Garypicked up the hat and turned it around in his hands. Then he dropped it with a start and scrabbled backwards on all fours away from the corpse. Whatever had done this to the big guy might still be around-and he would be vulnerable to it as well.
Not a virus-a virus needed living cells to replicate itself. A bacterium might have done it or even more likely some kind of fungal infection, sure, a fungus spread by airborne spores Spores that just happened along at the exact second ofGary ’s dark epiphany? It made no sense.Gary had told the guy to fuck off and die. To think that some fungus that just happened to counteract the effects of the Epidemic had wafted by at thatexact moment was ludicrous. Something had wasted Trucker Cap, though, something had happened right afterGary told him to Garymight have contemplated this more if he hadn’t heard gunfire nearby. Guns meant survivors. The dead lacked the muscular coordination to use firearms. Some desperate lone living survivor must have been making his last stand somewhere to the north. Up in the meatpacking district by the sound of it.
It wouldn’t last.
Garyshould just ignore it, go home to his apartment and think about what his newfound ability to control the undead meant and where it might come from. Walking into a firefight was the best way to get shot in the head which was the most certain way-the only way-that his new existence could end.
He’d never been able to resist his own curiosity, though. It was what got him into med school in the first place, his desire to know what made things tick.
Despite his best interests he found himself running northward toward the noise of the shots. They stopped abruptly when he was halfway there but he’d figured out by then they were coming from near the river, maybe on one of the piers.
Advancing carefully he nearly got himself shot. A black girl in a school uniform with a scarf around her head was pointing a rifle right in his direction. He slid down behind an abandoned car and screwed his eyes shut, his arms clutched around his knees, trying hard to make himself small and insignificant. She’d looked pretty serious about her weapon. Like a soldier or a policeman or something. Absurd… but this was a day for absurdities, it seemed.
There were others with her. A whole team of them judging by the noise they made. Their weapons jangled as they moved. He heard one of them talking-a hard, cold voice with an accent to it. She must be fromBrooklyn. “I saw movement in there,” she said.
No. No no no no no.
“If you shoot now the noise might draw others,” another of them said-a man.
Thank you, whoever you are,Gary thought, thank you.
He waited in desperate stillness for a long while, long after he heard them moving off. It sounded like they were headed over towardGary ’s old workplace. So much for curiosity. When he was certain they were all out of sight he got up and moved as fast as he could toward the river-away from them. He tried to run but the best he could pull off was a loping walk. When he got to the river though he found another surprise.
A ship stood out in theHudson, maybe a hundred yards out. Just an old tub with visible rust on its hull and a jury-rigged wooden superstructure. The ship’s registration on its nose was illegible, written in an alphabetGary didn’t recognize-a little like Hebrew and a lot like Medieval calligraphy. He peered closer and saw people onboard. Two men leaning on the rail, studying the wharves while a girl in that same costume of school uniform and head wrap stood on top of the wooden structure with an exceedingly long rifle in her hands.
He knew enough to keep his head down this time.
There were… survivors, he thought. Organized survivors with a way to get out ofManhattan. He had no idea what they were doing inNew York but their presence meant at least one inescapable, dreadful thing. His decision to transform himself into one of the walking dead, to become this unliving creature had been based on the fact thatNew York was done, extinct, over. That there was no hope for the human race.
It looked like if he’d waited a couple of more days he might have been rescued.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Eleven