Lewis’s group melded with the many others that were already there, a fucking jamboree of zombies. They all milled around, groaning like a bunch of drunks, like goddamn stoned hippies waiting for a show to start. They crowded at each other’s backs, all hoping to be near the stage.
Lewis rode a surge through the crowd. A woman pressed against him, her lower jaw missing, tongue dangling down like a necktie, eyes wide with fear. Her gurgles had a unique ring to them. She disappeared, replaced by the sight of a tall man who must’ve been one of the first to go. A patch of hair on his scalp and ribbons of flesh stretched across his cheek were almost all that remained on his skull. His eyes were comically wide, much too round. Maggots the size of peanuts dotted his neck.
So many stages of decay, so many people, but not people anymore. Lewis was pushed forward by the crowds at his back. Some of those ahead were shambling the other direction as if disappointed the show wouldn’t start. It was hard to smell the living meat from the middle of the crowd; the change in scents created eddies of undead, a swirling of rotting bodies like by the fish cleaning station at slack tide.
Lewis made it to the front and found himself pressed against the bus. There were smears there from those who came before, a clump of hair and a bit of flesh. He felt something like a gag reflex in his mind, but his body made no response. It was searching after the smell of meat.
Gunshots rang out from above. He had heard potshots the day before as he closed in on the area, wondered what they were shooting at. If anyone in the crowd took a hit, he couldn’t see. There were others at his back trying to take his place, and Lewis found himself shoved to the side along the length of the bus. He could imagine himself swirling like this forever until he looked like the man with the maggots on his neck. Another shot from what sounded like a high caliber rifle. That was another possibility, another way out. He tried to gurgle louder, to make himself a target, to seem especially threatening. He thought of a movie he’d seen once with monsters like him in it, had laughed while they trudged forward in a stupor getting their heads blown off, and now it occurred to him that maybe they were begging for it. Maybe they were trying to hold perfectly still.
Stupid thoughts. Just a movie. Actors. They hadn’t been thinking shit other than when the next smoke break was coming or hitting those tables of food. Fuck, Lewis couldn’t stop thinking about food and cigarettes. He banged his knee on something, something hard. One of those luggage compartments had come open, had been knocked loose.
There was a smell. Lewis fell to the ground, sniffing. Others joined him. They could go even closer to the stage, he realized. They could go under it.
He crawled inside the compartment, over a cardboard box wrapped in tape and past a duffel bag. A few suitcases crowded a dark corner, the other side of the compartment shut tight.
Lewis banged against it. Others pressed up behind him, knees ringing on steel, heads hitting the roof, dark and cramped and slamming against this other door, wondering if it might pop loose as well.
44 • Darnell Lippman
They left Darnell alone on the gurney with her thoughts. When her head twisted to the side, she could see them working on one of the others in the adjoining room. They crowded around while the monster thrashed, back arching and knees kicking, men in rubber suits trying to hold it still while doctors went to work.
She didn’t see it all. Her eyes roamed, following the smells coming through the loose joints and cracks of the place. It looked hastily put together. It reminded her of Lewis’s boat with its rough scars of metal where he used those bright torches to join plates together. The glass was glued in with something like that 5200 stuff. She knew from the clothes he ruined. “What’s this?” She would scratch at the hardened crust on his blue jeans. “Fifty-two-hundred,” he’d say. Always 5200. Funny the things she remembered.
The barge didn’t sway much, not that she could tell. It was anchored by those taut cables and the stiff current. It had to be a good sign, this quarantine. They were trying. There were people out there trying something. The non-infected were doing more than running away or fighting back. And the bridges, that had to be good, too. Darnell thought so. There were so many others to think about. The kids, her parents, all her friends back home. They would be watching TV and calling the authorities, letting them know she and Lewis were in the city, that their cell phones were going straight to voice mail, that they needed help.
Help is here, Darnell thought. Help is coming.
They finished what they were doing to the monster in the next room, and then they came for her, five of them in yellow rubber suits, the same material as Lewis’s knee-high fishing boots. They had hoods built into the suits with plastic visors the size of lunchboxes. Two men with wrinkled brows stood over her and held her shoulders. Darnell felt herself lunge after them, teeth clacking, and she wanted to apologize for this behavior the way her sister was forever apologizing for her yipping dogs. “It isn’t their fault,” Gladys would say. “They’re just being dogs.”
An older woman leaned over, wisps of gray hair framing a face of concentration or worry, hard to tell which. She had old eyes with crow’s feet at the corners and directed the others, her voice muffled by the plastic but her lips moving. She pointed with her thick gloves while machines were arranged, more tools laid out. Darnell’s body twisted and strained against the straps pinning her into place. It was as if the monster side of her knew better than she did what was about to happen. It was as if it were more afraid than she.
They tightened the straps to keep her from yanking about. She could barely move. It felt wonderful to be pinned perfectly still like that—her limbs could no longer betray her. They would see, now that she was calm, they would see in her eyes that she was okay, that she was more terrified than they were.
Her clothes were cut off, nasty scraps of fabric peeled away and preserved like they were unwrapping a gosh-darned mummy. Swabs on her skin, placed into baggies. A long stick shoved between her teeth and her gums, bagged up as well.
Yes, take your samples, Darnell thought. Make me better.
She was thinking this as the swabs and the wooden sticks were put away. A black bundle was placed on the steel table. Plastic canisters like Tupperware were arranged. Someone began to draw on her, began to probe her skin and tap on her chest with stiffened fingers. Darnell pleaded with her eyes—she tried to let them know she was in there. She tried to speak, all to no avail.
The bundle was unrolled. It reminded her of her mother’s silverware. And then the implements were removed, one by one, and placed on the table. Curved things that gleamed in the overhead light. Tiny and sharp things. Something like pliers. Alien tools. Expensive tools.
The old woman with the kind and wrinkled eyes held out a gloved hand. Her lips moved, and a tiny blade was placed handle-first into her palm. Darnell gurgled and tried to form the words. She wanted to cry, but felt nothing on her cheeks. In the next room, a monster rattled its chains behind the glass.