36 Hours (6 page)

“Shut the window!” I hollered, lying on the floor.

He tripped over me and fell against the wall. We both tried to stand, but fell back, butting heads.

My voice sounded hoarse. “The window!”

“I got it!”

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36 Hours

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I threw myself against the kitchen counter and scrambled to my feet, shocked I could now stand without falling over. I drew a knife from the knife holster; a slender iron bar tapering into a point. Les reached for the window; the infected’s arms wrenched in and groped at him. “Les!” I yelled; he flung back, flipping over the dining room table, back tenderly cracking. He rolled over on his side and fell to the floor as I stepped around and drove the tool deep into the infected’s face. Blood surged all over the windowsill. He let out a grunt and fell back, landing hard on the deck, the knife poking from his eye-socket. Tendrils of steaming blood oozed out over the deck, dripping between the cracks between the boards. I remember Les and his brother Chad had helped their grandpa lay out the boards for the deck two summers ago. Les shut the window hard.

“Lock it.”

“It doesn’t lock. He’s dead, anyways.”

“No. Don’t count on it.”

He squinted out the window. Sunlight reflected sharply into his eyes. “I don’t know. You got him good.”

I pointed into the living room. “Look in there.”

Les looked at me weird and went through the kitchen, into the living room, returned. “Where is he?”

“He left. He just got up and left. See the guy out the window? Yeah. He was the one shot with the shotgun. Came back to life.
I saw it,
Les. Saw it with my own eyes. Don’t believe me? Half his chest is gone. I saw him get off the street. He came through the window at me.”

“That’s impossible.”

Wryly, “I don’t think impossibility counts for much anymore.”

“Blood’s all over your shirt. I don’t know how to wash it.”

“Yeah. I’ll change shirts, if that’s okay.”

He tensed. “Did any get in you?”

“What?”

“Did any body fluid get in you?”

No. Shook my head.

“Sure?”

“I’m not clawing at you, and my skin isn’t turning purple, is it?”

“Let’s get you changed.”

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36 Hours

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As we walked from the room, I cast a risky glance back out the blood-smeared window; the man still lie there, the tool in his face, blood gently oozing along the aged contours of his face.

We trudged upstairs. Hannah stood by Jack’s door. “What happened?”

“They don’t die,” I said. She followed me with her eyes. Looking at all the blood. I still quaked.

Hannah went with us into Les’ room. He grabbed me a shirt and I changed. It felt good to be in something clean. When I changed my pants, Hannah turned and faced Les’ open closet. We threw my bloody clothes onto the floor. No one really cared.

“Be sure to wash up,” Les said when we returned to Jack’s room.

“I will. I want to get this crap off my hands.”

“It’s in your hair, too.”

“Does the shower work?”

“At your own risk,” Les said. He locked the door, paused. “Before things heat up… Hannah, when he’s showering, can you watch the window? Make sure no one comes at me.”

I was halfway into the bathroom, said over my shoulder, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I don’t want to go downstairs to get food when night comes. We’d better stock up. I’m gonna grab anything I can. Mom—“ He paused for a moment at the thought of his mother. “She usually keeps big boxes in the downstairs closet. I’ll fill one to the brim. That should last us a day or two.”

I nodded. “Better to risk it in daylight than in dark.”

“Sound good, Hannah?”

She shrugged and went to the window.

Les left and I locked the door. Going into the bathroom, I shut the door and tried to lock it, but it refused to lock. The jam was all out of whack. I stripped out of my new clothes—carefully, not wanting to get them stained with any traces of infected body fluid—and covered my hands with toilet paper, and folded them neatly over the barred window. I gazed into the backyard, standing in my skivvies. Fences enclosed the Whites’ yard, where their little Chihuahua barked at the commotion next door, infected running through a home. A house to either side, and one behind. One was empty, the other had some dogs moving about. The next door neighbor’s dogs were gone. The chains lie sprawled in the waving grass. In the lawn behind us, an infected stood on the back porch, just Anthony Barnhart

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standing there, hunched, arms drooping, staring into space; the door was open, and another was prancing about inside, tearing at the furniture and gutting out the cup-boards of the kitchen and dining room. I ducked away. They didn’t need to see me. How did they not hear the wild racket moments ago?

