This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (31 page)

Oliver paused a moment and then steamed toward Jack and her son across the grass. She stood her ground, arms crossed in front of her chest. “What was
that
?”

“I told him to go away,” Oliver said. “I don’t know how long that will last.” His eyes searched hers. “I was right to get you to move into my house. That thug was casing your place.”

“He didn’t seem particularly mad at you,” Jack said.

“He wants me dead,” Oliver said. “He had the rifle.”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“He was here to check us out.”

Us?
she thought.
Is there really an us?

“He was here to intimidate. Bently wants us to know he hasn’t forgotten.”

“Are you playing us?” Jack asked, watching the old man’s eyes.
 

“Of course not!”

“I’m trusting you, not because I’m sure I can but because I have no other choice.”

“I let you move into my house so you’d be safe! I am protecting you.”

“That better be true, Douglas.”

Jaimie pulled his mother away. Oliver stared after them, hands on hips.
 

The boy looked back at the old man, staring back, directly into Oliver’s eyes. Something wormed and wriggled in the old man’s bowels and he felt the sudden urge to urinate. His heart skipped a beat. Oliver felt a moment’s disorientation, like not quite enough oxygen could find its way to his brain.

Jaimie’s eyes were black stones from a cold alien planet. The old man felt a touch of fear.

When they come for us, hungry and red

“W
e have to go out on a mission,” Oliver announced.

Jack and Theo looked up together, surprised to find the old man standing at the entry to the living room.
 

“Still my house,” he said. Then, suddenly embarrassed by his own forthrightness, added, “Sorry if I intruded. I shoulda knocked.”

Theo gestured for Oliver to sit but the old man paced instead. “There’s more smoke to the southwest,” he said. “New smoke.”

“We’ve been discussing possibilities,” Jack said coolly.
 

The old man stopped and smiled. “It’s a bugger to figure out what we should take and how much of what. I mean, can we find gas along the way or should we just take as many gas cans as we can pack into and onto the van and just go with that?”

Theo shrugged. “I hope it doesn’t come to that…where we have to decide to abandon our home. Leaving it to go across the street has been enough of a hassle. I’m feeling a bit better and Jack and I were just discussing moving back home.”
 

He looked to his wife. Jack had already told him about spotting Oliver talking with Bently. The old man, it seemed, was trying to proceed as if that hadn’t happened.

“I hope we don’t have to leave, either,” Oliver said. “I’m no farmer, but your farm might be the best option, Theo. Still, there’s an awful lot of smoke in the city, and dry woods and lots of wood houses between here and Maine for that matter…”

“Pray for rain,” Theo said. “And it’s my
father’s
farm. It’s been a long time since I was there. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in.”

“But it’s remote, right?”

“As much as anything can be, I suppose…” Theo ended with a hacking cough and brought up something green and red and black into a rag. They had run out of tissues days ago.

Oliver continued, ignoring the interruption. “Remote is good. There are other farms that are much closer, no doubt, but with so many people pouring out of the cities, they’ll be headed to the rural areas. I don’t imagine whoever is left will be welcoming.”

“We could find a farm close by.” Jack squeezed Theo’s hand as he struggled to sit up and clear his lungs.

“I don’t think so. The farms will be overrun with gangs of city-dwellers looking for a safe place and taking what they want by force. I wonder how many little wars are going on as we speak, surviving farmers on one side, hungry refugees on the other?”

Oliver allowed the enormity of his suggestion sink in. He looked shocked when Jack Spencer shook her head. “Are we going to talk about Bently?” she asked.

“What is there to talk about?”

“The way you were talking to him…you looked casual about it.”

“I told him to go away.”

“He had a rifle in his bicycle basket but he didn’t use it on you.”

“Maybe he didn’t have any bullets. Maybe he realized I’m an old alpha dog and he shouldn’t fuss with me.”

Jack turned to her husband on the couch. “That’s a lot of maybes in a short space of time.”

“Jacqueline, what have I done that is so suspicious? The last we met Bently, I socked him in the face with cans of food to make him go away. The next time you see him, I’m telling him to go away. What else is there?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“I think I’ve taken you into my home to protect you from him. Your family is safe here. I’ve done nothing but care for you people. If we’re going to survive this thing, we have to work together. Don’t you agree?”

