Chapter 4 – The Long Walk
-October 2008
The ray of sunlight was inexorable.
Its sharp edge crept down the brick wall, over a faded poster highlighting the muscles of the human body, and then a bookshelf crammed full of ancient hardcover textbooks with frayed bindings. The light reached the edge of a thin mattress at the base of the bookshelf, and slunk slowly, but steadily, over the pin-striped fabric toward a clump of dark blankets, and the socked foot that emerged from underneath. The yellow glare reached the foot, and the attached toes that twitched and flexed, and then continued its daily journey, over the rising and falling mound of blankets, before finally falling on the mop of hair that rested on the pillow at the opposite end of the mattress.
The hair was dark, with slight curls slick with sweat that glistened in the morning sunlight, and framed a face unshaven with scruff that had given way to a beard. Closed eyelids spasmed in the brilliant light, and then fluttered open, exposing a pair of blue eyes.
Peter Bishop winced at the blinding glare, and then stared up at the water-stained ceiling tiles above. His confusion as to where he was, and how he had gotten there was momentary, and several seconds later it came back to him, forcing him wide awake.
The Kresge Building. The lab.
Oh yeah, and the end of the world.
The realization of his present circumstance was followed by the memory of the previous night—Olivia, and his…extracurricular activities. On the heels of that memory was another, conflicted in its scope. He lay still for a moment, examining his feelings on the matter.
John Scott was dead, and Olivia had asked him to accompany her to Brighton in the morning—today. To say that Olivia's boyfriend and he had never really hit it off would be something of an understatement. The guy hadn't trusted him to work alongside Olivia, and had told him so in no uncertain terms—out of her hearing, of course. That had been before everything went to shit. His threats had been thinly-veiled.
He couldn't exactly blame the guy for not trusting him—he wouldn't have trusted himself either. Reliability had never been his strong point, not in his adult life, at least. Being reliable was too much work. John Scott had seen his file…his record spoke for itself.
Despite the man's hostility toward him—whether it was undeserved or not—he was going to be missed. By Olivia for obvious reasons, but also for the man's skill with a rifle, and weapons in general. He had been impressive, maybe the best Peter had ever seen. He'd heard mention of his time in the Marines, but Peter had been around enough military over in Iraq to get a feel for the really dangerous ones—the Special Forces types. John had had that kind of feel about him. He had been good in a fight—and fighting, surviving was all that there was left for them.
He thought of what it must be like for Olivia. After everything she'd gone through to save his life, he was dead barely a month later. He wondered if she found it frustrating, and then dismissed the thought. She wasn't that kind of person. It hadn't wavered any of her determination to go to Brighton, however.
She was probably already up and about—waiting for him. And if there was one thing he'd learned about her in the month or so he'd known her, it was that she could be a bit impatient, when the mood suited her.
He groaned a wide yawn, and then brought his hands up from under the blankets and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His careful positioning of the mattress had worked as intended. The sun had driven him awake just as he'd hoped it would—being its usual anathema in the morning.
Sitting up, he tossed his blankets aside and stretched his aching back. The old mattresses they'd found—more of a pad, than an actual mattress—left much to be desired in the way of comfort. As much as he'd detested the sofa in the hotel room he'd shared with Walter for several weeks, he would have given much for its lumpy cushions. He would have given much for many of the things he'd taken for granted several weeks ago. A hot shower was at the top of the list.
Exhaling another yawn, Peter reached for his shoes.
#
"I simply don't understand, Peter," Walter voiced with displeasure. "Why on earth would you go to Brighton? Agent Dunham's family is surely dead…or, undead by this ti—"
Peter grabbed his father's arm and pulled him into the office. "What the hell is the matter with you, Walter?" he demanded, swinging the door shut behind him. "Do you have even an ounce of empathy in that insane head of yours?"
"What? I believe I'm the only one being rational in this situation." Walter jerked his arm free. "It's been several weeks, after all, and I find it highly unlikely that they could have survived this long."
He glanced out the office window at Olivia. She was still seated at the table where he'd found her upon entering the lab, cleaning the chamber of the M4 that had been John's baby. From her pale cheeks and determined jaw-line, he suspected she'd heard his father's conjecture.
"We did," he said, turning back to his father. "We survived. Olivia warned them to stay in her apartment before it got bad. It's possible they're still there, still alive. Not to mention that statistically speaking, there's no way we're the only ones." From the thin line of his father's lips, he remained unconvinced. "It's her family, Walter. She has to find out one way or the other."
Walter's shoulders drooped, and he lowered his head. "But…but why must you be the one to go?" His voice trembled. "What if something happens to you? What about that other fellow, Agent Franco—why can't he go? Son, I…I don't think I'll be able to—"
Peter sighed, and then hesitated before putting a hand on his father's shoulder. "Walter, I'm gonna be fine," he assured him. "We've got the new lights, thanks to you, and we'll be back before you know it. I'll be fine. Okay?"
Walter wrung his hands together, and then pulled a red licorice stick from his lab coat pocket. He nibbled on one twisted end, and then met Peter's eyes. "All right…" He nodded, chewing slowly. "Well…as long as you're going out, then could you pick me up some more Red Vines?"
"What? Pick you up some more Red Vines?" Peter scowled, and shook his head. "You're out of your mind."
"But…the—they're free, Peter," Walter gesticulated, flopping the licorice over the back of his hand. "My supply is running low."
"Walter, they're free because…" he started, and then stopped, seeing Olivia rise from her chair. Their eyes met through horizontal window slats. "You know what? Never mind. If I happen to come across a cache of Red Vines, I'll be sure to grab 'em."
"Wonderful," his father exclaimed with a clap, and then abruptly turned and left the office. He leaned close to Olivia on his way past and whispered in her ear, and then fled down the steps to his storage room.
Olivia arched an eyebrow as Peter approached. "Is he okay with this?" she asked, shouldering one of the spare backpacks.
Peter shrugged. "Probably not…," he replied, "but I've never let that stop me. It's not like he was ever around to care what I did before."
She frowned at his response, but said nothing and he moved past her to his work table, where his own backpack lay open. The head lamps he'd finished installing the red filters in late the night before, lay in a messy row. He grabbed one and passed it to Olivia, and then shoved the rest in his pack.
"Red bulbs are kind of hard to come by, so I coated the lenses with a red dichroic light-filtering gel that for some reason Walter…" He chuckled at the bored look on her face. "You don't really care do you?"
"Not so much, as long as it works," Olivia said, examining her headlamp. She stuffed the lamp inside her pack. "I've got enough food for a few days, mostly granola bars, and some of that dried fruit Charlie brought with him."
"Granola bars and dried fruit," Peter muttered with sigh. They were becoming staples. He grabbed his backpack. "Excellent. I'm really looking forward to them. I'll get the water, then I guess we're ready. Have you told Charlie and Astrid we're going?"
Olivia followed him over to the refrigerator. It was no longer cold, but they still kept the water bottles inside of it—out of habit he supposed, or perhaps to maintain some semblance of normalcy. It was rather pointless in his opinion. There was nothing left that was normal and no use pretending. All it took was one look out the window.
"Astrid was still asleep, and I told Charlie last night," she said as he pulled the refrigerator door open. "He'll let her know."
He grabbed a handful of plastic bottles and shoved them in his pack, and then another. "And how did Agent Francis take it?" Peter said, zipping the bag closed.
"He wasn't too happy about it," she answered.
Peter grunted, and threw the backpack over one shoulder. It was about what he'd expected. Charlie wasn't outright hostile toward him like John Scott had been, but they were far from friends. He figured it was the cop-criminal dynamic at play. "I imagine not…," he said, glancing over at her.
"Peter, Charlie's just…" She gestured randomly with one hand. "He was a cop before joining the Bureau. I think your…history—it doesn't sit too well with him. He'll get over it though, eventually." She eyed his backpack. "You know I can carry some of the water."
