“But there’s another way.”
Harper stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Not for us,” he said, and started up to the basement.
Conrad pushed himself off the wall. He had flicked back on the safety, had put the pistol back in his pocket, and now headed toward the stairs.
Gabriel called after him. “What are you doing?”
Still walking, he said, “You lied to me. You never wanted to save my son. You only wanted to use him.”
“Conrad, please. You never would have understood.”
The last of Harper’s men had already disappeared up the steps. Conrad, the three zombies behind him, followed without looking back.
On the outside,
58 Orchid Lane looked just like every other house along the street. But as Conrad pulled into the driveway and parked, he knew it wasn’t. Without knowing it he had the same sense as his wife, that this was a stranger’s house now, a place which had been abandoned and left to rot. For eleven years he had called it home, had existed inside its walls, had played with his son, had loved his wife. But all those memories had been washed away, wiped clean, and the house would not welcome him as it had all those times before, because now
he
was the stranger.
Conrad got out of the car Harper had provided him, Harper who had been sympathetic to Conrad’s plight and had mentioned something about fate. About how fate had brought them together twice already, and how the first time Harper had provided Conrad transportation so why not provide it again.
He stood there quietly for a moment, listening to the neighborhood. He could hear a dog barking in the distant, children playing, a sprinkler shushing water in someone’s front lawn. He looked across the street at Thomas’s house, almost expected to see his old neighbor sitting out on the porch, a pipe between his lips. He would go over there soon, take Thomas up on his constant offer—
anything you need, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask
—but first he had to go inside this house that was no longer his, the place he had last seen his wife and son.
Up the walkway then, onto the porch, he reached for the doorknob but stopped when he realized he didn’t have his key. He knew Denise had hidden a spare somewhere close a long time ago, but she had never told him where. Maybe he could go around back, try the patio door, or if need be break a window.
He placed his hand on the doorknob. Turned it.
The door swung inward and he stepped inside, paused at once when he saw the mess. The small table where they would keep their keys and mail and Denise always had fresh gray flowers waiting in a vase had not only been knocked over, it had been smashed into pieces. Just like Cynthia’s desk back at Living Intelligence, someone had been cruel to it for the simple fact that they could. The same was true of the hallway walls themselves, holes now all over the place, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and just went crazy.
Conrad withdrew the pistol from his pocket. He called, “Denise?” even though he knew she wasn’t here. He waited, five seconds, ten, and then he started farther into the house.
The existing room shared the same kind of destruction. Holes spotting the walls, furniture destroyed. Even the couch and recliners had been gutted, their foam viscera all over the floor.
“Denise?” he called again, as he wandered into the kitchen. He said her name not because he thought she would answer—he knew she wasn’t here after all, that she was long gone—but because he needed to hear his own voice. The house which was no longer his, which was now a stranger, had become much too silent. He had to say something to break that silence, even if his own voice was forced and awkward.
He checked the entire first floor, then the second floor. Much was the same here, Kyle’s toys scattered around, crunched beneath unforgiving feet. In the master bedroom the bed had been sliced open, the vanity mirror smashed.
When he was done with the second floor, he went down to the basement. All the rubber storage containers had been knocked over and opened, their contents sorted through.
The black case was gone.
Conrad stared, his mouth open, his legs starting to shake. He walked backward, step after unsteady step, until his legs bumped against the stairs. He sat down, leaned forward, dropped the pistol so he could place his head in his hands.
First Kyle, then Denise, and now his broadsword—everything in this world that he had cared about and held dear had been taken away from him. And it even went back further. Back to his childhood, the time he spent with his mom, the nights they’d stayed up reading, and how after everything, after he’d attempted to turn, his memory had been taken away too.
The doorbell rang.
Conrad opened his eyes.
The doorbell rang again.
He reached down and grabbed the pistol.
The doorbell rang a third time.
He stood and started up the stairs, stepped into the kitchen, went down the hallway toward the front when the doorbell rang a fourth time and then the door itself opened and in came Thomas, his face small and his eyebrows bushy, Thomas staring first at the mess and then glancing up and raising his hands when he saw the gun pointed at him.
Slowing his advance, Conrad lowered the pistol and said, “What are you doing here?”
“I saw the car in the driveway.”
Conrad walked past him, stepping over the chunks of plaster, and glanced out the door Thomas had left open. The street was deserted, the neighborhood still and quiet. He shut the door and turned back to his neighbor.
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked. “The police and Hunters were here three hours ago. They said there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”
“You talked to them?”
“I came over to see what was wrong. I mean, after the other night, with Kyle being taken away …” Thomas closed his eyes, shook his head. “Is it true what they told me?”
“What did they tell you?”
“That you’re a traitor.”
Conrad said, “The night Kyle was taken away, you knew we had a zombie with us. How?”
“I was a Hunter myself back in the day. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
“But you didn’t seem surprised. Why is that?”
“I don’t know. I figured it was something new the Government had instituted. Made sense to me—force the zombies to track down more of their kind.”
Conrad didn’t say anything for a long moment, studying his neighbor closely.
“Did you tell them that?” he asked. “About the zombie that was with us?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I just didn’t. I could tell something was wrong. And besides, I know you’re not a traitor. Right?”
Conrad kept staring back at him, searching for any small, telling detail in his neighbor’s decaying face and eyes.
“Right?”
Conrad nodded. “Right.”
“So why are they saying that about you? Why is there a warrant out for your arrest?”
“I seem to have pissed off their boss.”
“You mean—”
Conrad nodded.
His eyes wider now, Thomas said, “I saw him yesterday on the TV. He executed those three Hunters and … and that zombie.” He paused. “They were the same ones that were here the other night, weren’t they.”
