And when they finally got there, what would they find? Harrisburg had a population of about 50,000. In four days, that number could well be over a million. They would pick that city to pieces. They would be like a plague of locusts that left nothing behind. Would there be anything left when Will finally got his family there? Or would they have to press on through the now frost-covered Appalachian Mountains to tiny Altoona?

  The one thing Will knew was that he couldn’t trust the government. They had made a mess out of Hurricane Katrina and that was nothing but a blustery day compared to what was happening now. It could be weeks before they had the situation in hand. This begged the question: could they hold out at home for weeks?

  ***

  The question turned out to be moot. Catherine would not be dissuaded one way or the other. She was going back home and she was taking Jillybean with her and that was the end of the discussion.

  Will sighed and went to the car. He pulled their belongings from it, dumped the clothes out of two suitcases and filled them with food. Everything else was left behind. Warm clothes would be easy to replace, and jewelry and laptops were already next to useless.

  It was just after one when they left the car and took off cross-country, heading north east through semi-deserted neighborhoods. The people who had decided to remain during all of this had shuttered their homes behind planks of plywood when they could. When they couldn’t, they drew their blinds and set signs around their property warning would-be thieves that they were armed and were ready to kill.

  The houses without these precautions were fair game and had already been broken into and stripped of food. Will slipped into one of these and took a pair of long knives from a rack. He stuck one in his belt and gave the other to his wife. She grimaced, but took it.

  Because they were some of the few people heading against the tide of humanity, they were continually stopped and questioned. It was always the same unanswerable questions: What’s going on? Is the army sending people back? Are there camps being setup? Have you seen any zombies?

  After the fifth such stoppage, Will simply began to lie, telling people that his child was sick and couldn’t go on. Jillybean looked sick. After barely a mile her pace had slowed. After two, the little girl began to stumble.

  Will set her on one of the wheeled suitcases and although the handle bowed and the weight of the thing doubled, he pulled her along. Because of its tiny wheels, they were forced to travel strictly along streets, which added another two miles to their journey. It was a more dangerous route, as well. There was no telling when a group would go from waving a friendly hand to waving a bat.

  The Shaws passed a dozen frightening groups without issue. They kept their eyes averted, moved as far away as possible, and if someone said something disparaging, it went ignored. One group refused to accept their docility. Will tried to maneuver through the lines of cars to avoid them, but they kept shifting lanes as well, setting up a confrontation.

  Jillybean, who was reclining backwards on the luggage, saw none of this and only grew afraid when she heard her father say, under his breath, “Keep a hand on your knife, but don’t pull it unless you have to.” Jillybean squirmed around and saw four men and five women coming at them. All of them were armed with either baseball bats or golf clubs.

  Will stopped by a truck where there was a gap between it and the car in front. He slid the suitcase into it, gave Jillybean a wink and said, “Wait here, sweetie.” She was astounded that he wasn’t afraid—her little heart was racing like a rabbit’s.

  He was afraid, of course, but his fear was for his family, not for himself. He paused for a moment, debating whether or not to use the axe. It had its pros and cons. The axe was more fearsome than the knife and could do more damage. At the same time, it could only effectively be used two-handed, and in a cramped space its uses would be limited to an overhead chopping motion.

  “You guys are on my road,” the biggest of the men said, interrupting Will’s thoughts. “Sorry to say, it’s a toll road. It’ll cost you both of them suitcases.”

  “No, it won’t,” Will Shaw answered.

  “Will, maybe we should give them…” Catherine started to say.

  “The only thing I’m giving this guy is my knife. In the guts, I think. I want him to suffer.” He thought he sounded tough.

  The man only smirked. He was not very tall, but he was broad and strong. His knuckles were scarred pink from fighting and he had a jagged white line under one eye from being punched by a man with a fistful of rings. His brows were thick and dark and tended to V inwards, making his nose look longer than it was.

  “You gonna let him talk to you like that, Raul?” one of the women asked. She was an unnatural red-head with a pinched…”

  ***

  Ezekiel Cross:

  I had to interrupt. What the Queen had just said shocked me into blurting out, “Did you say Raul?”

  She had been talking nonstop for an hour, giving amazing details and she had just described Raul, King of the Dead Men.

  “Yes,” she answered, her eyes coming back into focus.

  “Holy shit, Raul is from Philadelphia,” the guard said in a hushed tone. This was the first he had spoken.

  The Queen turned her haughty gaze on him. By the crinkles at the corner of her eyes, I could tell she was smiling. “I know,” she answered, softly. She was almost purring. “Why do you think I’m here? Do you think I was simply ‘caught’ by the likes of Raul? No, I’m here, in this cell for a reason. I’m here to kill Raul.”

  The guard’s eyes showed fear and puzzlement. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just shoot him or blow him up or something? Everyone says you know all about bombs.”

  “Maybe I should clarify. I want to kill him up close and personal. I want to stand over his body and look into his eyes as I slide my knife into him over and over.”

  “Then why let yourself be caught?” I asked. I knew she was devious, but there were a dozen easier ways to get at Raul.

