Someone had to be broadcasting. If not the radio stations, then the city, or the government. Whatever happened, the United States government would still be functioning. Or at the very least broadcasting the Emergency Alert System. That was the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s job, right? Wasn’t this the sum of their entire existence?
She was angry, and it came boiling up in a stream of emotion. Angry at getting nothing on the radio. Angry at Donald, at Jack, at the woman in the Mercedes. Most of all, she was angry with herself, because the fear from last night still lingered and wouldn’t go away. She hated the feeling of being out of control, being at the mercy of someone else.
Some thing else.
She switched the radio to AM and turned the dial again, hoping to find something, anything. Where was all the chatter? There was always chatter on the AM dial. Right-wingers, left-wingers, and all the nuts in between. But even they were gone.
Where the hell is everyone?
She gave up and leaned back in the seat. She felt restless and frantic. She needed to move.
Kate opened the big car door, the loud squeal magnified in the closed confines of the garage.
She walked to the steel door, old and new motor oil on the floor clinging to her bare feet. Her skirt had an inch-long tear along one side, and she was missing some buttons along the hem of her blouse, now untucked. It struck her how nonchalantly she noticed these things when just a day ago she would have been horrified. Appearances were everything in her profession.
Used to be…
She pressed her ear against the steel door. Hearing nothing that could be mistaken for humanity or activity of any kind, she frowned in the semidarkness.
She crouched, gripped the metal handle, and jerked the door upwards. It slid up along the two railings at its sides, and she grunted as she pushed the steel sheet farther up, and up some more. It was much harder to open than close, or maybe it was because her arms felt like jelly after last night. She noticed, for the first time, bruises along her elbows and forearms. When had she gotten those? Her scraped right knee had scabbed over and begun to itch.
She wondered how she looked but was too afraid to check in the mirror. Torn clothes, scars along her body, and her hair probably a mess, too. Her make-up was gone, washed away by tears. She didn’t even remember crying.
Sunlight flashed across the opened garage door and bathed her in its heat. She sighed, stumbled out of the garage, and closed her eyes for a moment, allowing herself to believe that everything was all right. The caress of the warm sun was rapturous, and she dreaded the moment when she finally had to open her eyes again.
The barren streets greeted her first. Then the still, silent traffic lights.
The city looked like some felled capacious beast, now content to dwell in a long, deep slumber. She had expected the sight of the familiar skyscrapers and expanded sea of gray, lesser buildings to fill her with hope, but there was none. Instead, she felt an overwhelming emptiness and sadness…
But mostly sadness.
There was no help coming. There were no helicopters in the sky. No Army trucks in the streets. No police cars blocking traffic or National Guardsmen directing people to safety.
A piece of newspaper, covered in dried blood, blew past her, and she stared after it in silence, wondering where it was going, and if there would be any salvation once it got there.
The Buick’s gas gauge was still hovering over the big red ‘E’ when she checked for the third time in the last ten minutes.
She flipped the visor down to shield her eyes from the sun and drove the Buick out of the garage, going slowly at first, searching the street in front of her. She exited the driveway and eased back onto Milam Street before heading left.
She glimpsed the I-45 in the distance, its long stretch of concrete visible between the tall buildings that sprouted out of Downtown like trees. The I-45 became her beacon. Where there was a highway, there were cars. And where there were cars, there were people. She couldn’t possibly be the only person still in the city. The numbers didn’t add up. It was illogical — vain, even — to think she might be the only person who had survived the night.
The odds are in my favor. They have to be.
She drove slowly, easing around cars parked in the streets, surprised by how many more cars there were in the daylight. Or maybe they had always been there. It was a disturbing thought. How had she avoided an accident when she hadn’t even seen the cars? Was it the lack of seeing, or the not noticing that made her slightly sick?
There were cars on the curbs and sidewalks as well. Not accidents, just haphazardly parked. She maneuvered around familiar pileups at intersections. She saw blood along the sidewalks, on the streets, splashed against car doors, windshields, and car hoods. She felt suddenly very safe inside the big, expansive Buick.
So much blood, but no bodies. She wasn’t surprised, because she knew why.
They’ve been turned. Like Donald, Jack, and “S8UpFun.”
The blinking dashboard fuel light pulled Kate out of her thoughts.
She stared at the small black dial, willing it to move, dammit, move.
But it didn’t.
She leaned back and sighed, and closed her eyes for a brief second when there was a loud thump!
She snapped upright in her seat and saw a man standing next to the Buick holding a baseball bat. He stepped quickly aside as Kate drove ahead a few yards before stepping on the brake.
He was young, just a teenager, really. She guessed he couldn’t be more than sixteen, maybe seventeen, though he was tall. He was African-American, wearing a bloodied white T-shirt and baggy cargo jeans. Kate saw weary eyes looking back at her in the car’s side mirror.
After some hesitation, the teenager walked toward her car door, the baseball bat — caked in dried blood and recently chipped — hung loosely, threateningly at his side. She watched him through the mirror, both hands on the steering wheel.
He was much younger up close. Maybe fifteen…
When he was close enough, he stopped and stared through the closed window. “You going to open the door, or what?”
She didn’t respond. She stared back at him through the window, aware of her foot on the gas pedal. She was buoyed by the fact that the Buick was still in drive, though her other foot was on the brake. Still, all she had to do was release one foot and press down on the other—
“Look, there’s nobody here,” he said. He looked up the empty street for effect. “You’re the first person I’ve found since last night. You can come out.” He paused for a moment. “It’s the sunlight…they don’t like it. I think they’re hiding…or sleeping… I don’t know, but I haven’t seen a single one of them since last night.”
The killings didn’t start until nightfall…
He waited for her to answer, to lower the window or come out — to acknowledge him. She didn’t. Instead, she remained mute behind the safety of the glass, though the rational part of her wasn’t sure if there was much safety there at all. The bat could probably smash right through the window…
“You gonna open the door or what?” he asked again.
She didn’t respond.
“Come on, lady, there’s no one else out here. You’re the first person I’ve seen all morning. Have you seen anyone?”
She managed to shake her head.
“Yeah, me, neither. You got a name, at least?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, sounding exasperated now. Then he threw his hands up. “Okay, whatever. You don’t want to come out. Good luck out there.”