This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (11 page)

“Do you think that’s what we’re doing now? Going through some sort of test?”

“My town died around me. I think there was a test. We failed it and this is the punishment.”

Dayo gathered the blanket tighter and put her head on Desi’s shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about punishments. Tell me the story about the shepherd.”

“Not much to tell. She becomes his wife but there’s a catch.”

“With gods and goddesses, there’s always a catch. Tell me.”

Desi stared through the curtain, into the night, searching his memory for details as the first hint of the sun’s return lightened the sky almost imperceptibly. “The goddess said she’d stay with the shepherd as long as he never hit her. If he hits her three times, she’ll return to her sisters in the pond and take away the dowry of farm animals she brought with her.”

“Sounds more than reasonable. I wouldn’t stay with a guy who hit me once.”

“Yes, but the goddess had a very loose definition of hitting. He taps her on the shoulder to get her attention or something and she counts that for the first two times. I can’t remember those details, but the last time he grabs her shoulder roughly. I remember that part.”

“Why?”

“They’re at a funeral for a friend and the goddess won’t stop laughing. The shepherd’s upset she’s laughing at the grave of a dead friend. But the goddess takes the long view. She says she’s laughing because she’s happy for the dead friend. His mortal trials are over and now he finally has peace.”

“That sounds like a luxury only immortals could appreciate.” Dayo raised her head, worry etching lines in her forehead. “Is that where we are, you think? Was it
Khrushchev
who said, ‘The living shall envy the dead’?”

“No idea. Did he have anything to say about the zombie apocalypse?”

Dayo smiled brightly and Desi found he had to smile back. “What does your name mean, Dayo?”

“It means I bring happiness.”

“I thought that the first time I saw you.”

“The first time you saw me was day before yesterday, naked and almost dead.”

“I focussed on the naked part.”

“I know.”

“Desi, do you think the doctor can really get us out of here?”

“Why? Do you think he can’t?”

“I don’t like him much. And he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. When I told him my theory about the spread of the virus, his eyes got big, as if his house cat stood up on its hind legs and started talking.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you think that is? Because I’m a woman or because I’m black? Or is it because I’m fat? Or because I was a mere security guard.”

“Yes.”

“What?”
 

“All of the above.”

“You — ”

“Sorry, I thought you were asking an honest question.”

“I was, but I guess I expected you to soften the soddin’ blow, copper. Besides, he underestimates us. Aadi’s got a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Mumbai. I was two credits short of my sociology degree when everything went pear shaped. Working security was all we could get when the economy rotted inside out. Just because we’re poor immigrants doesn’t mean we don’t read. On the nightshift at Harrods, reading’s all I did.”

“Whatever the doctor’s prejudices, I’m sure he’ll get over them. We can’t afford bigotry anymore, can we?”

“And you don’t have those worries,” she said.

“Well…I’m not desperately fond of the English, but we need them, too, don’t we? Who will keep us in tea and call us a bunch of drooling colonials if we don’t keep the doctor around? At least until we get to America. Then the Yanks can look down on all of us.”

She smiled again and punched him in the shoulder. “You know what I’m asking.”

“I saw you naked. I’m looking forward to seeing you naked again.”

“Do you think the helicopter will really come to rescue us along with him?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Because the alternative is too awful.”

She thought he might kiss her then. Desi’s lips were inches from hers.
 

Something moved outside. She peered through the shade and saw a hunched, shuffling figure with wild hair. The front of the woman’s shirt ran black with blood. She came close enough to hear her animal growl. A zombie walked the streets of Dungarvan.

Desi paled. “I didn’t think we’d see one of them for days, yet.”

P
ERSUASIVE
STREET
PREACHERS
’
EYES
SHINE

T
he little band of refugees stayed quiet and watched the infected wander the streets. At dawn, there were two. By noon, Desi had counted a dozen. At the back of the house, Aadi stood watch, searching the sky and straining his ears for the thrum of rotors. A school, the weeds already grown long, sat behind the house. That was the landing zone the
Ciara’s
skipper had promised to pass on to the rescue helo.
 

