Authors: Daniel Kelley
Chapter 7: Beyond Saving
Preston hadn’t spoken again after saving Michelle and dictating that she get to Hyannis. He had dropped Emmanuel’s weapon and began tending to himself. Michelle turned the lamp back on, reignited the light, and tried to help Preston as best she could.
It was to no avail, as the blood spilling from Preston’s gut wound was almost black. In the best of conditions, that meant Preston was done for. With no hospitals and no way to get him to one anyway, though, Michelle didn’t even try.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never wanted to do this. I just need to get to my daughter.”
Preston coughed and inhaled deeply four times before groaning out a few words. “If you’re right,” he said in a breathy, fading voice, “it’s okay. If you’re right.”
“I am,” Michelle said.
“I understand,” he grunted. “They would, too. All four of us had kids in Hyannis. It’s why we were chosen for the job. They knew we wouldn’t run.”
Preston tried to speak again, but he could no longer create words. Through heavy breaths, he let out the slightest of nods, then lay back on the floor. Michelle, not knowing what to say next, just held her hands over his wound and watched the man suffer.
For four or five minutes, they sat there, him dying, her watching, before Preston finally spoke again. In a voice that was significantly more pained than it had been only moments earlier, he forced out three words. “Shoot me again.”
Michelle moved her gaze from his stomach to his face. Preston, through his pain, had focused his eyes, and they met hers. She knew what he was asking — he was not long for the world either way — but if she ended it herself, at least he would stop suffering sooner. It was almost merciful.
But Michelle shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, her tears forming again. “I can’t do it again.” The effect of having taken lives suddenly hit her full-force, and she knew, without doubt, that she couldn’t shoot Preston again, merciful though it may have been.
She couldn’t put him out of his misery, and she couldn’t watch him suffer, so Michelle did the only thing she could — she walked away. Michelle gathered Preston’s and Emmanuel’s weapons and left the small booth, walking away from it in a direction that kept her as far from the other bodies as she could get. When she was ten or twelve feet away, Michelle sat on the ground and dropped her head between her knees, her tears returning with reinforcements.
She cried again, but this time for different reasons. Stacy, Madison and all the other dead were still on her mind, of course, but this time, Michelle cried for herself.
She had always believed that genuine remorse and a genuine request for forgiveness was enough to save oneself in the event of committing such heinous acts as she had just committed, good reason or no good reason. Regardless, in the immediate aftermath of having been responsible for the deaths of four people, in addition to the other deaths in Stamford, at the toll booth, even back home, so many years ago, when Kellee had died, Michelle felt like her own soul, her own salvation was slipping away. This was the second zombie outbreak she had experienced; Michelle had only dealt with the first, especially considering her sister’s death, by consoling herself with the fact that a better fate lay in her future, whenever death found her.
But in the aftermath of these… murders, she didn’t feel so sure anymore. And that scared her, more than zombies, more than guns, more than the thought of danger to her own stepdaughter — Michelle worried that she was now beyond saving, and she no longer knew how to deal with that.
And so she sat on the sidewalk, yards away from the Sagamore Bridge, and cried. She stayed there for ten minutes or so, without knowing what to do next.
The decision, though, was made for her, when a pair of headlights fell upon her as she sat. It took Michelle a few seconds to realize it, but either way, she had company.
For better or worse, the arrival snapped Michelle out of it, and she brandished one of her growing supply of weapons as she scanned her surroundings for another safe haven, as she would be damned if she would venture back to that guard booth again.
Her quick machinations proved to be moot, as the car honked twice and slowed as it neared Michelle’s spot. The engine was turned off, the lights were turned to their lowest setting, and Michelle heard a familiar voice.
“Need a lift?” Donnie said, obviously trying to sound as casual as he could as he leaned out the window.
Despite herself, Michelle smiled at the familiar face, at the friendly tone, at the smile he was offering. It was necessary, in that moment.
She stood up and, trying to echo his casual tone, said, “You going my way?”
Donnie tried to maintain his smile. It was difficult, considering the fact that Michelle couldn’t help but look devastated. Nonetheless, he said, “I just may be.”
The invitation notwithstanding, Donnie noticed that Michelle made no move toward the car. Instead, her attention seemed to drift more behind her than anything. He removed the keys from the ignition and stepped from the car.
“Are you okay?” he asked, walking toward Michelle. She looked smaller than Donnie remembered ever seeing her, even when she discovered Madison’s death.
