Gods of Anthem Read online

  When I back away, there are too many to read in one sitting.

  Every prisoner from this section who’s come and gone, they fill the eastern wall. All of them lost. All forgotten, except for here.

  Someday, probably soon, I’ll join them.

  I climb up into the bunk to get closer to the window. It’s approaching night, so the orange sky is ablaze in twilight’s eternal fire, like the sky’s been lit with a match; whorls and wisps flow like water down the drain of a bathtub. But every once in a while the orange smoke moves to show a clear sky beyond.

  The sky’s abuse wasn’t the worst of it.

  What we did to one another … now that was something.

  After the undead outbreak, the Earth seemed infected, too, turning more violent to reflect our own violence. Death built like a tidal wave of red, and with our weapons of mass destruction … we destroyed, swinging at anything that moved.

  Mother Nature had responded to our little party, and the universe had front row tickets to the chaos. Storms brewed with increased intensity, and the sky turned every color in the spectrum as we tore it to bits. Earth answered each disaster, tit for tat. Beloved pets mauled their owners, and stories akin to Old Yeller piled up in every neighborhood.

  People soon forgot about the beautiful places that once existed. But they didn’t care. They were too busy dying.

  The cold window feels good against my face. The moon’s risen, and it bears a ring around it tonight. It’s the brightest I’ve seen in a long while, and a color of orange that’s alien. The sight makes me slump my shoulders, like the moon’s given up so we should, too … until a cloud slides out of the way and a glowing blue-white perfection takes my breath away.

  There it is. I place a hand to the window while it fades back to orange. It does see me, I think.

  Mimi’s leaning over me when my eyes open. Her small face swims in the red haze of the flashing lights and her delicate features are tight with fear. The alarms sound to match my fast heartbeat.

  “Liza,” she says, and I nod.

  Echoed screams swell between the pulsing buzz that’s felt through the metal frame of my bed. Feet thunder through the corridors in our direction, and next we’ll all be rounded up like cattle to identify the outbreak.

  Her tiny, frozen hand on mine jolts me to my feet, and I gesture for Mimi to follow me up the ladder to the empty bunk above.

  She hides under the thin blue blanket while I watch the chaos.

  No monsters yet in the crowd. Prisoners flow like a school of frightened fish, darting in a seemingly synchronized design through our section. Across from us, Sharon holds a rosary near her mouth, chanting so fast the words blur together. “Hailmaryfullofgrace … theLordiswiththee …”

  Her rocking form is mesmerizing; the litany, calming.

  A man appears in our doorway, and I brace against the dance up my spine. That strange way he pauses—predatory, stalking.

  Red lights hide his blood-soaked smock, and the strobe amplifies his drunken sway. His head swivels to scan the girls who flock like chickens, instinctively, and stupidly, into corners where they’ll be trapped. He stumbles toward them with a sucking noise, eyes shifting without focus.

  A warning cry builds in my chest, but is tamped down by fear of being noticed.

  Before anyone can do more than flinch, he’s down the aisle that’s one over from Mimi and me, hunched low to find stragglers still in their bunks. Hunger makes him agile; a cheetah compared to the chicks limp in the wake of terror.

  Some flee into our aisle. He follows and snags the smock of a girl trying to crawl underneath her bunk not but a few feet away. Screams overtake the alarms as beds crash aside in a tangle of sheets.

  They struggle together like two wrestlers, her calling out to us for help, and the cries are fresh, young. Guilt burns like ants under the skin; not a new sensation, and one that promptly goes ignored.

  Zombies are Herculean when sustained. One once lifted up three men as if they were mere kittens with their claws stuck in a sweater, and swung them into the walls. Trying to take on a zombie, let alone after it’s had a meal, is suicide.

  Still, when one does nothing, they live with that.

  The scuffle is used as a diversion to flee. Some rush like a horde of frightened buffalo past the two. The zombie reaches for them halfheartedly before turning back to his victim, whose wails of terror are quickly snuffed out.

