Earths Survivors The Zombie Killers: Origins, Page 3

  ~

  The night was beautiful, Billy thought as he walked along. He knew pretty much everyone he passed. He had been here for a little over six months having made his way up from Mexico when things had gone bad for him there. Technically he was on the run. Warrants out of New York. Somebody had put two and two together and dug up some prints from a crime Billy had been involved with. He had only found out about it because he had happened to be away from the house when the Feds showed up. His neck of the woods had no municipal police, but even if it had they wouldn't have come with shotguns and armor.

  He had hid out for three days until the word had trickled down to him that it was him they were looking for to hand over to some federal agents from the U.S. It hadn't taken much to put two and two together. He had managed to get a beat up old Ford pickup truck and then filled-fifty five gallon drums full of gasoline that rode on the back of it. He set off into the desert.

  The rest had been easier. Despite the laws and the changes in the U.S. It was pretty easy to disappear here. He had come with a little money, and that had helped. He had worked a series of meaningless jobs as he worked his way up the west coast. LA had looked good and so it had held him. That and Beth had come along.

  Beth was out of reach and he knew it, but that didn't stop the fact that he wanted her to be in reach. He had never met a woman like her. So he had stayed. He had watched her arrival from God knew where, some other place in California or Washington probably. He had watched her struggle to survive on the streets: Watched her work those same streets, doing her act in any place she could get into by day, walking the streets by night, and it was then he had seen something else in her. Something hard, some will he himself had that was hard to define, but that hardness in her pulled him to her like a magnet. It was that simple.

  He had been working for Harry by then and so he had mentioned Beth to him. He didn't know how the details had worked out, but a few weeks later when he had noticed she had disappeared from the avenue, he had found her tending bar at Harry's Palace.

  Now, as he walked he became immune to the world around him. He never heard Don until he was on him, had spun him around and dragged him into an alley.

  “Hey... Hey! Don... What the fuck, Don... Hey!” But it did no good. The first punch nearly shut him down. The second did. The rest he never knew about.

  Seattle Washington

  Bobby

  The wind kicked up along Beechwood Avenue in Seattle's red light district. A paper bag went rolling along the cracked sidewalk: Skipping over Bobby's feet where he stood watching the traffic. Money, he thought, if he could get a little money he could be okay. It didn't have to be a million dollars, just... A few hundred, he decided. A few hundred could really fix him up right... There had to be a way.

  He watched the cars slide by and tried to work it out in his head. The problem was he was too far off the edge of down. He needed to be more up, high, wasted to think straight. The brain just didn't work without the sauce. He needed some good shit, and for that he needed some money. Just enough to get enough good shit to get a good high tonight and maybe a good high tomorrow when it all wore off and the jingle jangles set in? … Maybe, he decided. Maybe. Bobby turned away from watching the cars as the paper bag bounded over his feet and tumbled along the avenue. The diner down the block was calling. Sometimes he had scored in the parking lot, there were truckers, creeps, who knew, but they were in this area for one thing and it wasn't the food. All he had to do was find the right guy and he'd be set. He looked once more at the traffic and then turned and walked off toward the diner.

  New York: Rochester

  John Simons

  The sidewalks below him were crowded. John stood at the apex of the steps that led up to the old court house. It was impressive. He looked down at his hands, shifting the small silver canister from hand to hand, rolling it across his palm, treating it as though it were just a small fascination to occupy his mind, when in fact he knew it was something more. He didn't know what, exactly. He wasn't paid to know what. Maybe someone up the ladder knew what, he didn't, and it was likely he never would, but it was something more than just a shiny little object to occupy his mind.

  He had done hundreds of these small jobs. Little things. Little things that probably meant nothing in the scheme of things, at least that's what he had always told himself. A little mental salve to prevent an infection of the larger truth. Little things he never heard a single thing about later on. Little things, but he suspected this time, this job was not a little thing at all. He suspected this was a big thing. He suspected he would hear about this one down the road. He suspected this one would come back to bite him in the ass.

  The trouble was, in for a penny, in for a pound. It all mattered. He had taken job after job where he might leave an item on a park bench. Drop off a set of wheels in the middle of the desert. Switch a suitcase at an airport. Little jobs. Little jobs and he had never said no. Never complained about them. Never turned one down. And so here he was about to press the activator on a small, silver canister that might do anything. Anything at all. And was he worried about that? Yes, he was.

  It was not so much worry for himself. He didn't really believe the thing would blow up. He didn't truly think they would take him out that way, if there was ever a reason to take him out, that was. He quickly shut down that line of thought. He had too much to worry about right now without starting a whole new avenue of doubt.

  So, no, he did not believe it would blow up. He believed it would hiss and release a giant cloud of some sort of toxic gas, gases even, he amended. Waste, poison, something, but if that were the case, how could he safely set it off and not be contaminated himself?

  The instructions were to walk to the top of the courthouse steps, depress the red button, and then toss it away. No specific direction, just away. It apparently didn't matter. And, he thought now, wasn't this exactly the way some terrorist would do it? Do an attack? A poison gas attack? An unclassified viral attack? He had seen a few movies, this was the way he would do it if he was writing the script. The girl beside him spoke.

  “If this is going to take much longer you're gonna have to pay more. I know I said it would be cool, a fifty, I mean, but standing around here is wasting my time. I got places to be. I got...”

  He cut her off. “And you ain't got no money yet. And if you do want the money then you need to shut the fuck up.” He went back to his self observation. A second later he looked back at her. “Hey, hey,” he soothed. She had begun to pout. Just another street girl with a habit and too much time on her hands to feed it.

  “Look...” He waited for her to look at his hand. He held the small vial upright. “Do me a favor, okay? I was looking around because, well because, I want a picture right here. Now all you have to do is push this little red button... Aim at me, it's got a little camera in there...You can't see it, it's one of those new ones, like them spy ones? So all you got to do is point it at me and then press the button.” He held the canister and looked around. She tried to take the canister from his hand and he snatched it away.

  “Goddammit, dude, You want it or not?” She stamped her foot exactly like the spoiled child she was and was destined to always be.

  “Yeah... Yeah I do. Just... See that corner over there? The top of the stairs? That little what-do-you-call-it hollow between those two pillars? Wait until I get there and take the picture.” He handed her the silver canister and started away.

  “Hey! How the fuck am I spos'ed to tell? There ain't no screen thingy, what-the-fuck-it-is?”

  He turned back and smiled. “Just face it to me and do it. It's not supposed to have a thing, screen, just do it.”

  She turned the canister to her face. It was only about four inches long, maybe an inch thick. It didn't look like a camera at all. She turned it back to John and clicked the button. Nothing, not even a click. It didn't work. It was bullshit just as she had thought.

  John froze when he saw her push the button, but nothi
ng happened. Nothing at all. She had pushed it just a few inches from his nose. No odor. No vapor he could see. No anything. He pulled it from her fingers and flipped it back and forth. The red button was depressed now and although he tried to work a thumbnail under it to pull it back up he couldn't do it. He bought it closer to his nose, nothing. No odor. He pressed it to his ear. No hissing. It was dead. A dud. Whatever it was it did nothing at all. Maybe it had even malfunctioned. He hefted it a few times and then let it drop from his fingers. It hit the stone step below him with a small metallic click, and then rolled away to the edge. It dropped to the next step, but it didn't have enough momentum to find it's way across that step to the next. He turned back to the girl.

  “You broke my camera,” he told her.

  “Did not, and that ain't no fuckin' camera anyway. You think I'm just stupid?”

  “I do think you're stupid. You broke it. You broke it and so I ain't paying you. Fact, you should pay me for breaking my camera! Besides which, you pressed it before it was time. You fucked the whole thing up. I shouldn't pay you shit. Not a fuckin' dime.”

  “Yeah?” she asked. Her eyes were wet, but they were also hard. She looked around at the crowd. “That's okay, because you know what?”

  “What?” John asked. He smiled. She was stuck and he knew it.

  “What is, I'm fourteen. Fourteen. And I bet you if I was to start yelling right now, oh, something like rape. If I was to say Rape!” She raised her voice a little and a nearby couple flashed their eyes at the two and slowed.

  John flinched and drew back from her.

  “Yeah, see? So, now if I was to do that I bet your tune would be different. I just bet it would.”

  “Twenty,” John said. His smile was gone.

  “You said fifty. Fifty is what you said, and it should be eighty.” She picked eighty out of a hat. It was three more dimes, and three more dimes was a lot better than five. “It is eighty. It's eighty because you tried to rape me!” She raised her voice once more and John's hand plunged quickly into his back pocket. He flipped a fifty and three tens at her from the wallet he quickly pulled free, and she had to scramble to catch the money. Two of the tens fluttered to the stone step below her and she flashed a hard smile at him. The couple that had cut their eyes at them were now stopped and staring at the two of them. A cell phone appeared in the woman's hand and when John met her eyes there was something there he didn't like at all. The girl scooped up the money, muttering as she did, and John headed down the stairs two at a time. A few minutes later he had blended into the crowd and was making his way away from the downtown area.

  Seattle Washington

  Bobby

  The prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic. Bobby Chambers sat with his back against the wall of an alley: Needle ready, and a speed-ball cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a little further down the alley. Bobby ignored him, watching the mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting together.

  Two hours before he had been sitting in the diner waiting for his world to end. He had paid for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that time. A trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from Bobby, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had changed his mind.

  He had just made up his mind to leave. Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more coffee. The cops couldn't be far away, when the trucker had reached back for his wallet, pulled it free, took a ten from inside and dropped it on the counter top.

  Bobby watched. It was involuntary. One of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet was one of those types he had seen bikers use. A long chain connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Sloppy, Bobby saw, probably because he knew the chain was there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put his ass nearly in Bobby's face as he got up from the stool. The wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the chain, frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Bobby's lap. He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second later.

  “Listen...”

  Bobby jumped and straightened quickly in his seat, his heart hammering hard against his rib cage. Busted. Busted and he had shoved the wallet into his wind breaker, double busted...

  “Listen,” the waitress continued, “buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me? Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve through window, “Says to call the cops.”

  Bobby stared at her in disbelief. He was sure that everyone in the diner had seen the wallet fall into his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah... Okay... I'm leaving,” he said with his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn't speak for weeks. It just wasn't necessary. When he did he would find his voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained it. “Going,” he said.

  He got up from the stool, kept one hand in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked out the front door.

  L.A.: 2:00 am.

  Beth

  The night wore on. Midnight came and went and the club shut down for another day. Beth worked at cleaning up the last little area of the bar as two of the dancers finished their drinks and hushed conversations, smiled at her and walked away. A short conversation with Don, probably some crude remark, Beth has seen how both of them had instantly stiffened their backs after he spoke. It wasn't just her, Don was an actual creep. Whatever he had said the two girls chose to ignore it, turning away, making eye contact with Beth, waving as if they had been at the bar talking to her, and when Don looked back to see who they had been waving at they slipped out the door. Don made his way over to the bar.

  “You scared my honeys away,” he told her.

  “I think you can do that all on your own,” Beth told him.

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Don asked.

  Beth frowned and shook her head. Sometimes she wondered if Don even knew what a creep he was. How he made the girls who worked here, her included, feel. “It means that not everyone is always on the same page,” Beth said. She had changed her mind at the last second. She had to work here. Don was the nephew of the owner. Creep or not he was part of the package.

  Don looked confused.

  “Donny, it means that sometimes you just have to let things happen. Go slow. A girl wants to think it was her own idea to like you,” she told him.

  “Yeah... I can see that, but when you need it you need it. Some of these bitches need to be on point.” One finger disappeared into his nose and then he seemed to suddenly remember she was there. “You know, me and you need to hook up. I got ...” One massive hand settled onto his shoulder and he stopped in mid sentence.

  “Disappear, Donny. I need to talk to Beth right now,” Jimmy told him as he sat down at one of the stools.

  “We was just talking, uncle Jimmy.”

  “Right. And now you're done talking... Unless you're not? Am I interrupting you?”

  Don turned beet red. He laughed to hide the embarrassment. “No... No,” he turned and walked away.<
br />
  Jimmy turned to Beth. “I guess you'll have to get used to the kid. He's a pain in the ass, but he's my pain in the ass... Load to bear,” He turned and watched Don step out the door to the parking lot. “Donny,” Jimmy yelled. Don poked his head back in the door and looked at his uncle. “Take a good look around out there, make sure the lot's empty and the girls all got to their cars okay.”

  “Okay, uncle Jimmy,” Don called back. The dopey smile that he usually wore settled back on his face as he stepped out into the darkness. Jimmy turned back to Beth.

  “Billy Jingo,” he said.

  Beth looked at him.

  “I think that kid is bad news for you... Not telling you how you should live your life, just distributing advice... A girl like you, a singer, don't need a distraction like that. The customers don't want to see no boyfriend hanging around. Spoils the fantasy that you're singing just to them.” He held her stare.

  “It's not like that, Jimmy. Billy is a friend only... Lives in the same building.” She had caught the fact that he had said she was a singer. Something she wasn't yet, unless...

  “Uh huh, but he wants you. The kid is like a love sick puppy. If you could step back and look at it you would see it clearly. Are you telling me you are smart enough to handle Donny and you can't see this Jingo kid has it bad for you?”

  Beth shrugged. “No... I know... I know that... But he knows it isn't going to happen. He knows what the deal is.”

  “Good... That's all I'm saying... But you need to tell him to stay away... Can't be hanging around while you're working... See?”

  Beth nodded. “I see.”

  “Good, cause next week you start as my lead act. I know you...” He stopped as Beth lunged across the bar and hugged him, squealing as she did. He hugged her back, laughing.

  She kissed his cheek and then her smile went away a little as one of his hands cupped the side of her breast. Her eyes focused on his own. “I think we'll become good friends, baby,” he told her. She nodded as his hand roamed a little further and then trailed away across the flat plains of her stomach. She pulled back. Jimmy wore a crooked smile on his face. “So we understand each other?”

  “Yeah,” Beth told him.

  “So smile then. Let's have a drink... On me... Pour us something good, baby,” Jimmy told her.

  3:00 am

  Beth stepped out into the darkness of the parking lot. She had spent over a month trying to convince Jimmy to let her sing. The Palace had huge crowds every night. Everyone knew that scouts were constantly cruising the crowd looking for talent. More than one act had been discovered at the Palace. Harry knew that and played on the reputation. Singing here could lead to the big break she was looking for. She had gotten her wish tonight, and more than she had bargained for, a relationship with Jimmy. She wasn't sure how that was going to be defined in public, but in private it was going to be defined as a sexual relationship. He had just defined it for her, she would have to wait to see what the public definition was going to be, but she had a good idea how it was going to be.

  Nan, the dancer Jimmy was currently seeing, was going to be upset. Jimmy was not subtle. It had been clear that they had been seeing less and less of each other. She had no doubt that her first night he was going to make it clear she was his. Like a dog marking his territory. She sighed. Off the street, but still getting fucked for money. She hated putting it that starkly in her head, but that was the plain truth. She was still selling it, just different terms, better money, better protection. She heard footsteps running behind her and her breath caught in her throat. She turned as the club door that exited to the parking lot banged shut.

  “Beth,” Don yelled. “Beth.”

  She stopped and waited.

  “Uncle Jimmy said I should drive you home... He don't want you walking.”

  She sighed. She had half expected it. Don ran the twenty feet from the door to where she was. She changed direction and walked slowly toward Don's car. Well, she thought, at least there would be no more bullshit from Don.

  Twenty feet away the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic.

  Seattle: 6:00 A.M.

  Bobby

  Bobby Chambers sat slumped against a wall in an alley off Beechwood Avenue, in Seattle's red light district. He had been dead for over six hours. The money he had stolen, had allowed him to indulge in his habit for over eight hours with no sleep. The last injection had killed him.