Michelle didn’t answer him, standing silently and holding her hands close to her body. Donnie got close to Michelle and pulled her into a hug, wrapping his arms as tightly around her as he could. For the first time since leaving Stamford, Donnie had no weapon on him, his attention devoted completely to Michelle.
The hug was for her. There was no question of that, as she clearly needed someone to console her as she dealt with whatever had happened in the past handful of minutes. But the hug was just as much for Donnie. He now knew there was never going to be a future with him and Michelle, that she never had been and never would be interested in him as anything more than a friend, confidant and traveling companion, but Donnie could not deny the feelings that he had been feeling for months now, the feelings that he and Michelle belonged together, and the hug only cemented in his mind that Michelle belonged with him. Even if it was only as his friend, even if he was destined to only ever be Stacy’s “Uncle Donnie,” he was never going to let them go without him. Not as long as he still had a say in the matter.
So Donnie hugged Michelle, held her as close as he could. He could feel her tears soaking through his shirt as she held him back, felt her breasts pressed against his chest, fought off the arousal he felt at being closer to Michelle than he ever had before.
The hug lasted at least a minute, and was only broken up by Salvisa exiting the vehicle. “We going?” the crazy old man said. “Sun’s due up before too long, be damned if I’m going to be out here when
that
damn light starts to fall. Be damned.”
Rather than question the old man’s determination to avoid sunlight, Donnie broke his embrace with Michelle and recomposed himself. “So …” he started, though he wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.
“Four,” Michelle said suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.
“What …?” Donnie started, but Michelle cut him off.
“Four guards, Donnie,” she said, pointing behind her. “There were four guards patrolling the bridge. One way or another, I killed them all.”
The tears on Michelle’s face weren’t going anywhere. Donnie couldn’t figure anything to do but nod, so he did that and hugged her again.
“They all dead?” Salvisa asked from his spot leaning on the car door. Without waiting for an answer, he lumbered across the space between himself and the first body, which belonged to the zigzagging guard Michelle had shot — the one who hadn’t died right away. She watched as the old man checked his pulse and, finding what he wanted, moved on to the next body, the one that Preston, not Michelle, had felled.
Some distance away, Salvisa got to the body, which Michelle could barely see even with the increased light, and stopped. “It’s a woman!” he called back.
Michelle hadn’t had any notion that one of her targets was a woman. Rationally, she figured, it couldn’t change much, but emotionally, it changed a lot, at least for her. It was far easier to picture a female guard who, like Preston, was on duty for the sake of a child, an offspring, someone dependent on the supposed safety provided by the guards, that Michelle felt herself collapsing all over again. She watched Salvisa confirm that the woman was dead, but couldn’t watch anymore, as he hobbled to the booth, presumably to check the corpses of Emmanuel and Preston.
Instead, Michelle turned her face back to Donnie’s shoulder. The tears hadn’t stopped, though she had momentarily been able to lessen their flow. Now, she cried freely into his arms, still devastated by the things she had done.
Seconds later, a shot rang out from the direction of the booth. Michelle didn’t even open her eyes, just listening as Salvisa called, “One of them wasn’t dead!” Preston, she now knew, was well and truly dead, and it did nothing to change Michelle’s mood. She just continued to cry, and Donnie continued to hold her as she did.
Chapter 8: Nothing to Burn
The teacher hadn’t spoken again after Simon and Celia had wrecked his office. He just watched their performance, such as it was, nodded and turned back to the hallway.
Celia and Simon hustled after him, exchanging puzzled, but a bit less stressed, looks as they did. The teacher was moving with more determination now, walking at a brisk speed that made Celia walk almost double-time to keep pace. He navigated through a few more turns in the hallway — once, Celia felt sure they had made enough right turns to make a circle, though she recognized none of her surroundings — before stopping at a double door that looked finer and more ornate than the others they had passed.
“Is this the teachers’ lounge?” Celia asked between breaths, having worked up a sweat keeping up with the teacher.
He nodded grimly, staring at the door. “It is,” he said, though he failed to move.
“What are we doing here?” Celia asked, with a glance at the bottle of what she assumed was alcohol in the teacher’s hand.
“Like everything else,” the teacher said, “the chem lab wasn’t stocked. No chemicals, no compounds, nothing you kids could have done experiments with.” He paused for a minute, still staring at the door, before continuing. “Nothing to burn.”
“‘Burn’?” Celia repeated.
“Burn,” Lowensen repeated. He didn’t elaborate, though, finally stepping forward and opening the door to the teachers’ lounge.
