Unrest Read online

  She eyed the guns in her closet as she picked out her clothes. For some reason she almost wanted to take one with her, as if it would protect her from something, but of course the school didn’t allow weapons of any kind, let alone guns. She didn’t know why she had this odd sense of impending tragedy, but she was probably just rattled by the unexpected phone call. Marina dressed and left for the day, opting for her boots rather than sneakers.

  ***

  His mother called him from the kitchen. Jomo was excited and ready for his day. His parents had set out healthy fruits and vegetables, and milk and orange juice on the table. His mother had also made a bowl of steaming oatmeal for Jomo with raisins in it as he liked. He smiled up at her as he sat, and she smoothed the back of his close cropped hair with her hand as he looked down at his meal, admiring her boy.

  “Are you ready for school?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered her.

  She nodded approvingly. “Eat up.”

  His father sat across from him at the table and said, “Good morning Jomo.”

  “Good morning Father.”

  His mother joined him and his brother and sister at the table, and they all sat and ate in companionable silence.

  Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in their homeland, unbeknownst to all, a plague was beginning.

  ***

  The attendant at the drive thru was unbearably slow, and Guadalupe only wanted to get her shake and fries and go. She was already running late for her first class, even though her parents had practically pushed her out the door to get her going. She wasn’t one to get irritated easily, but they were consistently slow. Lupe only went to this burger place because it was along her route.

  She considered skipping school altogether. She wasn’t really in a school mood anyway. But Lupe had to keep her grades up. It was more than not wanting to go to school though. It was more like dread.

  That was weird. Why would she dread going to school, especially today when she didn’t have any tests, or any tough classes? Lupe shook her head. Ah,

  screw it.

  “Never mind!” she yelled toward the window agent who was just out of sight in the back, probably picking his nose or something. She drove off.

  “Hey! Hey!” she heard someone yell seconds later. No time to turn back now. Guess she’d have to be hungry a little longer.

  ***

  Samir didn’t know what to make of the odd illness that had struck at a dairy farm in Mumbai, but he ate his meal nevertheless, perusing his notes for study group. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important, and that it would be both educational and entertaining for his friends. It was a testament to his research and his ability to connect with them that the group was still fully functional. Still something in his brain said he’d be called upon to do more than cite research and entertain. It could be the Mad Cow scare in his homeland had him spooked, but still that unnerving feeling was there.

  ***

  She picked up the phone on the third ring, without looking at the caller ID.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Kamara. It’s me.”

  Her ex-boyfriend Darius.

  “Oh hey,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking about things a lot, and about the way I ended things...”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I just thought we should give it another

  chance. I miss you.”

  “Well, I missed you too. But I can’t go through that again. You being into me, then you’re not sure, then you want to try. I can’t do it anymore. My heart

  can’t take it.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. This time I’ll make it work. This time I’ll be committed to you. I promise. I swear!”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t. I can’t trust that it’s going to be any different this time.” There was silence on the other line. “Darius, did you hear me?”

  “Yes. I heard. All right; if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye,” he said solemnly.

  The moment she hung up she cried. Two minutes later she blocked his number. She didn’t know what else to do.

  Her cat Bella jumped on the sofa beside her, looking up at her with concern, and then leapt onto her shoulder, nuzzling her face. She was hardly ever this affectionate, but as animals do she sensed her owner’s distress and did her best to comfort. Kamara kissed her on the top of the head, caressing her pelt. She didn’t know if it was her state of mind, but something felt unnervingly wrong about this day.

  ***

  Four and a half hours after Darius hung up he heard a pounding on the door.

  “All right, all right! I’m coming!” he said. Darius peeked through the keyhole but the person behind the door kept shifting. All he could make out was a white lab coat. If he had seen the blood on it he might not have opened the door, but he did. The banging on the door wasn’t knocking, but the sound of something smelling him, and trying to get in. The moment he unbolted the door, opening it just a crack to look, the thing behind the door shoved through. It was a man but with the face of a demon, seemingly possessed. It gnashed with its teeth and tore out his throat. Blood spurting from the wound, he staggered back and fell to the floor. The man/demon crouched atop him, eating his face as the last breath in him died.

  eleven

  Cruising along the vacant boarded up houses the three vehicle convoy made its way through empty littered streets, looking for any sign of re-entry onto a highway that wouldn’t be stopped up with traffic. But even at their vantage point several streets down from the main thoroughfare they could see rows of unmoving gleaming steel, like packages with reflective gift wrap shimmering in the fading light.

  Jomo’s father took the rest of them through several towns, some more pleasant, others worse, but all strangely devoid of people. Word travelled fast. Finally they saw an opening a mile from what appeared to have been a roadblock and some sort of major accident. It was wrong to be happy about something so terrible being responsible for their good fortune, but they couldn’t help it.

