Apocalypse Of The Dead (19 page)

And that’s when the knee went out. He dropped to the ground and screamed.

Behind him, Darnell was lumbering forward, getting closer.

“No,” Nate said.

He rose to his feet and hobbled away. Darnell’s mother’s house was just around the corner. Nate went to it. He limped through the front yard, got close enough to the wooden steps to see blood on the doorway.

Darnell moaned behind him.

“No fucking way,” Nate said. “No. No fucking way.”

Nate limped on, forcing himself to move.

He managed to get a good amount of distance on Darnell, even with the pain in his knee. He looked behind him, didn’t see Darnell, and decided to turn in to a space between two houses.

Another neighbor, Mr. Hartwell, had a lawn mower shed behind his house. Nate could see it from where he stood. He limped toward it, slid inside, and closed the door behind him.

He was in darkness now. He listened for a long time, but heard nothing. There were gaps in the sheet metal. He peered through them, and saw nothing.

The knee was killing him. So, too, was the pain in his arm.

“God, I fucked up so bad,” he said. “Oh, God, I don’t want to be like that.”

He slid down onto his butt, his back against the thin metal siding of the shed, and waited.

What was it the man on the news had said? You get bit, you got four, maybe five hours at the most.

It wasn’t much time, Nate thought.

God, not nearly enough.

Kyra Talbot was in her kitchen, one hand on her throat, listening to the news out of Odessa.

“…been no word as of yet from authorities with the Gulf Region Quarantine Authority as to the extent of the outbreak, but there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about earlier reports that the quarantine line has collapsed.”

Kyra drew in a sharp breath. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat and couldn’t quite do it.

The man on the radio said, “Deputy Director Richard Haskell gave a press conference earlier this morning at the Shreveport Headquarters of the Quarantine Authority in which he said the situation appeared grim.”

The voice on the radio changed to that of Deputy Director Richard Haskell. It was a smooth, slow voice, not deep, but very clear, and in her head Kyra pictured a tall, bald, slender man from somewhere in the South, his accent obscured by an Ivy League education, though not completely gone.

He said, “I can confirm that the quarantine line has collapsed around the Houston area. Initially, we directed reinforcements into the area, but it appears that our efforts there have been compromised, at least for now. We already have personnel moving into that area to try to shore up the breach. I spoke with Wade Mitchell, Director of Homeland Security, earlier this morning, and he told me we can expect significant reinforcement from military personnel as early as tomorrow night.”

A woman’s voice interrupted him. She sounded distant, like she was raising her voice to be heard from the back of a crowded room.

“Is it true, Director, that the outbreak coming up from Florida and Georgia was caused by escapees from the quarantine?”

“That seems obvious,” the director said. “Yes.”

“But how could that happen? Isn’t it your agency’s responsibility to stop this kind of thing?”

“It is,” he said. “And that’s a trust we stake our lives on every day. But the outbreak in Florida seems to have originated from a group of refugees who used a fishing boat to escape along the Gulf Coast. As you know, that is the responsibility of the Coast Guard”—he paused there for the briefest of moments, just long enough to give his next words added weight—“not our agency.”

More finger pointing, Kyra thought angrily. They’re so busy shuffling off the blame, they won’t tell us what’s going on.

Another reporter asked, “What’s being done to stop the spread of the infected?”

“That is the responsibility of the United States military,” the director said. “As I understand it, they have been moving troops into the affected areas for the last two days, but what their specific plans are, I can’t tell you. You’d have to go to them for that.”

“But what are you doing to stop the spread of the infected in the Houston area? We’ve been getting reports that this latest outbreak has already spread as far as Dallas. And there are reports of cases as far away as Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Boston.”

Now the director sounded angry, put upon. He said, “I have not heard any confirmed attacks in the Dallas area. The best information we have available—and this is not the rumor mill, mind you, this is confirmed information—is that the outbreak is so far contained within the sparsely populated region just north of Houston. Right now, we are redeploying our command around that area and we hope to have the threat contained within the next twenty-four hours. As for the other cases you mentioned, those again are not confirmed, and I won’t comment on unsubstantiated rumors. However, I have been told that the Director of Homeland Security is suspending all commercial airlines until further notice. Should any infected persons be found outside of the quarantine zone, we obviously want to prevent them from flying and spreading the infection to other cities.”

“Director,” another reporter said. “What do you have to say to those families who, in the meantime, are caught up in the path of these zombies?”

“The infected,” the director said, and Kyra could hear the inflection he gave the word, suggesting his distaste for the word zombie, “are extremely dangerous. We saw that in San Antonio two years ago. They can spread at an exponential rate. For that reason, we are asking people to remember their training. Remember the public service announcements we’ve posted since the quarantine was established. Stay inside your homes. Secure your residence the best way you can. If someone you know has been bitten, isolate that person. Complete depersonalization can occur in minutes, so make them comfortable if you can, and then isolate them. Do not attempt to care for them or transport them to a hospital, as this greatly increases your chances of being infected as well.”

“So you’re telling people who have been caught up in the outbreak to stay in their homes?” a female reporter asked.

“That’s correct.”

“What is the incentive for doing that, Mr. Director? If your agency is attempting to re-form the quarantine wall, won’t those people who remain in their homes be shut up inside the new quarantine zone the same way residents of the Gulf Coast were two years ago? That would be suicide, wouldn’t it?”

A long pause.

Kyra had already heard the director’s response four times that morning, but she still found herself leaning forward, holding her breath, waiting for him to say the words.

