36 Hours (33 page)

“Who taught you that?”

“Psychology, Hannah. Mr. Parker.”

“I don’t think we can make it in there. You don’t know the code.”

“3-6-9-1-1.”

“Dang it, Austin,” she breathed.

“I was under stress. We can’t wait until morning, either, because of your cut.”

“You have a cut on your forehead. On your leg, on-“

“Not as bad as yours.”

She was silent.

“There’s a man in there with an airplane across the field. We can get out of here.”

“And go where?”

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“I don’t know. The skies are safe, though. These guys don’t fly. We’ll go somewhere secluded, out of the way. An island or something. The wilderness. The desert. I don’t know. Just not here.”

“So what’s the plan for getting inside?” She groped at her wound.

“I’m kind of making this all up as I go. Are there any crowbars or something around here?”

“You want us to fight our way out?”

“Break the glass on the door?”

“They’ll get in.”

“You spoil all my ideas.”

“Why don’t we just sleep in the dumpster? I’m not joking.”

“Hannah. You’re hurt. We can’t stay here. Okay? You saved us. But we can’t stay here.”

We sat in the rain, listening to it drum on the dumpster, splash at the feet. I heard the distant roar of a gun engine, faint screams, gunshots. Clapping footfalls at the infected around the dumpster enclosure sprinted in the direction of the sounds. A peel-out somewhere; Hannah was turning her head to hear better. I leaned forward. Gun shots. Human shouts – intelligible shouts. The vehicle engine thundered in our ears and then slowly died down. Just the rain. Hannah groaned, “I wonder where
they’re
going?”

I stood and pressed my body against the wooden door, grabbed the lock.

“Austin,” she hissed, leaping up.

I yanked the lock and pushed the door open. Hannah grabbed something beside the dumpster. I stepped out of the enclosure, looking both ways. A figure brushed between three parked cars; it ran around the side of the car. Hannah stepped out and tossed me an iron bar. I caught it and hurled it around, bashing the creature in the side; she fell against the door. It was a teenager I’d never seen before. She snarled. I slammed the bar into her face, twisting it into a mess of bone and blood. She quieted and slumped down.

Hannah walked around the edge of the dumpster. I ran past and fiddled with the key code.

“No pressure,” she said.

“Quiet.”

A click. The door unlocked. We stepped back; I opened it wide, warm air throwing itself all over me. “Hannah, we’re-“

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Hannah screamed. I spun around to see her on the ground; an infected tore at her clothes, foaming, leaning forward for her neck. “
Austin!”
I kicked the animal in the chest, knocking him down. My foot punched his face in, and I sent the bar into his face, grinding it down through the brain and into the back of the skull. Blood seeped all over the pavement.

Hannah was standing: “Austin! Above!” Two more threw themselves off the roof. Hannah jumped out of the way; her own bar had fallen, and was out of reach, blocked by a hunched zombie.

The other fell on top of me; I twisted to avoid impaling on the bar; the fetid breath washed over me like a fish-barn, claws groped at me; the maniacal, sunken eyes spoke hell and bloodshed. Blood dripped from his jaws. I thrust my hand into his throat and pushed him to the side. He tried to bite my arm.
A bite
is a death sentence
. No. No! I kicked him in the groin and he rolled over, against a yellow pole jutting from the earth.

The infected attacked Hannah, knocking her against the wall. She cried out. I yanked the iron bar out of the infected’s head and cut it through the air; it bashed against the woman’s skull, breaking it wide, sending a spray of blood all over Hannah’s face. She swaggered to the side; the body fell; she stumbled over the body, falling on top of it, the warm blood fire on cold skin. Her hands, drenched in blood droplets, sparkled like Arabian incense. The other jumped after us; I punched it in the face. My knuckles burned and cackled. I groped my hand, dropping the bar. The beast shook its head and screamed. Suddenly figures in the distance stopped, shimmered, turned – and bolted for us. “Hannah! Get the door!” I yelled, throat rasping, trying to hold off the assailant.

Hannah wasn’t responding.

