Lisa explained to her that they’d come to the church because it’s where Johnny had decided to ride out the storm, watch the city go to shit.
“You could’ve done something,” Nancy found herself saying, her head pounding so badly now she thought she might pass out.
He shook his head, had a look on his stern face like he wanted to hurt somebody. “Nobody could stop this. It was inevitable.” Everyone was looking at him, but he paid them no mind. “This town’s fucked. Maybe the country.”
“I think it’s localized,” Lou said.
“You sure about that?”
“Could be spreading,” Ruby Sue said. “You know? I mean, shit, maybe town by town like some kind of plague. Think I saw a movie like that once. Anybody see that?”
Ben chimed in, “Listen, everything was fine before we got here. I’m sure it still is.”
Johnny shrugged. “Could be.”
“C’mon, Johnny,” Lou said. “When we were in the cruiser you could hear traffic on the radio. Cops calling in plate numbers, responding to calls. It sounded perfectly normal out there.”
“Did you call for help?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah. I tried. I hope I got through. I told ’em to get their fucking dead asses to this shithole on the double.”
Nancy thought that was good. If he got through help would arrive. Sooner or later, the cops would investigate. She was certain of that.
Ben was sitting by her on the couch, his face cradled in his hands. “Johnny? You live… or lived here, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Just outside town.”
“Well, what the hell happened?”
“About five days ago—I was out of town—we got this rain. It went on all day and night. No big deal, right? Except that in the afternoon, guy told me, it looked like ink.” He had their attention now if he hadn’t before. “After that, well, everyone started getting sick. Started staying inside, calling into school and work. People were saying we had a flu outbreak. No big deal. Half of the country was going through it, too. Nobody gave it a second thought. By Saturday, there wasn’t anyone around. Like a fucking ghost town. But Saturday night—”
“They started coming out of their holes?” Ben said.
“Yeah, you got it. Not a lot, but some. Sunday night, it was half the town… and tonight, well, you know what it’s like now.”
“I can’t believe somebody didn’t notice something,” Nancy said.
Johnny looked at her. “What’s to notice? The flu? Shit, it’s everywhere. Schools closing, businesses not opening. Think anybody’s gonna freak out about just another town coming down with it? You know how it is in the fall, winter, and spring… there’s always a lot of it around. They even talk about it on TV. No biggie. By the time somebody might have noticed, the phone lines were down and we were cut off. Who knows, maybe nobody wanted help. Maybe they didn’t want to admit that there was a problem in the first place. So they crawled under the covers, went to sleep. Except when they woke up that night… they didn’t see things the same way anymore.”
It was a chilling hypothesis, but it made a certain amount of sense.
It could’ve worked that way. People thought they had the flu. Even if they went to a doctor or the emergency room of a hospital with flu symptoms, they would’ve been sent home, told to drink lots of fluids and get some sleep.
Nancy closed her eyes for a moment.
The darkness felt good.
Her limbs were aching now, a tight ball of nausea jumping in her belly. She kept her hands hidden beneath the blanket though she was too warm, her scalp tight and itchy, sweat at her temples.
Flu? She wanted to laugh at that. But her body hurt too much.
Lou sat there, nodding. “All right. Say there was something in that rain. It couldn’t have gotten everyone. Am I right?”
“Maybe it spread person to person after that.”
“Could be,” Johnny said. “By the time I realized something was really fucked-up, it was too late.”
But they’d all gotten a taste of his nihilism by that point and they didn’t exactly believe him. They pretty much figured he liked all this.
Lou lit another cigarette. “Your husband tell you we’re not alone? There’s some people in the basement. Got themselves locked in. Johnny found ’em before. They won’t come out.”
“They think we’re… what do you call ’em, Johnny?”
“Rabids.”
“Yeah, rabids.”
Lou shook his head. “Bunch of Jesus freaks by the sound of ’em,” he said, like the idea disgusted him. “They got it into their heads that it’s the fucking Rapture or some crap. Rapture, my white ass.”
“They’re singing hymns, man,” Ruby Sue said. “And they sound like shit. Why don’t you go give ’em some pointers, Lisa?”
“I’ll pass.” She got up and left the room, taking her purse with her.
“Say the word, people, and I go clean ’em out,” Johnny suggested to them.
Joe laughed at that. “Few less pests knocking at people’s doors.”
“They’re scared,” Lou said. “You can’t blame ’em.”
No, Nancy thought, you can’t blame them.
There was a strange tingling where Sam had bitten her. It throbbed dully. She felt very… restless. Sore, tired. But she’d been through a lot and that had to be normal… right? Because she couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something felt wrong. And it wasn’t just the pain or nausea or numbness in her hands. There was no one word she could put to it, just a sense that something in her wasn’t exactly right.
Lisa came back in about five minutes later.
Nancy thought she looked much better.
“What time is it?” Nancy asked Ben.
“Almost midnight.”
Midnight. Christ in Heaven. Is that all? Another six, seven hours to dawn? That much time… might as well have been a week. What time had Sam bitten her? Ten? Ten-thirty? Yes, no more than that. And already she could feel it creeping through her, that malignancy.
She jerked stiffly under the blankets as a convulsion ripped through her.
“You okay?” Ben asked.
“Cramp,” she lied. “Ow.”
“All we gotta do here, people, is wait for dawn,” Johnny told them in a low voice. “When the sun comes up, they’ll crawl back in their holes. At least until the sun goes down again.”
Lou sat there staring at him, cigarette hanging from his lips. “What are you saying? We got vampires here?”
“No, not exactly.”
Joe turned away from the window. “If you know something, buddy, maybe you should spill it.”
Lou stood up now. It was pretty plain he’d had his fill. “Yeah, c’mon. If you know what this is about, for chrissake tell us.”
They were all watching him.
Johnny looked at them each in turn. A dark species of dread crossed his face. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone. You see, I’ve seen this before. But it was a long time ago and a world away…”
-THE WALKING PESTILENCE-
18
I spent two tours in Vietnam with the SEAL teams. You know who they are, what they do. I won’t go into that. Why did I join a unit like that? Late ’69 and ’70 they were beefing up the Teams because a lot of the conventional Army and Marine units were pulling out. Not just the SEALs, but other groups like Marine Force Recon and Army Special Forces. End of ’68 I was a swabby doing basic at Great Lakes in Chicago. I was eighteen. I joined the Navy because I didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to die in some foreign shithole. I thought I could avoid the draft and spend my time on a battleship, getting drunk and catching the clap in port. Towards the end of boot, the chief gave us a little chat, said they needed volunteers for the riverboat Navy, the River Rats. You’ve probably seen those guys on the Discovery Channel or something—they cruised the rivers in patrol boats, exchanging fire with the NVA and VC. Had a high casualty rate. Grunts in the bush had nothing on these guys.