The People Next Door Read online

  Mick charged at her holding Vince Render’s head like a warning light. When they were less than fifteen feet apart, he stopped, kicked the shotgun back, and threw the head at the shrieking widow. He dropped to the floor and rolled away.

  Amy clawed her way forward, took up the shotgun, and set the stock against her shoulder. Cassandra ran full speed into Amy and was falling on her when the barrel flashed, obliterating Cassandra Render from the jaw up. The body swayed and fell back, following what was left of her brains to the floor.

  The others began to surge forward in bloodlust, but halted when Mick pulled the hose around his waist and caught the weed dragon’s nozzle in his right hand. He waved the flame at them, drawing it back and forth as he backed away.

  Amy came forward to stand beside him, the shotgun raised with one shell left.

  The crowd of more than thirty faces stared back at them, waiting.

  Amy and Mick glanced at each other one last time. In their eyes was a reflection of the promises they had made in bed only hours ago, and of the bond that had survived for fifteen years. Mick nodded and Amy covered him, shifting the barrel from one to another as he walked calmly to the wooden door frame and set fire to the house.

  The others watched the flames catch hold and enlarge, until a serpent of orange crawled up the wall and expanded across the ceiling, splitting, then feeding on plaster and the oxygen blowing in from the yard on a sweet summer breeze.

  When the house became too hot to inhabit any longer, they turned away and one by one shuffled off into the darkness, some crawling over the fence to disappear into the fields of open space, others finding the roads that would lead them to another town, into the trucks and cars and homes of welcoming strangers, making friends of neighbors, turning enemies into lovers, uniting lost souls in new congregations, forging new connections with expanding populations, hoards of citizens rejoicing in their newfound gifts, until what once was a secret among the living had become a routine way of life among the dead.

  Mountain Living

  Set against a log-cabin wall, powered by a cable running into the floor and under the exterior ground, up into a waterproof shed constructed on a concrete foundation and housing a solar-and gas-powered generator, pulling a scratchy signal from an ancient aerial antenna, there stands a small plasma television. The sound is muted.

  On the screen:

  Live continuous footage of mass looting and burning furniture and four-story heaps of garbage in a darkened city, a city without a name, a city the viewers do not recognize and do not care to recognize. Fighter jets streak overhead, strafing coffee emporiums. Office buildings collapse in molten columns. Cars lift from the rear on rolling balls of flame. A city bus rocks from side to side while its passengers slide from the windows, pulled down into the street by faceless forms of all colors. Bed sheets draped from a window have been painted with scripture. Small bodies and old bodies dangle from street lamps and stray dogs sniff their feet. Hairless, malnourished women indistinguishable from the skeletal men march with picket signs in support of Mother Nature. A young man in welder’s goggles and wielding a samurai sword screams in silence before impaling a burning effigy of the President and seconds later is run down by a yellow cab stained red. Children crouch in the gutters, feeding.

  Below the live feed, news headlines scroll within a bright yellow tape.

  … Los Angeles New York Miami Philadelphia Newark Cincinnati Chicago Milwaukee Denver St Louis confirming outbreaks …

  … Caribbean territories and Central America teeming with persons infected with unknown biological agents …

  … CDC evacuated, unnamed spokesperson claims ‘epidemic now far beyond our scope and ability to manage. There is no cure but the True Death’ …

  … White House and Congress unanimously sign sweeping legislation instituting martial law …

  … local governments and 39 state governors declare sundown curfews, recommend sealing homes with any and all available reinforcements …

  … Senator Elias Orringer (D-VT) proposes deportation and execution camps for the infected …

  … Mumbai Singapore Kuala Lumpur London Paris Rome Buenos Aires Santiago Beijing Tokyo Moscow Helsinki reporting massive civilian demonstrations, catastrophic violence, tens of thousands of casualties …

  … Pakistan loses control of nuclear armory as Muslim leaders blame West …

  … Central Intelligence and FBI calling outbreaks ‘a coordinated uprising with hundreds and possibly thousands of co-conspirators’, denies knowledge of scope and timing of outbreak …

  … World Health Organization identifies at least seven strains, viruses believed to be mutating rapidly …

  … Pope Peter Laudisio tweets from underground Vatican bunker ‘The Second Coming is upon us, pray for His forgiveness’ …

  On the screen, three men and one small boy, all wearing red plaid hunting jackets, bullet-proof vests, and night-vision goggles, move forward in a coordinated cluster, AK-47s shouldered, firing in timed bursts.