The infected came again. I swiped the legs out from under him. He landed on my iron bar.

“Hannah!”

She came out of it, hobbling over to the keypad.

“3-6-9-1-1!”

She punched it in.

The infected was getting to his feet.

The door opened; I ran forward, pushing her in. She sprawled over the floor. I whipped inside and grabbed the door handle, trying to shut it. The infected stuck his purple hands inside; the door wouldn’t shut. I bashed the door open and Anthony Barnhart

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close, breaking the skin and snapping the bones. The infected bashed his head against the glass, leaving bloodied marks. The others would reach, pull – and we’d be doomed.

The alarm began to sound; the door open too long.

Hannah rolled over. “Austin! Shut it! Shut it!”

“He’s holding it open!”

“The alarm!”

“He’s holding it open, Hannah!”

Hannah got to her feet, pulled something out. I’d lost mine, and forgotten she’d had hers. She rushed forward, slashing at the fingers. She rattled it back and forth; blood gushed all over the door handle and frame. The infected continued to bang his head. Two fingers dropped to my feet. The third’s bone grinded, flaking, and suddenly it fell. I was jarred backwards; the door clicked shut.

Hannah stepped away as I dropped to the floor, landing hard on my rear, shaking, muscles pouting. The infected now bashed not only his head, but a fingerless hand against the glass. More infected smashed at the glass, roaring and glaring at us, prizes eluding their tastes.

The bloody knife dangled from her hands.

Saturday, April 24, 2004

12:00 a.m.

Bibles and Daggers

Only child

The stink of death

Everyone wore happy faces. Don’t dare walk around with a frown on your face,
you’ll either be judged super-spiritual or unspiritual. When you’re depressed, it
doesn’t help when someone congratulates you, seeing your down face, saying,

“God is blessing you! The Lord be with you!” It makes me sick, it makes my
stomach curl. I sit down and I watch them all. There are the older people, those
who have seen it all. They walk slowly with canes and walkers, admiring the
youthful vitality surrounding them. This is certainly a place for the midlife-
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crises. Forty-year-olds in every direction, shaking hands and saying, “How are
you doing?”, then responding with, “God is good!” even though life sucks and
their marriage is going down the tubes and their kids hate them and yet they
say, “God is good!” It’s all religious masks, hypocrisy to the highest mark.
The zombies gawked at us from the window, smearing it with fetal blood. I felt like rolling into a fetal ball and falling asleep. I know Hannah did, but this time she picked
me
up. I didn’t really want to stand, but I did anyways. They were so ugly. I told her so. She said, “Yes, they are.” She’s still holding onto my hand. I just want her to let go. The only thing I can think is,
How can they be so
ugly?

She sits down next to me. I try not to act startled, though I am. A mix of fear and humiliation and suspicion overcomes me at the same time. I think she’s just sitting down to be the unique one, the one who stands out, who makes her voice heard. It has nothing to do with me. She sits there, and I tense up. Don’t let her get to close. She’ll turn you into a fish out of water. But she smiles at me and I smile back. The blatant hypocrisy I had vehemently discharged now swarmed over me like a plague. I can see she is feeling awkward so I betray everything I know and say, “How are you doing?”

“How are you doing?” Hannah asked.

“Gosh, they’re so ugly. Look at them. They were once
people
.”

“They won’t break through that glass?” Sounded like a question.

“No. It’s plate glass. They won’t be able to break it.”

“Okay,” she answers, and she smiles even broader. Now the disposition
erodes to a foreign yet slightly invigorating feeling of attraction. I hate myself. I
hate how this happens. I’ll think it’s gone, but then it comes back, and I’m
captive, but the chains are hope, hope that is empty and barren. “We have
school tomorrow.” Now I know she feels awkward. Who says that? I would’ve.
But then, I am feeling more than awkward now. Hah! How could I ever see us
going out? We can’t even carry on small talk, much less an important
conversation. In that instant I see myself proposing, kneeling down, not knowing
what to say, and I see her feeling just as awkward, saying, “No,” and I slap the
key box shut and all my hope is diminished. I go home, burn incense, smoke a
cigarette, get drunk, listen to the female vocals of Straylight Run, and ponder all
the gritty misfortunes of this death-deal life.

