Order of the Dead (11 page)

26

Senna and Alan were lying in the grass, panting, their perspiring bodies keeping
the ground underneath them and the dew that they’d trapped there warm. Senna’s
left palm was resting on the lower part of her belly, her fingers making small,
contemplative circles on her bronzed skin.

Alan made a move at pulling away from
her, wanting to stand up, but Senna stopped him, wrapping her arms around his
chest and holding him tight.

“Not yet,” she said. “Just lay here
with me for a while.”

“Alright,” he said, and picked his arm
up so that she could slide under it and put her head on his chest. She did.

“Let’s lay here forever,” she said.

“We’d freeze,” he said, smiling.

“I know a couple ways to stay warm.”

He looked over at her and saw that she
was biting her lip. He laughed. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”

“Only when I’m around you.” She raised
her head and grazed her teeth against his bare chest. “You bring it out in me.”

Alan put a hand on the back of Senna’s
neck and drew her closer to him.

“I love you,” he whispered, and kissed
the top of her head.

“I love you too,” she said. She closed
her eyes and sighed, pressing her head into the space between his shoulder and
neck. “So much. With all my being.”

After a time, they pulled their
clothes back on and stood up. Alan walked toward the house and Senna followed.
He stopped at the border of the farm and turned around. There he looked at a
spot where an apple tree had once stood, until lightning had split it down the
middle two years earlier.

There was a sapling there now, one of
Senna’s many attempts to get her apple production up. The saplings hadn’t been
taking, and Alan doubted this one would either. The land was tiring out.
Perhaps it was blighted now. Perhaps the virus was finally in the plants, too.
Perhaps this was the last—

“Will you tell me?” Senna asked, an imploring
note in her melodious voice.

He looked at her and knew what she was
asking about. She was persistent in all things, and this was no exception.

“You promised that you
would…eventually,” she said. At once she regretted having used the word
‘promised.’ She didn’t want him to feel like she was pressuring him, like she
was prying into memories he didn’t want reopened.

“I just want to know,” she said, “to
know you better. I want to know more about you. I always do.”

He knew what it had been like for her
because she’d already told him, and he remembered how disappointed she’d been
when he didn’t share his own story. She’d confided in him, she’d told him
something so personal, and he hadn’t been willing to reciprocate, at least not
all the way. He’d told her bits and pieces, so she knew much of it, though not
all.

He’d held out for years, but now felt
different for some reason. Now he almost wanted to tell her. It wouldn’t be
everything, he didn’t want her to live with the full weight of what was in his
mind, but it was time to share some more, to share the burden, perhaps.

Senna took his hand and squeezed it.
“I’m sorry I keep asking,” she said. “I just…I just want to know what it was
like for you.”

He nodded, and, looking beyond the
sapling he saw where he thought the wild indigo was, growing at the farm’s outskirts
just past Senna’s great magnolia tree. The blue flowers crept closer each year,
as if they were waiting for a proper invitation to come inside. Go go indigo.
In-di-go. He looked for the spots where they’d flowered in the spring, but without
the bright coloring of the petals to show him the way, he couldn’t find them.

27

Alan took a breath that was shallow and didn’t connect where it needed to, as
often happened to Rosemary, especially when she was scared or nervous. He tried
again, but the second breath fared no better. In spite of that, he began to
speak, to tell the same story she’d heard before, except with more of the
colors filled in.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.” He paused,
then began again. “I think my parents died on the first day of the outbreak, and
I think my brother and sister died then too. They must have, because they were
in DC when it happened. They’d all gotten together for a museum day and dinner,
but I wasn’t able to go because of work. It was a busy time for my company.

“I was at the office when the outbreak
hit, churning out a land contract that we’d been negotiating for almost a whole
year. Coming to terms was so important and it was such an important deal, it
was so…” He sighed. “Meaningless. So all my immediate family died, taken by the
zombies, torn apart, and I guess it happened while I was staring at some
redline.”

He found death, even violent death,
was so easy to speak of now, and thought it must have been like this before.

“It must have been like this before,” he
said.

“What?” Senna said. “Like what
before?”

“I mean before the—” he hesitated.
What was he talking about? He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, “—the
outbreak. Long before that, in the Middle Ages, and before then, too, when
death was commonplace and unremarkable, horrible and feared but all around you
all the time, something that couldn’t be turned away from. I don’t even know if
they’re dead, not really. They almost certainly are, but I can’t really know
that. Imagining what their last moments were like, and not knowing, that drives
me crazy.”

Alan’s stare became glassy-eyed.

Moments went by and Senna became worried.
“Alan?” she said. “Alan? Are you okay?”

No reply at first.

He tried to swallow and after a few attempts,
managed it.

“I ran,” he said at last, “like we all
did. I ran and hid, and tried to stay alive as best I could. I didn’t have
any
survival skills…being a lawyer and sitting at a desk all day doesn’t exactly
prepare you for the apocalypse. Even in the first few days, I was surprised at
how long I was lasting, seeing all those other people around me, who...” He
laughed sadly. “Lawyers aren’t supposed to have zombie apocalypse skills, and I
even remember talking to one of the other lawyers at my company about it,
before the outbreak, back when the idea of such a thing was a joke, something
that’d never happen, something that never
could.”

