“You have to be
more careful.”
Noah wasn’t sure
whether he wanted to hit Karmen or hug her. What was she thinking?
Thank God the child had been strapped into a car seat or else he
would be facing a very difficult decision right about now. She could
have been bitten by that thing.
He shuddered.
“We need to keep
moving,” he said.
Karmen wiped her eyes
and nodded. He felt like a complete ass for being so cold toward her,
but what choice did he have? Hadn’t he lost everything, too?
There simply wasn’t time for pity and compassion until they got
to a safer place, and Crash’s apartment was still six miles
away. On foot, they would be lucky to make it before dark.
Noah made his way back
over the top of the metal mountain of cars, making sure to find a
solid place to set his foot before putting his weight on it. Slowly,
the three of them made it through the pileup and back on to the
asphalt of the main road.
“It’s so
eerie out here,” Parrish whispered. “So quiet.”
She was right. There
were none of the sounds you would expect to hear on a busy
intersection in Washington D.C. No car horns beeping. No voices or
footsteps. The familiar sound of tires on the road as cars zipped by.
It was all missing. Instead, the city was silent. Flat.
Dead.
Noah reached over and
took Parrish’s hand in his own. She looked over at him, a
surprised look on her face, and he gave her a gentle squeeze before
letting go. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but
how could he promise such a ridiculous thing? All he could really
promise was that he was there, standing by her side.
“Okay,” he
said, hesitating before pulling his gaze away from her face. “Let’s
do this.”
The walk toward Crash’s
was easy at first. Once they made it over the bridge, the three of
them moved together from city block to city block barely saying a
word. Crash led them on a path that went down Independence Avenue and
around the Capitol Reflecting Pool.
Noah had been here many
times with his dad and on field trips and stuff. But it was all so
different now. The passed the House of Representatives and he
couldn’t help but wonder what part of the U.S. government even
still existed at this point. Was the President still alive?
Karmen told them to
turn right on Constitution. The street was a piled with bodies. It
looked like some kind of bloody march on Washington. Noah and the
others had to cover their mouths and noses just to survive the stench
of it.
“Is there some
other way?” Karmen asked Crash through the radio. “I
mean, are you seeing this on your little cameras? Because this is
disgusting.”
Crash insisted that
this was the safest and fastest route. “Wouldn’t you
rather walk through a few blocks of disgusting dead people than have
to try to walk a few blocks through hundreds of walking dead ones?”
“Point taken,”
Karmen muttered.
When they got to
Stanton Park, Noah pulled his gun out, ready for anything. They kept
several feet clear of the trees and shadows and luckily made it
through without running into anyone. Or anything.
Every once in a while,
they saw a rotter shuffling along one of the side streets, but for
the most part, they were nowhere to be seen. Packed into buildings
until the sun went down, Crash told them.
In the distance, the
sun was making its descent, coloring the horizon the slightest bit
pink. None of them mentioned it, but Noah knew that they only had
about and hour before the sun went down for good. He didn’t
want to think about what would happen to them if they couldn’t
find a safe place to hide or settle down before then.
The were running out of
time.
“Karmen,”
he whispered. “Ask Crash how much farther to his house.”
He heard Karmen whisper
into her headset. There was silence for a moment, then she said, “He
said we’re still about two miles away, but that if we don’t
run into much trouble, we should make it just in time.”
A couple of miles.
Shit. They weren’t walking fast enough. Under normal
circumstances, two miles wouldn’t take more than half an hour
to walk. But this was far from normal. And the streets were becoming
more compact in this area. The buildings were getting taller,
creating more shadows. More places for the rotters to hide.
With every sound, the
three of them stopped and looked around. Every time one of them
spotted a zombie stumbling around on the street, they had to find a
safer route around the thing, watching their backs the entire time.
“We have to pick
up the pace,if we’re going to make it.”
“What do you mean
if?” Karmen said.
“Maybe he means
’if Karmen doesn’t try to stick her fleshy arm in front
of any more child zombies and offer them a little snack’,”
Parrish said.
