The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (44 page)

He’d tried calling from his office–twice in the morning and once again twenty minutes ago, a final frantic attempt to reach her; the phone rang and rang and rang, the receiver slick in his hand, and he’d forced himself to stay on the line, let it ring even as he heard screams and panicked footsteps in the hallway, coming closer, but he couldn’t hang up, he had to warn her, and just as he decided the next ring would drive him absolutely fucking insane, Tommy the security guard and the cannibal nurse had exploded through his doorway, grappling and screeching, and he’d tried to rescue Tommy.

Danielle, please
, he thought in the car now.
Please be safe.

If only he had a cell phone.

Ha. That’s funny. I’ll tell Danielle when I get home, she’ll laugh, we’ll both laugh, just please, Delle, be safe… be safe be safe be safe.

‘
Fuck!
’ he roared, the frustration scrubbing his throat raw.

On the dashboard the speedometer rocketed high above a hundred, Marco’s foot an infinite weight on the pedal, and
the Audi darted in and out of lanes, splitting gaps between slower cars. The Superstition Mountains towered in the distance, looking hazy and unreal–the throne of some mythological king, the god of a doomed dreamscape–and if ever Marco wanted to wake from a nightmare, the time was right fucking now.

And then he was exiting the highway, hurtling into the Gold Canyon, his neighbourhood, his street. At the base of his driveway the iron gate took an eternity to open; he mashed the button on his remote ten times like rapid fire before finally flooring the gas. The Audi bounded through the still-opening gate, snapping the side-view mirror off with a shrill plastic
crack.
The tyres scrabbled up the cobblestone; his nostrils bristled with the smell of burnt oil.

He jounced to a stop in the circular turnaround.

Danielle’s car wasn’t there.

He blinked at the empty kerb where she normally parked, as if he could possibly be mistaken, as if by some trick of light her car was there and he’d simply missed it at first glance. But no, the car was gone. A hundred harmless reasons could explain it–and yet his stomach plunged like a rock to the bottom of a cold lake.

Oh god
…

And then he was running towards the front door with no recollection of having left the Audi, except his keychain was in his hand, the house key jangling in a panic.

He burst into the foyer. ‘
Delle!
’

His voice rang against the plaster walls, ricocheted to the high ceiling.

No answer.

He called again up the stairwell and then with a head-rush ducked into the living room, braced for the sight of her mangled body on the hardwood floor. Nothing. No broken windows, no puddles of blood. The furniture was neat and
even, facing the front door for undistorted chi flow; Danielle had hired a feng shui consultant their first month in the house. He trampled through the room, a stampede of negative emotion, hollering her name.

‘
Delle!
’

In the hall mirror, he glimpsed himself–terror-eyed, his face and neck smeared with Tommy’s bloody handprints, his shirt red and wet like a butcher’s apron. Frightened of his own image, he turned into the kitchen. Empty. The back door shut, the glass intact. Clean dishes stacked on a dish towel beside the stainless steel sink. The counter…

The counter.

A blue square of paper lay on the island countertop, perfectly centred atop the mosaic chips of orange and sienna and brown tiles. A note.

He snatched it up.

Henry
, it said, in Danielle’s soft hand. The ink delicate and purple.

I have to get out.

He frowned and re-read it, knowing even before he continued what those words meant, what this note was about to tell him; she must have written it this morning, when the world was still normal–and his impulse was to crumple it, fling it to the kitchen floor before it destroyed him, before it ripped him apart, killed him more hideously than any dead cannibal ever could…

His hands shook uncontrollably. The paper rustled. He read the note:

There was more, but he stopped reading.
Trish.
Her sister.

With a cry he crammed the note into his pocket and pounced at the phone, punched numbers frantically as if he were disabling a bomb.

Two rings… three…

Benjamin’s voice answered, shaken and half whispering. ‘Hello?’

‘Ben! Is Danielle there?’

‘Henry? Jesus Christ! Are you seeing this shit—’

‘
Danielle!
’ Marco yelled, losing control. ‘Is she with you there?’

‘What? No… no, it’s just us. Trish says are you—’

The phone crashed to the orange tiled floor. Marco was
already running, down the hall, into the foyer, out through the door, diving into the Audi. The tyres howled as he stomped the gas, and the car shot across the cobblestones. Back into the dying world.

He sped west along the Superstition Freeway, towards Scottsdale. The madness had spread, he could see that much; below the highway, legions of dead men and women marched the streets like a parade out of hell, wicked grins on their greyish faces. They lumbered on stiff legs, knees unbending.
Rigor mortis
, he judged. The facial muscles and limbs were contracting violently. Maybe they’d just fall down, not get up…?

Keep wishing. Nothing’s that easy.

He glued his attention to the highway, desperate for the sight of Danielle’s blue Honda ahead. Twice he saw her…
wrong,
not her, goddamn it, just some similar-looking car, some other driver speeding away to die their own unique death.

He ditched the highway in Scottsdale, blazing past dead pedestrians, more and more on every goddamn corner; Phoenix had spilled over, or maybe new waves were breaking out spontaneously everywhere. As he shot down a side street, he encountered a savage commotion outside his right window–a man on a bicycle had been tackled by a pack of the monsters. The doomed man lay pinned to the ground, still seated on his bike, still frantically pedalling as the dead tore at him, ripped his shirt and his skin to moist, rubbery bits.

Marco’s foot touched the brake pedal. Then returned to the gas. Nothing he could do. His face itched madly with sweat and crusted blood.
Nothing… stay focused
…

Six miles from Trish’s house, he whitened.

Danielle’s car.

