Sunrise (26 page)

Steve reached up, adjusted the blanket across his shoulders and accelerated his pace, taking care not to clip any cars that happened to line the road. He didn’t think a fender-bender would do much to the SUV, much less keep them from moving, but he didn’t want to risk hitting anything with Erik lying unbuckled in the backseat.

“You ok?” Ian asked.

“Sure. Why?”

“You looked like you were thinking pretty hard about something.”

“I was thinking about not hitting the cars in front of us,” Steve replied. “It won’t do much to the truck, but Erik isn’t buckled in.”

“Best not to hit
anything
if you can help it,” Ian agreed. “Relax. You’re doing a good job. Better job than I probably could.”

Steve maneuvered the vehicle around a pileup of cars and continued down the road toward where he knew the road split into a Y that led to the interstate they’d just left last night. This particular passage didn’t put him at ease. Though he knew they would soon be safe, he dreaded the amount of metal they’d have to drive over. The rain had shifted most of it off the road, but some of it remained strewn across the path, metal snakes and barbed cone shells just waiting to be run over.

You can do this,
he thought.
You can.

Something stumbled out from behind a broken car, and Steve rolled to a stop.

“Just hit it,” Ian said. “It’s a fuckin’ zombie.”

“No,” Steve said. “Look at it.  This one is…different.”

The black-skinned entity before them lifted its head and acknowledged them with a simple tilt of the head. Seemingly gauging them, it straightened itself into an upright position, then tilted its head in the opposite direction, like a child trying to see something from every possible angle. Throughout this entire process, it remained standing in the road, content with the distance between them.

“See?” Steve asked.

“What the fuck’s it doing?”

“What’s what doing?” Erik groaned from the back seat.

“There’s something in the road in front of us,” Steve said. “It’s not a zombie.”

“Then what the fuck is it?”

“Look for yourself.”

A hand stabbed through the curtains and parted them. Erik’s head appeared soon after, face contorting in pain at the light that stabbed through the window. “I can’t see anything.”

“Give your eyes a second to adjust.”

Erik blinked. “What the hell?”

“That’s what I was saying,” Ian said. “You think it’s a person?”

“No. If it were a person, it’d already be down the road and by the truck by now.”

The creature tilted its head back into its regular position. It took one look to its right, then its left, then back over its shoulder before it began to make its way down the road. Stumbling, but not completely awkward in its movements, it coasted the wreckage in the street and regarded the metal on the road. Once, it even bent forward to remove it from its path, holding the piece of metal like a delicate artifact before tossing it into the bushes.

“What the hell is going on?” Erik whispered.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“It’s heading right for us,” Ian said. “It’s not taking its time either.”

At the rate the creature was moving, it would be upon them within minutes. That realization forced sweat from Steve’s face and made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

It’s not a zombie,
he thought, coaxing himself to remain calm.
It didn’t come straight for us when it heard us in the road.

“Here it comes,” Ian said.

Now no more than a few feet away from the vehicle, Steve could make out its features in gross detail. Its skin wrinkled like a raisin and darkened as though as though it had spent one too many hours in a tanning bed, it appeared to not be dead, but something completely unlike it. Steve would go so far as to say it was alive, but didn’t as its hand touched the hood of the vehicle and directed his attention toward its head. Its eyes—the original color now indeterminable—shined like black onyx under an intense fixture of light. They didn’t glow, but their boldness alone forced him to keep direct eye contact with it.

“It’s coming toward the window,” Erik said.

“I know,” Steve replied.

When the creature was directly at Steve’s side, it reached forward.

Steve swallowed a lump in his throat.

What’s it going to do?

It didn’t touch the window. Instead, it stopped, regarded him with a tilt of its head, then extended one single finger and tapped the glass with a long, purplish fingernail.

“Fuck,” Ian said, shocked. “It knows what’s it’s doing.”

“That’s obvious,” Erik said, “but what does it want?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said slowly. The creature tilted its head again. Its mouth seemed to replicate the action, as though disappointed, before it tapped the glass again, three times instead of just once. “I think it wants me to roll the window down.”