  In one bite, her throat’s a ripped mess.

  “Over here!” Sharon yells.

  I’m prepared to silence her, before I notice the guard rushing past the doorway. Sharon calls to him again, and he stops, turning back. She gestures over to the monster, and her beads accidentally clatter to the floor, drawing the zombie’s attention.

  Slowly, the guard approaches the bloody aisle. Brave of Sharon to call out. My voice has become a strangled wheeze. The zombie’s risen from his kill, and now turns toward us. The human face is so unchanged but for the bright red eyes and blood gushing from his nostrils.

  His life’s ticking away—the second one. His feet can’t seem to keep up, making him sway and crash off of bunks like a bumper car.

  Hands gloved in black blood lift toward me. They match the blood-rimmed mouth and bring images to mind of paint on a clown.

  Sharon prays fervently, lips trembling so her words tumble out in bursting jitters. The sound’s comical, like a child’s hiccups, and my laughter bubbles up inside before a modicum of reason trumps it.

  Hysteria, my brain supplies.

  The guard lifts his gun behind the monster that was once a man, a thing still watching me with a peculiar tilt of the head. On the guard’s helmet is a visor fixed with a one-way mirror reflecting huge eyes and an open mouth: me.

  But the burning-red eyes draw me into its gaze. He’s closer now, having scrolled forward three feet between blinks.

  Gasps from the bloody lips take shape.

  It’s saying …

  It can’t be.

  My voice is a dry husk of terror, and wonder. “What?”

  The head explodes.

  Mimi and I are rounded up with the others. We’re brought into the hallway, and the chaos there separates us.

  I weed through the melee, and find her once again. By the hand, I tow her along to a corridor that’s empty.

  We run that direction until we are too winded to keep on.

  “What do … we do … Liza?” Mimi huffs and puffs in my same rhythm.

  “I—”

  A gloved hand snags my smock in answer, and a guard lifts me off my feet like I’m a stray.

  “You should be at attendance with the others,” his voice grates through the helmet’s filter.

  He turns in the opposite direction from my block. East wing is the isolation ward, and he’s dragging me that way.

  Mimi stares at us, frozen.

  “Run,” I call back to her. “Hide.”

  The guard’s oblivious to my weak attempts to free myself, but his footsteps slow toward the end of the hallway. When I look back, Mimi’s gone, while my captor leans against the wall as if to rest, air-filter hissing in time with his breaths.

  “Hey,” I say, “what are you—”

  A red droplet appears at my feet.

  I want to step away, but I’m tethered. Confusion muddles my thoughts while I stare at the perfect circle on the floor before it occurs to me … I’m looking at blood.

  Adrenaline aids my struggle this time. “Let me go!”

  My screamed words echo. Prying his fingers loose is futile, and soon, more droplets have joined the first. The guard turns his visor toward me, red now running in a steady stream from the bottom of the mirrored portion.

  Terror livens my limbs.

  In the visor’s reflection, my head grows larger as he pulls me close. His shudder is felt even through the suit’s padding before he turns away so sharply, blood splatters the cement wall in a long spray. It paints a red line that runs, the drips racing each other downwar
d.

  Face to the wall, the guard stares at it as if fascinated. Then, he tips his head back in a solid yank, before smashing himself into the cement with a loud crack.

  The material’s cutting off my air supply. He again brings his face into the wall with such force that the visor smashes, sending shards of plastic in every direction.

  All I can manage are choked wails. “Help … me! Somebody!”

  Finally, footfalls emerge in the corridor.

  But the guard’s turning to face me already, blood spilling over the edge of the broken visor like a waterfall. His helmet had slowly filled like a blister. His eyes and nose run thick with red, though it’s not gushing because he’s not sick like us, and eventually the blood will clot and he’ll live forever as a zombie.

  He lifts me, testing his supernatural strength, and the veins in his face bulge. I’m beyond screaming anymore as I’m brought—like his snack—toward his mouth.

  Warmth spreads through my nether regions before I’m bitten. A dull burning sensation begins in my shoulder that soon blossoms into searing agony.

