If never I met you
I'd never have seen you cry
If not for our first hello
We'd never have to say goodbye
If never I held you
My feelings would never show
It's time I start walkin'
But there's so much you'll never know
Kiss (Hard Luck Woman, 1976)
"Lincoln!"
Her voice echoed, resounding through the endless night and coming back to her ears different, distorted, with a mocking hilt that it didn't leave with.
"Lincoln!" Louder this time, more desperate, pleading and frightened.
She was standing in the middle of a road surrounded by trees. It was night and the gibbous moon hung low in the sky, but she could see as though it were day. She felt no mortal fear - the dead no longer walked here, only her. She took a step forward and looked around, her heart knocking against her ribs. Where was he? Why didn't he answer her? "Lincoln, please!" She was proud, but now she was begging, tears spilling down her cheeks. Wind she did not feel moved though the treetops, rustling them: If she listened close enough, she knew, she would hear whispering - all the world was haunted now, the forest lousy with ghosts of a died off world. Her mother was out there, her father, and all of her sisters, watching through tangled brush, and if she squinted, she would see them, faces white and glowing, eyes black, ragged holes; no expression, no love, no hate, simply staring...staring…
She started to cry, and her knees went out from under her, spilling her to the rough pavement in a heap. "Lincoln," she moaned, "I need you. Please don't leave me." She drew her knees to her chest and hugged herself; she imagined it was him as she rocked back and forth, surrounded now by the presence of spirits she could feel but not see. Lisa, Luna, Lucy, Leni, Lori, and, right in front of her, Luan. You didn't watch for me, Luan's voice said from the center of her head. She sounded angry...and hurt. I watched for you but you didn't watch for me.
"I'm sorry," Lynn sobbed, her forehead against her knees. "I'm so sorry, Luan."
You left me to die. Her voice quivered with emotion. It hurt, Lynn...what they did to me hurt so bad.
Luan started to cry, and Lynn wept harder. She tried to speak, to beg her sister's forgiveness, but her words came out in a strangled rush.
You could have come back for us, Luna said, her tone dripping with disdain. You could have circled around and tried, but you didn't...you left us because you're chickenshit. You're a pussy and the moment it comes to you or us, it's going to be us every time.
"No," Lynn croaked, "no I was thinking of the others...we would have died."
I must point out that in fact we all did die, Lisa said, and Lynn could imagine her pushing her glasses up her nose. You killed every single one of us, Lynn, with your negligence. Now you're alone.
An unseen force lifted Lynn's head, and suddenly she was walking through the second floor hall of the house in Royal Woods. It was dark and dank, like a cave, and garbage littered the carpet. Terror clawed at her chest and she tried to pull away, but she was drawn inexorably to a door at the end of a corridor. Crooked pictures stared down at her from the wall, the faces they depicted strange and grotesque, the countenance of demons watching hungrily as she laid her hand on the knob. Something terrible lurked on the other side, she knew, but was powerless to stop herself as she pushed it open.
Crrrreeeeeaaaak.
The hall light fell across a bed and a humped form. It whipped up and twisted around, making Lynn jump, a terrible white faced apparition with glowing yellow eyes and matted red hair spilling over its deformed shoulders. It looked nothing like Lola, but that's who it was. "Lynnnnn," she drew, her voice hollow and soulless. She crawled to the foot of the bed like a crab, blood and pus dropping from her mouth. Lynn turned to run, but Lana blocked the way, half of her face red and seeping and a trowel in her hand. Lynn took a step backward, head shaking from side to side and tears filling her eyes, then tripped over something and went down. Lana lifted the trowel and brought it down in a deadly arc.
"Lincoln!"
She was back on the road, walking and jerking her head from side to side, the forest teeming with spirits that whispered lowly as she passed. "Lincoln!" She rounded a corner and saw him up ahead, his back to her. Joy filled her heart, and she started to run to him, but her feet were heavy and she could hardly move. "Lincoln!" she cried. "Please don't leave me! Please!"
He started to walk, and panic clutched her chest. "Wait!"
The road turned again, and a sign appeared on the right, white lettering on a green background. WASHINGTON 1MI. Lincoln kept steady ahead of her, his pace never quickening, never slowing. She tried to move faster, but her legs refused to obey her commands. "I'm sorry I yelled at you!" she heard herself saying. "I'll go to Washington!"
