Solstice: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (6 page)

Ashley gasped, Portia, her tough-girl alter-ego, cursed, and Josh moved apart from the others and was sick in the shadows.

Stu grabbed the woman’s slight shoulders. Turning her to him, he held her face against his chest. “Don’t look.”

The woman wept hot tears against his chest. He wanted to look away, also, but couldn’t. The child’s jaw opened still more, and the ripped flesh of his chubby cheeks reminded Stu of an even more gruesome version of the Joker than Heath Ledger’s take on the villain. His sharp chin touched the collar of the SpongeBob pajama top, and small white molars glinted wetly through a thick coating of new blood.

After a moment, the boy pressed his hands beneath his chin and closed his gaping mouth, his teeth snapping together with a sharp click. He turned abruptly and took off into the darkness.

Chapter 9

Near Gothenburg, Sweden

Tomas turned up the heat, and they rode in silence for a few moments. The city was just ahead, buildings looming like sleeping giants in the darkness. Traffic wasn’t bad at… whatever time it was, but the road was occasionally blocked with stalled automobiles.

Seeing Gothenburg in such complete darkness was surreal, and Melanie drew her knees up, wishing she could become small, and drummed her fingers against the peaks of each knee. One, two, three… left. One, two, three… right. She rocked in her seat slightly and counted each motion softly, breathing harshly.

Tomas placed a warm hand on her tapping fingers. “It’s okay, Melanie. You know that, right?” He sighed. “I can’t believe I was able to find you so quickly. Luckily, the train stalled only a few miles from the terminal.”

Melanie nodded, but watching the empty streets, she wondered if it were true. Maybe it didn’t matter. As long as she was with Tomas, she’d be safe.

Tomas put his hand back on the wheel. “So? Have you heard anything? Is it a blackout, do you think? The news predicted some geomagnetic disturbances, but this is a hell of a lot more than a
disturbance
.”

“N-no.” The image of the devoured woman outside the train window refused to leave her mind. “I mean, no, I didn’t hear anything before leaving Stockholm. I was sleeping when the train stopped.”

“It’s strange. My watch is telling me it’s almost nine o’clock, but it’s pitch dark. What does your phone say?”

“I lost it in the chaos, I think.”

Melanie watched him in the blue glow of the dashboard as he worried his top lip, still looking as gorgeous as ever.

“I want to get us back to the house as quickly as we can. I don’t feel good leaving Christopher and Leila alone for very long. Things are just too strange.”

“Tomas? Back at the train… did you see those bodies?”

He nodded.

“I saw it happen. I saw people going mad. They were tearing at each other.”

“Melanie—”

“No. Let me say it out loud, or I’ll never stop wondering about it.” The words wanted to spill forth. She had no control over them. They were like a sickness that she needed to have out of her body. “It looked like some were eating the others. They were biting them.” Burying her face against her knees, she started crying again.

Tomas stroked her hair. “I can’t tell you not to think about it, sweetheart, because it’s impossible not to. But know this—you’re safe with me. Understand? I’d never allow anything to happen to you or Christopher. Or Leila.”

What if you can’t stop it?
she wanted to ask. Instead, she wiped at her streaming eyes with the back of her hand and watched through the window as he drove through the dead city.

December 23-December 26

Chapter 10

Trollhättan, Sweden

Tomas keep a vigil by the hearth, making sure the fire stayed stoked and roaring, but the woodpile was diminishing quickly. The house was well insulated because it was situated half-underground, in the side of the hill, but nothing could battle a Scandinavian winter and win.

The candles had burned down to nubs, and the only entertainment left was telling stories or reading by the firelight. Christopher was bored with both. He ran his toy trucks and cars on pretend roads in front of the fire and brought out his
Lord of the Rings
action figures, which he hadn’t touched in months. He would stand the figures in battle against a band of evil Imperial Stormtroopers three-quarters their size. His nose ran, and Tomas wished for more heat.

Tomas was growing more afraid by the moment. They were going to have to leave the house soon, or else they would end up starving. Or frozen.