  Heedless of my dangling body, the guards fire at their turned comrade. They catch the zombie with a few bullets that force us both to the ground.

  One bullet’s grazed my arm, but the pain isn’t nearly as bad as the fire-poker feeling from the bite.

  They surround me, counting down the incubation period.

  Neurological side effects cramp my entire body like one huge contracting muscle. The zombie love-bite doesn’t turn everyone, and I’ve been bitten before. Twice, actually.

  First at the home where a kid named Jerry had turned. He’d chewed up my leg quite a bit before they’d come to take care of him. I’d silently allowed the assault, afraid of what would happen to the boy. I’d tried to stop him from chewing on our dead caretaker, and in the process, he’d pinned me down and started to … eat me.

  The second time, I was on the train headed to the island. The food-cart man had locked us into a room with him and away from a passenger who’d turned after being bitten. Only, the food-cart man had then turned himself, and we were trapped inside. He’d bitten me on the finger, just a small pinch, before they’d pushed him from the train and into the green ocean.

  Both bites were excruciating for twenty-four hours.

  One in five people will die; they’ll get bit and immediately flip. I’m one of the other four, and I won’t turn even after I’m dead. An entirely different probability, there. But they burn the bodies here so it’s not even a chance.

  The nurse bandaging my arm watches me warily.

  “Don’t worry”—I check her nametag—“May. I won’t become one. I’ve already been bitten, see?”

  She nods and dutifully glances down at the scars when I raise my pant leg. May peers with a grimace at the white skin pressed into an outline of tiny, perfect teeth.

  Later, she crosses herself when she thinks I’m not looking.

  After another round of spasms, I’m sweating buckets and shivering in a fever. The bite throbs, and the skin around it is itchy and hot.

  When I twist to see it, it looks infected.

  I am sick. Before, I was very sick, as well. But now, something new has come that doesn’t quite have a name yet, but might look a lot like giving up.

  Mimi shakes my shoulder, and when she pulls away, she wipes her hand on her smock.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I don’t answer. Instead, I roll over, trying to let the fire that’s burning deep in my shoulder catch the rest of me.

  It’ll kill me. That’s my hope.

  Mimi whispers to the others, asking if I’ll be a zombie. They tell her “no,” but she hides her head under the covers at night anyway. I’m the monster under her bed; the bloodshot eyes and moans giving her nightmares are mine this time.

  I really must look terrible.

  It’s apparent, because when they come to take me to the sick bay, they head toward the side where the dead people go.

  This will be my resting place, where I’ll find freedom.

  Finally.

  I’m there for what feels like years, while everyone waits for me to pass. They’re pleasant enough … for strangers.

  No one should have to feel lonely when they die, but we feel so much more than that. We feel left behind, too.

  There will be no funeral, but if the death is quick, then I’m settled.

  Doctors visit, but they don’t really check my chart. One glance at my face, and they move on to the next poor dying prisoner. We’re beyond help, as if we’ve already become ghosts.

  After three whole days of deep sleep, Nurse May tells me it’s a miracle that I’m still alive. I’m unable to croak out a reply.

  Refusing water does no good. She only returns and inserts an IV, guiltily avoiding my glare. It’s obvious May feels sorry for trying keep me alive, even if it is her job.

  My bones poke through my skin at all angles in a grotesque fashion. The sharp pieces of me, they tell a story of what’s left: Nothing.

  Mimi visits, but scurries back from my shooing and leaves me to rest.

  What is there left to do, but die?

  God, just let me die.

  They’ve placed me in a new part of the island. The birds are loud by my large, unbarred window, and dull sunrays shine through clean panes.

  The smell here is fresh, missing the stench of fear, death, and despair.

  New nurses I’ve never seen before, dressed in regular surgical smocks, look me over with vacant, professional eyes. They are quiet, unsmiling. Another doctor comes in, this one finely dressed, and though I’m certain that I’ve never seen him before, deja vu enters through the numbness.

