Project Pallid (29 page)

It’s
time.

There’s
no delaying it.

There’re
no more excuses.

And
as hard as it is to abandon the false-security of my house, I’ve got no choice
any more. Leaving the pantry was the catalyst that set a ball into motion, and
it’s got its own momentum now; I can’t question its direction. As terrifying as
the unexpected might be, and as much as every fiber of me wills against it, I’ve
got to keep moving forward.

And
so I do.

Outside
the kitchen, the dining room and the rest of what I can see of our place is
exactly what I found in the kitchen, and it makes me wonder whether the rest of
Platsville and Madison won’t look the same way, too. Then again, maybe it was
my presence here that drew the masses of rotting corpses around me.

Curled
and pale, mangled and spiritless, I carefully make my way through them to get
to the door. With keys in hand, the garage is only steps away. My bike’s just
inside it, and I know I can make it that far. Or, I’m pretty sure I can.

When
the door opens, the light of day is blinding. It’s the first direct sunlight
I’ve seen or felt in what seems an eternity. My skin, void of it for so long,
must look as translucent as those who weren’t so fortunate—if you can
call it that—but fading quickly might’ve been better than being left
behind to brave the fallout of infection, alone.

I
squint and peer around the front yard for anything or anyone who might still be
active, but I see nothing. I hear no one. My eyes finally adjust to the point
that I can see clearly, and I recheck what I’ve already surveyed. Still,
there’s nothing. Abandoned cars and empty yards, aside from scattered bodies,
there isn’t a threat in sight.
Maybe my timing was better than I thought.
Maybe enough has passed that I’m actually safe now
, I think. My fingers
cross with the optimistic thought.

The
lock on the garage door turns easily, and I’m quickly inside to pull my bike
from where Mom’s car used to sit.
 
And with my backpack slung tightly around my shoulders, I climb on and
situate myself.

I
leave the door swinging behind, roll to the end of the driveway, bang a left,
and start pedaling on what will become an eighteen-mile trip to Madison and to
Catee’s house. And from there, we’ll begin the long ride to Damariscotta, where
I’ll find my mom and the brains behind the disease, and then I’ll have my
revenge.

Even
if Catee has to see her own dad die, it’s what he deserves for what he’s taken
from me.

May 11
^th:
9:36 A.M.

It’s
a mile to the end of my road. Mostly lined with trees and dense shrubs, there are
a dozen or so small homes and trailers sprinkled along the way. The sky is a
flawless blue, and the early morning sun casts warm rays of spring on my
exposed skin. The air is eerily quiet: foreboding in the sense that its
stillness will inevitably be broken. I pedal quickly, legs whirling round and
round, as I climb the large hill of our road. My legs burn from weeks of
inactivity, but in a few more turns of pedals, I’ll be coasting down its other
side.

The
crest of the hill—what should have been celebratory—stops me
instead. I’m at the top now, and I can see clear behind me, back to my mailbox
and to our driveway. And I can see the end of the road just ahead, littered
with cars—what looks like six or seven from here. A couple face my way, a
couple face where I’m headed, and a couple more bisect them to face the sides
of the road, instead. One even hangs nose-forward in the ditch.

It
feels like a trap. A scene lay before me, like from the movies, where I’m
supposed to turn and go the other way. But I can’t go the other way. It’d add
another twenty miles to my trip that I don’t have time or energy for. My only
option is to move forward and to face whatever’s in front of me. It’s going to
happen sooner or later—a break in the utopia of silence—and it’s
better to do it here and now, on my terms, when I can see it coming and can
have
some
control over it. I’ve already learned I can defend
myself—I’d done it with my dad, after all. And if I could kill him to
save myself, I won’t have a problem taking down anyone or anything else that
gets in my way.

I
keep my brakes on as I roll down the hill, and I release them only when they
start to squeak. Worried about drawing undue attention, I coast from one side
to the other and make wide, loping movements down the incline to keep my
approach as slow, easy, and as silent as possible, because any of those things
might still be alive down there.

