When the Dead (2 page)

Willow
Brook is a three-story building, four if you count the basement. Each floor has
six two-bedroom apartments with identical floor plans.

            The
kitchen is to the left of the entry. It has an island that looks out on the
dining room and living room. The first room on the right down the hallway is a
second bedroom. Next is the laundry closet with a stacking washer/dryer unit.
The last room on the right is the bathroom. At the end of the hall is a closet
and the master bedroom is on the left.

All of the apartments look more or less like this save for differences in
décor and varying levels of tidiness. The Willow Brook building is controlled
access, meaning that if you don’t have a key, someone has to buzz you in, or
not.

On the morning
of the first day, the day that things would start to change for the residents
of Willow Brook Apartments, things looked normal. When Isobel Shiffman looked
outside it was almost too normal, right down to the happy thieving squirrel in
the tree nearest her living room window.

Northgate is at the northern edge of Seattle and the nearest reports of
the disease were further north in Everett and south in Tacoma, still far enough
away for Isobel to brave the outdoors. Her mother had told her to stock up on
food just in case things didn’t clear up as quickly as she hoped. Isobel had
gone shopping on Sunday and it was only Tuesday but her mother insisted.

Like Isobel, the rest of the city driven by nagging mothers, packed into
the grocery stores and left them in such a state of disarray that it was hard
for her to navigate. The cart, even without the help of the wobbly right front
wheel, kept running into things: cans of food, a bag of chips, some nylons, and
other items strewn about. All of which were displaced far from their original
aisle and shelf. She struggled with it until she found the secret to making the
cart move was to put pressure on the left side of it with her foot. She went
for some of the fresh food that everyone else was ignoring, figuring it could
be eaten first and when it ran out or started to rot, whichever happened first,
she’d break into the non-perishables (of which she had a lot).

She made it up to the only open checkout lane.

“How long did you buy for?” the nervous cashier asked.

“Um . . . I don’t know. A week?” Isobel wasn’t good at estimation or
small talk. Her cart was full with what she knew was affordable for her budget
and, more importantly, what she could carry up to her second floor apartment on
her own. She hadn’t been thinking about timelines.

“That won’t be enough. The world is coming to an end.”

“Ok. Well how long do you buy for when the world is coming to an end?” Isobel
snapped at the cashier.

“Don’t know,” the cashier shrugged. “Do you want your receipt?”

“Sure.”

On the way back home, the radio still reporting news from all over, documented
the plague’s movement. It crept slowly closer. Isobel turned the radio up and
listened.

“Early this morning, a ferry full of people trying to get home to
their families left Whidbey Island alive and well and arrived at the Edmonds
ferry dock infected with the mysterious disease we’ve been seeing. They had somehow
contracted the disease on the passage over the Puget Sound. Ferry officials at
the Edmonds Pier heard no reports from the captain of the vessel that anything
was wrong on the boat. The captain routinely steered the ship into port and the
infected disembarked and started attacking people in the parking lot. It is
suspected that at least twenty of the infected passengers made it out of the
ferry terminal and into downtown Edmonds. Efforts to locate and apprehend them in
order to contain the spread of the infection have been unsuccessful. Several
injured passengers made it safely onto lifeboats before the ferry made it
ashore, but they did not survive their wounds. The captain of the vessel has
been detained for questioning at this time.”

The program switched to weather and Isobel changed the station, desperate
to find out just how close it had become.

“
- determined that the perpetrator of a street fight in downtown
Seattle, described by witnesses as a “drunken transient”, was actually a person
suffering from the infection. Police shot the man after he attempted to attack
them. It is unknown how he came into contact with the disease. Attempts to
identify the individual are ongoing, as his body appeared to be in a state of
decomposition. The flesh of his fingertips was gone, rendering fingerprinting
useless. Investigators are working with dental records -”

            Isobel
changed it again, looking for another news story and its location.

