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Chapter 33


There’s not a lot that scares me, or so I thought. I’m not afraid of many of the usual, silly things – spiders, storms, heights, enclosed spaces, the dark… My biggest fears, aside from public speaking, are – or were – sickness and death. Ironic, considering I married a man who worked around deadly diseases. Almost as ironic as someone who hates speaking in front a room of people becoming a teacher, I guess. But I digress…

I considered myself pretty brave and pretty rational. I was afraid of the things that made sense to fear, the things that could, or were likely to, actually kill me. I was afraid of death itself.

Now, it’s the undead I fear.

In some ways, death – real, old-fashioned death, without reanimation – seems a luxury. Eternal rest… wouldn’t that be nice? Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to die. I can’t die. My life is too important now. If I die – if any one of us dies – one more shred of hope for humanity will die with us. We are all that’s left. We must live, in order to keep humanity alive. At least I have a reason, now, to fear death.

I used to think I’d die of cancer or a car accident, something typical like that. Maybe old age, if I were lucky. Hopefully nothing too horrific or freakish. I worried plenty about the typical things; I didn’t dwell too much on all the OTHER ways there are to die. But now? I have a new fear…

Phagophobia: the fear of being eaten.



Sunday, April 15, 2012
4:00 a.m.


Like the others before her, Gretchen awoke suddenly, but could not figure out why.

A noise? Lying still in her bed to listen, she could only hear the sound of her own breathing. The night was incredibly quiet. Even the crickets had gone silent.

A dream, then? She tried to remember it, but the images floating around in her head were too fuzzy to make any sense of.

She didn’t know what had woken her up, only that it was still night – judging by the light, too early for her to be up – and yet, she was suddenly wide awake. Her first thought went, naturally, to Shawn, and so she reached for the cell phone on her nightstand. After checking the time – four a.m… too early, indeed, to be awake – she tried, again, to call him. But there were still no bars on her phone, no signal, and the call did not go through. Sighing, Gretchen snapped the phone shut.

She sat up in bed, pushing back the top sheet. It felt stuffy in the room, with the windows shut tight and the air conditioning off, and she was warm from sleeping. She felt sweaty, even, which made her wonder again if she’d had a bad dream in the midst of her restless sleep. In any case, she didn’t feel like lying down again. She wished she could turn on the TV or, at the very least, go outside and cool off on the front porch for a few minutes. She was sure it was beautiful night, what with the full moon and the mild spring air. But she didn’t dare: Shawn had told her to keep the house shut up against the virus and stay inside.

Sighing, she flopped back against her pillows and kicked her legs straight out in front of her. She’d never fall back to sleep stretched out on her back like this, but she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep anymore, anyway. She stared up at the dark ceiling and wondered what Shawn was doing then. Was he sleeping, or still up, having worked through the night? Had his team made the breakthrough he’d been hoping for, or was he already on his way home to her?

That thought gave her hope and made her feel a little better. She stretched her arm out and patted the other side of the mattress, imagining Shawn’s body nestled there, close to hers. She wished he was there now. Gretchen wasn’t normally a clingy wife; she was used to Shawn’s being away, fulfilling his obligations to the CDC and, before that, the army. As much as she loved him, she usually enjoyed the time alone. But now she wanted nothing more than to have him safe at home.

After two days of being cooped up in the house on her own, unable to reach her family and friends, she felt edgy, anxious, and desperately lonely. She wished there was someone – anyone, anything – there to provide some comfort or, at the very least, companionship. Even a pet would have been nice. She imagined a cat curled up at the foot of bed, a soft, warm body that would purr as she pet it in the middle of the night. She’d had cats growing up and would have liked to have one now, but Shawn was allergic. They’d planned to get a dog, maybe in a few years, after the baby was born and old enough to be taught how to treat one. But there was no baby, not anymore, and no dog either. Just Gretchen, emotional Gretchen.

She got up from the bed before the tears could start, figuring maybe it would help to walk around. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that she could make out the shapes of the furniture, and she managed to get out of the room without tripping on anything. In the living room, she found her Bic candle lighter and lit a few candles. Shadows danced among the flickering flames.

Moving to the large front window, she drew back the drapes, letting the faint blue glow of the moon mix with the golden candlelight. Then she leaned into the windowsill and brought her face up close to the glass, peering out into the moonlit night.

