All Together Now: A Zombie Story (21 page)

Michelle groaned, rubbing her head.

I hit the gas and drove one-handed so I could keep a firm grip on my gun.

"Put your seatbelt on," I said. "We're going to Kirkman's."

84

"IT HURTS," MICHELLE SAID, WRITHING in her seat. Her eyes were cloudy the way Chuck's had been when he'd gone delirious before he turned.

I didn't know how much time I had. Chuck was smaller than Michelle, but he'd been bitten only once on the wrist. Michelle was bitten multiple times closer to her vital organs.

"Please kill me," Michelle begged. Her chest heaved in small spasms. "Don't let me become one of them, Ricky."

"I love you," I said.

"Don't let me... Ricky... Don't..." Michelle lay back against the seat and moaned in pain. She was losing coherence fast.

The horde of dead was more than a mile behind us. I stopped the Ford long enough to reach across and put her seatbelt on.

She clutched weakly at my wrists. "Kill me... you have to... shoot me in the..."

I yanked out of Michelle's grasp, easily as she had no strength in her grip. Her eyes fluttered and she moaned.

"Hang on," I said, speeding up.

When we reached the intersection of Kirkman Avenue and Harrington Street, I turned left, but not before I saw the courthouse. Its exterior was limestone and mostly still standing, though chunks of it had fallen to the lawn.

But its inside was burned out, leaving a husk of what had been: a building that should be ashes but somehow still stood.

Michelle groaned.

"Stay with me," I said, tearing down Kirkman Avenue. I had to slow to dodge a few empty vehicles, but there was no one in the street, dead or living.

"I can fix this. I can make everything okay."

Michelle fell silent.

I set my gun down so I could shake her until she moaned.

"We're almost there, Michelle. There's a cure. I know there is. There has to be."

I shook her again.

"Stay with me. I can make everything okay."

Ahead, I saw the giant green billboard proclaiming "Kirkman Soda" in pink and beneath it the parking lot for the bottling plant. There were two tanks parked there and a dozen military vehicles surrounding them.

I shook Michelle. She didn't stir.

I aimed the Ford's hood between the military cars, toward the front entrance. Three uniformed soldiers stood behind a barricade, yelling at me.

I couldn't hear them, but they were waving their arms.

I sped up.

The soldiers aimed their guns. Before I could hit the brakes, they opened fire.

The Ford's front tires exploded.

I experienced the weightlessness of zero gravity as the car flipped over the first time, but I hit my head and lost consciousness before the Ford's second flip.

85

"SO YOU LIKE ME, HUH?" Michelle whispered and giggled in my ear.

"I like you a lot," I said. "You're my favorite person in the world."

"That's because I'm the only person you know in the world."

Michelle lay on her back and I lay with my head on her chest. The hard cement of Ernie's roof was less comfortable than a couch or a bed would've been and the moaning chorus serenading us from below wasn't the music I would've chosen.

But in its way it was perfect.

"I think I like you a lot, too," Michelle said and kissed me.

"Ricky," she said when we broke. "Do you really think there's a cure?"

"There has to be. And I'm going to get us to it."

"You promise?"

I kissed her. "I promise."

And then we were lost in each other again, Michelle caressing my cheeks and neck with both hands, lightly.

Then more firmly.

Then so hard it hurt.

86

I OPENED MY EYES.

Michelle's hands clutched at my face, her nails digging into my skin, struggling to pull me closer.

She snarled.

"No."

She stared longingly at me, hungrily, through all-white eyes.

"No."

There was no Michelle in the dead girl hanging next to me and only her seatbelt kept her from crawling across the upside-down Ford, and biting into my flesh.

"No."

My ears rang.

I wasn't sure how much of it was because I'd reinjured my head in the wreck and how much of it was because I was hanging upside down in the driver's seat and all the blood had rushed to my skull.

My seatbelt cut into my chest and shoulder, but held me suspended.