It was spoken as a statement, not as a question, so Conrad didn’t bother acknowledging it.
Thomas said, “Just how much trouble are you in?”
Before Conrad could respond, a phone started ringing. He turned around at once, trying to determine its location, before he realized it was coming from his pocket. He pulled out the mobile phone Gabriel had given him, stared down at it.
“Who is that?” Thomas asked.
Conrad shook his head, pressed TALK, and placed the phone to his ear.
Gabriel said, “They’re already on their way.”
“What?”
“You’ve got two, maybe three minutes before they get there.”
“Who?”
“The Hunters and Special Police.”
Conrad closed the phone. He turned and hurried back to the front door, opened it, peeked outside.
“Who was that?” Thomas said.
Again the street was empty, the day quiet. The dog that had been barking before had now stopped, but still Conrad could hear children off in the distant, he could hear the shushing of a water sprinkler.
“Conrad, what’s wrong?”
If the police were in fact coming for him, they wouldn’t use sirens. At least not until they were a mile away, and then they would speed in with their lights flashing, hope to catch him off-guard.
“Please, son,” Thomas said, stepping forward, plaster crunching under his loafers, “will you answer me?”
Gabriel had lied to him before, had manipulated him for his own means, and there was the possibility that the zombie was doing the same thing now. But Conrad didn’t think so. He had heard the urgency in the zombie’s voice, the seriousness.
A hand fell on his shoulder, and for an instant he had the very strange notion that the hand belonged to the house itself, that 58 Orchid Lane had become an actual being with appendages—legs, arms, hands—and that one of those hands was now touching Conrad because it wanted to get his attention, ask Conrad what he thought he was doing trespassing here when he no longer had the right to step foot inside the front door.
But when Conrad turned he found it was Thomas’s hand on his shoulder, his neighbor staring back at him with worried eyes.
“Whatever trouble you’re in,” Thomas said, “I want to help.”
Conrad stared down at the hand on his shoulder. His eyes focused on Thomas’s wedding band and he thought about how eventually Thomas would be gone but the ring would still be here, would forever be here, and it made no real sense because the ring had never done anything to deserve its immorality, it had never worked a day in its life, it had no emotions, it couldn’t think.
“Thank you,” Conrad said. He took Thomas’s hand from off his shoulder, held it in his own hand, squeezed it tight. “Thank you, but I can’t bring you into this.”
“I’m already in it.”
“No you’re not.”
Conrad let go of his neighbor’s hand, turned away, and hurried through the front door. He had just reached the car, had started to open the driver’s door, when he heard them. Not their sirens but their engines, the squeal of their tires as they took the hard turns, and just then one of them appeared down the street, its lights flashing.
He got into the car and started it up, was about to put the gear in reverse when the passenger’s door opened and Thomas slipped into the seat.
Conrad said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
There was a screeching of tires as the police cruiser came to halt right in front of the house, blocking the driveway, its two occupants jumping out with their weapons drawn and aimed at the car.
Thomas was looking at them over his shoulder. “Now what?”
Conrad, his eyes on the rearview watching the two officers approaching, said, “Buckle up.”
Thomas had just managed to clip in his seatbelt when Conrad revved the engine once, twice, three times, and then shoved the gearshift into reverse. The car jerked backward and its tires squealed and it started picking up speed, the two officers unloading a few rounds into the rear windshield, spider webbing it, before diving out of the way.
Conrad closed his eyes and braced himself when they reached the end of the driveway, smashing right into the parked cruiser, a sudden pop of metal against metal. Then he shifted into drive, spinning the wheel, driving up over the curb and then back onto the street, one of the officers firing at him again, the rear windshield finally shattering completely, and when he reached the end of Orchid Lane and glanced back through where the windshield had been, he saw two other police cruisers farther down the street, their sirens now sounding, coming his way.
Through one stop
sign, through another, fishtailing around corners, gunning the engine on the straightaways, Conrad raced through Dead Oak Estates. The neighborhood was a blur around him, the houses whipping past, and no matter how fast he went, how hard he took the turns, the cops stayed with him.
When he turned onto Steinbeck, almost out of the development now, his mobile phone rang. His left hand on the wheel, he pulled it from his pocket and handed it to Thomas.
“Answer that.”
Thomas, squeezed down in his seat, his eyes closed, took the phone and opened it, put it to his ear and voiced a hesitant hello. He listened a moment, then said to Conrad, “It’s for you.”
Another stop sign came up on their right and they blew past it, straight through the intersection.
“Tell him to call back in a minute.”
They came around a bend and the street straightened out again, and Conrad gunned it. The engine roared and the needle rose steadily and they were two blocks away from the exit, one block, when suddenly a black Humvee appeared out of nowhere. It shot forward from a driveway and stopped in the middle of the street. Conrad gripped the wheel tight, jerked it to the left, went up over the curb and just barely missed the back of the Humvee. Then they were past it and headed toward the exit, the main highway now one hundred yards away, heavy traffic heading east and west.
Conrad glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see two Hunters scrambling out of the Humvee. He shouted, “Down!” as the Hunters raised their rifles and started firing, Thomas crouching even lower in his seat, Conrad ducking his head, and then they had reached the stop sign but were already doing forty-five, now fifty, and it was too late to stop.
Conrad closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact.
Horns blared, tires screeched, and when he opened his eyes a moment later he saw a truck barreling at them from the left-hand lane, its driver already covering his face. It struck them on the rear left and sent them in a swirling three-sixty, Thomas shouting out, Conrad closing his eyes. It seemed to last forever until the car slammed into the curb, jerked forward, and stalled.