As if by magic, the city spread out before her: She saw the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, and the reflecting pool, bodies floating face down. Fires raged unchecked, and the sound of screams, gunshots, and sirens filled the air. Someone spoke next to her, but she did not fear: It was just Tom Parcel from Channel 3. Guess he worked in D.C. now:
"At this hour, we repeat, these are the facts as we know them. There is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins. The murders are taking place in villages and cities, in rural homes and suburbs with no apparent pattern nor reason for the slayings. It seems to be a sudden general explosion of mass homicide. We have some descriptions of the assassins. Eyewitnesses say they are ordinary-looking people. Some say they appear to be in a kind of trance. Others describe them as being misshapen monsters. At this point, there's no really authentic way for us to say who or what to look for and guard yourself against. Reaction of law enforcement officials is one of complete bewilderment at this hour. Police and sheriff's deputies and emergency ambulances are literally deluged with calls for help. The scene can be best described as mayhem."
She was suddenly in the living room, standing behind the couch and watching detached as she and her siblings gathered around the television set. Mom and Dad hurried through the house in a fluster, Mom gathering supplies to take into the attic and Dad and Lincoln boarding up the doors and window. She remembered the terror as she watched the world end; riots, looting, armies of the dead swarming through city streets. CNN played endless video until troops stormed the newsroom and forced them to stop at gunpoint: The screen switched to a brass band playing Nearer, My God, to Thee, then went black. There was a talk show too, she recalled - a black man and a white man shouting at each other. The white man said: "Every dead body that is not exterminated gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!"
Lincoln screamed, and she jumped, her head whipping around. The front door was broken and splintered; a ghoul had him by the hand, dragging him toward a sliver of wood. Lynn's heart dropped and she tried to go to him, but something grabbed her ponytail and yanked. She turned, fists balled, only to find herself, an evil grin on her face. "Let go!" she cried. "I have to help Lincoln."
Lynn 2 shook her head slowly. "Let him die," she said.
He howled in pain, the shard sinking slowly into his eye, blood gushing, his arms thrashing helplessly. All Lynn could do was break down in tears.
Sometime later, she was lying in a sleeping bag, candles surrounding her, their flickering glow painting the walls a feeble orange. Her arm was bent behind her head and she stared into the darkness. She didn't know how, but Lincoln was dead, and it was her fault. She got him killed just like she got them all killed. She glanced at the Desert Eagle next to her, but didn't reach for it. She didn't deserve to die, she deserved to live alone in the hell she'd made for herself.
Something kicked in her depths, and she laid her hand on her stomach. At least she still had the baby.
She caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye, and her heart seized. She turned just as Lincoln stepped from the shadows, the firelight washing across his pale, dead features. His eyes were wide, staring, and milky white. Lynn's breath caught and a shock of fright went through her.
"I came back for you, Lynn," he said flatly, with no emotion...no anger, no rage, no love, no sadness. He came forward, and for a moment she was paralyzed in fear. The baby kicked again, and she came alive, picking the gun up and aiming it; it was heavy, cumbersome, and the trigger wouldn't budge. Lincoln's feet scraped on the floor as he approached, and the baby kicked again, as if in terror. Please, Mommy, don't let me die too.
Gritting her teeth and summoning all her strength, she jerked the trigger, and the gun jumped in her hand. A hole appeared in the middle of Lincoln's forehead…
...but he kept coming.
She tried to get up, to run for her and her child's life, but she was frozen, held down by unseen hands. Lincoln stepped over her and knelt between her legs. She couldn't scream, couldn't move, could only watch as he pulled her pants and underwear down and tossed them aside. Their gazes met, and she pled with her eyes. Please don't...please don't hurt our baby.
As if on their own violation, her knees parted, and Lincoln shoved his hands into her. She let out a silent howl of misery and threw her head back, her hips arching as she tried to wiggle away but couldn't. Something moved inside of her, and with an explosion of red agony, he wrenched the baby out of her, its thin, sickly cries rebounding off unseen walls. She bit her quivering bottom lip and squeezed her eyes closed against a rush of tears, but could still see: Lincoln brought the shrieking fetus to his lips, and when he bit down on its throat…
...Lynn sat bolt upright in bed, a scream locked in her throat and her heart bursting against her breast. Threatening darkness surrounded her, and for a moment she was certain that she was in hell, locked in the deepest, blackest chamber, doomed to watch her baby be ripped from her womb and eaten alive over and over again for all eternity. Then a stray moonbeam fell through the window and laid across the bed.
A dream.
Just a dream.
She took a deep breath and raked a hand through her chestnut hair. Next to her, Lincoln lay flat on his back, one hand resting on his chest and the other outstretched: They fell asleep cuddling, and she must have been using it as a pillow.
