September 2, 2048
They weren’t human. Some of the silhouettes were too tall and oddly shaped, and by the way they stumbled forward, he knew they were dead. Dead and hungry…
The chirp of the cell phone woke him from the dream. At?rst, he couldn’t?nd it. When he?nally realized it was still in his pocket, the call had ended. He checked the display and saw Fiona’s number. Fully awake now thanks to a nice dose of adrenaline, he hit the redial button.
“Jubal?” She didn’t sound sleepy and he suspected she’d been up with the woman. He glanced at the clock.
2:30 a.m.
“What’s wrong?”
“How fast can you get over here?”
He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. He could use another few hours of sleep.
“Do I have time for a shower?”
“No.”
He sighed. “On my way.”
He used the bathroom and washed his face. Next, he checked on his mother. He wasn’t surprised to?nd her still sleeping. As much as he wanted to wake her up, turn on the lights, maybe?x her some toast and turn on another Gunsmoke episode, he didn’t disturb her. He tried to tell himself that it was simply because she needed her rest. But he knew that wasn’t true.
He was afraid he would see blisters on her face, and he didn’t think he could handle that right now. He closed his eyes. He had never been particularly religious, but now he said a silent prayer, asking for his life to return to its boring normalcy.
Jubal slipped out of the house as quietly as possible.
The stench of the sick woman still lingered in the cruiser, so he had to drive with the windows down again, but it was a typical cool desert night; the breeze felt good after the scorching hot day.
When he pulled into Fiona’s driveway, he saw lights on throughout the house. It would soon be his house, as well. He had already moved some of his clothes and personal belongings in, and Fiona had allowed him to set up a woodworking space in the garage. She had asked him if he needed space for any hobbies. He hated to admit he didn’t have a hobby, so he decided he was a woodworker. The birdhouse he started back in February still sat on the bench, covered with dust. Fiona never mentioned his lack of progress and he knew she never would. It was just another reason he loved her.
Since she was expecting him, Jubal didn’t knock.
He smelled the sick woman before he crossed the threshold.
He had carried her to the couch in the front room. Fiona had suggested the bed in the guest room, but Jubal didn’t think he could carry the woman that far and still hold his breath. And if he didn’t hold his breath, he thought he would have thrown up.
Kind of like right now.
Fiona met him in the foyer and hugged him tightly. The stench of the sick woman was in her hair and on her clothes. She was still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday, as he was his.
“Jesus,” he said. “How can you stand it?”
She sighed against his chest. “You get used to it, I guess.” She sounded very tired.
“Is she dead?” Jubal was already running through the options in his head. If she had died, Jubal had decided he was going to wrap her in blankets, put her in his trunk, take her to the edge of town and burn her. Fiona wouldn’t like it, but he would insist.
“Not yet. But it won’t be much longer.”
Jubal nodded and tried to breathe through his mouth. “You wanted me to be here when she passed?”
“No. I wanted you to hear her story so you wouldn’t think I was crazy.”
She led him into the front room and he saw how quickly the woman had deteriorated. Her swollen face was gray, bloated and wet from the?uid that had leaked from the boils and blisters. Her lips were as cracked as if she had wandered for days in the desert.
Maybe she had, if his suspicions about where she had come from were right.
Her chest rose and fell only two or three times in a minute. When her eyes?uttered open, he could see that the whites were now yellow shot through with streaks of red.
“Renee,” Fiona said, “are you still with me?”
The woman moaned.
“Renee?” Jubal said.
“She told me her name is Renee Spencer. She worked for the government. In Nevada.”
Jubal felt the room spin. Everything he feared was coming to pass.
“It wasn’t a weapons program,” Fiona continued. She was speaking to Jubal but she was watching Renee Spencer. “It was something called-”
“Magellan.” The voice was ragged and full of phlegm and sounded as if it came from a thousand feet below the earth. Her tongue was as cracked and cratered as the surface of the moon. As she spoke, a tiny stream of blood ran down from each corner of her mouth. “Project Magellan.”
“What was it?” Jubal said.
“It was weapons development…at least at?rst…that’s what I heard.”
“You’re a scientist?”
She laughed. The laugh turned into a cough, which sprayed blood down her front and onto the blanket. Jubal and Fiona took a step back. When she could breathe again, she seemed to have more energy. She said, “I’m Army. Systems Analyst. I was assigned to Groom Lake Proving Grounds to assist on the project. They were trying to develop something called a quantum bomb.”
Oh, that sounded promising.
“What was it?” Fiona said.
Renee shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what happened?” Jubal felt the?rst?ares of panic in the back of his mind.
“I know what happened,” she said. “I just don’t know what a fucking quantum bomb is. It doesn’t matter. They couldn’t make it work.”
The woman closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She didn’t speak.
“It’s okay,” Fiona said. “She does this sometimes.”
Jubal rocked back and forth on his toes. He wanted to grab her and shake her awake, to demand answers, to?nd someone to blame. But he stood there with his?sts clenched at his sides.
“Renee?” Fiona said. “Are you still with us?”
The yellow and red eyes opened again. She stared at Jubal for at least a full minute. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” she said. “The dead army.”
“What? No-”
“Yes. In your dreams. Just like her.” She nodded to Fiona.
His dreams? Two nights ago he had dreamed, but he didn’t remember much. Something about a?gure in red, maybe. And this morning, hadn’t there been a dark group of?gures marching across the desert, like A dead army.
He looked at Fiona.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Jubal shook his head. Two or three people dreaming the same thing wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe it.
“Forget about my dreams,” he said. “What’s the dead army?”
“First I have to tell you about the lab,” Renee said. “About the work.” Her face glistened in the low-wattage light from the lamp on the end table. As he stared at her, Jubal could see blisters swell and burst, leaking yellow?uid. She didn’t seem to notice. He wondered if she even felt it at this stage of her illness.
“Do you know anything about string theory?” Her voice had lost a little volume. He had to strain to hear.
“I thought you weren’t a scientist,” he said.