  The Cocaine he had purchased had been cut with rat poison, among other things, so that the hype who had sold it to him could stretch it a little further. 

  The constant hours of indulging in his habit would have killed him anyway, but the addition of the rat poison was all his overworked heart could stand, and it had simply stopped beating in protest.

  The alleyway seemed to dip and then rise sharply as a sudden, strong vibration shook the area. The shaking lasted for mere seconds. Dust raftered down from the sky, shaken from buildings. In the silence alarms brayed, and glass shattered; fell from its frame to the streets below. Gunshots punctuated the silences in between the sudden periods of quiet, screams, yelling. Suddenly the ground shook harder, cracks appeared in the alleyway where Bobby's body lay and threaded their way out into the street.

  Bobby's eyelids flickered, and his hand shot up to bat at a fly that had been examining his nose.

  The alleyway shuddered and another strong vibration sent more glass and brick tumbling from the building into the street. Bobby sat, confused, his mind locked away from him in some dark place. Down the alleyway the man he had taken for a bum moved and rose shakily to his feet. Bobby closed his eyes as the shaking ended, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

  Billy Jingo had found himself rolling across the alley and nearly slamming into the opposite wall. He held himself steady, fingertips outstretched, until the shaking stopped: Unsure where he was or why he was there.

  As his mind began to awaken once more he remembered Jon punching him earlier. Nothing specific besides that, but it was enough to draw some conclusions as to where he was. Even so, it didn't explain the shaking that had awakened him. He looked off down the alley where a bum, or maybe a hype was resting against the wall, slumped over. Maybe, Billy thought, the bum had tried to awaken him. He made his feet and staggered past the bum to the mouth of the alley, looking out at the street. The bum was still sleeping when he looked back. The more he looked at the bum the more he thought he might be a crack head, maybe even a heroin addict. Those fuckers could crash out anywhere, oblivious to their surroundings, he reminded himself. He stepped onto the sidewalk, and then glanced back once more, wondering if he should repay the favor and wake up the now sleeping bum, hype, whatever he was.

  No, he decided. He focused his eyes, stretched his arms and legs, flexed his fingers and decided he was pretty much okay. As he started back down the street, he suddenly found himself thrown to the sidewalk as the earth began to shake and heave violently once more.

  Behind him the street began to shake harder, cracks traveled farther out from the alleyway where Bobby's body lay and threaded their way out into the street. Far off in the distance the earthquake shook harder at the epicenter, small booms coming over the sound of destruction as the time wore on. Nearby another building succumbed to the vibration and toppled over into the street clogging it from side to side. Cars rocked on their tires, shifting violently from side to side, sometimes bouncing off in one direction or another, or slamming into a nearby car or building.

  This time when the silence came the sounds that it carried were different. Weeping from the piled remains in the street. The zap and crackle of power lines as they danced in the street like charmed snakes without their handlers.

  A harder jolt hit and the cracks opened wider, some swallowing whole sections of rubble as they did. Bobby's body slumped over and then tumbled into a chasm that had opened next to him. Almost as quickly the chasm closed as though it had never really bee
n there at all. The shaking slowed and then stopped and the silence fell once more.

  Billy managed to get to his feet, staggering at first, pulling deep lungfuls of air, but getting his feet under him. Blood ran into his eye from a cut on his forehead, but he was otherwise okay. He waited for his panic to abate, his breathing to slow, and then he moved off at a fast run along the Avenue: Heading for home.

  6:15 PM

  Watertown New York: Public Square

  Pearl (Pearly) Bloodworth

  The streets were clogged with snow, but the sidewalks were impassable, so she had no choice but to walk in the street.

  She made her way carefully, slipping and sliding as she went. It was just before 6:30 P.M. and she might make it to work on time if she could make the next two blocks without incident.

  She had been working at the downtown mission for the last several months: The night shift for the last two months. The mission night shift was an easy shift. Everything was closed down. Those who had made the curfew were locked in for the night. Occasionally there would be a little trouble between residents, but that was rare. Watertown was small, as a consequence the homeless population was small. And trouble, when it came, was usually settled long before her shift. Her shift amounted to catching up on paperwork, dispensing an aspirin or two, and being there if there was an emergency of any kind. At 4:00 A.M. The kitchen staff would be there to start their day. Shortly after that the rest of the day-shift would be in. At 6:00 A.M. The mission doors would open and the homeless would take to the streets. She would have an hour of quiet at the end of her shift, sitting and listening to the bustle from the kitchen as they cleaned up after breakfast and began to prepare for lunch.

  She heard the approaching vehicle as she was stepping around a mound of melting snow and ice. It was late and there had been no traffic on this side street when she had stepped into the street at the cross walk three blocks down. The alternative was the foot deep snow and ice thrown onto the sidewalk from the plows. She would never get through that and make it to the mission on time.

  The Mission was on upper Franklin street, a short walk in a straight line, or even if you had to walk around the square and start up, as she usually did, but tonight the square was packed with traffic and so she had chosen the shortcut instead. Unfortunately it was not well lit: A four block wasteland of parking lots and alleyways.

  She had almost turned completely around to make sure the car had seen her when the horn blared and startled her. A second later she finished the turn, hand clasped to her throat, and watched as the car skidded to a stop and three men piled out of the back seat slipping and sliding in the slush, laughing.

  “What's up, bitch,” one asked as he found his feet and stood staring her down. The laughter died away.

  “Nice ass,” another said as he moved toward her.

  She turned to the second man, the one who had just spoken, as she shrugged her purse from her shoulder, caught the bottom of it in one hand, and slipped her other hand inside. The third man, really just a boy, looked frightened as his eyes slipped from his two companions and then flitted to her.

  The driver leaned out the window, “What the fuck! Get the bitch!” He was looking over the roof-line, sitting on the windowsill of the driver's door, a smirk on his too-white little-boy face.

  “Yeah... How about a ride, baby,” the nearest one said. The other had finally found his feet, stopped slipping, and was skidding his feet across the slush heading in her direction. She pulled her hand from her pocket and aimed the mace canister at them. They both skidded to a stop.

  The closer one, the one that had made the remark about her ass, cocked his head sideways, shrugged his shoulders and then pulled a gun from his waist band. “Yeah... Kind of changes the whole situation, don't it?” He asked.

  His gun was aimed at the ground, close to her feet. She had only a split second to decide. He was less than five feet away, the gun rising from the ground, when she pushed the trigger and watched the stream leap at him. His face went from sarcastic smirk to alarm just before the stream of mace hit his nose and splattered across his face and into his eyes. A second later he was screaming. She had just turned to aim at the second guy when the world turned upside down.

  She found herself tumbling sideways. Somewhere, close by, a roar began and rose in pitch as the ground below her feet began to jump and shake. She found her knees after she fell and skidded across the roadway as she tried to hold herself, but the shaking was just too hard. She collapsed back to the roadway and the relative softness of the slush and snow, her body jumping and shaking as she seemed almost to bounce across the short expanse and into the snowbank on the opposite side of the road.

  The roar went on for what seemed like minutes as she tried to catch her breath and steady herself at the same time. Both seemed impossible to do, but almost as soon as she had the thought the trembling of the earth became less and a split second after that the roaring stopped. There was no silence. The sound of breaking glass, tumbling brick, blaring horns and screams in the dark night replaced the roar. Sounds that had probably been there, she decided, she had just been unable to hear them.

  Pearl made her feet and stared back down the street where the car had been. The car was still there, the nose tilted upward, the back seemingly buried in the street itself. She blinked, but nothing changed. She noted the broken asphalt and churned up dirt, and realized the car had broken through the street. There was no sign of the men, including the driver that had been hanging halfway out of the window.

  She drew a breath, another, and suddenly the noise and smells of the world rushed back in completely. The screams became louder. Horns blared. The ground trembled under her feet as if restless. She could smell sewage on the air. Broken lines below the pavement, her mind reasoned. She swayed on her feet as the earth trembled once more, lurching as it did. She waited, but the tremble was not repeated. She sucked in another deep breath and then began to walk, slipping on the broken pavement and slush as she did.

  Franklin street appeared untouched as she lurched from the side street, slipping over the broken pavement, and retching from the overpowering smell of sewer gas. She collapsed to the icy pavement, skidding on her knees and was surprise to hear herself crying as she struggled to get back on her feet.

  She nearly made it to her feet before the next tremor hit, this one much harder than the last one. She bounced sideways, knees slamming into the ground, crying out as they did, but unaware of her own cries.

  Just as the trembling stopped she made her feet again and stood, hand clasped to her knees to steady herself, breathing hard, holding herself rigidly, wondering what was coming next. When the shaking stopped and silence flooded in she was shocked.

  She finally opened her eyes, she had no idea when she had closed them, straightened from the bent posture she had found herself in, quieted her sobbing and looked around.

  Forty feet away, the gray stone of the mission that had rose just past the sidewalk was no more: Churned earth had replaced it. The sidewalk was still intact, as though some weird sort of urban renewal had occurred in a matter of seconds. Her eyes swept the street and now they took in the sections where the sidewalk was missing. The entire side of the street was gone for blocks. What was in evidence was an old house several hundred feet away, perched on the edge of a ravine. Beyond that, houses and streets continued. She was on the opposite side of complete destruction, and there appeared no way to reach that side.

  She turned and looked back at the side street she had come from. Churned earth, tilted pavement, the car was now gone. Farther down the short hillside that had appeared the public square seemed completely destroyed. Water had formed in the middle of the square and ran away to the north, probably toward the Black river, Pearl thought. To the west everything appeared to be intact, to the east, Franklin street stretched away untouched toward the park in the distance. Close by someone began to scream, calling for help. She took a few more calming breaths and then began to walk
toward the screams: The west, angling toward the opposite end of the square.

  The screams cut off all at once, and a second after that the sound of a motor straining came to her. Cycling up and then dropping. She paused in the middle of the road, listening, wondering where the sound came from. As she stood something ran into her eye, stinging, clouding her vision, she reached one hand up and swiped at it and the back of her hand came back stained with a smear of blood.

  She stared at it for a second. The ground seemed to lurch, shift suddenly, and she reached her hands to her knees to brace herself once more, expecting the shaking to start again, but her hands slipped past her knees and she found herself falling, her legs buckling under her. The ground seemed to rise to meet her and she found herself staring down the length of the roadway, her face flush with the asphalt. The coldness of the ice and slush felt good against her skin: As if she were overheated; ice wrapped inside of a dishrag at the base of her neck on a hot day. She blinked, blinked again, and then her world went dark.

  She floated, or seemed to, thinking of London. A hot day. She was a child again: Standing in the second floor window and looking down at the street far below. The dishrag dripped, but it felt so good against her skin. The memory seemed to float away. She was rushing headlong through a never ending stream of memories. All suddenly real again. Urgent, flying by so fast, but sharp in every detail.

  Pearl had grown up on a council estate in London: When her mother had died she had come to the United States only to find herself in the Maywood projects on the north side of Watertown. From one pit to another. Just different names, she liked to tell herself. Up until a few weeks ago she had still made the trip back and forth every day, but she had found a place, a small walk-up, not far from the mission on the other side of the public square. It seemed extravagant to have her own space, but living in the downtown area suited her.

  She seemed to be in both places at once. Back in her childhood, staring at the street below the window, yet hovering over her body, looking down at herself where she lay sprawled on the winter street. She wondered briefly which was real, but nearly as soon as she had the thought she found herself struggling to rise to her knees from the cold roadway, her eyes slitted, head throbbing.

  In front of her a shadowed figure had appeared staggering through the ice and snow, angling toward her. She blinked, blinked again and her eyes found their focus. The man from the car, suddenly back from wherever he had been. One hand clutched his side where a bright red flood of blood seeped sluggishly over his clasping fingers. Her eyes swept down to his other hand which was rising to meet her. A gun was clasped there. Probably, her mind told her, the same gun he had been going to shoot her with before. The gun swept upward as if by magic. She blinked, and realized then that the sound of the motor straining was louder. Closer. Almost roaring in its intensity. The gun was rising, but her eyes swiveled away and watched as a truck from the nearby base skidded to a stop blocking the road from side to side no more than ten feet from her. She blinked, and the doors were opening, men yelling, rushing toward her.

  Bright light flashed before her eyes, and a deafening roar accompanied it. An explosion, loud, everything in the world. A second explosion came, then a third, and she realized the explosions were gunshots. She felt herself falling even as she made the discovery. The pavement once again rising to meet her. Her eyes closed, she never felt the ground as she collapsed onto it, falling back into the dark.

  She was back standing in the window, looking out over the street. The heat was oppressive, but the ice wrapped in the rag was mothers' wonderful cure. She tried to raise it to her neck once more, to feel the coldness of it, but her arm would not come. She tried harder and the window suddenly slipped away. A man was bent toward her face. A helmet strap buckled under his chin. Her hands were somehow held at her side. The motor screamed loudly as this world once more leapt into her head. She was on the floor of the truck, vibrations pulsing through her body as the truck sped along... In the back of the truck, her mind corrected as her eyes focused momentarily. Other men squatted nearby, including one who was partially over her holding her arms as the other man was tapping the bubbles from a syringe with one gloved finger. The mans face angled down toward her own and he aimed something in a silver canister into her face from his other hand. The hand opened and the canister fell to the ground.

  “Itzawight,” his voice said in a far away drone. “Awightzzz.” She felt the prick of the needle, the light dimmed, his voice spat static: The light dimmed a little further, and then she found herself falling back into the darkness.

  Harlem New York

  Donita's Notebook

  March 1st (Night)

  Quakes, at least three. Warmed up fast and all the dirty snow that was piled along the streets has melted. Torrential rains. Thunder and lightening in the snow storm that came after sunset. Didn't last long, turned back to rain. Parts of the projects are burning. Jersey is burning, the sky is red-orange, like everything across the river is on fire. No one has come.

  Watertown New York

  10:00 PM

  The first quake had been minor, the last few had not. The big one was coming, and Major Richard Weston didn't need to have a satellite link up to know that. He touched one hand to his head. The fingertips came away bloody. He would have to get his head wound taken care of, but the big thing was that he had made it through the complex above and down into the facility before it had been locked down.

  He laughed to himself, before it was supposed to have been locked down. It had not been locked down at all. He had, had to lock it down once he had made his way in or else it would still be open to the world.

  He had spent the last several years here commanding the base. He had spent the last two weeks working up to this event from his subterranean command post several levels above. All wreckage now. He had sent operatives out from there to do what they could, but it had all been a stop gap operation. There were planes that would soon be in the air, and there were men releasing the V compound worldwide, or there had been. Now that the end was here he had no way of knowing if the orders he had given would be carried out of not: Whether they even could be carried out.

  The public knew that there was a meteor on a near collision course with the Earth. The spin doctors had assured the public it would miss by several thousands of miles. Paid off the best scientists in some cases, but in other cases they had found that even the scientists were willing to look past facts if their own personal spin put a better story in the mix. A survivable story. They had spun their own stories without prodding.

  The truth was that the meteor might miss, it might hit, it might come close, a near miss, but it wouldn't matter because a natural chain of events was taking place that would make a meteor impact look like small change.

  The big deal, the bigger than a meteor deal, was the earthquakes that had already started and would probably continue until most of the civilized world was dead or dying. Crumbled into ruin from super earthquakes and volcanic activity that had never been seen by modern civilization. And it had been predicted several times over by more than one group and hushed up quickly when it was uncovered. The governments had known. The conspiracy theorists had known. The public should have known, but they were too caught up in world events that seemed to be dragging them ever closer to a third world war to pay attention to a few voices crying in the wilderness. The public was happier watching television series about conspiracies rather than looking at the day to day truths about real conspiracies. The fact was that this was a natural course of events. It had happened before and it would happen again in some distant future.

