Read Bestial Online

Authors: William D. Carl

Bestial (31 page)

There, she would find Chris again.

He was waiting for her.

She needed to be near him, to touch him again, to hear the way he laughed.

It had been a very, very long time since she’d heard him laugh. Since long before he had run away from home.

The thought drove her to push those pedals faster, to sweat through the cool afternoon air. The clouds that had threatened to erupt into showers all morning were even darker. She prayed she would reach the Bio-Gen building before the storms erupted.

She’d spotted bands of crazy people running in what could only be called packs. One group had tried to drop a large net over her from an overpass, but she’d steered the bike sideways and avoided the trap. Now that she was pedaling uphill, she prayed she wouldn’t run into any of them. They would catch her for sure, as slow as she was going.

Gasping, she stopped, feeling an unfamiliar stabbing pain in her
chest. If she was going to have a heart attack, she wasn’t about to do it while riding a bike. The indignity of toppling over onto the macadam was too much to think about, even if there was no one to see her do it. She got off the bike and walked beside it. Her thighs protested this new form of exercise.

The highway on the hill remained eerily quiet. Empty cars clogged the lanes, and bodies had been tossed to the roadside; she didn’t see a single living soul. Every once in a while, she’d hear a muffled giggle or a distant scream, but these people didn’t let themselves be seen.

“One taco short of a combo platter,” she said.

She walked beside her bike, pulling it along with her. The top of the hill was just in sight, barely a football field away. The distance seemed to loom ahead of her, taunting her with her inability to ride the bike up the entire ascent. Chugging, her breath coming in long gasps, she reached the top sooner than she’d thought she could.

Cathy looked down the hill, and she could see several of the tall downtown buildings beckoning her. They stood majestic against the stygian sky. In several areas, smoke rose from the city, and she prayed that downtown wasn’t burning.

Straddling the bike, she gingerly placed her feet back on the pedals. A blister popped beneath her right big toe. She grimaced, yelped.

The descent looked daunting, and she knew she would have to take it in low gear. It wouldn’t be smart to speed down the highway only to flatten herself against a stalled car or wipe out against an open truck door. She needed to let herself go, let her feet spin with the rhythm of the bike, and move forward … always forward.

She released her death grip on the handlebars and brakes, and she began to drift. At first, the descent seemed fairly slow and easy. Soon she picked up momentum, swerving and braking to avoid the pitfalls. Now that she wasn’t pedaling, her legs throbbed with even more fervor, and she desperately wanted an aspirin … maybe a half a dozen.

Taking the hill at a relaxed pace, she let the wind whip through her hair, felt the first raindrop smack against her forehead. It was a big one, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she was drenched.

A second raindrop reinforced her decision to ride faster. She
pumped her legs, and they almost felt better when put to use. She knew it was probably psychosomatic, but what the hell.

She turned the corner of the hill near Reading Road, taking the nearby exit. The buildings loomed over her now, but they did little to stop the downpour. She heard thunder, rumbling low and menacing. It lasted almost thirty seconds. She could feel it in her rib cage, compressing her chest.

Then the deluge began.

It was no ordinary rainfall, but the kind that makes a sane man build an ark in his backyard. It plastered her hair to her head, caused her clothes to grip her body in binding, uncomfortable ways. She could smell the lightning coming before it sizzled, striking a radio tower to her left.

Reading Road turned into Broadway, and she searched for a building labeled Bio-Gen, but the incessant rain stung her eyes and blurred her view. In fact, it was coming down so hard, it stung—no, it actually hurt!

Shrieking, she tossed the bike aside and took shelter under an awning attached to an empty warehouse. She could see Broadway just ahead of her, but she decided to wait out the storm.

When it began to hail, ice pinging like bullets on the aluminum awning, she leaned back against the building. She massaged her legs. She would have to get used to it. They were going to hurt for a while.

Looking out at the city, she once again found herself completely alone. Nobody wandered the streets. No families searched for loved ones. It seemed as though everyone was either locked up securely in their homes or dead. Even the crazies were keeping out of sight. There didn’t seem to be as many bodies littering the streets. Perhaps something dragged them off the tarmac, back into darkened alleys, where the creatures’ feasts were held.