Celia and Simon followed him into the room. Inside was richly appointed, more like a restaurant than a faculty room. There were a handful of tables spaced about, complete with tablecloths and sugar caddies, and a kitchenette on the far left.
To the right, though, was what caught Lowensen’s attention, and where Celia and Simon looked as well, following his lead. The right side of the room was lined from end to end, save a small opening for a person to pass through, by a long counter and stools.
“You guys had a bar?” Simon asked, incredulous.
Lowensen laughed. “Good thing we did,” he said. “Only damn part of the building that’s stocked. Didn’t bother to get a kickball, but got enough bourbon to drown Kentucky.” He went behind the bar and started loading boxes and bottles onto the counter.
“Why is it good?” Celia asked.
“Don’t have anything to burn in the chem lab,” Lowensen said, still moving liquor, “but we do have fire. Lighters, torches, Bunsen burners, plenty of things that’ll light. Just need something to carry the flame.”
“So… you want to burn this place down?” Celia said. She gave him a minute, but the teacher didn’t answer, still moving the cargo. “Mr. Lowensen? Mr. Lowensen, what are you going to burn? And why?”
The teacher paid her no heed, continuing his efforts, until Simon finally stepped behind the bar and started helping. He met eyes with Celia, signaling that he didn’t understand, but he started working nonetheless.
His burden lessened, the teacher looked to Celia. “What are we burning? We’re burning… this,” he said raising his arms around him, conveying the word “everything.”
“Why?”
“Fire kills them,” he said, returning to work. “Kills them better than any gunshot.”
“But… it kills us, too.”
“Not if we get out,” he said.
“How do we do that?”
“There’s another exit,” Lowensen said. “Secret. Didn’t publicize it. Only opens from the inside. Wanted to have it available in case… this happened. So we open the door, we get them in here, we liquor them up and light them up, and we slip out the back. All goes well, it gives us enough time to get away. Very least, it keeps the numbers low enough that the weapons could have an impact.”
Celia wasn’t sure what to make of that plan, but she didn’t think she was the one to grade it. Her father would be able to evaluate the teacher’s idea better than she would.
So Celia shrugged and crossed over to the bar, grabbing the first box she got to and carrying it to the doorway.
Chapter 9: Self-Destruct button
They were in the car, on the road, already on Cape Cod. The bodies of the four guards were lying in their wake, the bodies of their former mates in Stamford further behind, and the bodies of who knew how many students lay before them.
From her spot in the passenger seat, Michelle was silent. She hadn’t raised her eyes above the dashboard since they climbed back in the car. Donnie, despite his best efforts to raise her spirits or remind her of Stacy, hadn’t managed to break through. The memory of her musing that killing someone hadn’t changed her passed through her mind, and Michelle let herself acknowledge the irony.
Suddenly, though, Michelle felt a hand pat down on her right shoulder. Salvisa’s hand, from the backseat, was patting her on the shoulder.
“Well done,” he said in a low voice. “You did what you had to do. No one will begrudge you that, in this life or the next.”
It was hollow comfort, if that. But the delivery — from the mouth of a crazy old man who had seen more death than any ten people ever needed — made her feel like, despite her isolation during the event, Michelle wasn’t alone.
“How far to Hyannis?” she said dully, finally lifting her head.
Donnie smiled, happy that Michelle was, at least, engaging with them again. It was just a start, but a start meant there was more to come. He checked his watch and tried to remember Cape Cod’s size before guessing. “Twenty minutes?” he said. “Maybe 25?”
Michelle nodded faintly. She turned toward Salvisa’s backseat arsenal. “We need to be ready,” she said.
“Plenty of time,” Salvisa said, patting her arm and stopping her. “I’ll be ready. You rest. It’s short rest, but it’s necessary.” Suddenly, the old man glanced through the dashboard accusingly, as though the outside world had just stolen his wallet. “The sun will be up within an hour or so. I want to have your daughter and be inside by then. You rest now so we can do that.”
Donnie resisted the urge to scoff at the old man. While Salvisa was undoubtedly crazy, Donnie agreed that he’d like to be holed up within an hour. The sooner the better.
Then, Salvisa continued to speak, and Donnie never agreed with him again.
“Tell me,” he said, suddenly stern. “How old is your daughter?”
Michelle sniffled. “20,” she said. “Born nine months after the End.”
Salvisa exhaled in what seemed to Donnie like relief. “Good,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to be chasing a ghost.”
“What does that mean?” Donnie asked.
“No way to know for sure,” Salvisa said. “But if she was about a year younger than she is, I’d say we’re trying to fix the cold of a cancer patient.”
