36 Hours (11 page)

“What happened to the other one?”

“Same thing.”

Diane led the others down a flight of steps to the bathroom level. The men’s bathroom and women’s bathroom hooked to the corridor. Diane took them up a parallel flight of steps and out of sight. The steps led to the Meat Department, and the lounge door was hooked onto that. From the first steps down you could look up and see a grill, and behind the grill was a fan, which blew cool air into the lounge. I could see brief figures and some huddled conversations, a few tears. George took me in the other direction, to a storage room next to the employee bathrooms.

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He rummaged around. Stacks of paper, some manila envelopes. Some paper bags filled with folded plastic sacks for bagging. “Ah. Here.” He pulled out a red envelope and tore it open. A Homer’s Grocery shirt slid out. “What size are you?”

“That’ll work,” I said.

He tossed it to me. “It’s a Medium.”

“Perfect.”

“All right. Well, you know the way.”

“I do—did—work here.”

George paused for a moment, then, “We had a television before the power went out.”

“When did that happen?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“Oh.”

“But did you see the TV news? See what the news anchors were saying?”

“It’s all over the place,” I said, nodding. “The world is getting caught up in the disease.”

“They had to go to the emergency broadcasting system.”

“Yep.”

He swallowed. “I’ve been through a lot in my life, Austin-“

“George…”

“No. Listen. I’ve been through a lot. And I have a feeling—a feeling in the pit of the stomach—that this may be the end.”

“George,” I said. “Can I change? The blood is seeping through.”

He nodded and left. I quickly changed, and threw Les’ shirt against the wall. I loped up the ramp, down the steps, up the other flight of steps, through the meat department, through the door to the lounge, up a flight of steps, and knocked on the door. There was a pause, then a panel in the wall above opened. It was another one of Homer’s paranoia installments. Mary’s eye glowered down at me, vanished. The sound of scraping furniture, a lock unlocking, and the door opened, spilling light all over me. Mary stood there, grabbed my hand, and helped me through, though I didn’t need it. Mary is just tender like that. My eyes adjusted to the dim light. One of the two light bulbs wasn’t working. Several Homer’s Grocery employees milled about, and customers clung to each other. A tall man in a leather jacket and sunglasses, smoking in the corner. An elderly woman with her husband. A grandpa in a wheelchair whose legs—I later Anthony Barnhart

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learned—had been lost in a tractor-trailer accident. A young woman with several young children, crying so hard her chest seemed to heave out, revealing ribs underneath a tear-soaked shirt. A police officer whose car had crashed, he told us later, and who had barely escaped the infected; his partner had not. And several teens from school who had escaped, only to crash near the main Clearcreek intersection bordering the grocery.

Les and Hannah stood near a window with blinds; they seemed excited. The window overlooked the aisles of the store. A lamp shed golden light over their profiles.

I walked over. “What’s going on?”

Then a voice came over me, and I swung around with joy. “Amanda!”

Amanda stood there, beaming. I had met her through my sister Ashlie, and we became good friends. “Hi, Austin. Les and Hannah were telling me about what happened. I’m so happy to see that you’re fine.”

“I’m happier about that,” I said with a smile. “How’d you end up here?”

“I jumped in the back of a truck leaving the High School. It crashed at the intersection, and I jumped out, completely unhurt. A miracle, I know. And so I ran across the street, and people were leaping on people and tearing at them, eating them. It was so horrible. I got into this store just before they closed the doors. And I saw Bryon here, too.”

“Bryon’s here?” I gaped.

She nodded. “He’s in the restroom.”

“This is great,” I said. “Wonderful.” And it was. I could almost forget the nightmares outside the store.

Amanda demanded, “What about your sister, Austin? What about Ashlie?

Please tell me she’s okay.”

I swallowed. “I can’t.”

She seemed on the verge of collapse. “She didn’t become one of-“

“I don’t know. No. At least, I hope not. She was sick today. She’s at home. In bed, I hope.”

“So do I. Les? What about Chad? Oh. Ichthus. I wonder if it’s happened down—Oh. It’s everywhere.” She seemed to jump around dotes of questions and answer them with her own ferocity. Then, “Hannah! Where’s Peyton? I know you wouldn’t leave the school without him.”

