My neck itches where the puncture from my IV has finally clotted shut and the blood is starting to dry. The whole side of my face feels hot and sore. I scrape the crusty blood off with my fingernail and glance at the door. I’m terrified of what I’ll find on the other side of it.

  And who I won’t.

  I step over Mabel’s body and reach down to grab the sheet off the floor. It’s splotchy with blood, some mine, some hers, and I wrap it around me. The feel of the chilled, partially stiffened, fabric makes my skin crawl, but I try not to think about it. Instead, I tuck the corner in under my arm, then tie the IV line around my waist and cinch it snug.

  I freeze when the whisper of a sound comes from behind me, a wet, sticky noise that sounds like rubber tires rolling on hot pavement. I spin around.

  Nurse Mabel is on her knees, her head dangling between her arms. Blood and saliva drip from her face. She wobbles a moment, her arms shaking. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Relief courses through me because she’s not dead. I didn’t kill her. Then comes anger. Why won’t she stay down? If she comes after me again, will I be able to finish it?

  You won’t have to kill her. Just tie her up again. Just keep her out of your way.

  If she’d only stayed down, I wouldn’t feel this way. If she’d only died. But she’s not dead. She’s alive, and now she’s suffering. She probably has a bad concussion. She needs medical attention. She could have brain damage. What if she starts having a seizure?

  She stops trying to get up, just remains there on the floor on her hands and knees, looking like she’s trying not to puke.

  “Damn it,” I mutter, and take a step closer.

  Her head snaps up. There’s nothing in her eyes, not a shred of light or life. They’re as black as night and as soulless as a grave. One side of her head is flattened and slick with gore. Her mouth gapes open and her tongue lolls out. She hisses.

  That’s why we have contingencies. I’m sure you can appreciate that more than anyone else, Mabel.

  “Oh, god,” I whisper. “Please, no. It can’t be.”

  She moans her inaugural death moan, and I know that there’s no other way to interpret what I’m seeing. It’s a sound I’ll never forget from Long Island, the sound of death and hunger and desire. Cold fingers sweep up my spine and curl around my neck. I feel the air freezing in my lungs.

  “You’re not supposed to come back,” I tell her, as if speaking one fact will somehow negate another. The dead do not come back on their own. They either have to be infected by another zombie, or they have to be reanimated by injection with the government’s virus. They don’t just happen.

  That’s why we have contingencies.

  We don’t get very many volunteers.

  I want to see the transitions.

  The new virus, it doesn’t cause death. It must remain dormant until death.

  She moans again and lurches unsteadily to her feet. Her body lists to one side, and she crashes into the blood pressure machine. They both slam into the wall. It topples over; she doesn’t. She recovers somehow, too quickly, terrifyingly so, and begins to move toward me.

  I manage to step to the side just as her hands reach into the space I’d just occupied. She oversteps and crashes to the floor. She lies there without moving for several seconds.

  Get out of here! my mind screams, but all I do is stand there like an idiot and stare, letting precious seconds go to waste.

  She moans again and her body begins to contract. Her arms and legs draw up underneath her. She looks like a spider dying.

  Excepts she’s not dying. She’s already dead.

  She’s quicker to rise this time. It seems impossible, but it’s like her body is readjusting to its new life-in-death state. Before I have a chance to react, she’s on her knees, one foot under her. She wrenches her head toward me and makes ready to leap.

  I spin around and grab the closest thing to me, which happens to be the IV stand. I lift it above my head. I try to swing it down on her, but one of the feet in the base gets caught in the ceiling. I lose my balance and slip on the wet floor. Only my grip on the pole keeps me from falling. I hold on for dear life.

  She gets her other foot beneath her.

  My grip slips, and I land on my side against the wall.

  Nurse Mabel — or whatever she’s become — advances. I scramble away. My back hits the door. Her head lists unnaturally to one side. That side of her face droops, like she’s suffered a massive stroke. I guess she has. She reaches out again, hissing. She lunges.

