This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (16 page)

“Simple animal control,” Lijon said. She reported to Shiva only what her leader wanted to hear. “We got the piggy aboard the
Mars
, secure and out of sight before we moved the rest. Once we use the zombie to infect the others, a few poles, leather straps and ball gags won’t be sufficient.”

“When they are infected, they won’t be our problem anymore. They’re our solution. As soon as we get to New York, find me another boat for you, me and the remaining crew.”

Lijon frowned as the froth and bubbles stopped. The Atlantic’s waves erased almost all trace of the
Gaian Commander
. Some floating debris and an oil slick remained, but that was all. “I hope Captain Price and his crew did not suffer.”

“I will be sure to record their sacrifice for the cause.”

“I don’t think they did it for the cause, Dear Sister.”

Shiva turned to Lijon and studied her face as the last of the smoke from the explosion rose to mix with clouds. “Tell me what you mean.”

“Captain Price knew he would never see the future we will build. When this is done, his role will be a footnote in history known only to a few. I think he was very brave and pure. He sacrificed himself, his ship and crew for Mother Earth.”

“And so far you have sacrificed vanilla bean lattes. How does that make you feel, Lijon?”

“I will sacrifice more.”

“For Mother Earth?”

“For you, Dear Sister.”

Shiva smiled. “Lijon, when we’re a day from New York, put the piggy together with the rest of the herd. When we arrive, I want the army famished. Have you chosen a vessel for the surprise package for our pursuers?”

Lijon nodded solemnly. “Yes, Dear Sister. This one was a banker. We made her stick her bare hand in Stanhope’s cage. No matter how much he feeds, he still lunged at the chance.” Lijon checked the timer on her iPhone. “He bit her about an hour ago.”

“Piggies will be piggies. They just can’t stop eating!” Shiva patted Lijon’s arm, her hand hot on goose-bumped skin. “Excellent work, Sister! This is going to be delicious.”

Shiva’s smile curdled. She put a hand to her temple and her chin dropped to her chest as she clung to the rail to keep from collapsing to the deck.

Lijon rushed forward and seized Shiva under the armpits. “Is it the baby?”

“She’s kicking but…” The woman in red shook her head. “Lijon, carry out the attack on New York if I cannot.”

“But what’s wrong?”

“Something…I don’t know. I can’t believe it. This shouldn’t be happening. I have a fever.”

T
HE
WEBS
WE
WEAVE
ARE
DECEITS
WE
CAN
’
T
HANDLE

A
s the Spencers drove into daylight, more people appeared on both sides of the highway. They walked slowly, heads down. The refugees hiked single file. Jaimie slumped in his seat beside his father. Watching the hikers, the boy thought of baby ducks. However, the line was so long, he couldn’t pick out one leader. Nowhere did the refugees draw together, as if they knew the safe minimum distance to avoid contagion.

Anna called to a few through a thinly cracked window. No one knew about the attack at the Speedway. “They turned us away from there yesterday,” an old black woman called back. “Said they were full up. Told us to keep moving.”

“What will you do?”

“Keep moving.”

More worrying, some people faced them, travelling west, not east.

“Don’t go toward Indianapolis!” Anna warned. The refugees waved her off or cursed her, even when she said danger waited there.
 

“Give it up,” Mrs. Bendham said. “I waited so long for you people my butt got sore and my back hurts. Then you show up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder.”

“We could tell them about the man,” Anna said.

Jack gripped the wheel hard. “That was no man. I don’t know what that was.”

A vice tightened around Jaimie’s forehead. He surrendered to his headache and lay with his head in his father’s lap again, eyes closed. Theo performed a bedtime ritual that had always calmed Jaimie. With a touch as light as could be, Theo placed the tip of one index finger above the bridge of Jaimie’s nose, between his eyes. In the slightest of motions, Theo moved in a tight circle, counterclockwise.
 

When Jaimie was agitated from a day of overstimulation (and especially when he was a young child, Jaimie was always overstimulated), he asked for this treatment with the whispered word “glabella.”

