Running Red (4 page)

“And then the teeth. The bite is so deep.”

I nod more enthusiastically. “It’s like they’re shoving a whole quarter-pound burger into their mouths at once.”

“I think my stomach just rumbled.”

We laugh. “I hope it’s because we were talking about hamburgers and not runners.”

Aubrey becomes serious. “Oh, no. Totally about the runner.” He stiffens his arms like Frankenstein’s monster and wobbles towards me. “Latch! Me want to latch…and eat brains! Brains!” I’m laughing so hard my eyes water.

“Hey! Aubrey! Hey!”

Something catches Matt’s attention. He drops the handle of the wagon and runs up to the concrete and brick porch in front of a ranch style house. It’s slightly out of place because the other homes leading into town have smaller lawns and larger houses. They go from two-story clapboard homes to those large spooky Victorian places with rounded towers and gables. The closer to town they were built, the more they looked like they were from somewhere else in time.

Matt start’s spinning his arm in a large circle. He wants us to hurry. Aubrey starts trotting up the road. He carries the gun like a soldier advancing on the enemy. I pick up my pace, but I don’t run. Matt cups his hands around his mouth and yells for us to hurry. He turns then and cups his hands over the picture window. A second later he jumps back and laughs, then holds up both of his middle fingers at whatever is inside.

“Can you frickin’ believe it?” Matt yells. “There’s a runner in there. Right here in town. A runner.”

Aubrey steps up on the porch, the shotgun firmly clutched in his hands. I stand in the gravel of the driveway. The ranch has red brick going around it and vertical, white aluminum siding above the brick. Black metal shutters frame two smaller windows to the left of the door and the picture window. Bedrooms, I imagine, with soft, freshly made beds. My mind keeps the fantasy going: The towels are freshly laundered, the hand soap in the bathroom is spring fresh, and the kitchen smells of freshly baked apple pies. This last detail makes my stomach rumble. There are black, metal numbers next to the door: 11 Euclid Avenue. There’s a Virgin Mary statue in the front yard, and not far from her right hand is a concrete birdbath. The grass is high around each of them.

Aubrey stands next to Matt. He leans in but doesn’t put his face against the glass. I step up next to him. I see his face reflected in the window. I can tell he wishes he’d never set out on the mission today. I don’t want him to see me watching him so I step closer to the glass and look inside the living room.

Sure enough, there is a runner inside. She’s not much younger than me. She wears what I assume are pajamas because the spaghetti strap top has the same seventies style rainbow and bears on it that the front of the underpants have. The runner is well aware that we are outside, but she doesn’t know how to get us.

“Check it out,” I say. “She can see us.”

“Of course she can see us,” Matt says. “Look at her.”

I don’t like Matt so I argue my point. “What I mean is, I’ve always thought runners smelled us or sensed us. But this one.”

There’s a glass-rattling slap against the window. Her red, slimy palms keep slipping against the surface leaving long, wet streaks. Behind her is a slumping mound of slimy, gray moss that had once been the runner’s mother or father or sibling or someone she let in the house when she was human. It’s hard to tell anything about who the mound of organic matter had once been, as it went to seed a while ago.

But not before it latched onto the walker in the skimpy PJs. We can see the tooth-tattoo along the side of her neck. We can almost count every tooth impression.

Don’t be confused by the process. Humans are vehicles for spreading the fungus. It’s all about the plant’s survival, not ours. A runner latches onto a human and then dies once the human has absorbed the enzymes into its blood. Think vampire and zombies. The bitten, or latched, experiences fevers, falls comatose, and eventually decomposes into an oily, slimy heap of organic waste. The spore stalks grow out of this muck, releases new seeds, and they are breathed in by humans unlucky enough to have no immunity to the spores. No one knows why some people get infected and others don’t, but they’re working on it, they tell us.

All I know is a runner doesn’t care who it latches onto, and that’s the bigger concern for the moment. The teen runner inside the house is pressing her face against the window.

