Chapter Text
Tires screeched against asphalt as Sara floored the brake pedal. Ahead: the road, a gray tongue unfurling toward the horizon, pebbled with graying bodies under a gray sky.
This couldn’t be what the author of that book about shades of gray had been thinking about.
Sara laughed, the soft sound filling the car. Leaving the key in the ignition, she opened the door and stepped out of her car.
Not really her car, if you wanted to be picky. After the pandemic, recycling cars that had been forsaken on the side of the road became about as thrilling as picking apples from trees.
There were too many cars in the country even when it blossomed with life and the speedy rhythm of sixty-hour weeks. But with three quarters of the population out of the picture? America became a cemetery of useless things. Cars were metal sculptures surely rusting away. Cities were ice museums the living would not visit for many years—and so far, the dead had shown no interest in them.
Sara tightened her scarf, stepping over a dead body.
She was not afraid of death. Med school had washed all squeamishness out of her as sure as it had melted the bounce in her cheeks.
But the sheer scale of death everywhere was bound to steal the breath from your lips.
Kansas City, like all the cities Sara had seen so far, was a carcass: its insides sucked out, so all you could see was putrefying flesh if you ventured past the fanged gate of its mouth. Relics remained of the chaos that had run riot when the Contaminated were yet to starve.
Charred buildings, looted shops.
But all was quiet now.
Only the wind that whistled in Sara’s neck, and the plod-plod-plod of her footsteps on the asphalt.
It was a cold winter. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she tried to come up with a plan.
She had to have something to keep her going from dawn to dusk, other than the seemingly impossible horizon—
Chicago. Michael.
When the pandemic started and all citizens were confined to their homes, Sara had been giving a conference in Kansas. She hadn’t really wanted to go. After they left their fugitive lives behind, she and Michael became notoriously bad at being apart.
“It’s just a few days,” she told him, reassuring herself through the fact.
He had given her that smile, like he could see right through her. And of course, he could. Nothing about her remained a mystery—she’d always thought that was the real Love Test. Not, Does it last three years? But, Does it last after all the mystery has caved, when you can pick the thoughts from someone’s lips before they’ve even spoken?
And their love for each other had lasted past that point. Then it had lasted five more years.
Then the pandemic.
Then—
“Just a few days,” he repeated. “You go. I’ll be cheering.”
He had pecked her on the lips, driven her to the airport.
It was tattooed in the back of her head—the precise image of his fingers releasing hers as she crossed the security checkpoint.
If she lived to be a hundred, she would still remember the ghost-flutter of his touch.
Sara swallowed, banishing the thought.
If she allowed it to go on, it would hemorrhage—where was Michael now? Was he even alive? What if, as she trekked back to Chicago in the hope of finding him, he had gone to look for her in Kansas? What if the disease had taken him, as it had taken most of the population?
The first few days after she came out of hiding—after all the dead had, in fact, returned being dead—Sara had seen Michael’s face in every corpse that paved the street.
Icepicks stabbing through her sternum, she’d drop to her knees, tracing the lines of his face in the rotting features of complete strangers.
After months of hiding, with nothing to hold on to except for hope, discovering what was left of the world had been a death of its own.
Sara understood, on a bone-deep level, that life as she knew it was gone.
But as long as she could find Michael, she was ready to face life in any shape or form.
The plan had appeared to her, crystal clear. Obvious.
Find her husband. Go back to Chicago, to the place they had called home, praying he was still there.
Once upon a lifetime ago, he had asked her to wait for him. All she could do now was hope he had waited for her.
Sara looked at the winter sun, trying to gauge the hour. She still had a few hours before sunset. Now that she was on foot, she wasn’t going to make much progress.
“Get some food,” she said to herself. It felt good to hear a human voice. “Find a new vehicle for the night.”
That sounded like a good idea.
After a bit of walk, she finally landed on a Walmart that didn’t look like it had been plundered quite to the bone. The letters had been hacked at so that only three remained:
WA R
“Ha,” Sara said.
Inside, the place was not as bad as she’d expected. The aisles still stood, the floor littered with debris, packs of cereal, gutted cans, toys aplenty.
Sara inspected the shelves. It wasn’t easy finding something edible, even in a Walmart. All the food that could be eaten raw had long been lost to mold or rodents. Packs of spaghetti were great, if you could be bothered to light a fire, and Sara didn’t have any time to waste. That left canned foods, which were the first to go during loots. It didn’t help that there was only so much Sara could carry.
All that remained on the shelves were objects that had become utterly useless in the New World. Electronics. CDs. Home deco.
After some ten minutes, Sara managed to dig out a couple cans of Heinz beans. It conjured memories of her first year of med school, when she’d eat them with a spoon straight from the can.
Who would have thought the apocalypse would feel so much like being twenty-one?
Sara let out a chuckle that turned to stone in her mouth at the sound of the revolving doors, whirling open.
She swiveled, feet rooted to the floor. A blend of terror and excitement broke loose inside her.
Before she could think, she flattened herself against the wall. She stood there, heart punching her ribcage, ragged breaths escaping her in a deafening orchestra.
Nothing.
Had she dreamed the sound?
Part of her said she must have.
