This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (25 page)

Trent’s face went red. “If he was okay, he could have crawled home by now. We’re driving down there to see if we can find him. Then we’re headed up to our cottage up north. You can come with us.”

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “That’s not happening. You are not going downtown and you
certainly
aren’t going anywhere with the Howsers.”

Anna held Trent tighter, her face in his neck.
 

“It’s in the woods,” Trent said, “not far from a big lake. There’s a wood stove for cooking. Dad was a boy scout. We’ll be fine up there, at least until things settle down. You’ll love it. We can go fishing and canoeing. It’ll be great! It’ll be safe. There are too many people around here. Have you heard the gunshots at night?”

Jack Spencer shook her head emphatically but a lump in her throat seemed to be getting in the way of her voice.

“Can my family come?” Anna said.

“No, no,” Gina called, shaking her head harder than Jack, as if they’d entered into a competition to see whose head would fall off first.
 

“
Mom!
We have room for them!”

“It’s a cottage, not an ark, Trent! If you’re coming, we have to go now.” Gina focussed on Jack and Theo. “My other son may be bleeding somewhere and we can probably make it to the cottage by dark if we hurry.”

Theo coughed and struggled to maintain his balance, pushing his voice past the razors in his throat. “You’re not taking my daughter on some fool’s errand,” he said. “Downtown is where the fires are.”

Anna looked at Theo. “Daddy — ”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said to Gina, “but there’s an excellent chance your other son is dead. If he’s not, he’ll find you. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but you’ve probably already lost Bob. I’m not going to risk losing my daughter while you go look for him. Look at the sky. The city to the south is on fire!”

“You wouldn’t let me go downtown alone on the bus when everything was peachy,” Anna said.

“I didn’t. You’re right. So you’re sure as hell not going anywhere now,” Jack replied.

“I’m going to find my son and we’ll make it to the cottage. We spend every weekend of the summer up there. We’ve got lots of friends there. It’ll be fine,” Gina said. “Staying
here
is the dangerous thing to do.”

“I could come,” Anna said to Trent. She looked to her mother. “Just until things blow over.”

“No,” Theo managed and then bent over, his hands on his knees, coughing hard. The coughing continued until he pulled his mask off and gasped, taking in fresh air.

“Jesus!” Jake Howser came to life, clawing at his door lock and bursting from the station wagon. “Get away!” he yelled. “Get away!”
 

Jake grabbed his son by the neck and pulled him back across the street toward their car. Gina grabbed something from her seat and rushed forward to join her husband. As she ran forward she tied a winter scarf around her face. She joined her husband in pulling Trent toward the car. Trent couldn’t decide whether to resist or let them take him. He reached toward Anna uselessly.
 

Theo collapsed to his knees, coughing more but bringing nothing up.

“Daddy!” Anna cried. She froze in a moment of indecision and then moved toward Trent.
 

“Sonofabitch!” Jack cried and sprang forward, leaving her husband to grab Anna’s arm.
 

“No! No!” Anna shouted. “Wait!” She almost squirmed away when Jaimie appeared behind her. The boy clamped his arms around his sister’s waist. She leaned back, pushing hard at Jaimie’s shoulders, surprised at his strength.

Anna’s mouth dropped open. Jaimie gazed straight into her eyes. She stopped struggling. He had never looked into her eyes. What she saw there made her a statue. Anna nodded at her brother, her mouth still hanging open. “O-oh,” she said.

Trent had broken free of his parents but Gina and Jake immediately fell on him again. His father grabbed Trent’s arm. His mother wrapped both of her legs around one of her son’s legs.

“Enough!” Anna yelled. “Family is family. Your family needs you and mine needs me. When they don’t, I’ll come back. Just wait. Everything is going to work out.” Her voice had a new strength and authority she had never shown.

Jack went back to Theo’s side and helped him to his feet. The spasms in his chest passed.

“G-good,” Theo said. “Plan B was I hose ’em all down with vomit.”

“Jaimie, c’mon,” Jack said. “Help me with your father.” She looked at her daughter a moment more, trying to decide if she’d run now that the way was clear to escape with her boyfriend. The look on Anna’s face told her she shouldn’t have worried. Mother mouthed to daughter, “I’m sorry.”
 

Anna gave a firm nod of acknowledgement.
 