She tried to smile, which caused further cracking of the skin on her lips. Blood oozed out from the new wounds.
“I’m not. But I’m not a dummy, either. A lot of the folks at the lab talked. And I listened.”
“String theory has something to do with gravity and black holes, right?” Fiona said.
“You’re teacher’s pet today,” Renee Spencer said. “It does, indeed, concern black holes and gravity and quantum physics. Imagine a guitar string stretched across all of space and time, connecting everything there is. Now imagine playing different notes on that string, accessing different times and different universes.”
“That’s string theory?” Jubal said.
“Hell, no. I’ve barely given you the outline of the outline. I don’t understand all of it myself. And I don’t think I have a lot of time left to explain it, do I? No, don’t bother to answer. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it, too. So let’s get to the point.
“When the scientists at Project Magellan tried to build their little quantum bomb, I think they were trying to develop something that would explode over an enemy force and just send them…somewhere else. They couldn’t get it right, though. But one failure leads to another discovery, and they found a way to build a gate.”
“What kind of gate?” Jubal said.
Renee coughed up blood, runny with pus. Fiona wiped Renee’s lip with a tissue. The coughing grew worse, becoming a hack that Jubal thought would never stop. But?nally it did.
“Renee?” Jubal said.
“I don’t know what kind of gate, but it sure wasn’t made of white pickets.” She laughed weakly at her own joke, then coughed some more. The woman breathed shallowly, her eyes?uttering.
“I…in the control room when…it happened.”
Renee swallowed repeatedly. Discolored drool ran from her lip. A boil on her neck burst, the liquid running onto a bath towel that Fiona had placed beneath the woman’s head.
“Explosion. Yellow…smoke. Or mist.”
Jubal and Fiona waited expectantly.
“Screams. Terrible screams,” Renee said, gulping her words. She continued, her voice growing fainter as she spoke. “I ran to my car. I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life. There were more explosions, terrible ones, but I got out of there. Then…”
“Yes?” Jubal said, pitying the poor wreck, no longer aware of the worsening smell of decay and sickness.
“The rest is…hazy. My car broke down, so I hitchhiked anywhere to get away. Got sick. So sick. So…”
Renee’s eyes closed. Her breath hitched in her throat.
“The dead army,” Jubal said. “Tell us about the dead army.”
Her eyes opened to yellow-red slits.
“Your dreams…are real.”
Jubal turned to Fiona. “What does that mean? My dreams are real?”
“Just what she said, Jubal. She thinks there’s an army tromping around somewhere. An army of…the dead.”
“What?”
Fiona nodded, her arms crossed, looking very serious.
A burst of laughter erupted from Jubal. The laughter continued for some time until he noticed the tears on Fiona’s face.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” he said, wrapping his arms around his?ancee and patting her back. “I just?nd it hard to believe; I mean, c’mon. Zombies? Maybe ‘dead army’ just means the US Army is out rounding up the dead from this epidemic.”
Fiona’s head shook on Jubal’s shoulder. “You heard her. She had the same dream that I had. And that you had; I know you had it-I saw it in your eyes when she mentioned it. Something weird is de?nitely going on, and I’m so scared, Jubal.”
Jubal held her tighter and let her cry into his shirt. He happened to glance over her shoulder at Renee.
“Oh, shit.”
Fiona pulled away. “What?”
Jubal went to the woman on the couch and stared into her face.
“Renee’s dead.”
“How do you know for sure? Feel her pulse.”
“Hell, no. I ain’t touching her. But I know dead when I see it, and she’s dead.”
“What’ll we do, Jubal? What is going on?”
“Let’s go to the kitchen. You can get some coffee brewing, and we’ll think this thing through.”
They both shambled into the kitchen like lost souls. Jubal was beginning to feel numb from too little sleep and too much drama. He felt as if the world around him had become surreal, as if he were walking through some strange nightmare version of Serenity.
I hope I’m not having a nervous breakdown. Not now, when everyone needs me.
Then he thought of his dad, and Damon. They would never panic in a situation like this. At least he liked to think they wouldn’t. But he doubted if they’d ever had to deal with an emergency of this magnitude.
Jubal pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and slumped into it. He watched Fiona go to the counter upon which sat the coffee maker. As she swung a cabinet door open for the can of coffee, her hair swung aside for a moment and Jubal glimpsed a lump on her neck.
“So, what are we going to do with Renee, Jubal?”
The sight of the blister or boil on Fiona’s neck had stricken Jubal silent. He couldn’t tell her about his plan to burn Renee’s body somewhere in the surrounding desert.
“Did you hear something in the other room just now?” Fiona said.
He had heard something…
There was a moaning sound, then Renee Spencer lurched into the room, arms outstretched, heading straight for Fiona. She made a whining sound as if she were in pain…or hungry.
Fiona screamed and sidestepped out of Renee’s path.
But she was dead. I could have sworn…
Renee swung around toward Fiona. She made an angry sound from the back of her throat. Jubal could see her eyes now. There was no light there; there was nothing. Yet this dead woman was in Fiona’s kitchen, attacking her.
Jubal leapt out of his chair and punched Renee in the stomach. The undead woman let out a surprised grunt and tumbled backwards onto the tile?oor.
Oh my god. She looks dead. She smells dead. She looks dead. She smells- Renee was on her feet again and Fiona was still screaming in the corner of the kitchen. Jubal grabbed Fiona’s sleeve and yanked her toward the doorway.
As Fiona was pulled across the room, Renee clawed at her but missed.
Renee emitted a hunger-fueled wailing that chilled Jubal to the bone.
He yanked his Glock and shot the undead woman in the stomach.
Then Jubal and Fiona?ed across the living room and out the front door, slamming it closed behind them.
Jubal opened the passenger door of the cruiser and pushed Fiona into the car. Then he ran around to his side as Fiona swung her door closed. Jubal got in and switched on the radio.
Fiona was whimpering like a baby.
“Sh, baby, shh,” Jubal said as he tried to raise the state police. But all he got was static and hum.
“Shit!”