The houses across the street were as dark and lifeless as ever, windows shut, shades drawn. Then again, she supposed they always looked like that at this time of night. Her eyes panned lower, to the street. She remembered the man, the nameless neighbor, slumped on the sidewalk. She expected to see him lying there still, but when she looked, he wasn’t there. She blinked in surprise and squinted, looking closer. It was dark, but the white concrete of the sidewalk was visible enough. She should still be able to make out the shadowy form stretched across it. But there was no mistake: the patch of sidewalk in front of her house was undeniably bare. The man was gone.

Mystified, Gretchen’s mind began to whir, as she contemplated what could have happened to him. Maybe he hadn’t been dead, after all – just unconscious. If that was the case, he might have just woken up and walked home. Or maybe someone had moved him. That would have been the proper thing to do: leave the man with a shred of dignity and not just let him lie there to rot. She wanted to believe she would have done so herself, if she hadn’t been afraid to leave the house, but then she imagined how he might feel to touch – heavy and limp… and stiff – and how he might smell, after lying out in the sun for at least a full day, and she honestly wasn’t sure. Ashamed, she turned away from the window.

But there were still unanswered questions. If someone had moved him, that meant there was someone else alive, someone out and about. But who? She hadn’t seen a living soul since Friday. Who was there to come along and drag a dead man out of the street in the middle of the night?

She contemplated this as she wandered into the kitchen, with the idea of getting something to drink. Her throat was dry from sleeping, most likely with her mouth open. Ice water sounded heavenly… until she realized the ice cubes in the freezer would be melted by now. Maybe something hot to sip on, then. Who said you couldn’t fix hot chocolate in the spring? The microwave would be useless, of course, but she could always make it the old-fashioned way, by boiling water on the gas stove. She padded back into the living room for her lighter and ignited the flame under one of the stove burners. On top, she added a small pot of water. She settled for tap water to wet her throat while she waited for it to heat, and once she’d filled her glass, she stood at the sink, drinking it in long, slow swallows.

Her glass in one hand, she reached with the other up to the kitchen window and flipped open the mini-blinds. As soon as she did, she screamed and jumped back, her heart leaping into her throat, her glass falling from her hand. She vaguely heard the breaking of glass as it hit the floor and felt the splash of water against her ankles, but she didn’t look down as she reeled backwards in fright.

There was a face in the window.

Looming out of the shadows, it was the most horrific face she’d ever seen: bloated and discolored, its features distorted, the mouth agape, murky eyes wide and staring. It was the face of death, the face of her worst nightmares, and yet it was alive. The mouth moved soundlessly. The eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets when they saw her. Hands appeared suddenly, pressing against the window pane.

“What do you want?” she shouted, and when there was no reaction from the face outside, no sign that he’d heard her at all, she lunged forward, jerked the blinds shut, and sank to the floor. She sat down in a puddle of spilled water from the remnants of her glass, her back pressed against the cupboards, and shook. Her mind raced. Who was he? What was he doing? Why had he come?

The latter two questions seemed answered when she heard a tapping – no, a slapping sound on the window, the sound of palms beating against the glass. This was no neighborly knock; whoever he was, the would-be intruder wanted in. The window was locked, but how long would the glass hold against the barrage of his hands? Gretchen was not willing to sit there and find out.

With a burst of adrenaline, she scrambled up and scuttled out of the kitchen, half on her hands and knees, trying to stay low and out of sight. In the living room, she released a breath, then looked up and gasped. There were more bodies pressed up against the front window, their awful faces leering in at her. The glass squeaked as their hands swiped down it and groaned with the force of their weight.

Caught in a circle of candlelight, Gretchen froze in terror for a second, wondering what to do. Then, quickly making up her mind, she ran a lap around the living room, dousing the candle flames and plunging the room into darkness. From inside the dark room, she had a better view out into the moonlit night, and the beings outside would have a harder time seeing in. Counting on this hope and praying the latches on her doors and windows were sturdy, she retreated to her bedroom.

She closed the bedroom door and locked it, throwing the room into total darkness. The only weak source of light came from the window, but she didn’t dare open the blinds to let more of the moonlight in. She was afraid of what else might try to get in, too.

Relying on her other senses, she crept about the room, straining her ears to listen for signs that they had broken in, groping around for the possessions she sought. She didn’t want to leave the house, but if they got in, she would have to escape, and quickly. She had no idea where she would go or what she would need, but she felt around the back of her closet until she found an old backpack, and she started throwing things in: a change of clothes, tennis shoes, her cell phone. The rest of what she would want to take – the flashlight, her purse with her wallet and keys – was in the front of the house, and unless she planned to escape through the window, the doors were there, too.

