The Dark Trilogy (73 page)

That little bit of joy was her drug, so when she woke, Megan would bury herself in blankets and pillows and grasp at those fleeting images of happiness. But it never worked; once they were gone, they were gone for good.

No matter how bad or good her dreams became, Megan never made a sound in her sleep—or when she woke up. There was just too much of a chance that her voice would carry beyond the walls of her house.

Megan kept staring at her bedroom wall. She’d been working on memorizing the pattern of the wallpaper border over the past few days. It was a floral print Dalton hated, and it consisted of an assortment of red flowers repeating on the six-inch border all the way around the room. Memorizing the pattern wasn’t much of a challenge, since there were only about ten different flowers on the paper, but the exercises passed the time until she was able to drift off to sleep.

The rich color of the flowers matched the comforter and drapes, as well as the pillowcases and bed ruffle. Dalton faked nausea the first time he saw the entire set, but as a husband, he had learned how to pick his battles and bowed to his wife’s evil glare rather quickly when it came to such minor things.

Megan was proud of the decorative choices she’d made in the bedroom. It was the first room they’d finished in the house. The rest of the place was a work in progress, and had been since they’d moved in a little over a year ago.

This was their second place together, and purchasing the house had been the start of their “serious” stage. They bought a house that cost too much, picked out furnishings that maxed out their credit cards, and made plans to have a baby.

Megan and Dalton had been together for five years, married for three, and Megan had been feeling the itch to start a family for at least a year. This house out in the suburbs was going to be the place where they really got going as a couple … and having the bedroom finished and tastefully decorated was the first step in that process.

Now the bedroom was going to be her mausoleum.

It wasn’t as if the food had run out. Megan had never been a big eater, and she lost what little appetite she had when the world fell apart.

She could feel her muscles being devoured by her desperate body as she ate less and less. It was fighting her, resisting her desire to fade away. For some reason, Megan’s body wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet.

Before everything started, Megan had barely topped “a buck five” as Dalton would say. She was sure that if she checked her current weight, it would be a miracle if it were above ninety pounds.

“A strong wind’s going to blow you away if you’re not careful, honey.”

Megan grinned at the memory of her husband’s words. If she lost any more weight, she might test that theory. Floating away might not be a bad idea.

Megan spent the rare occasion when she wasn’t lying in bed trying to read old magazines and books, but as she was never a big reader, that didn’t last long. So instead, she dug up an old cookbook and flipped through it for hours on end, staring at pictures of recipes that would never be made again.

Ghosts of her old life resided in everything that surrounded her. Not just in the cookbook, but in all the little things in the rooms through which she floated like some sort of spirit—things they had bought together, made together. There had been so much to live for, but in the blink of an eye, that was all gone.

Megan also spent a lot of time thinking about her sister in Pittsburgh. Sandy had three little boys whom Megan adored. They were all younger than six, each cuter than the next. “Aunty Mega” would probably never get to see any of them again. When this mess began, Sandy told Megan that she and Phil were taking the boys down to the cabin in West Virginia and pleaded for Megan and Dalton to join them.

Unfortunately, things had turned bad so quickly that the National Guard clamped down on travel and Dalton nixed the idea of trying to make the six-hour trip in their Jeep. With all the reports of log-jammed highways and roadside attacks, Dalton doubted they could even make it out of town, let alone to the mountains of West Virginia. Nope, they would stay in the house, stock up on necessities, and pray this wasn’t the end of times, like so many of those damn televangelists were shouting about over the airwaves.

But those bastards had been right.

Early on, Dalton planned on going out one last time to collect supplies—food, water, batteries … anything he could get his hands on. Megan remembered CNN blaring in the background that day, saying that it was Day Six of the crisis.

Dalton was going to take the Grand Cherokee, all their cash, and the revolver. His plan was to head to the closest grocery store and pick up whatever would fit in the SUV and return home as fast as he could.

Megan recalled the conversation before he left, when she was in a white-hot panic and pleading with her husband to let her come with him or better yet, for him to not leave at all.