By late afternoon, more packs arrived. These were young men whose heads were still shaved tight to their skulls. Their neck tattoos were identical. They wore green football uniforms Desi recognized as the Leesiders’ club colors from Cork. The men lifted their chins, sniffing the air and milling aimlessly. The wounds on their hands and arms — defensive wounds, Desi called them — could be readily seen. The men seemed oblivious to their bites and intent only on finding new victims. The zombies came and went until, just before nightfall, three ran down the middle of the street chasing a barking dog.

Sinjin-Smythe whispered as he stood his watch, peering out the window. “Whatever Shiva thought she was going to accomplish, her plan can’t work.”

When the doctor turned from the window, his smile was broad and assured. “Look at those things. They’re plenty dangerous and scary now, but how long can they last? They don’t feed on each other. I’ve been watching for hours and they’re dumb animals. Worse than dumb animals, maybe. They’d fight each other over a bone like wolves, but I don’t even see any hierarchy to their groups. They move in packs, but there’s no clear alpha to lead. They’re disorganized and there’s no strategy! They’re obviously good at spreading the virus and eager to bite, but after a victim is bitten…I don’t know. They seem to lose interest unless they’re in a feeding frenzy.”

“I see one parallel with animal behavior,” Dayo said. “If you run, they chase you. Like wild dogs.”

“Perhaps you’re right. But I can’t see how they can last. They’re too erratic. At this rate, the world will be ours again in a week, maybe two…as long as we can deny them their meals.”

Dayo shook her head. “So you’re saying that once they eat as many of us as they can find, their food supply will run out? They’ll starve to death and all we have to do is hide and wait for the inevitable?”

“Of course.”

“What do you know of the terrorists’ plans, doctor?”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Excuse me,” Desi said, “but if you know nothing of their plans, how do you know this isn’t it?”

Sinjin-Smythe turned back to the window and sulked.

Three men in business suits shambled by. Their pants were ripped to expose pale, spindly legs. The one in the lead was missing his right cheek. He stopped, turned and appeared to look straight at the doctor, who shivered behind his peephole. The doctor could see the infected man’s teeth all the way back to his molars. The man’s mouth moved — open and closed, open and closed — as a thick line of venomous saliva drooled down his chin and to his chest. His black tie was still in a tight Windsor knot over a blood spattered linen shirt.

“Shiva,” the doctor said, more to himself than the others, “what was the plan? How did it come to this so quickly and easily? How did you know we were all so fragile?”

“I knew the end of the world was coming a long time ago,” Desi said.

“Yeah?” The doctor turned back to them. “What was your clue?”

“I’m a cop.”

The doctor smirked but caught the flash in Dayo’s eyes. “What about you?”

She nodded. “I knew things couldn’t last much longer.”

“Why? Because you were a security guard at Harrods?”

“No, doctor. I watched a lot of reality television.”

* * *

As the day ground on into night, the narrow little house seemed smaller from the pressure of the wait. “I’m starting to feel sorry for every twit I put in a jail cell,” Desi admitted. “This is my home and I can’t go outside. It’s not that it’s so bad. It’s knowing I couldn’t step outside for some fresh air if I wanted to.”

Dayo kept the girls quiet. She’d thought it would be an impossible task, but one look out the window had been enough for the girls to retreat to their pillow fort beneath the dining room table. Mostly, they slept. They slept not to rest anymore, but to escape the waking terrors. When they did not sleep, they held each other’s hands and whispered quietly.

It was Sinjin-Smythe who gave them away.
 

* * *
 

The zombies weren’t what he expected. They moved in a phalanx. Sinjin-Smythe looked left and right. The infected were an advancing wall, like a storm front, marching toward him.

Every ghoul drooled in hungry anticipation. Blood and gore caked their clothes and their wounds oozed a thick, yellow pus. Every eye was milky and stared at him. Each cannibal ached for the taste of his flesh, a need they could feel in each tooth. Worse? They smiled, eager to feed and sure of their success.
 

