Rotten (31 page)

He stepped inside and helped put away some groceries.  “How was the world?”

“Weird, people were staring at us, like zombies,” Princess said and shook her head.  “I don’t know, weird.  Where’d everybody go?” 

“They went to look around town, said they wouldn’t be gone long.  What do you mean people were staring like zombies?”

“Something is bad wrong, dude.  They would just stop whatever they were doing and stare.”  Moonshine mimicked the blank, slack-mouthed look.  “And not just for a second, but for seconds.” 

“You know how sometimes you’ll be lost in thought and find you’re staring at someone?  Yeah, not like that.  When that happens you smile or nod or acknowledge that you were being an idiot, these people just stopped and stared and then kind of restarted like they weren’t even aware of what had happened,” I tried to explain how odd it had been.

“How many people do you suppose were in the store?” Sully sat down at the counter that separated the kitchen from the main room.

“It’s Christmas, it’s a big store, and it was pretty packed.  Over a hundred I’d guess,” Princess said.

“How many staring events happened?”

“Maybe six.” I counted.  “Yeah, at least six different people stopped and glared.”

“Okay,” Sully stood up.  “Less than ten percent.  Let’s see what the others have to say when they get back.”  He walked back onto the porch and settled down with his book. 

“What does he know?” Moonshine said.

“God, I hope he’s not about to turn back into logical Sully, I didn’t like that guy.”  Princess watched him through the glass.

“Zombie Sully was cool as hell, though.”  Moonshine laughed. 

“It’s true,” I said.  “I wish they’d hurry up and get back.”

Sully was still on the deck and we were sprawled out on the furniture flipping channels on the TV when we heard a car pull in and the three of us met Mrs. Williams as she was stepping out of the Jeep.  It was obvious right away that their trip hadn’t been any better than ours, especially when Sarah ran from the car and jumped in Princess’s arms. 

“You’re safe, you’re home.”  Princess carried Sarah up the stairs and we followed with the packages.  

“We went to Mitchell’s Department store and it was crowded, very crowded, so we split up, Connie and Rebekah went to the ladies, and Sarah and I went to the men’s department.  There was Christmas music playing and I usually enjoy this time of year, but people seemed, I don’t know,” Mrs. Williams paused and searched for the right word, “out of it, distracted.  A lot of them had their phones with them and you get used to them just stopping in front of you and blocking your way as they zone out, but the people I noticed didn’t have phones and they would just stop and stare into space.  And Sarah said some of them gave her a bad feeling.”

“There was a sound, too.” Sarah lifted her head up from Princess’s shoulder.  “But it wasn’t a squeeee like the zombie sound, it was more grindy, like a bbzzzzzzz.” 

“I heard it too, but it was more like I felt it.” Rebekah said.  “Like she said it was grindy, it’s hard to explain.”  She stacked pairs of mens jeans on the couch by size. 

“At first I thought it was loud in there, it’s Christmas, there were a lot of people, music was playing, but then a lady started talking on her cell phone and I realized the people around were all quiet.  I didn’t see or hear anyone carrying on a conversation or laughing, it seemed the loudness was in my head.”  Connie stacked flannel shirts by size and placed them beside the jeans.  “Maybe that’s what they mean by grindy, like a buzz in your head.”

“Bbzzzzzz,” Sarah demonstrated. 

“I had trouble concentrating, too.  I had a list, I knew what we needed, but I would find myself zoning out, not staring into space, but it felt dream like.  You know how in a dream you can be eating an ice cream cone one second and then the next you’re on a battleground and it’s completely normal because it’s a dream?  Well I was looking at packages of underwear, and the next thing I knew I had left the lingerie department and was standing in front of a wall of jeans.  I looked down in my cart, and I had picked up the underwear, but I had no memory of it or of moving on through the store.  I can honestly say that that has never happened to me before.”  Connie dumped the packages of undergarments on the couch and began separating them.  “It was quite disconcerting.”

“Tell me about the bad feelings you had,” Princess asked Sarah.

“It wasn’t like when the monsters were coming, and it wasn’t like when the men in black came.”  She screwed up her face searching for a way to describe the feeling.  “We went to the zoo once, and Bekah and I were looking at the lions.  There was glass between the lions and us, but when one of the lions roared and I saw how big his mouth was, I knew he could eat me with only one bite. I knew he couldn’t get through the glass to get me, but it was still scary.  It was like that.”

“So it was like deadheads on the other side of the glass instead of lions?” Princess raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah, kinda,” Sarah climbed down out of Princess’s arms and opened one of the bags that held clothes for her and Rebekah.

“Well, they weren’t staring into space at the grocery store,” Moonshine said.  “They were staring at us like they were in some kind of trance, like the zombie trance.  As weird as it sounds I wondered if they knew what we had done in Arlington, I wondered if they could see it on us somehow.”

“I know, I kept checking to make sure we weren’t armed, or didn’t have blood and guts on us, or hadn’t mistakenly worn our zombie fighting suits,” I said.

“How many of these zoning out events did you see,” Sully asked Mrs. Williams.

“Three or four.  Yes, it was four times.”

“And Sarah, how many times did you get the bad feelings?”  Sully said.

Sarah admired the red velvet dress she held against her chest and answered without looking up.  “Four.” 