"Yeah, I know." He snaked his arm through the other strap, and then settled the bag on between his shoulders. "You ready?"
Olivia's eyes narrowed. From the way her lips thinned, it was clear that she was about to insist on carrying some of the water bottles, in an unnecessary demonstration of her independence. He walked away from her before she could.
Peter stopped at the table near steps up to the entrance, where most of the weapons they'd accumulated were laid out in orderly fashion. He picked up his crowbar from where he'd left it the night before. The crowbar was medium-sized, a little shorter than a baseball bat and about as heavy, with a nice, solid heft to it. It picked locks just as efficiently as it cracked open undead skulls.
"Here," Olivia said, stepping up next to him. "Take this."
She picked up a black Beretta off the table and held it out to him, grip first. He recognized it at once as her backup gun. She had given it to him once before, during their first real case together. The one with the test-tube man-baby. He'd thought things couldn't get any weirder than that. But he had been wrong—incredibly so.
"You sure?" he said. He didn't reach for it. He had never bothered taking a gun when he'd been outside the perimeter before. Running, and using his brain had seemed better options. And his crowbar. "I mean, last time you lent it to me, it didn't go so well." It was a bit of an understatement—the man she'd told him to watch had escaped. "And it's not exactly inconspicuous," he added.
"I'm not lending it to you," she replied, pushing it toward him. "Keep it, it's yours. We should all have one, just in case…"
Peter held her gaze for a moment, and then took the handgun. Just in case of what? he thought silently, but didn't ask. There was something behind her green eyes that he'd never seen before. Something dark and desolate. Forsaken, maybe. John's death had left her in bleak territory. In a way, it was a good thing she had something to do, something to keep her mind from dwelling on him.
He stuffed the pistol in the back of his pants—feeling like a walking cliché in doing so—and heard Olivia's voice. Safety's on the right. Do not let him move. That had worked out well.
Olivia picked up the assault rifle of John's and studied the wicked-looking bayonet. "Are you ready for this?" she asked in a low voice.
"Not really," he told her truthfully. Her eyes flashed from the bayonet, locking on to his with an uncomfortable intensity, and he forced his trademark smirk into place. "But…I've never let that stop me before. Let's get out of here before Walter decides to make a scene."
#
Peter cracked open the van's side door and stuck his head out. After surveying the street outside in both directions, he pushed the door all the way open, and slipped out to the sidewalk.
"It's clear," he told Olivia, who was crouched just behind him. "Not an undead soul in sight. Maybe the zombies are sleeping in today."
Instead of responding to his attempt at making light of the situation—poor as it was—she ducked out of the van after him, keeping the barrel of her rifle pointed at the concrete. She peered up and down the street as he had. Her eyes narrowed on one of the undead crumpled on the sidewalk a short distance away to the east. The side of its head was crushed in, and bits of skull glinted in the sunlight. It had been a female.
Olivia nodded toward the corpse. "Was that you?"
"Yeah, it wandered a bit too close for my taste last night," he replied with a grin, and then changed the subject. "Which way are we headed?" There weren't too many options—it was either east or west, and then south, depending on where she wanted to cross the Charles.
She hesitated for a moment, and then turned to the west, toward Massachusetts Avenue. "Let's head west then south. The infected…the zombies—" she said, and a phantom smile crossed her lips for an instant, "they were following the storm yesterday. Maybe that way is clear now."
Her theory that the undead had been reacting to the sounds of thunder made sense to him, though he'd forgotten to get Walter's opinion on the matter. He wondered at its ramifications for their group. Something about it troubled him, like he was missing an important wrinkle, but he couldn't chase down the thought. He should have discussed it with his father before they left. For an instant, he considered going back to the lab, but shrugged the idea aside. From Olivia's stance, she was eager to get started—she was almost bouncing on the soles of her feet, like she was about to spring on some unwary criminal.
Instead, he nodded, and swung the crowbar up to his shoulder. "Lead the way then, Agent Dunham," he said, sweeping his free hand in the direction of the Massachusetts Avenue intersection.
Olivia cocked an eyebrow, and then shrugged and started off toward the end of the block with her rifle tucked under one arm.
Before following, Peter squinted back to the east, beyond the corpse of the female he'd brained hours after she'd left him in the van. Far down the sidewalk, a pair of boots were just visible, sticking out from between two parked cars. She hadn't seen them. His gaze lingered on the boots for a moment, and then he turned and hurried after her.
#
In spite of her stated intention to leave at first light, the sun was well above the horizon when they reached Massachusetts Avenue and turned south. The storm had fled to the southwest, and left behind a crisply blue sky. Puddles and pools of standing water left over from the storm dotted the street and sidewalk, and the smell of rain was still in the air—it hung low, waiting for a stiff wind to disperse it. The wind hadn't arrived yet, though it would eventually. The temperature was uncommonly chilly, even for early October, and sent dark thoughts of the coming winter his way. He buried his free hand in his jacket pocket.
He'd always despised Boston winters—and that had been with central heating. It didn't take a genius to see the cliff looming, just a month or so out of view. There were rough times ahead for them.
Peter followed Olivia's ponytail as she swerved through the mess of cars and trucks, observing the way it fell lazily over her backpack and black jacket. He noted that she had a slight limp, and was favoring her right leg from an undisclosed injury. He watched her hobble along for a while, and then abruptly realized it wasn't her leg he was watching and lifted his eyes back to her hair, which was a safer landscape.
Their pace had slowed considerably since they'd turned southward. The area they were moving into was less-traveled, and care had to be taken. Most of their scavenging runs had been on the Harvard campus itself, and to the north and east, away from the more commercial districts of Cambridge. The majority of the vehicle traffic—before it had stopped altogether, at least—had always been moving to the west and the south, toward I-90. It had seemed safer to stay away from that area of Cambridge, if possible. Until now, at least. They were heading right toward the heart of the city.
Good times, he thought, shifting his crowbar to his other shoulder.
Ahead of him, Olivia came to a sudden stop and crouched on the sidewalk next to a bus station canopy. Peter nearly walked over her, not realizing until the last moment that her legs were no longer moving.
"What'd you see?" he asked, squatting down and taking stock of their location.
She frowned and eyed him up and down—perhaps noticing his near collision—and then pointed over the vehicles in the street. He followed the line of her finger, and spied a group of stooped figures—at least ten of them—in filthy clothes standing outside the entrance of a Starbucks about a football field away. With a start, he realized they had already reached Harvard Square. The triangular-shaped island full of retail kiosks was just north of JFK Street, where they would be angling to the southwest toward Anderson Bridge. What had been an idyllic, trendy area of Cambridge with tiny shops and store fronts occupying the lower levels of the apartment and office buildings was gone. It looked as if a bomb—or several bombs—had gone off, with many of the surrounding structures blackened by fire and large portions of their masonry caved in, like they had been struck by a gigantic fist. The sidewalks ahead were littered with rubble and shattered glass. Many of the vehicles that were stalled on either side of the square were burned as well, the sheet-metal bodies twisted and torn from explosions and riddled with bullet holes. He'd scene similar scenes in Baghdad and Kirkuk—it reeked of U.S. military action. There weren't many bodies evident, and he wondered who exactly had been under fire.
"That big group, and four more over there," she whispered, and pointed out another group standing near the remains of the freestanding Dunkin' Donuts that used to occupy the middle of the square.
Peter shook his head at the devastation. "It looks like there was a pitched battle," he remarked under his breath. "You remember that sustained gunfire we heard to the south a week or so ago? I bet it came from right here. Fucking military." He stood up and peered around the bus station canopy, trying to get a better view beyond the square, to no avail.