Jubal started the cruiser.
Fiona screamed. Jubal turned his head and, through Fiona’s window, saw Renee lurching down the front walk, her shirt spattered with blood. She reached out toward the cruiser with outstretched arms and groping?ngers, her jaw working up and down.
“Quiet, baby. We’re getting out of here.”
The cruiser tore off down the street, leaving the hungry zombie behind.
Fiona would not stop screaming. He’d seen hysterical people slapped in movies, but couldn’t bring himself to hurt Fiona-ever. Even if it was for her own good.
Halfway to the sheriff’s house, Fiona’s screams died down to sobs.
“Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry…”
“What…what happened back there?” Fiona said, sliding across the seat until she was right up against him. “You said she was dead. You said you were sure she was dead just by looking at her.”
Those dead yellow and red eyes. That blank stare. And the smell…
“She was dead, baby. I’m not going to lie to you. She was dead, and she was walking.”
“Nooooooooooo.” Fiona moaned the word.
“I shot her right in the stomach at point blank range, and she was up and at ’em-at you — in no time at all. And I saw her eyes, Fiona. I saw her dead, staring eyes right above her hungry, gaping mouth.” Jubal knew he shouldn’t be talking like this but couldn’t stop himself; he was babbling like a lunatic.
Fiona grew silent. And then Jubal knew; she had seen the woman’s dead eyes, too.
As they neared Damon’s house, Fiona said, “What about my neighbors? What about poor old Mrs. Sanchez and the Alberts?”
“We can’t worry about them right now. This is too much for me to handle alone. I need to talk to Damon. I need to know what he thinks of the situation. He’ll know what to do.”
“But isn’t he sick, too?”
“Yeah…” Jubal wasn’t thinking straight and he knew it. Which only angered him.
He realized he was chewing on the inside of his lower lip, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. It had always been a reaction to stress and he had torn up his lip pretty badly on occasion, causing his mother to coat the wounds with a foul tasting antibiotic paste. Back then the tribulations he dealt with included math class and getting the crap beat out of him by Tommy Brainard. Today was a mite tougher. He spat out the window, tasting the coppery tang of the blood.
Blood.
In the past few minutes he had seen more of it than he had in his entire life. The thought of it made him a little lightheaded and forced him to consider for the?rst time if he was cut out for this line of work.
On the other hand, was anyone cut out for a job that included facing down walking dead women? Jubal seriously doubted it. This wasn’t some horror disc from his collection at home. In those?lms, the heroes easily absorbed anything that was thrown at them, while spouting off funny lines and kicking ass. He was discovering that real life was different. In real life, your brain could only handle so much before it threatened to shut down. He was worried that Fiona wasn’t going to recover from what had happened. Also, he wasn’t very con?dent about his own stability.
The woman had died. He had no doubt about that. Yet the truth of what he had witnessed con?icted with his instinct. Could he have been that terribly wrong?
No.
She had been dead. She then got up and chased them. That was the truth, no matter how much he wanted to deny it or?nd a way to make it?t into some sort of nice package that would make sense.
Nothing made sense now, except that Renee Spencer had become a soldier in the dead army. And she was still marching back there, dead but hungry.
Holy Christ, what had happened down in that secret lab?
He turned into Damon Ortega’s driveway. Except for the rooftop solar cells that glinted in the moonlight, the house was dark. Jubal yearned for dawn. Even a strangely colored morning sky would be preferable to this sti?ing gloom and the horrors that might be hiding in the shadows, because it had occurred to him- and what im-fucking-peccable timing you have, Jubal, to be spooking yourself now — that maybe there were others like Renee Spencer in Serenity, shambling into town during the night, mindless, soulless, with only their need to feed propelling them. Or maybe the sickest residents in town, the ones he hadn’t seen for days, maybe they were also dying, shedding their humanity and getting ready to sign up for a hitch in this new unholy army.
He shivered in the cool of the pre-dawn morning.
“What’s wrong?” Fiona said. She almost sounded normal, which in itself seemed a bit cruel. Jubal suspected they had last seen normal in the rear view mirror.
“Nothing. Just got a chill.” He opened his door. “You coming in?”
“I’m sure as hell not staying here.”
In the dome light Fiona looked drawn and pale. He glanced at her neck, looking for the lump he had thought he’d seen back at her house. Her hair covered the spot, though, and he was grateful that he didn’t have to deal with it, at least for now.
Just a few minutes, Lord. Just a few minutes without another night-mare.
They held hands as they climbed up the front porch steps. Jubal rang the bell, but he didn’t really expect an answer. He turned the knob and swung the door open.
Damon may not have been the cop Jubal’s dad had been; still, he was pretty good and he always locked his door partly because he had a large gun collection that was his pride and joy. As they entered the house-Jubal in front, Fiona close behind, hanging on to his hand-Jubal drew his own weapon.
“Damon? You here?”
There was no answer. They moved down the short hallway to the living room, which was softly illuminated by the blue light from the screen of the silent TV. A large shape was stretched out on the couch. A large, motionless shape.
“Damon? It’s Jube. You okay, podna?”
Damon snored, causing Jubal to jump back and Fiona to emit a frightened squeal.
“Dead,” Damon said. “All dead-dead-dead.”
Jubal stepped closer to the couch and the smell hit him. It was the same fetid odor of rot that?lled Fiona’s house. It was the scent of Renee Spencer as she died and rose again.
Jubal turned on the lamp next to the couch.
Damon Ortega was covered with oozing pustules. The smell was coming from the yellowish?uid that leaked from the blisters.
“Aw, God.”
“Wha-Suze? That you?” Damon’s eyes?uttered open. Susan had been his wife. When Damon was still in high school she ran off with an economics professor from the community college in Carlsbad. Damon had never remarried. “I was too dumb for her,” Damon once told him. “You need to roust a drunk, I’m your man. But I wouldn’t know a?oating exchange rate if it jumped up and bit me on the pecker.”
“It’s me, boss.” Jubal couldn’t halt the tremor in his voice.
