Eat Your Heart Out, page 27
“Got it,” Fannon says.
We follow behind Miller. He grabs a shopping cart and takes an odd route, leading us through the aisle where they keep the barbecue supplies. He loads his cart up with bags of charcoal, lighter fluid, several lighters, and packages of paper towels. He opens the lighter packages as we walk.
“Just in case,” he says.
Every once in a while, we hear a series of snorts and crunches.
We all know.
We’re not alone in the store.
Miller points to a green EMERGENCY EXIT sign near the back, to the right of the butcher counter. “Okay, there it is. Let’s get ready to run. Paul. Now.”
Roger casts a reluctant glance back at us. But he and Fannon both take a side of the shopping cart holding Rachel and make a break for the door.
I take off after Fannon even though I don’t know why we have to run or where we’re even running to, but when we come to the end of the aisle, it’s clear what’s happening.
And Miller must have expected it.
Whatever happened in that factory, he and Rachel understand those things better than I do. Three of the zombies are behind the smashed-in glass butcher’s counter stuffing raw steak and hamburger into their monster mouths. It’s the first time I’ve really been able to get a good look at them in the light. There are two small ones and a third that towers over the others by a foot or so. They all have the same bluish-green fishy skin, but the iridescent scales create different patterns, much like people would have freckles or sunspots.
The monsters freeze for a second and watch us with their black eyes.
The big one roars.
They’re coming our way.
We’re going to be chased by three of those monsters into the narrow hallway that leads to the store’s rear exit. We’ll never be able to fight off three of those things. There’s an aluminum dolly near the hallway entrance, and Miller grabs it, dragging it with one hand and the shopping cart with the other.
This is it.
Miller pushes me down the hallway and blocks it with his shopping cart.
“Go! Go now!” he screams.
Oh God. I can see his plan.
He’s going to stay and fight them.
He’s going down with the ship.
He’s going to try to buy us enough time to get away. Steve Miller plans to set the shopping cart on fire and stop the zombies from entering the hallway for as long as he can. Miller is basically going to be a one-man version of the Spartans at Thermopylae.
I grab his hand, and I squeeze it hard. I don’t care if I hurt him. “No! No! I won’t let you do this. I won’t let you die for us.” For me.
I make a grab for a bag of charcoal and one of the lighters. Maybe we could use the charcoal briquettes like cannonballs. Maybe we could set the things on fire. Maybe the two of us working together could successfully fight them. There have to be other things to use as weapons. This is Arizona. The land famous for no gun control. There has to be a rifle around here somewhere.
There has to be.
Miller blocks my access to the cart and pushes me back again. He hoists the silver dolly up, getting ready to use it like a battering ram. “Vivian! Those monsters are ten times as fast as we are, and they’re getting smarter. There’s no way we’ll be able to stall them long enough for all of us to get away, and we can’t fight three of them and win, especially without the gun. I’ll buy you as much time as I can. You have to go. Now!”
Those things continue to watch us. Surveying our fight with almost amusement.
No. No. No. I stand my ground.
“Get the hell out of here, Vee,” Miller screams so close to me that my ears start to ring.
“I won’t! I won’t!” I make another attempt to get to the shopping cart.
The zombies cock their heads while I scream.
“Smentkowski!” Miller yells.
Miller pushes me back one last time into Smentkowski’s arms. Smentkowski presses himself flat against the wall of the narrow hallway, and I squeeze past him. Once I am in front of him in the hallway, he shoves me forward as hard as he can. But I don’t want to go on. I really want to stay. I really want to go down with the ship too.
I can smell the lighter fluid and hear the sizzle of charcoal as we move down the hall.
The rear door opens to a narrow access road and a wide land bank full of red rocks and short pine trees. Smentkowski slams the door behind us. Fannon is already off in the distance. Working with Roger to get Rachel’s shopping cart across the rocks. A second later we can’t see them anymore. They’ve left the strip of brightness created by the store’s parking lot lights.
Smentkowski grabs my hand and tries to pull me in that direction.
I yank my hand free.
I’ve never hated someone so much in my life as I hate Smentkowski.
He is going to let Steve die.
I make for the door. “Let me go! We have to go back. We have to—”
Smentkowski shoves me one last time. “No!” he says. “It’s not what he wants. If you go back in there, it means he’ll die for nothing. If you care about Steve Miller, do what he told you. Vivian, this one time. Listen to someone else.”
Listen.
This one time.
This one time I let Smentkowski take my hand.
And together.
We run.
STEVE MILLER
Too late, I realize what I really am.
The Courageous Captain.
Or maybe I always knew.
There’s something strangely reassuring about knowing who I am. What I am.
Like at least the events of my life make some kind of sense.
I hope my mom isn’t gonna be too pissed. She didn’t want me coming to camp. She wanted me home. At least when you’re dead, people can’t say, I told you so.