Rubbing her forehead with the heel of her palm, she listened to the night; a long, eerie wail sounded in the distance, and her blood ran cold. Just dead people screaming, she assured herself. They made lots of weird noises beyond the common hisses and moans. Sometimes their perpetually working jaws accidentally produced words: Mommy one said as it came at her, and she was so disturbed that she heard it in her sleep sometimes. Unintentional vocalization, Lisa called it. That was surely it - that thing did not call her Mommy.
A shiver dropped down her spine like a block of ice, and she resisted the urge to lean over and turn on the Coleman lantern sitting on the nightstand. She was too hot, and the air in the room too stagnant despite the open window. She grabbed the Desert Eagle and slipped out of bed, treading light on bare feet to make the least amount of noise possible. At the door, she paused and looked back at Lincoln, the moon casting his bare chest in cold, silvery light, then went down the hall to a door marked ROOF ACCESS. She eased it open just enough to allow passage, slid through, and went up a steep flight of stairs to another door that opened onto the roof itself, a wide, flat space enclosed by a waist-high parapet. Above, the moon stared down like an all seeing eye, its skeletal face wrapped in thin clouds reminiscent of dirty burial shrouds. A cool breeze plastered her sweaty bangs to her forehead, and being as quiet as she could, she went to the edge of the roof and leaned against the border. Below, the street stood empty, the only movement the skitting of trash across the pavement. The wail came again, further away this time, drifting through the desolate world like a doleful cry. Lynn's heartbeat sped up, and she swallowed thickly.
They were in the town of Potomac Mills, a tiny village on a wooded stretch of the Potomac River thirty-five miles west of Washington. From here, she could see the moon dappled surface, and beyond it, the black outline of Virginia. They stopped at just past six the previous afternoon after encountering an impassable pile-up on Route 190: A tanker truck jackknifed and a line of cars smashed into it, causing as massive explosion. The result was a twisted heap of scotched metal that completely blocked the road. Lincoln had an alternate route planned, because of course they did, but Lynn decided to call it a day while there was still light, against Lincoln's protests. We can go another hour, he said. She didn't understand why he was so set on making good time: Either way, they were going to be there by tomorrow.
Dread filled Lynn's stomach and she drew a deep, shivery breath. In just a few short hours, she and Lincoln would be in the city of the dead, a maze of streets, alleys, and passageways where you'd never see trouble until it jumped out and ate your face off. In just a few short hours, she might lose the one thing that mattered in the world.
She thought again of just turning around and taking them back into the countryside; let Lincoln be mad. It would be for his own good. That town...what was it called? The one where Lisa died. There was so much open space there, so many wooded ridges and mountains, so many rushing streams, deep, secret valleys and hollers that they could lose themselves forever.
Lincoln had to know that, he was smart, he always planned. Why he fought her so hard was a mystery and a frustration, but he did, and she caved because she was in love with him, hook, line, and sinker, and the last thing she wanted, especially right now (when, admittedly, she was weak) was for him to be angry at her.
The more she thought about it, though, the less she cared. She might not be a planner like him, or a scientist like Lisa, but she wasn't stupid no matter what people in Royal Woods might have thought. Washington was a death trap even if there were people there. They needed to wait until next spring. Hell, they could even try this winter. Lisa explained that the dead would probably freeze solid, or at least freeze up enough to slow them down even more. How many months away was winter? She turned her eyes to the sky and counted. Four months until December - that seemed like a long time, but they'd already survived half of that on their own.
Have we?
Lynn's stomach tightened at the memory of his words. No, not all of survived, but...they did, and they did it while travelling. If they settled down in a house on a hill, flanked on three sides by dense forest, say, and on one by a river, they could pass four months like nothing. Look at them now, sleeping in a second story apartment over a hardware store in the middle of a town. If they could pull this off for one night, why couldn't they pull off a farmhouse for ninety nights?
The wail came again, far in the distance, so far that it barely bothered her this time. She glanced up at the moon and pursed her lips. She didn't want to fight with him...but her mind was made up. Tomorrow they were turning around and going back to West Virginia whether he liked it or not. If he wanted to give her the silent treatment or yell at her or fight, well, fine, it was a small price to pay. She'd rather him alive and angry than dead.
Pushing away from the ledge, she went through the door, down the stairs, and into the hall, tiptoeing; every time the floor creaked under her bare feet, she winced and stopped to listen. Before coming upstairs for the night, they moved a riding lawnmower in front of the door and tacked sheets over the windows. Nothing could see in, but they could hear, and all it took was one tiny noise to draw them. Lisa hypothesized that they were somewhat hive-minded. If one heard something, say a gunshot, and started walking in a certain direction, others would join, despite not having heard themselves. It's akin to a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Eventually, you had a giant herd of living dead following a sound none of them remembered. If a crow so much as cawed close to their hideout, or if a screw gave way and a sign clattered to the street, they'd be overrun. The Bronco was parked against the back door, so close that all they had to do was open the door, open the driver side, and scurry in.
