Chapter
11
Matt and I rushed outside in time to see the last of the infected disappear between the houses and other buildings. There were three on the ground that were not moving. One was trying to crawl away. When it came out the side door, Lawrence’s fusillade of bullets destroyed its knees. Even without the ability to feel pain, it couldn’t walk; there was nothing left in the joint to support its weight. The creature was awkwardly dragging itself with its elbows, leaving a trail of blood from its mangled knees across the rough asphalt. When I closed to about four feet, it suddenly turned and lunged at me. A grasping hand clenched onto my ankle and its teeth snapped closed on air as I jerked my leg away from its gaping maw. A single shot to the back of the head ended its attack. I still continued to underestimate these creatures.
I turned and walked back into the diner, looking at the three bodies laying unconscious on the floor. One was female and two were male. I searched for a pulse on all three and found nothing. They were dormant. I shifted the shotgun to my left hand and drew my pistol. A single shot fired into each head ensured they wouldn’t wake up again. Two hours ago, there had been nearly fifty tourists here. Now, over forty of them were raging outside, exposing more people to the infection.
I looked around the room. Filth covered the floor. There was blood everywhere. My eyes came to rest on Yuto’s mangled corpse. Looking at his bloodstained body, I could not help feeling sad for him. He died in terror, in a strange country and ultimately alone. He was surrounded by people he had known as an adolescent, but fifty some years later, they were not really friends. The only one he had been close to was the one who brought him to his end. That was no way to die.
There was no putting this back in the box and sealing it up again. I had done everything I could to prevent the spread and I had failed. I had given myself to this town for the past five years. Now it was time to be with my family.
I walked out of Mary’s for the final time and was struck by the afternoon. A warm breeze, carrying the fragrance of spring in bloom, slowly propelled fluffy clouds, floating listlessly, through the deep blue sky. It was the kind of afternoon that brought joy to life. I smiled to myself at the irony.
I turned to Lawrence, Mary, and Bertha. “I’m not going to tell you what to do other than stay away from healthy people. You all know where we stand. We have three or four hours left. My wife and son have both been exposed. I’m going to spend the rest of my time with them. “
“We’ve talked about it and decided we are all going to go to my house,” Bertha said, trying to give off a positive air to overshadow her smeared mascara and tear streaked cheeks. “Mary and I have been talking about having a Scrabble tournament for a couple weeks now. This is as good a day as any. Larry said he’s going to join us.”
In spite of the destruction surrounding us, memories of late night games of Scrabble I had played with Lawrence at the station while waiting for a call nearly brought a smile to my beleaguered face. “Don’t let his made up words fool you. The more convincing he sounds, the less likely his word is actually real.” Even Mary couldn’t help but smile a little. “Good luck,” I said as I turned away from them and toward Matt.
“You always said you wanted to be the boss. Have fun.”
“That’s not funny, man. What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
“Keep that mask on, and don’t get bit. Kimiko has been through a lot. If you can, find somewhere safe to stash her. After that, if I were you, I’d get a case of bullets and stick them in the back of your car. As far as this mess goes,” I said, pointing back at the diner, “I don’t think there’s anything you can do. You saw them scatter. There’s no way you’re going to be able to hunt them all down. Between this group and the exposure at the school, there is no way to contain the disease by yourself. You’ll get some help in a few hours. In the mean time, keep a low profile and don’t end up like me.”
The morning’s events replayed in my mind as I turned back to my car. I saw people getting sick, dying and attacking their loved ones. I saw terror and misery. I halted mid-step and turned back to Matt. Without looking him in the eye and in a quiet voice, embarrassed to say what I was thinking, I asked, “Matt, would you swing by my house in a while and check on us? Four hours should be long enough.”
He held up his right hand in the universal signal to stop. “If you’re asking me to do what I think you’re asking, the answer is absolutely not! Do you intend to do that for Katie and Toby?”
“No,” I sighed. “I couldn’t shoot them, even if they had turned.”
