This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (7 page)

“And Ellen?” Sinjin-Smythe had met Dr. Ellen Harper in person at a symposium on clostridium two years previously in New York. He had fond memories of Dr. Harper introducing him to Manhattan’s nightlife. If Ava hadn’t swooped in on him at the same conference, it might be Ellen working with him in Cambridge instead.

“The Manitoba node remains green, but nothing new there. Go do that autopsy and get back to me with the histologicals ASAP, Craig. Tell me something new.”

* * *

In the isolation unit, Dr. Ava Keres had turned off the safeties, the backups and alarms. She entered the room that held the doomed rats and hurried to the tenth cage. Bogart lay on the bottom of the cage, battered and weakened from his attacks. “I’ve waited years to meet you,” she said, “and now you’re finally here.”

She slipped off her thick glove, unlocked the rat cage and thrust her bare hand at the rat. It was weak, but it snapped its jaws immediately. The infected rat’s teeth sunk into the web between her thumb and forefinger. The pain was exquisite, but brief. She shook off the animal, closed the cage and retreated, holding her wounded hand tight to her swollen belly.
 

Dr. Keres had signed out of the lab at the security checkpoint and was in a taxi headed for Piccadilly Circus before Craig Sinjin-Smythe was finished talking to the CDC’s Sutr virus vaccine coordinator.

When Sinjin-Smythe returned to the lab, he was puzzled that his fiancee was not at her desk. Another fifteen minutes went by before he checked the ladies’ washroom. She wasn’t there. He tried calling, but Ava did not answer her cell.

Dr. Ava Keres had disappeared into a noon-day crowd to spread the virus before he found the handwritten note on her desk:

Craig,

Words are important. Keres is not my real name, but it was chosen for me long ago. Keres is from Greek mythology. It’s a female spirit of violent death: Death in battle, by accident, murder or terrible disease. Today marks the end of all your First World problems.

We are strong.
 

We are coming.
 

You deserve us.
 

The chaos in every day you have left will be so scintillating.

We make history and a new future.

Season 1, Episode 2

He knows where you live.

Everyone thinks the worst will come for someone else.

~ Notes from The Last Cafe

Here we sit in The Cafe of Despair

D
r. Craig Sinjin-Smythe stood, chewing a knuckle as he made the call. After a few rings, Dr. Dan Merritt, the Sutr Virus Task Force coordinator for the CDC, picked up his private line.

“Craig? I didn’t expect you to call me back so soon. Surely you don’t have the histological report already?”

“Something’s wrong, Dan.”

“You should be calling on the secure line, Craig. That’s what it’s for.”

“Ava’s gone.”

“Ava’s
dead
?”

“No. Gone. As in, out of the bloody building. Security says she left in a taxi. I can’t raise her on her phone.”

“What are you telling me, Craig?”

“She disabled the alarms and safeties and she left a note.”

“A note? What does the note say? Fractured safety protocols and off for a nap? Tra-la-la! Back by tea time?”

“The note says…it’s not good, Dan. It suggests this is a Level One.”

“You know what this means. Did you go into lockdown? Are you in the isolation unit now, doctor?”

“Maybe it’s not as bad as we think! The rat is still in its cage. Bogart, er…number ten is right where I left him.”

“She disabled the safeties, Craig. Level One is our Defcon One. I’m sorry, but it’s a breach.”

“Can’t we talk about this? They went to Defcon Three on 9/11. Surely…Dan…this is Ava we’re talking about. Don’t call it a breach!”

“Done is done, Craig. You know it’s not up to me. Interpol is listening. They’re undoubtedly already on their way.”

There was a pause. Each man could hear the other breathing.
 

Finally, Merritt said, “Dr. Sinjin-Smythe. It’s been an honor serving with you. I’m sorry, but you’ve gone from green to red.”

“
Don’t!
There are innocent people still in the other isolation uni— ”

Behind Sinjin-Smythe, the innocuous black glass building at the edge of the Cambridge campus exploded into a bright fireball. Hell opened and thundered into the sky. The doctor fell flat and covered his head with his big leather briefcase as shattered glass and debris fell around him.