  So, in the end it hadn't mattered. In the end the factual side of the event had begun to happen. The reality, Major Weston liked to think of it. And fact was fact. You couldn't dispute fact. You could spin it, and that was the way of the old world. Spinning it, but the bare facts were just that: The bare facts.

  The bare facts were that the Yellowstone Caldera had
erupted just a few hours before. The bare facts were that the earth quakes had begun, and although they were not so bad here in northern New York, in other areas of the country, in foreign countries, third world countries, the bare facts of what was occurring were devastating: Millions dead, and millions more would die before it was over. And this was nothing new. The government had evidence that this same event had happened many times in Earth's history. This was nothing new at all, not even new to the human race. A similar event had killed off most of the human race some seventy-five thousand years before.

  There was an answer, help, a solution, but Richard Weston was unsure how well their solution would work. It was, like everything else, a stop gap measure, and probably too little too late. It was also flawed, but he pushed that knowledge away in his mind.

  While most of America had tracked the meteorite that was supposed to miss earth from their living rooms, he had kept track of the real event that had even then been building beneath the Yellowstone caldera. And the end had come quickly. Satellites off line. Phone networks down. Power grids failed. Governments incommunicado or just gone. The Internet, down. The Meteorite had not missed Earth by much after all. And the gravitational pull from the large mass had simply accelerated an already bad situation.

  Dams burst. River flows reversed. Waters rising or dropping in many places. Huge tidal waves. Fires out of control. Whole cities suddenly gone. A river of lava flowing from Yellowstone. Civilization was not dead; not wiped out, but her back was broken.

  In the small city of Watertown, that had rested above Bluechip, near the shore of the former lake Ontario, the river waters had begun to rise: Bluechip, several levels below the city in the limestone cave structures that honeycombed the entire area, had survived mostly intact, but unless sealed, it would surely succumb to the rising river waters. By the time the last military groups had splashed through the tunnels and into the underground facility, they had been walking through better than two feet of cold and muddy river-water. The pressure from the water had begun to collapse small sections of caves and tunnels below the city, and that damage had been helped along by small after-shocks.

  When the last group had reached the air shaft, they had immediately pitched in with a group Weston had sent to brick the passageway off. The remaining bricks and concrete blocks were stacked and cemented into place in the four foot thick wall they had started. The materials, along with sandbags initially used to hold back the rising waters, had been taken from huge stockpiles within the city, and from the stalled trucks within the wide tunnel that had once fed traffic into the base. There was no way in, and no way out of the city. With one small exception.

  The exception was the air ducting. The ducts led away from the city towards a small mountain-peak about a mile from the city. There the ducts merged together, inside a huge natural rock tunnel that had been part of the original network of caves and passage ways. That tunnel culminated deep within the mountain at a remote air treatment facility. There were also several access points where the ducting came close to the surface via tunnels and passageways that ran though the huge complex of caves. And it would be possible to walk through one of the many air shafts to the tunnel, break through the ducting, follow it to the treatment facility or outside to the surface and freedom. It would be difficult, but it would be possible. The end of the trip would bring them to the surface, from there they could go anywhere.

  TWO

  Donita's Notebook

  March 2nd (Day)

  Rain 'til noon. Destruction widespread. Then horrific quake just before dark. Started to rain again, very heavy, then later at night it turned to snow. Lightening in the snow storm.

  Night, no moon, no stars. Storms stopped for a while, still no stars. Then the storms came back harder.

  Watertown New York

  Project Bluechip

  Major Richard Weston

  The C-130's were lined up for take off ten deep. The Airfield at Fort Drum was geared up for continuing flights for the next twenty-four hours or until the chain of command broke down completely. Major Richard Weston watched on his monitor as the planes taxied to the main runway and took off one by one.

  This was a further implementation of the V Virus. The planes would over fly the largest of the states cities and release the compound. It was mixed in two thousand gallon tanks of water mounted in the open cargo bay. A simple nozzle setup with a waste-gate type valve controlled the output. Blue dye had been added to track the wind movement of the spray for correction and that was it. There was enough V2765 in the mix to infect somewhere south of two billion people directly. Another five billion with the potential for passing the infection on from the original two billion that had been infected.

  He chuckled as he watched the planes staging on the monitor. It was all overkill. There had been releases in every country, in every major city in this country. In every major water source or reservoir. He had taken no chances, and he had done it all of his own volition. The way the original plan had been laid out. No, no one had approved the release on the populace. It had only been approved for release on selected military units and specialized training facilities, but there had been no one left to stop him. No one in the chain of command who could decide otherwise. So, he had made the decision and then moved forward with it.

  He reached forward and turned off the base monitor. He was several miles away, deep underground, but he had a firm control of the base and those left there. And he had actually been surprised that there had been enough of the chain of command left to get the planes loaded and moving out. He doubted the core that was there would hold together much longer, but it didn't matter. The planes were simply backup. The deed itself was done. The V Virus, as most of them had nicknamed it, would do the job, in most cases already had. The rest depended on humanity itself: Whether they could shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding society from nothing.

  He rubbed lightly at his temples. It had been less than 24 hours since the first quakes had hit. His understanding of what had occurred out in the wider world was limited due to satellite failure, downed land lines, and point to point communication links that had been destroyed. What he did know was that the major governments were all gone on every continent. Not a single organized government remained. There had been a few hostile takeovers right at the end. The longest a hostile takeover in South Korea, but they had all succumbed. The machine was too vast. The simple weight of the various organizations, the secretive nature of the politics, had crushed them.

  The military organizations lasted longer. They were used to chain of command procedures. It didn't matter if there was anyone further up the chain of command. It only mattered that they followed the orders' given. But even the military organizations were falling apart. It was hard to rule a society that now had the same weapons you had. The groups that were beginning to come together already were the small individual groups bent on survival. Equipped with military grade weapons or even sporting goods weapons picked off the shelves in gun shops across the country. He assumed it was the same in other countries.

  Major Weston stood from his desk, a new office thrown together deep in the bowels of project Bluechip, and walked out into the hallway. Military command was built on chain of command. Chain of command required visibility. He did these walk-throughs three times a day. It kept up appearances, but appearances only, because the truth was that even here things were shaky, falling apart, and he was unsure how much of it could be saved and how long command could be sustained. The facility itself could last for decades. It was a self contained city deep in the rock, but the core he could depend on was small. He left the hallway and walked into the vastness of the control room.

  Project Blue-chip was designed to be completely self-sufficient, and along with the facilities miles of underground roads and buildings, there were also several underground acres of vegetables, wheat, corn, and other essentials, already planted, and several acres ready for planting.

  The planted fields wou
ld yield more than enough for the slightly over one hundred remaining people. Meat would be a problem for a while however. A small farm had been set up, but had not fared well at all. The chickens seemed to have been largely ignored, but the swine, and cattle, which had numbered well over three hundred initially, had mostly been slaughtered. Six cows, one bull, three sows, and two boars were all that remained, and, Weston knew, if they intended to breed them, which they were already considering, they would have to be off limits for a while.

  He had been trapped above when the first quakes had hit and the initial devastation had begun. Once he had made his way below on the last remaining lift, he had assumed command with ease. Not with the iron hand that most of the survivors had expected, but with firm determination. It was a job he had lived for.

  All around him people worked together to clean up the mess the main control room had become, and it was rapidly approaching the neat and orderly state it had once been.

  For Weston it was amazing to see the transformations that were taking place. He turned from examining a screen, retrieved a thick printout from a nearby desk top, and settled into an office chair as he began to read. The printout contained over two thousand pages that dealt with farming, a very small portion of the subject matter in Bluechip's data banks, but he had to start somewhere, he reasoned.

  March 3rd (Night)

  Rain in the day, but as soon as the sun set it turned colder. Snow, heavy snow, thunder and lightening throughout the night. No moon or starlight. No stars at all!

  March 4th (Day into Night)

  Electronics stopped working, wristwatches, battery powered clocks. Bear tried to start a truck. Nothing... Dead. Three more quakes, aftershocks. Planes sprayed blue stuff on us too.

  Billy Jingo: L.A.

  March 4th

  Billy paced the hallway, trying to think it out, telling himself they had to leave soon. Telling himself it was the right thing to do. The problem was that he was not used to doing the right thing. So unused to it, in fact, that he wasn't sure he wanted to try... should try.

  The world had been turned upside down for the last few days. There was no official word that anything was wrong at all, but someone had fucked up; of that he had no doubt at all.

  The police? Gone. Fire department? Ditto. Army? Well, wasn't the National Guard supposed to show up when the shit hit the fan? But so far the army had not raised a finger to do anything for them at all. There was a base right over by the airport near the Los Angeles Freeway, but there had been no sign of them.

  He lived on the north side, a high rise that had been new sometime back in the seventies. He had gone up to the roof twice during the day and looked over the city.

  It appeared to be dead. There was a precinct only two blocks away, deserted, doors hanging open. Looters were carrying away cheap computer systems and who knew what else, a steady stream in and out of the front doors.

  There were fires over past the park. It appeared to be a whole block over by Jordan Downs, but there were other single fires all over the city too. There had been for two days now, and no one had come to put those fires out. And there was more; you could hear gunfire from all over the city all night long. He continued to pace the hall.

  This was not normally a bad neighborhood, but it was no picnic either. There had been a few fires here but the people that lived nearby had put them out quickly. Dozens of buildings had come down or were now tilted crazily. The looting had started at some point, and now there were armed men prowling the streets in gangs.

  He had acquired a gun from a shop a few blocks over, ransacked, left open to the world. He had loaded it and waited, but the few that had ventured to his door had turned away when they had seen him with the gun.

  Winston, the old man that lived in the back basement apartment, had called them all down to listen to the radio just a short time ago. Not your average radio, a Short Band receiver. They had ended up listening to military talk, military talk that was probably supposed to be restricted. The stories that had come from that radio said the rest of the world was no better off. Explosions or earthquakes, there was a great deal of devastation everywhere.

  A few years before, the CDC had issued a warning about zombies, the inevitability of an attack. How it would come. Why it would come. What you should do. How to survive it, and more. Billy and his friends had gotten a good laugh over it. He had been down in Mexico at the time because of some trouble he had gotten into in New York. And he had been living like a king. What sort of trouble could come? What he had listened to on the radio in the last few days had changed his mind completely.

  Washington D.C. was completely overrun, the President gone. They weren’t even sure he had made it into hiding. New York and Atlanta, overrun with the risen dead. Mexico, absolutely silent. Canada, the same. Millions of people absolutely silent. How could that even be? And right here in Los Angeles there was talk on the radio about dead roaming the streets too, and probably every city in between L.A. and New York, because if they had overrun the big cities, what kind of chance did the smaller cities and towns have, he asked himself.

  CBS had stopped broadcasting here three days ago, even though what they had been broadcasting had been sketchy because the satellites were out. They had been dependent on travelers coming out of the east or up from the south. It had apparently not stopped broadcasting soon enough in the west, where T.V. viewers had witnessed the network studios being overrun, and the anchor of the evening news attacked on camera. The United states was under attack by an army of the dead.

  He had spent some time checking the other stations, cable, Univision? Nothing at all. ABC? NBC? Dead air. Cable? Satellite? Frozen pictures on some channels, nothing at all on the others, and not a single channel you could actually watch. The internet was dead. That had seemed worse than all the rest of it. Google didn't load the page for his browser, but it also didn't tell him why. Nothing.

  And it wasn't just the United States: North and South America. Germany had not been heard from in a week. England, France, all the European countries were incommunicado. The radio mans words, not Billy's. Australia had seemed fine up until two days ago. They had been talking about the problems facing America and Great Briton. They seemed to be wondering what was going on the same as everyone else. Then the broadcast had stopped in mid sentence. Shortly after that the few HAM radio operators that had been relaying information from there had gone silent too.

  He had paced the hallways since then. He should talk to Jamie... Beth... Winston... Scotty, a few others. It might be time to talk about getting out of here. The thing he was concerned about was the non action from the military. That was not military like. For them to be sitting by and allowing this to happen, it must be a serious thing. And he had no doubt that eventually they would get their shit together, or think they had their shit together, and then they would act. And who knew what their remedy for zombies might be?

  He stopped his pacing. Who did know, he asked himself again. Nobody. He stood in the hall for a second. Jamie was upstairs with Beth and a few others. Night was coming. Traveling in the night was not an option, at least not one he wanted to explore. But maybe they should be ready to leave in the morning. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was not something they should do hastily, but he did believe they should not stay too much longer. He turned back towards the stairs, debated only briefly, then walked back and climbed them to the second floor. He would start with Beth. Let Beth make the decision. She would know what to do.

  Maine

  Carl Freeman rose from his couch reluctantly, and walked to the front door. He clutched the thick book, which to him was his Bible, in his hand as he walked.

  There had been some shooting, and quite a lot of panic in the last several days, but none of it had touched him. He had locked himself inside the house after the first earthquake had hit, calmly finished the thick tattered book, and then had begun to re-read it again. He was once again at the good part, not the same good part he had been at, but every
part of the book was a good part to him, and so it mattered not at all which part he was in. But he was at the part where he might be able to help.

  He knew now that the book, The Book, was not just a book. It was real. It had to be he reasoned, it just had to be. The author must have been like a God or something, maybe even was God, or something, and so he had written the book not simply to be read, although that had definitely been intended, but as a warning. Something to point the way. The Book was, well, The Book was a Bible, he had decided, and thank God he had been able to figure it out in time, thank God, praise God, because if he hadn't, he knew, there would be no hope at all. He worriedly pressed his fingers to the flesh of his neck. Okay, good, he thought, all's cool on the western front, no problem, wonderful, great, grand and glorious.

  He opened the thick steel door and peered out. The ground, indeed the house itself, he thought, had been shaking for the last several minutes A lesser shock than the others. It was winding down., Maybe over, as far as the earthquakes were concerned at least. He stepped cautiously out the front door into what should have been darkness, but somehow was not. In the distance he could see that the sun was beginning to rise. He glanced down at his watch. Well, he thought, it must have stopped, or something. He stared at the horizon for a few seconds longer and then calmly walked off down the street clutching the thick book under one arm, leaving the door standing open behind him.

  It was time to leave, he told himself, and if he ever intended to reach Stovington in time, he had better hurry.

  Kansas

  Wendell Smith edged the thick concrete door open slowly. Everything seemed fine, he thought. The ground wasn't burned, the houses were still standing, most of them, he amended as he saw some that had fallen and a few that were leaning precariously. Tommy Switzer's body was still laying where it had fallen at the base of the stairs, he noticed, and, although it was none too appealing, it was not burned either.

  He hesitated briefly, and then quickly ushered his family out into the early morning air. Kansas City, never looked so good, he thought, and the air had never smelled so sweet.

  He had ushered everyone down into the shelter just after the first earthquake had hit. They had already lost the television feed by then and had been down to the radio broadcast. That had been difficult to follow, but he had understood that maybe, just maybe, the meteor would hit them after all. Tommy had shown up after he had bolted the door. Too late, or it should have been too late. He had reluctantly opened the door back up only to find that Tommy had collapsed just outside the door, and as he had bent to help him to his feet he had seen the large wound on his back; what looked like a bullet wound to Wendell. He had seen bullet wounds before on a crime show he had once liked to watch. Someone had killed Tommy. He had slammed the door, shot the bolt, and they had ridden the next few days out in the shelter.

  Yesterday had been completely quiet, and today there had been nothing more than a slight tremor. Maybe the end wasn't now, he reasoned, maybe the end was yet to come. Either way it didn't matter, the kids were safe, Lucinda was too, and he had a sudden urge to strike out for Oklahoma, which he fully intended to follow.