Shivering, she watched the hail bounce off the sidewalk, the rain slicing down in broad sheets.

She observed a bloodstain on the sidewalk, and she watched until it was washed clean by the rain. All around her, the water cleansed the streets.

40

SEPTEMBER 18, 2:55 P.M.

I
n the room of cubicles, Rick didn’t take long to discover more than ten cell phones, none of which worked for more than a few frustrating seconds. The dial tone would start, then dissipate to a tinny whine as Rick punched in the operator’s number. Then nothing—the sound of empty space.

“Here’s another one!” Christian shouted, pressing his ear to the phone. The dial tone surged, then faded, replaced by a loud hissing. Checking the tiny monitor on the phone, he said, “It can’t get a signal. I don’t know why. Everything seems okay with it. There’s plenty of charge left in the battery.”

“The storm, you think?” Chesya asked.

Rick checked another cell phone he’d dug out of a coat pocket. All he could hear was a constant static, like waves.

“Damn it!” He threw the phone across a cubicle, and it shattered against a bulletin board filled with memos on colored paper. The sound it made, of plastic and metal bits dropping to the floor, pleased him more than he wanted to admit.

“Well, that sure helps,” Chesya said, instinctively placing her fists upon her hips. “All we need to do is find one that still has a dial tone. If we don’t find it, we’re no worse off than before.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Rick said. “We have another night of this crap. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have a safe place to sleep and a few weapons.”

Christian placed a tiny phone to his ear, listened, then sighed and placed it back on the desk.

Chesya said, “Well, all your bitching and moaning don’t help any.”

“It’s not hurting any, either,” Rick said.

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Oh,” he said. “I guess I should just shut up and sit quietly like a good little boy. Chesya, you knew going into this that I wasn’t a saint.”

She snorted. “You can say that again.”

“One of these days, Alice …,” he quoted Ralph Kramden, making a fist with his right hand and shaking it in the air.

“Will the two of you just shut the fuck up!” Christian shouted. “I’m sick of the whining and backbiting. This isn’t a pissing contest.”

Chesya and Rick turned toward the boy. He’d been so silent for so long, so quiet and polite, that this outburst seemed out of character. Christian himself seemed shocked by his words and their sudden reaction.

“Damn,” Rick said, turning back to the desks. “Don’t have to get all mad.”

“Well, you two are acting like babies,” he said. “I honestly don’t think we’re gonna find another phone in this place. That one in the snack room was probably a fluke. Why don’t we just walk on down to the river and try to talk with the people in charge? It’s got to be better than sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. It’s not safe here.”

Rick said, “I like the kid’s idea.”

Chesya was shaking her head. “Didn’t you hear that radio? They said they had blown the bridges, that they were shooting anyone who tried to get across.”

“We won’t try to get across. We should just try to communicate with them.”

“No,” Chesya said. “I’ve seen what people in charge will do—police, army, whatever. Shoot first, ask questions later. I’ve seen it too many times growing up in Over the Rhine. You wanna take the chance that they won’t just kill you?”

“But we’re normal. We didn’t turn.”

“How they gonna know about that? Everybody looks the same in the daylight. How many people do you think they’ve shot already?” She raised her voice, an awkward, unpleasant sound. “ ‘Why, yes, Officer. I’m just fine. The disease didn’t affect me at all. What?
You say I can’t come over the river?’ BLAM! Would you take chances if you were them? They gotta make sure this thing doesn’t spread to the rest of the country.”

Rick scratched his neck. “What if we go to the bridge at night?” Chesya shook her head again, but he kept going. “They’d know we weren’t infected; they’d see it with their own eyes. Then they’d have to let us cross.”

Christian thought about it for a moment. “I kinda like the idea. The only real problem I see is, how are we gonna survive more than ten minutes out there? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m tired as hell.”