  I slide to my left. Her fingers snag in my hair. I kick out with my foot, connecting with her knees, but it only pushes her legs out from under her. She topples like a tree. Our limbs tangle. She drags me down with her. She opens her mouth, and her teeth barely miss sinking into my knee. Her chin slams into my kneecap. Pain explodes up my leg. I hear a crack. She rolls off me, her neck broken. She immediately begins to move forward again.

  I kick out again, aiming for her shoulder. I manage to knock her away. I scramble to my feet and immediately crumple as my injured knee collapses beneath me. The door’s out of reach. I slide over, my hands pushing against the wall. I try to stand. I find the handle. I watch her as she lumbers back to her feet.

  Just as she charges, I crank the knob and yank the door.

  My fingers slip off the unyielding knob. The door remains shut. I lose my balance and crash to the floor.

  The cardkey! You need the cardkey!

  But it’s on her belt!

  She slams into the door, and just as gracelessly turns to locate me. I scramble over to the far side of the tiny room, positioning the bed between us. It’s the only thing I can use to protect myself.

  It gains me a few seconds. I look frantically for something to use as a weapon, anything that’ll help me get that cardkey off her belt. But there’s nothing on this side of the room to use.

  Mabel steps to the head of the bed. I slide over to the foot, making sure to keep the bed between us. She keeps moving. I wait until she’s square in the center before I shove with all my strength and weight into the bed frame. She crashes into the wall. One elbow sinks into the soft drywall, and when she pulls it free, I see a metal stud behind it. She reaches forward over the mattress and moans.

  Still pressing against the bed, I find the wheel lock and push it down. Then, ever so carefully, I back away. The bed stays put. It rocks against Mabel’s efforts, but she’s pinned.

  I move quickly now. The bed won’t hold her for long. I reach up and yank the IV pole out of the ceiling. Bits of tile and insulation shower down on me. I hold the pole to one side, like a baseball bat, and take aim at Mabel’s neck, making sure that one of the pole’s feet faces forward. Then, with a grunt I swing it at her. She doesn’t try to move out of the way. Zombies don’t duck.

  The foot of the IV stand sinks deep into the wall two feet past her head. I position the pole over her neck and shove the top end into the wall on the other side until the bag holder pierces the drywall. She thrashes against it, but the pole remains locked into place. She can’t bend down.

  Now I circle around the bed one last time. She watches me with those dead black eyes. She reaches out. She hisses and writhes. I reach beneath her flailing arms and snatch the lanyard off her belt. The IV pole springs out of the wall just as the lanyard snaps free. Mabel lunges. She gets a handful of my sheet, but I yank it out of her clutches.

  I hear the bed move. I’m already at the door. The wheels screech and she pushes harder.

  She slips out of her snare. But she’s too late. I’ve inserted the key into the slot.

  But the lock doesn’t release.

  She steps toward me. Her shoes make sticky sounds on the tacky blood.

  I reinsert the plastic card.

  Still nothing.

  “What the fu—”

  I hear fabric tear. I glance back and see that her smock has caught on the bed. She takes another step. The fabric tears some more.

  I try the card key a third time. The air behind me shifts. Something brushes my hair. My skin prickles. I duck and kick blindly. She crashes backward and flips over the bed.

  I spin the key around and jam it once more into the slot. The tiny red light on the locking mechanism turns green.

  I yank the handle just as Mabel’s fingers snag a loop of the IV tubing around my waist.

  I lean into the door and thrust out with my foot. My heel connects just below her ribcage. A dead exhale escapes her defunct lungs. Stale air washes over me. She stumbles back once more. I yank the door open and dive through the opening, reaching back to pull it shut behind me. The door’s safety hinges resist me.

  I slip and stumble across the hall. The door clicks shut with the two of us on opposite sides of it.

  I can hear her in there, moaning, scratching. Can she hear me out here?

