Chapter 8

Elliot was sitting in the dining room with her hands over her ears, waiting for Nathon's recent string of pleas to turn into curses, then silence. She glanced at the clock in the corner of the room before forgetting the power had been out for days and releasing the grip on the left side of her head to glance at the time.

"Please let me in already! You assholes! What is wrong with you?"

It was almost midnight. Sarah had left the room a few hours ago in a silent fury. Elliot had remained to see the thing through to the end. Elliot was almost certain Nathon had attracted a fair amount of reanimated by now, but the gate would hold against a very large number. Elliot was tempted to count out the number anyway, but a flashlight would just attract more. Nathon had quieted again, and Elliot allowed herself to enter the world of sound.

Elliot pulled her leather journal from her belt. She flipped the pages filled with her own messy handwriting until she reached a page titled "Infection".

-Caught From
Bites
Blood caught in eyes or mouth
Any bodily fluid consumed

-Symptoms
Fever
Nausea
Congestion
Fatigue
Pallid complexion
Coma

-Time Frame
1hr from initial exposure
congestion and fatigue
5hrs from initial exposure
nausea and fever
10hrs from initial exposure
skin grows pale and subject becomes incoherent
12hrs from initial exposure
subject enters coma
15hrs from initial exposure
subject expires
15hrs 10min from initial exposure
subject reanimates

Something was wrong. Elliot and Sarah had gotten back before 2 o' clock. If it was midnight, why wasn't Nathon showing any symptoms? Elliot went over to the window, opened it, leaned out, and looked down. The moon was full, and she could barely see Nathon. He was huddled against the house, and it looked as if he was sobbing, though Elliot couldn't hear him very well.

"Hey, um, Nathon?" He remained huddled.

"Please don't shoot me yet." His reply was muffled.

"I won't. Uh, are you suffering from any fever, nausea, congestion, fatigue, or paleness?"

"Well, let's see. I've been screaming my head off for hours, so I'm probably a bit feverish. I'm about to die, so I kind of want to puke. I'm on the verge of tears, so my nose is starting to run. I'm afraid to fall asleep, as much as I would like to, because you'll probably shoot me. And, I don't get out much to begin with, so yeah, I'm pale."

"Well, at least you're coherent."

Nathon remained huddled.

"Are you cold?"

"Yes. Does that rule out the fever?"

"Not really. It's probably under forty degrees out here. Do you want a blanket?"

"Won't I be entering a coma soon anyway?"

"Well, yeah. But you have at least another two hours."

"Yes. I would like a blanket."

Elliot went into the library across the hall and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch. When she got back to the window, Nathon was pacing in a circle.

"Okay, I'm throwing it down." Elliot balled it up so it wouldn't be blown over the wall, then sent it down. It landed at Nathon's feet. He bent down and picked it up, then wrapped it over his shoulders. He continued walking in circles.

"Well. Oh hey, there aren't any reanimated down there, are there? I mean, can you hear them over the wall or anything?"

"Nope."

"Oh, well, good."

Nathon stopped his pacing. "You know what?"

"I doubt it."

"I'm dying in less than two hours, and... that's it."

Elliot was tempted to say that she had actually known that, but stopped herself.

Nathon continued. "I have no family, no home, nothing. I'm just one of the hundreds, thousands, maybe even a million people who have died in the past two weeks. I'm even less than that. I'm the body they won't even be able to identify."

"Well, due to the decomposition and head shots, I'm sure lots of bodies won't be identified."

"Gee, thanks."

"Besides, how do you know they'll even be identifying bodies? I see no helicopters, no rescue teams. We could be all that's left. There was not a single, real living soul out there today, besides that crazy guy, and he doesn't count. He probably gave in. Most people probably have. This is something a lot of people just can't handle. Nuclear war, sure. Surges of soldiers coming and destroying their way of life, why not? But waking up and finding your neighbor clawing at your window, craving your flesh? That's just... way too much to take in."

"Then, how can you handle it?"

"That is a very good question. I honestly have no idea."

"Why do you have a house surrounded by ten foot walls, a room full of guns? And how do you know all this stuff? We've been around since this whole thing began. You haven't timed how a person reacts to a bite, you haven't recorded their symptoms. How do you know what we need to survive? Where did the idea to tear down that staircase come from?"

"All very good questions, and all with the same answer. I have no idea how I know this, but I do." Elliot glanced at her journal lying on the table.

Nathon sighed, and returned to his huddled position by the building. There was an awkward silence for a few minutes, then Nathon's head jerked up.

"Uhhh..." he began.

"What?"