  The children filed out one by one, wide eyed, followed by Mrs. smith, who peered cautiously around as Wendell had done.

  “Wendell,” his wife asked, “you sure?”

  “Yep. Honey, it's time to get on with life,” he paused and drew her into his arms, as the children flocked around his feet. “What do you think of Oklahoma, 'Cinda?” he asked.

  “What'za Okahoma, Daddy?” little Jasmine Smith asked, as she tugged at his pants leg. Wendell bent and took his youngest daughter into his arms.

  “Well, baby, Oklahoma's a state, or was...” Wendell said with a smile. “How about we go there and find out for sure what it is, baby girl, Huh?” She giggled, as he tickled her chin and set her down. He reached over and took Lucinda back into his arms and kissed her.

  “You must be nuts, Wendell,” she said with a smile.

  “Nope, just happy to be alive, honey,” he said through a large smile.

  Between them they herded the children into the back of their aging station wagon, cranked the motor to life, and backed slowly out of the driveway, as they held hands across the split vinyl of the front seat.

  Donita's Notebook

  March 5th (Day)

  Tremors. Time seems off, days are longer, I feel it. No way to measure it though. No rain or snow.

  March 6th

  Harlem

  Donita sat on a stool in the kitchen writing in her little notebook. Something was going on out in the world. Something, and the news was covering it up. The local news had been canceled. First at noon and now again at five. There had been no strange weather today, but the time was still off. Really off. The days were longer, no doubt about it at all.

  There were fires burning out of control in the projects. No Firemen had come. No cops. Nobody at all. The gangs were beginning to fight the fires. Slowly taking control of Harlem, and that scared her badly. There had been Earthquakes, or at least the ground had shaken... Explosions somewhere? Was it Earthquakes? It seemed like no one knew.

  Donita didn't know anyone who owned a phone. A real phone. Real phones were a thing of the past. But a real phone would have been good now, because something had happened to all the cell phones. The bars had dropped to nothing. How could that even be, she had asked Bear. There were towers all over the place! Nevertheless, they had ceased to function, and she now found herself wishing for a real phone.

  Bear had rigged up a C.B. radio and they had listened to that for a while. Twice a voice bled through claiming to be from somewhere in Jersey warning everyone to stay away. The voice claimed the city was on fire. Union City? North Bergen? Edgewater? They didn't say, but it looked like all of Jersey was burning, just like parts of New York. There were gangs fighting for control of what was left here, probably the same there. The voice went on to say the dead were rising and walking the streets.

  “Feds?” Donita asked.

  “Feds landed and took over the streets?” Bear supplied.

  Donita shook her head doubtfully. “I hope so... Because it sounded like dead... The dead are walking the streets.” She trailed off and turned her eyes back to the windows; night coming, noise winding up in the projects, low hanging gray clouds that slipped past the windows. “That's crazy, though, right?” She asked, “Crazy?”

  “Yeah... Nuts... I think it was Feds, baby.... Feds... Maybe it means there's some serious shit going on there? We thought that anyhow, right? But dead walking the streets?… Can't be,” Bear said in his deep, bass voice. He pulled Donita closer to him.

  A few minutes later the C.B. went dead. When it came back a few seconds after that there was a man identifying himself as Commander Roberts telling them to keep the channel clear. Donita looked up at Bear. He pulled her closer and watched the night come down outside the windows.

  March 8th

  Manhattan

  618 Park Avenue: Seventh floor. 2B

  Donita's Notebook:

  (Morning): Fresh snow. Made it all look like it never happened... Clean.

  Watertown New York

  Project Bluechip

  Pearl

  She came awake with a start. In her dreaming she had been leaning, leaning, holding the window sill and staring down at the street below. The heat, the cold dishrag freezing her tiny fingers. She had leaned back, shifted hands, placed the rag against the base of her neck once more, leaned forward and braced herself against the window frame and her fingers, slicked and unfeeling from the ice had slipped. She had plunged suddenly forward, falling, faster, panicked, and she had awakened as she had slammed into the surface of the bed, a scream right on the edge of her tongue waiting to leap.

  “Here.” A woman's voice. A soft hand at the base of her neck, holding her, easing her back down to the bed. “It's okay now.” She held Pearl's head up and bought a water glass to her lips. Cold, ice clinked together in the glass
, she took the straw between her lips and drank deeply. She collapsed back against the bed.

  “Where?” She managed at last. “Where is this place?” The ceiling was florescent lights in a panel ceiling. Dropped ceiling, her mind supplied. An Americanism.

  “Blue,” the woman told her as Pearl's eyes focused on her. She was short, slim, dressed in fatigues, a pistol in a holster at her side.

  “Blue?” Pearl sounded as doubtful as she felt. She must have misheard. “Drum?” She asked. It was the closest military base.

  “Blue,” the young woman shook her head. “The new base... Blue.” She smiled, but it was a tired smile. “You remember anything at all?”

  Pearl shook her head, but then spoke. “A car... A boy with a gun... An earthquake?”

  “English?” The woman asked.

  Pearl nodded. “Was it then? An earthquake?”

  “More than one,” The young woman sighed. “It's bad up there. You're lucky they found you, Jeffers and the others. Lucky.”

  Pearl nodded and then moved her legs and nearly fainted. She looked down, both were bandaged. She recalled the gun. “Shot?” She asked.

  “No... No, just scraped up, banged up maybe” The woman told her.

  “Badly scraped up?” Pearl asked.

  “No... A few cuts, but they are swollen. A day or two and you'll be fine.”

  Pearl didn't hear the rest as she sagged back against the bed and fell away back into the dream once more...

  L.A: Billy Jingo:

  Evening: March 9th

  He came up from sleep fast, Jamie's face above him, her voice a low, panicked whisper.

  “Wha... What... What?”

  “Downstairs... It's downstairs,” she didn't finish, but she didn't need to. A crash came to his ears, but he could not tell if it was from the downstairs hallway. At least he hoped it was the downstairs hallway, not the stairs outside of their apartment, or, God forbid, even closer.

  He jumped from the tangle of blankets, started to pull his shoes on, and then reached for his machine pistol instead as another noise came from the hallway. This time it did sound like the downstairs hallway; the steel gate that closed off the lobby. Billy thumbed the safety off the machine pistol and ran for the apartment door.

  The hallway was nearly completely black. The hallway windows let in the light from outside, but it was very little. He slowed and felt his way to the staircase. He sensed her before his hand brushed against her.

  “Don't you fuckin' shoot me, Billy Jingo.” Beth whispered tightly. A small penlight clicked on and he could see her leaning against the wall from the upstairs apartment.

  “No,” Billy said. It was stupid, but he could think of nothing else to say. “Going down,” he told her. He made the stairs and headed down toward the lobby. Behind him Beth had turned out the light, but he could feel her following behind him.

  The noise became louder as they made their way downward. Billy tried to count the steps as he went. Fifteen to the landing, turn to the right, feel for the banister. Fifteen more to the bottom, but he missed the last step. He had made himself count the steps just earlier that day in case he had to navigate them in the blackness.

  He nearly fell before his foot found the floor and he regained his balance. He could smell them now though, as well as hear them. Just fifteen or so feet across the lobby. He felt Beth’s hand brush against his back. A second later she pressed up against him and whispered in his ear.

  “When I flick the light on them, just shoot!”

  “But what if...”

  “Fuck What if... Just shoot. Who do you think it would be, the fuckin' Avon lady?” Silence fell. The noise stopped. “Goddammit,” Beth muttered.

  A second later the penlight came on. It was like a floodlight in the narrow hallway. The gate was broken, forced part way open at the top. Another few minutes and they would have been through. Six dead were transfixed by the beam. Two with iridescent red eyes that seemed to glow in the light from the penlight. Both snarled and lunged at the gate to force their way through to them.

  His pistol was in his hands, but it was like the beam had frozen him too. He did not begin to fire until after Beth's pistol began to fire. The noise was huge. Everything in the closed in space. All six of the dead fell and they thrashed on the floor. It was over fast. So fast that Billy had not even thought to breath.

  He stood frozen, looking at the dead. Two still moved. He walked forward and shot both of them in the head, one by one. The beam left them and moved to the doorway.

  The aluminum door frame was buckled in the doorway. The safety glass had been smashed out and lay on the floor in one spider webbed sheet. Two heavy sledge hammers lay just outside the doorway. Another three were scattered among the dead by the steel gate.

  “Son of a bitch,” Beth breathed.

  “Jesus. You don't think they were using those, do you?”

  “Are you fuckin' kidding me?” Beth asked. She shone the light up and down the door frame. “We'll need a steel door and a welder to fix that,” She said.

  Billy nodded, realized she couldn't see it, and then spoke. “We can get one tomorrow.”

  She brushed against him as she squeezed past and walked toward the gate. His arm felt on fire from the softness of her breast as she had slipped past him. She turned and looked back at him. “They almost got in.” She shone the light on the steel collapsible burglar door. It had been there for as long as she could remember, and she had lived in the building for several years. The top was nearly separated from the steel bracket that held the hinge mechanism. Billy got his feet moving, walked over and examined the top of the door.

  They had hit it with the sledge hammer repeatedly. The steel had finally split, and it looked as though they had been trying to use sheer force to rip the rest of the bracket away from the wall where it was mounted. Billy stepped back.

  “I think,” he began, and that was when a zombie came through the shattered aluminum door frame and slammed into the steel gate. Fingers shot through the gaps in the steel and clutched at Billy's arm. The Zombie missed the arm, but got his shirt sleeve and immediately snarled and began to pull back.

  It lasted less than a full second before Beth’s pistol roared. The zombie's head blew apart in the narrow hallway, black zombie blood running down the walls.

  “Got you? Got you?” Beth asked.

  “No... No... No, I …” Billy couldn't find the words. Something moved outside the door, and he opened up on it. A second later there were four more Zombies flooding through the door. None of them made it to the gate, tripping over the other dead, and both Billy and Beth were firing immediately. One made it back out the door, a hole in its side that had blown away part of its spine as it had exited. Billy could not believe it was still able to move, but it was. Canted to one side, legs twitching as it ran, causing it to lurch from side to side. It disappeared into the darkness before either of them could get another shot in. The silence came back full.

  “You have got to get your shit together,” Beth said quietly.

  “I got my shit together,” Billy shot back.

  “You never saw that one coming through the door. What if I hadn't shot it...”

  “Well, fuck, if you hadn't... Never mind... Okay... I'll get my shit together.”

  She said nothing.

  “Okay... Okay... Does us no good to get on each other... None at all... We can fix this tomorrow.” He looked around the lobby.

  “Help me for a moment?” he asked. He headed for a length of chain they had bought back to use for something, he couldn't remember what, but it was about to be re-purposed, he thought. As Beth held the light he wound the chain through the separated sections of the gate, pulled it tight and ran a short length of nylon rope through the eyes, tying it tightly.

  He stepped back and looked it over. It would have to do until morning, her flashlight was already flickering, causing shadows to jump and fall on the walls. Batteries were getting tougher and tougher to find.
He looked at his wrist and cursed low. Old habits died hard. Watches were worthless now. He hadn't worn one in a few days.

  “I don't know either... I think a few hours until dawn,” Beth said. “That should hold for a few hours, at least slow them down enough to shoot them if they do try to get through it.”

  “Well, I'll sit here and wait for it... All I can do,” Billy said. “Go on back up and get some sleep. I got this.” He settled back onto the step, sitting with his back to the upstairs.

  Beth stayed silent for a moment and then came and sat next to him. “Got it with you,” she said. She sat next to him, and he immediately lost his words. Her arm pressed against his own. The flashlight snapped off, and the heat of her arm became everything.

  “Billy?” His name whispered from the upstairs hallway: Jamie.

  “I'm here until daybreak,” Billy whispered back.

  Silence. And then... “It's safe?”

  “They won't get past us,” Billy said.

  She said nothing more. A few seconds later the door slammed upstairs. Billy sighed.

  “Sorry,” Beth said. She was aware how Jamie felt about her. Jamie and Billy were not really together, but Jamie felt she owned him. Billy didn't help matters by staying with her, sleeping with her, yet not making it official, and Jamie knew Billy was hung up on her too, Beth knew. For that matter, so was Scotty. She wasn't interested in either of them. She didn't feel like she absolutely had to have a man to protect her, define her. Yet ironically, she reminded herself, she was doing the same thing with Scotty. Staying when she didn't feel the same, couldn't feel the same. “I better go up... keep the peace.” Beth said quietly.

  “Yeah... I'm good here,” Billy said. He wasn't though. He wanted her to stay; he just didn't know what he could do or say to get her to stay. Nothing, he supposed. “I'll be good. Morning's not far away.” Her arm pulled away, and a moment later he heard her soft footfalls on the stairs as she ascended them. Billy sat quietly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, his machine pistol in his hands.

  March 9th

  618 Park Avenue: Seventh Floor 2B

  (Afternoon)

  Warming up, days longer. Nothing works so I can't track the hours, but I know the days are longer.

  Donita folded the cover back on her notebook and slipped it into her pocket. She stood on the balcony that overlooked the city watching the fires that still burned here and there. It was ironic to her that the balcony faced West. Like she had never really left that world, only acquired a different view of it.

  This was so much different than their own place. The west side, even the other side of the river over in Jersey, was almost entirely in flames now. Across the river, the same west side she was looking over at now, still burned brightly. And Harlem was strange. The gangs had taken over. First fighting among themselves, then taking over the streets. The drug infested blocks just off the interchanges where the white folks had sometimes driven down into pretending to be lost so they could buy their shit, take it back to their cozy, safe neighborhoods-probably a place just like this, Donita thought-and get high with their friends, closed down. The whole area blocked off. City buses pulled across the streets. They had tried to go there, she knew first hand what it was like.

  She and Bear had left that area after just a few hours of wandering the streets, ducking in and out of the alleys to stay hidden, hearing the gunfire. The dead were one thing to have to deal with, she guessed the living would be the other thing everyone would have to contend with there, and there were too many dead. Too many poor in life, too many dead in death. And that was bad because death was not death any longer. Death was... Donita twisted her head and tried to put it into context, but she couldn't. There was no context. It made no sense. Death was still death except death was also now life. And life, the kind of life she knew, breathing, drawing breath, was becoming rare. Over there, if the dead didn't get you the gangs would. It was a no win situation. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she took a short breath involuntarily. Little angel wings flapping against her rib-cage. It was what always came to mind when it happened. She was almost out of medication too. She pushed it away. There was no time for it. It would have to be okay.

  Fires burned over on the west side too. Nothing like Jersey though. There seemed to be a concerted effort, behind those barricades of buses, to get the fires out. It had been just over a week now since the city had collapsed. She and Bear had come here two days before. She thought back on it, playing the scene over in her head as she watched the fires burn across the river. Cliffside, North Bergen, Union City. She couldn't tell where the fires burned and where they left off. Maybe all of Jersey was on fire.

  Two days prior...

  They had walked right down the middle of the street, looking up at the buildings as they walked. Park Avenue looked bad, but nowhere near as bad as Harlem had looked.

  618 rested above the door of this building in two foot tall brass letters. The door had been partly open. They had seen that from the street and walked closer.

  The doorman, an elderly white-haired man, had been dead. Lying in the doorway preventing the door from closing and locking. The dead had killed him but not turned him. Or at least he had not turned yet. What a lot you learn in three days, she told herself now, as she remembered. They had dug in, shifted him outside the door. Bear had dragged him to the gutter as she had held the door. They had no sooner let the door close than he had sat up in the gutter of the street.

  “Bear! He's only hurt,” she had said, shocked. She had turned to Bear where he had stood behind her in the hallway. The words coming to her lips automatically.

  “Baby,” he had started. But that was when the doorman had hit the glass door. Rattling it in its frame. Scaring her so badly that she had peed herself a little. Bear had dragged her unprotesting, backwards down the hallway.