Theo cleared his throat and spit into his rag again. “We’re grateful, Douglas. And yes, we will have to work together. Just so we all understand each other, everybody has to work together, right? Us with you…and you with us.”

“Of course. Which brings us to pressing business. I’m thinking of a proactive venture to solidify our alliance and get us a better chance of getting out of here. We need to go on a trip to the mall. A foraging mission. We should see what’s salvageable. You asked about bendy straws, for instance.”

Jack laughed in a climbing trill. “It’s kind of a risk just to get some straws, don’t you think? Besides, I thought the hordes had already cleaned out the mall.”
 

“Not everything is gone and it’s not about the straws specifically.” His guard slipped then and his irritation showed. “This is a
survival
situation. We need to do more reconnaissance and see what’s out there. We may find something we didn’t know we needed until we find it.”
 

He rearranged his face, aiming for reasonable and relaxed and not quite making it. “Besides, it’s only a few blocks and it’s for our tribe,” he said.

Jack and Theo looked at each other. “Tribe?”

“Look,” he said, “if we were suddenly transported to Gilligan’s Island with limited resources and hostile cannibals lurking around, you’d rearrange your priorities faster. You’d be thinking water, food, shelter, clothing. But we’re not marooned on an island. We’re in familiar houses while the ground changes beneath us. The worst that’s happened to you
personally
is a scary guy was rude to you, you moved in here and the power’s off.
 

“I’ve been fighting your inertia, trying to wake you up. If not for me, you’d be at the mercy of that hungry kook or you’d have burned through all your food by now. You’ve got to get out of your suburban self-satisfaction and get into survival mode, ’cause this is the rainy day everyone warns you about.”

“He’s right,” Anna descended the stairs, sat on the bottom step and hugged the bannister post. “Let’s go shopping. I can’t stay up in that room another minute. It’s time to take action and get more control over our situation.”

“I wouldn’t call it shopping, exactly, young lady,” Oliver said.

“Shopping. Looting. Whatever. Any excuse to go to the mall. Maybe we’ll find out what’s going on. Aren’t you just dying to find out what the hell’s going on? When I played soccer, the coach was always screaming that we had to assert, engage and attack to win. So let’s go win something.”

Jack stood. “Okay. Everybody who can carry something goes. Everyone else stays here and holds down the fort.” She looked at her husband meaningfully. “That’s you and Jaimie holding the fort.”

Anna shook her head. “Jaimie’s stronger than me and Mom put together.”

“Ah, fair youth,” Oliver said. “I was naturally strong when I was his age, too. We didn’t have gyms but for some reason we didn’t need them then.”
 

“He can carry heavy things just fine,” Anna assured her mother. “It’s the dictionaries that gives him those muscles.”

Anna pulled her mother aside. “I listened to the wind up radio early this morning.”

“Really? I gave up on it. When I first wound it up I thought it was kind of cool. Then winding it so often became too much of a bother.”

Anna gripped her arm harder. “Mom! Listen! I caught the end of a scary news report. It’s like London’s gone crazy.”

“We heard there were food riots. Supply lines to cities will be cut off — ”
 

“No! Worse than food riots. People attacking each other. The reporter said people were
eating
each other, Mom!”

“It’s hard to believe things could go that sour. Look, we’ve heard all kinds of rumours since this thing started. Who reported this?”

“I don’t know. The signal went in and out.”

“Those are called skips. It’s a trick of the atmosphere bouncing radio signals around.” Jack put an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “When I lived in Poeticule Bay as a girl, sometimes we caught skips of the Boston police radio on the stereo. If the atmosphere is just right, you can get anybody saying anything into a microphone. What you heard couldn’t have been from England, though. It was just a report of a report. The news has turned into an echo chamber. They sensationalize so much, we shouldn’t take what we hear too seriously.”

“This was real.” Anna looked as haunted as an old, broken house.

“Sweetie, on 9/11, rumours were reported as fact. First they said the attack on the Pentagon was a helicopter explosion. Everybody believed it. Then they said it was one of the planes. Then someone said it was a missile. Then we didn’t know what or who to believe anymore. Ever.”