I might be going down with the ship.
But I’m making sure my crew gets off in the lifeboats first.
I glance back at the door behind me.
I’m half expecting the door to open and Vivian to burst through.
But it stays closed.
I’ve saved the girl.
My girl.
The creatures creep toward me.
Now I wait.
For the inevitable.
SHELDON SMENTKOWSKI
Thank God I’m able to get Vivian away from that damn door.
She finally follows me, and then we follow Paul and Roger.
Once we get into the trees it’s kind of dark, but we still make pretty good time. The two of us don’t have to push a shopping cart full of a pregnant girl, and Vivian is pretty athletic. I spend most of the time trying to run at the same pace.
We come out of the line of trees and stand facing a large complex of hospital buildings. I’m out of breath, so I point in the direction of the red EMERGENCY sign. Vivian nods, and we jog in that direction.
When we arrive at the main door, Roger leans against the wall, on the verge of collapse. The set of double glass doors has been boarded up with what look like tabletops. Paul beats his fists against the glass. But he, too, looks like he’s ready to fall over, and his knocking doesn’t seem to have accomplished much of anything. Rachel pants in a steady rhythm.
For all we know, there are more of those monsters out here.
We don’t have time for this.
There’s a large potted plant near the door.
Vivian gets the idea fast, and the two of us scramble around it. We each take a side. The thing is seriously heavy, and Vivian grunts as she lifts it. We’re giving it a little bit of a swing, preparing to toss it into the hospital door, when the wood pieces are cautiously lifted. I spot two guards in Silverstone uniforms. They both have raised handguns pointed in our direction.
Behind them, a thin woman in blue scrubs peers through the gaps in their shoulders.
“Help,” Vivian shouts. “We need help.”
The men pry the glass doors open with their fingers. When it’s open wide enough for Rachel to pass through, Fannon and Roger hurry her inside the building.
I push Vivian toward the door. “We made it,” I say with an exhale.
On the opposite side of the door, two women in scrubs are already hustling Rachel onto a gurney and wheeling her away from us.
Vivian squeezes through the door. She turns around and glances over her shoulder at me.
I smile. It’s meant to be reassuring.
We made it.
Her mouth opens into a terrible scream. She tumbles to the ground. Looks of panic overtake the faces of the guards. Something cold slithers around my arm. Warm breath on my ear and the smell of an aquarium that desperately needs to be cleaned.
The monster has come for me.
There’s a snap as I’m jerked backward.
I’m pretty sure my arm is broken.
It feels like nails are being driven into my neck.
My feet fall slack as I’m dragged through the snow.
Vivian gets farther and farther away. She’s up on her feet again, trying to get past the guards at the door. She’d probably come into the fucking street and try to fist-fight the thing if the guards would let her.
The space between us is filled with all the things I’ll never get to do. The apologies I’ll never make. Sights I’ll never see. My potential, whatever it is, or was, dwindles away. Vanishes forever.
Gunfire breaks into the street. I spot the smallish zombie from the grocery store running in my direction. Steve was right. We couldn’t kill those things. Only delay them for a while.
More guys in black Silverstone uniforms scramble around inside the hospital. They’re shouting and firing in every direction and boarding up the windows again.
I close my eyes.
And then . . .
RACHEL BENEDICT
Push. Push. Push. You have to stay with me. You’re doing great. Just one more big push ought to do it. I know it hurts. Squeeze my hand, Rachel. You’re doing great. You’ve come so far. You can do it. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Breathe. I know it hurts. You’re doing so good, sweetheart. Almost. Almost.
Then.
The most gorgeous, deep, dark blue eyes I have ever seen.
Blue.
Like cobalt. Or the deepest ocean.
It’s a girl.
And I love her more than anything.
PAUL FANNON
Stevie Allison Benedict is born at 4:47 a.m.
We weren’t able to tell Rachel about Smentkowski until after she’d named the baby.
Roger has a broken arm and a huge gash on his stomach. He’s in surgery for a while. They’re able to fix Vivian’s face with some surgical tape, but my arm needs stitches. I’m out for a while for a blood transfusion. Then they give me what seems like about a hundred shots.
My dad isn’t here to make sense of it all for me.
As soon as Rachel and the baby are in stable condition, we’re all moved into a quarantine unit at the hospital. Doctors and nurses in cartoonish hazmat suits come and go. We’re not allowed to call our parents. We’re not allowed to see each other. We’re not allowed to watch the news or access a computer or use the phone.
We’re given old stacks of magazines and told to be patient.
Then, we wait.
After an eternity, we’re moved to Fort Huachuca, an army base close to the Mexican border. In some ways, this is better.
We’re allowed to see each other and watch TV.
In some ways, it’s worse.
We find out what the world thinks is going on.
And about how royally screwed we are.