Still, she was nervous, and part of her wanted to go downstairs and have a look around, but instead she went into the room and crossed to the bed, the dresser, chair, and TV set vague shapes in the dark. Moonlight gleamed on the glass of a framed photo hanging from the wall, a little blonde boy about three, sitting in a chair and smiling at the camera. There was a crib in the other room and toys strewn across the floor - no evidence of him or his parents, though. They probably went to one of the many rescue stations that cropped up before things got really bad: Most of them were overrun in the early days and closed.
At the bed, she sat, laid the gun on the nightstand, and turned the lantern on the lowest setting; weak white light spread across the covers, barely reaching Lincoln's side. She swung her legs onto the bed and faced him: His brow was pinched and his lips moved silently, his gloved hand resting on his bare chest. He kept that damn thing on all day, and when she pointed it out, he shrugged. I might need to aim in a hurry. Weirdo. He even kept it on when they had sex earlier (their first time in a bed, she mused). Love filled her as she stared at him, and, smiling, she snuggled up next to him, her hand going to his stomach. His skin was hot to the touch, and Lynn frowned. They were alike in a lot of ways (though you might not know it) and one of those was body heat: They both threw off a lot.
With a sharp intake of air, Lincoln opened his eyes; panic filled them, and for a moment he tried to sit up, but she held him in place. "Shhh," she soothed, "it was just a dream."
He jerked his gaze at her and swallowed, his eyes clearing. He raked his glove hand through his hair and took a deep, shaky breath. Lynn kissed his chest and laid her hand over his heart; it slammed wildly against her palm, and she kissed him again. "You're okay, Linc. You're safe. With me."
For a second he fought to catch his breath, then he swallowed with an audible click. "I-I know," he said, "I just…" he trailed off and shifted, a look of pain crossing his face.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No," he said and laid his hand on top of hers, "it's nothing."
His ashen skin and the haunted look in his eyes begged to differ. Lynn sighed deeply and rested her head against his chest, the comforting echo of his heartbeat filling her ear. He was strong and a survivor, but even strong survivors don't come through their ordeal without physical and mental wounds - he'd seen so much horror over the past three months, lost so much, just like her; and like her, he was scared and hurting.
She couldn't stop that, but she could love him. It may not be much, but it was all she could give. Rubbing his chest slowly, she kissed his heated skin, the saltiness of his sweat tingling on her lips. He brushed his hand across her hair and traced his thumb along her brow, the rough fabric of the glove making her wince. He laid it on the back of hers and squeezed. "I love you," he said.
That always made her smile. "I love you too." He let go, rested his hand on his chest, and stared deeply into her eyes. She ran her hand over his flesh and brushed against the glove. She rolled her eyes. "Will you take this damn thing off?"
She snatched it, and Lincoln's eyes filled with panic. "No," he said and tried to pull back, "I -"
It came off…
...and Lynn froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins.
On the knuckle of his middle finger was an angry red cut, not very deep but festering with blood and yellow pus.
The pit of her stomach dropped like a trap door.
"Lynn, I..."
She'd seen that same wound more times than she wanted to count.
He was infected.
Hot, throbbing pain exploded in the center of her skull and her heart started to slam in panic. It was happening. She killed him just like she killed the rest...he was going to leave her and it was all her fault.
"No," she said, her voice small and broken on trembling lips. Tears filled her eyes and she looked up into Lincoln's face. No, that's not what it was...just a cut, a scratch, something, anything other than that. She saw the truth in his eyes, and the tears came faster, streaming down her cheeks in stinging rivers. "No," she repeated and shook her head. This couldn't be happening...she couldn't lose him too.
Lincoln frowned sadly and took a deep breath. "I…"
She lost her parents, her sisters, her friends, her life, the shows she liked, the sports she played, the music she listened to, her own fucking bed, her home...now she was going to lose him too, the boy she loved, the boy she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, the boy whose children SHE WANTED TO HAVE!
A hot ball of rage detonated in her chest, and anger flowed through her like bitter poison; her jaw clenched and her body shook. Lincoln reached for her, but she ripped away and jumped to her feet, panting and trembling, her nostrils flaring as she drew great breathes in. She looked around the room for something to smash, to break, to kill, something to which she could direct all the blame.
But there was only herself.
Lincoln scooted across the bed and got to his knees, his hands up, palms out. "Lynn, take it easy…"
His eyes locked with hers. So soft, so brown. In them, she once saw her future...now she watched it die.
Just like he was going to.
