Nineteen
theo
“Oh, wow. I didn’t know you were out and about.” Laura strolled through the rooftop door two days later, mask in place, Crocs scuffing across the tiles. “How’s Sadie doing?”
Fog hovered above the ground, and the echo of distant shouting bounced down the street. It could have been pouring rain or a record-breaking heatwave for all I cared. The freedom of being outside again eclipsed every other detail.
“Better all the time,” I said, rubbing some warmth into my hands. Laura and Tim had taken turns dropping by to check on Sadie from the hallway, but I hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone else in the week since she got sick.
“I wish the phones were still working so we could text each other.” Laura clicked on the television and crossed her arms, tucking the remote under her elbow. “Has she stopped coughing yet?”
“Just about,” I said as we stood side by side.
“Still in your bed?” She slid me a sideways glance, eyebrows raised. “I’m loving this development, by the way.”
I smiled behind my mask. “Still in my bed, but I’m on the couch, so don’t get too carried away.”
“We’ll see.”
Not that it wasn’t on my mind constantly.
How could it not be? She’d trusted me to take care of her at her most vulnerable, laughed with me.
Let me in. Just one look from her ignited the spark, but I wouldn’t risk making a move until she agreed to come to my dad’s farm.
I thought too much of her to start something that was doomed to failure.
“She’s probably safe for the rest of us to be around by now,” Laura said, eyes locked on the jerky live footage. “Why don’t you bring her up here? Just knock on my door first so I know to come up.”
“I’ll run it by her and see what she thinks.”
She watched the news for a bit, taking in the same stories Sadie and I had been digesting on a loop.
“It’s starting to look like we’re hitting the point of no return,” she said.
“Owen and I were talking about leaving soon, taking the girls to my sister’s place in Darby Downs.
I don’t know if more space is the answer, but it’s gotta be better than this. ”
I nodded, my thoughts meandering down the same track as hers.
We’d already endured nearly twelve months of having the rooftop as our only safe space outside our homes.
I couldn’t picture myself doing another year of it without losing my mind.
“You shouldn’t have too much trouble with the roadblocks anymore. ”
She hummed her agreement. “Are you any closer to leaving for your dad’s place?”
“Not yet. I’m still waiting.”
“On?”
“Sadie’s sister. She should be touching down in Sydney this morning.”
“About time. It’s been so long.” Laura flicked me a glance, then followed up with a longer look, her eyes taking in every detail above my mask. “Aw, Theo, you little sweetheart. You have feelings for our Sadie.”
“Shh.” I nudged her shoulder with mine.
“Don’t worry.” She nudged me right back. “It’s locked in the vault.”
“Just for now. I’m trying to figure things…” My words trailed off as a reporter’s frantic voice drew my attention.
A helicopter hovered above central Sydney, the camera zooming in on a pack of men trading blows.
The group had gathered in the middle of the street, closed businesses on either side and a few cars banked up around them.
Some men lay unmoving on the ground, while others were still on their feet, rampaging around them.
I checked my watch. A fight in the street at eight a.m.
My eyes jumped from one detail to the next, taking in their torn clothing, blood, and features twisted with a kind of rage I’d never seen before.
The reporter in the chopper crammed in too much detail, commentating like a race caller on the home stretch, his voice crackling with interference.
“What the hell's going on now?” Laura spared me a glance, eyes wide. “This is next level.”
“It’s escalating. Not just the amount of violence, but—“
“The severity.”
My stomach dropped, and I nodded. I’d watched countless clashes over the past few days, but there was something off about this one.
They weren’t fighting like they wanted to win a confrontation.
It wasn’t panic or fear driving them. They were trying to end one another, as if the anger might destroy them from the inside.
And we were only seeing snippets of what was going on around us. There weren’t enough reporters left to cover it all.
What if it stretched between major cities, too? Were the highways safe? The two-hour drive to the farm with Sadie might be dangerous. Too dangerous.
Then another thought hit like a sucker punch. “Ava’s landing and walking straight into this—and she has to make it all the way back here.”
She was younger than Sadie. All alone. What were her chances if this kind of thing was even wider spread than we knew?
Laura was too caught up in the fighting to look my way. “Don’t even think about going out to find her,” she said. “That’s a whole needle-in-a-haystack situation if I ever saw one.”
She was right, but it didn’t kill the urge. “I’m not going anywhere until Sadie’s recovered.”
“Good. There’s no point in leaving a stable situation for the complete unknown. You’re too pretty to be getting into fights.”
Her attempt to lift the mood had me smiling, and I tuned into the news again. The camera panned across the crowd, the condition of the men deteriorating in the short time I’d been distracted. The people on the ground were still lying in the same positions—dead or alive was anyone’s guess.
No one was coming to help. Bystanders watched. Some leaned forward and appeared to be yelling, but most were unwilling to risk diving into the brutality.
I linked my hands on top of my head, watching the last glimpses of humanity die live on TV. The only part I could be thankful for was knowing Sadie had escaped this version of the virus.
“Did you see that?” Laura dropped the remote and grabbed the sleeve of my puffer jacket, jabbing her finger at the screen. “Look. The guy near the shop doorway. He’s not dead.”
I followed the direction she’d pointed, trying to latch on to a sliver of hope in a shitty situation, but the guy hadn’t moved since the coverage started, and there were still no signs of life.
“That one? In front of the jewellery shop?” I asked.
“He moved, I swear. Watch.”