“A group of students started a riot on University Avenue in the
U-District just after eleven a.m. Over fifty college students were injured in
the event, four fatally. The group seemed to have no agenda and was only intent
on causing destruction and harm to individuals. Sources at the scene noted that
the group was not involved in looting or property damage. Most of the students
fled the scene before they could be arrested and interrogated. Campus police
had great difficulty dealing with the problem and are not commenting at this
time. It is still unknown whether the perpetrators were rioting in response to
the disease, or as a result of being infected with it.”

Isobel’s heart beat faster.

“A bloody scene at the Helene Madison Pool greeted Shoreline Police
investigators midday today. A lifeguard interviewed said that a man had emerged
from the men’s locker room at the start of Public Swim and started attacking
children in the shallow end of the pool. It took two lifeguards on staff to
remove the man from the water and hold him while a third employee called the
police. All of the children involved suffered only minor injuries. The pool has
been shut down for investigation and sanitation reasons and will remain closed
until further notice.”

“That’s just up the road,” she said to herself.

Initial reports thought the disease spread and made people psychotic and
violent; that the infected were living people with altered minds and an
inability to differentiate right from wrong. Whatever the process, it only took
one infected person to ruin everybody’s day.

Approaching from all directions, the disease was soon upon Isobel’s
neighborhood and suddenly it was right in front of her in the form of a traffic
accident. Someone had destroyed a bicyclist with an SUV. A deep cut in his
abdomen sat open, displaying his intestines. One of his legs had been almost
completely severed near the hip joint. He had not survived his injuries. The
driver of the vehicle, a pale young woman in hysterics and leggings, was leaning
over the dead man when he sat back up, guts spilling from his body, and bit her
face, taking a chunk out of her cheek as she screamed for help. Isobel wasn’t
the only driver that swerved around the mess. She could still hear the woman’s
yelling as she sped the last three blocks home.
There was nothing I could do
to help the man or the woman,
she thought over and over again, trying to
calm her nerves and her conscience. The world was feeling much smaller to her;
the troubles of it more her own now.

She pulled her car into the parking lot of Willow Brook and quickly
lugged her two bags of groceries from the lot to the front door.

“Whroah roah wroooah! Roah!” A giant black poodle jumped into her making
her scream and drop her food.

“Kiki, no! Get down! Bad dog, BAD DOG!” Sheila Brown from apartment 201
yelled, tugging roughly on her dog’s leash and dragging it up the stairs.

“Oh, it’s ok. I can pick it all up myself. Really, don’t worry about it!”
Isobel said to Sheila who was already out of earshot. “Thanks for the apology
too, bitch.”

Upstairs she put the groceries away with what was already in the
cupboards. Her food situation looked much better to her now so for the rest of
the first day she sat alone in the living room in front of the television, eyes
glued to news report after bloody news report; ears listening intently to the
speculation. Several times she hopped up to check that the door was locked. She
was still having trouble mentally digesting what she’d seen on the road
earlier.
Maybe the bicyclist wasn’t dead?
Perhaps he was just knocked
unconscious and when he came to, in all his pain and bewilderment, he lashed
out?
No story she made up explained how the man could be alive after
suffering wounds so horrific, nor why he would want to bite the driver who
shattered and shredded his body.

His guts were on the road,
she kept coming back to this single
sight, this undeniable fact.
No one sits up with his guts on the road.

Many
people still had a very strong sense that things would be ok because they had
no contact with the disease yet. They were viewing the plague on televisions
and computer screens, not in person. Their faith in the police force, that the
uniformed men and women in affected areas could get things under control, was
strong. Stronger still was the idea that all of the world’s best scientists would
be gathering in a sterile room at an undisclosed location, working day and
night until they found the cause and then the cure. Hollywood had showed the
citizens this response so this is what they demanded; what their minds had
decided would happen -
was
happening. The population waited for
quarantines and white-suited specialists with giant mobile labs but they didn’t
come. Many CDC labs had already been overrun with the dead.