I winced. Les hadn’t heard Hannah’s story, but had gotten the picture from her tears. Hannah violently turned away and stared through the blinds, though her Anthony Barnhart

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eyes were stony, deep, focused on nothing but the memories. A tear trickled down her swollen cheeks. Amanda needed no more and backed off, literally backing into the chained and leather-jacketed Bryon Hunter coming through the door.

His face exploded in brilliant excitement when we locked eyes. “Oh my gosh!

Austin! Les! Hannah! When did you get here!”

Les answered, “Just now. Thank God these people let us in.”

Bryon laughed. He looked at me. “Feels good to be back here for once, eh?”

A smile creased my lips. “For once. And if this clears up, I doubt it should happen again.”

“It’s madness all over. I was at Sinclair. I barely made it out. My English teacher went psycho and tried to kill me. He was one of the first catchers of this disease, this strain, they called it before they went off the air. I ran out of the room. A buddy didn’t make it out the door before Hanover took him down. Then the kid came after me. You see. It spreads like wildfire. One person catches it, he passes it on, and it multiplies. It’s unbelievable. That’s why so many people have become infected so fast. It starts out slow, and gains momentum every second, until no one and nothing can stop it. Then hell’s doors open it floods earth. I got to my Miata and was somehow able to get here from the highway. I was trying to go home, but the exit was cluttered with cars. A big wreck. Heck. The entire
roadway
was an accident. And the people who had caught it, they were everywhere, too. I locked my doors and rolled up the windows. They were down because it had been warm this morning. I got off the exit and came south. I just knew these people-turned-monsters were going towards the city, north, so I tried to get out of there as fast as my legs—well, wheels, really—could carry me. Then I got side-struck by a truck coming through a field—you know, the one across the road, by the bank, with the neighborhood in the background?” I knew—one of those houses always lit up like a blow-torch during Christmas. “My car rol ed into this parking lot—the Clearcreek Plaza lot—and I got out. A lit le bit of whiplash, couldn’t move my head. They were shutting the doors to all the buildings. The sick people were everywhere. I ran as hard as I could and fought off one or two—they are not hard to fight off, they’re like grabbing children. Just more vicious. The doors here were closed, too. So I climbed a drainage pipe, onto the roof, and then a ladder to get to the second-story, and then I saw the latch on the roof. I was pretty safe, took a few moments to gather myself, knocked, and they opened it, Anthony Barnhart

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and let me in.” He pointed to a latch on the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed it before. I’d never been up there till then. “So here I am. And Amanda is here, too. And now you three.” He embraced us all. He was one of those rough-love kind of guys.

He tried to hug Hannah, but she gave him the shoulder. He asked us, “What’s wrong with her?” No sarcasm—pure compassion.

I opened my mouth. Amanda beat me to it. “She lost Peyton.”

“How?”

She shrugged. I answered, “He was infected.”

Bryon’s illuminating eyes fell, glowering. “This sucks. It real y,
really
sucks.”

Les asked, “What’s the plan?”

Mary appeared from the shadows. “None so far. No rescue teams are being sent out. No hope to be found. It’s all-for-one and one-for-all. A shoot-out with no winners.”

“Mary? Let me onto the roof.”

“Why?”

“I want to see.”

“I don’t know if it’s safe on the roof.”

Les said, “It is. I don’t know what he wants to see, though.”

“Okay. Well. Whatever.” She pushed some people out of the way and opened the latch. Dazzling morning sunlight filtered down. A ladder descended. “This is where the technicians and roofers got up. It’s kind of rickety. Watch your step. There you go.”