  The new section of highway they entered was entirely clear of traffic. The only vehicles they encountered were left abandoned on the shoulder. Jomo’s family was relieved but somber. The groups in Samir’s and Kamara’s cars cheered, whooping and raising fists in victory. That triumph was, however, short-lived.

  Up ahead through a sharp curve and an uphill slope of highway was what could only be described as a congregation of dead souls. The zombies, dozens of them stood there shuffling about, as if waiting for their approach. The overturned bus lying on its side that they’d come out from had skidded to a stop several hundred feet behind them.

  Jomo’s family saw them too late. His father

  slammed on the brakes, the squealing of the tires and the smoking rubber peeling on the hot blacktop. The van shuddered, swayed, lost control, zigzagging from side to side. He tried to pull the wheel and over corrected. The van flung through the air to the right, hurling sidelong and crashing into and then over the metal guardrail, down the steep embankment below.

  Jomo screamed, “Noooooooo!!” The other cars braked just in time to avoid the same fate. He leapt out of the vehicle, running to the twisted guardrail, to watch the van rolling down into the ravine. The others left the vehicles, following closely behind him.

  The fuel tank struck something and ignited. The van exploded in a fireball. Jomo could feel the heat nearly sear his eyeballs, and he backed away a moment, only to look again at the smoldering remains of his family. The wail of anguish that escaped him was hard for any of them to watch. His mouth opened wide as he screamed for them, his face wet with tears. “Mama, Papa, sister, brother!!”

  Samir and Klaus pulled him away from the scene. The groans rose behind them. The zombies were headed for the group. They sprinted toward the vehicles and their weapons. There was no ti
me for grief, only rage.

  Weapons in hand they faced the approaching horde. Full of fury Jomo skewered several of them through the face with his spear in rapid succession. Ian caved in heads as he swung his spiked mace. Klaus wasn’t as accurate with his sword, slashing one across the cheek and stabbing one through the chest, and after several attempts managed to pierce one through the forehead.

  Xinga impressed with her handling of the Sai, weaving them through her fingers, simultaneously stabbing with her right hand while blocking their advance with her left. The sharp center point went through one zombie’s eye, another’s temple and one’s brow. The two prongs on the Sai in her left blocked the groping fingers of one particularly aggressive zombie. She drove the long inner blade through its palm, and sliced outward from the wound slicing its hand in half and turning it into a yawning flipping V where its middle fingers separated. Xinga gained a confidence she didn’t have before with these weapons at her disposal.

  Kamara severed three zombie’s heads with her battleaxe, and then pivoted and spun around using the other blade, decapitating three more as they attempted to surround her. Where she couldn’t immediately cut off heads, she cut off limbs and reaching arms, hobbling one zombie by chopping off its leg, then bringing the full brunt of the battleaxe down on its head as it lay on the ground.

  Samir loaded the musket as Marina showed him, through the chamber at the top of the muzzle, using percussion caps- .58 caliber Minié balls, and firing off the shoulder. It was slightly cumbersome, but its shoulder held stance gave him more stability. He could only fire three rounds per minute, so it wasn’t completely reliable in close quarters like this, but he thankfully had the bayonet attachment. He fired off a round and a zombie skull exploded several feet from him. He stabbed two through the throat with the bayonet, and cracked one across the head with the hardwood stock, before firing off another round.

  The screams, the gunfire, the groans took on a rhythm of their own until they moved through them in almost synchronized fashion, the sounds fading away as they lost themselves in the motion of the kill. Marina was in her element firing the two Rugers at once. With ten rounds each she didn’t miss a shot and blasted twenty zombies in the head. Her ammo spent she was tempted to run back to the car and get the AK or the shotgun, or else move off to the side and reload from her ammo belt, but there were so few of the zombies left that she could see the rest of the group was easily picking them off. It was in their favor that they moved so slowly.

  With all the zombies dispatched they moved back to their vehicles, driving around the overturned bus. They could make out the writing on the side now as it loomed in their immediate vision. It read Grasshopper Tour Lines. It was certainly a tour they wouldn’t forget. The open highway ahead of them along with an uncertain future, the passengers in the two vehicles drove forward in silence.

  ***

  It was dark now. They realized that they were getting hungry. Kamara followed behind Samir’s car as they took an exit off the highway to a gas station.

  The lights were still on so that was a good sign. There appeared be no one inside the convenience shop though, so that wasn’t.

  “Hello?” Klaus said.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone in here,” Samir said.

  “No, I hear noise, like someone talking,” Kamara said.

  There was the shuffle of feet and a man came out from the backroom. They raised their weapons, ready to shoot, slice or stab.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!!” the man shouted. “Friendly company!”

  They lowered their weapons.

  “We just came in to get some food, and maybe some gas,” Samir said.

  The grey haired middle aged man eyed them curiously.

  “We heard talking. Is there someone else here with you?” Marina asked.

