Notes From the End of the World (16 page)

Chapter 24

March 15

Cindy

Beware the Ides of March.

I think this when I notice the date, but cannot remember where I first heard it. Then it dawns on me.
Julius Caesar
in sophomore English. It seems like a thousand years since I stepped foot in school.

Nick and I were still sleeping when Dad left for the hospital for the final time. When we finally woke, we moved around the house, frightened, anxious and also giddy with excitement over new the new possibilities and new challenges that await the three of us.

Now, Nick lies back on my bed, attempting to log on to the internet with his iPad, as I go through my drawers and shelves one more time. I don’t want to find out later that I’ve left something important behind.

We’ve packed the X5 to the gills. The only things I’ve chosen not to take are senseless clothing—uncomfortable shoes, dresses. Fancy-assed blouses. Pantyhose. I find a pair of nude-colored hose—the kind that comes in an egg-shaped box—in the bottom of my underwear drawer and toss them in the general direction of the wastebasket.

“I won’t be sad if I never have to squeeze myself into another pair of hose,” I tell him.

“So, you’re seeing some upsides to this end-of-the-world thing, then,” Nick answers.

I smile. “Maybe a little.”

Outside, the day is bleak. Clouds moved in overnight, and it’s rained steadily most of the day. We haven’t seen anyone in days. No Shamblers. No survivors. Just nothing.

I step inside my closet and begin going through what’s left of my clothes again. Nearly everything I feel is worth taking is already packed into an overstuffed garbage bag. We’ve opted not to use the luggage—bags are easier to pack into the tight rear area of the BMW.

“I’m on,” Nick calls, excited.

“Really?” It’s been two days since we were last able to find a signal. I pop out of the closet and leap onto the bed next to him.

He signs onto WeChat. None of his contacts have been active in days. Then Vine. There aren’t very many new videos there, either. The few that are shared are stupid clips of jerks teasing Shambles, enticing them into a chase. There’s a clip of a kid who looks to be about ten years old. He’s following an infected girl, about my age. Her top is off, and she’s just lurching around, her small boobs beginning to show signs of rot. The kid pokes at her nipples with a long twig, once and then again. The end of the twig sinks into her softened, decayed flesh, right through the nipple.

The unseen camera operator howls with laughter and the little video star cackles and sprints, barely eluding the girls claw-like grasp.

“Turn it off,” I say, disgusted. I lie back on the bed and sigh. That girl could’ve been Audrey. Or me.

Nick places the iPad aside. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It’s the world we live in, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” he agrees. Then he places his fingers under my chin and tilts my face up. He kisses me slowly, his lips brushing mine, his mouth opening, his tongue dancing with my tongue.

I draw back and bite his bottom lip playfully. My fingers walk down his chest to his stomach. Lower, over the front of his jeans. His eyes widen and he laughs as he presses upward against my hand.

“Nick,” I begin. My face grows furiously hot before I even get all the words out. “I don’t want to die a virgin.”

Nick’s sweet smile dissolves. “What? That’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know that? There’s something terrible waiting on us around every stinking corner.”

“That’s why we’re getting out,” he argues.

“Still. It may be too late.” I lie back onto the bed again and stare at the ceiling.

“Don’t be like that, Cindy,” he says, leaning over me. His soft hair tickles the side of my face. He really could use a haircut, but honestly, his long hair is incredibly hot. He looks like a guy straight out of
Seventeen Magazine,
and I wonder suddenly what chance I might’ve had with him had I not been practically the last girl on earth.

He bends and kisses me again, but this kiss is something more. It’s urgent and forceful, yet tender. He moves onto of me, and I love the warmth of him, the gentle weight of his body on mine. He presses himself against me, his fingers sliding under my shirt, then my bra, awakening my nipples until they harden into little stones.

I help him tug his own shirt over his head. He’s gorgeous, but he’s lost weight—we all have. And his skin is paler than he’s ever been. We’re children of the sun, but can’t chance being out in the sun very often. Getting away from Palm Dale will change that, hopefully.

I fumble with the button of his jeans and slip my hand inside, grasping, stroking, until he whispers for me to stop.