“J-Jubal?”
“Yeah. Fiona’s here, too.”
“Hot in here. Is the goddamn furnace on?”
Fiona moved next to Jubal, getting her?rst good look at the sheriff. She began to sob.
Damon squinted against the light.
”What’s wrong with her?”
“Oh. Well, it’s, uh, her time of the month, you know?” He tried to put a cheerful note in his voice, but he was afraid his attempt fell?at.
“Oh, I know,” Damon said. “Lock ’em outside and toss ’em some chocolate, that’s what my old man always said.” Damon started coughing. Jubal closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the color and thickness of the liquid that ran from the lips of the older man.
“What’s wrong, kid? Am I uglier than usual?”
Jubal opened his eyes. Damon was no longer squinting. The older man’s eyes were shot through with streaks of red and the whites were now yellow. He owed this man, this second father, nothing less than the truth. But as he stared into that diseased face he saw that the knowledge was already there, streaked with crimson.
“Naw,” Jubal said. “Just the usual level of ugly. Sometimes it still shocks me, that’s all.”
Damon chuckled-without expelling any?uids this time, thankfully. “How’s that woman you found at the car wash?”
Jubal could only stare at him.
“Don’t look so shocked, squirt. I’m still the sheriff and I still got contacts. My feelers are everywhere.”
The sickness momentarily forgotten, Jubal crossed his arms over his chest. “Who was it? Taylor or Red?”
“Pops Perez,” Damon said.
Jubal hadn’t even seen Pops out in the street. He wasn’t surprised, though. As much as the old-timer liked to gossip, he could also be as sly and quiet as a cat sneaking up on a bird.
“How much he tell you?”
“All of it, I reckon. She had blisters all over her face.” Damon ran his?ngers over his own face, feeling the pustules like a blind man reading Braille. “He said she was babbling some crazy talk, too.”
“Yeah,” Jubal said. “What about you, boss? You were doing a little talking when we came in. Do you remember?”
Damon looked away from his deputy, and Jubal was grateful that he didn’t have to see those yellow and red eyes.
“Just a dream I was having.”
“About what?”
Damon sighed. “Something was chasing me. It was a bunch of fellas, only they weren’t quite men.”
“What do you mean?” Jubal could feel his pulse throb in his temples.
“Well, they were shaped awful funny. Their heads were too narrow and long. Their arms were long, too. And…”
“What?”
“They were all tore up, like they had been killed by an animal or something. And some of them had parts of their faces torn off or big holes in their stomachs.” Damon met Jubal’s eyes again. “Some crazy shit, huh?”
“Yeah. Crazy shit.” Fiona walked back toward the front door. He couldn’t tell if she were still crying.
“So how is she?”
“Fiona?” Jubal said.
“The sick woman. Where’d you take her anyway?”
“Oh. To Fiona’s.”
Damon’s yellow eyes didn’t blink. “And?”
Looking his boss in the eyes as he spoke his next words was possibly the most dif?cult thing Jubal had ever done.
“Fine, Damon. She’s really coming along.”
Damon closed his eyes and rested his head against a pillow. If he recognized the lie, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he was even grateful for it. It wasn’t long before he began snoring again.
Jubal decided to let the sheriff rest. Maybe the old dog was strong enough to whip this thing. If anyone could do it, Damon could. After all, Jubal felt?ne. He would?gure this mess out on his own. He had no choice, really.
“Let’s go check on my ma,” he whispered to Fiona.
Growths covered his mother’s face like bumps on a blackberry. She?oated in and out of consciousness and was barely coherent. Each wheezing breath was like another painful needle in Jubal’s heart. This woman, his best friend really-whom he had loved all his life-was dying.
Jubal turned away, unable to look any longer, hiding his?owing tears from his?ancee.
Fiona stepped up behind him and laid her hand gently on his shuddering back.
“We have to get help for her, Jubal.”
Jubal sniffed hard and nodded his head. “Let’s get her into the car. We’re going to save her, Fee.”
“Sure we are, babe,” Fiona said.
They soon had Jubal’s mother in the back seat of the police cruiser…
Just like Renee.
…and were on their way out of town, heading north towards Carlsbad. The sky to the east showed a lighter darkness. Soon it would be dawn.
“She’s such a good woman, Fee. She’s always been a best friend to me.”
“I know, Jubal. We’ll do whatever we can.”
Jubal pressed down on the accelerator. He glanced at the gauge and saw he was going nearly 100 miles per hour. He’d have activated his siren if he thought it would do any good, but state highway 285 heading north was barren.
“This is damn spooky,” Jubal said.
“What?”
“The highway. It’s still early, but there should be at least some semis on the road.”
“There’s plenty of oncoming traf?c.”
“Yeah, weird.”
Some of the people in the oncoming cars waved their arms out their windows, but Jubal was moving too fast to understand what they wanted. He was in too much of a damned hurry to care.
“Why complain? The less traf?c heading north, the faster we get help for your mother.”
Jubal glanced into the back seat. His mother didn’t appear to be moving, but it was hard to tell anything driving this fast.
“Keep your eyes on the road, please, Mr. Deputy Sheriff,” Fiona said. “I’ll check on her for you.”
Jubal drove while Fiona leaned over the back seat. Soon she was sitting back down and fastening her seat belt.
“Her breathing’s erratic and she’s sleeping.”
Or unconscious. Or about to die.
Jubal slapped his palm against the steering wheel. Fiona shot him a worried glance, but he ignored it. His only concern right now was for his mother, and if Carlsbad told him there was no room at the hospital, by God, he’d make some fucking room. He wished there was a medical facility closer to Serenity, but all they had was Doc Mitchell, and apparently he was next to useless in this situation.
In the distance, something was happening on the highway.
Fiona gasped.
Jubal glanced at her. She had her hand over her mouth and was looking out her side window. At the green light of dawn.
Soon enough, they found out what the obstruction was in the road.
Traf?c. Cars at a complete standstill. Several people walked around on the highway, which indicated to Jubal that this long line of cars wasn’t going to move anytime soon.
