Lorie scanned the road in front of them. There were numerous rows of spike strips extending beyond the road through the wooded area between the lanes of Route 29. Beyond the spike strips were metal barricades. Beyond the barricades were military vehicles, extending up 29 as far as Lorie could see.
Soldiers clad in body armor and gas masks were scattered among the vehicles. They began to scurry into action.
They must be burning up in all that gear, Lorie thought, though she had to admit the gas masks were sure to be more effective than the surgical masks, if only Sven had a mask like that, then maybe he wouldn’t now be...
As if the ground portion of the roadblock weren’t enough, two helicopters flew up and down on a perpendicular flight path to the road, probably ferreting out fugitives unfortunate enough to be on foot, or fugitive zombies even.
In addition to the two helicopters in the air, Lorie thought she could make out the blades of another beyond the stripped-down cargo hold of a truck.
Jane lowered the window and yelled. “Where are we supposed to go? We’ll die back there.”
The soldiers positioned themselves, then raised their rifles, pointing the barrels at the windshield of the car. It seemed to Lorie like way too many soldiers just to take care of the three of them.
Another voice came on, gentler than the first. “You need to keep moving. The infection is waning. It’s ending. You can outrun it if you keep moving. Teams have been dispatched to secure the area, you are not alone in there.”
Lorie wondered what that meant. Teams have been dispatched to do what? To kill everyone? To napalm the place? No one was helping them, that was for sure.
More soldiers were dropping from the backs of trucks, joining others of their kind hurriedly surging toward the barricades. Lorie looked at the closest soldiers before her, pointing their rifles. A few were trembling.
Jane was breathing hard as she yelled back. “Just drive? Back to the zombies?”
The first voice came back on. “You cannot pass the point of quarantine. You must turn back. This is your second warning.”
Now most of the soldiers before Lorie were trembling like rickety robots, like mass-produced, impersonal killing machines stuck on vibrate. They were there to keep whatever was happening from spreading, to keep Lorie, Jane, and Sven trapped in the nightmarish stretch of road where the infected shambled, eager to bite and tear and—
“The bastards,” Lorie said, letting her face turn into a snarl. “This is all their fault. Why aren’t they helping us?”
“This is your third and final warning. Turn back
now.
”
“Our tax money at work,” Jane hissed. She put the car in reverse and began to back up. Then she completed a three-point turn, facing the car south in the northbound lane of Route 29.
She drove south until there was a gravel turnaround. She took it and entered the southbound lane, not that it mattered—theirs was the only moving car on the road.
As they drove back the way they had come only the previous day, Lorie noticed that it had grown much quieter.
The engines of the cars that they passed didn’t run, and there was no drone of zombies scratching at the insides of their cars. The zombies in their cars were still trapped, but they no longer moved, their bodies lay still, slumped against windows and steering wheels, or slumped toward the passenger seat but kept in place by their buckled seatbelts.
There was no noise save for that made by Sven’s car, Sven’s ragged gasps, and the soothing chirrup of birds.
“They’re coming apart,” Jane said, as they drove farther away from the Wegmans. Lorie looked and saw that Jane had slowed down and was peering into some of the cars, in which the zombies seemed to be deteriorating.
Maybe it
was
ending!
Maybe the military people, untrustworthy and loathsome as they were, had been telling the truth about this being the end of the outbreak.
On the verge of a joyful outburst, Lorie felt her jubilation die as her eyes passed over Sven. He looked just as Evan had before…
Lorie noticed they were pulling into a strip mall. “What are you doing?”
“We need some water, maybe some food, and I personally need some caffeine if we’re to keep driving like this forever. Gas wouldn’t hurt either.”
Lorie gave Jane her order and stayed with Sven while Jane rummaged in the convenience store. Pacing around the car, Lorie almost felt safe. It really did seem that the zombies were gone.
Jane came back and loaded the car with candy bars, and bottles of water and iced tea.
After a short leg-stretching break, they set off again, putting more distance between them and the Wegmans.
Lorie was munching on a Mounds Dark Chocolate candy bar when she saw them—a small throng of zombies coming up a side road toward 29. The throng reacted violently to the car’s presence, and though Lorie suspected that Jane saw them too, Lorie didn’t say a word.
Trying to work up the saliva with which to swallow her bite of coconut and chocolate goodness, Lorie tried to make peace with the truth. The outbreak wasn’t over. It would never be over.
120
Sven let himself fade in and out of consciousness as Jane drove and Lorie navigated. He couldn’t believe it was down to the three of them now. It had just been seven, counting Milt.
He realized that he was neglecting to count Ivan.