  I’m safe, and she can’t get out.

  Now I have to find and free the others.

  Chapter 18

  I’m in a short hallway. It’s dimly lit. The floor tiles are industrial grade, old and worn and stained. There are several doors, all closed except one. I can smell coffee.

  I turn back to the door I just came through. The words on the sign make no sense to me at first:

  DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

  PRIVATE SCREENING ROOM 3

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  I’m in an airport. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

  The Teterboro?

  The lights in the hallway flicker, jolting me back to reality. I step away from the room that was my cell and over to the next door. The sign there says the same thing, except that it’s numbered 2. I skip this and proceed to the open door.

  The room is sparsely furnished. The light comes on when I step inside. There’s a simple metal cot along one wall made up with white sheets and a green blanket. It looks recently slept in. I assume it belongs — belonged — to Nurse Mabel. Well, she won’t be sleeping ever again.

  Against the opposite wall is a red medical cart. I sift through a few of the dozens of drawers. They’re filled with needles and syringes and ampoules of drugs with names I don’t recognize.

  There’s also a small desk. A few items sit on top: a lamp, a personal Link, a coffee mug, a cold half-eaten Arc Foods Insta-Meal. A folding metal chair sits behind the desk.

  A backpack leans against the wall in the corner. I search through it and find two changes of clothes. The pants won’t fit me, but I manage to score a pair of panties and socks. I don’t bother with the bra; I’d need more than the remaining pair of socks to fill it out. I finish with a new tee-shirt that advertises the TV program Survivalist. There’s another just like it. She probably gets these for free.

  I personally never got into the show. I much preferred to play Zpocalypto rather than sitting passively by and watching what happens in the Gameland arcade as other people play The Game. Besides, Eric always gives me grief whenever the guys come over to watch it. They get too loud and rowdy.

  Thinking about Eric makes me angry again, and that gets me moving.

  Beyond this room, the hallway ends at another security door, an unlit EXIT sign over it. I place my ear against the surface for several seconds. When I’m convinced no one is on the other side, I try the cardkey. I half expect nothing to happen, but the red light turns green.

  Slowly, carefully, I turn the handle and push the door open. It’s dark. The air smells stale. In the distance, I hear the low grind of a motor running somewhere. The sound wavers and the lights on my side of the door flicker. We’re running off a generator.

  I let the door swing shut and turn around. I need to find pants. Then my friends.

  As I pass each of the other closed doors, I pause and listen. I hear nothing through any of them, no indication that anyone else is here with me. I begin to worry that the others might be kept somewhere else.

  The supply closet turns out to be the sixth door down the hall, and the only one without a security lock. I open it, and the light blinks on. Mouse droppings litter the floor. Leaning against a wall is a petrified mop. Next to it, a bucket on wheels.

  I move the mop and something small and brown scurries out from under the bucket and disappears into a back corner beneath a shelf. There was a time when mice terrified me. This one barely even registers. I just killed someone. And then that dead someone tried to eat me. A little mouse is nothing.

  The shelves lining the back wall are stocked with rolls of toilet paper, most of them shredded, and ancient bottles of cleaning supplies. In some, the fluids have separated and turned brown. There’s a half-eaten bar of soap and some dry-rotted rubber gloves. No clothes though.

  As I pull the door shut, I hear something brush against the other side. I glance around the corner and spot a pair of blue overalls hanging on a hook. They’re rank with mouse piss and poop, but they appear okay. They’ll do for now. I slip them off the hook and shimmy my way into them, kicking the bed sheet into the closet. The zipper catches halfway up. I give it a tug and the old stitching tears a little before the zipper reaches my chin. They’re not overly long in the legs and arms, though they are baggy. I use the IV tubing once more to fashion a belt around my waist.

  I guess it was too much to hope for shoes. Nurse Mabel’s got a nice pair on her feet, but she can keep them. She’ll be spending a lot of time on her feet from now on.