  “No, just me. What you heard is the TV. Watching the news from Atlanta. Won’t be long before they reach us up here. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll be closing up shop soon, getting out of Dodge, as they say- permanently.”

  “We can pay,” Kamara said.

  “No point. Whole world’s coming to an end. Money’s going to be as worthless as a forest without trees.”

  Ian’s cell phone rang. He looked at it. “It’s my mother, calling from Pennsylvania.” He answered it.

  “Mom?”

  “Ian, thank God! We’ve been trying to reach you all day! Are you all right?! We’ve been hearing the news and...”

  “I’m fine Mom. Yes. Yes.”

  The group watched him as he answered questions they couldn’t hear.

  “No. Ashley? Ashley’s dead,” he said, choking back the words.

  “Can you get home, Ian? We need you here, safe, with u...”

  “Mom? Mom?”

  “What’s happened?” Jomo asked. After losing his family, he feared the worst.

  Ian looked at his phone as if it were foreign to him. “The line, the line just went dead.”

  “Try your phones,” Marina told the rest of them, pulling out her own.

  They all did, and when they tried to make a

  call or even get a ring tone, it was the same answer.

  “Dead.”

  The clerk walked into the backroom, and they watched him reappear seconds later. “TV is out too. It’s on, but no reception. I can’t get any channels.”

  “Then it’s begun,” Marina said.

  “What’s begun?” Jomo asked.

  “The cover up.”

  IN CONVENIENCE

  Time limits are fictional. Losing all sense of time is actually the way to reality. We use clocks and calendars for convenience sake, not because that kind of time is real.

  - Leslie Marmon Silko

  There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our convenience.

  - John D. Barrow

  twelve

  “What’s your name fella?” Ian asked.

  The clerk looked at him. “I’m Lloyd. Look, if you guys want to hole up here for a while be my guest.” He passed the keys to Samir. “Lock up after me.”

  “You’re really going to leave your store behind? Just like that?” Klaus said.

  “Yep,” Lloyd snapped his fingers, “Just like that. I’ve got a wife and kids, and they’re safe, and the store don’t mean shit unless I can be sure to keep them that way. So I’m moving us as far up north as we can go to escape this plague that’s upon us.”

  “Well, what if there are more of them up north?” Kamara asked.

  “Then we’ll keep moving. It’s back to the old days. Nomadic tribes and all that. Everything comes back around to the beginning.”

  “Guess so,” Marina said. “Stay safe Lloyd.”

  “Will do. You folks do the same.”

  ***

  The group looked around the convenience store now that Lloyd was gone.

  “What do we do now?” Jomo asked.

  “Guess we stock up,” Kamara said.

  Samir shook his head, “Doesn’t feel right. We haven’t earned this man’s merchandise.”

  “Why did he go?” Xinga said. “Why he have to go?” Her questions and the way they were expressed told them she felt the same.

  “He abandoned his post because he knows the

  shit’s about to hit the fan,” Marina said. “I don’t feel right about it either, but we might as well appreciate his generosity, and take what we can use.”

  “But where are we going?” Ian asked.

  “To your parents, to Klaus’s; doesn’t matter. We head north, like Lloyd.”

  “It’s not much of a plan, but it’s all we have,” Samir agreed, “Especially with the cell towers down and nothing on the airwaves.”

  “Further up maybe more news?” Xinga suggested.

  “It could be that stations are working further north,” Samir said, “But if it’s a cover up as Marina implied then we probably won’t get much news about what’s really going on.”

  “There’s the rub,” Klaus said
.

  Marina shot him a look that said Really? Shakespeare?

  Klaus looked down sheepishly.

  “I didn’t imply. I flat out stated this is a cover up. The military, the government, the CDC- someone- let this shit get out of hand, and now it’s biting us in the ass.”

  “Maybe if we could not mention biting,” Ian said.

  ***

  They stuffed several coolers with drinks, deli meats, and frozen goods, packing it all in with ice; then filled several grocery bags with power bars, cereal, snacks, bread, and other dry goods. Rope, first aid kits, toiletries, superglue, scissors, a five-pack of lighters, a can opener, duct tape, several hammers, and a drill; they took anything they thought they could use, and fit in the cars. Then they gassed up the

  cars, taking several plastic containers with gasoline in case they got into any trouble on the road, and didn’t have a working gas station near. Moving Marina’s assault rifle and shot gun, they squeezed everything they could into Kamara’s car and then into Samir’s, leaving the bags and smaller items that didn’t fit on the floor of the backseats.

  “I want to stay,” Jomo said.

  The others turned to look at him.

  “What do you mean, stay?” Samir said.

  “There’s nothing for me out there. I have aunts and uncles in California who I will probably never see. But I have everything I need right here.” Jomo shook his head. “I don’t want to go out there and face those things again. If I stay quiet and keep to myself no one will ever know I’m here. I’ll close the store down, only leave on the back up lights.”