This was perhaps forty-five minutes after Ed and Annie fled the scene at Charlie’s Pocket. They’d run down the line behind the Main Street businesses for a block, until the area behind the shops widened into the row house neighborhoods. This, at first, seemed like a good thing, because the bigger the territory, the more places there were to hide. A lot of people lived in those blocks, though, so there were a whole lot of zombies wandering around. It was quickly apparent that they could make up for their slowness afoot with high volumes and coordinated movement.
Ed and Annie barely made it back up the hill to the shops again. On three occasions one of the townspeople got close enough to grab and hold down Annie, so Ed had to learn very quickly what was involved in getting them to let go. It seemed to be a combination of her screaming and him whacking them in the head with whatever was available. A shriek at the right pitch appeared to confuse them somehow—something Beth commented on earlier in the day—and the blow to the cranium stunned the zombies enough for Annie to wriggle loose.
By the time Billy grabbed a hold of her behind the Yarn Palace, they’d gotten pretty good at it, and Ed stopped thinking of the people whose skulls he was damaging as people at all. Then he recognized whom he’d just clubbed and felt terrible about it.
It was another fifteen minutes of hiding and sprinting and hiding before they made it to the back of the diner.
Annie had a key.
“Not that I know who to call, but the landlines are down too, in case you were wondering,” Annie said, emerging from the kitchen. She had a first aid kit and a look of concern. The latter probably had to do with the lump above Ed’s left eye.
He was sitting at one of the counter stools, which was probably a mistake. The chair had no back to it, and without the constant fear of death his adrenaline was dropping.
This is when people faint.
“Okay, let me have a look at that,” Annie said. She opened the kit on the counter. Ed took off his glasses and let her have a look.
“Gonna leave a mark?” he asked.
“Probably. It’s just a lump though, no cut. Don’t know what I was thinking with this kit, you need some ice.”
She disappeared in back again.
“You could have called the president,” Ed said. He reached into the first aid kit and pulled out a couple of bandages, which he decided he probably needed too. His body was starting to notify him of a variety of trouble areas on his person that may in fact be bleeding. Scratches, mostly. He was glad zombie-ism wasn’t contagious in Sorrow Falls like it was in the movies.
Annie re-emerged with a dishtowel wrapped around ice cubes.
“I don’t know his number.”
He took the ice, removed his glasses and pressed the towel to the lump. He was a little alarmed by how large the bump felt.
“I do.”
“Ooh. So what would we even say? ‘Mr. President, Sorrow Falls is overrun by zombies?’ He’d think we were pranking him.”
“Prank calls don’t make it to the oval office. But I think I’d tell him not to bomb us.”
“Not to… why would they do that?”
“It’s one of the contingency plans.”
“That’s a really crummy plan.”
“That’s the nature of contingency plans. They tend to be awful, but they exist to stop something even more awful from happening.”
“What kind of bomb, Ed?”
Ed didn’t answer, which was an answer unto itself.
“Jesus Christ, how is that a better option?”
Ed laughed.
“You don’t really realize what you’ve been next to all this time. I don’t think anyone in this town does. You know, we tried to move it once? The plan was hatched after the first year. We became convinced that thing was just a large piece of abandoned tech. So we got the idea to just scoop up the entire field and roll it out of town. Heavy earth-moving equipment was requisitioned and everything.”
“I don’t believe you. I would have seen the diggers.”
“They never made it into town. Things kept happening en route. Trucks would stall, engines would blow, and steering columns would lock up. Nothing made it all the way. And that’s the problem. That ship is plugged into our communications in a way we can’t even understand, and it can affect mechanical equipment at a distance that extends far beyond the immediate area.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, wow. And it gets worse. The next plan after that was to install failsafe explosives around the ship. That way, if things went wonky someone would just push a button and blow up half of Sorrow Falls. Remember that munitions explosion last year?”
“Yeah, that was a terrorist thing.”
“That was the story, certainly.”
“But that was in Delaware or something.”
“Yes. It was. The devices that failed were the exact ones scheduled for installation in Sorrow Falls, down to the last serial number. The message wasn’t subtle.”
“Message?”
“It can hurt us anywhere, any time, and more importantly, it doesn’t want to move. Most people assume it landed in Sorrow Falls at random, but that’s not the case at all. It wants to be right here, in this town. And after three years, we still don’t know why. We do know how to destroy an entire town, though, if we have to. We’re pretty good at that.”
Annie stepped away from the counter, to the front window. The curtains were closed, or they’d have zombies trying to break in already. By his estimation, they had maybe ten minutes before the group collectively figured out exactly where he and Annie were, and then it would be over, because as much as it was to their benefit short-term to find a place to hole up and rest, in the long-term, they were cornered.
Annie peeked around one of the curtains.
“We know it wants me,” she said.
“We don’t know that.”
“All right, it thinks it wants me. What’s the difference?”
“We don’t know what it wants you for. Maybe it’s just mad you screwed up the paint job on the hull.”
“Funny.”
“I’m serious, what’s happening out there doesn’t even make sense. If the goal was to get you to the ship, the zombies would be giving us free access to the southern half of Main, but they aren’t.”
“You mean they would be herding us there.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Well what we’re doing isn’t working, is it?”
“We’re on the wrong side of the town is all. We just need to get to get across Main somehow.”
“They’re lined up out front. I don’t think we’d make it.”
She closed the curtain.
“What if I went alone?” she asked. “Like, what if they aren’t herding us to the ship because you’re with me and I’m supposed to go by myself.”
“And what if they want to find you so they can tear you apart? I can’t let you do that.”
“Like you could stop me?”
“Annie…”
“Well what other choices to we have? Surrender’s the only thing we haven’t tried, and maybe if I do it you’ll make it out alive.”
None of us are making it out alive tonight, he thought.
“I’m not about to let a sixteen-year old sacrifice herself for me.”
“Not just for you. The whole town.”
“Well that’s very noble of you, but we need a better option.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but… Annie, they don’t want you to bring you back to their planet and make you a princess. This isn’t a movie. This is a malevolent force fixated on you, and we have to assume the worst because we’ve been given no indication to think otherwise.”