Trent broke free and gave Anna one last long kiss as his parents climbed back in the SUV.

“C’mon! C’mon!” his father yelled and blasted the horn.

As far as Oliver’s front door, they could hear Gina tell her husband to shut up.
 

“That’s what happens when your wife is a ten and you’re a balding idiot, Jaimie,” Theo muttered. “Beware marrying a girl who’s out of your league. They’ll run your life and you’ll be grateful when they spit on you.”

“Oh, shut up,” Jack said.

Theo managed a smile at his son. “See? It’s a wonder we don’t all run away.”

Jaimie noted the similarity between the words “run” and “ruin” and wondered if they shared a common language root.
 

Anna stood on the sidewalk. She watched Trent drive away. When the car barrelled out of sight, she turned and walked back into Douglas Oliver’s house. Her head was full of what might have been. She wouldn’t let her parents see her cry. She was determined to hold back the floodgates until she got to her bed.

Anna closed the door behind her and pulled the covers over her head. For weeks she had done this. Each night, Anna had prayed to disappear. All she wanted to do was disappear into a world without the Sutr Virus.
 

But now something she couldn’t name had shifted within her. The set of her jaw was defiant and commanding. Anna mourned her boyfriend’s absence to be sure, but she felt different somehow. She was no longer a little girl lost to circumstance. She’d made a choice and she knew it was the correct one. She was stuck in Sutr World and if she was to see Trent again, she’d have to take her world back. She’d have to make a stand and fight for it.
 

“One day,” she promised herself, “I’ll find Trent again.” When he saw Anna, she wouldn’t be tied to her family, helping to protect her brother, mother and father. She’d be stronger. He might hardly recognize her, but he’d love what he saw.

Anna looked out over Miseracordia Drive and surveyed a few stragglers on three-wheeled bicycles pedalling up the street. She studied the sky. The wind had shifted away from them. The dark cloud reflected a red glow from the flames of the city beneath, but the roads east would soon be engulfed in flame. A wall of flame was not coming to take her home at the moment, but the Spencers would have to head north beyond the fires before they could begin the trek east.

“They haven’t needed me, but they will,” she said. Anna spoke to herself for a long time, plotting the journey in her mind. “It’s time to be Batgirl or Tomb Raider or something.” Tears slipped down her smooth cheeks, but the set of her jaw was still grim and defiant.

The girl didn’t see the curtain move in the front window of the Bendham house. None of the Spencers knew they were being watched from behind lace curtains by anxious, prying eyes.
 

It wasn’t just old Mrs. Bendham who spied on them. It was Bently, too. He sat in the old lady’s rocker and watched the girl stand at the upstairs window.

Bently stared and rocked, waiting for the signal, with a big yellow-toothed grin.

Human sacrifice and bloody ritual

W
hen Douglas Oliver came through Mrs. Bendham’s front door, Bently straightened at his post in the rocking chair. “Spencer is still up and moving around I see. Too bad you still have an extra mouth to feed over there.”

“Go out the back and over the fence behind the pool,” Oliver said. “Don’t come back until after dark and bring me more gas. I’m worried about the wind shift. In case the wind shifts again, we’re going to need a lot of fuel to get where we’re going.”

Bently stood, his legs braced straight. “If we bug out, where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you when the time comes. Now get to work! Can’t you smell the smoke? If we have to leave, that changes the variables. Go be useful.”

Bently stalked out. Oliver caught his angry look but let it pass. He needed Bently and men like him, at least for now.
 

When he turned, Mrs. Bendham stood in her bedroom doorway. Pale, she leaned against the doorframe listlessly. The old woman had lost enough weight that her second chin was gone.

“Marjorie. Have a seat. You look tired.”

“I don’t know why. I’ve been sleeping for hours. Before the plague, I never slept enough. Now I feel like I’m catching up on the sleep debt of a lifetime, but I never feel rested. When I wake up, the sheets are twisted around me and I’m soaked in sweat.”

“Dark in here. Maybe we need to make it cheerier.” Oliver turned the dowel on the Venetian blinds, lighting the living room.
 

“Your man couldn’t keep watch like that so we kept the blind closed.”

“I know.”

“How is it he’s your man, anyway?”