He hit the brakes hard, and the tyres locked, and the Audi slid to a stop. In his mind he instinctively understood that
what happened now–these next crucial seconds–would haunt him again a thousand times in his nightmares, and deep inside he felt his subconscious buck in pain. He emerged dazed to the street and stumbled towards the Honda, in a trance, the asphalt sucking at his feet like mud–all this, too, burned forever into his muscle memory. His ears buzzed, as if his fear were audible.

No

Her car sat crashed halfway up the kerb, the hood crumpled around a splintered telegraph pole, that goddamn stupid licence plate
YIN
•
YANG
…

No no no

Bloody brown handprints on the open doors, the engine still hissing…

No no no fuck fuck fuck

He peered into the trashed driver’s seat. Soaked with guts, torn loops of intestine, half a bitten liver. The floor mats submerged in blood an inch deep. But no Danielle.

Delle…

A trail of red footprints exited the car, crossed the sidewalk and into the scrub.

Into the barren desert.

She’d left him.

In the prison lab Marco coughed and sputtered, his mouth sour with the acid aftertaste of vomit; at last he reeled in a full satisfying breath, and time kick-started forward again. His vision had dimmed, gone grey in the previous seconds, and suddenly colour came flooding back, and the room reanimated with agonising clarity. There was Wu, standing rigidly beside the operating table, his left arm wrapped in brown-red bandages, his green eyes darting between Marco
and the vaccine in its place on the wall rack–as if he were debating two choices, weighing each carefully in the hidden rooms of his mind.

And there was Ballard, still slumped against the medical fridge. Whispering to himself in that unnerving half-voice of his, the mumbled secret language that Marco remembered from his last days at the hospital. Roger Ballard–the most intelligent human Marco had ever met, reduced to this gibbering, mad, pathetic figure.

I’m sorry, Roger.

The thought flipped over in Marco’s mind like a card in a magic trick, surprising, impossible. But there it was, undeniable.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry this happened.

To me, to you. To Hannah. To Danielle. To all of us.

Four lives linked–a chain reaction triggered by the same catalyst, a single spark igniting four infernos. Hannah’s birth asphyxia had been the horrible weight thrust upon them all. They were like pack animals, each of them–overloaded, overburdened–and, although they’d fought bravely, they’d each finally collapsed in the end, their eyes bugging and tongues out, into the dry dust. Hannah was the first to fall. Then Marco and Danielle.

And now Roger. They’d all done what they could–and failed.

Seeing Roger now, so broken and miserable, suddenly devastated Marco. He felt the chambers of his heart flood with empathy, his love for Hannah and Danielle billowing outwards like a flame doused with gasoline, reaching further and further until it encompassed Ballard, too. He loved Roger, loved him for suffering, for self-destructing, for mourning Hannah in this fucked-up hell to which he’d damned himself.
A funhouse mirror version of me.
The words Marco had once used to describe Roger, and it was true. Roger
was
an extension of him–warped sadder, crazier, more obsessed
with the need to know
why
this had gone wrong.

He could forgive Roger for that.

‘Roger,’ Marco said hoarsely. ‘Roger, we have to get out of here.’

Ballard offered no response. From inside the fridge, the chilled corpse kicked again at the door; Ballard patted the glass like a parent pacifying a child.

Marco threw Wu a glance, then frowned. The sergeant seemed different somehow. His face looked…
sharper
now, his cheekbones more defined, his jaw rigid. The temperature in his eyes had dropped–cold again like the first morning in Maricopa.

Unsettled, Marco turned his attention back to Ballard. ‘Roger.’

Ballard ignored him.

Marco approached gently until he stood beside his old friend. He spoke with a calm assurance. ‘Roger. You did great here.’

Ballard’s muttering halted in mid-vocal, and he seemed to emerge from some deep basement of himself, unsteady, blinking into the light. He removed his glasses and, rubbing the lens with his tie, met Marco’s gaze, his sunken eyes slightly out of focus. ‘Oxygen, Henry,’ he said weakly. ‘The problem is oxy—’

‘I know, Roger. You’ll figure it out, but not here. We have to
go.
’ Nervous, Marco checked the flickering video monitor; the hallway into the infirmary was still a wild riot of corpses, body upon body jammed against the barred door. His spirits lowered. No easy exit. ‘Is there another way?’ he prompted Ballard.

‘Henry.’ Ballard’s crooked lip twitched. ‘Have you forgiven me?’

Marco tensed, stunned, afraid of his own answer. And then his cheeks warmed.

‘Yes,’ he said. The word rode from him on a beautiful chariot of air–a breath he suddenly felt he’d been holding for minutes, for months, for years.

Ballard’s taut face softened. He nodded, relieved, and returned his glasses to the hump of his nose. ‘I’m glad,’ he remarked. ‘Progress, yes, Henry?’

Marco cleared his throat. ‘Progress.’

The men regarded one another, appeased.

‘So,’ Marco said. ‘Are you coming, Roger?’

Ballard’s eyes closed, and he inhaled deeply and long, and Marco could almost see inside his mind, a reverie of blue skies and green grass, the open country. Life outside the torture chamber he’d built for himself. And then Roger snapped awake.

‘Yes,’ he concluded. ‘I’ll come with you. I will. If you don’t mind waiting here, you and the sergeant, I’ll gather my notes, and the vaccine of course—’

SWACK.

A silver blur struck from Marco’s right, so fast he had no time to react, no time to intercept or deflect its trajectory. He could only flinch as Ballard’s throat split apart, two rubbery pink flaps, top and bottom. For a befuddled instant the wound grinned horribly like a mutant mouth, and then Ballard gurgled and clutched his neck, a grisly red waterfall cascading over his thin fingers. Marco gawked, stunned, terror rising as he absorbed what had just happened.

No…