And
as I get closer and closer, I can see them: bodies. There’s at least one per
car, maybe more.

Closer
and closer still, I stop about a hundred yards away and shield my eyes from the
sun to survey what I can from the distance I’ve kept. There’re definitely heads
in the closest car—two, I think. But they don’t look like the paled-out
types. They don’t look like my dad did. They just look dead. Slumped forward
against their seatbelts, the driver and passenger of the closest car look like
a man and a woman: husband and wife, maybe. I don’t recognize the vehicle, and
I certainly don’t recognize them from this distance, and at the level of decay
I can tell they’re in.

I
see what looks like an arm, too. It protrudes from behind a car, and it
stretches across the ground. I step from my bike to hunker low and to see what
it might still be connected to. Tattered clothes, cover what—

“SCRRRRRCCCCKK-CHH-CHHHKK-CHHHRRKKK!!!!!”

The
unmistakable, metallic screech launches me back to my feet, and I spin,
shaking, in the direction of the woods and toward the sound of snapping twigs
and branches that grows louder and louder with the approaching
“SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”

“SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”

“SCRRCHH-CRKKK-KK!!”

Until
it leaps to the side of the road and lands on all fours, like an animal, only
yards from me.

I
barely have time to react, and I’ve got no time for digging in my backpack.
It’s dropped, and I take quick steps back, clenching my stake tightly between
two, shaking hands.

“GET
BACK!” I scream as loud as I can and somehow, its earless head hears me. Still
on fours and head crooked sideways, she breathes deep through holes that were
once her nose. Her pale, hairless head snaps in my direction to look at me
through white, cue ball eyes.

“I
SAID, GET BACK!!” I scream again, even louder this time, but she’s unfazed,
scrambles, springs, and lands directly in front of me with a single pounce.

I
draw back, lunge forward, and aim straight for her head. Like I’d done with my
dad, I don’t dare any other target. I don’t know what it takes to bring one down,
and having already experienced the success—if you can call it
that—of a direct head-strike, it’s my first move.

It
all happens so fast. The stake drives into one side of her head and out the
other, and even I’m surprised by its opposite end, now coated in a thick film
of white, pointed skyward behind her. And then, like a lead weight, her pale
body crumples lifeless to the ground. Free from infection now, her collapsing
weight rips the tape-wrapped end of my makeshift weapon loose from my hands.

I’ve
never hyperventilated before, but I think that’s what I’m doing. Or maybe it’s
a panic attack. I can’t catch my breath. The trees are spinning around me. The
air feels heavy, and it collapses me to the tar.

Only
briefly though.

I’m
quick to recover.

Sensibility
wins out, and I force deep breaths to regain composure. I’m a sitting duck, and
if there’s one, there’s got to be more like her, still out there.

I
stand to shakily pull my stake from her skull, and it comes out with a
sickening slurp before I scoop up my bag, leave my kill behind, and walk my
bike down the remaining incline, until I’m only feet from the carnage I’d
surveyed from on high.

The
picture is much clearer now as I creep along vehicles, noting passengers inside
who were seemingly uninfected by illness, but who were rotting casualties of
its victims, nonetheless. The stench is unimaginable when I step between cars
and around palled-out corpses—most likely killed by one another as they
competed for food. I poke each of them with the butt of my stick, just to make
sure they don’t need its tip jammed through their skulls, too, but they’re
totally lifeless. Their tattered clothes reveal more of their bodies than
appropriate, if not for the circumstance, and their papery skin, thin and
white, is nearly transparent; it clings loosely to even whiter bones and organs
beneath it.