  She turned her frosty gaze on me, making me swallow loudly. “You don’t see it, Ezekiel? Unlike you, I’m not trapped here. I was caught willingly so that he would bring me exactly here, into the heart of his city. I knew exactly where he would put me, just as I knew exactly what precautions he would take against me escaping. If anyone has fallen into a trap, it’s Raul. In essence, he has swallowed poison and doesn’t realize that he’s dying yet.”

  I felt like I was on some sort of strange treadmill that I couldn’t get off of. Who in their right mind would want to be imprisoned? “So…so you wanted to get caught, I get that, I guess. But how did you know where he’d put you? You couldn’t have known that.”

  “Of course, I could,” she answered. “I’ve been here before, in this very cell. Of course, then I was only visiting, setting things up, planting certain items I knew I would need. I knew that this would be my cell, just like I knew Raul would never trust a lock to keep me in. And since I knew he would weld the door shut it, was nothing to find the closest machine shops and ‘prepare’ the arc welders.”

  “What did you do?” I asked in growing excitement, clutching the bars.

  She only smiled. “Don’t be in a hurry. You will see in good time, just like our friend, the guard.” She grinned maliciously at him. “Sorry to say it will be you on duty when I decide to leave. Yes, I know the guard schedule. I know your numbers. I know when you leave, when you come, when your days off occur. I know all there is to know about this little prison. I know its exact dimensions. I know the exact volume of air it contains. I know it’s exactly thirty-nine paces, from the door of the antechamber at the top of the stairs, to this one.” She knocked the metal.

  “Why’d you pick me?” asked the guard. “I never done anything to you, e-e-except what Raul made me do. Do you know me? You know, personally?”

  She laughed. “No. You are just the guard and you will die like all the rest, and will be forgotten like all the rest. Unless, of course I kill you in a particularly interesting or gruesome manner. Who knows? You could be famous. Would you like to be famous?” His mouth fell open. “I could hang you with your own intestines. People will talk about that for years. Would you like that?” The guard, looking as if he had been hit with a cartoon mallet, shook his head.

  The Queen smiled gently. “Maybe if you behave, I’ll make it quick. Now, where was I? Oh yes, the red-head.”

  ***

  “You gonna let him talk to you like that, Raul?” one of the women asked. She was an unnatural redhead with a pinched face.

  Before Raul could answer, another of the women spoke up. “Maybe we should leave them alone. They have a kid.”

  “Shut up, Karen,” Raul muttered, hefting his bat and taking a step closer to Will. “This is about survival. This is about the strong living and the weak dying. You of all people should know this. You were just on Facebook last week saying how much you were looking forward to the apocalypse. Well, here it is. This is what it looks like.”

  “You really are going to break my arm, aren’t you?” Will asked him.

  Raul grinned. “I’m going to break more than that if you don’t drop those suitcases and walk away.”

  Will slid the knife out. “No. It’ll just be my arm. You’ll swing your bat and I’ll sacrifice my left arm so I can stick this,” he held up the knife, “in your guts. It won’t kill you right away. You’ll suffer.”

  “Fuck you,” Raul growled. “I’ll show you who’ll suffer.”

  “Jillybean, get under the car,” her father suddenly ordered, rolling his head on his broad shoulders. He was not going to back down. After all, the man was right, this was about survival.

  Without any evidence, Jillybean had always thought that her father was the bravest, toughest man who had ever lived. Now, she saw that her assumption was not wrong. She hesitated before sliding under the car. Raul was threatening her father, and she was suddenly consumed with an intense hatred, and she had never hated anything in her life. Except for lima beans and she had every reason in the world to hate lima beans.

  The hatred burned hotter than she thought possible as she took in Raul’s beak of a nose, his dull grey eyes, his bushy brows and the scar under his eye. She studied the face and vowed revenge.

  Just as she was about to slip beneath the car, her mom slapped her palm down on the car next to her. “No! Will, we aren’t doing this. Let them have the food. We’ll find more. It isn’t worth it. Will, please.” She tried to drag him back, but it was like trying to pull a tree down with her bare hands. She slid around in front of him, snatching Jillybean into her arms. “Take it,” she spat at Raul. “You guys can have whatever you want.”

  It was only then that Jillybean saw that two of the men had been slipping around on either side of them, using the cars for cover. Catherine had seen them as well. “It’s okay,” she said, again. “Take it all.”

  Will glared fury, first at his wife, and then at the men, his fist curled around the handle of the knife. They glared back and one called him a “Pussy,” which was not much of a put-down to little Jillybean. Everyone liked cats as far as she knew and some could bite very hard. Regardless, they let the three of them go. The little family hurried past the cars and then squeezed through a break in the fence that bordered the highway.

  For long minutes as they walked, Will steamed in anger until Catherine couldn’t take it any longer. “They would’ve killed you.”

  “Maybe,” Will answered, without looking at her. “Or maybe I would’ve bluffed the leader into backing down. You didn’t see his eyes, Cat. He was all talk. He knew I would fight and he knew he would die. He would’ve backed down.” He stomped on, going so fast that Jillybean had to jog to catch up.