Screams from bystanders went up first. Then sirens. Before the first ambulance arrived, Craig Sinjin-Smythe was already blocks away, removing the battery from his cell phone as he ran.

* * *

The woman in red found a comfortable seat in an empty pub just off Piccadilly Circus. Despite the warnings, plenty of people wandered about outside in the sunshine. There were no tourists — they had all rushed home before the airlines were grounded. However, Londoners came and went, tired of their government’s requests that they stay indoors to avoid spreading the flu.

The woman sat, waiting. She didn’t have to wait long. A man in an ill-fitting, black leather jacket sauntered in and sat beside her. He ordered a Heineken.
 

“Buy a lady a drink?”

The man glanced down her body. “Pardon me for saying so, but a person in your condition shouldn’t be drinking, should they?”

She shrugged. “It’s the best time. The baby isn’t going to make it. And I just left my fiancee this morning.”

“Oh, my god!” the man said. He handed her his beer. “You’ve had it, haven’t you, love? Beastly! He couldn’t handle losing the baby, is that it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re not wrong. Always is.”

“Thank you for the beer. I think I’ll drink this. Then I’ll chew on something. Then I’ll switch to Fosters. What’s your name?”

“Pete. Pete Grimsby.” He offered his hand and, as she extended hers, he pulled back. “Oh, that’s a nasty cut, you have there.” He looked at her hand and grimaced. “It’s not your day at all, is it?”

“A pet bit me. It’s fine. Do you have a big family, Pete?”

“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. Since the plague, what with the economy, I lost my job. We’re all packed in tight in one house. Had to get away to preserve my sanity.” The man glanced at her swollen belly again and squirmed in his seat. “S’cuse me. It’s bad form to be complaining to you about family right now, isn’t it?”

She patted his hand. “No worries. None at all anymore.”

He withdrew his hand discreetly and raised it to get the bartender’s attention. “Have a cold Fosters ready for the lady, Kenny!” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, most of us lost our jobs. I got a couple of brothers — Leland and Vannever — in the police. They support the rest. If not for them, things would be dire.”

“I see.”

“In times like these, well…any chance you going back to your man?”

“None.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t have to do anything anymore. I’ll do as I please.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’ve been doing research for years. I’m going into education next.”

“Teaching, you mean? What will you teach?”

She smiled. “I’ll show you.” She pointed to her throat. “Kiss me gently, here.”

Pete straightened in his chair. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Darlin’, you’ve had a tough morning. It wouldn’t be very gentlemanly —”

She slapped him, hard and fast, across the face. The bartender’s head came up. “Do I need to come down there and sort you two out?”

Pete was more startled than hurt. “I’m fine, but this one is crazy!”

Her arm flashed out again and grabbed the man by the hair at the back of his head. She pulled him off balance, toward her. “Kiss my throat!”

He did as he was told, she released him and he let out a laugh. “That’s good, Pete. Lovely. Thank you.”

“What’s your name, crazy lady?”

She looked at the floor and smiled demurely. “This morning it was Keres. But now, I think I’ll call myself Shiva.”

“You do have an exotic look. It fits.”

“Thank you, Pete. Let me educate you. After this, you can go tell your big family the big news.” Before he could puzzle that out, she moved to embrace him. She kissed his throat, just over the jugular vein, softly. Then she wrapped her arms around him so python tight, he felt the baby kick. It kicked so hard against her belly and his. It felt like the baby must be drowning.

“Shiva, we shouldn’t —” he wheezed.

“I’ll just take a tiny nip,” she whispered seductively. “One bite is best for now.” Her teeth clamped on the meat of the muscle in his neck and she shook her head as she ripped away a chunk.

Pete Grimsby howled and pushed her back, his hands clasping the wound. His eyes went huge as he watched the blood and gore drip from the woman’s chin. She smiled wider, showing red teeth.

“Careful to wash your hands, Pete. You wouldn’t want that to get infected.” The pistol in her hand pointed at his crotch. “Run.”

The bartender was about to run, too, but she leaned over the bar and shot him in the leg, just below the knee. “Don’t hobble off before you bring me another Fosters. I’m drinking for two.” She wiped her chin with a napkin. “Wow! Pete was
salty
.”

