“Jesus Christ,” Ethan said, almost in tears.
The reporter was screaming, The SEELS are changing. Oh God, oh God, they’re attacking people, they’re attacking everybody they see, they’re eating people.
Ethan turned the TV off and went back upstairs to watch history unfold from his picture window. Towers of smoke dominated the downtown skyline. It was chaos down there. Across the street, he saw his neighbors’ houses standing in a neat row facing him. One stood dark and silent, the living room window painted with streaks of dark fluid.
What is that? he wondered. Could they be here already?
Pale faces looked back at him from an upstairs window of the house directly across from his. The three Tillman kids. He could see their father, Roger, pacing furiously downstairs in the living room, holding one of his big hunting rifles. In the distance, an Army Chinook helicopter pounded over the city. Roger had the right idea: bunker down. Ethan stared at their house for a long time, trying to think about what came next: food, water, defense. But everything was fuzzy. He could not focus on these things beyond abstractions. He decided that he would pack some items in an emergency backpack and leave it by the door. He did not think they would need it but when Carol finally came home she would have wanted him to have done something constructive. He pictured himself showing her the backpack. He smiled glassily, taking a little comfort in the thought.
A hole appeared in the window with a sound like a wine glass breaking in the sink, jolting his consciousness. Roger Tillman stood on his porch, lowering his rifle and squinting up at him through a puff of gun smoke. Ethan backed away from the window in a dry-mouthed stupor, occasionally flinching as if prodded.
Why did Roger do that? he thought. Jesus, he could have killed me!
He retreated to the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the toilet, shaking. Long minutes passed and nothing happened. He sat there until he started to feel safe again.
The gunshot made him realize how serious the situation was. What am I doing here? he asked himself. I have to find my family. I have to find them now and get them to a safe place.
Ethan ran out to his car and drove to the bank and then the daycare but both were closed, locked and empty. He saw many terrible things but later he would remember the entire drive only as a blur. As darkness fell, he returned home and paced his house alternating between rage at Carol for not coming home and blind panic that what happened to that family on TV might have happened to his wife and precious little girl. He howled in torment like an animal until he realized that he was starving and needed food immediately. He drank more coffee instead and watched the news in the dark and hit redial on his phone repeatedly until he fell asleep.
He stayed at home for days waiting for Carol to bring Mary home. Each morning, he woke up hopeful and each night, he passed out from exhaustion in a state of near suicidal despair. The days began to blur together until the power failed. There were no more sirens downtown, only sporadic gunfire. He realized that he had plenty of meat in the freezer that he should cook before it spoiled, but the gas stove did not work either. He ate as much as he could from the refrigerator and washed it down with the cold dregs left in the coffee pot and then went back to staring at his cell phone, willing it to ring and feeling sick. He tried to pour himself a glass of water but the plumbing did not work. He had not filled the tub or any gallon jugs, only a few bottles for the backpack. For some reason, he had thought the plumbing did not need electric power to work. He stared at the faucet, feeling helpless rage at his own stupidity.
He tried to call his wife again but his cell phone could not get a signal. The collapse of the power grid had cut off phones, cellular communications and the Internet. Ethan was completely isolated from his family now. He knew all about the mathematics of probability. Finding them at this point would be like finding a needle in a haystack—a haystack soaked in gasoline and blazing. He spent the day overpacking two suitcases with clothes and provisions and put them by the door.
That night, he lay curled up in a fetal ball on the bed, crying into his wife’s pillow, unable to even look inside his daughter’s room, and smell her in the air, out of fear of losing his mind entirely. A machine roared to life outside and he got out of bed in the utter darkness, grateful for the distraction. Across the street, Roger Tillman had a generator going and the house blazed with light under a beautiful night sky filled with stars. Ethan watched, running his hand over his scraggly new beard, questioning his own manhood. That Roger really knew what he was doing. He had a gun, generator, food, water and his family under wraps. He had prepared for the apocalypse. He had thought of everything, while Ethan had whined and paced.
Black shapes and shadows flickered around the Tillman house. Suddenly a man came running out of the darkness into the pool of illumination created by the bright porch light. He bolted straight into the front door and bounced off it with a startling crash, howling in pain and rage. Then ran back again, and again. A woman appeared at the edge of the light on wobbly legs, dressed in a torn suit and holding onto her purse slung over one shoulder. Her head jerked in little spasms like a bird as she walked to the living room window and peered in as if looking for somebody to ask directions. She began punching the window repeatedly, finally putting her fist through it, her arm spraying blood until she fell to the ground twitching. Within minutes, the house was surrounded by growling people. Some of them began to crawl into the opening. Roger banged away at them with his rifle but now dozens of people, drawn to the light and noise, were pouring into every window and door. Jane Tillman was screaming like an animal, Don’t you touch them you motherfuckers, I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking cut you. Roger was shouting, Get back, get back, there’s too many. Shadows flickered inside the Tillmans’ living room and a table lamp spilled, its bulb popping in a flash of light, plunging the room into darkness. The rifle banged several more times, the muzzle flashes lighting up the dark. Then the screams for mercy began.
Moments later, the house was quiet except for the buzz of the generator and the screamers stumbling around the illuminated porch, drawn like moths to the light and noise.
Ethan returned to his bed, curled up into a ball and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep until a crash jarred him awake.
Footsteps clomping downstairs. Somebody was in the house.
He almost called out, but didn’t. He knew it was not Carol. He realized then that he had lost hope that she would bring Mary home, and that it was time to get out of this house if he wanted to survive the week. The threat of death was once miles away but now it was crashing through his front door and this fact electrified him. There are people in my house that cannot be spoken to or reasoned with, he thought. Things out of nightmares that are now wild animals and hunting me even though they are not yet aware of my existence. Creatures that will claw and bite me until I am dead or become one of them. Some of them wear faces that I know but they are no longer human.
The first step was to get out of the house.
Stepping quietly, Ethan got dressed. The sun was rising over a smoking America and its first rays provided a dim red light in the bedroom. He stuffed his pockets with photos and trinkets and a hairbrush from his wife’s drawers. He found a tiny yellow rubber airplane on the floor, a toy carelessly left there by Mary days ago, and pocketed it. He suddenly wanted to take as much of them with him as possible. The floorboards creaked downstairs. He picked up his baseball bat and felt its reassuring weight in his hands. His suitcases were downstairs by the front door, ready to go. He tried to control his breathing. Here we go, then.