  They had used the elevator. Taken it to the top of the building. There had still been electric in the building that first day. Now the elevator was dead, wedged open on their floor.

  There had been an old lady in the apartment across the hall. She had come and stared as Bear had forced the handset and let them into the apartment.

  “You know, Amanda Bynes will not care for that at all,” she had told them as she stood in her doorway, clutching her dressing gown to her throat.

  “Well, fuck Amanda Bynes,” Bear had told her. He turned to her. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” he added. She had shrunk back.

  She blinked. “Well, I don't suppose she'll be back... Do you?” She hadn't waited for an answer but answered for herself. She lowered her eyes to the floor. “No. I don't suppose she will.” She looked back up. “Well, you're welcome to it I guess. I guess it doesn't belong to anyone anymore... You just scared me is all.” She stood blinking. Donita walked across the short distance and stuck out her hand.

  “I don't think anyone who isn't here right now will ever be back,” Donita had told her. She had held the old woman’s cold, thin hand.

  “Alice,” The old woman said as Donita told her, her name. “Jefferson,” she had added.

  Bear chuckled from across the hall. Donita had turned her eyes to him. “Just found it amusing is all,” Bear had told her.

  “I wonder what Mister James might think about all of this,” Alice had said. “We've never had... trouble like this,” she had finished quietly.

  “Mister James is your husband,” Bear had asked kindly.

  He tended to snap at people and then regret it after. He was so big that he scared people when he did that. Six foot three, and at two hundred and ninety, very close to three hundred pounds. But he was really an easy going soul, Donita knew. He had been trying to make up for snapping at the old woman a few seconds before.

  “No, dear, our doorman. He's not supposed to let anyone in at all.” She had clutched at her throat and the collar of her housecoat once more.

  Donita had looked at Bear. He had opened his mouth and then closed it. She had tur
ned her eyes to Alice. “Alice... Alice, the Zombies got him. They got your Mister James... I'm sorry,” she had told her.

  Alice had blinked. “I see. Well he'll probably lose his job if he's... Well if he's unable to do it,” she had looked at Donita. “Do you think he's unable to do it?”

  Donita nodded. “I'm pretty sure,” She had said.

  “Well... I wonder who will do it then?”

  The silence had held in the hallway for a short time and Bear broke it. “Do you think you might want to come over here with us? We're going to try to ride it out... Can't last forever, right?” He had finished with the lock-set, swung open the door and looked into the gloomy interior of Amanda Bynes' apartment. He turned back to face her.

  “No... Thank you, but I have always lived alone and I can't see changing it now... Have you seen these zombies? These dead people? I saw it on the T.V. before it quit working.” She had peered up at Bear.

  “Yeah. We've seen them... Had to fight our way through them.” His hand had come up and scrubbed at his face and the beard that was beginning to grow there.

  Alice had nodded. Her long robe lifted at floor level and a small white dog had stuck his head out from under the hem and looked up at Bear and Donita. Alice followed their eyes down. “Ge-boo,” she had said. The dog looked up at her and then slipped his head back under the hem of the robe once more. He had poked his nose back out a few seconds later, fixed his eyes on Donita, and then slipped back under the robe for good. It seemed to Donita as though it hadn't really happened.

  “A dog,” Bear had said.

  Alice had nodded. “I have been walking him in the daylight. They said... The T.V. Said... they can't come out in the daylight. Like vampires or something... They haven't bothered Ge-Boo and me... Have you seen them in the daylight?” She had asked.

  “No,” Bear had told her.

  “No,” Donita had agreed. “But you shouldn't go out. There are bad people out there... Not just zombies.”

  “You mean people that break into people's houses?” Alice had asked. She had looked from Donita to Bear.

  “Yeah. Well, okay,” Bear had agreed. “Just be careful... Alice,” He had added her name as an afterthought. “Donita.” Donita had nodded at Alice and then stepped into Amanda Bynes' apartment...

  Now she looked out over the fires burning in Jersey. The air was full of ash and smoke. It seemed like it was always now. She turned and went back into the apartment, sliding the balcony door shut behind her.

  Madison and Cammy

  The street was empty. Madison went first, taking her time, then called to the others. Cammy and Mickey came around the corner a few seconds later. Cammy stopped, watching Madison where she waited, Mickey came slowly, trying to look everywhere at once, holding the machine pistol he carried pointed up at the sky.

  Harlem was crazy. There were very few dead, but there were very few dead because the gangs were running all the sick and elderly out of the neighborhoods. They had watched from the safety of a rooftop that overlooked the projects, as some gang members had gone apartment to apartment in the projects, running the people there out into the street.

  They had lined them up in the middle of the road and run them out of the projects, past the buses. Three different times one of the oldsters had turned to argue, or maybe just to make a point and they had clubbed them down, dragging them unconscious, out past the buses, and then shooting them in the head. After that they had begun going house to house looking for any other old people, sick, injured. Yeah, it was crazy in Harlem. They had decided to get out. There was no telling what might happen if they stayed.

  Mickey finally lowered the machine pistol he carried to the ground. Took one more look around and then his eyes came back to Madison as he walked.

  The shot rang out and they all flinched. Madison went into a crouch. She had reached out and grabbed Cammy, pulling her low too, so she did not see Mickey begin to fall. Did not look that way until he was crumpled on the ground like a small pile of dirty clothes. Her eyes shot up toward the buildings quickly, but they dropped as a voice spoke.

  “Get the fuck up, Bitches.” A tall dark-skinned kid, a kid, no more than that, walked from the darkened doorway of a building across the street. “I said, get the fuck up,” he repeated as he walked toward them.

  Cammy stood from her crouch and Madison stood with her. “You don't have to hurt us,” Madison began.

  “Good... Good. You bitches just get your asses moving and it'll be cool then.” He motioned back the way they had come with his gun. Madison looked down at Mickey crumpled in the street, blood pooling around him, and got her feet moving. She held Cammy close as they walked slowly back into Harlem.

  March 10th

  618 Park Avenue: Seventh floor. 2B

  Donita's Notebook:

  March 10th: Warming up, days are longer. It feels like spring. It's early March. No way should it be this warm. My watch is working again, no rhyme or reason.

  Donita stood now overlooking the city. It seemed that everything had changed in the last few days. Her watch said it was somewhere past midnight, if it could be trusted. It had quit, started again, and she had set it for 9:00 PM at sunset. The days were longer, but she had no idea how much. It should be close. But so many strange things had happened that she wasn't sure it could be trusted. The days seemed longer. What good was a twenty-four hour watch if the days were all screwed up? Longer? And everything else was bad too, her own life was falling apart, and she couldn't even bring herself to tell Bear about it, or how much it scared her.

  The old woman, Alice, had taken her dog G-Boo out a few days before and she had not come back. Donita had opened the door a crack as she had been leaving and warned her again about how bad it was outside, but Alice had simply pretended not to see her, or hear her, when she had spoken. She had walked off down the hallway: Smartly dressed, G-Boo wearing a small, pink sweater, and Donita had not seen her since.

  Bear had called the elevator back up a few hours later, locked it down, and then jammed it open with a chair from Amanda Bynes' kitchen. It was clear that if Alice was not back she would not be back. The streets had suddenly been crawling with the dead. The daylight meant absolutely nothing to them at all. An hour or two into the darkness the electricity quit, and the building, most of Manhattan with it, had gone dark. Now this.

  Donita looked out on the city now. The fires were everywhere. Twice, a few days back, the planes had overflown the city. Bear had been down in the park trying to find out what was going on. She had been alone, jumping at every sound. The planes had swooped low, blue-tinged mist spraying from the open cargo holds. Military planes. Jets? She wasn't sure. She had seen them clearly from the seventh floor, but knew nothing at all about airplanes, military or otherwise. Soldiers in gas masks stood in the open bay doorways and directed the thick hoses that sprayed the city. Three men crouched in the open cargo holds of each plane.

  She had slid the glass balcony doors closed. Fashioned a rag around her mouth and waited for Bear to come back. He had not been long. They had been able to smell something on the air. A thick, cloying smell that reminded Donita of old perfume. It had left a nasty taste in their mouths, but it didn't seem to do anything to them other than that. A few hours later they had ventured back out on the balcony. The rags tossed aside. If it had been something to kill them it would have already done that they had both reasoned.

  The city had fallen quiet. That night the recently risen from the dead were dead once more. They had fallen sprawled into the streets where they had stood after crawling from their hiding places. Dead again. They had thought it was over. Hoped it was over.

  Donita stood now and looked at the city. They weren't dead any longer. What ever it had been it had not been able to kill them, if that had been what it was supposed to do. In fact, it had seemed to make them even stronger once they had come back the second time; stronger and smarter. She could see them in the streets below now. They walked purposefully from doorway to
doorway. Testing the locks. Stopping at every shadow. Investigating. A car here, a doorway there. Looking up to catch her eyes. Maybe just to let her know that they knew she was still there. And Bear slept behind her in the bed. Unaware of it all. Oblivious to it.

  And there was irony here. Irony, because she was dying. She was dying and she was sure that they knew it. She was sure that was the reason they kept looking up at her where she stood on the balcony. Judging the time between now, and when she would be one of them.

  She blinked away tears as she looked out over the night darkened city: The fires that burned; the dead that prowled the streets. She had popped her last nitro the day before. It had taken the pain in her chest down, but it had not stopped it. Too much excitement. Too much damage from the drug use that had ravaged her body. She hadn't touched a thing in two years, but it had still killed her. Just as she had known it would. It had just taken its time. Twenty-three and a bad heart. It thundered and trip-hammered in her chest. Out of sync. Out of beat. Out of time. And the dead knew it. They were only waiting for her to stop, keel over, and...

  She wondered about that 'and' as she looked out over the burning city. And what? She would raise back to life? She didn't think so, but she didn't know. She was sure they had to bite you for that to happen. Even so, if you did come back on your own... She stood brooding. Feeling the pressure build in her chest as evening came on and the fires continued to burn.

  She couldn't make Bear have to do for her, she decided at last, and there probably wasn't much more time for her: If she intended to go she should.

  She turned and looked at Bear's outline on the bed. She couldn't chance waking him either to say goodbye. And that hurt too, but it would probably not hurt for long. He would stop her. Possibly read her mind. He had done it before; just seemed to know what she was thinking. She turned a few minutes later, walked quietly across Amanda Bynes' plush carpet, eased open the door, and stepped out into the hallway.

  Lenox Avenue

  She slipped from the shadows and ran along from building to building until she reached the end of the block. She had expected to hear gunshots behind her. Expected to find herself falling to the ground dead, a bullet in her back, but the bullet never came. They must have stayed asleep.

  They, were four guys who had come around a few days before. She had opened the door to her apartment. Stupid. If she could have gone back and undone it she would have, but she had been so scared. She had been so alone. The kid at the peephole had seemed so young. Scared himself. All she had done was open the door an inch or two, just slipped the chain, and the other three had slammed into it. The four of them had easily broken the chain and pushed past her into the apartment. She had given in. There had been no sense in fighting them. What could she do?

  She had become their toy. Passed from one to the other. Yesterday morning they had come back from someplace with a new girl. She had no idea where they had found her. Sometime late afternoon, before dinner, they had killed her.

  Something had occurred. She hadn't been able to tell what. But she had heard the shot, and then they had bought her out from the bedroom and dumped her on the living room floor. Naked. A bullet hole in her head. And she had known it would not be long before it would be her turn to be dead. She had just known it.

  She had been cooking for them. A little grill out on the balcony. They went out and bought things back. Canned stuff, she cooked it on the grill in a pot, and they ate it like it was the finest gourmet food available anywhere. She had gone into the bathroom. Opened the medicine chest, and stared at the sleeping pills she had put there, until one of them, Randy, she thought his name was, had come and yelled through the bathroom door. She had taken the pills and dumped them into her pocket, flushed the toilet, and went back out to the kitchen.

  She had put all of them in the food. Mixed them right in with the canned spaghetti and they had wolfed them right down. Never had a clue. Now they were all out. Maybe dead. There had been an awful lot of pills.

  She had been with Bobby a few days before, when she had thought to get the pills. Bobby was nice, if there could be anything close to nice with these guys. He had looked her up and down and that had been that. She imagined he had probably never had a woman that looked like her in his entire life. Maybe never had a woman at all, it was clear he was an inexperienced lover. He had no idea what he was doing. He was rough, cruel even. Nice only meant he didn't beat her, he still used he as he pleased.

  He had taken her with him because the others had been out and he had not wanted to leave her alone in the apartment, guessing, correctly, that she would not be there when he came back. But, he had been bored, left alone, and he wanted to look through some shops and stores in the neighborhood.

  It had been broad daylight, but there had been no one to stop him or any of the other gangs that roved the streets and did as they pleased. He had broken into a pawn shop. She had talked him into going into the medication aisle at the Korean store down the street. And she had picked up the sleeping pills. He had seen her do it. She had told him it was Midol. Relief for period pain. She had picked up a box of Tampons too. He had turned red and had not asked her about them again. As a bonus he had left her alone that night also. Probably thinking that she had been indisposed. Fine. Whatever. It didn't matter any longer.

  It was nearly dark by the time they had finally passed out. That had pissed her off. Pissed her off and scared her too. The dead were out here somewhere. The dark was their time.

  They had died off when the planes had come over, but they were back now. Strong, or becoming strong. She wanted to get as far away as she could before the street was completely lost to the night. There were people down the street, two blocks or so down. She had seen them coming and going. Making sport of the zombies. Enticing them into chasing them and then killing them with head shots from the shotguns they carried; routing them out in the daylight and running them over with cars, shooting them as they roared by, racing the block from end to end in a souped up car they had gotten from somewhere. They had been out earlier. If she could get down the street she was sure they would take her in. Positive.

  She stopped at the end of the street, caught her breath leaning against the side of a pickup truck, and then took off once more at a fast walk.

  She was halfway through the block when she realized someone was following her, and her heart sank like a stone. Bobby... Had to be. She stopped and peered back through the shadows and dark. The moonlight was bright, but it was still not easy to see. She thought she saw movement at the corner of a building two buildings back. She screwed up her courage.

  “Bobby... Bobby don't be sore... Don't...” She stopped and squinted into the gloom. Two people had come from around the edge of that house. Two, and neither of them looked anything like Bobby. Both were shuffling and lurching as they came. Her heart leapt high in her throat. Seeming to clog her airway. A strangled squawk came from her open mouth. She swore under her breath and turned to run.

  He caught her under the arms. He must have been standing right behind her all along, she realized.

  “Hey... Hey, there's no...” She stopped in mid word and began to scream at the rotted face that angled down at her own face. His hands clawed at her throat, closing off her screams and then his teeth found her and he began to tear and bite. A second later the others joined in, dragging her to the ground and then out into the road. They left her under the street lights, her blood pooling around her head.

  THREE

  The Docks

  Donita walked along aimlessly. The smell of the river was heavy on the air and she was following it. She was unsure what she had in mind. The tears continued as she walked. It wasn't fair, she continued to tell herself, but telling herself it wasn't fair didn't do anything for her situation. And here she was wandering around in the night where the dead ruled. Like she wanted the exact opposite of what she had told Bear that she wanted. Like, instead of dying, she wanted to slip into forever alive like the zombies seem
ed to be. Like she was some sort of... Some sort of zombie bait... Teasing them.

  But there were no zombies around, or if they were she couldn't see them, hear them, feel them. She pressed her hand flat against her chest. The pain was worse. Much worse. And she wondered how much more she could take. How much more her body could handle. She stopped and drew several deep breaths, trying to ease the pain that seemed to close on her chest like a fist.

  When the pain eased a little, she started off down the street once more, heading toward the river.