He shook his head. “We were joking
about it at lunch, and I joked about it all the time, in fact. I was never very
good at taking care of myself, you know, keeping food in the fridge and
stocking up on supplies and all that. My friends got on to me about it sometimes,
and I always said, well, I want to be unprepared when the zombies come, because
I want a challenge. I don’t want to be
too
ready with supplies and a
bug-out pack and food. I don’t want to be in too good a shape for the zombies.
Stuff like that.

“Well, I couldn’t go back to my
apartment when the outbreak hit. The zombies were everywhere, deciding for us where
we could run. I was just trying to stay away from them, and it was probably for
the best that I couldn’t get back to my apartment. I had nothing to live on there.
Not much anyway. Maybe a bag of carrots, some condiments, some liquor. Less
than a day’s worth.”

He was beginning to look grim now, and
feeling it too. The story was sucking him backward, and he was seeing images
that he usually kept pushed to the furthest limits of his mind, skewered
against the walls of his skull.

“Of course if I’d still been in DC I’d
have been dead twice over by then.” There it was, something positive to say,
some faint spin of optimism, which nowadays most commonly took the form of: it
could’ve been worse, worse meaning dead walking. “Moving down to
Charlottesville saved my life.”

Had he stayed in Washington, DC, and
not taken the job in small-town Virginia, he would’ve died in the outbreak for
sure. Or so he thought, because he was in the business of underestimating
himself, always had been, and he was damn good at it, too.

On this point, however, he was
probably right. Only a tiny fraction of people who’d been in DC on the day of
the outbreak made it, and all of them had been extremely lucky, assuming, of
course, and as survivors must if they’re to keep their minds, that it actually
was lucky to survive, and not the other way around.

28

Senna gently pulled the top of Alan’s shirt open, kissed his shoulder, then lay
her head on it.

“The first place I made it to and hid in
was a storeroom of a consignment store. It was aboveground, but it was secure,
with brick walls and metal shutters. It was on Route 250, a good distance away
from the university and the more densely populated parts of Charlottesville,
where most of the zombies had gone, but there were still enough zombies for it
be dangerous.

“There were four others there in the
store: three men and one woman. Their names were Andy, Matt, Chris, and Julie.
We were all scared out of our minds and couldn’t believe what was happening, it
just didn’t make sense.

“We only had what little food we’d
managed to grab on the day of the outbreak. Well, two of the others did,
anyway, and they were kind enough to share. I didn’t have anything, because I
hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab anything while I was running.

“What we had to eat ran out by the
third day, and then we were hungry, and, sooner or later, we’d have to find
food. We talked about what we could do, about how we could go looking for food
safely, how we could avoid the zombies.” He shook his head. “We knew almost
nothing then. Andy said that there was a mattress warehouse nearby, which
serviced a good number of the mattress stores in the area. He told us that he
worked running deliveries to it, and that it was secure and stocked with a
decent amount of canned food, because it was a middle ground for some overflow
deliveries that eventually made their way to the supermarkets in the area.
After some talk, we agreed that the warehouse would be our goal, and, if
possible, we’d scavenge what we could from stores that we passed on the way.

“The idea was to stay away from the
large attractions like grocery stores, which we’d discovered were too
dangerous. Too many other people were flocking to them, and that made them a
popular feeding ground for the zombies. I wish it could’ve been different, but
the people who were still alive were making too much noise in those days. They
still hadn’t figured it out, and who can blame them? We’d barely gotten it
ourselves, and only by dumb luck.

“We didn’t have much of a plan for
what we’d do if we got to the warehouse and it was overrun. We knew that was a
possibility, but between trying the warehouse and starving to death where we
were, we decided to take our chances because at least then we’d die trying. We
could go from strip mall to strip mall until we were finally picked off and
turned into one of those things.”

Senna took Alan’s hand and squeezed
it.

“We waited in the storeroom for four more
days,” he said. “We were starving by the time we left and if it weren’t for the
running water there, well, we probably wouldn’t have been able to wait long
enough for the noises outside to…to lessen, to stop being so violent
and…sickening.

“Finally, the zombies calmed. They
went dormant, quiet, having found all the live prey that was close to them. We
raised one of the storeroom’s shutters half a foot off the ground for a look
and saw them everywhere, wandering in slow motion. I remember thinking how
hideous they were, like chewed-up shells of people, stumbling around in some
horrible daze.

“They didn’t react to us, because we
were too far away. We’d already noticed, on the day when we escaped to the
storeroom, that if we stayed far enough away, and remained quiet, we could go
somewhat unnoticed.

“We were committed to the plan by that
point, so we crawled under the shutter and out of the storeroom. We didn’t
raise it all the way to avoid making any more noise, and because we wanted to
keep a small escape hatch for ourselves in case the zombies forced us back
inside. If that had happened…I don’t know. Anyway, it didn’t.

