Until the End of the World (Book 1) (4 page)

He laughs. But I know what he means. It doesn’t seem like things could be bad, the way the neighborhood is out enjoying the day. No one seems to care.

“I don’t know why no one is listening to what’s going on,” James says, and shakes his head.

“What’s going on is that everything is fine, according to the news,” Penny reminds us. “Not everyone is dissecting everything they say and spending hours on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be safe than sorry, but no one else thinks this is a big deal.”

Every step in these shoes has become torture. That’s what I get for going for form over function. I can’t even wear platforms without wobbling like an eight year-old playing dress-up. I should’ve stuck to my boots. I consider taking them off, but the sidewalk is covered with a layer of what resembles congealed fat.

We wait for cars to pass on the corner. I nudge Nelly and point to James and Penny’s intertwined hands. He winks at me as I catch a glimpse of someone coming out from behind a dumpster. He’s probably been taking a leak and I don’t want to embarrass either of us, so I avert my eyes.

A rasping exhalation makes me turn again. An older man with dark, matted hair shuffles forward with a dirty hand out. At first I think he must be asking for change, but his skin is gray and his mouth gapes. Almost half of his neck is gone, like a bite was taken out of it. He must be infected. The wound is edged with black and filled with clotted blood and bits hanging that I really don’t want to identify. The stench of something rotten wafts past.

“Let’s go!” James yells, and yanks Penny’s hand.

My ankle twists as I turn, and I gasp at the jolt of pain. I have to get out of these stupid shoes. Nelly steadies my elbow as I kick them off and we race across the street. Half-Neck follows. By the time we reach her building he’s halfway there. Penny scrambles to get her key in the lock of the outer door. Maybe we should just keep running.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Penny begs.

Her hand shakes but her key slides in. We fall into the small vestibule as Penny works on the next lock. Half-Neck appears and spreads his hands on the door. Brown flakes smear off his filthy fingers onto the glass. His eyes are filmy. He sniffs the air with a guttural moan and paws at the door.

“C’mon, before he breaks the glass,” Penny says.

We rush through the second door. Once inside the second floor apartment, the door locked behind us, I collapse on the couch. James runs to the window.

“Oh my God,” Penny says. Her hand’s at her throat, like she’s trying to hold in a scream. “What the fuck was that?”

We’re all silent, our chests heaving and eyes wide. That’s not what I thought an infected person looked like. He didn’t look sick; he looked like a monster from a horror movie. And he chased us. My skin crawls when I realize he might be chasing other people right now.

“I’m calling 911.” My voice sounds far away as I dial with a shaky hand. “We can’t let him walk around.”

After twenty rings I hang up and try the landline. An automated voice tells me they’re too busy to answer. “They’re not answering.” This is not good. This is New York fucking City. “They’re too busy.”

Nelly watches out the window. “Still there. Penny, when’s Ana coming home?”

Penny jumps for the phone and presses redial over and over. “Ana!” she yells, when she gets through. “Where are you? Okay, listen. There’s a guy out front trying to attack people. Go to the service door. I’ll stay on the phone with you. James and Nelly will open it so you can run right in. Do not come in the front!” A shrill voice sounds on the other end. “Ana, please. Just do what I’m telling you to do!” She turns to Nelly and James. “She’s five minutes away. Will you go make sure it’s safe? One of you run back up if it’s not.” They nod and leave.

“They’re on their way down,” she says into the phone. A couple of minutes pass in tense silence. “Is the door open? Go. I’ll see you upstairs.”

Penny grabs Ana in a hug as soon as she enters. Ana gives her a cursory pat then pulls away and smoothes her long hair. It’s lighter than Penny’s, with hints of gold. She wears brown suede knee-high boots and a long sweater with leggings. The sweater must cost as much as my yearly clothing budget, including my sandals back on the corner. Ana looks a lot like Penny, with her dark eyes and small nose, but she doesn’t have Penny’s curvy softness.

“So, what’s with the crazy guy downstairs?” Ana strides over to the window. He sits slumped against the glass of the door. He’s not moving. I hope he’s dead.

“He tried to attack us on our way here,” James tells Ana. “That’s what the infected people are doing. You get the virus through bodily fluids.”