  “I wasn’t about to take that chance,” Catherine sniffed.

  Will stopped and looked around. They were in a neighborhood that had the misfortune of being too close to the highway. Every house had been ransacked. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re going to have to take chances. Probably, every day, and the longer this goes on, the worse our chances are going to be. Raul was right about one thing. This is what the apocalypse looks like.” He waved his arms, indicating the broken windows and the kicked-in doors.

  Catherine was not going to argue about whether she had been right or wrong concerning Raul. She had been right and no force on earth would change her mind. “Why would anyone want this? You know, an apocalypse. It’s been only five days and already people have gone crazy.”

  There was no answer to this and Will started on again, angling across the street. Behind an RV they came upon a pack of dogs. There were six of them drinking from a puddle. They were hardly a wild lot. The toughest of them was a Yorkshire terrier. It kicked out with its back paws like a tiny furry bull about to attack. The larger dogs displayed an almost human look of fright and slunk away.

  Will edged around the rest. He wasn’t frightened of them, but would not take the chance that a bite might get infected. They crossed a yard and jumped a fence.

  “Take it somewhere’s else,” a voice barked from a covered porch. A man sat in an old recliner that was awash in shadows. The chair was green except where countless cigarettes had scorched little black circles. The man was maybe in his sixties, grizzled and cranky. “Back over the fence with you.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Catherine said as Will was just about to help Jillybean back over. “We don’t have any food and we have a hungry child.”

  Unbelievably, the man rolled his eyes. “I heard this ten times already today and I’ll hear it ten more times before the sun goes down. And guess what? Tomorrow it’ll be fifty times, and the answer will still be no. I don’t care how many rug-rats you have. They are your rug-rats and that makes them your problem, not mine.”

  Catherine glared. “You’re going to die alone,” she stated, her voice high and strident. “Sad, alone and unmourned.” She turned her back on the man, who lit a cigarette and stared through grey smoke without answer.

  Soon Jillybean, with Ipes clutched in the crook of her arm, had been passed back over the fence and they skirted the house, making their way through ugly neighborhoods. It took them a good hour to get through the devastated areas and into neighborhoods that hadn’t been in the direct path of the human horde. “See?” Catherine said, gesturing around at the houses. “There’ll be enough food for us to get by on. This was the right thing to do.”

  Jillybean, who was only a little bit hungry, looked around at the houses in wonder. She pictured their interiors to be over-flowing with cookies and chips and barrels of chocolate milk. She had been without chocolate milk for two days now and pined for it.

  Will eyed the houses with skepticism. He had picked his own house clean, taking everything that could be nibbled on, including frozen food. It’s what anyone with any sense would’ve done. Maybe there would be a little bit left here and there, and all he would have to do to get it was to break into a stranger’s house and steal it all. “This is what the apocalypse looks like,” he muttered under his breath as he headed for the nearest house.

  “Not yet, Will,” Catherine said. “Let’s get Jillybean home first. The idea of getting stopped by more, uh, hoodlums with Jillybean with us makes me crazy.” She grinned for the first time that day. “Do you think hoodlums is the right word for them?”

  “I don’t know. They were all just normal people.” He found it hypocritical to call them thieves since he was planning on becoming a thief himself. “Or they were just normal people, now I don’t know what they are.” As they passed the houses, his desire to slip in and see what there was grew so strong that he made the suggestion once more to his wife, and once more she was obstinate. For her safety came first.

  The sun was hanging just over the trees in the west when they finally made it back to Peakview Drive and saw their house. Just like almost all the other houses on the block, it was cold and dark, and yet all three of them felt a surge of hope. Even exhausted as they were, they practically skipped the last hundred yards.

  “And the electricity is still on!” Catherine cried as she walked through the front door and flicked the switches.

  Will flicked them back down. “Maybe we don’t want to advertise that there are people here. While I’m gone, you should cover the windows and barricade the doors.”

  “No. You’re not leaving us until this place is like a fortress. Safety first.”

  “But searching in the dark can be…” He saw her face and knew her view on the matter was set in stone. “Fine.”

  Jillybean’s feet hurt so she sat in her dad’s big comfy chair while her parents pushed the couch in front of the door and then piled more furniture on and around it. They then scraped her father’s desk to the back door and wedged it into place. “How are we oposed to get out?” she asked. “You know, just in case there’s a fire or something?”

  “Through the garage, dear,” her mom said, stretching her back with a grimace.

  “Oh.” She didn’t like the garage, it being so dirty and all. After a moment she stated, “I’m hungry. Can we order pizza tonight? Ipes says he’s real hungry for pizza, and that’s what means we should probably get some with extra cheese.” She held up the zebra to add to her appeal.

  The thought of pizza made Catherine’s stomach growl. They hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “No one’s delivering, Jilly. We’ll have to make do with what we have, or what we can get.” She went to the kitchen and stared at the depressingly empty shelves. “Will? I think it’s time. Can you run out and get us some food?”

 

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