She’d have to chance it, but not without some reassurance. Heart pounding, she crawled to Shawn’s dresser and eased open the bottom drawer. She felt around for the shoebox she knew he kept in the back corner, under a pile of grungy college sweatshirts and old army fatigues. She pulled it out carefully and set it in her lap. Daring, for the first time, to use her only source of light, she took out her phone and flipped it open. She tipped the lid off the shoebox and held her phone up over it, using its bright screen as a flashlight. Reflecting the glow of the weak, blue-white light, the metal of the gun inside seemed to gleam. It was beautifully frightening, and it sent a shudder through Gretchen as she reached in and gingerly picked it up. It was the first time she’d ever held a gun, a real gun.

She hadn’t wanted a gun in the house at all, and it was something she and Shawn had argued about when she’d gotten pregnant. But this was not just any handgun, Shawn insisted; it was an antique, the very pistol his grandfather had carried on his person in World War II and, later, the Korean War. It had been handed down the family to his father, who’d taken part in Desert Storm, and then on to him. It was not only an antique, he protested; it was an heirloom. It was not there to be used, but to be cherished.

And suddenly, for the first time, Gretchen did cherish it. She couldn’t fathom actually using it, but as she took it from its box and wrapped her fingers around the grip, she imagined she might soon be glad she had the pistol with her.

She kept the gun in her hand as she rose, slowly, and slung the backpack over her shoulder. Creeping to the bedroom door, she cracked it open soundlessly and peeked out. The hallway was dark. She could still hear the muffled pounding of hands and bodies against the windows, along with a low, guttural sort of moaning, but there was no indication that they’d broken in. Yet.

Who are they? she wondered again, but she dared not stop to think. Everything about them felt threatening, and instinct told her she didn’t want to wait around to find out. She wanted to get away, as soon as possible. If she could make it to her car, she could floor the gas and leave them all behind.

But what if they followed her?

They wouldn’t, she argued with herself. These people were sick. They weren’t acting normal; they weren’t acting human. If they had cars, if they were up to driving, they’d be doing it, not beating against her windows. They were out of their minds.

It’s the virus, she thought, and remembered Shawn’s warning to stay inside.

As she hesitated at the threshold of the kitchen, a sudden crash made her jump. Horrorstruck, she looked to see the living room window shatter inward. That was enough to make up her mind. She barely caught a glimpse of the first shadowy figure clawing its way over the windowsill before she bolted, snatching her purse and keys from their hook by the back door on her way through it.

There were more of them outside the back door. Gretchen screamed as a woman lumbered toward her, reaching out with fingers hooked like talons. She dodged out of the way of the woman’s grasp, only to nearly collide with a man in a dirty, gray tracksuit. Her eyes widened with dawning horror as she recognized the man from the street, the neighbor with whom she’d exchanged smiles, but never a formal introduction.

“You’re alive?” she gasped, but she didn’t wait for an answer, backpedaling in fright. This man looked like he wanted to grab her, to hurt her, as much as any of them. It was all in his body language, though; his face was expressionless, the mouth slack, the eyes blank and cloudy, completely…

Dead.

His face was the mask of death, his eyes nothing more than two, cold marbles rolling around their sockets. His limbs moved with the stiffness of rigor mortis, and her nostrils could already detect the faint stench of earthy decay rising from his body.

Yet, he was moving. They were all moving toward her, arms outstretched, seeming frenzied and hungry despite their blank, dead faces.

Dead.

Undead?

Gretchen began to shake violently and feared her quivering knees wouldn’t support her if she tried to run. But just as they began to close in on her, cornering her against the house, she acted on one last burst of adrenaline and blind courage. Shrieking, she ran, using the butt of her gun like a club, hitting and pushing through their stiff, grabbing arms, shoving them aside. She heard a crack as she barreled through the woman’s thin arm and nearly gagged when she realized she’d broken her bone. Insanely, she thought of Red Rover, a game she’d played as a child. The kids at her school were no longer allowed to play it at recess, not since a boy had fractured a little girl’s arm, trying to get through the line.