“Then don’t ask me to either. You guys are like family to me,” he said, dropping his hand back to his side.
I nodded my head in understanding, ashamed to have even mentioned it. “Take care of yourself, Matt,” and I turned back to my car.
“Connor,” Lawrence yelled. “I still have your gun.”
“Give it to Matt,” I yelled back, sliding across the worn fabric of the front seat. “I don’t need it anymore than you do.”
I looked at Toby who was sitting in the seat next to me. “What do you say we have a little excitement and not wear our seatbelts?”
“Dad,” he said with a huge grin on his face, still oblivious to what was actually happening. “That’s against the law.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” As the car rolled onto the freshly paved road, I punched the gas. The car leaped ahead, all two hundred fifty horses roaring in delight at having been loosed from their bonds. The needle flicked through seventy as the freshly painted lines on the road popped by faster and faster. At ninety, the noise of the wind howling over the light bar eclipsed the roar of the engine. The needle peaked at one hundred thirty and the road was a blur, fence posts and tall grass on the roadside blitzed past without distinction. After two seconds, there was a change in the resonance of the engine and the speed dipped down to one hundred twenty-eight, where it held steady. With my turn rapidly approaching, I removed my foot from the gas.
Air resistance increases exponentially with speed. At one hundred-twenty eight miles per hour, massive amounts of air were piling up in front of the car, causing a ton of drag. Without huge volumes of fuel dumping into the cylinders, the engine couldn’t produce the horsepower needed to keep the car pounding through the resistance ahead and it rapidly slowed. At ninety, I started applying the brakes. Our road was closing fast. I braked hard. The calipers squeezed the rotors like a goat in the clutches of a three hundred pound anaconda. With the speed rapidly dissipating, the front of the car bowed to the approaching turn like a peasant before the throne of a king who was to be his judge. When the speed reached forty, I eased my foot off the brake; I turned the wheel to the left, initiating the turn. All four tires howled in opposition, but they held fast to the road. Halfway through the corner, I moved my foot back to the gas. By the time the car straightened out of the turn, the engine was screaming again at full throttle.
Toby sat in the seat beside me with a silly grin on his face. “Faster!” he screamed to be heard over the engine and wind. “Can I turn on the siren?” Nobody else lived on our road so nobody would be bothered except for the cows in the field before our place. Toby loved “Code Three” driving. There was no emergency right now, just one last ride with my boy. I desperately wanted to see his “Code Three” grin. He didn’t disappoint me as he set the siren to wailing.
I slowed just enough to avoid losing control as we transitioned from the asphalt road to the gravel driveway. As I made the right hand turn, the back end of the car lost traction and drifted to the left. I had anticipated the change in traction and was already counter steering when the back end slid out. I only put in enough left steering to maintain control. I stepped on the gas to ensure the back end stayed sideways for a complete lap around the circular portion of our driveway. By the time we were done with our lap, all we could see was a cloud of dust. Toby was laughing so hard he couldn't get out what he was trying to say.
Finally, he was able to mutter, "You’re gonna to be in big trouble with Mom," between continued outbursts of laughter.
"You're right, buddy, I'm going to be in big trouble. We threw gravel all over the lawn. She’s going to be all over me in a minute."
The thought of me being in trouble got him tickled all over again. He doubled over in the seat, trying to catch his breath as his body heaved between clutches of laughter. Tears rolled down both sides of his face. I opened my door, walked around the car, and opened his door. I grabbed him up and tossed him over my shoulder like a sack of dog food and walked toward the house.
I gripped the oval knob with my left hand. Before I turned it, I observed the distorted view of my wife through the cut glass in the door. I hesitated before turning the knob, wondering what sort of state she was going to be in. It didn’t matter. She needed me, whatever state she was in. I twisted the knob and pushed it inward. The door swung in, revealing my wife just outside its arc of travel.