"It doesn't matter," Olivia said. Her voice was determined, and more than a little impatient. "Whoever it was, they're gone now." She rose up next to him, brushing up against his shoulder. "We need to keep moving. That group of four is close. We'll take them, and then I think we can run past the others. Let's go."
Olivia started forward and Peter grabbed her backpack, pulling her back toward him. She spun around, eyes blazing, and he ignored her indignant glare. Why risk attacking when they were outnumbered? There was another way. Harvard Square was familiar territory—he'd grown up in Cambridge, after all.
"I've got a better idea," he whispered. "Wait here, I'll be right back." Keeping low, he moved away from the bus stop, toward the tightly packed rows of parked cars and trucks in the center of the street.
"Peter, where are you going? Peter!"
Olivia's furious hiss followed after him as he moved down the line of vehicles, looking for a gap he could slip through to cross the street. He pretended not to hear. She could get as angry as she wanted, but the point was to survive, and not take needless risks.
You didn't seem to have a problem taking needless risks last night, an unwanted voice spoke up from someplace inside his head. That was different, I had a good reason, he answered the voice, and kept moving.
At a narrow space between an empty red hatchback and a catering van that wasn't empty, he passed through the first row of vehicles, and then slid over the low hood of a Corvette to reach the sidewalk on the other side. They had already passed the particular shop he wanted, so a little backtracking was necessary. His back and thighs were protesting angrily from his bent-over sprint when he finally arrived in front of the shop he was looking for.
The glass store front was shattered from wall to wall, including the door, which hung lopsided from its hinges. He pulled and lifted the door open simultaneously, keeping the metal corner from scraping on the sidewalk, and stepped inside. He stopped just beyond the threshold and surveyed the interior, crowbar ready.
The liquor store he had frequented occasionally in his teens had been looted heavily, but he thought it likely what he needed was still there. Apparently, the end of the world had driven the locals to drink, and a lot—most of the shelves were empty. He moved forward into the murky light, heading around the rows of shelving to the hard liquor section. Broken bottles and empty packing covered the floor, and the beer coolers along the back wall were canted forward, leaning against the shelving endcaps.
Peter scanned the rows in the hard liquor section, passing over several bottles of schnapps and what remained of the low-proof alcohols, until he found what he was looking for. He slung the backpack from his shoulders and grabbed two bottles of grain alcohol from the bottom row. After placing them in his pack, he moved back to the front of the store and was about to leave when another prize caught his eye.
He was at the checkout counter in two long strides, where a locked display containing the exorbitantly priced top-shelf liquors had somehow remained unscathed during the looting.
"Excellent," he said to himself, and put his crowbar to work.
A moment later, he pulled a bottle of twenty-one year Glenlivet scotch from the display. He shoved it in his pack next to the grain alcohol and the water bottles, and considered grabbing another before restraining himself. The pack was heavy enough as it was, and they still had miles to go before Brighton. Maybe on the way back.
With his work done, he retraced his steps back to Olivia, who was waiting impatiently where he'd left her next to the bus stop canopy. All told, he'd been gone less than five minutes, but her eyes were aflame when he set his backpack down next to her and removed the grain alcohol.
"This is your brilliant idea?" Olivia bristled with frustration. "To get drunk? Peter, I swear—"
Peter huffed and rolled his eyes. "Have a little bit of faith, Olivia," he said, eyeing her as he unscrewed the cap from each bottle. "Besides, you couldn't pay me to drink this stuff. That'd be like drinking battery acid."
He scrutinized the vehicles parked near the bus stop, and then grabbed a suitcase from the back of a BMW wagon and upended it on the sidewalk. Olivia regarded him silently as he grabbed a shirt at random and tore it in half. He dribbled a little of the alcohol on each of the shirt-halves, then stuffed them into the open bottle necks and examined his work. The grain alcohol in the molotov cocktails would do nicely, better even than the vodka he'd hoped to find. They were missing a few ingredients that would have made them true molotov cocktails, but they would work well for enough for his purposes.
"C'mon," he said, and shouldered his backpack. He handed her one of the cocktails, and then grabbed the other and his crowbar. "We need to get closer."
Her gaze was stony, but she followed him without protest down the row of cars until they were close enough to see the golden eyes of the first group of undead on the other side of the street. They were fresher than he'd like—a little more aware than he would have preferred. Gunshot wounds decorated their ruined clothing.
The bigger group near the Starbucks had wandered a little closer, which was a stroke of luck. Across the street, and about halfway between the two groups was an alley between two apartment buildings—easily within throwing distance. He glanced at Olivia.
"You ever play baseball or softball when you were a kid?" he whispered, keeping his eyes on both groups of undead through the spider-webbed windshield of the taxi they had stopped behind.
"What? No, I…wasn't really into sports when I was young," Olivia replied back. "Why?"
Peter rummaged in the front pocket of his backpack for a lighter he remembered seeing there. "I thought you might have a better arm than me," he said with a shrug.
His fingers brushed up against a cylindrical object, and he pulled it free of the pocket and held it up to the sun. It was a yellow Bic, with about half its supply of lighter fluid remaining.
Olivia set her cocktail down between them, and leaned on the stock of her rifle. "You aren't going to try and hit them with it, are you?"
"Nope." He opened his pack and removed the bottle of scotch. "We just need a distraction."
"What are you gonna do with that?" she asked, gazing down at the bottle.
He spun the cap off and smirked. "Drink it, of course," he replied. "This is twenty-one year scotch. It's going to be a rare commodity any day now."
Peter took a sip and winced at the tender harshness as it slid down his throat. A warm glow suffused his insides, and he sighed with content.
Olivia shook her head with a mix of amusement and exasperation. "You are…unbelievable, Peter Bishop," she uttered under her breath, and then pulled the scotch from his hand. "Gimme that."
She took a long swallow before he could warn her—longer than his own had been—and then reached for the cap and replaced it without comment. The bottle disappeared into her bag, also without comment.
He closed his mouth—it had dropped open at her lack of reaction. The woman was full of surprises. Not in a million years would he have guessed her to be a whiskey drinker, and an experienced one at that. He wondered what other secrets her green eyes concealed. Their gazes met, and she arched an eyebrow.
"Let's get on with it," she said.
Peter blinked, and cleared his head. "Right." He grabbed one of the cocktails, and lit the strip of cloth. The fabric caught easily, sending thin flutes of black smoke drifting upward. He handed the lighter to Olivia. "You ready?" he asked, testing the glass bottle's weight.
At her silent nod, he stood up and heaved the bottle in a high, lazy arc, over the lines of cars, over the zombies and the roofs of the remaining kiosks, and into the alley he'd been aiming for. The bottle seemed to hang in the air for an instant, then dropped with a resounding crash on the edge of a dumpster twenty or thirty feet from street. There came a whoosh, and fire screamed up the side of the open dumpster, and into the dumpster, and on the side of the building it rested against.
The conflagration was mesmerizing, and Peter watched the dancing flamed creep up the side of the apartment building with anticipation. Until the undead began roving about the square, and a hand yanked him back down behind the taxi. The walking corpses turned about, and though both groups began moving in their drunken shuffles in the general direction of the alley, they still appeared uncertain on where they were headed.
"Nice shot, Bishop," Olivia said in a low voice. She lit the other cocktail. "Think you can do that again?"
He nodded and took the flaming bottle gingerly from her outstretched hand. "We'll see…," he said, rising from his crouch.
His next toss missed the dumpster, and shattered on the gravel in front of it. Again there came a burst of ignition, and a fireball blazed upward. The dead men and women's pace toward the alley increased, and they rounded the building and rushed toward the fire, oblivious to the danger it presented.
Peter grinned with maniacal glee as they walked straight into it, one after another. Fire licked the ragged seams of their pants and shirts as they shambled through the blaze, kindling into flame on some, but not all. The dumpster had become a roaring inferno, and what had once been a woman with wild hair combusted into a torch after wandering too close. They seemed unaware of the fire even as they burned.