Despite the ringing, I heard the sound of dead hands pounding against the back seat and moaning coming from the trunk.

I thought of the truck flipped over in the field we'd passed days ago with Mommy and Daddy in the front and an empty car seat in the back.

I undid my seatbelt while doing a one-handed handstand. I fell as slowly as I could manage and flipped over so I sat on the Ford's roof.

I scooted backward, out of Michelle's reach.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

"God, take it back. There's still time, God. Take it all back. You can do it. I know You can. Take it all back."

"Don't leave me, Michelle. Not you. Everyone else, but not you. Don't leave me."

And so we sat, my love snarling beside me, my little brother snarling behind, and me weeping.

For there's no greater pain in heaven or hell hurts worse than being on my own.

87

"PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE air!"

Slowly I turned.

"Put your hands in the air right now! Put them up!"

Two sets of black boots stood outside the Ford's window. Tucked into each were camouflage pants.

I couldn't see the guns the soldiers were pointing at me, but I could hear in their voices that they had them.

Michelle snarled sharply. I turned back to see a third solider crouched beside the passenger window.

Michelle reached for him, struggling against the seatbelt that held her upside down.

"We got a biter." The soldier aimed his machine gun.

"Don't shoot!" I screamed, thrusting my hands in front of Michelle. "That's Gerald Kirkman's daughter!"

"Who?"

"Michelle Kirkman! She's Gerald Kirkman's daughter!"

The soldier frowned. He lowered his gun and raised a radio transmitter from his belt.

Michelle growled and clawed at the edges of the broken window.

88

"HOW'S YOUR HEAD?"

I sat up. The movement made me wince. "It sucks."

A blue candle on the desk he was sitting at was the only light in the office; shadows from the flames danced across Gerald Kirkman's face.

"When the soldiers brought me in, there were lights."

"We leave the lights on the main floor on," Kirkman said. "Everywhere else we use candles. There's plenty of fuel for the generators, but it's better not to use them for nonessential functions."

"Where's my mother?"

"With your brother."

"And Michelle?"

Kirkman's lips tightened. "She's safe."

And then I asked the big question, the one I came here to ask, "Is there a cure?"

Kirkman stared at me for a long moment as though trying to decide on the exact wording. "Not yet."

I lay back in the cot.

"We have medicine if you're in pain."

"No medicine," I said. "Take me to see Chuck."

"First I want you to tell me what happened."

I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the cot, and nearly vomited. But I kept it down. I wasn't going to puke in front of Kirkman.

"Take me to Chuck, then I'll tell you what happened."

"I need you to tell me now!" Kirkman's eyes blazed with a fire other than the candle flame's reflection. "What happened to my daughter?"

"You killed her."

Kirkman made a sound that wasn't quite a yelp or a yell. He swallowed it and gripped the edges of the desk, breathing slowly.

"Tell me what happened. Please."

I told him.

89

WHEN KIRKMAN CAME BACK HE was pushing a wheelchair.

I didn't ask why he had it or where he got it. I transferred myself from the cot to the chair and Kirkman wheeled me out of the office onto the main floor.

We passed two soldiers, but otherwise the plant was empty. It was eerie to see all the machines and equipment sitting unused as though abandoned.

The moaning chorus was so low, at first I figured it must be coming from outside. But as we approached, the moans became the telltale snarls indicating the zombies could see us.

I couldn't see them, not until Kirkman wheeled me into the improvised medical laboratory. There were three steel boxes the size of semi-truck trailers, one side of which was made up of steel bars like a prison cell.

The dead were in cages.

Kirkman rolled me to the third box. Michelle reached through its bars, snarling at us. Beside her, Chuck did the same.

Behind them was a third zombie I didn't recognize until she lurched closer and the light reached her face.

"Oh no," I said. "Oh no, oh no, oh no."

I clamped a hand over my mouth.