“We should take her back to Denny,” Matt says.

“Are you a freaking idiotic or what?” Aubrey says. “She’s ready to latch. If that runner gets a hand on you, you’re a fungus feeding ground.”

“Denny’s going to want to know,” Matt said. “He’s going to come back and get her anyhow.”

“Denny’s got the equipment, we don’t.”

“Equipment for what?” I ask. The boys stop arguing. They stare at me like I appeared out of the air.

Matt gives in. “Fine. I’ll come back with Denny.”

There’s another slap. All of us stare into the house. The runner looks at the door next to the window like she’s trying to remember what it is, how to use it. And then I have a realization: the runner is thinking. It’s as if I’m watching the runner processing, searching for a memory on how to use a doorknob.

“We should burn this place down,” I say. It shocks both of the boys.

“What if the family comes back?” Matt asks.

“Why would they?” I say. I drop my hiking pack from my back and open one of the side zippers. I dig around inside looking for my own disposable lighter. When I find it, I ask Matt for his.

“Why do you need it?” he asks.

“I need the fluid inside for an accelerant. I’m going to break mine open and pour the fluid in it along the base of the door. I’ll light it with yours and then break that one open as well.”

Aubrey puts a hand on my wrist. “I can’t let you do that,” he says. “You don’t get it.”

I tense, and this time it’s to let him know about my strength. I might not look it, but from all the walking, along with carrying the backpack, I’m fit, taut. I have that body I used to make fun of, but now I think it’s not so bad.

“Maybe you two clowns don’t get it,” I say. “That runner in there is thinking. It’s putting things together. It’s searching the carrier’s memory for ways the carrier might have opened a door.”

“How many ways can you open a door?” Matt asks.

“One,” I say, “and that runner is trying to learn how.”

“Runners don’t think. They can’t think. The fungus kills that part of the brain,” Aubrey says. I see it then, that same questioning look he gave me on the road, like he’s trying to figure out who I am. “All they do is use the carrier.”

“I know what the fungus does, Aubrey. But remember, it went from ants to mice to other small animals, and then to us. It kept changing along the way, getting stronger, using bigger sources.”

Matt jumps into the conversation again, waving his hands. “Wait a second. Wait a second. You think the fungus is—what? Probing the brain, learning to use it?”

A wet hand slaps against the window. All three of us stare at the window. The runner stares back at us. And then, very slowly, she raises her hand. Her fingers slowly fold in against her palm until she points a finger at us. She drops her hand to her side. It’s brief, but it happens and we all see it.

“What the eff?” Matt says.

“It’s nothing,” Aubrey says. The tone in his voice isn’t that reassuring. “Muscle spasm.”

“We should burn it down,” I say again.

Matt shakes his head. He spits into the overgrown grass. “We have to go tell Denny. He’ll be pissed if we burn this down without letting him know.”

“Who the hell is this Denny guy?” I ask.

“It’s time you met him,” Aubrey says. “Let’s move on.”

We walk away from the house. Matt lights another cigarette. Each of us, as we walk back to the wagon in the road, steals a glance or two over our shoulders. For the first time since I ever encountered a runner, I feel like it is actually watching me and not just seeing me. It’s never been clear if they smell their next source or if they see it or if they just sense it. But now, walking away from Number 11 Euclid Avenue, I can feel the runner’s eyes burning into my back, and I know it is pointing a finger at me.

Four

The house Matt and Aubrey take me to is a massive Victorian mansion. Before the outbreak of the rash, it was a bed-and-breakfast called Heather House. There is a professionally painted sign out front with the name on it. Someone has taken white paint and hurriedly slapped “Closed” over the calligraphy. Now Heather House is a mini Safety Zone. Three stories high with a rounded turret on the north side, the entire house is painted princess pink and trimmed in white. In many ways, it resembles a giant birthday cake with a single candle attached to it. A shiny brass weathervane with a rooster on it sits atop the tower. A black, wrought iron fence, roughly three feet high, tipped with spikes, runs along the front and down the north and south sides of the yards.