“What does
that
mean?”
“It means she’d already be a zombie, son,” Salvisa said, snapping at Donnie. “It means that, if this girl we’re going after was born in, say, 2012 or 2013, wouldn’t matter how fast we got to Hyannis, how many security guards we shot on our way. It means that some 99 out of 100 of the kids out there that are still in their teens are busy chomping on their parents’ necks, not watching out for their own.”
“How do you know that?”
Salvisa laughed. “I know many things.”
Donnie braked slightly and turned to stare at the old man. “And how,” he said, speaking slowly and over-enunciating, “do you know that? How do you know that teenagers are zombies?” Something in the way Salvisa was talking was making Donnie suspicious. It was one thing for him to assume the young, untrained kids out there would have succumbed to the virus. It was another thing altogether for him to figure that any young people born after a certain, arbitrary deadline were automatically zombies.
Salvisa met Donnie’s gaze for a minute, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter who knows now,” he said. “Odds are I’ll be dead soon enough anyway.” He stopped speaking and turned to look out the window for a moment before continuing. “Either one of you ever studied neurology?” he asked at last.
Donnie and Michelle both shook their heads.
“The brain,” Salvisa said, “is more like a computer than anyone ever really admitted. We want to think that our innate intelligence, our common sense, our adaptability made us special, set us apart from the motherboards and binary code. All that was, was fear. We saw
Terminator
and didn’t want to believe robots could take over because we were in some way
superior
.
“But all we are is computers, and pretty damned basic computers at that. Give a PC the right algorithm and it would beat us at everything. I think
Jeopardy
proved that once, years and years ago. Our brain can send a signal to our hand to do something. You know that. Well, one brain can send a signal to another brain too, if it’s given the connectivity.
“Anyway, the gap between humans and computers became smaller and smaller as we advanced ourselves, forcing ourselves to be more and more technological. Kids were always texting, grown men were always on their Bluetooth. 200 years ago, a man got up in the morning, went out on the farm all day, tended the animals and the crops, came home with what he had made, his wife made dinner, they fucked and went to bed. Didn’t need a computer to be successful. Didn’t need a cell phone, a GPS device, an md3 player or whatever they were called. Just needed a mule, a plow and a good woman at home.
“We grew too dependent on our button-pushing, on our data streams. And there was a faction of our society that acknowledged that dependence, figured out that we were fast approaching our own
Terminator
reality.
“Well, if you’ve come to realize that your world is
growing
its eventual demise, is cultivating the very thing that will destroy it, what do you do? You try to show it to them. This group, this faction kept growing, kept gaining people in all branches of population, our workforce, our government. It’s not at all dissimilar to the Illuminati or the Masons, so many years ago. They had… infiltrated, I suppose, anything they chose to infiltrate.
“They wanted to show that computers weren’t really the answer, weren’t the things we should devote our lives to. Originally, they tried small steps, inconsequential, really. They spread the rumor that Y2K was going to destroy our world. Total poppycock, but they thought that by instilling
fear
of computers in the general populace, they could create a revolt
against
computers.
“It didn’t work, of course. The general population had grown so accustomed to computers that all people did was buy bottled water and hope. And when January 1, 2000, passed by and they could still instant message their friends, everyone forgot about the supposed threat and kept tap-tapping away at their keyboards.
“So these people recalculated. They looked at what they thought was the core of our problems and set out to stop it there. The snake dies from the head, after all. So they looked at it all again, and they realized — what is the source, the cause of all the digital-mania? Kids. The youth of the world were the most tech-obsessed out there.
And
they were the easiest ones to get to.”
“‘Get to’?” Donnie repeated.
“‘Get to,’” Salvisa repeated. “See, at the same time as this whole thing was going on, there were all sorts of developments in nanorobotics. We were implanting chips in the babies being born all over the populated areas of the world. Sure, Africa missed out on these babies, but all the developed countries had babies getting chipped right and left.
“Like I said, this faction, the Anti-Techs, were everywhere. And we knew about the nanotechnology. Well, it’s not at all hard, if you have people in the right place, to start getting these tiny chips manufactured with some… alterations, if you will. We started getting these chips made with a data stream that would influence our actions more significantly, would overpower the general brain chemistry, if need be.
“And that wasn’t all,” he continued, picking up steam. Donnie couldn’t help but notice that Salvisa had switched from “they” to “we” as he spoke. “These chips started being made with what I suppose you would call a virus, something that would… infect, I suppose, others who came into contact with it. Like I said, we aren’t that different from computers. A virus attacks one computer, and if it’s good enough, it can infect all the computers in its network, all the computers with connectivity, and so on and so on. And people have their own network. And bites are connectivity, after all.