  Some move slowly, others are inhumanly fast, but all are fair targets now.

  A motorcycle piloted by a body cloaked in leather, faceless behind the black-screened helmet, speeds through the carnage and the camera turns as it passes, following its trajectory to its inevitable conclusion, a collision with a phalanx of armored tanks which crush bones while above low-flying unmanned drones emit streams of tracer fire upon humanity’s last stand.

  The images collapse in a shrinking ball of white light and the television screen goes dark.

  ‘That’s enough of that for one morning,’ Mick Nash says, dropping the remote and turning to his son. ‘Didn’t I ask you to help your mother?’

  Kyle sits forward on the couch. ‘Don’t you want to know how it all turns out?’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough, but not today. Come on, let’s go outside, champ.’

  Kyle follows his father out onto the front porch. Before them stretches a rolling meadow beside a placid lake which itself reflects the snow-capped peaks on three sides. Amy, who has lost thirty-seven pounds and whose blonde hair has grown out to be cut and replaced by new, naturally brown strands the color of buckwheat, is chopping wood. Seeing Kyle and Mick come out from the cabin, she plants the ax in the stump and glances back at the shrinking pile.

  ‘You can finish this cord,’ she says to Kyle.

  Under the tall pines behind her, sitting on a blanket, are Adolph and June, who now goes by her given name, Keelie. The only ‘Render’ survivors, like each of the Nashes, carry firearms holstered at their ribs at all times, and all have spent hundreds of hours training at various distances with paper targets. All are prepared to fire at their own kind and on clean humans, without hesitation, should any hostility or bloodshed arise.

  Adolph is reading When the Legends Die and seems to be engrossed in the story, though he glances up at Briela, who is collecting berries at the edge of the forest, from time to time. He does so with a look that is equal parts cold respect, childish resentment, and a sibling’s duty to protect at all costs.

  Keelie is writing in a leather-bound diary. She has been recording their days since they arrived here in August and the diary is almost full. She does not pause in her scribbling to look up at Kyle. She knows he is there, watching her, and though she loves him deeply and in profound ways, she knows that she can never touch him, nor allow him to touch her. Perhaps someday, when they have learned to control their urges and separate young lust from animal appetite, but not now. She does not believe he will ever attempt to hurt her, and she has no desire to do him harm, but sometimes, at night when his family is sleeping, she catches him staring at her and her heart pounds with longing and raw fear.

  Kyle begins to lose himself in the labor that is necessary to sustain them for the coming winter, and Mick watches his son with approval. Amy joins him on the porch, pinching his waist.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ she says, resting her head against his chest.

  ‘You’re one t
o talk,’ he replies.

  ‘How many days has it been since we’ve eaten?’

  ‘You asked me that yesterday.’

  Amy nods. ‘I’m going to ask you again tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow might be different.’ Mick closes his eyes, feeling the sun on his face. Its light, but not its warmth. Never its warmth.

  Amy lifts her head to look at him. ‘How?’

  ‘We might have a visitor.’

  ‘You think there are others all the way up here?’

  Mick considers this for a moment. ‘Like us or like we used to be?’

  ‘Either kind.’

  ‘There must be. Mass exodus from the urban centers. It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Will we be able to stop ourselves this time?’

  ‘Tomorrow, yes.’

  ‘But?’ she prods him. ‘What about when winter comes? What happens when we are skin and bones?’

  Mick opens his eyes and looks down at her. ‘We could always go back down the hill for that waitress who was rude to us at that last truck stop. Can’t imagine anybody would miss her if we turned her into a little Christmas Eve goose with all the trimmings.’

  Amy slaps his arm.

  ‘Side of mashed potatoes, some cornbread stuffing,’ Mick says. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ she says, her perfect fair skin pulling with a sadness that only he can touch. ‘What will we do?’

  Mick doesn’t need to search long for the answer. ‘We’ll find a way to survive.’

  Neither speaks for a few minutes as the sound of birds and the chopping of wood fills the clean air. Mick takes his wife’s face in his hands and kisses her nose.

  ‘We always do.’