"You know how earlier I said there weren't any zombies down here? Well now there are. And it sounds like a lot of them."

"Great. Well, you'll be better off not aggravating them. You should head to the back of the house."

The moans were drifting up to Elliot's level. It sounded as if a couple dozen had suddenly decided to show up. She couldn't help but wonder what had taken them so long to get here. She felt a deep sympathy for whatever it had been that had distracted them. Nathon hopped up and quickly walked around the corner of the house, looking behind his shoulder worriedly at the section of the wall where the reanimated could be heard. Elliot left the window and walked across the hall into the library. She looked out the window and saw Nathon come around the corner of the house. He looked up and saw her leaning out the window. After a brief pause he began talking.

"How much time do I have left?"

Elliot glanced at her wrist. "Hour and a half."

"So, I just collapse and that's it?"

"I believe so."

"Well. Are you going to just shoot me from up there, or what?"

Elliot pondered. "I guess I could go down there. You'll be in the coma for three hours, so it's not like you'll be trying to eat me by the time I get to the backyard."

"Can you, like, check my vitals or something? I don't want to accidentally fall asleep too early or anything."

"Uhm. Sure. You know, you're probably handling this pretty well."

"Like I said, it's not like I'm leaving anything behind. I'm probably more afraid of what's over that wall than what's happening in the next hour and a half."

"Good point of view, I guess."

They shared another awkward silence. Elliot heard her dogs come into the room. She leaned out of the window frame to greet the two of them, and to drag a chair over to the window. The dogs sat at her side, and one looked out the window at Nathon and whimpered quietly. Elliot stared at the dog for a moment then out at Nathon.

"That's weird." She said.

"What?" The dogs aren't going crazy.

"Well they didn't like me when I first, er, got here. But they've been sleeping in my room."

"No, I mean, dogs can sense the virus. They aren't even barking at you." The dog put its paws on the windowsill and leaned out, looking out at Nathon worriedly. "Something weird is going on." Nathon just stood in the middle of the yard, shivering slightly.

"Can- can I come in?" Elliot was debating how to respond when her thoughts were interrupted by the reply from the next window.

"No."

She leaned out further to see Sarah leaning out from the next room.

"I don't see how it's your decision." Elliot said.

Sarah grimaced. "You said you wouldn't be jeopardizing anybody's safety. There's no magical immunity to the virus, your dogs are just used to the smell by now. He's staying out there."

Elliot just stared at her then down at Nathon, who was looking up at Sarah with confusion and fear. It'd become pretty obvious the two weren't the best of friends, but even Elliot, who barely knew Nathon, felt at least a little bad about leaving him out to die in the cold. When Elliot looked back to Sarah's window, she was gone.

"It's my house." Elliot said to Nathon. "You can stay on the first floor if you want."

Nathon just shook his head and retreated to huddling against the house. Elliot thought about trying to salvage a conversation, but decided he'd probably like to be alone. She left the window, staring at her dogs for another few seconds before going to the kitchen to get something to eat.

...

Nathon sat against the building, the blanket pulled over his head in order to further muffle the sounds of the dead on the other side of the wall. He was trying hard not to think about what little time he had left, and tried to just remain calm. He glanced at his ankle. The bite was shallow, and the bleeding had stopped some while ago, although his sock was stained with his own blood. He continued focusing on not thinking about anything painful, and he was finding trouble thinking of something that fit into that category. He satisfied himself with lying down and staring at the sky. After a while he became drowsy and decided to get up and move around. He had lost track of time as soon as the sun had gone down. It had to have been at least an hour since Elliot had left the window.

"Elliot?" He called up to the dimly lit window. There was no reply. He assumed she had left to take a nap or eat something. As he processed this, his stomach growled. He realized he hadn't eaten anything since the small granola bar he'd inhaled before the trip to the grocery store. He groaned and sat down again. Nathon still had no idea what time it was. He assumed time was impossible to keep track of when you were dying. He tried to remember the symptoms Elliot had asked him about. Fever, nausea, congestion, all the stuff Sarah had written down those weeks ago. He felt his head, but realized that was pointless considering how cold they were anyway. He could breathe through his nose just fine. He was tired, but he'd been up almost twenty hours by now. The slight urge to vomit had been with him so long now that he had become used to it. He sighed and leaned his head back against the house.

He was just standing up again when Elliot called his name from above. He stepped away from the wall and looked up at the window.

"Nathon? You aren't in a coma?"

"No... was that supposed to happen already?"

"It's almost five o' clock." Elliot was getting frantic.

"What?" Nathon had been right about time playing tricks on him. "You're saying I can't even become a zombie right?"