Theo had forgotten how he’d discovered this technique settled his son. He didn’t realize Jaimie wanted him to repeat it until he looked up the word.

“The name for the space between the eyes is the glabella!” Theo told Jack one night, triumphant but guilty he hadn’t understood sooner. “He’s been asking me to do that thing with his forehead so he can sleep!”

Theo had happened upon the entry in Jaimie’s own dictionary.
Glabella
was surrounded with a perfect circle in purple crayon. Jaimie was four.

Behind the glabella is the pineal gland,
Jaimie thought.
The energy there is the third eye. When that energy is balanced, its color is violaceous
. He’d tried to tell his father what he needed. The crayon box didn’t have violaceous, so he’d had to make do with a simple purple. Still, his parents had not understood what he needed for twenty-three days.

With the glabella trick, Jaimie could feel calm. He needed that. However, his sister and Mrs. Bendham would not shut up.

“I heard the screams,” Mrs. Bendham said. “I believe you about the man, but these people won’t.”

Anna turned in her seat to look at the old woman. “What do you suggest we do?”

“Hit the gas. Whatever happened at the Speedway, I want miles between us and it.”

Two old, frizzy–haired women, each wearing a bright orange backpack, claimed the pavement by the shoulder heading west. Jack had to slow to a crawl to avoid hitting them. They walked as if concentrating on each step. Clearly exhausted, the women walked on the road rather than challenge the soft, rain-soaked field beyond the ditch.

“Shall I try again, Mom?”

“Just roll your window down a bit, Anna.”

Jack stopped and Anna waved to the women while she held a mask to her face with one hand. “Hello! What’s going on up ahead, ladies?”

Only one of the women looked up, her face a deeply-lined topography. “Detour for cars,” she croaked. “They’re telling people to turn back.”

“Who’s
they
?” Jack called.

“Who do you think? The military. You’d think they’d have something better to do.”

“We’re headed east,” Anna said.

“Not in your vehicle you’re not,” the other woman spoke, still not looking up, her words slurred and garbled.
 

“People who’re walking are turning back for a bit, but the block is only across the road. We’re going to pick out a nice spot to rest, maybe have a nap in the back seat of an abandoned car if there’s no corpse already in there.”
The old woman gestured to the double line of cars that stretched out before them. Both women tittered. Their climbing trills made them sound a little crazy and, despite their age, perhaps dangerous.

Jack made a split-second decision. “We’re headed east. I think we’ll get through the checkpoint. Those guys must not know what’s behind us. No one should be heading toward Indianapolis. There was a riot there last night. You ladies want a ride?”
 

Mrs. Bendham cursed quietly from the back of the van.

The old women looked at each other, their hats touching as they quickly debated. The one who had been staring at the ground pushed her hat back and gave Jack a gummy smile through the windshield.

“No, thanks!” she said cheerfully.
 

“We’re headed to Milton, to the south beyond the barricade” the first woman said. “That’s where my son lives. We’ve been walking the last few days. We’ve had a few rides here and there from nice folks like you, but if you’re headed east, you’ll have to get out and start walking once you get up here a piece. It’s either that or double back.”

“We’ve heard things. These barricades started out as checkpoints and detours,” the other woman said. “Now they’re excuses to take your stuff. ‘Supply tax,’ they call it. You can avoid the barricades if you take small, secondary roads, I think, but you’ll keep getting pushed north. East is a problem, at least in a vehicle.”

“We’re going to wait for dark and then make our way across,” the toothless woman said. “I think we’ll end up walking cross country and get off the roads entirely, if we can face the fields and woods.”

The other woman gave her a shut-up nudge but the toothless woman shrugged, smiled wider and looked to Anna. “Those young men — I won’t call them soldiers — they look awfully serious and surly.”

“Impressed with themselves!” the other one said.

“They’re all about their guns!” the second said, spitting thickly on the last
s
. The women tittered again and their heads drew together as if to share the strength of their laughter.

They waved and chorused “Good luck!” as they continued down the road along the edge of the wet, black macadam.

