Prometheus Mode, page 9
I wend my way through them in a panic, barely avoiding smashing into them, until I reach a place where they’re still staring at the sky. Where they don’t notice we’re here. I slow down, measure my breathing. I can’t see Brother Matthew. I can’t believe he abandoned us, just took off. The dead stand all around, a forest of hollow stumps. The drowning rain pours into their mouths, filling their desiccated gullets until it spills back out and over their charred lips. Drops explode off their faces, shatter into a million smaller droplets on the surfaces of their unblinking blind eyes. It runs down their necks and pools in the sinewy hollows at their shoulders. They’re almost serene. I can’t help staring at them in wonderment, both terrified and humbled.
Until Micah slams into me.
I sprawl straight into the feet of the nearest one. It stumbles, turns, and lowers its head. Water gushes out of its mouth. Its entire body sags until it assumes the characteristic slouch of the dead. A moan gurgles from its throat. The IUs standing nearby begin to lower their heads, too. More moans, more snapping jaws. The awakening spreads like a wave. The rain no longer holds their attention. They have more urgent needs to attend to.
“Get up!” Micah growls into my ear. He yanks on my arm.
The IU I’d knocked lurches toward me; I scramble beneath its outstretched arms and scamper across the broken, littered, rain-slicked pavement until I can get my feet beneath me. I look for the nearest opening between their shrouded forms and head for it. Micah follows, still clutching a wriggling, whining Shinji. I no longer care where Brother Matthew is. Right now we need to stay out of the reach of the undead.
“Wrong way!” Micah shouts, when we reach a fence. “Go back!”
I spin and retrace our steps. The dead are moving now, bobbing and weaving the turbulence of our wake. They reach out and rake my back and arms with their bony fingers. I picture Jake lying on the table, soon to become of them, and I realize I don’t want to die, not now and not like that. I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity waiting for the rain.
A massive darkness rises before me. My first instinct is to turn away from it, but it feels like it may be a building, and a building means shelter. I plunge ahead.
The groans of the awakened undead have become a chorus. We’re surrounded now. We flash past them. They’re genderless and ageless, timeless and mindless, shadows and shapes filled with endless hunger. There is nothing in their blackened eyes but longing, nothing in their rotting brains but a single impulse, given form and manner in their clacking teeth. The rain continues to pour down on us all, but it’s no longer a distraction. It flows down their heads and past their mouths like so many tears, as if the sky cannot stop crying for their lives lost and stolen.
The darkness ahead deepens, rises, solidifies. A shape takes form, materializing into the façade of a storefront. Brother Matthew appears out of nowhere. He flashes past, heading left. I follow, glancing back to make sure Micah and Shinji do as well. I trip over the curb of a sidewalk, flail for a moment. There are no IUs here, where the rain is blocked by the walls of the building and the wind angles it away. Matthew skids to a stop in front of a doorway. He pries at the lock, twists, yanks it open. “Inside,” he tells me. He grabs my arm, and pulls me into the shop.
I head straight to the large display window in front and look out.
Behind me, Micah stumbles in, gasping. The door shuts. The lock clicks.
“Get away from there.”
“They can’t see her,” Brother Matthew pants.
He shakes the water from his hair and disappears into the back of the store.
Shinji jumps from Micah’s arms. He shakes himself off, too. Micah and I can only stare at each other and gasp for breath. Water pours off of us, puddles onto the tile floor, turning the dust into mud. I’m shivering, but I don’t feel cold.
Shinji presses against my leg, breaking the trance. He lets out a quiet whine, as if to remind me he’s still alive. I mouth “Thank you” to Micah, then crouch down to hug him.
“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” Micah says. “I save the mutt, and you get the love.”
“Don’t call him a mutt.”
I bury my face into his matted fur. I don’t care that it stinks of wet dog and feels gritty on my cheek. Our hearts rattle against each other. I close my eyes and count the beats, but I quickly lose track. After a minute, he licks my face, extracts himself from my arms, and wanders off after Brother Matthew.
“We’ll stay here until the Elders go back to sleep,” he calls from the back of the store. He’s clattering around. Only then do I realize where we are.
“Well, looks like you got your wish,” Micah says. He crouches down beside me. “Bikes galore.”
I pull him into a hug and start to sob. Traitor or not, whether he consciously remembers who he really is or is still faking it, in this moment, he is my savior. By saving Shinji, he’s saved me.
Chapter 13
“You knew this shop was here,” I say, stating the obvious.
Brother Matthew nods without turning away from the bike pump he’s using to inflate the newly installed inner tube. “Of course I knew. Why do you think I came this way?”
“I thought it might be to drown us,” I grumble.
He scowls. “You wanted bikes. Normally, I prefer walking. I rarely have need for such speed anymore. Discretion, yes; speed, no. I remembered this shop was here.”
“So, you know of other ways to get through the wall?” Micah asks. He flits around our conversation like a moth trying desperately to inseminate a light bulb.
“Of course. There are easier ways, but this was closest to this shop.”
“How many?”