Ana turns from the window and shrugs. “So, this is that swine flu or whatever? I can’t believe people are going so crazy over it! The bar we were going to go to closed early. Now I get to spend Friday night here.”

Now that she’s safe, I want to put her out there again. “Ana,” I say, in my best stop-being-a-little-shit voice. “Sorry your Friday night is ruined. But did you hear James? The man tried to attack us. Your mother is stuck at the hospital with these people. There may be a hundred thousand infected in New York. And it isn’t swine flu.”

Ana sticks out her bottom lip. “Fine, whatever.”

She picks up her bag and saunters off to her room. I love Ana the way you love a little sister that you also don’t like sometimes. That sweet little girl she’d been must still be in there. One summer at my parents’ cabin she had found an injured rabbit and nursed it back to health. She didn’t trust anyone else to do it. When she and my dad let the healed bunny go, she sobbed and spent the rest of the week looking for more animals to save.

“Whatever, indeed. At least she’s safe,” Penny says, and she raises her eyes to heaven.

Nelly pops the tops off four beers. James puts the TV on a local channel. CNN is still off air. I listen as I dial 911 over and over.

“Buses are filled to capacity with the sick. Family members are being asked to pin a note with the infected person’s information onto their clothing and leave the area, with promises that they will be informed of the patient’s progress. Police say this is to protect family members from being infected. We’re going live to the scene at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.”

I set the phone down and move closer to the TV. A reporter stands outside of the hospital where Maria works. Penny leans forward like she’s trying to catch a glimpse of her mom. The number of people out there is staggering. They’re lying down, standing up, sitting. They shuffle forward onto a waiting string of buses. As each bus fills up and pulls away, it’s replaced by a new one. City buses, school buses, Greyhound coaches—it looks like anything with more than four seats has been pressed into service.

“They’ve been funneling people onto buses for several hours, but more arrive to take their place. We were just informed we are being moved to an area a few blocks away for our own safety. We will continue to monitor the situation down here. Back to you.”

Nelly lowers the volume as the news anchor lists the treatment centers again.

Penny sighs. “Well, I don’t imagine my mom’s going to be home soon. There must have been five hundred people waiting out there. I just hope they’re giving the nurses the anti-viral medication.”

Penny grabs her phone and walks to the window, trying her mom again. Her beer hits the wood floor in a foamy crash that makes us jump. One hand covers her mouth and the other points to the street.

There are four of them in front of an apartment building down the block, bent over on the shady side of the street. One is Half-Neck, astonishingly still alive, his head canted to the left. There’s an old lady wearing a flowered housedress and wispy gray bun, a hipster with off-kilter aviator sunglasses and a Hispanic man wearing a half-tucked shirt and jeans.

The housedress lady stumbles away to reveal something meaty and glistening and pink. Only the hands and feet give any indication that it was once a person. The four of them are coated in fresh blood. It’s smeared around their mouths and drips from their hands. It runs down the concrete into the street. My stomach heaves, and I lean on the windowsill. I want to scream at them to stop, but that would alert them to us, and the person is obviously dead. I run and dial 911. Fast busy. I try again and again as the others stare out the window.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a voice asks.

“I’m watching four of the infected on the street. They’re ripping someone apart! I’m on—”

The voice cuts me off. “Ma’am, is the person they’re attacking dead? Can you tell?”

What kind of question is that? “Yes, I think the person’s dead, but—”

“Ma’am, we can’t send any police out now. If you give me your address, they’ll take the infected into custody as soon as possible.”

I give her the address. “Do you know when they’re coming? I’m afraid they’ll hurt someone else.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t.” She has that officially harried voice every civil servant in New York City adopts. “And please stay in your home. The police will be there soon, and they are equipped to handle the situation.”

“Yes, of course. Thanks.” I hang up, adding, “For nothing.”

I move back to the window. “They’re not even coming.”

“Well,” James says, without tearing his eyes away, “at least they answered this time.”

I can’t stop watching either. It’s so horrifying that the minute I stop looking I think there’s no way it can be real, so I look back.

“They aren’t just attacking, they’re eating,” Nelly says, and shakes his head in disbelief.

