36 Hours (31 page)

Her smiling face.

“Come on. Can you stand?”

She nodded and stood, leaned against the wall. “Where are we?”

“Come on. Hold my hand.” It was cold and limp. I took her down the hallway, testing doors. Finally one opened. We went inside. I shut the door and locked it tight. Setting Hannah down on a couch, I grabbed a soft chair and positioned it against the door. There were no windows in the room, and it was warm, but getting colder – the heater was off. Even in spring, heaters were needed. I looked around the room. A whiteboard, several couches, a coffee machine. It was a conference room.

“It’s not the Marriott, but it works.”

Hannah was asleep.

Anthony Barnhart

36 Hours

192

11:00 p.m.

The rape of all good and true

The Dumpster

Coffman Family YMCA

We were submerged in complete darkness, but my eyes had adjusted. I sat down next to the couch, leaning against it, breathing deep and shallow, deep and shallow, for many minutes. Hannah’s ragged breath ran through my hair, tickled my hair. The dark closed tighter and tighter around me. Every time I closed my eyes I just saw Ashlie’s face; I had to open them. I didn’t want to fall asleep. Just stay here, where it’s safe, and dream not – nightmares sure to come. I had only slept once or twice since all this began. All the excitement – is excitement really the best word? – and the adrenaline and the physical exertion had worn me out. My legs burned with exhaustion, and my arms felt like lead. I stared dully at the whiteboard; it was covered with frantic scribbles expounding on a business venture for XG Corp., whatever that was. XG Corp. I smiled. Such a nice office room. It meant nothing now. And the silence. You can’t imagine it. So silent it roared in my ears; every heartbeat was thunder in a prairie.

I coughed. It hurt. My throat was so dry. I looked at Hannah. Her eyes fluttered as she slept. Her fingers twitched. My eyes grazed down over her arm, the gash she’d received as the truck barreled through that barbed wire fencing. The cut was deep and ragged, and dried blood clotted the wound and the fingers of her opposite hand. The edges of the tear peeled over, revealing deep skin tissue, and the area around the wound was growing a bluish purple. Standing, I said nothing as I moved the chair away from the door and went out into the hallway.

The building was a labyrinth of snaking corridors and locked rooms. I had gone creeping through these buildings as they were being built; Chad and I had escaped from the YMCA and had gone trekking at night. He had played a little hide-and-seek in the construction, and it scared the crap out of me. Now I moved silently, hearing nothing but my heart and footfalls.
Never thought you’d
be here again. My, my, my, how things change.

Firelight bled in through the windows, refracting, splintering over the walls and furniture. The moon wasn’t out and rain fell, tapping on the glass. I walked Anthony Barnhart

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around an empty chair and desk for the receptionist, felt a palm frond scrape my side, and almost tripped over a pile of new magazines on the floor. I saw my own reflections in the tall glass windows, and my dull eyes stared back at me, imprinted with the burning fire off to the side of Dorothy Lane. The fire raged, tearing apart the gas station from every angle. The fire cast its warming glow in every direction – over the fresh fields bordering Wright-Brothers Airport, to Dorothy Lane, where sulking figures moved about abandoned cars. Smoke rose from Dorothy Lane’s upper bay window on their mezzanine. The fire reflected off the artificial lake, and its golden glow touched the backs of several suburban houses of neighboring neighborhoods. The fire reached over the wrecked dump of 741, past a torn fence, over rutted crop fields, and to a farmhouse now being torn apart top-to-bottom.

And the light hit the overturned truck.

I turned away, refusing to look. I didn’t want to see what was happening.
They’ve been killed, bitten, turned. Your sister. Your best friend.
They’re-

“Water,” I said, rekindling my focus. I left the lobby in a different direction and came upon a pair of water fountains, one shorter than the other. I almost walked off, thinking they wouldn’t work because of the power outage. Then I remembered: the water doesn’t flow with the power. I tried it, and cool water gushed out of the faucet. Drinking my fill, I searched around the fountain for some paper cups, filled one or two up, and headed back towards Hannah. Lightning flashed as I drew past the lobby, sprinkling over the sidewalk and concrete pillars just outside. A figure stood at the door of the lobby, just staring inside. Our eyes met, and I didn’t turn away. His own eyes stared right back; he shrugged his shoulders and walked out of view, around the side of the building.
This place is no safer. There is no Alamo. They can smell my heart-beat, they
can smell the lifeblood inside me.