We undress quickly in the shadowy afternoon light.

I’m not going to die a virgin, after all. At least I’ll have that going for me.

***

Nick

I jump awake,
my mind racing, and grab for the iPad to check the time. It’s nearly three p.m. We’d fallen asleep holding each other, tucked beneath the soft weight of Cindy’s down comforter, naked and looking extremely guilty if Ben were to show back up. Thankfully, the door is closed and locked—another glaring sign of guilt. I get up and dress, careful not to wake Cindy. The daylight coming through the window is dimmer, now, the shadows in the room long and heavy.

Cindy hears me moving around and wakes. She smiles as she brushes her tangled hair from her face, so beautiful that it makes my heart ache. There’s nothing in her that reminds me of Audrey, with her light hair and eyes, but I still feel a little strange, being with her. I might’ve loved her long before I realized Audrey wasn’t anything but a pain in the ass, and circumstances just brought us together.

Deadly epidemics have a funny way of changing a person’s plans for the future, you know.

She climbs from the bed, naked, but still oddly modest considering the fact we just made love. She dresses quickly, her back turned to me, but I’m not complaining. The view is almost as nice as it is from the front. She’s athletic, small, but firm. She looks strong, which is a very good thing. Ben and I have complained about her running, but honestly, it’s for her to keep fit—and not just for the nice view. She can outrun a Shambler with no problem.

Shit, cardio is
Zombieland
rule number one, you know.

“You think Dad’s back?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” We head downstairs, groping in the darkness. I hate that we’ve had to board up the windows. Like Cindy, I need to see the sunshine, and want to feel it’s warmth pouring through the windows. In the kitchen, Cindy lights the nub of a candle and calls for her father.

Nothing. And it’s obvious he hasn’t been back yet.

“I really thought he’d be back by now,” Cindy says, her voice shaking with worry. Our plans are to get out and on the road to the cabin before sunset.

I step out into the garage where the X5 sits, packed and waiting, and the cold jars me into full wakefulness. I grab a bottle of water from the box next to the door and take a long drink. It’s relatively cold since the garage is so chilly, but tastes metallic and funky. Bottled water is tough to find lately—the supermarkets are picked cleaned, as are the Walmarts and the gas stations—so we’ve taken to refilling bottles with tap water as often as possible. There’s a chance I’ll have an upset stomach later on, but right now, I’m good taking my chances.

“Maybe he got tied up,” I suggest, but I’m thinking something worse. Lately, you just want help but think something worse. Our entire lives have become a game of
Worst Case Scenario
.

Cindy sighs and sits down at the kitchen table, the candle flickering in front of her. She bites her lip like she does when she’s afraid and determined not to show it. “Stupid of him to keep going back there,” she mutters.

I touch her shoulder and sit down next to her. “It’s not stupid. You’d do the same thing,” I tell her. “You’re just like him. You both just want to do what’s right. You want to help.

“Wanting to help people isn’t stupid.”

She raises her eyes to mine and smiles sadly. “We’re just wonderful people,” she says, sarcastic.

“Yeah. Pretty wonderful,” I agree, offering her the bottle of water. She takes a drink, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Yuck.” She wrinkles her nose.

“Tell me about it,” I say. Then I offer, “Look. Let’s give him an hour. If he’s not back, we’ll go to the hospital and check on him. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Cindy nods, clearly perked up. “I’m probably just overreacting, anyway.”

***

Cindy

Getting to the hospital is easier than I thought it would be. Nick and I decide to take bicycles—easier to outrun Shamblers and to get off the streets and into hiding, if necessary—but with the desolation of what used to be my hometown, we could’ve taken the M5 undetected. With the hospital only a few minutes away, Dad is always taking his chances either on foot, by bike, or his car, if the streets appeared quiet on that particular day. Today it appears he’s taken his car. I don’t really blame him. It’s cold out.

The sun’s getting low, but we still have a couple of hours until dusk. My nose runs as we bike along, and chilly air makes my eyes water. The dead world lies ahead of me blurry and unfocused.