Oliver sat on her couch. A chunk of salty cured meat sat on her glass coffee table, leaving a stain of grease. Flats of bottled water lay before him on the floor. He pulled a TV tray closer and propped one leg up on a short stack of water bottles.
 

Oliver pulled a leather bag and a small sheet of black felt from his jacket pocket. He turned the bag over to reveal jewels of many colors. He examined each one and sorted them carefully.
 

“That’s a good question, Marjorie. If Bently were smarter, maybe he wouldn’t work for me. However, he’s still caught up in the remnants of the old economy. Pieces of fancy paper don’t matter anymore. People are still attached to the values of a month ago.” He gestured to the rings, earrings and necklaces and began sorting each piece by type: Gold, diamonds, and other gems.
 

He reached down and chewed the meat slowly, as he pondered the gems. She couldn’t tell if he was savoring the taste of the meat or admiring his collection, but he looked satisfied in a way that made her uncomfortable.
 

Oliver caught her look, too. He didn’t miss much. “Marjorie, people should value what they can use and what they can eat. However, I convinced Bently that the principles of the old economy still have value. Well, the ancient economy, really. Trading really hasn’t changed in thousands of years, whether it’s Spanish gold, Indian spices or animal pelts. For years, hucksters have been selling bars of silver and urging people to stash gold away in case the government collapsed. Heh. They still think they can eat gold, maybe. Jewels are portable, but soon? I think a lot of people will give up every piece of gold they have for one goat. The trouble will come when the guy with the goat asks himself why he needs another gold ring.”

“So why do you have all these gold rings, then?”

He smiled. “Because not everybody wises up at the same time. If they did, there’d be no commerce at all.” Oliver pointed at the boxes of water bottles, “I’m preparing for the shift in values. The next economy will be trading cans of food that aren’t expired yet. The next economy after that? Finding someone who is still alive who is a blacksmith. Carpenters are going to be rich again after being devalued for years. The richest man in any town won’t be a politician or somebody who wants to be a boss. It’s the dentists and doctors who will become really wealthy.”

Oliver surprised her by pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and fishing a lighter out of his pants pocket.

“I didn’t know you smoked. I’ve never seen you smoke. Please don’t smoke in my house.”

Oliver ignored her and pulled a cigarette from the pack. He flicked the lighter’s wheel a couple of times and a tiny flame sprouted. He lit his cigarette and took a long drag. “I did quit. I quit for years. I was worried about my health. I was so worried these things would be the death of me someday. But I’m old and I survived the Sutr Virus. It feels like it’s reasonable to relax some old standards of behavior, don’t you think? Live a little. Take more risks. The rules have changed. Our life expectancy isn’t so good, anyway, especially the fewer of us there are. Time to stop and smell the deadly nicotine and cancer-causing chemical agents once in a while. What do you say? Nobody lives forever. Spit in the devil’s eye, Marjorie.” He held the cigarette pack out to her.
 

The old woman ignored the offer and gathered her housecoat around her, hugging herself. “I heard Bently say we still have another mouth to feed over there. What did he mean by that?”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” He looked up at her as he tore another hunk of the meat with his teeth. He reached for a bright yellow nylon rope and wound it between his shoulder and his elbow in a neat oval. “I’m the one building the tribe so as many of us as possible get to live. Don’t pay attention to Bently. Bently shouldn’t talk at all.”

Mrs. Bendham looked at the floor and hugged herself harder. “I’m sure you’ll save as many of us as possible.”
But especially you,
she thought. She walked to the kitchen.
 

She opened the refrigerator door. The old woman had lost track of the number of times she had opened and closed that door. Was it twelve or thirteen times since the power went off? Each time she looked in, she found the same few rectangles of stale cheese and some expired packets of plum sauce and catsup from a forgotten take-out order.
 

A fat bottle of green relish still squatted on the top shelf — “hot dog-slop,” Al had called it. It was still cool to the touch. Her husband had loved it.
 

“Be sure to gimme that hot dog-slop, Margie,” he’d always say when they ate the soy frankfurters that were supposed to be better for you but tasted like cardboard. He’d say, “I loves me my Marge and hot dog-slop and the Mets.” Then he’d add, “And when the Mets crap out on me, I’ll always have my Margie and the hot dog-slop and the Yankees! I love ’em all with relish!”