Hannah was asleep as I sat down next to her, having shut the door and pressed the chair against it. The paper cups sat on the conference room desk, and I pulled up a chair next to her. “I brought you some water,” I said, nudging her. She didn’t wake. “Water, Hannah.” She lay on her side, head on the couch cushion. Why did a conference room have a couch? “You’re really tired, aren’t you?” Nothing. “So am I. I can’t sleep. You’re lucky.”

Minutes dripped away.

Anthony Barnhart

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“I know how you feel now. Remember when you were talking to me when I was in the shower? You said I didn’t know what it was like, losing someone so close. I know you loved Peyton. I never doubted that. He might have treated you like crap sometimes, but I know you loved him. I know you love
him
, not the monster that’s replaced him. He’s safe. His soul is safe. I guess that’s the way we need to look at it, Hannah. They aren’t our brothers or sisters, they aren’t out friends and co-workers. They are beasts out of Hell.” A pause. “But Ashlie
was
my sister when I left her. You didn’t leave Peyton. What happened to you wasn’t expected. Me, I knew what would happen. And I left her, I left her, Hannah. She was crying out my name when I ran. I ran away, and I heard her screams as they climbed all over the truck. I have to live with that. Those screams.”

I shook my head, tears swelling in my eyes. A horrendous flood of turbulent emotions overtook me. My hands began to shake; balling them into fists, I said,

“She always bragged to her friends about how great of a brother she had. Whenever her friends would talk about how horrible their brothers were, Ashlie would say how great
I
was. She always told me, ‘You’re my best friend in the whole world,’ and ‘You’re the best brother ever.’ How great am I, really, Hannah? Look at me. A coward! See me shake? I see her face now. Smiling. She would come into my room and just want to be with me. I left her.”

A loud noise rattled: my fist burned. The wood table shuddered. Hannah didn’t wake up.

“Do you know what I’m afraid of? Hannah, I’m so afraid. I never thought I would say this to you: I am afraid of being alone. This fear haunts me, eats me, consumes me, day in and day out, judging and liquidating my every move. I fear, so bad, never having anyone. I fear growing old, cold, alone, never tasting love, and dying alone and forgotten in those whitewashed tombs: nursing homes. I am so afraid I will never taste the kiss of a girl, the warmth of her body close, be the focus of sparkling eyes and tender touch and shy smiles. I fear never being loved, only watching others parade in fashion, hungering and thirsting and crying in my own silence. I can’t rationalize my fear away; you can’t rationalize the fear of snakes or spiders, and my life’s history gives no alternative meaning: ‘No one wants you, and who might care are taken from you.’ I am left alone, unwanted, watching my friends and their girls, watching the object of my passion for so long taken by a best friend – and he forgets me. Anthony Barnhart

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For so long I’ve lain alone at home in bed as my friends went out with all those who shared affection.

“I don’t want sex or making out, Hannah. I want someone to
talk
with, someone to hold close, a girl who doesn’t shiver at my sight, but draws close, finding comfort in my arms. When she cries, I want to hold her. When I cry, I want her to hold me. I am a romantic shunned, looking around and seeing sexmongers cheating the romance out of girls, leaving them hollow, slutty shells –

the rape of all good and true. I want a girl so bad, a genuine and authentic, loving and cherished, a beautiful and captivating girl to find refuse in my arms, to cry no more. I want to go to candlelit dinners, to hold her by a fire, to feed off her warmth under the stars, to whisper in her ear, ‘It will be okay.’ I would give up that cherished dream of college and career just for this that I long for – I would work at Homer’s Grocery for life just to find the one who would complete my life.

“Did you ever see the movie
Donnie Darko
? Donnie falls in love with Gretchen, and she is killed – run over by a car. It is very tragic. This haunts me, sears me, paralyzes me. It comes up in my dreams and nightmares. I am Donnie

– weird, socially blundering, wanting the girl. Gretchen is the one I seek; I am the one who’s filled her dreams of weddings and engagements and honeymoons. Then she is taken, brutally and savagely, innocent and angelic, battered and bloodied. This I fear, too: discovering the One – and she is taken from me. I fear she will be taken from me.”

I leaned forward, whispered, “
It will be okay.
”

And I took her hand, cold and limp. She shivered, breathing shallowly.

“Sleep,” I said.

