than just run to save my own ass.”

“Maybe,” Meghan admitted, “but you let all of us tag along, and so far, saving your ass has saved all of ours too. So thanks. Besides, if you were only interested in saving your own ass then you wouldn’t have come back for us when my car stalled. You’d have just driven on down the road and left us to fend for ourselves.”

Shaking his head and trying to confess as much to himself as to her, he pleaded, “You’ve gotta understand, Meghan, I don’t have all the answers. Hell, I don’t even know all the questions. I’m just a guy who’s been in a rut of a job for too long and not sure how I wound up there, and maybe I’m even a little afraid to take the next step. And then this all happened.”

Smiling, she said, “You act like any of us are that different from you. I’ll let you in on a little secret. How you described yourself is pretty much how it stands for all of us. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just gotta be willing to try, that’s all.”

“God, I hope it’s enough.”

“So do I, honey. So do I.”

The fact that she called him “honey” was not lost on him. Hearing himself called that warmed him from the inside out and brought a warm, pink glow to his cheeks.

“Maybe you’re right, but I can’t do this alone.”

“And nobody expects that of you. We gotta look out for one another. Gotta be able to count on one another.”

She closed the distance between the two of them and wrapped her arms around him. She laid her head, which came up to just below his chin, against his chest. He was afraid that she could now feel and hear his racing heartbeat and think that he might have some congenital heart defect. His fear immediately gave way to the warm satisfaction that he felt with her pressed against him.

With tears in her eyes she asked very quietly, “Just tell me everything’s gonna be alright. That the storm will pass and we’ll be okay.”

He tilted his head and let his cheek rest on the top of her hair and whispered, “Everything will work out. It always does. If nothing else, you can count on that.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”