Brother Matthew continues pumping. “The barrier is actually quite porous.” He pauses and leans his back against a repair bench. “For the living, anyway. When Arc erected it, they weren’t all that concerned about such vulnerabilities. They just wanted to be sure the Elders — and, later, the Deceivers — couldn’t get out. They never considered that living people would want to sneak through.”
“Bet they’re whistling a different tune now,” Micah says.
Brother Matthew doesn’t offer any further opinions on the matter. He finishes pumping the tire. After testing the pressure with his fingers, he moves onto the next one.
“Well,” Micah says. “It’s good to know that there are options, because there’s no way in hell I’m going back down into another sewer.”
“Storm drainage, not sewer.”
“Which right there should’ve been our first clue not to enter it during a storm.”
“I agree,” I say.
“As I said before, I’ve never seen it so full,” Brother Matthew grunts. There’s no hint of apology, neither in his words nor his tone. “I’ve been in the tunnels during the rainy season before. This was...” He frowns, as if he’s just realized something worrying. “Anyway, it was the most convenient access point. It’s always been one of the safest and most reliable.”
“Not anymore,” I grumble.
“This storm is an anomaly,” he asserts. “A once-in-a-lifetime downpour. We won’t see anything like this again.”
“Well, it’s not even the rainy season,” Micah says.
I turn and look out the window. It’s still coming down in sheets, and I hope he’s right about how unusual it is. As hard as the rain can sometimes fall, I’ve never seen it come down this heavy before. What we’re witnessing is one of those century storms. But then again, it sure seems like we’ve been experiencing these once-in-a-century events more and more frequently lately. And it’s not just here with the monsoonal rains, hurricanes and tornadoes, and flooding. Out West, the droughts, fires, and dust storms are coming more often, sooner in the season, and with direr consequences. Media always underplays them, but the truth is everywhere in the black streams.
Another gust pummels the windows. The building creaks. It’s lasted a dozen years, but I seriously doubt it’ll last another dozen, not if the weather trend continues.
There’s a spit of pressurized air as Brother Matthew detaches the pump from the tire. He gives it a slow spin, placing his ear close and listening for any leaks. “That’s the last one. Let’s hope they hold. Some of these were pretty dry rotted.”
“You want to leave now? They’re still out there,” Micah says.
“Too risky,” Brother Matthew agrees. “We’d be riding blind. So, for now, we wait.”
“For how long?” I demand. “We could be here all day. It doesn’t look like it’s letting up.”
“We wait for however long it takes.”
My heart sinks. Everything outside the window is a uniform dark gray. The storm’s showing absolutely no sign of abating.
I settle onto the floor. It’s strewn with tools and the old inner tubes Brother Matthew stripped out of all three bicycles. He’d reasoned that they would likely fail. “Fresh, thick-walled tubes out of the boxes give us a better chance of making it without a flat.”
He kicks the debris out of the way, then removes his shirt and wrings the excess water out of it. I try not to stare at the scars that crisscross his chest and back, not just the bite mark on his shoulder. They don’t look they were made by teeth. Their existence drives home the fact that their lives here haven’t been easy. It’s not just the undead who can cause harm. I imagine in the days and weeks afterward, when the reality of the situation began to hit people, and desperation grew, factions would’ve formed among the survivors. Not all of them would’ve been interested in helping their fellow man.
I sense from his restlessness that I’m not the only one chomping at the bit to get moving again. Changing all the inner tubes was probably as much about keeping himself busy as it was avoiding problems on the road. And to avoid conversation while we sit around and wait.
But now it’s all done, and the rain is still pouring down, and there’s nothing left to do. So he paces.
“Why were there so many of them here?” I ask. I step over to the window. I can just make out a half dozen vague shapes. “We saw a lot on the other side of the arcade, but never like this.”
“Military cleared a lot of them out over there. They started to do the same here, but then they pulled out when Arc took over.”
“And why do they do that, hold their heads up and their mouths open? Are they drinking?”
“Water is life,” he says, sardonically.
I don’t know if he’s being ironic or dismissive.
“I think it’s slackening. I can see further out, anyway.”
“We’ll see,” he says.
I know it’s not my imagination. There’s a clear difference from just a few minutes before. There’s more definition to the shadows across the street. They look like more buildings. Still few details, though. I torment myself imagining there’s a pizzeria or Chinese restaurant there. When my stomach clenches, I try to think of something else. But my thoughts keep drifting back to the familiar, and it sours my mood even more. How pathetic is it, that I would get homesick for a place I’ve always hated?
Soon, I can count at least twenty smaller hazy shapes, and closer, maybe a dozen confirmed IUs. They’re like dirty marble pillars holding up the quicksilver sky, as a quicksilver flood rushes past their ankles. It’s like Kwanjangnim Rupert’s river and boulder metaphor. If we were to go out there, we’d have to be the water.
“I can just imagine Ashley’s grandma right now,” Micah says. “She’d go right out there and tell them to get in out of the rain before they catch their death of cold.” He chuckles.
It angers me that he’d try to make light of our situation, especially by evoking G-ma Junie, who right now is serving her LSC. I also hate that it makes me angry. I hate that I trusted and befriended him. I hate that I so willingly accept that he’s betrayed us. I hate that I keep hoping Ashley’s wrong, even though I know she’s not.