“Crack it,” Erik said. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Reaching forward, Steve set his finger to the dash and pressed his finger to the button.

The window rolled down a crack. A gust of rain and the smell of fruit blew into the SUV.

Fruit?

“S-sir?” he managed, waiting for the thing to respond.

The thing brought its hand back and let it dangle at its side. It tilted its head again, this time obviously acknowledging Steve for the fact that he wasn’t an inanimate object, then shifted its lips. A purple tongue, still very much wet and free of rot, slicked its lips.

“Sir?” he asked again.

“Ruhh,” it gasped.

“What the fuck?” Erik said.

“It’s talking!” Ian gasped.

“What are you trying to say, sir?” Steve asked, heart firing in his chest.

“Ruh…ruh…
run.”

“It’s telling us to fuckin’ run!” Erik yelled, clawing at Steve’s shoulder. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

“They…ur…here.” It pointed.

A horde of zombies stumbled out from inside a building and turned their eyes on them.

“GO!” Erik cried. “GO!”

Steve slammed his foot on the ignition.

The SUV went soaring up the road.

In his haste to leave, he barely noticed that the thing had stopped to remove all of the metal on the road.

CHAPTER 10

They pulled into southeastern Idaho around three-thirty, despite the rain that followed them throughout the lower parts of Denver and Utah. A breath of fresh air at the tail end of October, they each breathed a sigh of relief as the air warmed and the sun came out to celebrate their joyous victory.

By the time evening began to crest the horizon, they pulled into the neighborhood Jamie had once called home.

“This is it,” Jamie said, coming to a stop outside a row of three houses.

Dakota looked on in awe at the sight of the three two-story, perfectly-restored country homes before him. Flanked by a long-dry field on one side and a road on another, each house looked toward the south, where an expanse of neighboring houses lay a few hundred feet in the distance. Here, poised almost at the tip of the range, he could just begin to make out snow forming on the jagged peaks of one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

“Jamie?” Desmond asked, drawing Dakota from his thoughts.

Turning, Dakota frowned when he saw that Jamie had bowed his head, hands tightened around the steering wheel and face obscured by his arm. His first reaction was to ask what was wrong, then he looked at the houses before him and sighed when the realization hit him.

Oh,
he thought.
Home.

To see your past before you when the rest of your life had failed, to realize that the people you loved would never be home again, to understand that your happiest moments were only memories and there would never be any more of them—how did it feel to come home after so many years, after so much had happened and after the world had ended? Was it a stab in the heart, a punch in the gut, or was it something worse—evisceration by a rotting hand or decapitation by a wrongful step? Either way, it didn’t much matter, because when Jamie let out a startled sob, Dakota leaned forward and wrapped his arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, bowing his head into the man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jamie.”

“It’s ok,” Jamie said. “Just…give me a moment.”

They waited.

Jamie began to cry.

Dakota and Desmond eventually left the car by Jamie’s instruction. Told to walk to the front door and take the key from under the flowerpot, they entered the house and seated themselves within the living room, atop the vanilla-white furniture in front of a stonework fireplace. The whole while they sat there, the silence more than total and the tension extremely thick, Dakota tried not to look back out the window and at the truck parked in the driveway.

He’s gonna be ok.
He turned his head down and away from the window.
Everything’ll be just fine.

“It’s a nice house,” Desmond said, “isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Dakota said, looking up at the living room before them. “Really nice.”

“Have you looked at anything?”

“Not really.”

“Just wondering. I’m kinda surprised you haven’t, considering this is where your boyfriend grew up.”

“I will eventually.”

“Maybe you should go talk to him.”

“He wants to be left alone.”

“You’re his boyfriend. I really doubt he’d push you away.”

Knowing Jamie?
Dakota thought.
I highly doubt that.

“I don’t know,” Dakota sighed, preparing to rise, but not sure if he should. “I think I need to let him have his moment alone. He is coming home, after all.”

“I guess it’s hard,” Desmond said.