He glanced back at Olivia, who was watching the scene unfold with cold satisfaction. "How's that for a distraction, Agent Dunham?" he said, and retrieved his backpack and crowbar from the sidewalk.
"It'll do," Olivia replied, sounding indifferent to his achievement. "Let's move." She grabbed her rifle from where it was leaning against the taxi, and started toward the far side of the square.
"Yeah, well…you can thank me later," he called after her.
"Keep your voice down, Peter." He heard her say. She didn't look back at him.
Peter huffed and then hurried after her. What did it take to impress the woman?
With their path to the south clear, they passed through the traffic jam without further incident. Tan and brown military vehicles came into view, blocking Massachusetts Avenue where it turned to the east, and JFK where it continued to the southwest. Both streets seemed empty for some distance beyond the barricades. He peered inside the cars and trucks as he passed them by, until it became clear that most of them contained the bodies he'd been looking for earlier—still in their seatbelts. Some of them were still moving. The tan and brown vehicles resolved into the familiar shapes of camouflaged Humvees.
Olivia abruptly veered toward a squat structure constructed entirely of framed, tinted glass in the middle of the south and east forks in the street. Peter hesitated, and then followed her warily. He knew the glass building well—it was the entrance to the Harvard Square station for the Red Line subway. The subway system wasn't high on his list of places to visit in a zombie-infested Cambridge.
She stopped at the top of the descending steps and waited for him to approach. "I want to test out these lights," she said at his inquiring look. "This seems as good a place as any."
Peter swallowed, and peered down into pitch-blackness of the stairwell. "I already tested them," he told her. "They work, I swear."
Olivia ran a hand over her pulled-back hair and tightened her ponytail. "I'm sure they do…but, I need to see it for myself. Just for…for…" She looked away, and then bent over her backpack without finishing her explanation.
He watched her search through her pack for her head lamp. There wasn't going to be any convincing her otherwise. The blond FBI agent could be damn stubborn when she wanted to be. He'd known that already—it had been clear from the day he'd met her in Baghdad. And accompanying her stubborn streak was a certain recklessness regarding her personal well-being. The combination led to such insanities as her willingly letting his father dope her up on LSD, and then mind-melding with her comatose boyfriend in a rusty tank of water. That it had worked, and she'd saved him was beside the point. He wasn't built that way—self preservation was ingrained.
"All right, let's do it," he said, letting his pack slip from his shoulders. "What could possibly go wrong?"
#
The red beams of their headlamps were mottled on the faded-yellow brick walls of the stairwell. The dichroic gel sheets he'd used to make the red filters could have used a little more work—it was obvious that he'd failed to clear all the air bubbles. Distinct spherical shapes were present in the circles of their lights as they reflected on the painted bricks and concrete, and on the stainless steel of the escalator to their left as they crept down the steps.
They reached the landing together, and were met with a silent, empty corridor stretching both directions. Harvard Square station was a complex, labyrinth of tunnels and platforms stacked atop one another. He recalled exploring its depths fondly as a kid, racing along its slopes and ramps, and leaning impossibly far out over the overhangs—all the while ignoring his mother's pleas to be careful. He'd always had a bit of a problem with authority, and it had only grown worse with age.
Olivia turned her light toward him. "I've never been in this station before," she murmured. "Which way?"
Peter considered the madness of what she was proposing. "So we're actively looking to…to find some zombies?" he asked. Her red light nodded affirmative. "Well…then, I guess we should head toward the outbound platform. I imagine there were a lot of people in a hurry to get out here when it all went to hell. Maybe they were lucky enough to have an infected among them."
"Okay, let's go," she said. "I want to get back on the road as quickly as we can."
He took a calming breath. This was insanity. She was going to get him killed—and yet, he couldn't muster the will to refuse.
Maybe he was the insane one.
"…Right," he muttered, and then led them deeper into the unwavering abyss.
They moved toward the next set of stairs that led to the lower levels. His grip on his crowbar tightened until a shooting pain traveled the length of his forearm, and he forced himself to relax. He'd never been afraid of the dark, nor particularly claustrophobic, yet the darkness weighed on him like something tangible. The red beams of their headlamps seemed pitiful things—barely able to penetrate the space in front of them. An awful silence pressed in from all sides, and the quiet scuffs of their shoes shouted their presence to the far corners of the earth with every step.
Peter eyed Olivia with a sideways glance as they passed by a vacant ticket window. She appeared unaffected by the murk, and was fingering her ponytail absently.
Perhaps sensing his regard, she glanced up at him. "Everything all right?"
He looked away from her light, and forced his lips into a thin smile that she would never see. "Sure, what's not to like," he said, letting his typical dry tone show its face. It was better than letting fear sink its teeth in.
She didn't reply.
They reached the next set of stairs. If his memory served, at the bottom was a wide row of turnstiles that they would need to pass through in order to progress any further. A hand on his sleeve held him back as he took the first downward step.
"Peter." Olivia's voice was a whisper.
"What?"
He flashed his beam around in the darkness, looking for a threat. Finding nothing in their immediate vicinity that was cause for alarm, he peered back at her. Her hold on his sleeve remained. He glanced at her hand, and then examined her face for some clue to her condition.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
With him a step lower than her, their eyes were on the same level. Her soft features were washed in the red glow, giving her an alien aspect. Yet she still retained her inherent beauty that he'd known would be trouble from the moment he'd laid eyes on her in Baghdad, walking through the hotel lobby like she owned the place—and him.
"Thank you," she said.
Peter furrowed his brow. "For what? Coming down here?" he said. "Don't thank me yet, we haven't even gotten to the fun part."
A smile fluttered across her lips for an instant, and she shook her head. "For coming back with me to Boston," she said. "I don't think I ever thanked you for helping out with John. So thank you."
"Um, you're welcome…," he said, unsure what had brought on her sudden gratitude—there was an unhealthy, fatalistic ring to it that was unlike her. Also, she had given him little choice but to come back with her, but it wasn't a topic he was prepared to bring up—not with their faces inches apart in the inky blackness of an abandoned subway station. "Are you okay, Olivia?" He glanced down at her hand again, and she released him.
"Yeah. I'm fine." She nodded and moved past him.
He stared at her retreating back. She didn't sound fine. What in the hell was that about? he wondered, and hurried after her down the steps.
At the bottom, Olivia came to a sudden, jerking halt, and he saw why an instant later when he joined her. A paralyzing dread clamped around his spine, and he found himself unable to move or look away from the turnstile gates, and what was waiting for them beyond.
The row of gates were as he remembered from his youth—stretching about twenty stations wide. What he wasn't expecting were the undead—or rather, the sheer number of them—standing within spitting distance on the other side.
They were just standing there. Waiting in the darkness.
The horde stretched from wall to wall, and every space in between. Their numbers extended beyond the range of his headlamp—as far as he could see. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. It was impossible to tell—there were far too many to reasonably count. In the red light, their visages were ghastly, with unblinking, ocherous gazes and torn flesh that bordered on demonic. For some reason their stillness bothered him most of all; they appeared content to stand in the darkness forever.
Some appeared fresher than others, still resembled something that had been human. Those he watched with a wary eye; the freshes, or those that were recently infected, could move far faster than their elder brethren. Almost as fast as a human. Walter seemed to think it had something to do with the degeneration of nerve tissue as the corpses decayed. The explanation made as much sense as anything else.
The stench of rotting death wafted over them, and he wondered how he could have missed it from the top of the steps. Accompanying the foul odor was an odd sort of humming noise. It made him think of a beehive, or a bug buzzing in his ear. Only the sound was low enough in pitch that he wasn't sure if he was hearing it all, or just feeling it—like a vibration—or, if it was entirely in his head. Either were distinct possibilities.