I climbed the creaking steps and pulled myself onto the roof. Smoke rose al around. The road and parking lot were cluttered with cars. The stream of infected that had chased the Jeep were gone. Nowhere to be seen. It was as if the world had emptied. Except for the sound of crackling flames, distant combustions and the occasional chirp of a bird, it was eerily silent. “Ghost town,” I said under my breath. The clouds cast forlorn shadows over the earth, and were building into a coming storm. I remembered watching the weather forecast this morning. Showers and thunderstorms late in the day. I looked at my watch. Nearing noon. I needed food. But it was so
quiet
, so
empty
, so…

unreal
. I turned on my heels, and looked over the low-rimmed, almost antique buildings of Olde Clearcreek. Olde Clearcreek had once been a peaceful Quaker settlement, and a fiery station for the Underground Railroad. Nearby Franklin had been a coffee-pot of slave traders and slave-catchers. Some scholars thought Anthony Barnhart

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
was written in the setting of the Clearcreek-Franklin area, with names changed because of the times. Now the streets of Olde Clearcreek were trashed with overturned and smoking vehicles, a few stray bodies here and there, on the sidewalk and streets. But empty. No. A flicker of movement. A little girl walking between the buildings. Innocent? No. Hunched over. Arms wrapped over her chest, fingers hunched over like tiny claws. A blood-sprinkled shirt that read in big block letters,
I ♥ My Mom
. Wild eyes. And then she looked straight at me; my muscles went limp and I ducked down, bruising my knees and the palms of my hands.

“You okay?” Mary asked from below. “What do you see?”

“Nothing. I’m coming down.” My voice danced.

I peeked my head up. The girl was going down the street. I stifled an urge to laugh. I had been frightened by a little girl. I descended back into the lounge, and Mary folded the ladder and set the latch back right. “What was that about?”

My stomach rumbled. “This place is dog-empty. Nothing.” Except for an infected kindergartner. It didn’t make any sense – thousands of people in Spring Falls, and right at the heart of the town, none are to be found?

She had heard my stomach grumbling. “You hungry?”

I nodded. “What do we have up here?”

“Nothing. Except for my packed lunch. Well, what’s left of it. A diabetic needed it. Oh, yes, and Daniel’s lunch. A frozen pasta entrée. But it needs a microwave, and we don’t have any electricity except for this battery-powered lamp, a relic, so who knows how long that will last.”

“We ought to get some food.” I pointed to the window. George shook his head. “No. The doors burst open. They could be in there.”

“Les. Look out the window. Who’s down there?”

“No one.”

“See? It’s safe.”

“But it might not be.”

“And we might all die if we don’t get food. And that diabetic will be needing more in an hour or so.”

Mary sighed. “Who is to go?”

“Me, George, Louis and Daniel. You and Diane keep things under control here.”

“All guys. You know how I feel about sexism. And women’s rights.”

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“This isn’t the sixties anymore, Diane. I know. But men will bust under pressure if something happens up here. You guys won’t. Sound good?”

Running a hand through her hair, “Fine. But hurry up. It doesn’t make me feel good, you guys being out there.”

“We will. George, Louis. Where’s Daniel? Daniel! Over here! Hi-ho, let’s go.”

Mary peered through the slit in the wall, eyes gazing down the steps.

“Careful,” she said as Diane opened the door. George, Daniel slipped through, then me, and then Louis. We descended quickly, a rancid stench burning the insides of our noses. The stairs bellied out into the meat department; slabs of warm beef and chicken, red with blood and staining the counters, covered with thousands of swarming flies. The smell was overwhelming. I imagine that if the flesh were of humans, I would have puked all over my own shoes. The door leading to the heart of the store had been wedged shut with several steel rolling tables, then barricaded with wire-frame struts positioned at an angle. It seemed frail, but it took all of us to move the contraption away. Louis looked through the twin glass windows in the swinging metal doors, saw nothing, and pushed through. The rest of us followed, emptying into the store. The eyes of a dozen people tore into us from above, where friends and companions watched from a honey window with flimsy blinds.

“Hurry,” Daniel told us, especially me. “We weren’t able to board off this place. There could be some of those killers roaming around here. In the aisles. Be careful.”

We split up. I went past the soda bins, stacks of fresh deli bread, and an overhanging sign that read
Hot Deli; Meats and Cheese; Sandwiches Prepared
Fresh For You!
I hopped the counter of the deli, landing hard on my feet. I bent over and opened a sliding panel to reveal buckets of chicken and potato wedges and mashed potatoes and macaroni-and-cheese and even some salmon. Don’t forget gallons of tuna and ham salad, chicken salad, deli cheeses and sliced meats. Honey-suckle ham and smoked turkey bacon. Oh, and ham wraps and the delicious but cold potato skins.