“Andrew?” I whispered loudly.
After pulling myself inside, I searched every room, every closet, every corner of the house. Something wasn’t right, though. The girls’ jackets weren’t crumpled on the floor, their drawers weren’t cracked open, and none of Halle’s drawings were scattered on the table. They had never come home. They must have been at the town meeting with the governor when the outbreak happened. They could be trapped inside a shelter with the governor, or Andrew could have run with them. They could be anywhere.
“Goddamnit,” I said, louder than I’d spoken in hours. “Goddamnit!” I screamed. I picked up Andrew’s dining room chair and launched it across the room, and then lost my balance, falling to my knees. “No,” I cried, crumpling into a ball on the floor. I saw their little faces, innocent and frightened, wondering where I was and if I was safe, just as I was wondering about them. I couldn’t do this if I wasn’t with them. I needed to see Jenna roll her eyes at me again, and for Halle to interrupt me. They needed me to tell them that everything would be okay. We couldn’t survive the end of the world without each other. I didn’t want to. Sobs built up and released with such ferocity that my entire body shook. Certainly someone would hear me, my screaming and bawling was probably the only sound that could be heard in the entire godforsaken town.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, letting the guilt and despair wash over me. I leaned over and let my forehead and arms rest against the carpet; my hands clasped together above my head. Before long, extreme exhaustion pulled and tugged on my consciousness like I’d never felt before. The sobbing quieted, and within moments, I fell into a vast sea of darkness. The depths surrounded me on all sides, and eventually I was swallowed up by it, warm and calm.
Tornado sirens. Odd. I didn’t remember the meteorologist mentioning a storm that morning. It wasn’t a test. They tested at noon every Thursday, and today was . . . I wasn’t sure what day it was.
The first thing I noticed when my eyes peeled open was baseboard, and the way the carpet was newer closer to the wall than farther out where people walked. I used to notice those things when I was a child, when I spent more time on the floor: playing, watching television, being bored. I spent so much of my childhood on the floor. As an adult, I couldn’t remember the last time I had this view. But the carpet between my fingers wasn’t mine.
My eyes burned. Tears had washed all of my mascara in and out of my eyes, leaving them dry and on fire. The second I remembered why I’d been crying, my head popped up, and I took a quick glance around the dark room. The tornado sirens were blaring. They could be malfunctioning, or there had been a breach.
On my hands and knees, I quickly made my way to Andrew’s front door. The streets were still empty, but the sirens continued to wail. The church in Fairview crossed my mind, and I prayed the sirens would stop. The noise would draw every shuffler for miles.
I pulled open the wooden door, and pressed the side of my face against the glass of the storm door. My breath blew moist, visible air in quickly disappearing puffs, clouding my view. When I saw the first person running down the street, intermittently exposed by the street lamps, the breaths became a single gasp.
She was older, maybe in her fifties, but she was alive. Even from a block away, I could see the horror in her eyes. A few seconds later two men—one holding a child—and a woman appeared before they slipped into darkness again. Then five more, and then a dozen. Men, women, and children. At least fifty had passed before I spotted the first shuffler. I could only make him out because he happened to take someone down just under the street lamp. Not long after, several more shufflers became part of the crowd. The screaming slowly built from one or two intermittent cries to full-blown panic. The crowd seemed to spread out, but they were all coming from the same place; from wherever they were held with the governor, maybe. It seemed like the entire town was in the street, running for their lives. My eyes squinted, desperately searching for Andrew and the girls, hoping they would turn down his street from the main road any minute, but as the river of people thinned out, I began to lose hope.
Tears threatened to moisten my eyes once again, but instead I let anger take control. The helplessness I felt at not being able to get to my children sent me into a rage. I ran to Andrew’s bedroom and searched his closet. He kept a hunting rifle and a 9mm. Just in case he happened to come back here, I left the rifle and grabbed a backpack from the back, filling it with ammo. My movements were clumsy, both from the adrenaline pumping through my body, and because I hadn’t held a gun since before my divorce. I took a few cans of food. The can opener was in the silverware drawer, but I left it, hopeful that Andrew would remember to pack it if he wasn’t already on the road. I also took a plastic reusable water bottle.
Not until I made my way to the laundry room did I come across anything really useful: a flashlight, some batteries, a large screwdriver, and a folding knife.
I grabbed one more item, zipped the backpack, and then returned to the front room. I pulled some frames off the wall, and then shook the can in my hand. The aerosol hissed as I pressed my index finger on the trigger, my arm swaying with the silent music of my good-bye as it formed large, conspicuous black words.
I watched the paint drip from the letters, hoping that it was enough; that in the middle of this hell my children would remember the name of Dr. Hayes’s ranch, and tell their father how to get there. If Andrew was in that crowd running from the town hall, he would bring them here.
I let the can drop to the floor, and then looked out the glass column of the front door again, seeing slower, shuffling dead ambling down the main road, following the scent of the living. Andrew had gotten our daughters out somehow, before the breach. I had to believe that, and I had to trust that my next decision was the right one.
I gripped the straps of the pack at my shoulders and rushed out of the house, stupidly letting the screen door slam behind me. I paused, slowly turning to see a few of the shufflers to the west automatically turn toward the noise. I ran east toward my grandparents’ house, maybe even faster than before, knowing that before long, the sun would rise, and there would be no more shadows to hide behind.
Nathan
“Zoe, try to slow your breathing,” I said. Zoe was nearly panting, struggling to wrap her head around everything she’d seen, including telling her aunt Jill good-bye for the last time. I reached over and held her small hand in mine. “We’re going to be okay, honey. We’ll find someplace safe.”
“I thought the church was safe,” she said softly.
“Not safe enough. We need a place to stay for a long time. In the country, away from all the sick people.”
“Where is that?”
I paused, careful not to lie to her. “I’ll find it. Don’t worry.”
Zoe sat up tall and lifted her chin, seeing the green pickup truck idling in the road the same time I did. I let go of Zoe’s hand and raised mine to shield her eyes just as the man raised his gun to a woman lying in the road, in a puddle of vomit and blood. A pool of dark red was spilling from her beneath her soiled dress, too, almost like she was having a miscarriage, but I knew that wasn’t where the blood was coming from. She was emaciated, her skin a grayish tone except for the lines of red that drained from her eyes, ears, and nose.
A shot was fired to her head, but the woman didn’t move. As we passed, the man was blank-faced, scooping her up tenderly into his arms. He carried her into the cab of his truck, shutting the door behind him.