With an effort, Peter tore his gaze from the undead and turned his light on Olivia.
She appeared to be in a state of shock, not unlike his own—her eyes and lips were both open wide, frozen in place. The assault rifle dangled from limp fingers.
He reached for her arm with an unsteady hand, whether to pull her back toward the steps, or merely for contact with another human being, he couldn't say. He was having trouble forming complete thoughts. Conflicting voices shouted inside his head.
His hand closed on empty air, and his heart stumbled in his chest, pounding with drunken, unstable beats.
Olivia had stepped out of his reach.
Not away from the legion of undead, flesh-eating monsters, like any rational person, any sane person would have. Toward the turnstiles. She took another careful step. And then another, and another, until she was less than ten feet from the gates, and the first row of undead directly on the other side.
The humming, vibrating sensation he'd heard earlier changed in some indescribable way. Air pressure change, a calm voice told him over the quivering voice that was screaming for him to run, to leave Olivia and her madness behind. The air felt hot all of a sudden, and he thought of beehives again, and how certain species of honeybees defended the hive by creating friction with their wings—cooking would be attackers alive with intense heat.
It was true. He'd seen it on National Geographic. The thought came from somewhere else, somewhere outside himself.
He was going insane, right alongside of Olivia. He clamped his mouth shut, lest his stupid tongue betray them both. A pressure built in his chest in exponential increments—the urge to scream held back by his clenched teeth.
She took another measured step closer, and consequently farther away from him.
One of the undead moved.
Its head turned a fraction, followed by its predator eyes, which came to life and swiveled in her direction. Then a ripple of animation passed through the undead, its origin point being the one closest to Olivia. It spread outward in a rolling, circular wave that continued beyond the range of his light. A horrific growling filled the chamber, wet and bubbly snarls that reduced the shouting voice in his head to gibbering hysteria.
The horde pushed forward against the turnstiles.
Peter recoiled backwards and tripped over the bottom step behind him. He landed hard on his rear and elbows, and dropped the crowbar with a clank of metal on concrete. The gun in the waist of his pants, stabbed into his tail bone, forcing a gasp through his lips. In a surprising show of rational behavior, Olivia backed away from the gates, pressing the assault rifle tight against her shoulder. He waited for the thunder of her rifle to fill the subway platform, but it never came.
And neither did the horde. Though the mass of infected reached and lunged forward, they were unable to pass through the turnstiles.
It was the outbound platform—the gates only turned one way.
He snatched up his crowbar and joined Olivia, just out of reach of the outstretched arms and clutching fingers. She glanced up at him and lowered the rifle at his approach.
"I don't believe it…" he said, putting a hand to his chest. His racing heart thudded through his jacket. "They can't get through. It's like an animal trap—the turnstiles let them in, but won't let them out. We're lucky this isn't the inbound platform. How did you know?"
She shook her head, keeping her wide eyes on the undead. "I didn't," she replied. "I…I just wanted t—"
A metallic creak stopped her voice.
The mass of undead swelled forward all along the line of gates, pressing the front row against the angled metal bars of the turnstiles. Almost in unison, the bodies in front buckled over at the waist, dark blood pouring from between their gaping teeth as bones and internal organs were crushed by the mounting pressure coming from behind.
The metal gates creaked and groaned, and Peter took a step back, pulling Olivia with him. They weren't going to hold. There was too many of them—it was like a riot at a European football game. Too many eager fans.
"I think we should probably—" he started to say.
A gate to their left snapped with a sharp crack, and the walking corpse in front fell forward on the concrete between the turnstile stanchions. The undead behind surged forward through the narrow opening, trampling their fallen comrade with indifference.
Gunfire exploded in the darkness.
The sound was deafening in the confined quarters, and the light of the star-shaped muzzle flashes lit up the platform beyond the gates with strobing, chaotic images of endless snapping teeth and burnished eyes.
"Olivia," Peter shouted over the reverberating growls and echoing gunshots.
She mowed down the first five or six that attempted to pass through the gate, blocking the opening with the corpses of undead for a few precious seconds.
"Peter…," she said in a rising tone, turning away from the horde. Her red light flashed in his eyes. "Go. Run!"
Peter didn't argue, and bounded up the steps taking three at a time. Olivia kept pace with him on his right, until she stumbled, and fell to her knees with a curse about halfway up. He stopped and hauled her to her feet, and then grabbed her hand and refused let it go the rest of the way, despite her attempts to shake it free. More of the turnstile gates snapped off with audible cracks as they neared the top, and he glanced back in time to see the undead flooding toward the bottom of the stairs like a swarm of locusts.
"Don't stop," he told her. "I don't know if they can climb stairs or not, but they'll be climbing over each other if they can't." She tried again to pull her hand free, but he held it tight, and shook his head. "You can kick my ass when we're in the daylight, Olivia," he said, "but we're not losing each other down here."
"I'll consider it, Bishop," she muttered, and then relented and squeezed his hand once.
They raced side-by-side through the pitch-black of the subway station, retracing their path back up the winding ramps toward the stairwell to the surface. The red headlamp beams cut irregular swathes that bounced wildly ahead of them, and the pounding of their feet reflected back from all sides.
Adrenaline had him in its grip, and Peter felt a strange exhilaration—like he could run forever. Maybe it was the aftermath of coming within a hairsbreadth of being eaten, but he couldn't recall ever feeling so alive. He grinned in the darkness. Maybe Olivia's madness was contagious.
In spite of their flight from overwhelming danger, he couldn't help but notice how tiny her hand was compared to his own. There were several hardened nubs running in a line across the otherwise soft skin of her palm, and guessed them to be calluses from hours spent at an FBI shooting range. She was something of a perfectionist, and would have demanded it of herself if she felt deficient in any areas that could have affected her performance. He was wondering how good a shot she was when the upper stairwell slid into view.
The shaft of light might've been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Olivia's speed increased, and she angled toward the set of stairs, pulling him along in her wake. They stumbled out of the black void of the subway tunnel a moment later. After the utter darkness they'd endured, the daylight was blinding to the point of being painful.
"Shit, that's bright," Peter said, blinking at the intense sunlight. He shielded his eyes with his free hand and let Olivia pull him away from the subway entrance toward the south of the square, heading toward JFK.
At the line of military vehicles they finally stopped running. Olivia released his hand and they leaned forward on their knees, sucking in deep gulps of air before speaking.
Olivia caught his eye. "So, your lights work…," she said in between breaths.
Peter stared at her dumbfounded. "Ya think?"
He tried to stifle a chuckle, but it came out in a snort that grew into full-blown laughter, originating deep in his gut. He laughed until his sides hurt, and tears threatened to run down his cheeks. It was cleansing laugh—celebrating still being alive—and he let it run its course.
Olivia's face turned a deep shade of red, but her calm demeanor soon broke and she covered her face with both hands. It was a pity—he'd never seen an unadulterated laugh from her before.
"You're insane, Olivia Dunham," he said after the laughing fit had passed. "You know that? Certifiable. I think I may have told you that before."
"Well, I try," she said. The red in her face had faded, leaving behind a trace of pink dusting her cheeks.
They exchanged glances again, and Peter had to look away before another fit of laughter took hold. "You know, for a moment there I thought we were dead," he said, and massaged a tightness out of the back of his neck. "…and that you'd lost your mind. What were you even doing?"
Her lips turned up in a faint smile. "I wanted to see how close I could get before they could see me," she said. "It seemed like useful information to have at the time."
"So it was for posterity's sake…," he chuckled. "I take it back. Maybe you have lost your mind."
He smiled, taking the barbs out of his words, and then peered back toward the subway. The entrance remained still, with no signs of an eminent horde of undead about to spill forth. Further north, a thin trail of smoke rose up over the edge of an apartment building.