Red Rover, Red Rover… childish voices chanted in her mind as she ran, her eyes fixed on her car, imagining herself yanking open the door, leaping in, and shutting it immediately. Send Gretchen right over…

Her body slammed against the car, and she reached quickly for the door handle. A quick tug revealed what she should have already known – it was locked. She never left her car sitting out under the carport unlocked. The keys were in her hand, and she fumbled with him, trying to fit the right key into the lock with trembling fingers in near darkness. She could sense the undead encroaching on her, could hear the scrape of their clumsy feet on the driveway and the low, grunting groans from deep in their throats. When the door came unlocked with a faint pop, she knew, without looking, that they were right behind her.

She clutched at the door handle again, and this time, the door flew open, slamming into a couple of the... well, whatever they were, and knocking them over. She jumped in and wrenched the door shut again, nearly catching the fingers of the man in the tracksuit. He banged his hands against her window as she jammed the key into the ignition and started the car.

The headlights came on automatically, illuminating the alley between her house and the next. She thought it might deter the undead, but instead, it seemed to act like a beacon, luring them towards her. She didn’t wait to find out how quickly they could climb onto her hood or how strong her windshield might be. She threw the car into reverse and floored the accelerator, whipping backwards out of her driveway faster than she ever had, with no thought to what might be behind her. She felt a massive thump beneath her tires as she mowed down one of them, and then another bump as she hit the curb. She didn’t care. As long as she didn’t blow out the tires of her little, blue Cobalt, she was good.

She spun out onto the street, braked just enough to shift into drive, and gunned the engine again, speeding past clusters of the undead on both sides of the road now. My God, they’re everywhere, she thought with despair. All the people who had contracted the virus… all the people who had died… had they all become these creatures? These… zombies?

Zombies – what am I thinking? Behind the wheel, she shook her head, laughing humorlessly. Was she going crazy? This had to be a dream. A nightmare. Maybe she’d never really woken up at all.

Come on, wake up! Snap out of it! she pleaded with herself, but as she navigated through the familiar streets and sights of Atlanta, she realized her surroundings were much too vivid to be part of a dream. This was real. Somehow, it had to be real.

It all seemed too much, and she started to cry then, shaking violently as she pictured the face leering in at her, the monsters climbing through her living room window, the man in the track suit reaching for her, the woman’s arm snapping with a crack. For a moment, with her vision blurring and her hands trembling, it was difficult to keep her car on the road, and she nearly hit the curb again. Thankfully, she managed to get control again, both of her car and of herself, remembering that she couldn’t afford to blow out a tire. Her little Cobalt was her only protection against the masses of undead roaming the streets of Atlanta. If she crashed the car, she was screwed.

That realization was enough to calm her down, make her think rationally. I have to get out of the city, she decided, assuming that, away from the city, there would be less people… less zombies… less to worry about, and more room, more time, to think. She would drive first and figure out the rest later.

With that decided, she headed for the nearest interstate. She’d thought, foolishly, that it would be relatively easy getting out of Atlanta in the middle of the night, when everyone else seemed to be dead or a zombie. She hadn’t counted on the fact that before they died, those people, those zombies, had owned cars, and some of them had had the same idea about getting out of Atlanta. The roads were strewn with vehicles, and they weren’t just parallel parked neatly along the curb. Some of them were stopped dead in the middle.

She gaped through the window of the first one of these she encountered, as she eased her Cobalt carefully around it, and saw a dark figure slumped lifelessly over the steering wheel. A shudder ran through her. In the next car, the driver was moving around, smacking her hands against the window, as if she were trying to get out. One look at her bloated face told Gretchen she was not among the living, but the living dead, trapped in her own car, where she’d apparently died and come back.

After that, Gretchen stopped looking.

She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, watching out for cars and zombies in the road. There were lots of both in the heart of the city, and she was both glad she had a small car, because it made it possible to squeeze through obstacles, and worried, because it wouldn’t take too many zombies to total it. Thankfully, once she reached the freeway, there were far less zombies, and after she’d crawled up the on ramp and driven a few, tedious miles, the number of stalled cars thinned too, and she was able to speed up.

Once it seemed the immediate danger was behind her, her emotions caught up to her again. She didn’t shake this time; she seemed to be past the point of shock. But she did cry. She cried, thinking of the home she’d left behind, the first house she’d ever owned. She couldn’t go back there, but where would she go? She couldn’t imagine stopping anytime soon and wondered how she’d ever feel safe enough to stop driving. She cried, thinking of Shawn, surely on his way home to meet her. How would he find her, now that she’d left without so much as a note? A note… she should have left a note. But there’d been no time, and what would she have said? She hadn’t a clue where she was headed, so a note wouldn’t have been very helpful. She had her phone, in the backpack alongside Shawn’s gun, but it was useless without service. And so she cried.

