Chapter Five #2
She glances at me. “You…have, though? Been there before?”
“Yep. When my sister still lived in New York.”
“Is the drive easy?”
“Pretty much a straight shot.” This statement seems to visibly affect her, her grip loosening on the wheel. Can’t say that I blame her. I’d be pretty nervous to go on a road trip solo through Zombie America right now, too. “You’ve never been to your own bunker?”
“It’s not mine.”
“Ah. You’re going to live with that man, then? The one radioing you when we…um. Almost, ah. Before?” I strive for nonchalance, for casual, polite conversation.
I fail.
“I’m going to check on Gramps. That’s it.”
Gramps. The man asking her whether I’d put out is her grandfather?
Maisie turns up the volume on the boxy radio she has strapped to the dash, probably to keep me from making this even more awkward, and her too-crazy-for-AM-radio news spills through the car.
“We are facing a Mass Reanimation Event. I repeat, a Mass Reanimation Event. It’s time to bug out and hunker down. If you have to move, avoid hospitals, morgues, and cemeteries at all costs.”
“Cemeteries?” My voice pitches upward, panic rising like a wave. Does that mean that somewhere out there…Louise…I feel woozy, like my head might roll right off my shoulders.
Maisie’s eyes dart to mine, then back to the road. “There have been no reports of buried bodies reanimating. It seems to affect only those who die from the virus, or…” Her voice trails off as we wait for a pack of zombies to stumble across the road.
“Or what?”
“Or those who get bitten, of course.” She gives me a searching glance edged in alarm at my sickly shade. “You weren’t bitten, were you?”
I shake my head quickly. Waterbed tried, but even zombie teeth can’t rip through winter-weight denim.
“Virus symptoms?” she asks, her voice a sharp demand.
I hesitate for a second, then shake my head again.
My stomach hurt half the night, but once I acknowledged that the people trying to eat me were real zombies, the panic attack I’d been fighting finally razed through my system and burned me down to ashes.
After it ran its course, the muscles finally unclenched in my abdomen, and I began to feel, if not better, at least not sick.
Her nostrils flare as she stares at me, but whatever she sees must convince her that, at least for the time being, I’m okay. I don’t tell her about the failed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but I do put on my mask, just in case.
I give her directions to my house, and our talking stops altogether, drowned out by tinny, feverish voices from the radio and the crushing weight of this new, terrifying reality.
I prefer conversation, honestly.
“So…you’re a prepper.” I nod thoughtfully around at the stacks of weapons, food, jugs of water, pausing slightly over what appears to be a defibrillator charging in the USB port. The back seat’s packed with supplies. I’m lucky there’s room for me in the front at all.
“Yep,” she responds, tight-lipped. “But I wasn’t going to Misery you. And I needed zip ties for normal, non-kidnapping purposes. I just wanted to go on a damn date.”
Shame washes over me again. I may be a sad, reclusive bastard, but I’m not a mean one.
And I’d liked Maisie. Before I stumbled into her doom-room, I’d felt more for her than anyone I’d met in years.
I spent the year after Louise died consumed by a deep, heartbreaking grief.
But when that finally passed, a numbness set in that affected all of my functions.
My ability to laugh. To plan for the future.
To care about anything but Chicken and Gemma and Sandeep.
It felt like I’d never want anything again.
But then I did. Standing there pinned against her doorway, I wanted Maisie so much I ached from it, like the rush of painful sensation that floods your limbs when you come inside after spending too long in the cold.
And now she’s sitting here, reliving the rejection I put her through last night when I learned that she was a prepper, which, coincidentally, is the reason I’m sitting here still alive.
It’s not fair, and I feel terrible about it.
“Look, Maisie, I’m sorry for how I—”
“It’s fine,” she cuts me off.
I press my eyes closed and sigh. “It’s not fine, and you don’t have to pretend that it was.
It’s just—that was the first date I’ve been on since my—in a long time.
I was really nervous, and your…” I swallow, not wanting to add any further insult, but also not quite sure how to describe what I saw.
“Armory? Threw me for a loop. And the zip ties.”
Maisie sniffs. “I told you I prepare.”
“I thought you meant, like, meal planning or go bags. I wasn’t expecting a full-blown doomsday prepper.”
She mutters “go bags” under her breath.
“Anyway, I’m sorry. It was horribly rude and unkind, and can we blame the zombies? I’d like to blame the zombies.”
Maisie deftly dodges an upturned truck on fire, then her mouth twitches once. Twice. “You wanna play the zombie card?”
“I mean…” I gesture out the windshield at the clumps of undead lurching stiffly down the road. “Now’s the time.”
Her breath escapes in an amused huff. “Fine.”
“Zombies.” I shake my head in wonder as we pass a whole flock of them. “They always struck me as the least likely monster, too.”
“I know. I can’t believe all the craziest preppers were right. Climate disaster, nuclear war, massive asteroids—those all seemed like way more realistic apocalypse scenarios than zombies. How do you prepare for zombies?”