But in this, at least, he’s right. G-ma Junie would always chastise me whenever I was out in the rain, as if cold or flu viruses were present within the drops. Even on days when it was barely even sprinkling out, she’d be like, “You’ll catch your death standing out there, honey.” She’d run off and grab me a towel, no matter how much or how little rain was in my hair.
Brother Matthew looks over at us, pensive. He checks the connection between the trailer and bike he’s outfitted for me.
Micah gets up and wanders into the back of the store. He returns a few minutes later with a stack of paper towels to dry off with, plus an armload of windbreakers and a trio of weird-looking backpacks. They’re oddly narrow and have rubber tubes sticking out of them.
“CamelBaks,” he says, reading the label. “For storing water. Get it?” He pulls the plastic sleeve from one and blows the spider webs and dust out of it. “You’re supposed to suck on the tube while you’re riding. You don’t even have to stop. Seems pretty clever, if you ask me.”
“That’d be great, except we don’t have any water to put in them.”
Brother Matthew rolls his eyes. “There’s water everywhere,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “You just have to collect it.” He settles himself onto the floor and starts chewing on a piece of jerky he pulled from his own backpack.
I grab one of the sleeves and step over to the door. The sky is starting to lighten considerably, but it’s still raining plenty hard.
Micah tries to stop me. “You can’t go out there.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
He looks over at Brother Matthew, who shrugs. “She’ll be fine, as long as she’s quiet.”
“Can’t let them hoard all the rain for themselves,” I say.
I quietly turn the deadbolt and open the door. I step out and extend my cupped hand. Within seconds I have enough water to rinse the dust and dead insects off the plastic sleeve. The insanity of what I’m about to do comes to me then. I’ll be filling a water bottle just feet away from a dozen zombies filling their mouths with the same rain. And I know I should be a lot more nervous, especially considering what we just went through, not to mention the fact that Jake’s dying from a bite from one of their ilk. But there’s something calming about the scene, like watching a sleeping animal.
Only this animal happens to be a wolf.
Micah joins me with the other two CamelBaks. He rinses and begins to fill them, just as I’m doing, but he grows impatient. He takes mine and props them all up on the road against each other, then pulls me back inside. He’s always been the one in our group to find shortcuts. He hates wasting time when he can be doing something else, something more productive or to his liking. But I can’t help imagining that my standing so close to the dead makes him nervous. Maybe he is redeemable.
“If there are this many here, we should probably expect the roads won’t be as clear as we’ve seen in the past,” he warns.
“We’ll just have to be more careful,” I say. I hate being reminded of anything that might slow us down.
“We may also have to do some portaging.”
“Some what?”
“If there’s any washouts or downed trees, we may have to carry our bikes over and around some of them.”
I don’t know if he’s just trying to temper my expectations or discourage me. I glance over at Shinji and decide to take a page from his book. He doesn’t seem all that concerned right now, so I won’t be either.
Chapter 14
By the time the roads have cleared, the rain has stopped and the clouds are starting to break up. It’s well after one o’clock in the afternoon. It’s so strange to watch the dead disappear, like ghosts fading away after a long night. Steam rises up off of the pavement, giving the scene an otherworldly feel.
“Okay, it’s been ten minutes since the last visible IU disappeared,” Micah announces. “Visibility is good. I don’t think we’ll be accidentally plowing into any now.”
“Then we’ll wait another ten just to be certain,” Matthew says, glancing over at me as I prowl the edges of the showroom. All this waiting is fraying my nerves. I don’t care if my pacing is wearing on theirs. “Trust me. It won’t make any difference if we get there ten minutes sooner, but it will if we don’t get there at all.”
“Twenty-four hours,” I remind them. “That’s how much time you said we have before he dies. Twenty or so now.”
“It’s out of our hands.”
“Is it?” I demand.
“You can’t help him if you’re hurt.”
“I can’t help him if he dies, either. This waiting isn’t just killing me, it’s killing him.”
“Then go,” he says. “Nobody’s going to stop you.”
I look at Micah.
“Sit tight, Jess. We don’t know where to go. Just be patient.”
“Brookhaven,” I reply. “There’s got to be a map around here somewhere.”
Brother Matthew stands up, chuckling. “It’s not a small town.”
Micah checks his pack for the third time. He tries to hand me the last of his stale energy bars, but I wave them off. I’m not hungry, despite not having eaten very much.
Shinji, on the other hand, has more than made up for my lack of appetite. He’s polished off three cans of tuna and one of sliced peaches, which Micah fed to him by hand, dangling each wedge like a sardine from his fingers and making him beg. He found it amusing. I’m sure Shinji had no opinion one way or the other, just as long as they kept coming, but I found it degrading.
I did drink some of the left over syrup. My muscles do feel a little stronger for it. But it’s all I can stomach right now.
Shinji lies contentedly on the floor, waiting for something to happen. He looks about as happy as a puppy after a morning Easter egg roll.
“Take it,” Micah says, offering me the bar again. He gives me a worried look. “You’ve barely eaten anything since last night.”