For awhile, she drove in silence, her senses on high alert, eyes focused, ears piqued for sounds of danger. But soon, the silence became too much. Gretchen hated driving in silence; she always had music playing when she was behind the wheel. Longing for something to drown out her thoughts, she turned on the radio. Nothing but static. She pressed the auto-tune button, but as it ran through the stations, static blasted out at her from every one. With a sigh, she switched to her mp3 player, which she’d thankfully left plugged in to her car stereo. Without need for a signal, this worked fine, and within seconds, her music was blaring.

After a few songs, Gretchen started to feel again that it had all been a dream. Surely, it couldn’t have been real – dead people reanimating and breaking into her house as zombies, chasing her out of Atlanta? She was just on a road trip, heading South, not a care in the world. Truth be told, she loved driving at night, alone in the car, with the music turned up high. It was her chance to sing along as loudly as she wanted to, and no one could see her or hear her. She was in her own world.

This was normalcy, and it was comforting. She still had no idea where she was going, but now, she didn’t care. She just didn’t think about it. The sun would be coming up soon, and with her music playing, she could drive all day if she needed to. She started to feel better, the further she got from Atlanta, the further she went without seeing a zombie. There were still abandoned cars here and there, but not nearly as many as before, and most were pulled off to the shoulder, so that she could drive as fast as she wanted without the fear of wrecking her car.

Then she saw a sight up ahead that made her slow down.

It was a car, a sedan, not just parked in the median, but crashed there, its front end smashed into the guardrail. She wouldn’t have thought much of it, except that its taillights and one headlight were still on. None of the other cars she’d seen had any lights on. And in the eerie, red glow of the taillights, she could see shadowy figures circling around the car. She swallowed hard, realizing by the way they moved that they were among the undead. This made her want to slam down the accelerator again and leave them in her dust before they could turn their attention on her. But the fact that they seemed so fixated on the other car and had not yet turned to approach her gave her another realization.

There was someone trapped in the car. Someone living.

That had to be it; there was no other explanation she could think of for a cluster of zombies to be swarming around a single car with its lights still on. If it was abandoned, they would abandon it, too, and come after the car that was moving: hers. But it wasn’t abandoned.

She turned down her music as she crept up to the scene, her foot poised over the gas pedal, ready to floor it again if she needed to. As the light from her headlights spilled over them, some of the zombies turned to face her, and she nearly did floor it. But thankfully, she paused and looked first, and with her headlights illuminating the other car, she could see that there was a man inside. Frightened as she was by the thought of another encounter with the undead, she couldn’t just drive away and leave him there. His car wasn’t much bigger than hers was. Eventually, they would break in, and… and what? Kill him? Eat him? Everything she knew about zombies came from the movies; she didn’t have a clue what real ones would do to a living person. She was pretty positive she didn’t want to find out.

Slamming her palm against her steering wheel, she honked her horn. Once, twice, then a long, sustained third time. She thought this would scare the zombies, but it didn’t. It did, however, attract the attention of the man in the car. She couldn’t make out his face in the shadowy interior, but she could see the shape of his arms waving, the universal signal for HELP!

Her mind quickly formulated a plan. She pulled ahead, then made a U-turn, so that she was now facing his solitary headlight. Then, with the utmost concentration, she revved forward, trying to get as close to his car as she could, as fast as she could, without hitting it. She plowed into several zombies, throwing them out of her path, cringing as their bodies crunched against her fender. Then she slammed on her brakes, stopping her car parallel to his. She reached over to the passenger door to unlock it, only to realize she’d pulled up too close to get the door open. There was no time to correct this; the zombies were regrouping, staggering towards their cars.

“The window!” she yelled to the man in the other one, signaling by flapping her hand downward, as she lowered her own passenger window. Thank God for automatic.

The man understood and did the same on his driver’s side. Without hesitating, he stuck his head and torso through his window and then through hers, climbing awkwardly into the Cobalt. It was a good thing he was a small guy, thought Gretchen, as he struggled into her passenger seat.

“Okay, drive!” the man shouted, as soon as his legs were free of his car, and Gretchen didn’t hesitate. She whipped the car around in another U-turn, righting her direction on the freeway, and then she plunged her foot down onto the pedal. They raced away, leaving the pack of zombies lumbering in confusion behind them.

***