Good, faithful Ivan, scratching at the bottom of the seat. Ivan would always be there, Ivan would always…
There was a shaking, a pain in his chest, blood in the trees—
He opened his eyes.
The car wasn’t moving. Was he in the car? Yes, still in the car, he could feel the strap of the seatbelt holding him uncomfortably in place.
Lorie was shaking him awake. “You need to eat.” Her eyes were kind, concerned.
Sven shook his head, feeling his throat seize and lock up.
“Sven,” she pleaded.
Abruptly, Sven jolted awake. “Why are we stopped? Where’s Jane?”
Lorie began to answer something about ABC Stores, but Sven didn’t catch the rest of it. He opened his door just in time, and fell out of the car to heave.
The heaving sapped the last of his strength, his will.
“Where are the…” he managed.
“Far behind us, far—”
When Sven next came to, they were stopped again. He heard voices—whispering voices. He opened his eyes.
Ivan was looking down disconsolately at him, intermittently poking at Sven’s head with a concerned paw.
Where were the voices coming from?
Whose voices?
Sven looked around, bleary-eyed, wondering if Ivan had been fed.
His field of vision lurched, and began to spin.
He rolled over and gave in to the vomiting. His body became one large spasm of expulsion. But nothing came out. What he needed most to get rid of could not be thrown off.
The darkness was there, drilling its way into his bones, and Sven knew that it would never leave.
When his vision cleared, Sven’s mouth was filled with a thick liquid. He was sure that it was blood.
I’m a zombie now too, he thought, that’s what’s happened. Just swallow it and shamble on. Come on zombie Sven, come o—
Sven’s vision cleared. Lorie and Jane were crouched over him, pouring water into his mouth.
He managed to swallow some of the vile liquid between bouts of coughing. Then his vision clouded again, and he was swimming in nausea.
After what seemed like hours, Sven regained some of his former self and propped himself up on his elbows. “Where are we?”
Lorie’s voice answered. “On the UVa grounds. Memorial Gym.”
“What? We’re back where we started? Across the street from my…”
“Across the street from what?”
Sven sighed, keeping the nausea at bay for the moment. “My house.”
His eyes finally focused properly, and he saw that he was lying on a gym mat, in what he recognized as the ground floor of Memorial Gymnasium, a building whose layout he knew well from years of working out there. Sven found the gym mat’s sweaty smell oddly comforting, and reminiscent of the pure athletic endeavor that he wasn’t sure he would ever experience again.
He sat up slowly. “What’s happening to me? Am I…”
“I think you’re fine, probably inhaled too much of the zombie fog. I think of it as their tentacles. They reach out and grab you, paralyzing you, and then…well, you know.”
“Wait, how’d you get me in here?”
Lorie pointed at something.
Sven looked where she was pointing and saw a small, carpeted dolly. He laughed in spite of everything. “You carted me in on
that?
”
“Yeah, that’s right, and you weren’t much help either, flopping around all over the place like a dead jellyfish.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Any time.”
“Where’s Jane?”
Lorie pointed straight up. “On the roof, getting ready for…well, why don’t you go up and see for yourself? She’ll be so happy to see that you’re better! We had already thought you were gone when you weren’t coming back, and then when you showed up, well, you were so sick that we…”
Trying to understand Lorie’s words, Sven felt a gap in his memory, in the story of that day. There was something he couldn’t place, an inexplicable dead zone where a connection should have been. He tried to fill the gap, to remember, but his mind wouldn’t let him.
121
Dusk was approaching, and it would be time to start soon. Things were going as smoothly as could be expected. The outbreak did seem to be waning, but Jane wasn’t going to be the one to tell that to the zombies that had gathered down below, snapping and clawing up at her, probably trying to project their stench upward so she would fall down to them, a heaven-sent dinner gift for the undead.
Jane was crunching away at a bag of hickory-smoked potato chips, reflecting on what she would soon do, when the doorknob shook.
She dropped the chips and whirled toward the door, reaching for her semi-automatic.
Then the door that led onto the roof opened, and Sven hobbled out, Lorie supporting him at his side. Ivan kept crossing in front of Sven, as if trying to trip him up.
Jane was overjoyed to see Sven limping over to her, seemingly alright, the color back in his face.
She felt cold at how wrong she had been about him dying in his successful attempt to create a diversion, and then again in her assessment that he was becoming a zombie himself.
The man she had now mourned twice looked about the roof, then at her. “I see we’re drinking tonight.”
Jane smiled. “Only if you’re buying.”
“You have chip on your chin.”
“How unladylike of me—forgetting my compact what with starring in a zombie movie and all that.”