Matted grey hair. A streak of blood across his temple.
He’d curled up in the fetal position, his shirt ripped open down the back and one shoe missing.
My pulse thudded in my ears, and I willed him to do something.
Then his socked foot twitched twice, and his arm lifted before it dropped back to the ground.
Shit. He was alive. “He needs a paramedic,” I said.
“Or at least someone to help him up. Everyone’s just standing around watching, like it’s the freaking UFC or something.”
The reporter stopped commentating on the violence and pointed out the same detail that had caught our attention, his rapid-fire words dialling up the drama.
When the man’s head jerked backward at an unnatural angle, my breath stalled.
“What was that?” Laura’s fingers dug into my biceps.
“A seizure?” I tried to sound calm despite the unease rolling through me. “Don’t people convulse sometimes after head trauma?”
But Sadie hadn’t reacted that way when she was hit by the cyclist.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He stirred again, his shoulder lifting from the concrete first, then his leg flinging out ramrod straight. Too fast for someone who’d just been knocked unconscious.
When his back arched and his eyes snapped open, Laura flinched, and every bone in my body went still.
“He’s getting up.” She shared a split second glance with me, then stared at the footage. “How the fuck can he be getting up on his own? I wish the reporter would shut up so I can concentrate. He sounds excited. This isn’t the Melbourne Cup, you idiot.”
Any other time, I would have smiled, but I didn’t have one in me right now.
The man opened and closed his mouth in quick succession, then turned his head from left to right, taking in the preoccupied crowd with strangely blank eyes.
My breath got stuck in my throat as I scanned the sea of nearby people. No one else saw it, too caught up in the threats coming from every direction to see what we were watching on a zoom lens.
I stood and waited for… something.
“He’s not right,” Laura said. “Check him out. His eyes look weird, like he’s not even in there anymore.”
“He’s on the move.” The man’s awkward shuffle took him closer to the main group.
He reached the periphery and caught a wayward elbow to the temple from a beefy guy in a hi-vis hoodie, but his vacant expression didn’t change; not even a flicker of pain or anger.
If he’d reacted, it would have at least shown awareness of his surroundings and eased some of the pressure on my chest.
“That hit didn’t even register,” Laura said, hanging onto my arm like a life preserver.
If he’d had a single thought in his head, it would have been his sign to turn around and get out of there. Instead, he extended his arms and closed in on the pack, jaw grinding from side to side in the most unnerving way.
“I’m sick of this fool.” Laura let go of me and muted the volume, shutting down the reporter. The sudden silence made the situation even more frightening, as if cutting off one of my senses had made me tune into the others. My fingers shook, and I curled my hand into a fist at my side.
The next moments played out like a slow-motion nightmare. The formerly unconscious man grabbed the hi-vis guy by the hair and dragged him backwards, the attack so unexpected, it almost toppled him over. As he tried to right himself, the other man lunged and sank his teeth into his neck.
Into. His. Neck.
Fuck.
Laura made a funny squeaking sound, and I stared at the TV, mouth half open, eyes wide.
“He’s biting him,” she said in wonder. “Teeth. Neck. Chomp.”
I shook my head in confusion. Hi-vis guy screamed and struggled, trying to shove the man off him. My body tensed, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the TV. His injury sprayed like a geyser, and the biting turned feral. An animal going in for the kill.
As the thugs on the periphery turned toward the noise, a nearby movement finally dragged my attention from the attack.
One of the remaining men on the ground spasmed a couple of times just like the first, his body jerking as it became more mobile.
It took him less effort to gain his feet, and this one didn’t need time to acclimatise to his surroundings.
“There’s another one.” I nodded at the screen as he locked onto the man already drenched in blood and made a beeline for him.
If it had been chaotic before, the scene exploded into a frenzy. Both men tore into muscles and tendons, their faces shiny with fresh blood. Hi-vis guy had stopped fighting now, his body dropping to the ground. I had a sinking feeling he wouldn’t stay down for long.
Laura’s breaths were audible.
My mind raced, and I struggled to focus. This could have been Sadie. What if it was Ava right now?
I had to get back home. If Sadie had been watching the same footage, she’d be planning a rescue mission, and the panic wouldn’t help with her recovery.
“He’s dead.” Laura stepped back from the screen as if distancing herself from the truth. The man with the ripped throat had landed on his side, his clothes saturated with blood. “They killed him live on TV. What if my girls saw it?”
I exhaled a harsh breath and uncurled my fingers, shifting my attention between Laura and the news. “Owen would have switched it off the second it took a turn.”
Sadie, on the other hand, would have absorbed every detail—and I wasn’t there to support her.
Laura shoved her hair back from her face and turned to me. “Is this what we’re dealing with now, as if we haven’t already been through enough shit?”
When another man rose from the ground, a fluttering started behind my sternum. More attacks, more blood. The crowd had scattered, leaving only those who’d risen and their victims.
As if the network had finally realised the scene wasn’t fit for mass viewing, they cut to a shaken news anchor in the studio. The restrained panic in the woman’s eyes hit hard, and I sucked in a breath.
One occurrence could have been put down to an anomaly. Two was a stretch. Three? There was no getting around what we were watching. “You know what it looks like,” I said.
“If you say it—if you so much as utter that word—I swear to God I’m going to lose it.”
It was unfathomable.
Inhuman.
It defied explanation.
I locked eyes with her. “Zombies.”