The day before, they had gone through the motions of Christmas morning for the boy, decorating with candles and tinsel. Tomas wrapped the gifts he had hidden away in the closet. It was a sparse lot because he normally did the bulk of his shopping at the last minute. Tomas risked venturing outside and chopped down a spindly evergreen. They sang. Leila sulked and later wept behind a glass of wine. Melanie read by candlelight, tapped her fingers nervously until he asked her not to, and stayed out of Leila’s way as much as possible. Tomas played soldiers with Christopher and pretended all was fine. He was pretty certain he had Melanie convinced, also. Her mood had lightened considerably.

Tomas booted up his laptop a few minutes each day, checking for any signs of life, but the internet was like a virtual ghost town of un-updated pages and Facebook statuses that had stopped in time. At eight o’clock each evening, he switched on each of the three cell phones and tried for a signal by standing at the front door, and then on the back deck, as if the few meters of space might make a difference. No signal came. And the charges were nearly gone on all three.

Leila prowled the shadowy house like an angry cat, refusing to speak. The first couple of days, the phone was her perpetual companion. She continuously dialed Brock, her lover, but had finally given up and tossed the cell toward the hearth, where it shattered.

Melanie listened to her iPod until it was dead, but kept her earbuds plugged into her ears, pretending they were the reason for the complete and gloomy silence. Food grew scarce, but thankfully, the stove was gas. They heated water for coffee and tea and bathing. They ate soup and instant macaroni and cheese.

Tomas even found a box of butterscotch pudding mix in the back of the pantry and sang like the Swedish chef from the old
Muppet
show as he whipped it up. Christopher giggled and clapped his small hands, begging for more. Leila lay on the sofa, drinking the last of the wine. Blank-faced, she stared into the flame, but Tomas felt he had enough to worry about besides a miserable, pouting, immature wife.

Melanie joined the boy at the kitchen counter. She ruffled Christopher’s hair as he laughed, and Tomas wondered how she and Leila could actually be of the same species. Melanie was a darker version of her mother, but despite all the things she had endured—losing both parents at such a young age and then coming to live in a place where she probably felt unwanted most of the time—she still carried a light within her. Leila had lost her light long ago, except when she looked at Christopher. Tomas usually found himself wondering what he’d done to cause her to fall out of love with him. For so long, they had tiptoed around each other, pretending they still cared, when the only common ground they really had was their son. Neither of them could bear the thought of not living with Christopher and seeing him every day. As far as Tomas was concerned, his son was worth the sacrifice. He wasn’t sure Leila felt the same, however.

***

Strange figures moved past the window. It was only a flash of inky movement, one of those tricks of light and a snatch of something caught in the corner of the eye. The little hairs prickled on the back of Tomas’s arm, but he kept the sighting to himself. Melanie had seen enough already, and Leila might go into some mad anxiety. He could do without both. Besides, there was no reason to incite a panic until he knew for certain he had seen something.

He covered the windows with heavy blankets, nailing them tightly to the frames. When Christopher asked why, Tomas assured him it was only to better keep in what little warmth they had. The response seemed to satisfy the women, as well.

Tomas watched the lawn through a sliver of an opening. Then, there it was—a single loping shape crossing the lawn. His breath caught, and he stood motionless, afraid any movement, no matter how slight, might alert the trespasser. It had started snowing again, but as the lone figure moved closer, Tomas could see the person was dressed only in thin pajama pants, billowing in the breeze, and an undershirt stained with something dark across the front. No shoes. White hair in need of a good trim whipped up and away from a pale face.

Bo must have sensed the presence of the old man because he moved to the front door, his pointed ears perked. He growled low in his throat and pawed at the door.

“Shut up, Bo,” Tomas hissed.

Of course, the blasted animal ignored him. Pawing desperately at the door, the dog began barking. The old man glanced up, his face trained first toward the front door and then to the window where Tomas stood. Tomas jumped back and let the blanket drop over the slit. The man’s eyes had been as white as his fish-belly complexion.