  March 11th

  L.A.

  Billy and Beth

  Billy was up on the roof. Beth, Jamie, Winston and Scotty were standing at the edge of the building as he was, looking out over the city. Things were crazy, and they seemed to be getting worse as the days rolled by.

  The police precinct was still burning. It had started sometime during the night two days before, and since there was no one to put the fire out, it had been raging for hours now. A few minutes ago, the roof of the building next door to the precinct burst into flames. Maybe the fire had started inside, or the extreme heat from the burning police precinct had caused it to burst into flame, spontaneous combustion, but it was a strange thing to watch. It appeared as though it had simply burst into flames all on its own.

  The animated conversation about whether it had been spontaneous combustion or a fire source from inside the other building that had simply burned through, had kept up for a few moments, and then they had all lapsed back into silence. Beth spoke now.

  “Where would we go?” she asked.

  “I think southeast,” Scotty threw in.

  “Why not north or northeast,” Jamie asked.

  “Makes no difference, I suppose, but this winter it might. That's why I think southeast.” Billy said.

  Beth nodded. “What's the radio say?”

  “It's bad everywhere. Different people, different days, all talking about the dead. Some talk about the living too, gangs, shit like that, but the big deal is the dead. Every major city... Boston, Hartford, Manhattan, San Fran, Providence, Scranton, Miami... there are more. Every day you hear more places, and that's bad. But then there are the ones that you don't hear from anymore, and that's even worse,” Billy said.

  “So how is southeast better?” Beth asked.

  “Might not be better, as far as the dead are concerned: It might not be, but it will be warmer. I mean, no problem now, but winter isn't really over up north, and it will come again, and we had better be somewhere with our supplies settled in for it when it does come again,” Billy answered.

  Beth nodded. “All of us?”

  “A few others,” Winston said. “Emma, down street. She has a baby. Don and Ginny across the street. They got a few friends too.”

  “Babies... I don't know about babies,” Billy said. “Adults, okay. Children are bad enough, but babies? How do we take care of them?”

  “Billy, should we leave them here to die?” Scotty asked.

  “Fuck, Scotty. I didn't say that. Do we invite them along to get killed? I mean we're leaving the safety... Talking about leaving the safety of this building and going on the road.”

  Beth raised her hand. “Scotty misspoke, or you mistook what he said. Can we agree on that?” Scotty turned away and then turned back and nodded. Billy nodded too. “Tomorrow... Tomorrow we scout it out. We need trucks... not a car. Something that can get us over the bad spots. And we'll have to see how far we have to go before we can hope to drive. We sure as hell can't drive here.” She shrugged.

  “Tomorrow,” Billy agreed.

  “Yeah,” Scotty added.

  Beth turned and looked back over the city, watching the building next to the precinct burn.

  New York: Park Avenue.

  The Dead Girl In The Street:

  They came from the shadows, the smell of blood pulling them. The young man in the lead approached the girl's body where it lay on the pavement. They had watched it far into the darkness and now into the sunrise. But unlike some it had not come back. He looked over at her now. Her eyes dull marbles, her mouth wide, as if frozen in a scream. Curled on her side, one sneaker twenty feet away. The pink sock on that foot had a hole in the toe, and her toe peeked out, red polish glinting in the early light.

  They had watched as the other dead, the slow ones, had gotten her last night. Not that they wouldn't have gotten her themselves, they had been following her too. But the others had gotten her first. They had chased them off before they could take her too far into death, to the place where she could not come back. But sometimes they didn't come back. No reason, no explanation, they just didn't.

  He walked across the asphalt. The sunlight bothered his eyes, but he wore dark glasses to protect them. He walked up to the girl's corpse and toed it with one heavy work boot. She rocked stiffly.

  “Done for,” he said. His voice was clear, but distorted. Two in the small crowd behind him whined. He stepped back from the body. “Go ahead,” he said in his rasping whisper, “Go ahead.”

  The small crowd of seven fell on the girl's body and began to feed on it where she lay in the road.

  Bear

  Bear awoke to the early morning light spilling into the bedroom. He turned to hold Donita, but she was gone, that side of the bed cold. He lay still for a few minutes. Incredulous that he had not only fallen asleep in the midst of all of this, but shocked that he had slept through the night. It was a split second later that he launched himself from the bed. Nearly flying up, and landing neatly on the flats of his feet and running down the short hall to the living room in one smooth motion. Propelled by fear.

  It was crazy to think that there was anything wrong. He knew about her heart problem. She had told him it was fine. But the panic had already slipped into his brain and pinned his thoughts down. She had just talked to him yesterday. She had just made him promise yesterday that he would... He pushed it out of his head as he slid into the living room. Empty.

  The strength fled from his body as he stared at the back of the door. His hand reached out and plucked the note from the door. The pushpin went flying. He read it slowly and then read it again as the tears began to slide from his eyes.

  The outskirts of the city

  They stood in the shadows of the factory as the morning come on. The fires still burned in the distance. Fires were heat. Fires were bad. Fires frightened them all and they wanted nothing to do with them. Several times they had been tempted to go out into the city and feed, but the fires had been too frightening. Too frightening even with the smell of so much fresh death on the wind. So tempting... So tempting, but the fire was fierce. A pain of its own. Heat was for those who lived the small life. For those who were dead, heat was an enemy. Pain. Corruption.

  They stood and silently waited for a leader. A leader was promised. None of them knew where that leader would come from, when that leader would come, but they knew they would have one. They sniffed the air and waited. Some whining lightly, deep in their throats, other times growling, salivating in their own dry way, eyes running as they scented the air and waited.

  Last Wishes

  Bear

  The morning moved on. He had finally gotten himself up from the floor and went and looked out over the city. His sadness and depression stole away as the sun rose, and was replaced with a steely resolve. She had asked him, made him promise, that he would bury her if anything happened to her. She had a fear of the zombies getting to her, biting her, and turning her. She had made him promise. Promise, like she had known. Like it was a real thing. And he had thought it was just fear talking. Just things you said when you were afraid. Just in case things. Not real things.

  He had known about her heart. He supposed, he admitted to himself now, that he had even known that she could die if she did not have the kind of treatment she needed. Could... He had known too that it was harder for her. He had thought immediately about her heart when she had talked to him, but he had not questioned her. Her eyes had said somethi
ng to him. Something like, Ask me and I will tell you the truth. All you have to do is ask. And he had not wanted to talk about the truth. Did not want to talk about the truth because the truth scared him too badly. So he had not asked. He had pretended he had never seen that permission in her eyes.

  She had talked. She had talked about the things that scared her. She had been worried she would die in the night, turn, and then go after him. They had talked about it, but only briefly. He had shut the conversation down. He didn't want to believe it, and hearing it only forced him to believe it. He had been selfish. He had given in to his fear when he should have given in to her need to talk to him. Tell him, and here he was. It was a real thing now. She would not have left if something had not made her leave. A real thing, he repeated to himself. He could see no other reason why she would have left. And what about the baby. The mere thought made his eyes begin to leak.

  The note had said next to nothing. Just... 'I'm Sorry... I love you.' At least it said that. At least. But why had she gone?

  He took the stairs down to the lobby. The stairwell had been empty, but the lobby had not. The zombies had long before crashed in through the door and taken over the lobby. He had eased open the door to find two of them laying in the shadows, sleeping, or whatever it was they did that passed for sleeping. He stepped quietly out of the stairwell, shoved a piece of broken board into the fire door opening to keep it from closing and locking him out, and then walked quietly to where the two lay.

  They stank of death. Rotted flesh, corruption. Their chests did not rise and fall. They did not move. Their eyes were partially slitted. It would be easy to believe that they really were dead and had been for some time. The gun was in his hand. He had flicked off the safety before he had stepped out into the lobby. He walked up to the first one, turned slightly to take in the second one.

  Whatever did not work, their hearing did. As soon as he shot the first one the second would be up and on him. He looked from one to the other, lowered the gun and shot the first one in the head.

  The second one screamed as he turned. A high piercing sound that distracted him for the briefest of seconds. She began to come up off the floor, her eyes wild, flaccid breasts swinging freely, flapping like sails, and he nearly let her get him. He became so distracted that she was very close to having him before he finally pulled the trigger and shot her.

  The first shot took her in the chest and flung her back like a rag doll. But that was all it did. She was scrabbling back for him as Bear stepped into her path and pushed the pistol into her head, squeezing the trigger as he did. She flew back this time and didn't rise again. Rotted brains splattered across the wall behind her. She slid down the wall.

  Bear stood for a second, his breaths coming in long ragged pulls. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, then turned and went back to the stairwell. His concern was whether he should leave the door open or closed. Open and they might get in. Closed and he would have to smash the handle set off himself when he got back, so that he could get inside. And that made him wonder if he would be back. If he would find her, take care of her, and then make it back to here. He had no way to know.

  A minute later he kicked the board from the propped open door, and stepped back into the lobby. It closed with a solid steel clunk. If he came back he would break in. Better that than leave it open for the dead, if he didn't make it back before nightfall, or if they came looking in the daylight. It was the only safe place he had. He walked across the lobby and stepped out onto the cracked city sidewalk.

  He walked a short distance north before he found a stalled delivery truck at the curb. The keys dangled from the switch. The shattered drivers side window and the blood smeared down the door told the story of what had happened to the driver. Scattered sheets, towels and uniforms had tumbled from the shelves and fallen into the aisle of the truck when the driver had driven it into the curb. But there were no dead lurking in the back of the truck.

  The battery was flat. He pushed the truck a few hundred yards before he came to a long slow downgrade. He jumped in, put the truck in second gear, and then popped the clutch out a few seconds later. The motor roared to life. The transmission whined, the truck jerking and bucking, throwing him against the dashboard. A second later he downshifted into first and began to wind his way around the traffic that clogged the intersection at the bottom of the short hill. He began looking for her. Convinced that he would find her, be lead to her somehow.

  Leaving L. A.

  Billy and Beth: March 12th

  To leave the city with nine people they were going to need a truck, and that was going to have to wait until they made their way out of the city and all the stalled and wrecked vehicles that clogged the main streets.

  They had hoped to cross over the river on the Firestone Boulevard bridge, but after a three hour walk, most of which consisted of crawl-walking over the tops of stalled vehicles, they had been forced to turn back when they reached the beginning of the bridge. The bridge was badly damaged, the pavement gone, leaving a ragged drop into the water below, and the water seemed to be much deeper than usual, nearing the tops of the concrete side to side, and fast moving.

  They had debated back tracking and crossing the water to the west instead. Billy had pretty much let Beth decide. She was, after all, more familiar with the city. In the end they had decided to continue south toward the freeway where they could hope for a better crossing. That had caused an argument between Billy and Jamie that had only ended because Billy had walked away from her.

  “You want her, not me. Her... Why don't you just say it, Billy... Just say it.” She screamed the last as Billy picked up his pace walking faster still. There was nothing he could say. It was true after all, and the truth couldn't be hidden in these circumstances.

  The light was fading from the day as he found a small shop, the glass covered by steel panels. The panels were dented, even punctured in a few places by something he assumed had been heavy and sharp, possibly an ax, but they had held. He rolled a cigarette and stood, one boot heel resting against the brick wall behind him, the other holding his weight on the cracked concrete. He watched Beth as she walked toward him.

  She smiled. “Roll one for me?”

  Billy rolled one and handed it to her. She fished a lighter from her own pocket and lit it.

  “We have to settle in for the night... Too dark to keep on. Who knows what sort of freaks are waiting for night to make a move on us.”

  Billy nodded. “Dozens... No doubt...” He sighed. “We'll need a place for all of us.” He tapped his free hand against the brick. “Place looks untouched, it will take a little work to get in, but we could spend the night here.”

  Beth inhaled deeply and let the smoke roll slowly out of her mouth. She turned the cigarette around and looked at it. “Killing me, I know it, and I couldn't care less. Tastes so fucking good and calms down that itch in my brain.”

  Billy laughed. “I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter what we do now. I think the life expectancy of the human race just dropped a whole shit load.”

  Beth laughed along with him, took another hard pull on the cigarette, looked at it once more and dropped it to the pavement. She ground it out with her boot heel. She raised her eyes to Billy and the laughter was gone, ground out like the cigarette. He knew the next words she spoke would be serious, but he wasn’t prepared for them when they came a few moments later. “It's just you and me.” She frowned as she finished.

  “What?”

  “What? Come on, Billy, what did you think she was gonna do? You knew this was a problem... Scotty ran you down after you walked away... It took very little to turn them around... They're heading south... Lynwood Park, I think. Scotty thinks there are safe places there and more people too.”

  “And? … What did you say?”

  Beth shrugged. “I said go... If you fall apart after a little tough walking we don't need you...”

  “Jamie?”

  Beth laughed, but the laugh didn't t
ouch her eyes, instead they narrowed, hurt. “Called me a cunt. Told me I could have you.”

  “Wow... Right to the C word... Must have been pissed...” Billy straightened from the wall. “But you stayed with me.”

  “Yeah... About that... Nothing's changed, Billy. I don't want us to get off on the wrong foot. I like you... I even like you a great deal, but you're not the guy for me... I don't know where that guy is. Even if I let you be the guy you couldn't handle me, Billy.”

  She had shifted her rifle from her shoulder, she stepped forward now and rested the barrel end against the fat padlock that held the steel shutters on one side. “Better move off a little further,” Beth told him. “I have no idea how this is gonna go.”

  The noise was deafening in the quiet late afternoon. A flock of pigeons startled from a nearby rooftop, lifted into the air. Billy followed them with his eyes as they lifted into the gloom. Suddenly a larger shadow appeared above the pigeons and a split second later a much larger bird dropped into the flock, talons extended, and emerged with a pigeon clasped in those same talons. The bird wheeled, climbing on an air current and then began to drop to a nearby roof where it apparently had a nest.

  “Jesus,” Billy breathed.

  Beth chuckled. “Hawk,” she turned her eyes back to the padlock. “Come on, Billy, lets get down for the night.” She reached down and carefully pulled the jagged metal from the eye holes where it had rested in the bottom of the steel frame. Together they lifted the shutters.

  Donita

  The Lady In Waiting

  She opened her eyes. The moon was high in the sky. A silver blue-tinged orb. A glow rose up to meet it. Brighter than the moonlight. She lay quietly and watched it for some time. Content to watch it move slowly across the sky. At least for the time being.

  It occurred to her, after some time, that the man who had shot her, she recalled that now, lying here in the quiet night, one of the men had shot her when they were through with her... After they had raped her... He had bent over her and shot her... But, the man that shot her, must have done a bad job of it. Must have missed her completely, or skinned her, as they used to say when they were kids. Or a flesh wound. She had heard that used in countless movies on television...

  “Bobby! Bobby, are you shot bad? Are you?”

  “Naw, Bill. Naw. It's only a flesh wound. A flesh wound is all.”

  Who hadn't heard that in a movie before, she asked herself. And she had grown up in the projects. She had seen people get shot and live through it. Even get shot in the head and live through it. And she had not been shot in the head. She remembered that.

  She tensed for the pain and then sat up all at once. No pain. None at all. The moonlight was bright, but at the street level she was laying in shadows. She gazed down at her chest. Her shirt was plastered to her chest with dried blood. It baffled her. She wondered if she could make it back to the apartment and Bear. Maybe... Maybe...

  It baffled her because it seemed to be a great deal of blood yet there was no pain. It baffled her because the blood was dry, and no way could the blood be dry. Why... Why the man had just shot her a few minutes ago. She had left the apartment and...

  She couldn't make it all come back. She had gone so that she would not chance coming back and attacking Bear. It had seemed a crazy thought, but the longer she had thought of it the less crazy it had seemed. The more it seemed to make sense to her...

