Sorrow's Gift

Chapter Sixteen: Parrish

"Any news on my sister?" she asked Crash. It had been three days since they'd arrived at his apartment, and this was the first time she'd had a chance to ask him about it. "I'm sorry to keep bugging you about it, but I have to know if she's okay."

"I'm sorry, Parrish," he said, shaking his head. "I tried."

Her stomach twisted, and a knot formed in her throat. "What are you saying?"

He spun toward his computer and brought up a new command prompt. He typed furiously for a moment and a bunch of new windows opened. "I've been trying to call her cell phone, but there just aren't any signals getting through to New York. Everything's completely jammed up there," he said.

"Did you try calling her room?" Parrish said. She moved to stand behind Crash, her fingers digging into the back of his leather chair. "I mean, maybe that part of New York wasn't hit as bad as some of the others."

Crash's sad eyes met hers for a moment before he turned back to his monitors. "It's bad everywhere, Par."

Tears rushed to her eyes, and she took a deep breath. Everything was going to be okay. She'd told Zoe to gather food and water and barricade herself in the room, and according to Crash, her cell was still there in the hotel. She was still alive, safe in her suite at the Four Seasons.

"What can you tell me about New York City, specifically?" she asked, her mouth suddenly dry again. Her heart pounded against her chest as she stared at map of the United States Crash still had up on the top left monitor. New York was a brilliant mass of red.

"The biggest cities had it worst," he said. "The more dense the population of an area, the faster the disease itself spread, and the faster the hospitals filled up. Also, with a city like New York, there was no place to burn the bodies. It wasn't like they could stack them up in the middle of Times Square and light a bonfire."

"So it's overrun?" she asked. She heard what he was saying, but she didn't want to think about what it all meant. She wanted him to just tell her the truth.

He didn't answer at first. Instead, his fingers moved fast over the keyboard. A window popped up on the large center screen. Several windows with videos popped up and he moved them around so that there were four open boxes organized in two rows on the screen.

"This is New York City," he said.

Parrish's eyes opened wide as she stared at the videos. The streets were growing darker, so some of the images were difficult to see now that it was almost night again, but she could see masses of bodies moving through the destroyed streets.

She turned her attention to the video on the top right of the screen. A fire had broken out nearby, illuminating the area around the camera. Hundreds of rotters made their way down the street, climbing over and around a huge pile up of abandoned and wrecked cars.

The walking dead wore clothes as if they were just normal people. Lab coats. Suits. Dresses. Pajamas. Uniforms. Jeans and t-shirts. But almost nothing else about them looked normal. They barely even looked human anymore.

Their bodies were decaying rapidly, their skin bruised and cut open. Many of them had blood dripping from their mouths and Parrish turned away, disgusted and afraid.

This can't be happening. Is this what the whole world looks like now?

She forced her eyes back to the scene. She wouldn't be able to help Zoe by being weak and scared right now. If her sister had any hope of surviving, Parrish was going to have to be strong. Strong enough to kill every single one of those rotters if she had to.

She clenched her jaw and took several deep breaths, forcing her stomach to calm down.

"What exactly are we looking at here?" she asked. "What part of the city?"