“Basically, once this plan was made, all that had to be done was develop a program for the chips, and flip the right switch at the right time. The thinking was that people would see this happen and they would retreat back into themselves, back into the minimally technological world that the Anti-Techs wanted. Some technology was great, of course. Phones were fantastic. We had no problem there. But the goal was to reduce the
dependence
as much as possible.
“Well, it worked. To a point. Nanobots got implanted, kids were computerized, then 2010 happened and 90% of the world were goners. But less than a year after The End, I remember seeing an ad for the iPhone 5, the new, post-zombie model, the one that would reinvigorate the entire world of technology.
“The Anti-Techs wouldn’t stand for that, of course. Wiping out six of every seven people, and Nintendo just keeps making games? That’s silly. We had reached critical mass on our technological advancements, and we needed to stop advancing. Leave it be. Go farm. Call your family if you need to, have e-mail, sure. But don’t stay tied to texting. Don’t use a video game that can detect where you’re standing. Don’t have satellites track your every move.
“So we started up with nanobots again. It took about a year, give or take. Enough time for us to see that we hadn’t accomplished our goal. Hadn’t quite severed the snake’s head. But we started getting the doctors out there again, started implanting the nanobots in most kids born in late 2012 or after. It permeated most of our culture, much faster this time, because we knew how to do it. And from there, all it took was flipping the switch again. Pressing the self-destruct button, if you will. Maybe this time, people will see that we can’t resort to computers, GPS, technology to solve all our problems. Maybe this time, we’ll do what we tried to do.”
Salvisa fell into silence in the backseat. Neither Donnie nor Michelle reacted, letting the story sink in. There was so much new information there that Donnie didn’t know where to start. At least, he figured, he now knew how Stamford had been overrun — Lindsay Quinn, the woman who had brought her daughter to work that day, had unwittingly introduced the infection into the Stamford facility.
What Salvisa hadn’t answered was why. Even if Donnie could accept the Anti-Techs rationale for 2010, it seemed they
had
accomplished their goal. People still had cars, phones, base technology. But Donnie hadn’t sent a text message in 20 years. Hadn’t played a video game since
before
his mission trip. Wasn’t even sure he could remember how to upload music to a mobile player. He too remembered the iPhone 5 advertisements — it had gone on the market and bombed miserably, as people
had
learned not to devote so much attention to their gadgets. What was left of Apple folded within months of its release. Nintendo didn’t even make it that long. For better or worse, Donnie figured, the Anti-Techs had realized their goal.
“So why now?” Donnie asked. “We don’t live on our cell phones anymore. Seems these people got what they wanted.”
“Have we?” Salvisa asked, bitterness in his voice. “Because I seem to recall our fearless leader stumbling into something of a rallying cry over the past few months. What is it he’s been saying? ‘A phone in every pocket, a website for all occasions’? Morgan must have said that a hundred times over the past six months. No one learned a lesson from 2010. They just got scared for a while. Like a criminal who gets busted breaking into a house. For a month, two months, half a year, they toe the line. But as time goes by, as the memory fades, as the shock of being caught wears off, they start to think they can do it again. And eventually they’re prying open windows again. Fear, it seems, is the only true motivator, and everyone needs a refresher course every now and then.”
Donnie couldn’t take it calmly anymore. “You operate a
website
!” he cried. “The most successful website in the world! You are at the
forefront
of technology.”
Salvisa chuckled this time, a dry, humorless laugh. “A necessary evil. What better way, we thought, to monitor people’s level of fear, level of awareness? I suppose you can consider me something of an Anti-Tech spy.”
Michelle still hadn’t spoken. Donnie, in his seat, was seething, and had almost pulled the car to a stop. He was so mad he could barely see the road anymore. He was trying to form words, but Michelle finally found them before Donnie could settle himself enough.
“What about the break?” she said softly.
“What break?” Salvisa said with a growl.
“In 2010,” she said. “The break. For, what, a few hours? The zombies went down. Just stopped. Then all of a sudden, they were going at it again. What happened?”
Salvisa shook his head, a remembering smile on his face. “You ever bump a light switch?” he said. “Same thing, basically. Someone — damned if I know who — flipped the switch, turned off the signal for a bit. Soon as they realized what they had done, they turned it back on. And when the whole thing ran its course, we flipped the switch again.