Solstice: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (19 page)

“What do you want, Melanie? This has to be better than the Leila we were dealing with a week ago.”

I’m not so sure.
Instead of arguing, Melanie just nodded.

They trailed Leila until they found a small section that displayed flashlights, some tiny enough to clip onto key chains and the tops of books. Melanie selected a couple of the larger ones, fitted them with batteries, and then took a handful of the book-sized lamps, as well.

She passed one of the larger lights to Tomas, and kept the other for herself. She no longer had a gun, which she could live with since guns frightened her anyway, but without a light, she felt exposed.

Like the entire village, the store was deadly silent. The only sounds were the dull
plat, plat
of sleet against the front display window. Compared to the towns they had seen with the fires and the shadowy figures, Coquelles was so empty, like a
Twilight Zone
episode without the bow-tie ending. It was a ghost town, but there was no Clint Eastwood appearing on the horizon. Overall, she wasn’t sure what was better—Ragers or no people at all. At least the presence of Ragers indicated there was once some sort of life out there. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever see other people again.

She moved along a narrow aisle, her light cutting a yellow trail. She selected first-aid items, such as bandages, antiseptic, and pain medication. She wanted to keep things practical, but temptation was an itch she needed to scratch. She selected some makeup—foundation, which was tough to match to her own skin tone in the dim lighting, moisturizer, toner—along with some antiperspirant, toothpaste, and gargle. She turned the corner and found herself in the feminine needs department. She grabbed two large boxes of tampons. A few meters down were birth control items. She sighed and moved on, doubting she would ever need any of those things again.

Unlike Leila, she made a point of not straying far from Tomas. Deserted or not, she didn’t feel comfortable alone in the store. Tomas had put Christopher down, but instructed the boy to stay at his knee. Christopher gathered a fistful of Tomas’s pants in one tiny hand, his sweet face upturned, intently watching his father. Tomas selected supplements that helped them cope with the lack of sunshine. He scooped up bottles of vitamins D, B12, and C, children’s chewables, and calcium tablets. Next, he vanished behind the chemist’s counter and returned with a dozen boxes of salbutamol inhalers for Melanie’s asthma. She wanted to kiss him for it, but only smiled at him instead.

Tomas took Melanie’s baskets and asked her to hold on to Christopher. Smiling, she swung the little boy up into her arms and snuggled him.

“Eskimo kisses,” Christopher chirped, pressing his cold nose to her. His cheeks and lips appeared chapped and sore.

Melanie moved off to search for petroleum jelly to help soothe his skin, but stopped short. Something smelled dreadful. It was a stink she’d experienced before—death, illness, rot. Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed the shadows squirming. Dreading what she was about to see, she trained the light in that direction.

On the floor, a male Rager hunched over the partially devoured corpse of a woman. The dead woman’s face was turned toward Melanie, but her tangled blond hair covered her eyes. Brownish blood stained her jeans, and her gray sweatshirt was hiked up above her breast, revealing her exposed ribs and ravaged flesh.

The Rager jerked his head around to stare at Melanie. His white eyes reflected the light like twin silver coins. His mouth was bloodied, his crooked teeth showing like a bizarre grin. His cheeks were ruddy with weeping, shiny burns. The Rager shakily climbed to his feet, one arm outstretched, spidery fingers flexing, clawing toward Melanie’s face. In his other blood-painted fist, he held up what Melanie first thought was a length of rope. However, after a second look, she realized it was not something as innocent as a rope, but a long coil of large intestine.

Melanie gripped Christopher’s wrist hard enough to bruise and yanked him backward. “Tomas! Hurry!” she cried, moving backward and pulling the little boy with her.

The Rager moved with her, waving the loop of colon like an agitated old man waving his cane. He carried the stink of death on him like a perfume, making Melanie feel as if she might vomit. She breathed through her mouth as her eyes began to water.

“Taste! Taste, taste, taste!” the Rager growled. “I want to taste, taste, taste! You, you, you!”

He flung the intestine at Melanie, and she batted it away with her hand, disgusted.

The Rager stopped its pursuit and stared at her. She gripped Christopher to her legs, unsure of what to do. Frozen with terror, she waited for the Rager’s next move.