  The nurse and doctor give me shots, both holding me down like I’d do anything but lie limp on the crisp white sheets.

  He watches me, and compassion fills his eyes, yet there’s something missing. Almost like a copy—a rendering from a very good artist.

  An urge to run from this man with missing puzzle pieces, a kind of Pretend Man, strikes me even in my feeble state. He turns away when that thought arises, as if he can sense the empty I’ve found in him and doesn’t want to frighten me.

  If I could, I’d laugh at the very thought.

  I find him at my bed each time I awake. His eyes are blue, sort of like mine, only brighter, and his are pressed into a face as masculine as a hammer. He seems unhappy with my regard now, and somehow that’s apparent, too.

  To remain stoic in the appraisal of this stranger is too hard. Even breathing has become a chore as my body’s long since given up.

  My message can only be sent with my eyes: I’ll be judged in my own good time, Pretend Man. I don’t need your approval, not anymore.

  His face relaxes into what one can only assume is his most lavish smile. But that mouth hasn’t seen a sincere grin—a real parting of the mouth, showing teeth and gums; one like my father’s, whose smile was like the heavens opening up through the clouds. No, this reveals some force that chills me; a twist of fate that reaches into my fuzzy, almost-dead brain cells like a flurry of snow.

  Skin and bones, and dressed like a doctor. But inside? A void.

  He watches me for a while before he nods to the nurse, like he’s decided something.

  They poke me so many times each session; I sleep during the process.

  I’m feverish again today. It reminds me of summertime and the fire hydrants that used to keep us cool when the sun began to melt us all for our incompetence. When each day was a record high, and we lost power due to melted electronics, some people lost their minds, clawed at our door, wondering if we’d somehow found a way to stay cool. We soaked our sheets with a hose like everyone else.

  We Randuskys cried ourselves to sleep, just like they did.

  And then, after shunning us for so long, when they asked for our help, I dreamt of their horrible deaths.

  Maybe it was a sin. Maybe I’ll pay for that now.

  My dreams are the last remnan
ts of my short and pathetic existence.

  Some are of when we first arrived at Bodega as paper children ready to blow away. But tonight, they’ve come as ballerinas poised in a studio.

  And she leads the class.

  My mother.

  Certain places had once regarded my mother as one of the best dancers in the world, back when people were still inspired by such things. My pensive and stoic parent, a stuffy citizen of the British Empire, held such a tenuous grasp on the idea of parenthood. But when she stepped onto the stage, her body would become water—pliable, flowing over anything in her way. Like a reed in the deepest canal bent almost to breaking, dancing for my mother was like breathing for anyone else.

  Then, I’m in my old room. The one facing the westward sun that perfectly lit my desk in the afternoon, and upon it is my old music box. Fragile and never to be wound again, it had been a gift from my father, the composer of modern times. When wound, the beautiful shell-carved box plays the most haunting ballad ever written. And a tiny ballerina spins across from her oval mirror.

  I’d once asked my father what he thought of the shuffling creatures replacing our neighbors, and he’d said they had no rhythm, no predictability. He, the maestro—his enemy was chaos, and he’d mumble into his teacup, head shaking, as we learned more about the tide rising around us threatening to drown everyone with dead people who just wouldn’t stay dead.

  “Chaos disrupts the compilation,” he’d often say, as if we were an orchestra and not nations and a populace. “It disrupts the melody!” he’d cry, then shut himself away to mourn.

  I’d wait in my room wondering at the fate of us Randuskys. Famous or not, we, too, would be lost in this limping world.

  And eventually we were …

  My eyes crack open to find Pretend Man watching me tonight, with a face as closed as a vault, while he searches my wrist for a pulse. He thinks I’m dead. I’m almost sure of it.

  Do my eyes not open far enough to show him I’m still alive? Do they not blink?

  Most of my body’s unresponsive. Maybe I’ve already expired and sight’s the final residue of my brain sparking.

  When he jabs a needle into my side, I don’t feel it.