As the day disappeared and night came, things were falling apart fast as
the spread of the infection continued from one complacent and unprepared house
to another. In Northgate strange noises filled the air, mixed with relentless
emergency response sirens. Isobel turned off the television, filled the bathtub
with water just in case it stopped running, cooked some pork chops and drowned
out the horrible cacophony with her mp3 player.

Slowly she fell asleep. Around one in the morning the gunshots picked up
and tore her from her rest. Unable to regain unconsciousness over the noise,
Isobel turned the television back on. The dead weren’t just coming back; they
were definitely coming back hungry. Her mind returned to the bicyclist.
He
wasn’t lashing out in anger; he was
trying
to bite her!
The
confirmation was terrifying. The attacks had spread so quickly that the
infection had reached uncontainable levels. With one eye open, Isobel barely
slept at all the rest of the first night.

The
second day of the plague was noisy.
All this death is so much nosier than
the daily grind of life,
Rob Pace thought. Midday brought a motorcycle
accident in the street out front of the building. He heard the bike speeding up
the street, then a horn honk, some metal crashing on metal, and then yelling.

            Rob
looked outside. He saw the motorcyclist lying on the ground a few yards from
his bike. He was dragging himself along the ground; his legs made useless in
the crash. Rob noticed he wasn’t yelling from the pain. The dead people that
had appeared on the street overnight were slowly moving towards the maimed man.

            “Get
away! Stay back!” Rob heard him yell. “I have a gun!” And he did. The biker
pulled it from inside his jacket and started recklessly shooting into the
growing crowd. He took two down easily but he realized he wouldn’t have enough
bullets to kill them all. He turned the gun on himself.

            “No!”
Rob yelled from his apartment balcony. The man pulled the trigger before he was
killed by one of the undead.

            “What
is it Dad?” Gabe, his seven-year-old son, had run to his side. Rob quickly
threw a hand over his eyes.

            “Something
you shouldn’t see.”

            “But
I want to see it.”

            “You
are only saying that because you don’t know what it is.”

            “Well
. . . yeah.”

            “And
you’ll never know.”

Rob found it within himself to laugh as he pulled his son away from the
window.

It was easy
to stay inside if you were anyone other than Jeff Brown. He hadn’t been out of
the apartment for almost a week due to the combination of a nasty cold he’d
caught and then the infection that everyone else was catching. His desk job,
providing technical support for a major software company, always drained his
energy. He should have felt rested from the time off but he was tired.

            His
marriage to Sheila was crumbling; if you could call it a marriage to start
with. She’d forced him into it ten years ago and he’d regretted that every day
since. There was no communication and his wife loved her dog more than him. All
this he was ok with though. The issue lay with being stuck inside with her for
a week and for an indefinite length of time to come. He blew his nose into one
of the last tissues they had in the house.

“Do you have to blow your nose so loud? It’s disgusting!” Sheila yelled
from the other room.

He could feel his patience grow thinner with every remark she made and
every tense conversation they had; thoughts tugging at his brain of leaving or
asking her to go instead.
She could take her untrained dog with her,
he
fell asleep on the couch dreaming of it, used tissues scattered across his sick
body.

“We just
have to survive this. Please be patient, Edward. Life has thrown us more
difficult things in the past,” Moira tried to comfort her husband who had been
pacing their first floor apartment for two days.

“Have you looked outside today? There’s blood on the street and people
everywhere.”

“They aren’t people anymore. Maybe you should stop looking if you don’t
like what you see.”

“Folks on the radio are saying we should try to get somewhere safe.”

“No place is safe! The army bases started turning people away and now
they are dying at the closed front gates. The mega churches asked their
congregations to gather for mass prayer in order to cast out the demons that
possess everyone. Then they all got trapped in the buildings with the
infection. The pews are covered in blood just like the street. NPR said the
best course of action is to stay inside and lock the doors.”

“That isn’t action; that is
inaction
.”

“So we don’t change a thing then. Sit down and read your book.”