The Rager dropped his head back. His mouth fell open, insanely wide, the corners pulling and then tearing with a noise like ripping fabric. A screech bellowed from its open lips, the sound building, building…

Then, Tomas was there. “Turn him away.”

Melanie picked up Christopher and pressed his face to her shoulder. The gunshot echoed deafeningly, causing her to jump.

Tomas snatched up the baskets. “Find Leila while I load the car. I think he was alerting other Ragers.”

Chapter 29

Coquelles, France

They piled into the Rover with all they had taken from the pharmacy. Tomas drove too fast in the ice, the wheels spinning without traction for a long, frightening moment as they headed toward a row of stalled cars that lined the edge of the street.

Bo barked loudly in the back compartment, complaining over being jostled. Melanie checked Christopher’s seatbelt and then her own. Gripping the headrest of the passenger seat, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“Home,” Leila calmly responded.

Tomas said, “We’re going to try the tunnel.”

A fresh jolt of horror shot through Melanie. “What? How? We can’t do that, Tomas. You know the trains aren’t running.”

“There’s a service tunnel. Trust me.” He swerved between two stalled automobiles, the Rover’s front bumper clipping the rear of a Ford sedan, sending the smaller car spinning slowly into another parked car.

“You’re sure we can get through?” Melanie asked.

“No, I’m not sure, but I believe it’s a stronger possibility than finding another ferry operator. Don’t you? This will be the quickest route. It’s only thirty-one miles. I’ve been on the trains many times.”

They passed a haunted-looking café on one side the road and an Elf petrol station on the other. Melanie thought she noticed a couple of flailing scarecrow-thin figures darting in and out of the shadows.

Slowly, they moved toward the darkened terminal and the entrance beyond, the Rover’s headlights painting the snowy road, the wipers beating back and forth. The lack of stalled automobiles was fortunate. They had a straight, unblocked path all the way to the tunnel entrance.

Melanie wondered how things were in other parts of the world. If things had ended during the busy time of day, what might have happened? What about the parts of the world where it had been daylight? Had the sun simply flickered out?

Leila fidgeted in her seat. “No, no, no.”

“It’s fine,” Tomas said, his voice tinged with impatience.

Melanie had never heard Leila sound nervous in the least, let alone frightened, but the woman did then. She placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder, but Leila shrugged her off and moved away.

“Stop the car, Tomas,” Leila said. “For a moment, stop.”

Frowning, Tomas brought the Rover to a halt at the top of the incline. Ahead, the railway tracks wove snakelike, vanishing into the mouth of the twin tunnels. Normally, the Eurotunnel shuttled vehicles on the trains between France and England, twenty-three miles running deep beneath the cold waters of the English Channel.

The Rover idled low, and they waited for an anxious moment. Through her side window, Melanie watched as a hint of swirling northern lights brightened the sky just beyond the rolling hills that lined the road. Suddenly, she realized what else she was seeing. In the distance, thin shapes as gangly as scarecrow silhouettes against the moon and the fog crested the hillside.

“Tomas, Look! Are they Ragers?”

“Dear Lord, I think they are,” Tomas responded. He threw the Rover into drive, but the wheels spun uselessly in the snow.

Leila screamed, grabbing for the door handle. “Enough. This is enough!”

Tomas slammed the gearshift back into park and snatched at her arm. “No, Leila. They’re coming. Can’t you see?”

“I hate you! I hate this… this waiting to die. Let's get it done with. You let our home become a den of monsters.
You!
” Managing to free one arm, she clawed Tomas's face. Blood flowed, shimmering like black ribbons in the darkness, and Tomas let her go long enough for her to throw open the door. In a breath, she was out of the Rover and away.

Tomas opened his door and jumped out, but Leila was already stumbling up the hill, toward the hoard of writhing shadows. The snow whipped around her like ash.

“Jesus, Leila! Don't!”

But she was away, her coat like wings behind her, one expensive loafer cast off on the side of the road.