  Before shutting the door again, I grab the mop. The head adheres to the floor, crackling stiffly. I snap it off. It’ll make a fair weapon, not as good as a bo staff, but enough to do some damage. With it in one hand and the cardkey in the other, I make my way back up the hall.

  I stop and listen at the door to my room. Mabel has settled down now. I wonder what she’s doing. I picture her standing on the other side, staring at the door with those sightless eyes. If she stops moving for a while, the lights will shut off. How long will she remain there in the dark like that, waiting, motionless? Weeks? Years? The zoms on LI have been there for over a decade.

  Not all of them. Some were fresher.

  Other Arc experiments, I’d wager.

  I hear Mabel hiss. Can she sense me standing out here? If no one ever comes back, will she just stay there on the other side until the end of time? Until she runs out of energy and simply cannot move again? Like the fossilized zombie Jake first spotted the day we arrived on Long Island?

  I wonder what the end of the world will look like. I have a feeling I’ve gotten glimpses of it other people never have.

  I tap gently on the door, suddenly certain she’s no longer even in there anymore. Maybe she got out when I wasn’t looking.

  A faint scratching comes to me. Then a low moan. She’s there.

  I stop at a room marked INTERVIEW 1. Once more I listen for signs of anything — living or otherwise — but there’s not a sound. After unlocking the door, I wait a few seconds. Then I turn the handle as quietly as I can and ease it open. The lights come on.

  A large stainless steel table occupies the middle of the room. It looks like an autopsy platform except for the pair of heavy nylon straps dangling on either side. Medical-looking equipment are arranged on trays pushed against the far wall. A hospital light hangs overhead. I step inside and see a strange looking contraption attached to the far end of the table. It looks like a doorway. A metal blade hangs from the top half.

  I realize with a jolt that it’s a guillotine.

  Is this where they do their infection experiments? Is this their contingency, in case something goes wrong?

  I check for blood splatter, but I don’t see any.

  The wall beyond the blade is glass. I can’t see through it. When I open the next door down the hall, OBSERVATION 1, I see the same glass on the adjoining wall. This room is empty, except for a pair of chairs facing the window. I can see the guillotine.

  I want to be present to see how well each of them responds to the transition.

  “Too bad,” I say to the empty room, and close the door behind me. “There won’t be a show today.”

  It’s behind PRIVATE SCREENING ROOM 1 that I find Ashley.

  Chapter 19

  I rush over, calling her name. She doesn’t wake. I repeat it, louder the second time.

  Nothing. She just lies there, lifeless, her skin pale and waxy. The mound of her body under the sheet seems too small, like she’s shrunk. Her trademark auburn hair — always her pride and her spirit, and on the most humid days, her nemesis — is a flat, drab, tangled mess. It cascades over her pillow like the crumbling embers of a dying fire. Her skin is splotchy, bruised in places, ashen in others. One eye is puffy and has a halo of black and purple. Her cheek is scraped. The scab looks several days old.

  “Ashley?”

  I reach out and shake her shoulder, but there’s no response. Her eyes remain closed. Her head lolls to the side. Her skin is cold.

  I press the back of my hand to her cheek and find heat. I bend down and listen. The soft whisper of her breaths reaches my ears, caresses my face. She’s alive.

  “Ashley, can you hear me?”

  I pinch the skin on her neck. She moans and turns slightly, but doesn’t wake.

  I call her name again, louder this time. I pull the hair away from her face, and her eyes move beneath the lids, like she’s dreaming. She gives off a faint smell— sweat, blood, and something else, something... chemical. A bandage covers the left side of her neck and reaches around to the back. An IV line drips through a tube that passes beneath the sheet and into her arm.

  I decide to try doing the foot thing that Nurse Mabel did to me. I move to the end of the bed and lift the sheet.

  That’s when I find the restraints around her ankles. I check her wrists and find them there, too.

 

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