“Get upstairs, all of you. Go to the washroom and lock the door!”

Christopher began to whimper.

“What’s wrong?” Leila asked, standing up, her magazine falling to the floor. She picked up the boy and hugged him.

Melanie yanked her earbuds from her ears. She immediately began tapping the tops of her thighs, and Tomas found he wanted to scream at her to stop that, to just take a damned breath and get a move on, but even in his panic, he managed to bite his tongue.

“Is it them, Tomas? Is it the monsters?” Melanie asked, her voice quivering.

“Yes. Upstairs. Now.”

The dog was going crazy, saliva flying from his muzzle, claws marring the floor and the bottom of the front door. The door handle turned, easy the first time, and then more forcefully.

A voice that sounded caked in rust rose from the other side of the door. “Let an old man in, why don’t you?” The man knocked, five times, ten, and then he began to hammer.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

“Let an old man in, why don’t you? I’m starving!”

Melanie grabbed Leila’s arm and pulled her toward the stairs. “Come.” They fled to the second floor with Christopher.

Tomas sprinted to his office. Frantic, he rummaged through a few boxes on a high shelf in the closet. Papers, books, receipts. “Damn!” Finally, he located the box he needed. He took it down and opened it. Inside was a .44, a gift from Melanie’s father, Harold, many years before the accident that took the man’s life. Tomas had pretended to be thrilled with the gift because he loved the old man, but he loathed guns. He couldn’t have been more thankful for that gift at the moment. Inside his desk drawer, he found the box of bullets Harold had included. He always kept the bullets locked away, separate from the gun. He’d heard too many horror stories of children finding their parents’ loaded guns.

Hands shaking, he fiddled with the heavy piece. At the entrance, the pounding and barking continued, accompanied by an ominous splintering noise, but Tomas finally had the gun loaded.

The old man was just stepping through the door as Tomas rounded the corner into the living room. Bo attacked, tearing into the man’s white arm. Amazingly, the old man simply laughed and threw the dog away from him as if the heavy shepherd were a stuffed animal.

Tomas raised the gun and fired. He missed, and the bullet ripped through the wall a yard from the old man’s head. He fired again, and the old man’s head vanished in a rain of blood and brain. The ragged body fell backward, half in and half out of the front door.

Upstairs, Leila screamed, and Christopher began to wail. Tomas, his knees coming unhinged, fell back against the wall and slid to the floor. The world blurred, and he thought he might be sick. He had just blown off a man’s head.

He breathed deeply and, after a few moments, felt strong enough to stand. “Everything’s all right, Leila. But keep Christopher up there until I tell you it’s okay.” Slowly, he moved to the crumpled body. He stuffed the gun in his waistband and wiped his sweaty palms on the seat of his jeans. Icy air blasted in through the broken door, causing him to shiver. He heard a door open and close overhead. “I thought I told you—”

“It’s only me,” Melanie said. She crept down the stairs, carrying one of those tiny flashlights made to fit inside a purse. She moved next to him and touched his shoulder. “I thought you might need some help.”

“You shouldn’t see this. Go back up.”

“No.”

In the orange firelight, Tomas could see that she had a determined set to her jaw. That was one of those little quirks he had liked about her from the time she was a small girl. After getting to know her, Tomas had learned that when he saw that look, nothing was going to change her mind. He nodded. “Okay.”

Melanie sighed. “Something tells me we’re going to see a lot more of this.”

***

Melanie helped Tomas clean up the body and the mess, then Tomas removed the door of his office and nailed it across the shattered front entrance. It wouldn’t hold if anything really wanted in, and after seeing the chaos on the train, Melanie knew it was only a matter of time before something else would try.

While Tomas finished the makeshift repair job, Melanie went upstairs to get Leila and Christopher. They all moved into the warmer living room.

“We all need to know how to use this thing,” Tomas said, holding the gun out to Leila.

“I’m not interested in learning how to fire a gun, Tom,” Leila said.

“You need to know. Something might happen to me, and you’ll need to protect him.”