Up about a hundred yards, alongside the highway, was a large silver tent that looked like a prop from a science?ction movie.
Then Jubal noticed the armed soldiers in HAZMAT gear. Some stood at attention while others herded citizens back into their vehicles at gunpoint. Several more stood around the silver tent.
Far ahead, the vehicles were being rerouted over to the southbound lanes. That explained the southbound-only traf?c on the way up here.
A gunshot cracked. Jubal?inched. Fiona squealed. Jubal could not see where the shot came from.
“Stay here with Ma. I’ll be right back.”
As Jubal slammed the car door shut, two armed soldiers approached him. He could not see their faces behind their protective masks, but the weapons were menacing enough.
“Get back in your vehicle, of?cer. All vehicles are restricted beyond this point.”
Jubal was afraid they were going to say that. He stood his ground.
“But I have to get up to Carlsbad on of?cial police business.”
“You have no jurisdiction here, sir. Please turn your vehicle around and go back. It’s for your own good.”
Jubal felt his face?ush and knew if he had a mirror with which to see his re?ection, it would be beet red. He pointed back at the cruiser.
“We have a deathly ill woman in that car that needs to get to the hospital now, or she’ll die. Do you hear me, soldier?”
The soldiers turned their heads toward each other as if conversing in a silent language.
“If you’d just clear a path…” Jubal said.
“We are going to have to take a look at this sick person,” one of the soldiers said.
Jubal stepped aside, hoping the soldiers would see his mother’s condition and let them through. He walked behind them as they circled the car. As he passed Fiona’s window, he noticed she pulled up her shirt collar.
One soldier swung the back door open while the other stood away.
“You see,” Jubal said, “She’s…”
“We have a corpse here. Everyone stand back while we remove it from the car.”
The soldier farthest from the door approached to help his partner. Jubal stepped in front of him, risking harm and not caring one fucking bit, and bent to his mother. He placed two?ngers against her neck, momentarily unconcerned about the damned blisters or boils or whatever they were on her neck.
His mother was dead.
A heavy hand landed on Jubal’s shoulder. “Move away from the car, of?cer. We must quarantine the body.”
Quarantine?
Jubal stood in shock as the two soldiers walked past him, carrying his mother between them towards the silver tent at the side of the highway. Fiona stared at him through the window with tears running down her cheeks.
Jubal sprinted after the two soldiers, who still hadn’t reached the quarantine tent yet.
Three other soldiers, who had been policing the nearby area, saw him and ran over, blocking his path.
“I want to see my mother,” Jubal said, hand falling instinctively to his Glock.
Three barrels lifted, pointing straight at him.
“Throw that gun down, of?cer, or we will shoot to kill. This is not a threat; it’s a fact.”
Jubal reluctantly drew his Glock with two?ngers and?ung it toward the soldiers. One of them swooped his hand down, scooped it up and stuck it in his belt.
From the direction of the quarantine tent, a shot rang out.
Jubal lunged at the men blocking him, attempting to break their line, but they expertly grabbed his arms and pulled him to the ground.
“No! They shot her. They shot my mother! Let…me…go!”
The three men held Jubal on the ground while he continued to struggle. One planted his knee in Jubal’s chest, cutting off his breath.
Jubal looked up into the soldiers’ blank helmeted faces, looking for sympathy or mercy, but all he saw was his own re?ection. A man in agony and despair.
“Mister,” said a soldier. “You have two choices: go back home or die.”
Jubal stopped struggling.
Suddenly Fiona was there. “Please, leave him alone. We’ll go back. Just let him up.”
The soldier who had his knee on Jubal’s chest rose. “You better hope so, ma’am. We don’t have time to fuck around here.”
The men released Jubal, who stood up, brushing off the backs of his legs. He suddenly felt very empty and tired.
“How bad is it?” Fiona asked the soldiers. “What’s happening in Carlsbad?”
“Ma’am,” a soldier said. “Carlsbad is dead.”
Under the careful watch of the soldiers, Jubal shuf?ed back to the cruiser like a man defeated, with Fiona in tow.
Fiona placed her hand gently on Jubal’s shoulder, but he shrugged it off. When his mother had died, something within himself had died along with her. And now the government had her corpse, probably keeping it for dissection instead of a proper funeral. And how would he ever retrieve her body for burial?
The world had gone mad and it seemed civilization was fucked.
He allowed Fiona to lead him back to the cruiser. She took him to the passenger side of the car, and said, “Keys.” He didn’t question her. He handed over the key ring, then slumped into the passenger seat.
The gunshot still echoed in his mind.
They shot his mother. They said she was dead and they shot her anyway.
You know why.
No. He didn’t want that disturbing picture in his head.
They shot her because she was becoming one of them.
“No,” Jubal whispered.
The dead army.
Fiona looked his way, but didn’t speak. He knew she wanted to?nd a way to comfort him, as he had tried to do for her after Renee Spencer died. That moment seemed to have happened months ago. Fiona turned the car around and headed back toward Serenity.
Maybe she couldn’t?nd the words; she was likely still in shock herself.
Jubal closed his eyes and tried to think of a time-was it just a day ago? — when the sky wasn’t green and corpses didn’t rise from the dead. Instead, a series of images?ashed through his thoughts.
His mother comforts him after he started a?ght with the tall girl who lived next door and received a busted nose for his trouble. She tries to look concerned, yet every now and then a smile slips through.
His mother sits up all night next to his bed when he shivers with a fever, frequently pressing a cold washcloth against his forehead and murmuring silent prayers; he isn’t scared but, rather, comforted by her presence.
His mother, dead only a few minutes, stands up and tears through the HAZMAT suit of the soldier nearest her and chews through the man’s stomach. When she stands up her entire face is covered with blood and small pieces of?esh and muscle. Rivers of scarlet?ow down into her empty, cold eyes.
“Stop the car! Pull over!”
Fiona stomped on the brake pedal, forcing Jubal to throw up a hand to brace against the dashboard. “What?”