  They had come at her down by the river. Three blocks... Four blocks from the apartment, surely it had been no more than that. Her heart had begun to skip and beat irregularly She had hoped she could make the river. She thought if she could throw herself in, it might work. But it was clear she wasn't going to make it. She had stumbled into an alley, slumped against the wall, pulled the pistol Bear had gotten for her from her pocket, and slipped the barrel into her mouth.

  The taste of the steel, and the coldness of the barrel had made her gag, and that had been her mistake. She had not seen them when she stumbled into the alley. As soon as the gun left her mouth, one of them, the same one who had ended up shooting her... Shooting her with her own gun as a matter of fact, had stepped from the shadows and snatched the gun from her hands. The others had surged forward then. They had dragged her deeper into the shadows and taken her.

  She stared up at the full, bloated moon hanging directly overhead. Except it had been early evening and now it was not early evening. The moon did not hang in the middle of the sky during the early evening. She touched her chest, felt across the swell of her breast and found the bullet hole.

  A big bullet hole. A scary bullet hole. She tried to suck in a deep breath and panicked when she realized she couldn't draw the breath. Not being able to breath was not possible. People could not live if they can not breathe. The panic rose fast and hot, bright in her thoughts.

  The hole was crusted with blood, but sticky wet towards the center. And she probed it even in her panic. Maybe despite her panic. Her baby finger slid right in up to the second joint. Her breath still wouldn't come. She pulled harder. Harder. No good.

  She struggled to her feet, still no pain: Still no breath. She staggered off down the street. Weaving, she saw. Not surprising, I'm dying. I'm dying because I can't breathe. I...

  She Stopped in the middle of the street. She was dead... Dead or dreaming.... That was all that made sense. Nothing else did.

  She had lain on the ground for... She looked down at her wrist, 9:29 pm. It meant nothing at all to her. Watches really couldn't keep time anymore. They could only record passing time if you had a point of reference. And she hadn't thought to look at her wrist when the whole thing had started, so she did not know how long she had lain there gazing up at the stars, and it didn't matter. The last time she had looked at it, it had read sometime just past midnight... She had been on the balcony; looking out at the city. Over twenty hours had passed then, and how could that be? And did it matter?

  The thing that mattered was that she had lain there awake, gazing up at the moon and she had felt no pain. Same as she felt no pain now. She had lain there gazing up at the moon and she had not been breathing. Same as she wasn't breathing now. And it had been a long time. A long time she had lain there. A long time she had not been able to breath, draw air. She was not dying at all, she was dead already.

  She let the panic bleed away. A dream or really dead, she decided.

  Pinch yourself and wake up.

  She didn't wait, she took a piece of the flesh on her side and pinched. Nothing. No pain. No waking in pain. Nothing. She did it again, pinching harder. Nothing at all. She looked down at the flesh between her fingers. Smashed flat. It should hurt and it did not hurt. She let go, smoothed her shirt, her blood-encrusted-shirt, her mind added, and then looked off down the street. The street was in shadow. She began to walk.

  At first her vision was blurred, but as she walked on it had changed. Her eyes had changed. The world seemed to jump suddenly into sharp focus once more.

  She had stopped, her knees buckling at the sudden urge to reverse and run away. She had actually taken two scrambling steps backward before she realized she could not run away from this... This change, she decided to term it.

  She made her way to the water, and she had seen herself reflected back from the water of the harbor. Her hair was a ruined mass of black. Stringy, tangled, plastered to her head like a helmet in places. But it was her eyes that had caused her to stare the longest. They were cloudy marbles in the moonlight.

  She had seen those eyes reflected back from the water of the harbor. She had gone for the water because you had to have water to survive, every living thing did. She had not yet accepted that she was no longer a living thing.

  The moonlight reflected off the trash strewn water. A drowned cat floated by and transfixed her. She had been torn between vomiting and reaching into the water and retrieving the cat... Bringing it to her mouth... Tasting it... But the moment had passed and she had shaken herself... Come back to herself. And that was when
she had seen her eyes reflected in the harbor water.

  She was only hours dead, and it all came back. They had shot her, They had.... But she had run from the group of men after they had shot her. They had laughed and let her go and so she had run.

  The pain in her chest worse than it had ever been, and she had run right into the arms of someone else... Some thing else. She never saw him... Her... Whatever it had been. It's teeth had found her neck, the blood had spurted, and she had spiraled down into darkness, the pain no more.

  She bent to bring the water in her cupped hands to her dry, cracked lips, and she had seen her eyes. Dull, colorless marbles in her head. Barely reflecting light at all. And she had known. Known she was dead. Not that all the other things had not already told her, but that her mind had finally clicked over. Taken the information it had shoved to the corners of her cloudy thoughts and thrown it out into the conscious.

  She had shaken it off. Scooped the water to her mouth, swallowed, and then gagged, vomiting the water back up. Her body would not accept it. She had stood from the water, shaky, unsure of anything.

  There was smoke in the air. She could see it and it frightened her. Suddenly frightened her. She looked down at the water, shiny, black, and then something jumped into her mind. A word... South... South... And it made sense. It made sense of the fear of fire. It made sense of not being able to breath. It made sense of the hole in her chest. It explained nothing, yet it made perfect sense.

  She turned in the street. She did not know north from south. For a second that seemed to matter, but as another second slipped by, it stopped mattering at all. She stood for a second longer and then walked off into the shadows of the street.

  L.A.: March 13th

  Beth and Billy

  The trek east out of the city was much harder than Billy and Beth had thought it would be.

  It was close to noon before they reached Alameda and decided to try to find some kind of four wheel drive SUV at one of the many car lots that dotted the sides of the service roads.

  It had been slow going until they reached the El Segundo Boulevard. The stalled traffic had been much lighter there, and they had been able to drive part of the way by cutting into the parking lots of fast food restaurants that dotted almost the entire length of the highway. They had followed that to Willmington and picked up a truck that had seen better days. Getting the truck had not been a problem; there were several used car lots along the road. They had used the parking lots to swing around the worst of the traffic, and that had worked well until they had intersected Compton Boulevard. It was hopelessly packed with stalled traffic. They had left the truck, which had sounded as if it was close to dead anyway, and struck out on foot again. Beth led the way as they cut cross lots through Compton Woodley Airport.

  Crossing the dead airfield had been unnerving for both of them. The runways had cracked, and either lifted skyward, or tilted down into the ground. Several blackened skeletons of large aircraft dotted the airfield. Most of them were so badly burned that they had been unable to tell what they had been before. Billy thought a couple of them may have been military aircraft, but as badly twisted as they were it was impossible to be sure.

  One large plane sat tilted skyward on a chunk of runway that had separated from the surrounding pavement. The plane looked untouched, and almost as though it was some sort of rocket ship waiting to be launched skyward. Luggage, some burned, some untouched, was scattered across the airfield in every direction, and many of the suitcases were burst, with papers and clothing scattered everywhere along with other personal effects. There were bodies here too.

  On their way through the city they had seen very few bodies. It had been unsettling to both of them. Fewer bodies meant more undead. They had both wondered aloud if the changing was happening that fast. Raising the dead faster as time slipped by. The bodies they had seen had not been killed by the Earthquakes. They bore head wounds, and appeared to have been dead for only a short period. Possibly only the last two or three days, they decided.

  The bodies at the airport were concentrated around the terminal building. The huge glass windows were peppered with holes, and in some cases completely blown inward, as if a battle had taken place for the terminal. Most of the bodies inside were concentrated behind the long rows of seats in the main lobby, as if they had been trying to use the seats for cover. It had apparently done no good. They paused only briefly, wondering what had occurred before they moved on. The overwhelming stench in the shattered terminal building drove them out. The wrecked planes, where they had expected to see bodies scattered all around, were empty.

  Occasionally they heard gunfire around them, and twice explosions from further north, behind them had startled them. They had hurried along fearing the sounds, but fearing more the possibility that the owners of the guns might find them. They walked in silence across the remainder of the shattered airfield, and they were both glad when they left it behind them and eventually came to 91. 91 was traffic packed and they made their way across the steel roof tops once more, crossing under 91 on South Central and making their way along the sides of the road to E Del Amo Boulevard.

  Here, like the Martin Luther King Highway, black topped parking areas fronted all manner of fast food restaurants, store chains and shops, which bordered both sides of the strip. It wouldn't necessarily assure a way around the stalled traffic, Billy realized, but it appeared as though it would give them a much better chance of getting to 405.

  Billy led them towards the rear garage area of a truck dealership where they found a full size four wheel drive Chevy pickup. Billy had worked at a dealership before, and recognized the garage area as the prep shop.

  “When someone buys a new car,” Billy said, “or truck, or whatever, they have to prep it. Take the plastic off the seats, fill the tank, wax it, sort of get it ready for the customer, you know?”

  “I thought they came from the factory all ready to go?” Beth said.

  “Well... they do, sort of,” Billy agreed, “but, they have plastic over the seats to protect them, and oil drips from the cars overhead on the transport trucks; dirt gets tracked into them when the guys move them around the lot. Sometimes they may have a scratch, or small dent that the body shop guys have to fix, and they get paint over-spray all over the car; dust in it, you name it. I used to have to prep cars, and it's not much fun. Minimum wage type of job and the salesman who sold the car is usually breathing down your neck all the time you're getting it ready. I hated it. I figured though, if we're going to find a truck all ready to go, this would be the first place to look. Gassed up and the whole nine yards. They even waxed it for us.” Billy finished, trying to break the somber mood that had set in as they crossed the airfield.

  His effort worked partially, Beth offered him a small smile as she spoke. “You know a lot of things don't you?”

  “Not really,” Billy said. “I just worked at a lot of different jobs. Mainly just to stay employed, but also, I guess, because I believe you should learn as much as you possibly can. It worked for me. I grew up with a lot of guys who were constantly unemployed. Maybe they were carpenters, or roofers, or auto mechanics, whatever. When things would get bad, they'd get laid off. Not that I never got laid off, I did, but if I got laid off I could go to work somewhere else fairly quickly. I can practically build a house from the ground up, and do all the rough and finish, electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. The same with cars. I just learn well I guess, and it paid off. Someday I'd like to build my own house.”

  “I've always wanted to own a house,” Beth said, the tentative smile had grown wider as she listened to Billy talk. “I never thought I would live anywhere except that crummy apartment. If I never own a house I guess that would be fine with me, as long as I never have to live in that dump again.”

  Billy was nodding his head as she finished speaking. “I know what you mean. I had a crummy little place in a little town in northern New York. I used to take all the overtime I could get, so I wouldn't have
to go back to it too soon. I really hated it, I mean totally. I had this dream of buying some land and building my own house, when this is over that's what I would like to do. Just find a nice place and build a house. Maybe have some cows, I don't know much about cows, but I could learn. I guess that sounds kind of stupid, but it really is what I want to do, and if I make it through this in one piece, I'm going to.”

  “It doesn't sound stupid to me at all,” Beth said, “in fact it sounds like a good plan, a good dream to hold on to. I've never really dared to dream. I guess you know that. I'm not making any excuses, and I'm not really ashamed of how I lived. I really didn't have many choices. It seems now though as if I do. I guess now it's okay to dream. You think?”

  “I think so,” Billy agreed. “I mean if you can't dream, what's the use, right?” she nodded her head as if to say yes before Billy continued. “Like, I live my life, and you live your life. You believe what you want, and I'll believe what I want. You see?”

  “I do,” Beth said. “I guess I'm sort of the same way. I always tried to live without hurting people. I was getting pretty bitter though, I have to admit. I just saw too much that didn't make any sense to me, and I could never understand why, if there was a God, he would let so much bad exist. I guess though, if people want it, it's going to be there. People thought I was bad, but I never really dared to look at myself. I guess I was bad, to a certain extent, but what was I supposed to do?” she seemed pensive.

  “I had family, but... Well, you know.... I guess I don't want to get into that. Suffice to say I couldn't be with them. So I was on the street before you came to L.A. ... Before this last time, and I had to live. I prayed. I prayed a lot, but God never seemed to hear me. I guess I just gave up. I lost a lot of friends on the streets. It's sort of like a family, I don't know if you can understand that or not, but it is. We all tried to watch out for one another, but it didn't always help. When you live your life that way, you can't expect to get any help from the cops either. I guess I just tried to stay alive from day to day.” She laughed, “And it was all about to change... I didn't see you, but they gave me the job singing.” She had lost her smile as she spoke, replacing it with a wistful pursing of her lips and a sadness that sat deeply within her eyes.

  Billy nodded his head and they both fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Beth,” Billy said. “It really doesn't matter anymore. I'm the last guy who would ever think of judging you. Believe me. I've screwed my life up so many times it's not funny. As far as I'm concerned what you did, you had to do. It doesn't make you a bad person at all, and it doesn't have any bearing on who you are now. I mean that sincerely.”

  Now it was her turn to nod her head. She hadn't realized it, but his opinion mattered to her, and what he said allowed the small smile to re-surface on her face. She had told herself that she didn't care what he thought about her, but she knew even as she told herself that, that she was wrong. It did matter. It mattered a great deal.

  They walked together to the back of the garage, and pushed up the steel overhead door. It took a few minutes to move a couple of the cars out of the way, so that they could drive the pickup out of the garage and into the lot behind the dealership.

  Billy drove the truck across the grassy back lot, and stopped at the rear of a gas station to look for a state map. Beth followed him into the deserted station.

  She filled a paper bag with some groceries, mostly canned goods, while Billy opened the map and studied it on the counter at the front of the station.

  “Looks like the best way out,” Billy said, “Is still going to be 91. We passed it, we'll have to back track to catch it. We should be able to skirt around most of the traffic, shouldn't we?”

  “Believe it or not, I don't really know,” Beth answered. “I mean I live here, or did, but I didn't get out of the city at all, or hardly ever, so I don't know what it's like.”

  She paused and looked at Billy as he bent over the map. He smiled as he spoke.

  “I actually understand that,” he said. “I didn't really know a lot about getting around outside of Watertown. I guess you learn how to get to the places you need to get to, and that's about it. No real big deal though. According to the map there are a lot of loops, sort of side roads that go around, and run parallel to 91, and hey, we've got four wheel drive, we can cut through the fields if we have to, right? That will get us to 10 and ten is our ticket east.”

  Beth shrugged her shoulders, as she replied. “I guess?” The attempt at humor was not lost on her, and she flashed a smile at him as she shrugged her shoulders again. “I guess if the cows don't mind.”

  Billy grinned back, and they both laughed a little as they walked back out to the truck.

  “You know,” Billy said as they climbed into the cab of the truck. “We should stop and pick up a couple of sleeping bags, and maybe a tent too. We still need to pick up a couple more rifles too.” He didn't want to alarm her, or make her start to worry by bringing the subject up once more, but the truth was that he was fairly worried himself. If there were armed people running around killing whoever they chose too, it would be kind of stupid, he thought, not to have better weapons. Beth had the pistol and her rifle. Billy had his own pistol and a rifle, but he wasn't sure it would do a lot of good. He wasn't a good shot. She surprised him when she not only agreed, but didn't seem to lose her smile when she did.

  “I think it would be stupid not to stock up on whatever we can, guns included,” she said, echoing Billy's thoughts. “You know much about them?”

  “Not really,” Billy confessed, “I've never even shot a rifle, you know, just never learned, I guess, or even wanted to. I think I could learn though. You know anything about them?”

  “Well, now that you mention it I do. At least a little. Not from shooting one, but more from seeing them. There are a lot of pawn shops in LA, sort of goes with the territory, I guess. That's where I got this,” she said, holding up her small pistol, “I got the rifle from a smashed in pawn shop... There has to be a pawn shop or sporting goods shop out here somewhere.” Almost as she spoke Billy spotted one across the crowded interstate.

  “There's one,” Billy said as he pointed.

