He’d explored for the last two hours and hadn’t encountered a single active zombie. The dead were dead again. The stench of rotting corpses hung thick, filling the streets like fog. He’d tied a bandana around his mouth and nose, but it did little to help. It was beautiful. The smell of victory.
“It’s over,” Brian said out loud as he climbed down. “It’s really over. They’re gone!”
His voice bounced back to him off the abandoned buildings. Gone…gone…gone…
Where were the other survivors? He couldn’t be the only one, could he? His wife and daughters had…
They had…
He blinked away tears. He couldn’t be the only person left alive.
Brian’s parents moved to Goffstown when he was five years old. He went away to college for a few years (where he studied engineering), but then moved back, along with his wife (whom he’d met while in school). They’d lived here since, along with their three daughters. Life was good, the way it was supposed to be. A month ago, they’d added money to his daughter’s college and wedding funds. Now…
He ripped the bandanna from his face and screamed. “What’s the point? I can’t be the only one left!”His echoes answered him.
Overcome with delayed anger and grief, Brian snapped. He ran through the streets, firing into the unmoving corpses until he was out of ammunition. Then he clubbed them, beating them into piles of red pulp, until the rifle’s stock shattered. He sank to his knees in a red, wet puddle, and sobbed. Eventually, he found a vehicle that still had the keys, and drove out to his parents’ home. They were gone, of course, killed the same night as the rest of his family, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t return to his own home. He just couldn’t. His parents’ home was on the west side of Addison Road, halfway between Shirley Hill and Winding Brook roads. Driving there, trying to ignore the constant crunch of bodies beneath the tires, Brian thought back to his youth…in the woods with his sister, Anne, and best friends, Ken and John, digging junk out of the old dump, walking along the old overgrown railroad bed, exploring streams and swamps, catching frogs, and barely making it home in time for supper.
He stopped when he saw the Big Pipe. That’s what they’d called it—a huge granite culvert and cement pipe that ran under Addison, big enough to stand in when they were kids. They’d sit on the end in the spring and watch the water rush through, the level from the melting snow. Now, it trickled through, barely ankle deep.
Lost in memory, Brian got out of the vehicle and scrambled over the rocks. In the forest, the leaves hissed. He walked through a patch of waist high weeds, twisting as they clung to his jeans. The weeds refused to let go. They squeezed tighter. The trees groaned.
Brian looked down and screamed, thoughts of his endless childhood summers gone.
Ticks swarmed up his legs, crawling over the denim. He’d never seen so many before, a moving carpet. Frantic, he tried brushing them off. Lyme disease, he thought. Oh fuck, I survived and now I’m gonna get Lyme disease.
The weeds cinched around his wrists, coiling like snakes. That was when Brian noticed they were dead: brown and withered—yet still moving. Slapping at the insects (he could feel them all over him now), Brian wrenched free of the vegetation and started back up the embankment. There was a deafening crash. He looked up at the road—which had suddenly sprouted a forest. Tall oaks and pines covered Addison, their roots serving as legs. Their limbs battered the vehicle, smashing the windshield and crushing the roof. Brian wheeled around and fled for the Big Pipe. A mosquito buzzed his face, biting him right below the eye. He glanced down at his feet and noticed that the insects were not only attacking him, but attacking each other as well. They’re zombies. It wasn’t over. It’s just spread to other life forms.
If that was true, then he stood no chance. No chance at all.
“No.”
He dove into the culvert and crouched low, ducking into the Big Pipe. He’d been able to stand up inside it as a kid. Now he barely fit. Splashing through the water, he burrowed into the darkness. He still felt insects crawling on him, but he couldn’t see them. There was little light inside the pipe, just two small circles of daylight at each end. He stripped down to his underwear and flung his clothing as far as he could. Then he slapped at his exposed skin and checked for ticks.
It grew darker.
Brian glanced back at the opening. The daylight was slowly disappearing, blocked out by the vegetation choking the exits. Soon, it was pitch black.
Brian Lee retreated back into his memories, ignoring the slithering sounds, creeping closer in the darkness.
MARCH OF THE
ELILUM
The Rising
Day Twenty-Eight
Florida Caverns State Park
When it was all over, Michael Bland and his son, Kyle, were grateful to be alive. Before they’d gone underground, Mike, a 46-year-old divorcee, was a professional geologist with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. His entire world had revolved around 14-year-old Kyle. When they saw each other (every other week as ordered by the court) they spent time playing World of Warcraft and going to the movies and just hanging out. When Kyle was at his mother’s, Mike, who had been married for nineteen years, enjoyed his independence. He didn’t date, and had no desire to start. One of his co-workers had once suggested that he “come out of his cave.”
Mike stood blinking in the sunlight. He remembered the comment, and laughed.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“Just thinking.”
Kyle glanced back at the cave entrance and then to his father. “Do you really think they’re gone?”
Mike nodded. “Sure looks that way. Maybe they’re all dead.”
“They were already dead, Dad. They can’t die twice.”
“Well, whatever it is that happens when you destroy their brain—maybe it’s finally happened to them all.”
Mike and Kyle had taken shelter in the caves (only an hour from Mike’s home in Tallahassee) on the second day of The Rising. They’d burrowed deep into the subterranean network, hiding among the dazzling formations of limestone stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flowstones, and draperies. The cave was dry and air-filled, and a small spring fed by the Chipola River, provided them with water. They had sleeping bags and a kerosene lantern and other survival gear. By the second week, they’d run low on food, and Mike went out to find some. Despite the warm sunlight, he shuddered, remembering the horses.
Florida Caverns State Park was also popular for horseback riding, and offered stables for equestrian campers. Some of those animals must have been left behind, starved to death in their pens, and then reanimated. While Mike had been hunting for food, the zombie horses attacked.
He rubbed his forehead, which still bore the scabbed, crusty imprint of a hoof.
“Dad?”
“Hmmm?”
“What if we’re the only people left alive? What about Mom?”
Mike felt a pang of regret. What if, indeed?
Could they possibly be the last living humans? No, there had to be others, maybe hiding underground like they were, unaware that the zombie plague was over. He wondered if there were other fathers out there, battling to get to their sons or loved ones. If so, he wished them luck.
“I don’t know, Kyle. But we’ve got each other. If there is anybody else left, they probably can’t say the same.”