Her anger drained away, and the world blurred as tears overwhelmed her. His face crumpled, and the look of pain she saw made her cry harder. She bowed her head and clamped her lower lip between her teeth, but there was no stopping it, no slowing it. A tide of grief swept her away and she sobbed hysterically, her shoulders shaking and her chest aching so bad she doubled over.
When Lincoln took her in his arms, she melted against him; her knees gave out, but he caught her. "Lynn," he said, a pleading note in his voice, "it's…" he trailed off, not knowing what to say.
The one good thing in this world, and like in her dream, it was being ripped away from her. Lincoln shushed her and ran his fingers through her hair and hugged her tightly. His scent filled her nose, soothing, warm, and that made her cry even harder.
She didn't realize she was trying to speak until she heard herself. "Y-You're gonna die," she moaned, her voice breaking.
His body tensed. It was true: She knew it and he knew it too. He couldn't deny it, or put up a false front, or point to the bright side because there was none. Instead of speaking, he held her and stroked her hair as she wept against his shoulder. At some point, he led her to the bed, and they sat, her head against his chest and both of his arms around her shoulder; he placed delicate kisses across the plain of her forehead, and her tears slowly tapered off. She was empty, wrung out...dead, her eyes staring sightlessly and her mind frozen as surely as her limbs.
The world hadn't really ended for her until the moment she saw that wound on his knuckle, his warm, fragrant skin broken, his kissable body filled with infection. She knew that if he turned his back to her, she would see the first faint purple bruises...where his blood was beginning to pool. Her heart clutched and her stomach twisted. She couldn't stand it...if she saw it she'd start crying all over again.
She surprised herself by speaking. Her lips were numb, cold. "When?"
Lincoln threaded his fingers through her hair and ghosted his nails over her scalp. The sensation wasn't enough to penetrate the fog, though. "It doesn't matter," he said.
"When?" she asked, more firmly. She already knew, but she needed to hear it.
Sighing, he said, "Yesterday. Or the day before. When...when Luan died. I went after you and one of them came at me and I...I punched it in the face."
Her deceased heart thumped painfully. I went after you. She remembered the terror, the panic; on some level she knew Luan couldn't be saved, but she tried anyway...and she led Lincoln to his death.
She thought she was wrung out, but she wasn't: She started to cry again and Lincoln pressed her head to his chest. "I'm sorry," she breathed, "I'm so sorry, Linc."
"It's not your fault. I could have shoved him or-or punched him in the chest. I just...reacted and busted him in the mouth. I didn't realize his tooth caught me until later. That's why I wanted to get the Bronco so bad." He swallowed hard. "I-I knew I wouldn't be around to help you. And why I wanted to go to Washington before I got too sick."
Lynn squeezed her eyes but the tears still came. She curled her fingers against his chest and gave voice to her anguish. Lincoln brushed her hair from her face and kissed the top of her head. "I should be good for another day or two, so we can get you to Washington -"
"I'm not going to Washington," she said.
Lincoln tensed. "What?"
She drew a deep, shivery breath through her nose and let it out slowly. "I'm not going to Washington. I-I can't lose you." A strangled sob escaped her throat and she clung to him. "I can't...I can't."
"Lynn," he said, a stern note in his voice.
"No," she said firmly. She looked up at him; his eyes were wide with horror, but she ignored them. Her mind was made up. "If you die, I die."
He flinched as if struck. "Lynn, no, you -"
She silenced him by touching his cheek and brushing her thumb across his lips. Tears stood in her eyes and her face was drawn, lips tight and trembling. She looked far, far older than her sixteen years. "No," she said, "no."
Lincoln gazed into her eyes, swirling and dark with misery, wet with tears, and knew that she wouldn't be dissuaded. "Maybe there's a cure," he offered, his voice unconvincing to even his own ears. He didn't believe that. Lynn shook her head and he sighed. "There's a chance."
"There is no cure," she said. "Lisa said it was impossible."
She did. On the road, she studied the infection as best she could, and reached the conclusion that the plague worked by rapidly breaking down blood cells. She compared it to cancer, only it was much, much worse. Within hours, she said, the infected is beyond all possible help. Maybe if caught in the first fifteen to thirty minutes, but certainly not after that.
"She could have been wrong," Lincoln said, "s-she didn't have the time or the facilities to really study it." His words were coming quicker now. He could feel tears threatening to overwhelm him but blinked them back. He opened his mouth to try and convince her, but the truth, unvarnished and total, came out instead. "I don't want you to die." The tears came then, and he looked away, not wanting her to see his weakness.
When she cupped his cheek in her hand, he looked up into her eyes.
"I'm already dead," she whispered.