She slept. I sat in that chair, watching her, knowing how beautiful she real y was. My soul stirred, and I pushed it down. I wanted to crawl onto that couch and shield her, hold her, I wanted her to wrap her arms around me. Her soft skin against mine, her breath mixing with mine, pulling close, holding on, fearing to let go for the hell outside the door. Our lips to touch, our souls to entwine. None of that now. I had too many other things to think about. We had a free ticket out at the YMCA – but how to get there? We couldn’t just walk out the door. At
least
one of those things was lurking around the complex. They weren’t like the zombies of the movies, either; they didn’t lumber around, they didn’t groan and gurgle. No, they
ran
. They could jump, too. They were humans turned into animals, with all natural human capabilities. And they Anthony Barnhart

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screamed, they screeched, it was nightmarish, ghoulish. If you listened hard enough, maybe you could hear them. I still hear them. I hear them all the time, in my sleep, walking around.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if, one day, all this was over? If one day it all ended, the plague just stopped? Wouldn’t it be interesting if a movie was made about this? A comedy, even? I laughed. Who could find humor in it? I would watch with new friends and Hannah. Hannah and I would be sitting together; my arm would drape around her and she would lean her head on my chest. We would watch the movie. Our friends who didn’t experience it would laugh. We’d just be silent as the grave. She would start crying. So would I. My parents gone. My sister gone.
Her
family gone. Our friends gone. We were all we had left.

This was no movie. This was no book. I wanted to puke. How had I survived so long? Almost everyone I knew was dead, turned, become something otherworldly. All except Hannah. That’s why I had to keep her. That’s why I loved her. She was now part of me; if I died, she died. If she died, I died. She was the only thing on this earth who knew who I was – and cared. Everyone else was dead.
Everyone else was dead
. The pen hovers. I never thought I would write that – and be serious.

How could we get to the YMCA? Should we wait for morning? Or would it be too late? Would the pilot even still be alive? Would we show up and be left alone in those dark gymnasiums and workout rooms and children’s daycare?

Part of me wanted to give up. Go to sleep. Stop worrying. Just give up; if they come, they come. So what? Maybe it is better to be like that anyway. Any tempting, however, soon found itself corrupted: Hannah kept my attention. She kept me alive.

Hannah shifted on the couch, but didn’t wake.

I had to at least see how far away the YMCA was. How? Was there a roof? I had to check.

“Be back in a minute, Hannah.” She didn’t hear me. I left the room again and meandered through the hallways, searching. Eventual y I discovered a utility room and let myself in. A rack of flashlights sat on the wall; I pulled one off, shook it, flipped the switch. The beam glared and I grunted, looking away. My eyes shrank and I looked about. There was odd-looking machinery, some tomfoolery of all sorts, wrenches and hammers and buckets of nails. There was another door; stenciled on the front in nice letters it read,
STAIRWELL
. The knob Anthony Barnhart

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was locked. The hammer was heavy in my hands, but I delivered several blows to the door handle, and finally it snapped off. The hammer clang loudly at my feet; fingering inside the latch, I flipped the lock open. My shoulder pushed against the steel, and the metal door creaked open. A silver stairwell led up to the ceiling; a latch.

The ladder shook back and forth under my feet. I pushed hard on the latch. It took a few moments, but eventually it popped open. The lids slammed onto the roof surface, ringing loudly. A thunderclap drowned it out.
Thank God.
I pulled myself into the rain and turned around on the roof; it was barren. The gas station inferno cast warm light over my face; I spun until I saw the triangulated roofs of the YMCA. The parking lot was littered with cars, but the building was very quiet. Hope surged within me – what if there were survivors inside? What if al those in the cars had escaped the plague? What if we were to join them, get to a plane… Looking at the YMCA, I felt a new surge of hope. We had survived through this, there
had
to be survivors. All over the place. Hundreds, in Clearcreek alone! Cooped up in homes, businesses, cars out in the middle of nowhere. I stood on that rooftop and I saw a mother holding her two children, trying to keep them quiet, huddled in the closet of their home, drenched in darkness, praying countless hours. Businessmen and women in Arlington, on the top floor of a skyscraper, looking through the windows at the dark and burning city below, tortured by thoughts of their loved ones – wives, daughters, sons. A lone car sitting in a field somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, the teenage occupants, having escaped Clearcreek High School, silent in their contemplations, wondering what to do, listening to the rain drumming on the hood.