  They left the truck beside the stalled traffic, and walked through and around the cars to the large shop. They spent the better part of the afternoon outfitting themselves from the racks in the shop and carrying what they needed across the road to the truck. The pickup had a black vinyl bed cover. They opened it, stored the tent and the sleeping bags along with the other camping gear inside it, and then snapped the cover back into place.

  “It probably won't keep everything totally dry,” Billy said, “if it rains, I mean. This is more for show than actual protection,” he said indicating the cover. “But it should still do all right.”

  They had both picked up weapons in the shop. Billy had picked out a deer rifle, a fairly impressive looking Remington. He had also picked up several boxes of the ammunition the rifle took. Beth had settled on an entirely different sort of weapon. It looked more like a machine gun of some sort to Billy, and she also picked up several boxes of ammunition for it, and several spare clips. She explained to him that it really wasn't a rifle, but a machine pistol, and that it could fire better than seventy rounds a second if it were converted to full automatic. This one wasn't, she said, but she had seen some that were. To Billy it still looked like a machine gun, and he joked that the sight of it alone would probably scare anyone.

  By the time they had loaded the truck and gotten under way it was late afternoon. Even with the late start, and the slow going due to the stalled traffic, they managed to make it to the Colorado River in Ehrenberg Arizona just before nightfall.

  The country had been turning more arid as they drove, the river was an oasis. Off to the north giant plumes of smoke blanketed the sky, seeming to spread across the entire length of the horizon. They had both wondered what it might be. Beth had checked the map and she though it could be Yellowstone or something cl
ose to Yellowstone.

  Shops, stores, and even an RV park had sprung up around the interchange. They foraged for food in the late afternoon and gassed up the truck before evening began to take the sunlight. The air had a bitter hot smell to it, the river flowed sluggishly, the water gray, and a scum of yellow white foam and ash rode the slow current. They sat in the truck and ate quietly while the map lay open across their legs and the seat top. Their eyes would drop to the map and then jump back up to scan the area. It had seemed too quiet, and there were no bodies anywhere. No sign of life either, and the stores and shops had not been looted. Most were still locked up. Empty RV's in the park when they rolled slowly through it. Neither liked the feeling, the whole place just felt wrong.

  “Billy,” Beth waited until his eyes left the map and met her own. He lifted them to follow her own gaze. “The silver building over to the right. The door just opened and then closed.”

  Billy frowned. “Not something the dead would do, is it?”

  “We didn't think they would use sledge hammers either, or come out in the daylight,” Beth said.

  As billy watched he saw the door edge open slightly and then close just as slowly. “Saw it... I don't like it. Dead or alive they know we're here and they're checking us out.” He dropped his eyes back to the map.

  “Okay,” he said after a few moments. “Lets get back on the road. That takes us away from civilization to a degree. Eventually that will bring us into Arizona, but there's a lot of desolation between here and there, at least on the map.”

  “Desolation is fine as long as the dead aren't there.” Beth said quietly.

  “Less likely to be,” Billy agreed.

  A few minutes later they were running through the desert that ran alongside I10. There were not a great many cars or trucks there, but in several places there had been wrecks that closed lanes down on the highway. With no one to clear them they would have ended up in the desert anyway. And there seemed to be a dirt road that ran beside I10 for as far as they could see.

  The landscape in the distance had been changing as they drove the day away, but with the sun setting a few hours after they set out once more it was hard to tell what the surrounding countryside was like. Billy dropped speed and flicked the trucks high beams on. A short while later Beth was sleeping, her head heavy against Billy's arm. He drove through the night and into the early morning before she woke again.

  March 13th

  Manhattan

  Donita

  She came awake in the dark, sat up, and stared into the darkness. The old factory was still, quiet, but she knew something had pulled her from her sleep.

  Her body had been reduced to skin and bone. The skin had stretched tight, illuminating the bones beneath it. Causing ridges and valleys where she had never seen any.

  Her skin had peeled away from her face in a few places and the bone showed through yellow-white. Gleaming in the moonlight. Her face was framed by her black hair. It had come back thicker, changed, but back. It made her wonder what else might change too.

  She wandered slowly from the old factory and focused on the moon above. The moon that had never meant much of anything to the old Donita. Now it talked to her. Pulled something inside of her. Spoke to her very being.

  She stood quietly and scented the air. People had been here... Something else, traveling by, had wondered about her, but decided against tasting her. Warned by some instinct.

  The people worried her the most. She could tell from the scent that they had lingered, and they would be back. If she stayed she would have to deal with them if they came back again.

  She looked up at the buildings. Some city, she did not know where it was or what its name was only that it was south, and south was where she was headed still, New York far behind her.

  She looked off at the other buildings. The hunger drove her. She needed to feed, but she needed more. It occurred to her that she needed more of her own kind... They were out there... They were out there waiting for someone to lead them. Maybe that someone was her. She had no idea where that thought came from, but she trusted in it. She looked up and down the street once more, scented the air, and then moved off toward the river.

  FOUR

  Billy and Beth

  March 14th

  The name of the place was Tonopah Arizona. Billy had eased the truck up onto I10 and that had waked Beth up, the tires bouncing over the broken asphalt.

  “Not a big city... A town from the looks of it. Phoenix is close. Ten, fifteen miles maybe. Can't really tell from the map,” Billy said. A gas station loomed out of the early morning gray and Billy wheeled the truck under the roof that covered the pumps. He shut off the motor and they both listened to the tick of the cooling motor for a few seconds.

  “Coffee would be real nice,” Beth said. “No way do we want to go into Phoenix... Too dangerous.” She yawned and then covered her mouth and laughed. “Jesus... Morning breath.” She zipped open her knapsack, retrieved a bottle of water, her toothbrush and some toothpaste. She stepped from the truck.

  Billy opened his door and settled his feet onto the pavement. It wasn't just old pavement, he saw, it was gray, like it was completely washed out, used up. There was no black left in it. Beth stood slightly in front of the truck, her gun in one hand the toothbrush working around her mouth on its own. The other hand was reaching for the rifle which was just coming free of her shoulder. Billy shrugged his own rifle off his shoulder and into his hands before he even saw what had alarmed her. She spit out the toothbrush, unsheathed the rifle and flicked the safety off. Three men stepped out of the shadows of the open garage bay.

  They were kids, Billy saw. Or at least not much more than kids. They walked slowly forward.

  Beth raised the rifle and pointed it at the lead kid. “That's it right there.” She said.

  She didn't scream it, softly spoke it, Billy thought later, but the kid stopped in his tracks.

  “What's with the fuckin' guns?” The kid asked.

  “Ours weren't aimed at you until you aimed yours at us,” Billy said. He hoped he sounded as cool as Beth had.

  “Bullshit,” one of the other kids said. “You had it in your hands when I looked at you. That's why I got mine ready.”

  “I don't want to kill anyone today,” Beth said.

  “It really don't bother me,” The third kid said. His eyes were blood shot. They had interrupted him while he was sleeping, it seemed. He kept rubbing at his eyes, Beth saw.

  “I think you're right. Can't matter if you're dead,” Beth said.

  “Hey,” the lead kid said, “Maybe all we want is to party a little.”

  “Well I don't know if Billy swings that way,” Beth said.

  “Pretty funny,” the kid responded. “Look... It's our town. We ain't the only ones here. You shoot there will be twenty more here in seconds. Then everybody dies.”

  “Oh... I guess I didn't see it right,” Beth said. “I can see where it might be preferable to get raped and then murdered instead of getting murdered outright.”

  The one in the back, the one with the sleepy eyes, stiffed a yawn and reflexively raised one hand to his mouth as his eyes slipped shut for a split second. Beth shot the lead kid in that split second, Billy had the second guy a moment later. The third kid opened his eyes to a changed situation.

  “Just give me a reason,” Beth said. “Any reason.” The kid released the rifle he held and it dropped from his hands to the pavement.

  “Can't shoot me I ain't got no gun... Can't... Can't shoot me...” He spun and looked off toward a rag tag collection of trailers that lined a dirt road in back of the station. “Johnny!” he screamed. “Johnny! Killers!” he turned back to Billy and Beth. “Can't shoot me... I ain't armed... Can't...” Billy shot him.

  A second later the truck roared to life and Billy spun the wheel hard heading back towards the drop off from the pavement, back the way they had come.

  Beth bounced around the cab and smacked her head hard enough on th
e windshield to star the glass when the truck left the pavement at better than fifty miles an hour and hit the hard packed dirt that ran alongside I10. She finally got her balance, swept one hand across her forehead, looked at the blood and cursed lightly. Behind them three trucks had launched off the pavement and were running hard to catch them.

  “Fuck me,” Billy said. He pushed the pedal to the floor, there was nothing else for it. The glass in the back window starred a second later as Beth rammed the rifle stock into it. Another hit and the glass fell out into the pickup bed area. She raised the rifle and began to fire back at the trucks. A second later a hole punched through the windshield to Billy's left. He mashed the pedal harder into the floorboard feeling the truck skate across the hardscrabble of the desert as it flew beside the highway.

  “We have to get north, the other side of the highway. If they squeeze us south we'll be in the goddamn desert,” Beth yelled above the scream of the engine.

  “There's cars up there,” Billy yelled back. “On the highway!”

  “There are bullets down here and they're gaining on us,” Beth yelled back.

  “Better sit down,” Billy yelled.

  “Just do it, Billy!” She continued to fire out the back window.

  Billy turned the wheel hard right and the truck lurched hard to the left, threatening to roll over as the center of gravity changed. It nearly rolled before it hit the edge of the pavement, broke over, and then became airborne. It came within ten feet of a stalled, wrecked semi and trailer and then it plunged off the other side of the highway so smoothly that billy couldn't believe it had actually landed.

  “Nearly broke my neck slamming it into the ceiling,” Beth yelled. She fell silent. “I...” She started, but an explosion from the highway stopped her words.

  “Hit that fucking truck,” Billy screamed. “Has to be.”

  “Keep it floored though, Billy. Keep it floored.” She stayed where she was, staring out the back window, knees driven into the seat top. Billy's eyes strayed to her ass, and then snapped back to the road. He watched the hard packed earth fly by.

  “Roads coming up... Like dirt roads,” Billy said. He had no sooner said it than the truck hit the slight rise and flew across it.

  “Like back roads, looks like,” Beth said. “Nothing on the map.” She was trying her best to read the map as the truck bounced and tilted. One hand clutching the seat back held her in a somewhat stable position as she looked at the roads. “Looks like all dirt roads, back roads and then it falls away to nothing. Just keep it pointed at the mountains in the distance.” She turned completely around and sat down with the map in her lap. “Must have hit the truck or each other. Whatever it was I don't think they feel like coming after us again... Billy, we can't fuck up like that again. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking letting my guard down like that.”

  Billy said nothing. Beth went back to reading the map.

  “Start breaking left, Billy. There's a river... No, maybe some sort of waterway, not a river, too straight. It ends and then picks up again a few miles later. We can get through and into the desert from there.” She looked at the map for a few more minutes, “Maybe twenty miles or so. Just run right by I10 and we should be good.” She turned and peeked over the back seat once more. “We're leaving a lot of dust, Billy.”

  He looked over at her.

  “We gotta figure this out too. I mean, we're going backwards, back to where we came,” Beth said.

  “I could loop out deep and then swing back,” Billy said.

  “Yeah, except I'm thinking in this desert you can see dust for miles... The dust is the problem.” She leaned over and looked at the gas gauge. “Less than a half tank, so gas is a problem too.” She frowned.

  “We've got gas in the back,” Billy threw in.

  “I'm thinking this. We hit that water way, or an out building, has to be something around here. We crash, sleep the day away, and then tonight we run across the desert to the other side of Phoenix. What do you think?”

  “Sounds like a plan... I'm shot,” Billy agreed.

  “Okay, so take the next road that crosses, slow down to keep the dust down and let's start looking for a place to hide for the day... We've got enough gas in the back we can get a long way before we need to find a station if we don't burn it up running in circles and backtracking.”

  Billy slowed the truck and began heading to the right, the east. “One of those towers will do... High voltage lines? Something like that. Just scrap metal now, but that will hide us if we drive right up to it,” Beth said.

  They drove to the tower and a dirt service road that circled it and continued to the north. Billy pulled the truck up close to the tower and shut it down. The silence held for a few moments, he fisted his hands into his eyes. “Jesus, I'm shot.”

  “Come here,” Beth said. She pulled him down to the seat and laid his head in her lap. She began to rub lightly at his temples.

  “God, don't do that, It'll put me to sleep,” Billy told her half jokingly.

  “Which is why I'm doing it.” She stretched her legs, angled them across to the drivers side floorboard, and leaned back into the door. The last thing she remembered was smoothing the hair out of his eyes and then she spiraled away into a series of dreams.

  Billy and Beth

  March 15th

  It was late afternoon when Billy awoke. Somewhere in the day Beth had wound up beside him, two spoons in a drawer. He lay still unwilling to let her go, his hand was curled protectively around her. Beth moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One moment all soft and willing, the next a live wire.

  “You didn't cop a feel did you?” Beth asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.

  “Beth, can't you ever just say something like, I don't know, good morning?”

  She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. The one that had started him falling in the first place. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it wasn't that secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched, yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV so we have some place to sleep too.”

  “I don't know, I kind of liked this,” Billy said before he could shut his mouth down.

  Beth laughed and it was the unguarded Beth once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking directly in his eyes.

  “I... I know the deal,” Billy said. The press of her body was maddening.

  “We really don't need to talk it out?”

  “You know how I feel, Beth.”

  “I do,” she nodded and her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I considered sleeping with you before you became my friend, before I knew it couldn't work between us. I even considered it after... Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost me a friend because it wouldn't mean to me what it would mean to you.” She held his eyes as if willing him to understand.

  “It's like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Billy. So far. You have been on the bad side of me and so I can't see why you still try to see me that way.” She laughed. “It's a thing men do. Like... Like that is love, you see? Instead of love just being about all the other stuff... The things I admire about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix... But no, I'm a princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It's not possible... The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks at me as me.” She watched his eyes.

  “I think I can do that,” Billy told her.

  Beth laughed.

  “No, really. I think I can separate those things... I'm pretty sure.”

 
; “Yeah? I think you like the idea of me... I think you want to fuck me... I think it might even hold together in a situation like this... At least for a while. And I think you could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant that we were together, and it wouldn't mean that at all. It would mean we were scared and we took some comfort in each other... Because the attraction was there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath. “But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that's the way this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I've seen it... I've felt it... And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my fiend, because he doesn't want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one hand up and pushed Billy's dirty blonde hair away from his eyes. That hair, and the way it hung across his eyes was one of the things that had nearly made her give in. He looked like a little boy, vulnerable, maybe he would love her forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be reacting to something in her that didn't really exist. Something only he saw. That little boy, awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to feel, to be in with her... She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his eyes.

  “We probably should get going,” Billy said. A smile played across his lips. Tentative, but there.

  “Okay,” she laid her head against his chest. “I need a toothbrush... That little bastard made me lose my toothbrush.”

  Billy laughed. “I got extras.”

  She lifted her face up, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She bent and kissed his forehead and then rose from the seat and looked around at the scrub brush and sand before she rose all the way up and sat on the edge of the seat while Billy straightened his long frame out and sat on the drivers side of the seat.

  “That felt sort of, I don't know, brotherly... That kiss.”

  “I hated my brother,” Beth said. She levered the handle and stepped down to the ground.

  “Hey?” Billy said. Beth stopped and looked back at him, her eyes careful.

  “I'll work at it... I mean,” he looked at a loss. “I don't want to lose our friendship.”

  Beth smiled. “Thanks... I mean it. Now get out here and get me a toothbrush, Billy Jingo.” She laughed as she finished.