Before the car was completely stopped, Jubal was out the door and throwing up on the blacktop. He fell to his knees; it felt like his body tried to eject everything he had eaten since he was twelve. When he was?nally?nished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and climbed to his feet, wincing at the new soreness in his stomach.
Fiona was standing next to the car, her arms folded across her chest. She studied him with a look of exhausted concern.
She hugged him close and helped him into the car again.
When they were about a mile farther down the road, she said, “Would it help to talk?”
“No,” he said. But in less than a minute, he blurted out, “My ma…they shot her. She was turning into one of those things.” Jubal felt the hot tears?ll his eyes. He turned away from her and stared out the car window, blinking until he felt like he wasn’t going to cry.
Fiona placed a hand on his arm.
“I loved her, too,” she said.
He put his own hand over hers. In the midst of this madness at least something good remained in his life. “I know,” he said.
She released his arm.
“Fee?” he said. “When we were kids, why did you punch me in the nose?”
He turned to her in time to see the faint smile play across her face. “You called me Stork Girl.”
He remembered. Jubal had been a smart ass when he was a kid. He had deserved that punch in the nose.
“You always were a tough broad,” he said.
“You bet your ass.”
Jubal sighed. “I have to do something pretty tough now and I could really use your help.”
She took his hand. “We’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
Damon Ortega had been the second most important man in Jubal’s life. He’d tried to be a good role model for the boy, had taken him?shing, made sure he kept up his studies. Damon had even been the one-at the request of Jubal’s mother-to give the boy “the talk.” Jubal and Damon still laughed about that one, about how the older man’s face quickly reddened and stayed that way when he learned the depth of the boy’s knowledge.
“You can really do that?” Damon had asked.
Repeating that line never failed to make the sheriff blush all over again.
There were so many good memories, and some that weren’t so pleasant. Like when Damon crawled into the tequila bottle for a few months after his wife left him. That dark episode culminated in an ugly night at Conchita’s when a drunken Sheriff Ortega pulled out his service revolver and shouted incoherent threats at a-thankfully-small group of townspeople. Pops and Red had talked him down, taken the gun away from him and then poured a gallon of coffee into him before driving him home. The next morning Damon emptied every bottle in his house into the kitchen sink.
There was no investigation, no charges?led. Everyone knew Damon and the pain he was in. For his part, Damon recognized his second chance and took it. The people of Serenity took care of their own like they usually did. It was one of the reasons Jubal never wished to live anywhere else.
Now he had to make another unpleasant memory.
When they rolled up Damon’s driveway, Fiona said, “You need a minute?”
“No.” And it was true. Jubal had somehow managed to lock away his emotions so he could focus on what had to be done. Later he might turn into a quivering mess, but for now he had managed to achieve a bit of distance from today’s events.
As long you don’t count sweaty palms, a dry mouth and a stomach so messed up that it might explode out the back of your pants any second.
He climbed out of the cruiser and walked back to the trunk. Locked into a brace on the inside wall was a Mossberg. 12 gauge shotgun. Jubal removed it and checked the load. He pumped a round into the chamber and shut the trunk.
Fiona was waiting for him by the front of the car.
“I know it won’t do any good to ask you to stay out here,” he said.
She stared at him.
“So I won’t. But this could take a while, Fee. If he hasn’t…you know…”
“You think I’m going to let you go through something like this by yourself?”
He forced a smile. “Come on, Stork Girl.”
They walked to the porch and through the front door. Jubal didn’t hesitate. With the shotgun raised, he walked quickly to the living room.
Damon wasn’t in the room. The couch was a mess. The cushions and the pillow were speckled with blood. Jubal remembered the coughing?t that Renee Spencer suffered through before she passed.
“We have to search the place,” he said. “Stay behind me.”
They went through Damon’s house room by room. It didn’t take long. Jubal led the way, checking behind each door and around any corner that didn’t offer a clear view. Fiona was close by, with her body at a 90-degree angle from him, so she could keep an eye on Jubal and anything that might try to sneak up behind them.
When they reached the small kitchen, Jubal saw a small pool of blood in the sink.
“He was in here.”
“Not anymore,” Fiona said. She pointed at the small window over the sink.
Damon had built the gazebo back in his married days with the help of Jubal’s dad. Susan was already making noise about the limitations of being married to a small town cop, so Damon was trying to?x the place up a bit to appease her. These days he sat out there on occasion, sipping a can of beer, but nothing stronger. Sometimes Jubal would join him.
Now a dark form was slumped across the gazebo’s bench.
Jubal stepped through the back door. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as though a band of steel had tightened across his chest.
He took a couple steps toward the gazebo. He could hear the crunch of Fiona’s shoes on the dry soil behind him. She was keeping a bit of distance between them.
Good girl. If there were trouble, maybe it wouldn’t take both of them.
Jubal took two more steps. He was?fteen feet from the gazebo. He could clearly see the back of the prone man’s head. It was de?nitely Damon.
Damon sat up and swiveled his head around, farther than Jubal thought possible.
“Damon?”
Fiona gasped.
Damon was through the gazebo’s screen door and running at Jubal.
Jubal froze, his shotgun held loosely in his hands. He could not accept that Damon had turned into a monster. This was a man he had looked up to his whole life. And loved-something he’d never told the older man.
Now the dead sheriff glared at him with orange eyes. Folds and?aps, where the blisters had burst, covered his gray skin. Off-white saliva stretched between his upper and lower teeth. His hands were curled into killing claws. Sheriff Damon Ortega snarled, sounding more animal than human.
“Damon, stop,” Jubal said, as the zombie sheriff barreled into him, knocking him to the ground. Jubal rolled onto his back and pulled the trigger of the shotgun.
The blast hit Damon squarely in the chest,?inging him backwards to the ground.
Jubal got to his feet. “What have I done?”
“You had to do it, Jube. He was going to kill us,” Fiona said.
“Man, this is crazy. I don’t know if I can take much more…”
Damon sat up, grinning, with a gaping hole in his chest. His mouth dropped open and he made a sound that reminded Jubal of Jurassic Park pterodactyls.
