Lost and Found (20 page)

Of course, I knew there wasn't really a universal dimmer switch but I liked to imagine
things like that, especially when nothing made sense in the new world. The sound of
Drake stretching turned me away from the window in time to see him untangle from his
blanket and sit up with a groan.

"Morning," I said quietly. He only nodded.

After his bathroom break and tossing me a bottle of water, we ate a modest breakfast
of peanuts and fruit cups before saying goodbye to our overnight haven. The air outside
felt fresh on my face and smelled of dry earth, with a lingering scent of dead things
that I was sadly growing accustomed to. Dead trees, dead flowers, dead grass, dead
bodies - all emanating the same dried-out and overripe odor that filled the sour streets
with a fetid tang. Before I threw myself off a cliff and landed in the ocean to drown
in an endless supply of sea-foam, I intended on burning the cities of California to
the ground. It wouldn't take much; one spark here, another there and the decomposing
buildings would burn like fireplace timber. The fire would spread where the wind took
it, which in the southern parts of the state meant the fire would eat up everything
it touched from all four points of the compass.

Just as it should be. Burned to the ground, wiped out so life can start again. A rebirth
from the ashes. Maybe then, the dead would finally leave and give the living a chance
to survive.

Retracing our steps from the day before, we left the residential street and turned
to follow one of the main roads toward the freeway and the large shopping area that
was across the street from the warehouse. It was dark enough that we hoped to slip
through the landscape unseen, choosing to think that anyone on the other side of the
freeway was still clueless about the events of the previous day. I was relying on
luck again.

Not in the mood for small talk, we walked side by side with at least five feet of
space between us. Before making it even a block up the street, we both stopped in
our tracks as an image formed, still shrouded in the shadowy remnants of night. I
peered hard ahead of me, at the small figure that stood in the center of the inclined
road. As my eyes adjusted to the changing surroundings, a peek of sunlight lit up
the road and we were able to clearly see that it was a boy standing in the distance.
He was young, maybe five years old, wearing loose pants and nothing else. Unable to
control it, my chest began to heave up and down as I fought to keep the panic and
fear at bay. Spinning around, I saw no one behind us, but that didn't mean
they
weren't coming.

"Oh God, not again," I said to myself.

"Jesus - that's a kid!" Drake made a move to run after the boy but I yanked on his
arm, pulling him close to my side.

"Don't," I warned.

"What? It's a
kid
," he repeated.

"No. It's not."

He turned to look at me, his face slack with shock and pulled free from my clingy
grasp. "What the hell's wrong with you, Riley? We can't just leave him there!"

I shook my head at him and begged him to stay. Not to walk up the street toward the
small child that stood motionless and eerily quiet in the car-cluttered road, but
it didn't stop him. At first, he walked, then he jogged, and when he was almost there
it finally happened. It must have been what it felt like for Connor - to see no one
and then dozens of bodies come out of the shadows and surround me. I finally understood
how terrifying it must have been to see that from the outside.

Drake was leaning down toward the child, but something must have spooked him, since
he jumped backwards and cursed, gripping at his backpack straps as if he was ready
to bolt. He didn't realize there was nowhere to run. Small misty shapes began moving
toward him, merging into little people as they got closer. Children. Only ten at first
but then twenty, thirty, fifty. All in their bed clothes, all the color of death -
pale grey skin with bloody faces. Scraggly blooms of burst veins shimmered beneath
the skin like fireworks - the signature calling card of the virus.

He didn't know what to do; the circle closed on Drake so quickly. Some of the children
holding hands, others reaching up to touch him, pulling at his clothes, tugging at
his shirt, as small children like to do and all he could do was panic. With his hands
fused over his eyes, he saw little of this but I could hear his distress. It was my
name he yelled over and over.

I ran for him. Even before I knew what to do, I ran. I plowed right into the group,
barreling into the shoulders, heads and backs that barely came up to my hips. So young;
they were all so young. Hands reached out for me, and I felt their cold and slimy
fingers through my clothes. I kept my momentum going, even after something snagged
my sweatshirt, tearing the seam open. Gagging to avoid choking on the smell, my eyes
watered with the memory of my dead children's faces before I burned their bodies.
Not bothering to slow down, I collided into Drake and we clutched at each other, our
eyes sealed shut to block out the horror. We crumpled to the ground in a muddled mess
of limbs, bringing our bodies as close together as they would fit. My head was beside
his, jammed into his chest, leaving my neck exposed. Small hands continued to touch
and grab at us, but it was different than my first experience with the dead - the
sensations felt less angry and more eager. Almost impatient, exploring rather than
trying to cause harm and fear.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real,
I chanted in my head over and over until I almost believed it. I might have been
saying it out loud, Drake might have been saying it too, but my knowledge that the
tiny dead bodies would eventually vanish into thin air did little to stifle my screams.
Especially, when something warm and sticky dropped onto my neck, sliding off my skin
and landing at my side with a wet plop.
It's not real, it's not real.

We shivered, cursed, screamed and shivered some more, until the air went still and
sunlight warmed the place on my neck where some sort of flesh had fallen off one of
the children. Fighting to calm my stomach, I kept my eyes closed while running my
trembling hand along my skin, feeling nothing but my own sweat. Funny, even after
no physical trace of the dead was left on our bodies, the lower hem of my sweatshirt
hung at an awkward angle, torn clean along the seam.

"It's over." My voice wavered and creaked like an old board.