Mold crusted over the edges of the shower. I opened the fogged door and stared at the mold for what seemed to be hours. I thought I saw a cockroach scurry into the drain. A gut fear gripped me, and I almost turned away, but I sent a hand to my scalp, ran it through my hair, felt knots and clots of blood. Drew my hands away—smeared with red. That did it. I stepped inside and shut the fogged door. The knob turned lazily, as if it were never used, and cold water sprinkled out, dazzling. I pressed myself out of the spray, but it stung at my legs. Stupid! Let the water get warm first. But then it did, and I felt so much better, letting it run over my body. And I stood there for nearly five minutes, just letting the soothing water rain down all over me, for a moment forget ing. For all I knew, Chad and Drake were dead—or worse—and Jack wouldn’t be coming home this time. Blood clotted my hair, and my mind would never forget, for as long as I lived—my death approaching sooner or later, though I preferred later—and would haunt my dreams.

The water ran into my eyes. I rubbed them and searched for shampoo. None. I opened the door. “Les!” Downstairs. “Hannah!” The door opened, and I shut the fogged door. She sauntered inside. I could vaguely see her form behind the fogged glass, and I knew she could see mine, just as fogged, yet knowingly nude. My face reddened. She couldn’t see anything. My heart loped down. “I need some shampoo or something. To get out the knots.” I meant,
to get out the
blood
, but I didn’t want to upset her.

“Okay,” she said, and vanished.

My eyes fell to my chest, and I saw the water running from my scalp was stained red. Nasty.

She came back in. “I couldn’t find any. I guess they’re out. Here.” She tossed a wrapped bar of
Ivory
soap over the shower door. It slipped through my hands. I bent down, scraped around the mold, picked it up. Mold crumbled, soggy in my fingers. “Thanks.” My fingers unwrapped the package and dropped the wrapping to the ground. I lathered my hands with the soap, but the suds washed out. I just rubbed the soap all over my scalp, felt it tugging and shearing at my hair. Bubbles rose up over my head. I bent down and rinsed. It fell in a splatter of red. So-Anthony Barnhart 36 Hours

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“Austin.” She was still in the room.

Acting not surprised. But she scared the crap out of me. “What?”

“I loved my brother.”

“I know.”

Pause. I ran the soap through again. “You know I tried to save him.”

My hands stopped moving. The soap bar rested on my head. I took it away.

“Hannah? What happened?” I could tell she wanted to tell me. But she wouldn’t. Not until I asked. That was how she was. And Peyton was
her
brother and
my
friend. We both knew him. I would go over and play basketball with him. Ashlie and I would go over, and the four of us would hang out. Hannah would make the food, Ashlie the drinks, and Peyton and I would clean up. I wanted to know what happened to my friend. But she didn’t answer. “Hannah?”

“I was in Food and Nutrition Class.” She had always liked to cook. She planned on going to medical school. Become a nurse. “Then we heard the doors downstairs breaking open, and we heard the screams. Ms. Hamlin tried to keep us in class, but we opened the door and saw people running around.” Her voice seemed detached. Just as mine had been when recalling driving a knife into poor Chris King’s neck. “Then one of the sick people came in. Ms. Hamlin tried to help her. She was just an old woman. She ran towards the woman, and then the woman clawed Ms. Hamlin so hard she tore out her cheek. Ms. Hamlin screamed and the woman jumped on top of her. The rest of us, we were so confused. People started running out. I grabbed my things, but then I dropped them. Because Ms. Hamlin got up, and she was different. Bleeding, alive, but at the same time dead. She looked right at me, and she came after me. I got out of there fast. I ran through the halls.” I couldn’t wash my hair. “I found Peyton in the top of A Hallway. He ran up to me, and he told me that they were killing people. He was really scared. So we went to the staircase; then one of those sick people came at us. I got out of the way, but Peyton, he couldn’t move. He was knocked over the railing, and he fell down, into the crowd going down the steps. Some people were hurt, but they left him. He was trampled under their feet. I ran down to help him, but blood, it was flowing out of his ears and his nose and his mouth. His body looked crushed. I couldn’t help… couldn’t help…” I heard the sniffling. “I would’ve saved him, you know?” she begged of me. “But he was already dead. He wasn’t breathing. How could he still be alive? I left him there on the steps and a sick kid was coming down. He was going towards him… I should’ve stayed…”

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From the shower, “What could you have done? Nothing.”