My eyes met her hers. After seven years of marriage, I still caught myself wondering if eyes could truly be that deep of a blue. It took two months of dating for her to convince me that she wasn’t wearing colored contacts. I had never seen eyes more striking than my wife’s. Today, however, the blue was hardly noticeable in light of how bloodshot her eyes were from crying.
I set Toby on the ground and Katie flew into my arms. At five foot five, she wasn’t tall. She wasn’t short either. It put her at the perfect height to bury her head in my shoulder.
“Connor, what are we going to do?” she asked, starting to cry again.
“I guess that’s up to Toby,” I said, looking down at him. “What do you want to do, big guy?” I asked, already knowing what the answer would be. “You get to pick what we do this afternoon.”
“Then we’re playing Monopoly!” he exclaimed, with a smile spreading across his face. Monopoly had been Toby’s favorite game since he got it for Christmas. Given a choice, that was what he always wanted to do.
“All right!" I said, mustering forth every bit of excitement I could dredge up. “I’m the car.” My attempt to get a reaction from Toby by claiming his usual game piece worked as I anticipated.
“Oh no you're not!” Toby burst out. “The car is mine. You have to be the wheelbarrow so you can carry all my money around for me.”
"Oh yeah? Well you're not going to have any money to haul around after you land on my Boardwalk and Park Place. They’re going to be full of hotels," I laughed.
The corners of Katie's mouth slowly crept upward. "Neither of you are going to have any money if you don't pop some popcorn,” she said between sniffles, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Everyone knows you can't play Monopoly without popcorn. While you two are arguing about who gets which piece, I am going to go hide some money up my sleeve so I have a head start.” Katie had long ago been banned from being the banker in any Monopoly game because she was such a cheater.
“You are definitely coming with us.” I grabbed her from behind, wrapped my left arm under her knees, my right arm around her torso, and picked her up and carried her into the kitchen, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and melt some butter?” As I was putting Katie down, Toby was banging through the cabinet, pulling out the air popper.
“Don’t forget to grab the bowl while you’re down there,” I said as I reached into the cabinet above the stove and removed a half empty jar of Orville Redenbacher popcorn from the top shelf.
I was at my maximum extension when Katie jabbed her index fingers into either side of my rib cage. I am not overly ticklish, but it was enough to cause me to drop the jar of popcorn. It landed on the countertop, bounced off and hit the floor. The red plastic lid popped off the container and a profusion of golden kernels leaped and bounced across the tile floor.
Toby saw the whole thing coming. He had just finished his outburst of laughter from the car. The tickling and then the spilled popcorn sent him over the edge again. He was barely able to wheeze out a brief sentence in the midst of his roils of laughter and he stole Katie’s line, “Dad, you’re such a pig.” Katie had had to explain long ago that people sometimes called the police “pigs.” He loved the analogy and tried to beat Katie to it whenever I made a mess.
When the popcorn was finished, we settled into a vicious game of Monopoly.
Toby caught Mom cheating twice and gleefully brought the accusation against her. Both times she was forced to pay a five hundred dollar fine.
In a magical moment, the passage of time ceased and knowledge of what was happening around us melted away. Time did not begin its onward march until Toby emerged as the undisputed winner. I looked at my watch and realized three hours had passed since we began. I looked from Katie to Toby. Toby was still all smiles. His high pitched laughter filled the room as he bragged about his uncanny ability to catch Mom cheating.
She took the teasing and dished it back to him. While I enjoyed the interaction between the two of them, I realized it was pushing six hours since I had first been exposed to the infection. It was nearly four hours since Katie and Toby were exposed.
I should be dead. They should be well on their way.
“Toby, come here and let me look at your face.” He quickly scurried on all fours, barking like a dog, all the way across the room to where I was sitting on the floor. I looked at the left side of his cheek and noted five scabs. The one just below his eye was about a quarter of an inch long. It was shallow, but there was no question that it was big enough to permit entrance of the infection into his body. The infection had failed to take hold.