The
passengers of the cars are all in various stages of decay; the noxious smell of
it hangs heavy and the flies swarm thick. So much so, that I have to pull a rag
from my bag and tie it around my nose and mouth just to keep from gagging. From
what I can tell, it looks like they must’ve all stopped at different times, and
that all this didn’t happen simultaneously. Maybe one stopped to try and help
the next—curiosity lured them in, but The Whitening held them forever.
The thought begs me to consider whether I’m not doing the same exact thing.
Whether I’m not headed down the same, morbid path. And that’s what returns me
to the task at hand; there isn’t going to be anything here for me.

Two
of the cars are empty. I imagine their passengers escaped to flee on foot. Or
worse, maybe they went white, and now they’re out hunting, too. It makes me
pause to scan the surrounding tree line and to take second-look at the woman I
just finished-off on the hill.

And
it strikes me that none of the rules apply anymore: that life is about survival
now, and that no matter what I did before the outbreak, the game’s been irrevocably
changed since then. When I grab the door handle of an empty, green, Ford
Taurus, it opens easily. The scent of new car upholstery is totally unexpected,
surprising, and in complete juxtaposition to the vileness of everything that’s
contaminated my nostrils and lungs for weeks. It jolts my system, and it
reminds me of a time when things could be new. It gives temporary hope, albeit
remote, that things can be fresh and new again.

I
keep my feet grounded, for escape or attack, and lean into the car to fumble
its floor for keys. I check the glove box, the visor, and the backseat, too.
None. And when I get out, I leave the door hanging open; there’s no sense
making any more noise than I need to.

The
other, empty car is sideways, nose-down in the ditch: a grey, Mercury Grand
Marquis. An old one, too, like your grandparents might have—I doubt he,
she, they, whoever owned it, stood much chance on foot.

Its
handle pops neatly up when I grasp it, and the door, much heavier than the car
before, requires more might to pull open on rusty hinges. With a
CREAK
to wake the dead, it gives, and I climb aboard to gently close it behind me.
But in spite of cautious maneuvering, its weight does most of the work, and it
closes with a thunderous
BANG!

The
commotion I make isn’t wasted on absentee ears. Seconds later, while I fumble
in search of keys, the metallic screeching returns—from two directions
this time—and a white blur springs from the woods in front of me. It
closes the divide between us with wind-milling hands and feet: it lands on all
fours, leaps to a sprint, and returns to four. I only look for a second, but
it’s coming at me so fast.

I
search the floor like a madman, and I’m contorting myself to reach under the
driver’s seat while simultaneously struggling to lock the doors, when a
THUD!
lands a second one on the roof of the car.

The
first reaches its hood just as my hand grazes the keys I’ve been searching for.
They throw themselves at one another, tumble, roll down its front, and I
immediately recognize the impossibly large frame of the second attacker as Ryan
Hayes—star, football freshman of Madison High. I’d snicker with
satisfaction, but he’s already twisted his rival’s head completely around, and
now he’s crouched, sniffing the air, and staring vacantly my way through empty,
white eyes.

“Oh
SHIT!” I yell, and jam the key into the ignition to start the Marquis with a
single crank of the engine.

With
a spring to the air, Ryan’s back on its hood. He looks cock-headed in at me and
pants deep breaths. His nail-less fingers are completely white, and they drip
with the even whiter blood of his most recent kill. They spin and dig at the
glass as I throw the beast of a car into reverse and punch the accelerator into
the ground. It lurches back, jolts forward, and I hit the pedal again. It pulls
further back and shakes him from the hood before it rolls forward into the
trench again. When I slam the pedal a third time, the car flings back and comes
to a crashing stop as it T-Bones the car behind me.

Ryan
flings himself back to my hood, and his screech forces me to let go of the
wheel to block my ears from its painful pierce. In his pause, I throw the car
into drive, crank the wheel, and pound the gas.

I’ve
never driven before. I’ve never even been behind a steering wheel before, so
it’s all new to me—especially with a car that could double as a
tank—and I have to let off the gas and tug the wheel hard right to avoid
driving off the opposite side of the road. All the while, Ryan keeps firmly
glued to the car’s top. Sliding back and forth, he refuses to give up so
easily.