“F-fuck,” Jubal said.
Damon got to his feet, swaying a little. Then he took a step forward. His bright orange eyes were stretched wide open, and the orbs looked as if they had no lids. His mouth gaped and emitted a croak.
Jubal could do nothing as Damon took slow, staggering steps toward him. It was as if it were a dream that he’d soon wake up from.
Yeah, that’s it. All I have to do is wake up. Just wait a few seconds and it’ll be over.
Damon’s head burst apart into gray chunks and red mist in what seemed like slow motion. His headless body dropped to its knees, then keeled over.
But Jubal hadn’t pulled the trigger of the shotgun. He looked down at his hands. The shotgun was gone. He looked over at Fiona.
She had taken it from him and he hadn’t even noticed. The barrel still smoked from the killing shot.
This wasn’t a nightmare; it was real. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that?
Jubal’s face felt funny. He reached a hand up; it was coated with tears. He looked at his wet?ngers as if the substance upon them was some alien liquid.
“C’mon, baby. Let’s get out of here,” Fiona said, grabbing his upper arm. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
They made their way around the house, their feet crunching in gravel. By the time they had reached the cruiser, the rising sun had dehydrated Jubal’s tears.
“We need more guns,” he said.
It was another scorcher in downtown Serenity. But unlike most mornings, Main Street and its sidewalks were completely empty. Not even Bubba, the old dog owned by Phil Marx over at the Amoco, was to be seen; the mutt usually roamed up and down the sidewalks, looking for affection or handouts. He always had a wag of the tail for everyone.
Fiona made a low moan in her throat.
Jubal ignored it. The numbness in his mind had returned and he felt like a wooden puppet only loosely controlled by its own wooden brain.
He rolled the cruiser to a stop in front of the sheriff’s of?ce.
“You stay in the car, Fee. I’ll leave it on with the air going. Use the shotgun if you need to. I’m going to get more weapons.”
Fiona nodded weakly, staring out the windshield at nothing much.
Jubal laid the shotgun on the driver’s seat as he left the car. He slammed the door and paused, listening.
A mourning dove cooed somewhere. There was a muf?ed crash and clatter, as if from a toppled piece of furniture in a far off building. Then nothing.
Ignoring the piles of reports on the desk, which no longer meant anything to him-or to anybody-he walked straight to the gun cabinet. Jubal unlocked it and withdrew a Glock to replace the one the soldiers had con?scated, and two more shotguns just like the one in the car, along with an armload of ammo boxes. Looking around, he saw nothing else he thought he’d need.
What do you need when the world is ending?
What entertaining thoughts his mind conjured.
Outside, the car door slammed.
Jubal thought he heard Fiona say something. He laid the weapons and ammunition on the over?owing desk except for the Glock.
He left the front door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Fiona stood behind the opened car door, sighting along the Mossberg laid across the top of the door.
Jubal looked where she was aiming.
Far down the street, the walking dead creature that had once been the lab worker Renee shambled towards them. She held something loosely in her grip. Jubal squinted against the light and saw that it was a severed hand. As he watched, she put one of its pale?ngers into her mouth and bit it off with a snap that Jubal could hear quite clearly even from this distance.
“Are you okay?” Jubal asked, not taking his eyes off Renee.
Fiona grunted assent, still sighting along the shotgun.
“You know,” Jubal said, sliding on his sunglasses. “It’s just a matter of time before the whole town ends up like her.”
Fiona turned her head towards him with an astonished look on her face. “Mr. Sensitive now, are we?”
“Just the facts, ma’am,” Jubal said in a monotone, lifting his Glock and taking aim. “Die, bitch.”
Jubal shot once and Renee’s head snapped back. She wobbled around a bit, as if beginning a waltz step, then toppled over onto her face.
Jubal had the sudden urge to blow the smoke off the barrel of his gun, like an old-time movie cowboy, but then thought better of it. He barely understood what he was doing; it was as if some cold, primitive part of himself was taking command of his actions. “Bullseye,” was all he said.
“Jubal, are you losing it on me?” Fiona said, sitting down on the passenger seat with the shotgun propped between her legs. “I need you.”
“Shoot ’em in the head. They go right down. Plop.”
Jubal knew he shouldn’t be acting like this, that he was freaking Fiona out a little, but he just couldn’t help it. Maybe he’d feel like his old self after a rest.
“I’ll get the additional weapons, then let’s go home, Fee. We need to plan shit out.”
Fiona slammed her door closed without answering.
Jubal turned towards the sheriff’s of?ce, saying, “Oooooh-kay,” under his breath.
He went inside and collected the weapons. He brought them out and threw them in the back seat of the cruiser.
Again behind the steering wheel, he?ipped on the car and revved the engine. “It’s okay Fee. We’re going home now.”
He put the car into drive and sped off down the street.
“Look out, Jubal. You’re going to run over…”
With a thump and a bump, Jubal drove over Renee and continued on.
“Dead bitch.”
“Jubal?”
“It’s okay, Fee. Everything’s going to be okay now. I can feel it,” Jubal said.
He even smiled.
They carried all the weapons into his mother’s house, laying them on the coffee table, and locked the doors and windows.
“I have got to sit down and rest,” Fiona said, plopping down onto the couch.
“I’ll get you a glass of water. Be right back.”
Jubal returned with two glasses of ice water. He pushed aside the shotguns and set them on the coffee table. “Some wedding we’re going to have, huh?”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey, we could have Renee bring the?nger food,” he said and immediately regretted it. Fiona kicked the coffee table, spilling both water glasses and knocking one of the shotguns to the?oor. Jubal hadn’t engaged the safety of either Mossberg and he prepared himself for a blast that never came.
He picked the gun up off the?oor and heard the slam of the bathroom door.
You’re an idiot.
He just had to show his?ancee how calm and cool he had become, how he was dealing with this unholy crisis like a wisecracking movie character. He wanted her to know he was strong and he would protect her, because if he could convince Fiona, maybe he could convince himself. And maybe he could erase from his mind the image of Damon Ortega’s head bursting like a melon.