The stink of the dead and the odors of everyday human life is gone—exhaust from the automobiles, perfume or B.O. from people passing by, the grease of food cooking in the restaurants, smoke from fireplaces—all gone now. I smell the briny ocean, although the Atlantic lies a mile to the east of where we are.

I haven’t been on this street since my last trip to the hospital, the night Audrey was bitten. There’s a supermarket with the entire glass front crushed in. Trash has blown out into the nearly-empty parking lot—soda cans, potato chip bags, candy wrappers. A couple of cars remain in the lot, covered in a heavy blanket of grime and dust.

The BBQ restaurant Dad loved is boarded up as if for a hurricane. The familiar “CLEARED” sign has been sprayed on the plywood that covers the front entrance.

Here and there, cars and trucks sit abandoned, covered with filth, forgotten. On the far side of the street, we spot a Shambler, teenaged boy. He’s wearing a Palm Dale High football jersey, jeans that are falling nearly to his knees, and one sneaker. He stumblers with every other step because his pants.

“Nick. Stop,” I say, pulling to a halt.

Nick coasts to a stop next to me and we watch the kid, who’s lurching along directionless, mouth agape, whitish eyes dull. His thick hair is screwed up into filthy spikes, untouched for quite a long while.

“Is that Tommy?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m whispering.

“Yeah,” Nick answers. “It’s Tommy. He’s number twelve.”

several emotions hit me all at once. There’s sadness for yet another one of us gone. There’s the fear that either Nick or myself will be the next one. And finally, there this dark, wretched feeling that I’m witnessing a weird kind of justice. Part of me always felt it was Tommy Barker’s fault that Audrey was infected.

Karma’s a bi-otch, they say. And so am I.

Tommy stumbles on, no puffs of breath floating upward from his lips in the cold air as it does for me and Nick. Noticing how a seemingly living human is not breathing is one of the most jarring aspects of the N-Virus victims. That in itself proves they are indeed the walking dead.

I watch Nick’s face as he watches Tommy stagger away from us, but I can’t read his expression. Finally, I just put it out there. “He deserves it.”

Nick shrugs. “Maybe. But do any of us
really
deserve that?”

I push off. “Some of us do. What about those soldiers who took your Mom. Surely you must believe they deserve this kind of ending. After what they did to you?”

“I suppose so,” Nick says, peddling along behind me. He doesn’t sound convinced. Nick’s a lot more forgiving than I am.

We travel in silence, the hospital looming ahead of us, shadowy, most of the windows black against a graying backdrop of a cloudy late afternoon sky.

***

A voice inside my brain screams something isn’t right as we approach the hospital’s front entrance. There’s less than two dozen cars scattered around the parking lot, and aside from Dad’s Lexus, most appear they haven’t moved in months. Around the big sliding doors, the weeds have gone out of control. The once-immaculate landscaping has gone to hell. Sprigs of brownish grass shoot up between cracks in the walking path. Everything is so eerily silent that I can hear my heart thudding inside my chest and pulsing in my ears. My throat clicks when I swallow, as if I’ve eaten a mouthful of dust.

Something is burning—the rubber and plastic stink hits rises as we move closer to the building.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I whisper, wanting Nick to tell me that I’m just paranoid. That I’m nuts. Anything but that I’m right.

After a moment, Nick answers, “Difficult to tell from here. It’s probably because there’s no light.” He doesn’t sound very positive.

We ditch the bikes twenty yards front the front doors. It’s impossible to detect movement inside—this entrance is also the emergency entrance and covered to shield people from bad weather at the drop-off. It’s as black as a cave there, weak overhead lights flickering like broken butterfly wings, never long enough to break the darkness.

We walk the rest of the way, and I’m chewing my bottom lip and fighting the urge to break into a sprint toward the door. Nick senses my unease and takes my hand. “Slow. Okay?”

So, he thinks something is off, too.

The sun is low and hidden behind the building, making it even colder in the shade. I shiver, and Nick squeezes my fingers tighter, trying his best to comfort me. Under the arched awning leading to the front doors, the lights flicker again, accompanied by an dry, electric buzz.

“Stop!” Nick hisses, yanking my backward.