Dalton had gripped her shoulders as he tried to reassure her. “Honey, it’ll be all right. You can’t come with me. You have to stay and-”

“But I don’t even want you to go! Don’t you get it? It’s not safe out there, Dalton. God only knows if the virus is here already. Please! If you have to go, let me go with you.”

Megan had gone on like that for over a minute as Dalton shushed her while shaking his head. He never broke eye contact with her the whole time.

Dalton’s calm began to overpower Megan’s determination, and her hysterics lessened. In a normal situation, if her husband had shushed her, she would have punched him in the chest. Not that her slight frame could pack much of a wallop, but he would definitely have known she wasn’t going to tolerate such a condescending attitude. But this time, it was having the effect he’d hoped for.

“You know as well as I do,” Dalton said as she started to wind down, “there isn’t much you can do for me out there.”

The volume of Dalton’s voice increased as Megan grew agitated again. He glared at his wife. “I’m not taking a chance on something happening to you. And let’s not play bullshit games about who is capable of handling themselves better out there if things get crazy.”

Dalton LeValley stood a smidge over six feet tall and weighed in at a fit one hundred and ninety pounds. He was ex-military, though he’d not seen combat in his two years of active duty. Still, he’d been trained to deal with dangerous situations, while Megan had taken a two-week self-defense course down at the Y. She knew Dalton could deal with trouble and move faster without her tagging along, but the idea of being separated from him, even for an hour, terrified her.

Megan shuddered as she took in a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she tried to shut out all the logic her husband had thrust upon her. The world had gone mad, and she didn’t care that what Dalton said made sense. She also didn’t care if she was being selfish. He didn’t have to go out at all. They had enough food and water for a couple of days, and this whole thing would blow over by then, wouldn’t it?

All that day, the TV showed images of riots. Sure, they were going on in places like New York and Los Angeles, as one would expect, but they were happening in smaller cities and just about everywhere else.

One story on the television had stuck with Megan. A convenience store clerk in Iowa had been hung from a light pole in front of his store because he tried to stop a crowd of looters from ransacking his place of business. Megan remembered the images of shattered plate glass windows and shelves stripped bare. The store looked like a tornado had hit it. But what resonated in her mind were the images of the poor man after he’d been lynched. He’d not just been hung; he’d been stoned as well. His face and body were a mass of bloody bruises and welts. The censors had stopped bothering to cover up such brutality by then, so she got to see it in all its glory.

Megan found it hard to believe that it would ever get that bad in their anonymous little suburb. Certainly, their subdivision was in an uproar, with neighbors panicking and wondering what to do, but the madness of the outside world hadn’t touched down in Milfield yet. Lots of people were leaving the area, and a few teens were trying their hand at vandalism, but the overall perception was that this viral crisis was happening elsewhere and would never reach the local area.

It wasn’t until a camouflaged Humvee drove down their street with a loudspeaker announcing where the nearest Red Cross and National Guard shelters were set up that Megan realized that the worldwide panic being wailed about on television had come to their little corner of the world.

The National Guard wasn’t requiring people to leave their homes. Dalton told Megan that the military didn’t have the resources to waste on homeowners unwilling to evacuate. They were urging everyone to do so, but were too busy cordoning off areas of the city, battling rioters, and trying to maintain the peace to bother with house-to-house searches.

Some of the families in the neighborhood took the Guardsmen up on their offer, piling into their cars and heading to the shelters. Others, like Dalton and Megan, decided to hunker down and wait it out.

Dalton had dismissed the idea of heading to a shelter rather quickly. “Why should we spend the next month crammed into some shitty tin can like sardines, eating lousy food when we can be comfortable here in our own house?”

Megan didn’t argue at the time. But now Dalton was heading out into that mess to do a little grocery shopping, where the possibility of facing looters wasn’t the worst thing he might face.

Dalton shook Megan. It wasn’t violent, but she snapped out of her reverie just the same as if he had slapped her.