She was dressed in the same blue blouse and jeans she'd been wearing the last time I'd seen her, except the sleeve of the left arm was torn and everything below her elbow was gone.

The eyes beneath her blonde bangs were all white, and her face was pale, but I would've known it anywhere.

I spoke a single word before the tears came: "Mom."

90

"ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, SHE'S A fine specimen," a man said from behind me. "I expect her to make a full recovery."

I wiped my eyes as Kirkman turned my wheelchair from Mom to face a bearded man in a white lab coat.

"We'll have to tend to her arm, of course, but otherwise a fine specimen."

"This is Dr. Romero," Kirkman said. "What's the good word, doc?"

"Atlanta's ready to begin human trials."

Kirkman grinned so wide it threatened to split his head like a grape. "That's outstanding! Excellent work!"

I don't remember the exact things Dr. Romero said, so I'm not even going to try to recount them here. He explained he'd been working on a cure before the first cases of dead people walking were reported.

He talked a lot about samples and tissue regeneration and trial phases, but what I took away from all his talk is that he thinks he's already developed the cure.

But that wasn't what blew my mind.

When I followed Dr. Romero to his desk at the corner of the "laboratory" to view the data, I saw he had a news web page open in his browser. He went to minimize it in favor of charts of medical data I didn't understand. I stopped him.

"Your internet is up?"

"Of course," Dr. Romero said. "It's slow, but—"

"Is that's today's date?" I asked pointing to the ledger just beneath the headline reading:
Millions Raised for Recovery in Areas Hardest Hit by Zombie Disaster
.

"Yes."

"But... but..." I could only stare and stammer. Above the story was another headline proclaiming:
Evacuations from Quarantined Zones Still Underway
.

"What is it, Ricky?" Kirkman asked.

"I thought... I thought..."

"You thought it was the end of the world?" Dr. Romero suggested.

Never have I been so glad to be sitting in a wheelchair. The weight in my head gave out completely and if I'd been standing, I would've fallen over.

91

I HAD MORE QUESTIONS THAN Dr. Romero had time to answer. Kirkman wheeled me out of his lab so the doctor could work, but he gave me a tablet so I could surf the net and read the news myself.

When I started this journal, I wrote that there were zombies in Europe, China, and Japan, and there were. I wrote that the human race was probably extinct because I honestly believed it.

But Harrington hadn't had power or phones or internet for days and everyone here is dead. As I read various news sites, I learned what I would've already known if I hadn't been living in ground zero of the zombie outbreak.

Zombies had infested most of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. Parts of Michigan and Tennessee were heavily infected, but outside the Midwest, the outbreak had been contained.

People in Wyoming and California were going about their daily lives. They were drinking Java Jive coffee and going to the malls.

92

CHUCK, MICHELLE, AND MOM STRAINED against the bars, snarling and reaching through them for the living men.

Kirkman seized Michelle's arm and held it while Dr. Romero stuck her with a syringe.

"What are you doing?" I called.

Kirkman waited until Dr. Romero's syringe was withdrawn to drop Michelle's arm and turn toward me. He was positively beaming.

"The cure works."

I rolled closer. "Really?"

"Early results are promising," Dr. Romero said.

Kirkman seized Mom's hand next, and then Chuck.

I watched them expectantly.

They reached for me and snarled, their all-white eyes still seeing no Ricky, only food.

"The cure could take several hours to show any progress," Dr. Romero said. "You gentlemen are welcome to wait elsewhere and I'll send word just as soon—"

"That won't be necessary, doctor," Kirkman said, rolling a desk chair in front of our family's cage and planting himself.

I set the brake on my wheelchair.

93

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE fourth hour, Michelle stopped reaching through the bars and let her hands drop to her sides.

Kirkman stood and she snarled at him.

Chuck didn't snarl.

I rolled closer to the bars. Chuck didn't stare at me, but through me. Michelle clocked my movements, but Chuck looked off in the distance as though I wasn't there.