He cursed himself under his breath. He was 22 years old, shouldered with huge responsibilities, and he still acted like a kid.
Jubal stood outside the bathroom door for several minutes. He expected to hear Fiona’s sobs, but she made no sound.
Finally, he tapped his knuckle on the door.
“Fee?”
She didn’t answer.
“Fee, I’m sorry. I…I’m an ass. It’s so hard to act like I’m strong when I’m so goddamned scared.” He swallowed. That had been a tough thing for him to say. Now that he had, he felt better. Fiona loved him. She would accept him just as he was. After all, she had known him longer than almost anyone.
Actually, he realized, she had known him as long as anybody left alive.
“Fiona, did you hear me? I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
The voice was very small and came from a place near his knees. He pictured her sitting on the bathroom?oor, her head against the door.
Jubal leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting by his side of the bathroom door.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. You’re a guy,” she said, as if that explained everything. Jubal supposed it did.
He pressed one side of his face against the door, hoping it was near Fiona’s. “Fee, we’ll get through this.”
“Don’t.”
“Just listen-”
“No, Jubal, you listen to me.” Her voice sounded on the edge of tears. Before yesterday, Jubal had seen Fiona cry two or three times in?fteen years. Now the sight and sound of her sorrow had grown too familiar. “I know you want to save me. To save Serenity, I suppose. But pay attention to what I have to say. Are you listening?”
“Yeah.” He pressed harder into the cool wood of the door, dreading what she was going to say, yet needing to hear it.
“You can’t save me. You can’t save this town. You need to leave. Just get in the car and drive somewhere else. Try to?nd a place where this disease hasn’t reached.”
“What? Fiona…no. We’ll stick it out together. I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to, Jubal.” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if addressing a child. Somehow that made her words sting even worse.
“It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Through the two inches of oak, Jubal heard her sigh.
“Don’t lie to me, Jubal. You’ve seen the blister on my neck, and now there’s one on my leg. Whatever this is, I have it. I’m sick.”
“No!” Now he was the one who was near tears. Again.
“I know it’s hard to hear, baby. But it will go easier if you accept it.”
Jubal turned the doorknob. It was locked. Still, he rattled it several times.
“No. You’re not going to die. We don’t know anything about this thing. Maybe it doesn’t kill everybody. Look at me, Fiona. I feel?ne.”
“I know,” she said. “And I think you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Like any other disease, it progresses at different rates in different people.”
He latched on to that. “See? You might-”
“And some are probably immune to it. I think one of them might be you.”
He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
”Jubal?”
His?rst thought was one that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
It won’t kill me. I’m going to live.
He felt the guilt slam down as if it actually had weight.
“You can’t know that,” he managed to get out.
What if it was true? What if he was immune to this awful plague? Would life without his friends and family be worth a good goddamn? Could he go on without Fiona?
“I know it, Jubal.” She began to cough, and while it wasn’t as wet or drawn out as the sounds Renee and Damon had made, it wasn’t a sign of good health either. When the coughing?t ended, Fiona said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but something is changing inside me. I can tell you’re?ne. You stand out like a splash of color in a black and white drawing.”
Jubal decided that Fiona must have a fever. She was starting to talk crazy. Of course that meant the stuff about him being immune was just bullshit. The brief disappointment he felt was enough to tighten the screws on the guilt.
He had to get her out of the bathroom and put her to bed. Maybe get her some Tylenol to bring down the fever. He thought there were antibiotics in the bathroom from that ear infection his mother had suffered through last year.
“It would have been a nice wedding,” she said.
Jubal stood up and moved to the small curio cabinet his mother kept in the hall.
“Still will be,” he said.
“I would have loved Egypt.”
The airline tickets were in the desk in his bedroom, but Jubal couldn’t dwell on that now. He felt like a mountain climber hanging by one hand over a bottomless precipice. If he allowed himself to think about everything that was going on-and how it was likely to end-then he just might think about putting the business end of one of the shotguns in his mouth. He could never do that to Fiona.
“Egypt will still be there when we get to it, Fee.”
He opened the drawer at the bottom of the cabinet and felt around.
“Sure, it’ll be there,” she said. “Full of plague victims and the dead army.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Where are you going, Jube?”
He knew she meant why had he moved away from the bathroom door, but he couldn’t help but think of the question from a larger perspective.
Where was he going? Where Fiona was. That’s all that was important now. He had to keep them alive for another day, another hour.
His?nger touched something thin and metallic.
Got it.
He removed the bobby pin, black and shiny in the hall light. His mother had kept it in the drawer after a couple of moody pubescent episodes on Jubal’s part.
“Get away from the door, Fee.”
“What, you’re gonna shoot it open?”
The bobby pin had been bent into one long metal strand. Jubal slipped one end through the small opening in the doorknob and felt a satisfying click as the lock disengaged.
He opened the door and saw Fiona standing in the dark bathroom. Illuminated only by the hall light, she looked as sallow and insubstantial as a ghost. He thought he saw the shadows of small eruptions across her forehead and cheeks. He didn’t look too closely.
“Where did you learn to pick locks?”
“I used to lock myself in here when I was a kid. It’s how Ma and Dad got me out. Besides, it’s not a lock that’s really designed to keep anybody out.”
“I never had someone pick a lock for me before.”
“Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
She smiled. It was a?eeting expression, gone as quickly as it appeared. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”
And the rest of the day, they made slow, passionate love. Jubal made a point of caressing Fiona’s neck to show he was not disgusted by her illness-to show that despite it all, he really cared about her and always would. But after a while, he no longer had to make a point of it. He was lost in the depths of a love so strong that nothing mattered but each other’s pleasure and happiness.
Sometime in the middle of the night, long after they’d fallen asleep, Jubal vaguely registered Fiona getting up and going down the hallway to the bathroom, coughing the whole way. Then he drifted back to sleep, afloat on the memory of their beautiful lovemaking.