“So, believe no one?”

“Believe me, Anna. We’re going to be okay. You know why? Because we’re going to assert, engage and attack our problems.”

Anna smiled. “Okay.”

Jack leaned closer and whispered, “But since you bring it up, don’t trust Mr. Oliver.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have real evidence, I suppose, but your dad and I have changed our minds about the old guy. We’ve decided to watch him more carefully. After this trip to the mall, and if the city’s fire burns itself out, I think we’ll move back home.”

Anna smiled wider. “I’m good with that. I want to sleep in my own bed. The one I’m in is lumpy.”

“Good. It’s decided then. And don’t worry. We’ll go to the mall and see what supplies we can find. If the old guy steps out of line, I’ll find some sweet and sour sauce packets in the food court and I’ll eat him myself, starting with his lying face.”

Don't bother hiding under the bed

O
liver, Jack, Anna and Jaimie left at five in the afternoon. “It’s only a few blocks, Theo,” Jack told him. “Have a nap and we’ll be right back.”

“Isn’t that what they say in every horror movie before something terrible happens?”

“Shut up, love. Sleep.”

Theo Spencer looked up at his wife, weary, but his eyes were brighter. “I love you, too.”

Jaimie tried to take his huge English dictionary but his sister took it from him gently. She held up his little paperback of Latin phrases and put it in the bottom of his school backpack. Jack and Anna’s backpacks remained empty. They hoped they would be able to pack them full of useful finds for the trip home.
 

The old man carried a long walking stick in one hand and the can of bear spray in the other. The spray was a short, fat yellow can fitted with a bright red nozzle and a trigger. A strap circled Oliver’s wrist so he couldn’t drop it. “Works on humans, too,” he said. “Like squeezing a skunk in their eyes. Very discouraging.”

The mall was only four blocks away. Jack and her children came to a halt at once as they came to the top of Miseracordia Drive where it spilled onto the thoroughfare that was Fanshawe Park Road.
 

A fire engine lay on its side up the street. It was a ladder truck and the longest ladder with a basket atop it splayed out in two lengths along the pavement. The forgotten machine looked like a broken dinosaur carcass.

“The ’40s and ’50s had the mushroom cloud. The ’60s had flower power and the rocket to the moon. The ’70s had disco, the ’80s and ’90s were run by a stock ticker, and the 2000s had the World Trade Center attack.” Oliver pointed with his chin toward the wreck. “There’s the new symbol of our time. Of course, it’s like the Bachman, Turner, Overdrive song title, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet’.”

“Who?” Anna asked.

“Don’t blaspheme, girl,” Oliver replied.

They walked on. But for the wreckage in the street, it was a lovely late spring day filled with birdsong. Tall, gray slab walls bordered the road on both sides. They were built to shield suburban homes from traffic noise. Fanshawe Park Road was a major east-west conduit along the north end of the city, but now there were no cars or trucks barreling through. Except for the abandoned emergency vehicle, the street stood empty.

The sound barrier walls, normally a long expanse of gray concrete, had become a riot of paint. Anna paused to admire an artful copy of the Christ on the cross marred by several illegible gang symbols. Another graffito was scrawled at regular intervals: Stay out of the X! Beside that was scrawled in another hand: Beware the Wolves!

The writing was a complete mystery to Jaimie. He saw no words. The writing was not uniform enough in its cursive and italic loops and lines for him to decipher. Each writer’s intent and character was too varied for him to read. Where the others saw messages sprayed on the walls, he saw only abstract pictures, ciphers impossible to decode.
 

His sister, mother and neighbor could read the messages, however, and he could tell by their auras that their moods were plummeting the farther they walked along the wall.

Anna chewed her lip and held Jaimie’s hand tighter. Repent! read one message in day-glo green. Someone else had written over that in blood red: Lord have mercy! and a third tagger had written below that, Obviously, God don’t care.

A little further on stood several memorials. “Olivia, you were a good wife,” read one. That was in white and, unlike the others, written large to fill the height of the wall for several concrete panels. The tribute had been painted with a wide brush by a tall man.