Chesya crossed her arms. “You really think someone in a position of power, someone with a damn gun, is gonna let us just row ourselves across that river? What if we’re carriers of the virus? Ever think of that? We could spread it all over Kentucky just by crossing that bridge and breathing. Shooting us would be a way to easily contain the disease. If nobody gets out, neither does the virus.”

Rick started grinning.

“You’re always so damned amused. What now?” Chesya asked.

He giggled. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

He laughed louder, clutching at his sides. The sound echoed, seemed to surround them, and Christian began to laugh too, sitting on the edge of a desk. He knew the joke wasn’t that funny, but something about the way Rick giggled at his own infantile humor was hilarious. The laughter grew, became contagious, until even Chesya cracked a smile, then she joined in the hilarity. It sounded as though there were twenty people in the room instead of three, all of them broken up with joy over some terribly funny joke.

“Why are you all laughing?”

The voice stopped the laughter so suddenly that the newborn silence seemed ominous.

A woman stood in the doorway, soaking wet and dripping rainwater on the floor. Her blond hair was plastered to her scalp, and her blue eyes seemed large and full of curiosity. She was a bit hippy, but her figure was still good for her age, which Chesya placed at about forty-two or forty-three. Her tan was as artificial as the smile she
wore. Something around her eyes bothered Chesya. The woman’s face registered a procession of emotions that flashed through her so fast that they barely had time to become visible.

The woman looked at them, still smiling, then she fell to her knees in a single, graceful, painful motion. When she hit the floor, she closed her eyes and grimaced. Her hands flew out in front of her in a familiar gesture, that of someone asking for a hug. Chesya felt Christian stir behind her.

“Christian,” she said. “Is that woman your mother?”

“I made it,” the woman said, opening those bright blue eyes to gaze at Christian. “I tried so hard to get here, and I actually made it.”

“Mom?”

The boy moved forward, hesitating a bit. This woman looked older than the one he remembered, as though she had withered in the months he’d been gone. He saw that it was certainly her, but something in her had changed. She seemed tougher, wiser.

She nodded to him, stretching out her arms toward him.

“Yes, sweetie. It’s me. I came for you.”

And the gesture of the open arms was so familiar that Christian flew into their embrace, resting his head on Cathy’s shoulder. His arms encircled her waist, and he clutched her as tightly as he could. She stroked his hair, his back, taking in the true solidity of him.

“Oh God, Christian.”

Her words broke him, and he began to sob into the crevice between her shoulder and her neck. She smelled of sweat, but there was also a half-forgotten scent that could only belong to his mother.

Stepping up behind Chesya, Rick placed a solid hand on her shoulder, watching the reunion with a big grin on his handsome, unshaven face. Chesya covered his hand with hers.

Beaming, Christian lifted his mother and spun her around in the air, just like she used to do to him when he was a child; Cathy’s delighted laughter filled the room.

41

SEPTEMBER 18, 4:00 P.M.

A
fter they had gathered four rolling chairs from the offices, everyone introduced themselves and told their respective stories, as though sitting around a campfire. Cathy could barely keep her hands off of Christian, patting him, picking some piece of lint from his shirt, and all the attention annoyed him. Still, he was having trouble not crying and shouting “Mommy!” at her.

“My God,” she said, “you look so much bigger. Older, too.”

“I
am
older,” he said.

Chesya and Rick watched their interactions with a sort of perverse amusement. They could tell she was making Christian uncomfortable, but they also knew he was too polite to say anything about it. He just let her give him little hugs and pats, gritting his teeth all the while.

“What are we going to do now?” Cathy asked, brushing some dandruff from Christian’s shoulder.

“That’s pretty much where we were when you showed up,” Rick said. “We need to get the attention of the men guarding the river, but we don’t want to get shot.”

Christian gently moved his mother’s hand from his shoulder. “It all comes down to this: finding a safe place to be seen, so that the military—the police, whoever—can see that we don’t change at night, that none of us is one of them.”

“One of us … one of us … one of us …,” Rick intoned monotonously. When Chesya gave him a dark glare, he said, “What? You haven’t seen that movie?”

Turning toward Cathy, Chesya said, “Ignore him. Don’t encourage him. Sometimes it works.”

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