He heads into the kitchen and sits at the table. I follow him to get paper towels to clean up the spill. He’s as pale as I’ve ever seen him, but his mouth is set in a firm line. “I know you promised Eric you’d leave if it was bad.” I nod. “I thought that was a little over the top. But now I don’t know. What do you think?”

What we just saw wasn’t simply someone a little ill and violent. I don’t want to sound like a maniac, but I’m scared. And I promised Eric. “I want to go upstate,” I say.

James comes to the doorway with his arm around Penny’s shoulders. “They don’t have this under control,” he says. “I mean, there are people eating someone on the corner and it’s not even a fucking priority. They’re not telling us the truth. People still think it’s safe.”

It’s true; I can hear music and the sounds of happy shouting blocks away.

“Okay,” Nelly says, his hands fisted on the table. His expression is incredulous, but his nod is firm. “Then we should leave. I can’t believe this, this is insane.”

I’ve always thought it would be great to have Nelly’s total belief, just once, in my and James’ crazy imaginings. But I find that this is one time I really, truly want to be wrong.

A yell from the street snaps us out of our silence. Five young guys grip baseball bats and pieces of rebar and move in on the infected, who are so busy with their meal they don’t notice.

A length of rebar connects with Aviator Glasses’ head, while the owner of the rebar yells with the effort. It splits his head open with a crack that carries down the block and through the window glass. There’s surprisingly little blood, although my stomach lurches at the sight. Another bludgeons the older man. Half Neck and the old lady turn toward the three men left.

“Now!” yells the biggest guy.

Half Neck and Old Lady don’t stand a chance. They’re down in seconds and bashed repeatedly until their heads are just a memory. The big guy straightens up and wipes his forehead with a bandanna from his back pocket. Before I can stop myself I throw the kitchen window wide open.

“Hey, thanks!” I call.

They look up and around until they see me and move to stand under us. Penny leans out of the living room window and waves.

“Oh, hey. You Maria Diaz’s girl, right?” the leader asks. Penny nods. “Listen, you need to stay inside. They’re everywhere.” He gives us a stern big brother look.

“Are they all like this? So violent?” I ask. “They said they were attacking people, but it looked like they were eating—”

“Oh, they’re eating.” He grimaces. “Make no mistake. And you have to get their heads or they don’t go down easy. Cut their necks or something. Crazy shit. You know, like zombies.”

A younger kid wearing a baseball hat chimes in with lit up eyes. “It is, man. They
are
zombies. It’s just like that game. You know, the one where you—”

“Christ, Carlos,” the leader says. “This is no game. You see that body? That could be you or your moms or your sister.” He looks up at us as Carlos surveys the remains and quiets.

“Sorry. We got to go. I’m picking up my little sister from a friend’s house. Stay inside. Be safe. Tell your moms Guillermo said hi.”

Penny says she will. We watch as they walk down the rest of the block and pause before every doorway.

“Zombies,” James mutters. “Jesus.”

It’s silent. Penny finally speaks. “I’m willing to entertain the idea that this virus is out of control. I’ll leave New York as soon as my mom comes home. She’ll know how bad it is. But, zombies? C’mon.”

She crosses her arms, her face tight. Penny is practical and even-tempered like her mother, but I can see the doubt in her eyes even as she insists it can’t be true. They were eating that person, as hard as it is to believe.

“You just saw them, Pen.” James gestures toward the window, then squeezes her shoulder gently. “I can’t rule anything out, can you?”

Penny shakes her head, arms still crossed. He knocks a cigarette out of his pack. I haven’t smoked since I quit again a year ago, but I think I can break the rule this once. James is smoking out the window, as no one in their right mind would send him outside, so I drag a chair over. He knows what I’m after and hands me his, lighting another for himself.

“Thanks,” I say, and take a deep drag. The nicotine tingles down to the tips of my fingers and toes. “I can smoke if it’s the zombie apocalypse, at least. What’s my life expectancy anyway? One week, maybe two?”

James chokes on his smoke as I grin at him. “You’re sick.”

“Humor is the last refuge of the damned. That’s what my mom used to say.” I take another drag. “I don’t know what else to do.”