A highly varnished plank of pine hangs on a pair of small gauge chains above the steps to a truly magnificent veranda. The porch wraps around three sides of the house. The hanging sign that once announced, “Welcome to Heather House” has had the word “Heather” blocked out with duct tape. Someone has written “freedom” in all capital letters.

White wicker furniture decorates the terrace. A white haired old lady reads a book on a hanging love seat, her back to the tents set up along the west side of the house. She looks up when the gate squeaks open and we pass through. Her lips are thin and set. She puts her book down on the wooden slats of the porch swing.

The part of the backyard I can see is crowded with tents. People go about talking to one another, hanging clothes on lines of rope, stoking small campfires. A faded privacy fence runs along the back of the yard. Thick, old trees grow not far behind it. The last row of tents I can see sits about three feet from the wood panels. Coiled razor wire has been added across the top.

I can only see the corner of what appears to be a detached garage. In the space between the fence and the outbuilding’s wall is a makeshift pen. I can see at least one large hog lying on its side behind the chicken wire. A hand painted sign nailed to a decorative brace on the front of the garage reads “Our farm, our food.” It need not say anything more.

A child’s tree house, nothing more than a wooden frame platform fitted into the crux of a tree with three jutting branches of a common trunk, holds two armed men. From their perch they can see the entire backyard and the front west side of the house. One of the men has a cigar wedged into the corner of his mouth. He is a large man, bald, with some sort of tribal looking tattoos over his scalp. Even though he wears large, plastic sunglasses, I can feel his eyes on me. He leans against one of the splits from the center trunk.

His companion, a skinny man with greasy, thin hair and a thin mustache, sits with his legs over the edge. He swings them back and forth. The larger, tattooed man rests a long barreled rifle over his chest. The skinnier man has a pistol in a holster on his hip.

Matt closes the iron gate behind me. It has finality to it as it clangs into place. A few of the people milling around the tents look at me. Three women stare blankly in our direction. A man in his thirties pokes his head out of a tent. He squints through his glasses and turns to speak to someone still inside the tent. He fixes his eyes on me for a moment and then pulls back inside.

It’s a compound, I think. Are they survivors or prisoners?

Matt jumps up on the porch. He pats the old lady’s knee.

“Hey, Aunt Alice,” he says. “Denny around?”

Aunt Alice looks up from her book. She smiles at Matt. “He took a group into town.”

“How long ago?”

Aunt Alice looks up Main Street. The town is only a few blocks away. I can see the single traffic light hanging over a junction intersection. The word “quaint” comes to mind. “Right after you and Aubrey left. What did you bring back?” She looks at me.

Aubrey pulls the wagon to the foot of the steps. “Pro Drink,” he says. He hands one of the boxes up to Matt. “And these.” The open carton of cigarettes is in his hand. Auntie Alice smiles and nods. Aubrey unloads the second box.

“There’s more of that drink,” Matt says. “We’ll go back and get it later. But check it out.” He flops down on the swing next to the woman. “We found a runner.”

Aunt Alice closes her book. I can see the title on the spine:
On the Beach
.

“A runner,” she says. Her attention turns to the south.

“Yeah. Denny’s gonna be so happy.”

Her voice is as far down the road as Yuki. “Yes, I imagine he is.” When she looks back at Matt, her eyes search his face. “It might make up for stealing a package of cigarettes.”

Matt’s smile freezes on his face, but his eyes look like they are filling with tears. “I didn’t take—”

“Don’t lie, Matthew.”

“But Auntie Alice, I didn’t take the pack.”

With lightning speed the woman he calls Auntie Annie cracks him on the knee with the spine of her book. Matt lets out a whimper. He covers his face with his arms. Auntie Annie whips the spine of the book against them. As she continues the assault, I can see two of the women from the tent city out back peeking around the edge of the porch. Auntie Alice and Matt’s backs are to them. One of the women sees me and she pulls the other back.