“What were you thinking?” Mrs. Bendham said. “I know you want to add to the tribe, Jacqueline, but for God’s sake, how are a couple old ladies going to help us?”

Jack glanced back at Mrs. Bendham in her rear-view mirror, looking at the old woman for the first time since they’d pulled on the highway. Jack told herself she didn’t want to see if anything was gaining on them. She’d fought that fear all night. The despair was bad in Brandy’s house. The fear was worse since Jaimie let that thing loose. It had been all she could do not to floor the accelerator pedal and keep it there.

“I mean, really, what were you
thinking
?” Mrs. Bendham said again.

Jack’s jaws clenched.
 

Before she could answer, her daughter spoke for her, “It’s about numbers and trying to do the right thing, Mrs. Bendham. We took
you
in, didn’t we? How much more is that going to cost us, I wonder?”
 

The way soon became narrow again as they entered another gauntlet of cars. Brake lights shone ahead of them. A white SUV pulled up tight behind them, blocking Jack from reversing her course. “I thought the barricade was farther up!”

“Those two old women were
walking
, Jacqueline!” Mrs. Bendham said. “The line up to the barricade must have built up.”

Theo continued making tiny, light circles on Jaimie’s forehead. “Millions dead and we
still
have traffic jams.”

Anna leaned close to her mother’s ear and whispered, “Mrs. Bendham has one good point, Mom. Stop trying to save everyone and start thinking about people who can haul a heavy pack and shoot a gun. We don’t need to save another little old lady. We’d be better off finding able-bodied mechanics and carpenters, doctors and soldiers. Form a caravan. If we gathered people along the way, we’d have safety in numbers. Maybe by the time we get to Papa’s farm, we’ll have the basics for a real life.”

Jack’s scalp went hot with embarrassment. Anna was right, of course. However, when Jack looked at her lovely daughter, she was afraid for her. Jack didn’t dare add anyone to the group she couldn’t easily paste across the back of the skull with a rock.

T
HE
CLUES
ARE
THERE
FOR
THE
VERY
AWARE

J
ack pulled into line behind a silver BMW. Blankets, packs and boxes crammed the back seat to the cabin’s ceiling so the Spencers couldn’t see the driver.

“I’ll turn around. We’ll find another road as soon as I see a spot for a U-turn.” But there was no such spot and no time.

Ahead, a man in camouflage stood on an armoured personnel carrier. He wore a gas mask. The large glass circles for eyes made him look like a bulky praying mantis. He pointed his machine gun at the line of cars.
 

Jack felt a long icicle of fear pierce her diaphragm. “Anna, switch places with Jaimie! Quickly!”

“Jaimie! Get up beside your Mom,” Theo said.
 

Anna clambered into the back, pulled her mask over her face and rolled into a ball on the floor.

A short, stocky soldier in a gas mask, ramrod straight as if to make up for his lack of height, walked down the line of cars toward them. He peered into each car, the .45 revolver in his left hand held loosely at his side. He appeared not to engage the drivers in conversation. He gave each curt orders and moved on.

“Can’t we turn around and get out of here?” Mrs. Bendham said. They were blocked on all sides. The old woman’s plea was a helpless wish.

Jack clutched the wheel and checked the rear-view mirror. The SUV behind them was snug to her back bumper. “Look around, Marjorie. Besides, that soldier might shoot us for trying to avoid the roadblock.”

The soldier’s mask muffled his voice so he yelled, overcompensating. “As soon as the line moves, move with it. Keep your vehicle in line and do not get out of your vehicle until you’re told to do so! Do not stop or reverse the vehicle or you will be shot!”

A white van pulled in behind the SUV and the soldier moved on to deliver the same message.

On his way back, Jack rolled her window down slightly. “What’s going on?”

He craned, trying to peer through the family van’s tinted glass. “Up ahead, you’ll park your vehicle in the field to your left or right. One of the men will direct you.”

“What then?”

“Do I look like the information booth at the mall to you? All you need to know is the road ahead is closed.”

“What do you mean it’s closed?”

“Closed!”

He looked through the windshield at Jaimie. “Funny looking kid,” he said.