“I love you, Dad.”
The boy rarely said it anymore, and Mike’s eyes watered.
“I love you, too.”
“So what do we do now?”
Mike shrugged. “We go home. Carefully, until we’re sure the zombies are dea—gone. We’ll see if our car is still in the parking lot. If it is, we’ll take 90
to 71, and then hop on I-10.”
“Good. I’m sick of these caves.”
They stepped out of the shadow of the cavern mouth and started down the trail. The treetops and grass swayed back and forth, rustling softly.
“You know what I want?” Kyle asked. “Pizza.”
Mike chuckled. “Yeah, now that you mention it. Beat’s those cold beans we’ve been eating.”
They continued on. Twenty-seven days of living in the cave had hardened them both, but Mike was still tired. Sweat ran into his eyes and he wished for a cool breeze. Despite his exhaustion, he felt good.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” Mike mopped his brow. “We outlasted them.”
Kyle didn’t respond.
The plant life continued rustling.
How, Mike suddenly thought. There’s no wind…
“Dad?”
Mike stopped. Kyle was pointing at something ahead of them. Mike looked. At first, he didn’t understand what they were seeing. An armadillo, still alive and not a zombie; lay twitching on a rock. A black cloud swarmed around it. The cloud buzzed.
“Mosquitoes,” Mike said. “What the hell?”
Kyle screamed.
His legs had turned black, as thousands of ants crawled up them, covering his shoes and pants. Kyle slapped at the creatures and his hands came away covered.
“Dad, get them off me!”
Stunned, Mike beat at the insects, brushing them from his terrified son’s legs. Smashed ants littered the trail. Crushed, their bodies still impossibly twitched.
“Oh Jesus…” Mike moaned. “They’re zombies. Kyle, run! Back to the cave!”
Pushing Kyle ahead of him, Mike glanced back. The mosquitoes forgot about the armadillo and darted towards them. The trail was covered with ants. When he looked back toward the cave, the insects blocked their path, surrounding them.
“Dad—”
“Get off the trail.” Mike shoved him onto the grass. “Keep running!”
The zombies didn’t disappear, he thought. They just changed. It’s not the humans and animals anymore. It’s the fucking bugs!
They ran through the grass, biting ants still clinging to their extremities. Beneath their feet, the grass moved. Yellow lilies stretched towards them, whipping at their legs. Overhead, the tree limbs groaned. The leafy canopy hissed.
Mike tripped, crashing to the ground. Sprawled on the grass, he gasped for breath. Kyle stopped to help him and the mosquitoes surrounded the boy’s face.“Keep going,” Mike shouted. “I’m okay!”
Mike felt the individual blades of grass probe beneath his clothing, entwining around his fingers and ankles.
“Run, Kyle!”
With one last, lingering look, Kyle did, speeding towards the cave mouth, frantically slapping at the hungry insects.
Mike sat up. A vine wrapped around his arm and tugged. Mike tore away and sprang to his feet. More vines encircled him. There was a horrible, wrenching groan behind him. He whirled around and gasped.
Slowly, ponderously, the trees were stalking towards him, tip-toeing along on their tendril-like roots.
Screaming, Mike ripped free of the clinging vines and fled for the cave. He leapt through the mouth. Cool darkness surround him.
“Kyle?”
His voice echoed back to him.
“KYLE!”
“I’m here.” Despite the boy’s age, his son’s voice sounded small and afraid.
Mike’s did, too.
They found each other in the darkness, and returned to their camp inside the cave’s interior. Mike lit their kerosene lantern, and they checked each other for damage. Both were covered in hundreds of insect bites, and the vines had left ugly, red welts on Mike’s arms.
“Dad? There’s no plants in here, right?”
Mike shook his head.
“And bugs don’t live inside caves, right?”
“No,” Mike lied, closing his eyes. “No they don’t.”
At the edges of the lantern’s glow, the cavern floor began to move.
Darkness scuttled towards them.
Outside, the Elilum reigned over all.
BEST SEAT IN
THE HOUSE
The Rising
Day Twenty-Nine
Cashmere, Washington
“Something’s happening.”
Chris Hansen put down his Stephen Crane collection and looked up at Francesca. She stood at the window, the sunlight reflected on her skin. For a second, Chris found it hard to breathe. She looked beautiful, even after living barricaded inside this house, with no showers and very little to eat. She was slender with long dark brunette hair and big brown eyes. The only thing missing was her great smile.
Francesca hadn’t smiled in a long time. Chris nudged the sluggish wheelchair towards her. It was less responsive. The batteries were almost dead. And with the electricity out, there’d be no way to recharge them.
“What is it?” he asked.
Francesca didn’t reply.
They hadn’t seen a zombie for three days. The last one to approach the house had collapsed in the driveway, literally falling apart. The arms fell off and the abdomen popped like a balloon. When Francesca crept outside to investigate, she said the insects burrowing through the rancid flesh were fighting with each other. Chris had scoffed at this.
“So what is it? Not more zombies?”
She shook her head. “Something else…something…weird.”
Chris was thirty-eight years old and had been a quadriplegic for the last eighteen. He had good use of his left arm (except for the fingers), but very limited use of his right. He could not feel his skin or use any muscles below his collarbone. Dead from the neck down, he’d once said. Sometimes he was envious of the dead outside. Unlike him, they could still move.
He looked out the window, and gasped. The trees were dying. Their house sat in the middle of a flat square acre. As they watched, the grass died—and then came back. There was no clear way to describe it. Like a wave on an ocean, a patch of brown rippled across the lawn. In its wake, the grass then turned green again—but it moved. The grass moved, each blade waving like an individual tentacle. The same thing was happening to the trees—tamarack, pine, fir, and blue spruce—each died and was resurrected. They ripped themselves free of the soil and clambered away on their roots. Thankfully, none of them realized there were two humans less than twenty-five feet away.
“It’s spreading,” Chris whispered. “Maybe nobody’s going to come after all.”
“They’ll come.” Francesca wheeled him into the kitchen. “The Rising is over. We’ve stayed inside for twenty-nine days. All we have to do is stay inside for a few more.”
“Not like either one of us were social butterflies anyway.” Chris grinned, trying to take his mind off the strange occurrences outside.
Before Francesca came into his life, Chris had barely left the house in over ten years. They’d met online when he’d purchased some books from her on eBay. Like him, she was reclusive, wading through and waiting on life. After three months of phone calls and emails, Chris invited her to visit. A month later, Francesca left the east coast behind and moved in with him.
Every day since then was magic. Sunshine. Life.
Chris felt alive with her.
“I’ll make you lunch,” Francesca said. “It’s good that you don’t eat much. We’re almost out of food.”