The bartender winced, swallowed his scream and did as he was told. She looked behind the bar. Pictures on the wall showed the bartender as a younger, thinner man in uniform. Medals hung in a box by the mirror.

“So, you were a soldier?”

“Yes. I was.”

“I am,” she said. “Before I let you go, I’m going to spit in a glass. You’re going to fill it with water and you are going to drink it. Then run, as best you can, and tell everyone you meet about the morning you met Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.”
 

God doesn't mind dirty tables and broken chairs

T
he next morning Jaimie woke early to birds chirping, the blare of radio voices and his next-door neighbor singing louder than usual. Mrs. Marjorie Bendham, intent on her task, seemed to ignore the radio as she turned her flower bed with a hoe. She trilled up and down like she was trying to drown out the radio voices. She had been a soprano when she was young and, though she was very old now, she rarely stopped singing, even when her voice grew so weak and low, she dropped to a whisper.
 

She and her husband Al spent a lot of time in their backyard by the pool. Mrs. Bendham practiced scales and occasionally an aria. Jaimie did not understand Italian, but he appreciated the clear violets and blues and greens that floated out as she sang. There was something different in her voice today, a sharp yellow quaver Jaimie hadn’t heard before. It seemed everyone’s aura was dominated by yellow, if it wasn’t already infected black. Only Anna’s angry reds — “mean reds” he’d read in one of her high school books — seemed to run on the high energy of an inexhaustible fuel of emotion and gritted teeth.

Jaimie moved to the window and watched the old woman putter among her empty flower beds, disturbing gardens of dirt aimlessly. The best, clear notes sailed out as usual, but the irritating yellow vibrated and hovered, disappearing and returning around the edges of the blue sounds. Her aura was usually a muddied green and a dirty mustard yellow around her hips and knees. When she sang opera, her colors deepened to richer hues. Jaimie could feel the emotions she conveyed with her songs. Mostly, they were laments. The dictionary said a lament is for something lost, but didn’t specify what. If he were a talker, Jaimie would have asked Mrs. Bendham. He wondered what she had lost.

Al Bendham was a quiet man who had worked for the government though he never said how. Jack once asked exactly what his old job had been as they chatted over the fence. He just shrugged and said, “Nothing much.”
 

The old man was blind, which interested Jaimie since the boy saw more in the auras of others than he felt. Jaimie felt blind in his own way because the motivations of others were so often opaque to him. Despite his vast vocabulary, it seemed people had a secret language within a language. Words had too many hidden meanings and subtle implications.
 

For instance, at school, his teacher often lectured him about “boundaries” if he stepped too close to another student. However, boundaries were elastic things that seemed to vary by individual and circumstance. Birthday cake was good to share, but he was forbidden from eating another student’s lunch. People, Jaimie decided, were disorganized and ruled by too many variables.

Since Jaimie saw more than he felt, he wondered if Mr. Bendham felt more than he could see. The neighbor spent hours listening to the radio as he vacuumed his pool. Though the radio sat on the ledge behind the screen of his kitchen window, it was turned up loud. As he vacuumed, his great head of shaggy white hair was always cocked slightly toward it. He looked like an old lion at the zoo, pacing and waiting, but with no apparent purpose beyond pacing and waiting.

Sometimes Jaimie spied on Mr. Bendham as he did Mr. Sotherby. He rarely saw Sotherby unless he spotted him mowing his lawn or playing the bouncing game with his flight attendant friends. From Jaimie’s bedroom window, he watched the blind man vacuum the pool. He never seemed in a hurry and the boy found that soothing. The old man frequently cleaned the same spot in the deep end repeatedly, either not knowing when he was done or not caring.
 

The boy watched the blind man’s aura, which was curiously disorganized at the back of his head. From a medical dictionary, the boy knew there was something faulty in the old man’s occipital lobe — something that betrayed his vision. Jaimie watched and waited for him to pick his nose or dig in his ears. When he found boogers, he rolled them between his fingers and flicked them into the pool. After he dug in his ears he smelled under his fingernails, checking for ear wax. The boy knew he was forbidden to do that, but the old man was allowed. More mysteries of human behavior. Sometimes, Jaimie wondered if he was something other than human on safari on a strange planet with customs no outsider could hope to decipher.