“Megan! Please let me go. We both know I have to do this.” He wasn’t pleading with her. It was the last gasp of rational arguing he would do before he got angry. It was easy to read him after five years together, although things had never been even remotely this intense before. Megan knew she didn’t want him angry. Because if something happened and she never saw him again …

Things didn’t seem normal outside their house, but it wasn’t as bad as the horror stories the news had cooked up. If Dalton went out there, then everything would be real. Megan was beginning to understand that for her husband it already was real, and had been from the moment he heard the first hints of trouble in other places on the news. Dalton had accepted this new reality immediately and had boarded up the house and rationed their food and water. He’d even packed the Jeep in case they needed to leave in a hurry.

As Dalton spoke, it dawned on Megan that the only reason he hadn’t proposed this trip a couple of days earlier was because he knew how she would react. He had waited as long as he could before broaching the subject, until he had no choice but to make this trip if they were going to survive inside their barricaded house.

So Megan knew it probably surprised Dalton when she pulled him close, hugging him, and nodded her approval rather than choosing to continue arguing. The tension remained for a moment, but when Dalton’s stiff shoulders relaxed, Megan knew things were okay between them.

Wrapping her hand around the back of Dalton’s neck, she pulled him close to whisper in his ear.

“Please, Dal, be careful. God, just be safe … I can’t imagine what I would do-”

Megan’s words were cut off as her husband swept her into a big bear hug. Dalton kissed her on the forehead and then pushed her back so they could look each other in the eyes. She had to bend her neck back quite a bit, as she always did to accommodate their difference in height.

“You know I’ll be as careful as possible. No screwing around, just getting what we need and then I’ll head straight home.”

He dropped his arms to his sides, still a bit tense, fearful that Megan was some sort of firecracker whose wick had burned all the way down, but hadn’t exploded. Megan gave Dalton one of the sleepy little smiles she reserved for those times when she had essentially lost an argument. Not that she would admit defeat, but it served to let her husband know that this firecracker was a dud. Megan’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, but it was good enough for Dalton. He pulled her close again and kissed her firmly on the lips before heading to the garage.

“Be back soon,” was all he said before getting into the Jeep and driving away.

Dalton did make it back. He had been through hell, and the Jeep had suffered some serious dents, but both man and vehicle returned in one piece. There was a small gash on his forehead, but no other visible wounds when he stepped out of the SUV.

He described people dying on the streets—some sick, others simply looking insane as they roamed the area.

“People were trying to take the truck, grabbing at the doors. A bunch threw rocks at the police and the National Guard … hell, they were attacking them! Everyone out there is insane, I swear to God. But …” He paused, his face turning pale at the memory. “But it was those sick people, the ones who were infected. They were attacking everyone, ripping and biting them. Christ, there was so much blood. It was a fucking nightmare.”

Dalton hadn’t made it to a store. Two miles down the road from their neighborhood was as far as he got, and that was more than enough. He tried to turn back, but people were running everywhere, blocking his path. After a few minutes of negotiating traffic to a place where he could turn the Jeep around, a bunch of teenagers began throwing rocks and surrounded the vehicle.

When Megan asked for more details, Dalton shook his head, only saying that he had gotten away and was fine. He wouldn’t let Megan touch him as he rattled off his story, peering through the slats he’d nailed over the front door and windows. It was as if he were worried someone had followed him home. When she tried to hug him, he darted away. He was too strung out to stand still for even a moment.

It was when he went to the sink a few minutes later and rolled up his shirt sleeve that Megan saw the bite mark. The wound on his arm looked superficial, but Dalton’s hooded sweatshirt was torn in a couple of places. There were blood spatters on his clothes, and Megan wondered if he were hiding any other wounds from her.

Dalton pulled off his sweatshirt and tossed it into the trashcan. Still agitated after cleaning up at the kitchen sink, he locked himself in the bathroom. Megan tried to leave him alone for a while, certain her husband just needed time to calm down. But when he didn’t come out for ten minutes, she couldn’t wait any longer and banged on the door, demanding that Dalton talk to her.