Noah hid a smile and
kept walking. The last thing he needed was for these two to get
started again.
“For your
information, I didn’t realize the little girl was a zombie,”
Karmen spat back.
“Right, cause the
putrid smell and the black circles under her eyes didn’t give
that away,” Parrish said, stomping ahead of Noah and leaving
Karmen behind.
They were walking
through an alley in between two tall buildings just off Maryland
Avenue, and Noah just wanted them to shut up. The darkness was
creeping in on them second by second. Here in the alley, there were
too many shadowy corners and open doorways.
“Hey! That child
was beautiful. She didn’t even look dead at all until she woke
up. I honestly thought she was sleeping. What if she had been alive?
Would you rather I just leave a sleeping child trapped in a carseat
until she died?”
Parrish stopped and
stomped her way back toward Karmen. Noah’s stomach tightened.
They couldn’t afford to lose time, and this argument was
pointless.
“Well, I
certainly wouldn’t have tried sticking my fingers practically
in the child’s mouth just to see if she was alive or not,”
Parrish said, standing still in front of Karmen with her hands on her
hips.
“I wasn’t
sticking my fingers in her mouth.” Karmen’s voice echoed
through the alley, sending a panic through Noah’s body. What
were they trying to do? Lure out every single rotter in a ten mile
radius?
“Shhhh,” he
said, stepping between the girls. “Keep your voices down. If
you haven’t noticed the sun is going down and we’re in
the middle of a dark alley filled with shadows and doorways and all
kinds of nooks and crannies. Unless you both have a death wish, I
suggest you drop this discussion until we’re safely inside
Crash’s apartment.”
As he was talking, he
noticed movement in the distance. Squinting in the hazy twilight, he
now saw that a small group of zombies had stumbled out of a nearby
shop and were making their way down the alley. One of them stopped
briefly to let out a long and echoing moan that sent a shiver of fear
through Noah’s body.
Both girls turned at
the sound and froze as they saw the approaching group of undead. “Oh
my sweet Jesus,” Karmen whimpered.
“We’ll be
okay,” Noah assured her. “We just need to keep moving and
keep our mouths shut, okay?”
Parrish and Karmen
nodded and he motioned for them to get moving. Their steps were timid
as they all made their way through the rest of the alley, which
seemed to be growing darker by the second.
Beside him, he felt
Parrish’s body stiffen. He followed her gaze and stopped cold.
A redheaded man
stumbled out of the door in front of them, his fingers reaching
toward them. Karmen screamed and Noah clamped his hand over her
mouth. Barely able to draw a steady breath, he turned around to see
zombies pouring from every open door and dark corner. Karmen’s
scream must have acted like some kind of dinner bell for these
things.
“Tell Crash we
need a way out of this alley. Fast!” Noah looked to Karmen, but
his words didn’t seem to register with her. She was staring
dumbly at the wave of zombies shambling towards them.
He ripped the radio out
of her hand. “Crash? Are you seeing this? We’re
surrounded! Where can we go?”
“Oh shit, dude.
Hang on,” Crash said. Noah could hear fingers tapping again at
the keyboard. “Okay, straight ahead, then turn in the second
doorway on your left.”
Noah didn’t
hesitate. He grabbed Karmen by the arm and pulled her along as
Parrish followed close behind them. Between them and the doorway
Crash was talking about, Noah counted five zombies. He let go of
Karmen’s arm and slid his bat from his pack.
He’d have much
rather used the handgun, but that would make noise. And right now,
noise was their enemy.
Behind him, he heard
the collective moan of several undead. And they were close.
Still, Noah hesitated.
These things used to be people. He hated to go on a killing rampage.
What if there was some kind of cure?
Noah knew he was being
ridiculous. He could either see these zombies as people and let them
possibly kill him, or he could kill them first and worry about their
human status later. He’d killed his own father, hadn’t
he? A handful of strangers shouldn’t be any worse.