“We stood up, and I stared at the new
Charlottesville. I didn’t know then that all of Virginia was like that, too,
and all of the United States, and the whole world. It was impossible to
imagine.

“We crept alongside the building,
staying as close to it as we could and making as little noise as possible. We
were lucky then to be far enough from the closest of the zombies that they
weren’t drawn to us. We didn’t stay lucky.” He shrugged. “We made it a few strip
malls over, about halfway to the warehouse, when we had to duck into a BMW dealership
and regroup. We’d gotten to a point on Route 250 that was too thick with them for
us to safely pass through. There were about a hundred blocking our way, and
they were dormant, so we decided to keep our distance and steer a wide path
around them.

“After we made sure that there were no
zombies or survivors in the dealership, we took a short rest there and washed
up in the bathrooms. We made short work of the food we could find, mostly
granola bars and some cans of soda that were supposed to be for customers.”
Alan snorted. “I guess we were as good as customers then. When we were getting
ready to leave the dealership, Matt freaked out.”

Alan looked at Senna and she nodded.
They both knew what that meant, having seen it so many times. The mental strain
that came with leaving a place of safety, even if it was only temporary, to go
back into the open where the zombies were, was too much for some people to
bear.

“We tried to calm him down,” Alan said,
“but you know how that can be. He wouldn’t listen to us but just got worse and
worse, and then he started screaming. We had to get him to stop, but we didn’t
know what to do. So Andy hit him, again, and again, until Matt was out cold.

“Seconds after Matt collapsed, the
zombies were at the door, trying to break in, like damned clockwork. Inside the
dealership, it seemed we’d found a way to stay beyond their reach, out of their
radar or whatever we thought it was then, but then Matt made enough noise to
attract them to us, and there they were, banging up against the glass, moving
erratically and quickly, but with a definite purpose. They wanted in. We all
stared at them—Julie and Chris and Andy and I—and we had no idea what to do
next.

“I remember the zombies’ eyes, how
they never connected with mine, because the zombies weren’t using them to see
anymore.

“I whispered to the others that it was
only a matter of time before the zombies broke in, that we had to leave right
away. They agreed, but we didn’t know what to do with Matt, who was lying
unconscious at our feet. I can still see it all so clearly, it was twelve years
ago, Senna, and I can see it more clearly than yesterday, even though it’s not
like what you went through.”

“I know the feeling,” Senna said, and she
did. There were scenes from the outbreak and the days right after it that stood
in her memory too, with greater clarity than most other moments in her life.

“There wasn’t enough time to find a
car. The keys to the new cars on the lot were in a safe, and I hadn’t been able
to find the keys to the safe, that and going out into the lot to find the car
that matched the keys was now too dangerous. Andy suggested carrying Matt, but
that would have been our collective death sentence.

“We considered leaving him, but we
weren’t quite hardened enough at that point to give that any serious thought.
We decided to wake him up and have him run with us, to give him, and the rest
of us, a fighting chance. We all picked him up and carried him to the back of
the dealership, away from the zombies who were trying to get in through the
front. If he woke up to that, given the way he was acting before, he would’ve totally
lost it. When we were at the back door, we talked about which way we’d go, and
how we’d run, and what to do if we couldn’t make it to the warehouse.

“To say that we were scared is an
understatement, but it was time to make our move. We couldn’t stay there
overnight with the zombies at the door, and we didn’t want to wait much longer
and risk moving in the dark.

“We shook Matt awake. He was drowsy,
and calmer, but his head was in bad shape and he didn’t look like he could keep
it together very long. We told him that we were moving, that we were doing it
now, and that he could come with us or not. The thought of being left alone
must have scared him even more than the thought of facing the zombies with us,
because he sobered up real quick.

“We snuck out the back door, planning
to circle the mass of zombies on the road. We were moving together, quietly,
keeping a good distance, or what we thought was a good distance, anyway, and we
were making progress, when we had to make our way past a small, local donut
shop.

“The storefront window and the door
were broken in. There were still donuts inside, sitting on the display shelves.
Donuts.
We were inside in moments, filling our packs.” Alan shrugged.
“It made sense—the donuts were loaded with calories. They were stale, but we
couldn’t be picky at that point. Stale calories were better than no calories.

“And then the zombies were inside, coming
after us and blocking our exit. It was obvious something like that might
happen, but we were all caught up in the stale calories then. I was too. I had
my second or third donut in my mouth when I turned around and saw them. We ran to
the back of the store, trying to get away, and then, perfect timing again, the
zombies broke down the back door, and were coming in that way, too.”

Alan winced.

“I got a sense of what would have to
happen next. It came to me quickly, out of the blue, in fact. One of us would
have to die for the others to have a chance—
at least
one of us. The
zombies needed a diversion. I was scared and in a fight-or-flight state, so I
wasn’t seeing everything clearly, but this rang through. It was my survival
instinct guiding me, I know, but at the time that instinct was still not that
good. I got to know it better later, a lot better.”