Elliot just stared at him for a while. "Something is going on. You don't have any incredibly wacky health condition or anything?"

Nathon shook his head.

"Right..." Elliot scratched her head. Nathon looked to the east and saw the sky barely beginning to lighten.

"So, now what?" He asked.

"I have no idea."

They were silent for a while, then Nathon's stomach growled again.

"Hey, um, could I have a granola bar or something? I haven't eaten anything in almost twenty four hours."

Elliot left the window and returned a few seconds later with a box of chocolate chip granola bars, and dropped the whole thing down to Nathon. He opened the package and chewed on one thoughtfully. Elliot continued to stare.

"What if there is a miracle immunity?" She said it barely loud enough for Nathon to hear. His head snapped up.

"What, I'm the one person in the world who's immune? What are the chances of that?"

Elliot just softly shook her head, and said the phrase she'd been using way too much for her own liking.

"I have no idea."

Nathon finished his granola bar and then another one, then looked up to Sarah. "If I fall asleep, will you promise not to shoot me?"

Elliot thought a moment. "Probably... how about I wake you up in an hour to make sure you're not in a coma?"

"Sure." Nathon was already positioning his blanket into a pillow and getting as comfortable as he could. He waited for the sound of the window being shut before closing his eyes, and slowly drifting off to sleep.

...

Elliot walked into the kitchen and filled the dogs' bowls with food she had picked up at the store. She grabbed herself a piece of bread that hadn't yet gone stale and put some peanut butter on it. She ate her sandwich quietly, and could hear the footsteps behind her as Sarah walked into the room. Elliot turned around to see Sarah with a grey cat slung around her shoulders. The expression on her face was not one Elliot had seen before. There was her normal anger, but there was something else beyond that.

"Why the hell isn't Nathon shot?"

"Where the hell did you get that cat?"

The two glared at each other for a moment before Elliot answered first.

"He hasn't shown any symptoms. He's sleeping now, but not in a coma. I'm waking him up in an hour. If he's still fine then, I don't think he should have to stay out there past noon."

"His name is Jimmy." Sarah replied. Then walked out of the room.

...

"Naathon!"

Nathon's eyes opened and he felt immediately relieved to know who he was and to not be craving anybody's brains. He sat up and looked to the window. Both Sarah and Elliot were leaning out of adjacent windows. As far as he could tell, they were both in the library. The sky was lighter, and he could see much better. He could also hear the zombies that seemed to have greatly raised in numbers since he had fallen asleep.

"Uhm. Hi."

"Okay, good. You're not a zombie. Well, as you might have noticed, we do still have a zombie problem. And it's mostly your fault, really. All that cursing and everything last night. Didn't do a great job of keeping us inconspicuous."

"They almost trampled all the water you were graceful enough to drop outside the garage yesterday." Sarah interjected. She still seemed pissed off, but there was a strange tone of curiosity and confusion in her voice.

"Uhm. Sorry." Why the hell was he apologizing? "I mean, uhm. So, what are we going to do about the zombies?"

"What do you think?" Elliot said. She and Sarah both pulled guns outside of their window frames. Sarah grinned maniacally.

"Well, I'll just sit here and be useless some more then." Nathon hadn't meant to say it loud enough to be heard, but Sarah replied.

"If you're somehow not infected, you've still got responsibilities. She dropped her gun and it landed a few feet from Nathon. He resisted the urge to step away from it. Sarah sneered down at him. Nathon took a deep breath and picked it up. He looked to Elliot for direction. She gave him a brief instruction on how to fire, and pointed out a dog house he could stand on top of to shoot from. Nathon walked over to it and climbed on top, and saw the several dozen zombies standing outside the wall.

"Here's a tip!" Elliot called out from her window. "Don't look at their faces, just fire."

Nathon took one last glance at his bloodied sock before taking aim. His eye first landed on an old man. Too late, Nathon was already imagining what grandchildren he had had, and if he had lived nearby. Nathon found a new target, and fired before taking in its appearance. It crumpled in a heap. By now, Elliot and Sarah, with an extra gun Elliot had produced from her belt, had each taken out at least four.

The guns were silenced, but still more zombies kept appearing. The trio took half at least half an hour to take them all out, leaving a large pile of bodies outside the wall.

When they were all gone, Nathon turned around and looked at the two women in the house, who were both looking back at him. Sarah turned to Elliot.

"How long has it been since he was bit?" She asked. Elliot glanced at her watch.

"Almost eighteen hours. He should be completely reanimated by now. I don't think he even has any symptoms." Sarah nodded and said nothing. Elliot continued. "Why don't you come inside, Nathon?"