Drake's soft brown hair brushed against my cheek with each shake of his head. Such
a strong man, an arrogant, independent man, and he was kneeling on the asphalt, refusing
to let go of a woman half his size. After muttering something I hoped sounded soothing
into his ear and pulling away from him, I looked quickly around us. We were alone
again. The street seemed massive then, as if the lanes spanned one hundred miles wide
and we would never be able to reach either shoulder before the road cracked in half
and swallowed us whole.

I imagined the waves of the ocean as they lapped around me. What the salt water would
taste like as it filled my mouth and drained into my body. I was not going to die
on that dirty street; that wasn't how I was supposed to go.

***

We didn't talk for the next hour. It took a considerable amount of urging on my part
to get Drake up and on his feet. We sat on the sidewalk next to the bumper of a dusty
Audi with bird crap dotting the hood. I glanced inside just once; it was long enough
to see the dead family of six partially huddled under an array of different colored
blankets. Like so many other people, they died in their cars trying to drive away
from the virus. But you can't run from the air you breathe. I doubted they got far
before the driver lost control of his bodily functions and the passengers, too sick
to notice, died beside him soon after. The first words spoken after the early morning
event that nearly made me pee my pants came from Drake.

"Holyfuckingshit." It came out in one breath, strung together like a solitary word.
He said it over and over until I placed my hand on his knee and gave him a friendly
squeeze.

"It's over," I told him again. Knowing full well my words didn't matter, I tried to
smile anyway.

"Holyfuckingshit,"
he said again, staring at one of the Audi's flat tires. His short hair just barely
grazed the top of his tanned ear. It blended effortlessly into his centimeter long
beard that he hadn't once shaved off completely the entire time I knew him.

"Yeah," I agreed. After draining the water I handed to him, he stood up too quickly
and swayed a bit.

"Don't you dare pass out on me - you're too heavy to carry. I'll just leave your ass
here on the sidewalk," I joked half-heartedly. But I felt creases digging deeply between
my brows as I watched him with concern.

With a curt nod, he let go of my shoulder and bounced his empty water bottle off the
roof of the dirty Audi. It slide down the windshield and topple off the other side
of the car. It rolled to a stop somewhere in the street - just another piece of litter
for me to feel guilty about.

***

"Do you want to talk about it?" I finally asked. It had been twenty minutes of silence
- me following Drake along sidewalks, in between houses and over freeway walls.

We were slowly moving our way east through the bumper-to-bumper cars. The sun was
already warming the day, and though I wasn't sweating yet beneath my layers, I knew
that by noon I would be. If I were still alive at noon.

"Do I look like I want to talk?" he grumbled without turning around.

"Hasn't that happened to you before?"

I accidentally stepped on his foot as he abruptly stopped walking and whirled around
to glare at me. "What did I say?
Don't
."

Blinking up at him, I tried not to feel offended and nodded. We crossed the rest of
the highway in silence, reaching the other side with our hands and knees dirty from
crawling over the hoods of cars and trunks. With a final glance back at the vehicles
before following Drake down the shoulder of an exit, I wondered how long it would
take the cars to break down and rust. A lot longer than it would take their occupants
to turn into skeletons. I shivered. The image wasn’t a pleasant one.

When the highway wall dipped down low enough to hoist ourselves over it, we landed
feet first into the backyard of a private residence. The yard was an open and weed-filled
lot with brown grass. In one of the corners, there was a large doghouse. Lying on
its side, still attached to a thick and heavy looking chain was a dead dog. Something
had eaten most of the soft organs out of the body, exposing the dried out ribcage
and spine. The animal was so badly decomposed and disturbed that it was impossible
to tell what color, sex or breed of dog it had been. I yanked a starched and sun-bleached
towel, rigid as a board, off a nearby clothesline and rested it on top of the corpse.
After crying over the body, I joined Drake at the side gate, where he patiently waited
with his hands in his pockets.

"Is there something wrong with me, that I feel worse for that damn dog than I do the
men that we killed yesterday?" I nearly sobbed.

Drake reached out and swiftly pulled me into a rough hug, releasing me almost as quickly
as he grabbed me and planted a dry kiss onto the top of the head. It was a brotherly
act and I sighed in thanks for the gesture.

"No. There's nothing wrong with you," he said.

We walked through the quiet neighborhood. Me avoiding looking too closely at the yards
that looked as if a pet had lived there, and Drake scanning every corner, peering
into every window with caution. The warehouse was only two neighborhoods away, according
to him.

Whispering so I could barely hear him, Drake pointed to the houses on the south side
of the street, "Behind there is a newer apartment complex. It's the one I told you
about, the one they sort of took over. At least, that's where they were. The warehouse
is just on the other side, close to the shopping center. It's new too. Or it was."

"Are we circling it?"

"Yeah. We'll go all the way around, come up on the warehouse from the north side where
the delivery docks are. I don't think they'd expect that." He scratched at the side
of his scruffy face, lost in thought.

It was a gamble. A risk - but then again there was no right or wrong anymore. Just
survival of the fittest. Everything I had been was gone, not much of me would be left
in the end. The way it should have been from the beginning. Why not risk what little
was left?

Drake stopped just before a major intersection, stepping off the cracked sidewalk
to lean against the wall of a three-story office building. I stood next to him in
semi-baggy clothes that didn't quite fit right, my hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.
We stared across the street where dozens of medical tents stood, cordoned off from
the street by a slew of haphazardly placed military vehicles. Even from hundreds of
feet away I could hear the flap of plastic as the breeze moved through the tents with
a lazy kind of lull. A separate area inside the barrier was partially obstructed from
my view, but a single story tent with a white dome top had a rip down one of its long
sides, exposing the contents to the elements.