"We should get out of here," he said. "I don't know if those things will find their way up here or not, but I'd rather not stick around to find out."
Olivia nodded and grabbed her rifle. The smile she'd been displaying disappeared as if it had never been, and she gazed southward down JFK.
"You're right," she said. "And it's not getting any earlier. I'd like to get through Allston before sundown if we can. When I was…looking across the river yesterday, I saw military, still active. We need to be careful, in case there's more about."
Peter frowned. "Why? You think they'd shoot us? Aren't they on our side?"
"I don't know." She shrugged, and glanced back at the carnage behind them in the square. "Last time I checked, the undead couldn't drive cars, though. Maybe they had orders—have orders…"
He took a closer look at their surroundings and the humvees blocking the road. The pavement around the trucks was covered in dark stains and empty bullet casings, some bigger than a can of tomato paste. He knew them—he'd seen them before, in Iraq. They were shells from a Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher. He looked up and saw the intimidating weapon itself mounted on an armored swivel in the back of the truck he'd been leaning against. Its presence certainly explained the destruction back in the square. Someone had been trigger-happy…yet surely they hadn't fired on civilians.
Could they?
He answered his own question. Of course they could. Such things had happened in Iraq regularly, where the insurgent population was indistinguishable from the innocents. Factor in fear and the end of the world, and all bets were off. It was going to be every man for himself, if it wasn't already.
Or woman, he thought, meeting Olivia's gaze. "Maybe we should just avoid people altogether," he told her.
She didn't argue against it.
#
They came across a mass grave in a park across the street from what had been one of Peter's favorite Thai restaurants. (He was going to miss their drunken noodles; they'd been divine.) The sour stench of decay that enveloped them as they'd approached it was worse than anything he'd ever smelled before. It might have been the apotheosis of all foul odors, but he wasn't sure. There was no metric for measurement, only what his senses told him.
He'd vomited up his snack of granola bar in the front seat of an empty Ford Escort as they passed it by, and then again when he'd peered over the edge of the pit. The second time had mostly been dry heaves, and the water he'd drank to wash away the acrid taste of the first.
Olivia had taken it stolidly, like she took everything. The only sign of discomfort she'd displayed was the slight tightening of her jaw when she'd gazed down at the nightmare at the bottom of the hole. Then she had turned and walked away.
He had stumbled after her, still wiping the puke from his mouth.
A while later, they were strolling down a relatively empty block of JFK, less than a mile from the bridge over the Charles. It might have been a normal day, if it weren't for the scorched buildings on either side of the street. Curls of gray smoke from the charred husks still drifted in the wind, despite the thunder storm they'd endured. Tall elm and honeylocust trees in planters broke up the sidewalk on both sides of the street at regular intervals. The trees had survived the holocaust untouched, and their wide branches wove together overhead, giving the street a rather tunnel-like appearance.
There had been little talk between them since the grave they'd left several blocks behind, and he was tired of the utter silence. He wanted to hear something beyond the wind blowing. That he liked the sound of her voice had nothing to do with it. Of course not.
"So have you seen any zombie dogs around?" Peter said.
Olivia eyed him sideways. "Zombie…dogs?"
Peter gave her a crooked smile. "Yeah. Dogs, cats, or any other animals that won't remain dead."
"Um…I don't know," she said. "I haven't really been paying attention. I don't think so. Why would you ask that?"
"Well it occurred to me that whatever is causing this, it doesn't seem…man-made. I mean, everything was fine—people died and they stayed dead, and then all of sudden they didn't. Whatever changed, it happened everywhere at once. It was simultaneous, like flipping a light switch. So I think we can rule out some kind of…biological or chemical attack, at least of the mundane variety. You follow me?"
Olivia raised her eyebrows. "Sure. I…guess that part makes sense," she said. "I don't see what it has to do with zombie dogs and cats, though."
"Just stay with me," he said, nudging her with his shoulder. "The event was global, so we need to think about it on a global scale. No one—not us, the Chinese, the Russians, or whoever, have technology capable affecting the entire planet at once like that. And that is if we could even raise the dead in the first place, which last time I checked wasn't in our repertoire.
"So where does that leave us? If we didn't do it—who, or what, did? The possibilities are fairly limited." He counted off on his fingers. "It's some kind of attack by aliens. It's God's doing. Or it's no one." he said. "I guess if you're an atheist, then God or no one would amount to the same thing."
"No one?" Olivia said. "How could it be no one?"
"Something natural could have caused it."
"Peter, the dead staying dead is what's natural," she said, and kicked a stone ahead of them down the sidewalk. "None of this is natural."
"Ahh…but you're still thinking on a human scale, Olivia," he said, nudging her again. She responded with a pointy elbow in his side. He grunted, and rubbed at the spot. "Maybe the Earth passed through a field of unknown particles, undetectable by any of our instruments, or…or we're moving through an unstable region of space-time that—"
"This isn't a movie, Peter," Olivia said. "The Earth didn't move through the tail of a comet. Something caused this, and I don't think there was anything natural about it."
"As impressive as it is that you've seen Maximum Overdrive enough to make an apt reference to it in this conversation, I don't think you're getting what I'm saying," he grinned. It was impressive—and surprising, among other things. "There's so much about physics, and the fundamentals of life at its most basic level that we still don't have a clue about."
Olivia snorted. "That's very interesting, but you still haven't told me where the zombie dogs and cats come in. And I've never seen the movie. I read the book when I was a girl."
"Really?" Peter said with a grin. He supposed he had wandered a bit before arriving at his point. "Well…if we do see an undead dog or cat," he explained, "then I think it's safe to assume that this isn't an attack on humans in particular, and that everything that's happening, is just a side effect of something else, something external—to us. And by us, I mean the organisms that live on this planet. It almost seems like something has changed on a quantum level, as crazy as that sounds. I imagine theoretical physicists would have had a field day with it—if they weren't all dead, of course."
Olivia's eyes narrowed, and she pursed her lips. "You know, you sound a lot like your father sometimes."
Peter skidded to halt. He sounded like Walter?
"I'm not sure if that's an insult, or a compliment," he called after her.
She glanced back over her shoulder, amused. "I'm not either…," she said, "Now keep up. We're almost at the bridge. If we're lucky it'll be clear."
They reached another jam of abandoned vehicles heading south as the canopy of treetops obstructing their view came to an end. The bridge over the Charles reared up ahead of them in a gentle arc.
Like everything else in Cambridge, it was an old bridge, with brick guardrails and no overhead structural steel to mar the view of the city, and of the bridge itself. Two lanes ran north and south. The lanes were wide and lazy—with easily enough room to hold four lanes, yet it had always been two, for as far back as he could remember. The bridge was anything but clear.
Both lanes were jammed with vehicles heading south, packed tight together like sardines in a can. Undead roamed the aisle between them, and the spaces along the guard-rails. The arch of the bridge prevented a view of the other side, but it was easy to extrapolate the conditions. The herd of infected extended off the bridge and spilled into the park on the west side of JFK, and another property to the east that held an old castle-like structure with high arched windows, and covered in red bricks and tan stucco.
"Shit. I don't think we're gonna be crossing here, Olivia," Peter said, crouching down next to Olivia behind a blue coupe. "I guess this explains why we saw so few on the way here. The fucking storm drove them south, until they reached the bottleneck and couldn't pass." He glanced to the east, down the street that ran parallel to the river. "Didn't you say something about crossing at the Weeks Bridge?"
Olivia squinted over the trunk of the car at the shuffling figures. "I'd thought about it," she said, "…before what happened with John." She swallowed, and then met his gaze without expression. "And it's a lot further east."