“What do you know, dude?”  Moonshine pulled the tags off a shirt with his teeth.

“Nothing yet.  We’ll see how the others made out.”  He picked up a cardigan sweater with leather patches on the elbows and smiled at Mrs. Williams.  “I take it this is for me?”

“I couldn’t resist.”  She smiled. 

Princess looked at me and winked.  And for a moment all the stress, fear, paranoia, and uncertainty fell away and for a moment everything was right and in focus and for a moment I think we all felt hope.  For a moment it was Christmas and we were one big and happy family.  But the moment was brief and reality rebounded as the rest of our group returned from town and reported much the same things we’d experienced.

“Will and I went to the library, I wanted to get on the computer especially after what Binks had said about all our media being controlled.  I wanted to see what I had missed or if I’d find different things in a search from the library than I would a search from here on the wi-fi.”  Rotten opened a beer and sat on the couch.  “Anyway, the computers were busy, surprising how many people were there, lots of kids, so I picked up the local newspaper.  There was an article about the most recent earthquake and how it had been felt all the way to the coast, not as strong as the Blacksport earthquake that was felt in five states.  It mentioned that several families evacuated from the outlying areas of Blacksport and Freemont had relocated here after they lost everything in the disaster.  There was also a phone number and website where you could donate to help them get back on their feet.”

“I just wandered around.” Will held up a t-shirt with a superman logo on the front.  “I don’t think this will fit Sully.”  He laughed.  “There was some kind of weird buzz in there, like all the white noise in a building from the lights, computers, printers, and all the electric stuff was tuned to the same irritating frequency, it was grindy.”

“Bbzzzzz.”  Sarah twisted back and forth, still holding the dress, and watched the ruffles dance around her knees.

“Yeah, like that.”  Will picked up a batman t-shirt and smiled.  “Thanks, y’all.” 

“I only saw one person acting like they were in a trance, but I was reading the back issues of the paper,” Rotten said.  “And then a computer freed up and I got on.  I was searching back in the news to see what we’d missed and there wasn’t as much coverage of the first earthquake as we believed, so Binks was right, all that looping and continuous footage was just for us inside the dead zone.  Out in the world there were a lot of articles for one day and then not much of nothing; we were replaced by a shooting in LA.  A cop shot a kid in the street.  Over a hundred thousand people dead and it had the nation’s attention for just a day or so.  Oh, and remember those videos we watched at Grady’s?  Those zombies all over the world videos?  Yeah, none of them exist, except one clip and it’s from some B horror flick no one’s seen before. ”

“I think I saw a couple people zoning out, but it was hard to tell with the people sitting at the computers because they usually have that zoned out look.” Will picked up the backpack set with his clothes and checked out the pockets. 

“We had people staring at us,” Beth said.  “Had me downright jumpy.”

“We just walked around downtown, there weren’t a lot of businesses open, I guess they close in winter, but we got some coffee and went to the drug store.”  Highland dumped a half a dozen prepaid cell phones on the counter.  “I saw the girl serving our drinks freeze up for a couple seconds at the grinder, and another lady in the drug store stopped and stared at us with that blank look.”

“I been thinking and my question is why zombies?”  Sully said.  “We haven’t really talked about it, which is odd in itself, but we did see some kind of spaceship take off the other night.  It was the aliens after all, Michael.”  He smiled.  “So why zombies?  If mean if they wanted to kill us it sure seems that they possess the capability and the technology to kill everyone of us, but instead they turn us into zombies?”  He shook his head.  “I think the zombies are just a waste product left from the real experiment, which is to create a perfectly controllable human and I think they know how, but it doesn’t work with everyone.  I suppose whatever is inside of us that makes us human rebels, so maybe they get one or two from every five hundred zombies and then maybe they just seed them back into society for future use.”

“It is weird how we’ve barely mentioned seeing a mother ship appear, float, flip, and disappear.” Rotten agreed.   “That sure doesn’t happen everyday.  And when I saw the damned thing was shaped like a pyramid, you know, the most used example of the illuminati conspiracy, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.  Such a ridiculous cliché and I felt they were rubbing it in my face.  A pyramid.”  He sighed and rolled his eyes.  

“You cried, bro,” Moonshine said.  “But I didn’t see a pyramid, I saw the Borg ship from
Star Trek
.”

“I saw the Litchfield building slowly flipping the penthouse upright.”  Princess looked at me.  “What did you see?”

“The
Langoliers
, those pylons that hold electrical wires, on a mountain,” I said.

“I saw the monolith from
2001: A Space Odyssey
,” Highland said.

“I saw the death star from
Star Wars
,” Sully said.

“I saw the twin towers,” Mrs. Williams said.

“I saw the space ship from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.”  Connie raised her brows. 

“I saw the hotel from
The Shining
, me and my dad watched that movie a few weeks ago,” Will said.

“I saw Ariel’s castle from
The Little Mermaid
, but it was dark and scary looking,” Sarah said.

“I saw the witch’s tower from
The Wizard of Oz
,” Rebekah said.

“I saw a really big cruise ship, those things scare the crap out of me,” Beth said.

“So none of us know what we saw or what it really looked like?”  Rotten’s eyes were wide and for a second I thought he was about to cry again.  “Did we all see it flip?”