“Desmond, can I ask you something about your past?”

“I lived with my parents,” Desmond said. “Yes, they loved me. I loved them. I have pretty much given up on the idea of ever seeing them again though.”

“Are you ok with that?”

“No, but I’ve accepted it.”

The door opened. Jamie stepped in, eyes red and cheeks puffy. “I just needed a moment to myself.”

Dakota stood and crossed the short distance between them. He wrapped an arm around his boyfriend’s side and leaned into his chest. “I love you, Jamie.”

“I love you too, babe. And I love you, Desmond.”

“Thanks,” Desmond replied. “And thank you for getting us here safely.”

“We had a few bumps, but it’s ok. We’re…we’re home now. Right?”

“Yeah,” Dakota smiled. “We are.”

The rest of the morning passed in silence. Desmond lounged in the living room, Jamie sat in the kitchen poring over documents and scratching things down on paper, and Dakota wandered the house and tried to distract himself from the eerie calm, despite the fact that he knew they were safe. He examined family pictures, peeked into bedrooms, slid his fingers over the neat, colored tile in individual bathrooms and pressed his hands into the fabric of beds, all in an attempt to familiarize himself with a time and place he knew he would not be familiar with had the end of the world not occurred.

Eventually, his search led him to a portrait of Jamie that had been taken years before. Dressed in fatigues and clean shaven, he looked younger than Dakota could have ever imagined him.

He looks,
he thought, then paused, reaching forward to embrace the frame with his right hand. “So young,” he said aloud.

How long ago had this been taken? It couldn’t have been less than five years, because the lines around Jamie’s mouth hadn’t deepened and his cheeks didn’t have that much fat in them, and it couldn’t have been only five because he looked younger than the twenty-one he would’ve been.

This was taken years ago,
Dakota thought.
When he was my age.

The sight of the young man before him forced a shiver through his body. His chin still softened and the fat around it still dense enough to hide the hard square; his cheeks fuller, plump with youth; his skin lighter beyond compare—he looked Nordic, compared to how dark his skin was now, like he’d been living in a frozen wasteland complete with narwhales and penguins.

A hand touched his shoulder. Dakota jumped.

“Hey,” Jamie said, wrapping an arm around his waist from behind. “Looks like you found my enlistment picture.”

“This was taken when you were my age, wasn’t it?”

“Yup. I’ve sure changed a lot, haven’t I?”

“No kidding,” Dakota said, pulling his hand back from the picture.

“I can hardly remember being that ignorant little boy who knew nothing about the world.”

“What were you doing in the kitchen?”

“Going through my mother’s stuff, trying to figure out what we’re going to do about the house. I’d rather not board it up if I don’t have to.”

Dakota nodded. Drawn by a second picture just slightly above Jamie’s own, he looked up when he saw another man staring up at him, face hard and jaw set. The glimpse of a smile could be seen on the corner of his mouth, despite the desert behind him.

“Jamie,” he said, “is that your dad?”

Jamie reached out to touch the picture. “That’s pop,” he said.

“You look just like him.”

Jamie tightened his hold around Dakota’s waist.

A tear dropped down onto his shoulder.

Dakota reached down and set his hand over Jamie’s.

“You want to do
what?”
Dakota asked.

“Build a wall,” Jamie said, setting his hand over a large piece of poster paper before him. “See the perimeter around the property? We’re gonna dig a trench, build a wall and fill it in with concrete. Call me vain, but I don’t want anything happening to the houses, especially not the one next door.”

“How come?”

“Erik grew up there.”

“Really?” Dakota said.

“I remember that now that you mention it,” Desmond said, looking down at the table of figures off to the side. “What’s this?”

“The amount of wood and concrete we’ll need.”

“Those are some pretty heavy numbers,” Dakota said. “How do you expect to get all of those supplies, much less get them back here?”

“Simple; we wait for Ian, Erik and Steve to get here, scrounge up an extra car or two, then make our way to the nearest U-Haul. I doubt they’d care if we borrowed a truck, considering the circumstances and all.”