So I prove my genius by saying, “Yeah. That really sucks.” For emphasis,

“Sucks.”

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Anyone have a gun? I want to shoot myself.

They clawed at the handle. For a moment I feared they would break in. But one-by-one they gave up, retreating, until only one was left, the one with the dripping finger stubs, rubbing his bleeding hand and face all over the window, bludgeoning it with poisoned body fluids until all you could see was a slight distortion through the red glaze.

Hannah tugged at my hand. “I don’t want to be here.”

“We’re inside. Better to be at the dumpster?” A pool of water forms at my feet.

“I don’t want to be
here
, by the door.”

We just look at each other. I’m groping for something to say, anything, but
nothing comes to mind. For a moment a light bulb flashes. We both like Italian
food! Yet talking about that would do nothing more than reveal my desperation
to have even a shallow conversation. She would see my flirting attempts and
break away and I’d lose her, making me happy and sad and distressed and
lonely and overjoyed, all at the same time – a whirlwind, a cesspool of human
emotions. The moment is growing more awkward as we sit in the lobby, the
morning sun filtering through those great doors. She flexes – is she standing?

Operation Talk-to-Austin has failed. She abandons. Austin reaches out…

Melanie Prass arrives on the scene, appearing from the river of men and
women gushing out the lobby doors! She sparkles in the light, swinging around
in blue jeans and a Every Time I Die t-shirt. Her wondrous eyes capture the
world in a bottle, inclement to the brim, stocked with deception and iron fists.
She walks with an elegance unknown to mankind, a creature of venus, no – a
planet all in herself. She opens her mouth. The world slows. Takes a breath,
awaits the wisdom. “You don’t have to have tan skin to look attractive,
Hannah.” My sister appears on the scene, with Amanda at her side. Amanda is
grinning and laughing from a joke I will never hear. Melanie says, “Look at all
of us. We’re not tan, and we’re the ones with boyfriends!” Her expression of
awkward silence fades to one of solemn condemnation.
The last infected moves away from the door; he smeared his own vision of us and forgot. Who was he? A father? A brother? What were his dreams, hopes, aspirations? Become a basketball player, a famous musician, a veterinarian?

Was he religious? 24 hours ago was he praying to the Creator of the Universe, now a heap of gnarled flesh and primeval instinct?

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She stands and heads away. I shoot Melanie an awful look and tramp after
her. “Hannah. Wait.”

Hannah turns. She doesn’t want to talk. How can I surrender now? Black spot
on my record. I always act without thinking. Stupid, stupid, stupid… “Hey.
Don’t listen to her, okay? She has a worse dating record than anyone. She
doesn’t know up from down, boy from girl. She’s a relationship mess.”

“I know, Austin. Why are you telling me this?”

“I can see it in your eyes, you’re hurt. Hurt by what she said.”

She turns and heads down the hallway, past gymnasiums where kids play
basketball and run around. Where booths are set up for the women’s ministry,
the postmodern ministry, the small group ministry, the youth ministry… We cut
around it, loping over the cloth tiers trying to keep people out. Actually,
Hannah lopes over it. I almost trip just trying to keep up. We round past several
short lockers, walking down the hallway leading to the side door, where parked
cars and birds and sunlight awaited, a world of beauty and mystery, spring
coming alive, crying tears of grace and mercy.

“Hannah,” I said. “Come on. I’m not hitting on you, okay?”

She spun around. I nearly ran into her. “Why would you even say that?”

“Everyone thinks I have feelings for you. Every time I talk to you or walk with
you they think a romantic relationship is blossoming!” I wish. “I don’t like you.
No, I do like you, I mean, not like that. I mean… Look. You’ve got a lot of better
things in store for you. Don’t listen to Melanie, or Amanda, or even Ashlie. By
the time they’re seniors it’ll be another story. With Melanie, this time next
week

it will be another story.” She didn’t say anything. “Just don’t let their words cut
wounds, okay?”