The reason she'd changed her mind and led them to the JFK crossing was clear; John's corpse was undoubtedly lying in a street somewhere near the Weeks Bridge. He couldn't blame her for wanting to avoid that, he supposed. Although it made crossing the Charles more difficult. The Weeks was foot traffic only, and was less likely to suffer from the same bottlenecks—in theory. But it was in opposite direction of Brighton, like she'd said. The next vehicle bridge to the west would likely be just as bad.
"It's gonna be like this the whole way, isn't it?" he muttered.
"Probably."
Peter put a hand on her arm. "I don't think we have any choice, Olivia," he said, "We have to try the Weeks, unless you wanna swim—and with the current, we'd probably end up there anyway before we made it across."
He didn't mention how cold the water likely was, or the pollution. No one swam in the Charles if they could help it, especially after a hard rain, when the pollution was at its worst—it had been prohibited, when there still had been laws. He certainly didn't intend to.
"Shit…," Olivia whispered and then closed her eyes. Her lips pressed together in a thin line. "You're right…I—coming this way was a mistake. I should have known…fuck…"
He hesitated—she seemed furious at herself—then gave her arm a squeeze and let his hand drop. "Don't worry about it," he told her. "Besides, if we'd gone straight there, we wouldn't have had all that fun down in the Red Line. You can't buy that kind of entertainment, not these days."
Olivia snorted a soft laugh, and lowered her head. "Fun, huh?" she said, "That's not quite how I remember it." She seemed to gather herself, and lifted her head over the trunk of the car. "All right. Let's follow the river east. Stay low."
They moved forward toward the intersection, creeping between the line of iron fencing to their left, and the snarl of traffic to their right. At the corner, there was a grassy area behind a hedge of squarely-trimmed bushes that concealed the entrance to one of Harvard's many libraries. Olivia glanced back and motioned toward the hedge. Peter nodded, and followed her behind the waist high bushes, where they stopped for a moment and caught their breath.
The muscles in his thighs were burning again, unused to the unnatural activity of constantly maintaining a crouch. He massaged them through his jeans for a moment, then pulled a hole through the branches with the hook of his crowbar.
The undead milling about in the intersection were mostly former students, from their colorful clothing and youngish appearances. Morbidly, he noted several of them still wearing backpacks on their shoulders, as if they'd just come from class. He let the branches close, and studied Olivia's profile. She was gazing through the bushes next to him. The tip of her tongue peeked out from between her lips in her concentration.
"What are you thinking?" he hissed.
"What's that building across the street?" she said. "The old one on the corner."
He pulled the branches aside again. "The tan one with red bricks?"
"Yeah. It looks like it backs up to the river. What is it?"
"That's part of the university," he replied, "The…Weld Boathouse, I think it was called."
She let the branches snap back into place, and grabbed his sleeve. "Are there boats in it?"
"Boats?" Peter frowned. "Maybe, I think it might be where they…" His mouth dropped open. "…Where they store the boats—for the rowing team. There's a dock on the backside that you can see from the bridge. I used to watch them row when I was a kid. I always liked the kayaks."
"Kayaks…" Olivia breathed, "We can take one west up the river, then get out north of Brighton. It's our best chance."
"You're assuming they're still there," he said, playing the devil's advocate.
"Why wouldn't they be?"
He opened his mouth to reply, but snapped it shut when no reasonable response came to him. He'd seen rowers in the Charles since he'd been back in Boston on more than one occasion. "I don't know," he admitted. "I guess they would be. It's not like anyone was expecting the world to end, right?"
Olivia's answering nod was eager. "We're gonna have to slip through them somehow," she said. "You got any ideas?"
Peter moved around her to the edge of the row, and edged around the corner to get a better view. The infected were crawling all over the intersection between them and the boathouse. They were thickest in front of the bridge, but grew thinner a block or so to the east, where the herd dwindled into separate packs. They almost looked like football huddles standing on either side of the line of scrimmage.
"I think we can go around them if we go far enough east," he said in a low voice. He sensed Olivia moving in close behind him, and glanced back at her. "Then we can doubleba—look out!"
He jumped to his feet and swung his crowbar like a baseball bat, sinking the pronged hook into the head of an infected that was lunging for Olivia's unprotected back. It had stumbled silently out the library entrance—the door swung outward in his peripheral vision—and more were following after it. The hook sank in just above its ear with a solid, wet smack that vibrated up his arm and knocked the undead to the side. It collapsed into the bushes, and nearly half of its face came away—it had been an old woman, he saw to his horror—when he yanked the crowbar free in a shower of blood.
Peter spun toward the library entrance, and saw with relief that Olivia had not been idle. The one he'd seen following after the old woman lay at her feet, blood trickling from a gaping wound in its forehead. Her back was against the door, holding it closed against more that were struggling to push their way out. The bayonet on her rifle dripped on the concrete sidewalk at her feet.
The dark drops fell in slow motion, one after another.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
He looked around them.
The mob in the street was rushing toward them—not nearly as many as had been in the subway—but more than enough to leave nothing of the two of them behind. Their snarling teeth seemed to agree. They were almost at the sidewalk, fanning out to either side around the bushes.
He realized Olivia was shouting at him, and had been for some time—seconds, at least, maybe hours. Everything returned to full speed.
"Peter!"
Their eyes met. Hers were wide open, and full of some emotion. Fear, excitement, determination—it could have been any of them, or none. He thought they mirrored his own. In that look, a silent communication passed between them—regret, thanks, and goodbye all rolled into a single nod, which she returned.
It had been fun. He was glad he'd met her.
"Stay with me," he said.
Without waiting to see if she would follow, he raced around the side of the hedge where they seemed fewest—and then everything that came after was shrouded in a blur of chaotic stop-motion.
The long crowbar came alive in his hands. It ripped through flesh and bone with the ease of machine-hardened tool steel. He kept his feet moving forward—always forward—and swung his weapon in wide arcs, tearing through reaching hands and gaping mouths. The undead's rasping breaths were everywhere and he screamed in answer—he'd been screaming in a wordless howl of defiance since the first swing of his crowbar.
There was a pressure against his back, and he saw Olivia's ponytail behind him mid-swing. She'd stayed with him. She was slashing and thrusting her bayonet like a sword, sliding its razor tip into those coming from the rear. Together, they moved deeper into the melee, leaving a trail of fallen undead behind them.
After nearly losing the crowbar to a snag, he shifted his grip on it, turning the hook inward. He caved in the forehead of a snarling business man, then shoved the angled end through the gaping teeth of a sorority girl—Delta Gamma, her sweater proclaimed her. She dropped like a wet sack. A boy with flaming red hair, an elderly black man with a white shaggy beard. On and on the dead came, all shapes, sizes, and genders, in a never-ending flood.
His arms began to ache, and the crowbar grew slick with undead blood—it was everywhere, coating his arms, his face, dripping into his eyes and open mouth. He tried not to swallow—their speculation on how exactly the infection was spread to the living was still inconclusive.
He could sense Olivia behind him, still guarding his back, as he'd been guarding hers, but it wasn't enough. They weren't going to make it. In mere moments, he was going to be dead, going to be eaten alive.
A fat man wearing a purple Taco Bell t-shirt dropped in front of him, and abruptly the way ahead was clear. His crowbar rebounded off the windshield frame of a red sedan after a reflexive swing. The sight gave him a burst of energy, and he leapt up onto the hood. Olivia was below him, backed up against the sedan's fender, and surrounded by a wide ring of infected that grabbed at her from all sides. Her rifle bayonet was a blur of motion.
"Olivia!" Peter shouted.
He dropped his crowbar, then grabbed her under the shoulders and lifted her from the fray. She fought him like a wild animal, twisting in his grasp and lashing out with her feet. The bayonet's sharp point came dangerously close to spearing him over her shoulder as he dragged her onto the sedan's roof.
"Olivia, it's me…," he said in her ear. "It's me!"