“Our hopes and prayers go out to everyone caught up in this disaster,” he said, carefully controlling the anger he felt for being put so roundly on the spot. “But these are dire circumstances. Some people will have to make terrible sacrifices so that the rest of us can continue to live in safety. I don’t expect anybody to like it, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”

Kyra gritted her teeth with a gathering rage. His hopes and prayers, she thought. What a ridiculously empty sentiment. The man wouldn’t lock himself up behind the quarantine line, and yet he had no trouble doing it to others. The thought made her face flush with renewed anger, and she snapped off the radio.

Her fingertips glided over the counter to the special clock that Uncle Reggie had bought her for her fourteenth birthday. There was a large spongy button on top. She pressed it, and a vaguely feminine robotic voice told her it was 4:12 P.M. The voice always overaccented the p in P.M., the pitch climbing to a sort of mousy squeak, making it sound like there was some kind of bathroom humor there.

It used to make her laugh as a little girl. In the last few years, it had still managed to make her smile, but today she couldn’t even do that. It was getting late, and Uncle Reggie had been gone for a while now, since before noon. She was starting to get worried.

More than worried actually. She was downright terrified. They were a long way from Houston, nearly at the opposite end of the state, but that didn’t mean a whole lot when they were dealing with the infected. The infected spread at an alarming rate, and despite what the Deputy Director out of Shreveport was saying, she had already heard plenty of reliable reports of outbreaks as far away as Los Angeles and Seattle and New York. People screaming and dying in the streets made for pretty believable reports, confirmed or otherwise.

Come on, Reggie, she thought. I need you here.

She hoped he was taking this seriously. She hoped he was cleaning out the Walmart shelves, loading up the truck.

A noise made her jump.

She let out a small gasp, then froze, listening.

She could hear a scraping noise coming from outside her trailer, like somebody was dragging a stick along the wall.

Her hand went back up to her throat.

The sound stopped.

After a long silence, it started up again, closer to the window now.

Her mental map of the trailer was precise. She knew the exact number of steps it took to get from the kitchen to the front door, how many to get from her bedroom to the bathroom at the end of the hall. She could, with a surprising degree of accuracy, stand at the trailer’s front door and point out every piece of furniture in the living room. And she could do the same thing in the kitchen and her bedroom and the bathroom and even Uncle Reggie’s room, though she rarely went in there.

Now that mental map of hers was telling her she was standing right in front of the window that looked out onto the front yard. Whoever was out there would be able to see her through that window.

She stepped back and off to one side.

She waited, barely breathing, listening for the noise to come again.

From somewhere out in the yard she heard a moan, and her sightless eyes instantly went wide. There was no confusing that sound. She had heard it far too many times on the radio, that phlegmy rattling deep in the throat that was the calling card of the infected.

Her mind was humming. What was she going to do? She couldn’t go anywhere. She couldn’t defend herself. She was trapped inside this trailer. She wouldn’t even be able to see them coming. What in the hell was she supposed to do?

Come on, girl, she ordered herself, think.

Something thudded against the front door, a heavy, clumsy sound, a drunk stumbling up the stairs.

The door, she thought. Oh, Christ.

Moving quickly, she reached out and touched the edge of the counter. Gliding her fingers along the edge, she moved to the door, found the seam, then moved her hand down to the dead bolt.

It was open. Careless, she thought. Stupid. Stupid could get her killed.

Or worse.

She focused on the dead bolt and turned it as quietly as she could. She closed her eyes and cringed as the bolt creaked out of its seat and fell into place with a final and unavoidably loud click.

The noise outside her door stopped.

For a moment, the world was quiet. She could hear the wind whistling around the corners of the trailer’s roof. Outside, she knew, the late-afternoon winds off the desert would be filling the streets with driven dust. She had listened to the soft, gritty movement of that blowing sand against the windows of this trailer all her life, until it became a sort of soundtrack for her quiet, comfortable existence. But now it seemed more like an ominous prelude, the first notes of something terrible.

When the crash hit the door, she was not surprised, though she did jump backward and gasp. Kyra immediately silenced herself, but the damage was done. Whoever it was out there was now beating on the door, throwing their weight against it. She heard moaning and the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs leading up to the door. A few seconds later, there were more hands beating against the door.

Uncle Reggie kept a pistol in his closet, she remembered. Maybe she could get it and use it, shoot through the door at whoever it was out there.

Yeah, she thought, and maybe you’ll even blow your own head off with it.

A crash against the door, and this time something gave. She could hear a crunch deep inside the cheap plywood. A moment later, there was another crash. The door burst apart, and Kyra could hear bits of wood falling to the floor.

She heard moaning, too.

She screamed as she turned and ran through the living room, crashing into the coffee table and Uncle Reggie’s La-Z-Boy recliner before finally stumbling into the hallway that led back to her bedroom.

Behind her, she could hear bodies clamoring through the doorway, falling all over themselves as they entered her home.

Her own bedroom was to the right, but she turned into Uncle Reggie’s room and slammed the door behind her. She tried to move his dresser in front of the door, but it was too heavy for her to do it by herself. Instead, she sat down with her back against the dresser and put her feet up on the door.

Fists beat against the door.

“Go away,” she screamed.

She was answered by moaning and a furious pounding on the door.

“Please,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

Then, from outside, a shotgun blast. The noise was followed by the sound of the shooter racking the spent shell from the breach, and then another blast.

“Kyra? Kyra, where are you, baby?”

Uncle Reggie, she thought.

“In here,” she shouted. “I’m in here.”

Kyra heard footsteps, Uncle Reggie cussing, then three more blasts from his shotgun.

She waited, her feet still pressed against the door with every bit of strength she had.

“Kyra?”

“In here.”

She heard the floor creak on the opposite side of the door.

He said, “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She said it so quickly that the words came out as one syllable.

“Baby, I’m gonna open the door, okay?”

“Okay.”

A pause.

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you blocking it with something?”

“Oh.” She took her feet off the door and crawled into a ball in the corner where the dresser met the wall.