Even if these things
had been human at some point, they weren’t human anymore. They
were monsters. They were killers. He had no choice. If he wanted to
live, he was going to have to kill zombies. This is simply what the
world had come to.
His hand steadied, and
Noah swung the bat. The zombie closest to them fell backward as his
head jerked to the side.
Another came up behind
that one.
He swung again, hitting
the zombie dead in the center of its forehead. It fell limply to the
ground. A surge of confidence flowed through him as he quickly aimed
at the next one, took a deep breath, and swung again. Parrish put her
back to his, her katana slicing through the ones that approached them
from behind. One-by-one, all of the infected fell to the ground.
“Wow,”
Parrish said. “Hell yeah! Let’s move!’
The three of them moved
around the dead corpses and into the second door on the left, making
sure to close the door behind them. There were no lights on in the
building and out of habit, Noah reached for the light switch on the
wall. Then he remembered Crash had said most of the city was without
power. He reached in his backpack for a flashlight and shone it
around the room.
They seemed to be in
some kind of storage room for an office building. Tall metal racks
held cases of copy paper, boxes of pens, extra toner cartridges and
packaging materials.
“Now what?”
he asked Crash.
“You should be
inside the first floor office of some accounting firm. I can’t
see inside the building with my satellite, and the infrared scanner
doesn’t pick up the zombies because, well, they’re dead
and not giving off any body heat. Once you get into the main office,
I should be able to pull you up on the security cameras. You’ll
have to carefully open the door to the main office and see if there’s
anyone in there. If you can make it through the office and out the
front door, it should put you on the main street, which is Florida
Avenue. It appears to be basically clear right now. Of course, it
will only be clear if you guys stop making noise and screaming at
every cockroach that scurries under your feet. The more noise you
make, they more attention you’re going to get from those
things.”
“So no guns?”
Noah asked.
“Not unless
you’re in trouble,” Crash said. “When it comes down
to you, do what you gotta do to stay alive.”
“Stay behind me,”
Noah whispered to the girls. He took a shallow breath and felt a buzz
of energy center in his chest. Carefully, he turned the knob on the
door and opened it. He peered into the room beyond and felt a second
of sweet relief. “All clear.”
The office was dark,
but there was some light coming in through the front windows on the
far side of the room. The room was divided into small cubicle
offices, and Noah felt a strange uneasiness crawl up his spine as he
looked around. One desk had a person’s lunch set out on top,
only one bite missing from a moldy sandwich. It was as though the
desk’s owner had simply disappeared mid-meal.
He crept through the
dark maze of desks, noticing overturned chairs, discarded cell
phones, and further evidence of a world gone very wrong. What had he
expected? The world
had
gone wrong, hadn’t it? Still, he
somehow pictured the scene inside these tall city buildings to look
like everyone had simply gone home for the weekend. Instead, it was
chaos. Struggle. Abandonment.
Crash’s voice on
speaker sliced through the silence in the office. “Uh-oh.”
“Great, what is
it now? Werewolves? Aliens? The fun just keeps on coming,”
Karmen said, throwing up her hands.
“No, Barbie,
everyone knows there’s no such thing as werewolves,”
Crash said. “Zombies. About a block away from where you are,
but moving in your general direction. I have no idea if they can
smell you from that far away, but I don’t think now is the time
to test that theory.”
Noah picked up the
pace, kicking an overturned desk chair out of the aisle. He heard a
low moan, but before his brain registered what was happening, the
zombie had attached itself to his leg. He yelled out and shook his
leg, trying to get it off him, but it wouldn’t budge.
From the shadowed
cubicles, he heard another growl, then another. His head snapped up
and he looked around to see a few zombies stand up throughout the
room, awakened by his own yells of terror.
Something had caught
their attention out on the street.
The boy was huddled in
the corner of his small apartment. It was still at least half an hour
until the darkness came, but something else had drawn them out. They
seemed to be getting hungrier lately. More desperate.