Survivors

Blood On Your Shirt

My encounter with Brett Soto bothers me.

It doesn't surprise me that there are other kinds of infected out there besides the zombies that made up 99% of society's collapse. People are surprised to find out vampires exist all the time. How many other types of infected, undead, and in-between are out there?

But the part about two parties of totally innocent people meeting on the road and one slaughtering the other in a ballistic involuntary frenzy, or getting murdered over a misunderstanding? That bothers me a lot.

At least I can speak for myself when it matters. Brett's people can't. I might have a career in diplomacy in my future.

The whole thing brings me back to the kinds of questions I stopped bothering to think about a while ago: Where did the virus come from?

Lots of theories flew around back then. A lab had an accident. A lab had intent. A biochemical bomb. A nuclear bomb. Monkeys. Homosexuals. The wrath or one or several gods. An ancient curse - Mayan, Mummy's, Romani, take your pick of "Which minority should we scapegoat today?" The usual.

My friends wondered if some other vampire had actually cracked the code on creating ghouls of legend. Mindless, undead minions under some necromancer's thrall. But even the supernatural don't peddle real magic. We're just weird.

I just assumed someone broke open a tomb full of not-so-dead inhabitants and it spread from there. Who knows?

It doesn't take long to get to my destination after leaving Manchester. It's long stretches of straight highway shooting - or winding - through the scenic, snowy countryside. It's a lotta what I've been seeing since this all started, once I had gotten out of New York City.

And now I'm back on the coast. The pretty little town of Ogunquit's like a Christmas display without the lights, a collection of dollhouses all sprinkled with snow. It looks like it was designed to sell you something.

I scout around, making my way down the coast in back-and-forth sweeps as I search for signs of activity. I find them: Tracks on the roads, and every house in town's been marked with spray-paint on the doors using symbols I don't recognize. I keep low, keep off the main streets, dart from alley to backyard to alley.

This time of year, night comes early, and earlier still with the forested hills at my back to hide the sun. The last orange light twinkles out on the ocean waves before Ogunquit sinks into dusk. I'm too much of an aesthete not to pause to admire it. The stars and sliver of moon are splayed out above and below me.

As Robert Frost said of New Hampshire, the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

I move quicker now. Kira said there's a peninsula that Mike's claimed for his headquarters, which turns to an island in high tide. It sounds good and defensible against both humans and zombies. Thankfully, I'm neither.

As I hustle along, I hear something besides the ocean: Music. Real, live music. The part of me that made a living as an entertainer flares to desperate life in my chest at the sound of it. An out-of-tune piano plunking away some tune I think I half-remember.

I want to go back to a world with music in it, so suddenly, so badly it hurts.

I angle toward it, still zig-zagging through the alleyways. Music means people, and people probably means Mike's gang.

I find the source: A playhouse with wobbling light in the windows. I get closer as the piano music plays off, replaced by voices. Though muffled, they echo. I recognize the unique acoustics of people speaking from the stage of an auditorium.