The day after we’re checked in at the base, we’re more or less able to wander around our isolation barracks. The first time I see Vivian again is in the commissary. I’m sitting there with a plate full of cold chicken and an unopened container of green Jell-O.
She takes the chair across from me. She’s wearing a pair of Silverstone blue sweats, same as me. No hello or how have you been or anything, just, “They took it. Those bastards took it.”
When I stare back at her, she goes on. “The camera. Allie’s camera. I thought they might try something, so I hid it under the mattress. I went out for a bunch of tests, and when I came back it was gone. We’ve got nothing. Allison and Steve and Sheldon died for nothing.”
Vivian gets up and paces around the table.
“They died to save us. That’s why they died,” I say.
An expression of horror crosses her face, and she deflates, falling into her chair again. “I know,” she says. “I know. But after everything that’s happened, I was hoping that something good would come out of it.”
I nod. It’s easier to believe that our friends died to expose some big conspiracy instead of so that I could be sitting here, poking at my lunch.
“Have you heard anything about our parents?” she asks me.
I shake my head.
She leans forward. “I overheard one of the nurses saying that my mom has a lawyer and that Rachel’s dad got the governor to call.” She glances at the soldiers guarding the exit. “They have to let us out of here, right?”
I shrug. “I don’t think they have to do anything.”
Vivian’s shoulders fall. “Have you seen the news?”
Oh yeah.
We’re the Featherlite Four.
Three teenagers and a camp employee. The only survivors of the worst blizzard in the history of the state of Arizona. An environmental disaster that killed over four hundred people.
Roger mostly stays in his room.
We’re all listed as being in critical condition.
We learn that after the first monster broke loose, the afternoon we arrived at camp, Silverstone was able to evacuate most of Flagstaff, sending everyone who would go to Phoenix and rounding up everyone else and putting them in high school gyms and hospitals and churches. Flagstaff Medical Center was actually a safe haven site for locals.
I’m pretty sure this is what ended up saving our lives. That we saw hundreds of people at the hospital.
And they saw us.
The government can’t deny we exist. And our parents are squawking enough that Silverstone can’t just whack us.
They even show Rachel’s dad several times on the news. He looks about like what you’d expect. Kind of bald and kind of cranky, and he takes turns offering up his church for anyone in need and asking everyone to pray for his daughter.
The worst of it though is when they show that actress Dorian Leigh DuMonde in a velvet dress, posed in front of some castle in Transylvania, with mascara running down her face. It takes all my strength to keep Vivian from kicking in the television.
Army people come and go.
Silverstone people come and go.
They don’t introduce themselves.
We’re interviewed separately.
We’re interviewed together.
As the days stretch on, it’s more like Vivian is interviewing them. One morning, I think it might be a Tuesday, we’re in the interview room.
Vivian: What happened to Steve Miller?
Silverstone Man 1: This would be your boyfriend from camp?
Vivian: You know who he is! When are you letting us out of here?
Silverstone Man 2: When we believe that it will be safe.
Vivian: For whom?
Silverstone Man 2: We also need to make sure we understand what happened at camp.
Vivian: We’ve been over that. The zombies destroyed it.
Silverstone Man 1: Ah yes. Those would be the genetically engineered super soldiers.
Silverstone Man 2: (laughs) The fish men.
Vivian: I didn’t say they were fish men. And you guys should know what they are. You created them.
Silverstone Man 1: I don’t know anything. And neither do you.
Silverstone Man 2: The sooner you become part of the solution, the sooner you can go home, Miss Ellenshaw.
The room is suddenly even chillier.
The baby stops squirming around.
My blood runs cold. Rachel told me all about Silverstone and their threats against my father. That made me feel a little better. Like, it’s a relief to know Dad isn’t a cold-blooded killer. But my friends don’t need their fatness “cured.” They need people like me and my father to treat them with respect. If we make it out of this, it’s gonna be on me to make sure that happens
And that was a big if. Because the Silverstone guys said that same thing to my father.
You’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the solution.
Before they killed Kaiser.
It was obviously meant to intimidate us.
If we want to go home, we have to convince them that we are part of a solution that doesn’t include anyone from Silverstone being held accountable for their actions.
The only thing we’ve got going for us is that everyone really likes the baby. And the baby has great timing. When things are getting rough, little Stevie will let out the cutest yawn and everyone will settle down. Or when the interview goes on too long, she’ll cry and the Silverstone guys will mumble something about coming back later.
The problem is.
They do keep coming back later.
That night we have dinner in the TV room. They seem to be on some kind of a schedule with the meals, and tonight is Salisbury steak with macaroni and cheese.
Yep. It’s definitely Tuesday.
“All the interviews. I think they’re a diversionary tactic,” Vivian says as she makes herself a plate. “They’re stalling. They’re keeping us here while they clean everything up.”
Rachel is distracted by the baby but nods along.