“You didn’t answer my question though. How do you expect to get all those supplies?”

“We’re only going to dig the trench a certain number of feet,” Jamie said, tapping the empty section of the rectangle around the three properties. “Once we set the foundation, we’re going to fill it up with concrete, then install support beams along the inside of the property.”

“You seem to have it figured out,” Dakota sighed, looking up at Desmond. “What do you think about all of this?”

“I think it’ll work,” the boy said. “What about the ice though? I’ve heard something about concrete breaking apart if moisture gets into any cracks and freezes.”

“We’ll cross that barrier when that time comes,” Jamie said. He looked down at the figures, reconsidered the detailed sketch before him, then looked back up at Dakota and Desmond. “Guess you guys know what comes next.”

Dakota reached forward and grabbed his gun.

They went into the other two houses one-by-one. Guns drawn and clips full, they scoured each room on every floor, searching for anything or anyone that might have managed to stumble into the building and lock the door behind them. Several times, Dakota thought he heard something groan, then turned with his pistol at eye level only to find nothing behind him. It scared him, thinking that a house could possibly speak and reveal all of its secrets, but he didn’t think about it for long after Jamie mentioned every house he’d stayed at in Idaho did such a thing.

It’s like they’re talking,
he’d said, echoing Dakota’s previous sentiments.
Like they’re waiting for someone to stop and listen.

By the time noon turned to dusk, they returned to Jamie’s childhood home, sweat staining their shirts and hair plastered to their foreheads.

“You think we could take a bath?” Desmond asked, stripping his soaked shirt off his skinny frame. “I haven’t showered in days.”

“I could probably get the generator out back working,” Jamie said, casting a glance toward the door sitting at the very end of the hall. “But I don’t think now would be a good idea to try.”

“Best not to do it now,” Dakota said, frowning when Desmond sighed. “I’m sure we can figure something else out.”

“We can,” Jamie said. “Even if we have to use some of the bottled water, we can always get more.”

“And we can purify it now that we’re here,” Dakota added, reaching out to set a hand on Desmond’s sweaty shoulder.

“I just don’t want to use anything we don’t have to,” the boy said.

“You want a shower, you got a shower,” Jamie smiled, heading toward the door. “Dakota, care to help me bring some stuff in?”

“It’d be my pleasure.”

“It’s nice to have a little alone time,” Jamie said, “isn’t it?”

Dakota nodded. Tilting his head back, Dakota smiled at Jamie and took a moment to readjust himself on the bed Jamie had slept in for most of his life before allowing his eyes to continue their endless pursuit of the room. Most of the walls were bare, evidence of a room long uninhabited, but a few things sprinkled their surfaces, giving birth to personality found solely in a patriotic young man. An American flag blanketed a corner, while a miniature display of what appeared to be the Civil War covered a shelf just above a writing desk, upon which a photo of Jamie’s father sat—post Gulf War, a chest-up shot with the man flashing pearly whites.

“Jamie,” Dakota said, “do you remember anything about your father?”

“Sure.”

“Like what?”

“The way he used to throw me into the air and catch me in his arms. Scared my mom half to death whenever he did it.”

“What else?”

“Him taking me for ice cream, going to church on Sundays, playing baseball in the park.”

“It sounds like a dream come true.”

“Did your dad not do anything like that with you?”

“Honestly, I can’t remember. It seems like everything was going just fine up until everything went to hell near the very end.”

“We both had pretty fucked up childhoods.”

“Guess that’s why we go together so well,” Dakota laughed, bowing his head into Jamie’s chest.

“I used to resent the fact that my friends all had dads when I didn’t. It’s taken me a long time to get over that, but now that I have, I realize that I’d never wish anything I went through on anyone else. It’s hard growing up without your dad.”

“I wish I could say the same thing.”

“You have any idea what happened? I mean, with their relationship?”

“I don’t know,” Dakota sighed. “Even if I could know, I don’t think I’d want to. Whatever happened, or
was
happening, it was bad. That’s all I know.”

“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Jamie said.