“I guess I was too evil…”

“No.”

“Not a good sister…”

“No. Hannah. No.”

I felt the warm water running over me, and ran my hands through my hair, silently grunting as knots and tangles were ripped apart. Hannah. “I’m so sorry. I loved him. I went into the atrium, and it was terrible. You know. And I turned to run back, and then I saw Peyton coming out. I ran to him. He was bleeding, but you know, he was alive. I didn’t care. I ran for him, I reached for him…” Her voice trailed, cracked. “But his eyes. They were so terrible. And they looked at me, and I knew it wasn’t him. He chased me, and finally gave up. He became one of them, Austin. He became a demon. He tried to hurt me.”

Clumps of hair came out with my hands. “It isn’t your fault.”

She said nothing.

“Hannah?”

I heard the bathroom door shut, and I was alone.

10:00 a.m.

Emergency Broadcasting System

Funeral March

The fal of 25 Rosebud Avenue

The water trickled to a stop and I got out of the shower. From Jack’s bedroom I heard a sound that made my heart jump circles: the muffled echoes of a television. I quickly dressed, feeling fresh and right, and joined Hannah and Les in the room. Les had dropped a box of food on the bed, everything from chips and crackers to bread and canned foods and fruit punch juice boxes, thrown haplessly together. His shoes had trekked blood into the room, in the outlines of footprints. Les had turned on the television—how it escaped our minds, I can’t fathom—and Hannah sat entranced on the edge of the bed. Les leaned against the dresser. I stood rigid by the door, watching the screen, which intermittently fuzzed in and out with static. The picture would blur, then sharpen, blur, shake, sharpen.

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“Good news?” I asked, hopeful.

They didn’t answer; Les just shook his head.

Hannah breathed, “It’s all over the place.”

I stepped closer and knelt down beside her, head level with the television set. My mind caught the powerful images:

A view from a news station, a harried reporter shaking with the troubling news,
saying that the city was falling to the disease. He pointed down from a rooftop
and one could see people running for their lives as the wild infected whisked
through the crowds like a dying October breeze. There was a large crash, and
the camera-man turned skyward to see a helicopter smashing into a skyscraper.
Reporters on the rooftop were crying; he said, “That was one of the helicopters
carrying people out of the city, I don’t know how it crashed…”

The view from a helicopter flying over the beaches. Boats were streaming out to
sea in the hope of escaping the bloodshed of the mainland. The infected could
be seen everywhere down below, running in and out of buildings and over the
boardwalks. None seemed to run into the water. Many running to their boats
were trampled underfoot or victims to the infected.

London, England. Big Ben slowly ticked as a bus overturned and erupted into
flame, metal blasting everywhere. The infected ran through the fire, flailing
about as they burned. Britons and tourists ran helter-skelter for their lives. In
the background, one of the many bridges spanning the great river had collapsed
and the infected and healthy mingled in a shower of screams.

Baghdad, Iraq. American troops were caught in a hailstorm of gunfire, spraying
tracers into crowds of Iraqis. Some of those who fell got up again and again,
some with limbs missing, others with holes torn through their bodies, and
rushed at the troops. Legless victims crawled towards the barricades. Huey
helicopters took off into the air, soldiers clinging to the struts to get out of there.
Shouts and screams as the infected swarmed over the barricades, clawing and
tearing and ripping at the soldiers. The camera blacked out.

People ran out of the subways and into them, trying to escape the carnage in
Paris. The Eiffel tower stood grisly quiet, yet bodies could be seen plunging
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from the roof, humans deciding to lose their lives in the fall instead of falling to
the gruesome monsters that had once been loving mothers, hard-working
husbands and happy go-lucky school-children. All across the globe men and
women and children were committing suicide rather than succumbing to the
madness.