Would the doctor be a meal, vivisected and screaming, or would they make him one of them? He turned to run.

He could hear helicopters chopping the sky, but he was sure they’d come too late. Climbing the hill, he slogged through hungry mud that sucked him down. He moved in slow motion and the zombies marched on, relentless. He glimpsed their number. They stretched out in a wall of horror to the right, left and to the horizon.
 

And they did not growl and scream or howl. Their chant began as a whisper that, in their millions, sounded like it descended upon him as cutting hail from a roiling sky. “
Shi-va! Shi-va! Shi-va!”

The chorus rose. The zombies sang. It had never occurred to the doctor that Hell, too, had a choir. Each beat of the chant was a hammer. Each strike crushed a skull. The song was a tightening fist around every human heart.
 

The girls, Aasa and Aastha, ran behind him, screaming, terrified and reaching. They were only a few feet ahead of the ghouls. He could have reached back for their hands. Instead, the doctor ran on, hoping the infected would slow to gorge themselves on the children first. He hated himself for their sacrifice, but not enough to stop running.
 

Helicopter blades cut the sky, closer, but still too far away.

Sinjin-Smythe searched the darkness ahead because he could not look behind him. He didn’t want to see Death’s march as the damned enveloped the doomed.
 

Ahead, to his left, he saw a woman in a red dress, her back to him. To his right, he saw a young man he’d never seen before.

The woman he’d known as Dr. Ava Keres turned, beautiful and serene. She held an infant and he knew it was his child.
 

In swaddling clothes,
he thought. “Ava! Is it a baby girl? Were you right?”

Ava smiled wider. Blood stained her teeth. The blood ran and dripped thickly, colored her dress and, to his horror, fed the gasping, reaching child.

Anguished, Sinjin-Smythe turned to the boy for help. His eyes were black mirrors. Sinjin-Smythe saw himself reflected perfectly. Looking down, he realized that he, too, was covered in blood.

The phalanx of the infected rose behind him in endless waves. The doctor was about to be taken and the helicopters were close, but still too far away. He could hear their chop and a chattering sound he didn’t understand.

The boy with mirrors for eyes smiled, not unkindly. “Phalanx,” he said. “What a wonderful word!
Phalanx
!”

Snarls rose to shrieks as the horde came upon them. The doctor could not make himself look at the agents of his death. He smelled the stink of their clothes, rank piss and fresh shit. He felt hot breath on his neck.

Sinjin-Smythe covered his ears and screamed just as the boy spoke a single word to the cannibal army.

The zombies’ march stopped. The millions, at some signal Sinjin-Smythe could not detect, fell. The infected writhed in agony, but their hungry gaze remained fixed on the the doctor.

The doctor fell to his knees before the boy. He had not heard the boy’s command and, if he had, he would not have understood its significance. But he knew power when he saw it. “Please! Stop this insanity!”

“
Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros
.”
 

Sinjin-Smythe’s jaw went slack.
 

“Look it up.” The boy smiled.

* * *

Sinjin-Smythe ran on. He dared to look back. The zombies were closing on him again.

The girls screamed behind him with Aadi and Dayo tugging at their hands, urging them to run faster.

Desi brought up the rear, his back to the landing helicopter, choosing his targets. The Walther bucked in his hand and each time he shot one of the infected, one of the young men in a green football uniform fell.
 

Sinjin-Smythe felt like his brain had slipped a gear and only now was he coming up to speed with reality.

The thunder was true.

The sound of whirring helicopter rotors was real.
 

The agonizing feeling of running too slow in deep mud was real.

That chattering. What is that chattering? Is that real?

It was. A second helicopter swung low over the rooves of Dungarvan, circling and turning with a dragonfly’s grace. Its heavy machine gun spit shell casings as the gunner ran through a belt.

Shots chunked the ground at the feet of the infected. They did not run for cover. Instead, they reached up, numb to fear and dumb to consequence. The gunner found their range and fired into the small crowd in short bursts, chopping through bodies with merciless streams of metal.