After a moment she relaxed, and he set her down next to him. Her chest heaved, and her green eyes were wide open, showing the whites all around. She was drenched in blood, her hair and face dripping with bits of flesh and gore. There was something feral in her gaze when it locked onto him.
Without thought, he reached out and cupped her trembling cheeks, holding her still. "You okay?" he said.
A final shiver worked its way through her. She blinked and nodded, then looked like herself again. "Yeah…I think so. You?"
Peter managed to force out a grin. "Oh, I've never been better." He released her and bent for his crowbar.
He looked out over the undead standing below them, shocked that they were still alive. Maybe there were as many as had been in the subway. He spit foul-tasting blood out into the crowd. Their hands reached up ineffectually, clawing at their shoes and he kicked at any that came too close.
"If we stay up on top of the cars…," Olivia panted, "we should be able to find a gap. You ready?"
"Ladies first, Agent Dunham," he replied with a little bow. Olivia rolled her eyes, but he caught a faint smile on her lips as she turned away from him.
He followed her down the line of vehicles, leaping from car to car, car to truck, until they left the initial group of infected behind. They reached a space between two groups, where there was enough space for them to make a break for the river's edge. After jumping to the pavement, they sprinted for a thin line of trees on the bank of the Charles. The trees provided a little cover as they reversed course, and headed back toward the boathouse.
Their followers were befuddled by the sudden change in direction. Those in the rear weren't getting the message that they were going the wrong way, causing mass confusion in their ranks. As amusing as it was to watch the undead attempting to right the ship, more importantly, the turmoil gave them the invaluable moments they needed to reach the boathouse unmolested.
"We're lucky they have the brains of a rock…" Peter commented as they rounded the back corner of the old boathouse. "We oughta be fucking dead, Olivia…"
Ahead of him, she shook her head. "Not yet, Peter," she said, and led him out onto the wooden planks of the boathouse dock. "Not yet."
There were a myriad of boats to choose from, all held in place in their slips by thick ropes and padlocked chains. Unfortunately, it was all speedboats, without a kayak, or canoe, or any boat without a motor in sight.
"That's not good," he said, moving along the rows. He picked one at random and glanced in at the ignition. He met Olivia's gaze. "There's no keys."
"Can you hot-wire one, like when we made the barricade at the lab?" she said.
"Probably…if I had enough time…," he said, peering around the backside of the building. He didn't bother stating that there wouldn't be enough time—he'd already seen that she knew in her eyes. "But I know they store the rowing team's stuff here. It must all be inside."
"Go look, I'll keep watch." She lifted the rifle to her shoulder.
He nodded, and ran to one of the arched doorways facing the river. His crowbar made quick work of the lock, and the door opened into a wide storage area. Boats of all shapes and sizes were stacked in racks from floor to ceiling in long rows. Long and slender, sleek racing shells were to the right of the door, with another rack of canoes and kayaks to the left. A huge wooden bin of upright paddles of differing lengths sat next to the door.
"Jackpot…," Peter muttered. He grabbed two of the paddles and chucked them outside, and was deciding between a two-seater kayak and a wooden canoe when gunshots thundered on the dock.
He glanced back over through the doorway, then yanked a small canoe off its rack. More shots rang out in quick succession. The canoe fell to the floor with a dull crash and he dragged it behind him toward the open door, and then out into the sunlight.
Olivia was picking off infected as they came around both sides of the boathouse. Shell casings clattered at her feet. She stood still—almost serene, he would recall later—alternating the direction of her fire between each side of the dock. She saw him with the canoe and moved closer. Undead collapsed on the dock, and tipped off into the water with great splashes.
He ducked under her firing line and tossed the paddles into the canoe, and then pushed it across the uneven planks. The boathouse dock had two wide ramps that angled gently down to the river. Whoever came up with them was a genius, he thought, pushing the front of the canoe into the water.
"Olivia," he called back to her. "Get in. Olivia!"
Olivia glanced back at him, then lowered her rifle and retreated quickly down the ramp. She tossed the rifle into the canoe, then jumped in the front seat and snatched up a paddle. Peter slid the boat the rest of the way in, wincing as the chilly river water invaded his boots, then worked its way up his legs to his thighs. When they were clear of the ramp, he threw himself across the back seat—nearly capsizing them and ending their journey.
Then something grabbed his leg.
"Stay down, Peter," Olivia said. She yanked her pistol free of its holster.
Peter twisted on his side and kicked at a zombified woman that had made its way down the ramp. Behind the woman, more of them lumbered out onto the dock. Though he was sure it was his imagination, the undead almost seemed to sense their prey's impending escape and redoubled their efforts to reach the canoe. The infected woman clawed at his kicking feet until Olivia shot it through the eye, turning the yellow orb into mash.
It fell forward across his legs, then slipped into the water. The canoe rocked precariously from side-to-side, and then righted itself as the current took hold, spinning them out into the river.
Sucking down deep breaths, Peter stared up at a small cloud twirling overhead. His shoes dangled into the water over the back of the canoe. For the second time that day he'd thought he was going to die, yet hadn't. Flashes of being surrounded in the scrum, of the gnashing teeth, and the clamor of harsh breaths passed through his mind like a fetid wind. He blinked the images away.
"Anytime you feel like helping, Peter, I would appreciate it," Olivia said. "Canoeing isn't exactly one of my strong points. I think we're heading out to sea."
Peter pulled himself upright, and swung his feet into the boat, letting the backpack slide from his shoulders. "Sorry," he said sheepishly, and grabbed the remaining paddle. "You may be used to being on the opposite side of the predator-prey relationship, but I'm not quite there yet."
"I don't think it's something you can get used to," she said, dipping her paddle into the water. "…Unless you're psychotic. Do you know how to steer this thing or do we need to switch seats?"
"As strange as it may seem," he said, dipping his paddle into the water. "I'm no expert either, though I think I understand the basic principles. Keep your paddle on the right, Agent Dunham…"
She did as he instructed, and they were soon facing upriver, though somewhat farther downstream from the ramp where they'd put in. His lefthandedness worked well with Olivia's right, allowing each to row on their natural side.
"Peter, look at that…" Olivia said, pointing with her paddle toward the dock.
The mob of undead were rushing down the ramp into the water, one after another. They sank to the man—or woman—beneath the surface. The suicidal plunges continued unabated as they rowed past.
"Now tell me that's not disturbing," he said, glancing back at the dock.
"What do you think will happen to them?" Olivia asked.
"I imagine they'll get swept through the dam into Boston Harbor," he said. "And if they're lucky, into the Atlantic, where they'll live a long happy life at the bottom of the sea, at least until they're crushed by the water pressure. It's not like they can drown. Too bad that none of the pumps are running at the dam—they've got grinders in them, you know."
Olivia looked back at him with a frown. "That's disgusting, Peter," she said. "They were people, once. They had lives and families, people who loved them."
"The key word there is once, Olivia," he said. "What they were before is irrelevant. Those things tried to eat us."
"I know…," she said, and then lowered her head. "I just…what if… Never mind. Forget it." She plunged her paddle into the river and pulled on it with a determination that tilted the canoe with every stroke.
Peter gazed at her blood-specked ponytail and wondered what she'd been about to say. What if…what? From her wild rowing—like she intended to sprint the entire distance to Brighton—he suspected it had been something about her family.
He intended to keep pace with her as long as he could. Her intense need and desire to reach her family was something he could understand. Family was important—despite his rocky relationship with Walter. His mother had done her best to drive that point home. You protect and look out for those you love, she had told him, in multiple languages.
And after everything they'd just endured, he was still alive—they both were. He ran his gaze over the south bank of the Charles as he paddled, beyond the treetops to the innocent-looking structures that peppered the shoreline. He suspected their hardships were only just beginning, but they were going to have to make do.
Somehow.