Yet in her bones, in her gut. She knew that couldn’t be right.
For months, she had become attuned to being alone. And this—what she felt now, the atmosphere that had swept into the supermarket. Whatever it was, it wasn’t alone.
As if to confirm this, footsteps started down one of the aisles. She could make out the crisp impact of every sound.
Jesus, she thought.
What to do?
What to do what to do what to do?
A voice inside her screamed to leap out of hiding. Make herself seen. A person, an actual person! In her bleakest hours, she’d wondered if she was the only one left in the world. God knew, she’d seen enough sci-fi movies to know how these stories ended. Whoever was out there, it had to be better than the rankness of her own thoughts, chewing themselves out of sanity a bit more with each passing hour.
You’re not alone. Just go. Go to them. How much worse can things get?
But a different Sara, a Sara who had been dragged to horror movies by old boyfriends, urged toward caution.
How much worse can things get? she said. Glad you asked. A LOT.
For starters, she could tell that the footsteps belonged to a man. She couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was fear talking. But she sensed it in her stiffening spine, in the anxious beat squeezing inside her breast.
Exactly what did she think would happen? That she would run toward this person—this man—and he would help her on her quest, like a good sidekick? Want to find your missing husband? Sure. I don’t have anything planned.
Maybe the living dead had all rotten away, maybe there was nothing left of the zombie-like creatures that had blown through the country like a hurricane.
But who was to say that the dead were the only thing to fear?
Then what? Hide? Miss out on this one possibility for human contact?
If another two months went by, or a whole year, and still all the world she discovered around her was a desert—would she be able to live with the fact that she had stayed hidden, crossed out her only chance for companionship?
Sara was so busy ping-ponging between her options, she didn’t know how close the man had gotten until his shoes were grinding pieces of broken glass, a couple of aisles from her.
Alarm spiked her heartrate.
Glancing toward the nearest exist, Sara’s palm slipped against one of the cans she had been about to shove into her backpack.
She watched it fall in slow motion.
There was time to think: I can catch it.
But no time to actually make good on that before it clattered to the ground.
The man’s footsteps stopped dead in their tracks.
Horrified, Sara weighed her next move for a second. Run? Cut toward the revolving door, drop the can of beans or use it as a weapon?
But if she was going to make an attempt at peaceful contact, she couldn’t start like this.
You grew up with a Republican, Sara. You can handle a little diplomacy.
Fists clenching, she sucked in a deep breath. “Hello?”
She waited. Nothing. For what felt like a whole minute, he didn’t seem to even breathe.
“I’m not armed,” she said. “I’m not contaminated. I’m not looking for trouble.”
Silence.
Past the initial fear, excitement pulsed within her like a second heartbeat. Someone was here. Someone was here. Now that the possibility of an encounter was tangible, the prospect of spending one day more following her routine felt unbearable. Walking around, looking for food, or a vehicle, or a place to spend the night. All the food she had eaten the past two months seemed tasteless, all the sleep she had gotten drained from rest. I can’t do it. I can’t be alone anymore. I just can’t.
Most likely, the man was as afraid as she was. He was alone, too—or he wouldn’t have wandered here by himself. Was he starving for contact? Had he started driving himself crazy, the sound of his own thoughts grinding like claws on metal?
“My name is Sara,” she volunteered.
Nothing.
For a beat, she wondered if she had imagined the footsteps.
But then the man shifted on his feet. She heard glass squeal under his shoes.
That same nervous stab of panic and joy. A breath came out of her, half-laughter half-shock.
“I—I’m going to come out. If that’s okay. If you don’t want me to, you can leave. I’ll give you time. Okay?”
Time stretched like pieces of hot toffee.
She counted to thirty. Once. Twice.
Then she peeled off the shelf, sweat beading between her shoulder blades. Her heart pounded all the way to her throat as she made her way toward the end of the aisle, kicking into a broken jar of pickles.
Once she stood at the center of the walkway, Sara paused. Should she seek him out? If he had wanted to come out of hiding, he would have. In fact, if he wanted anything to do with her, he would have spoken by now.
Maybe he wasn’t interested in people at all.
Maybe he’s planning how to hack you into pieces.
Sara licked her lips. She didn’t dare take a few steps further and peer into the aisle where the man stood, concealed—and yet, she must.
The proximity of a fellow human prickled every nerve in her body.
“If—” she started. “If you could come out now. Or say something.”
From the aisle, behind a wall of shampoos and body lotions, a sigh came out. A throat was cleared.
Sara swallowed.
Real human noises that hadn’t come out of her own mouth.
The world brightened.
Then his feet broke into a stride. She could barely hear them past the blood rushing to her temples.
A hand grabbed a shelf, knocking a couple of conditioner bottles to the floor. Sara’s smile stiffened. A military ring gleamed on his finger. Airborne, USA.
A shoe thrust into her field of vision. Just one.
He was hesitating. Making this drag.
Maybe he’s disfigured. An old scar left from the army. Maybe he’s shy.
Another voice said:
Maybe he’s some sort of vampire, and he’ll grab you by the throat and suck you dry.
Then his second foot came out, and he was standing before her.
The floor beneath Sara’s feet crumbled.
And she almost wished that the man had been a vampire.