Melanie leapt from the backseat after Tomas, leaving Christopher behind, buckled in and wailing for his mother. “No, Tomas! Think of Christopher. Think of your son.”
Think of me.
She grabbed at him, but he shoved her aside. She fell against the side of the Rover, pressing her breath from her painfully. “Christopher needs you,” she wheezed.

He stopped, hung his head for a moment, and then moved back to the Rover.

Melanie watched as Leila met the creatures at the top of the hill, and against the black and snow-sprinkled backdrop of the sky, they swarmed. Leila became one with the screeching, howling mass and was gone forever.

Tomas climbed back into the car. Melanie got into the backseat and consoled little Christopher.

Tomas began driving. In the rearview mirror, Melanie saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. The scratches were no longer bleeding, but still red and angry. Melanie wanted to kiss his tears away, but said nothing other than the cooing assurances she gave the boy.

After a moment, Tomas said, “She’s one of them, now.”

“Think of her as immortal.”

Tomas turned to her with a questioning expression.

Melanie shook her head. “In our hearts, I mean. In our memories.”

“Why remember her at all? She was terrible to you.”

“Her memory is what we make her to be, Tomas. That’s all we can expect to have.”

“Then we won’t have much, will we?”

She stroked Christopher's hair. “You have him. He's enough, isn't he?”

Tomas nodded and turned back to face the front. Melanie again watched Tomas’s hurt, shining eyes in the rearview mirror. Why was he so hurt over a woman who had fallen in love with another man? Was it the loss of the woman or the loss of the good, comfortable life he had achieved? She could relate to pining over the loss of a comfortable life. Predictability had become a precious commodity since there was no assurance they would even be alive in twenty-four hours. She didn’t miss Leila, but she would never tell that to Tomas. Leila had become more than a nuisance and a bitch; she had become a danger to them all. She was capricious. If anything, Melanie felt terrible simply for not feeling anything over Leila’s flight.

***

It looked as though others had tried to get through the tunnels, but traffic must have bottlenecked. Tomas wove the Rover between abandoned vehicles. Car doors were hanging open, as if the occupants had fled in a hurry. A military Humvee with a shattered windshield sat on four flat tires, and a transit bus lay on its side, the passenger door thrown open. Various other trucks and cars sat vacant. Melanie realized there were bodies scattered about in varying degrees of dismemberment, covered in a light dusting of snow. A partially denuded skull sat atop an armored truck like a macabre hood ornament.

Tomas brought the Rover to a stop. “There might be something left here we can use.”

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Her chest tightened a bit, and she reached into her pocket to clutch her inhaler.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Tomas said, shifting the car into park. He climbed out, leaving the engine running, then reached back in for the gun.

Melanie chatted with Christopher, struggling to keep her voice light. She felt through one of the bags in the back and found a small stuffed monkey. She stood it up and made it dance along the back of the driver’s seat and then up Christopher’s leg.

The little boy laughed and clapped his hands. “Let me try.” He danced the toy on the seat between them. Bo turned and hung his head over the seat, waiting for a pat on the head. Melanie scratched behind his ears, her eyes riveted on Tomas’s broad back as he strode to the Humvee.

After a moment, Christopher stopped playing with his doll and stared intently up at Melanie. “Will I see Mommy again?”

“I think so.” The lie tasted bad, but Melanie didn’t know what else to tell the kid. “Maybe she went back home. She’ll probably be there when you get back.”

“We’ll go back home?” Christopher asked.

“Of course. But we have a few other places to visit first. Okay?”

“’kay.”

Tomas returned to the car with a bluster of icy wind and snow, tearing Melanie from her hateful memories. “No luck, except for this.” He held up an evil-looking machete.

“Soldiers carry those?”

“I have no idea. But I think we can use it, don’t you?”

In the back, Bo was becoming antsy. Melanie glanced through the back window and saw that the horizon had brightened slightly to a grayish orange. Headlights. Someone was coming their way, and survivors were proving to be even more dangerous than even the Ragers.

Tomas must have seen it, too. “Looks like we need to move.” He shoved the Rover into drive and headed toward the tunnel.

“Do you think this is going to work?” Melanie slipped her fingers into her coat pocket again and gripped the inhaler. She didn’t want to have to use it, especially in front of Tomas. She needed to be stronger than that.