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“How much longer till morning?” I asked.
Nick turned his phone over and squinted at the display. “A few hours, tops. Maybe less. Maybe in the daylight this won’t look so bad. Maybe the things down by the river will slow down. ”
“Why?” Christ complained. “They aren’t vampires. ”
I thwapped him on the head with the back of my hand. “Have you actually seen any of them? During the day, I mean?”
“Not during the day. But until tonight, pretty much everybody who ever saw them died shortly thereafter. The mere fact that we haven’t seen them when the sun’s out does not mean they can’t wander about in search of a tan, if they want. ”
“He’s right,” Nick said.
“Sure, okay. He’s right, maybe. But whatever they are, I bet they’ll be easier to see when the sun’s up. Harder for them to sneak up on us. Right?”
Jamie agreed, but with an ulterior motive. “So we might as well grab a cat nap. All of us, if we can. What are we going to do now, anyway? We’re stuck here and we’re more or less safe. If the river keeps rising, and they keep on coming, then we might not find ourselves in such a choice position for long. I’m going to make the hike back up to Becca’s place and turn in. ”
“What? No way,” I argued, but he put out his hands and waved me into submission.
“It’s straight uphill from here, away from the water. It’s dark, but it’s not too far and there are plenty of living, breathing, non-zombie people between here and there. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. I’d be a selfish cad if I tried to score a spot here anyway. ”
He left us shortly thereafter, and I couldn’t blame him or stop him. He was in better physical shape than the rest of us, or so I wanted to think. Maybe he’d gotten more sleep, or had consumed more coffee; but he looked good enough to walk the distance to Becca’s place, which couldn’t have been more than a mile.
The rest of us agreed that there was nothing else to agree on. Christ fell asleep on the spot where he sat, and a paramedic said he’d keep an eye on him. Nick and I were too tired to ask precisely what that meant, so we didn’t.
Nick’s phone rang, and it turned out to be the producer from the studio again. He wanted to know if the news SUV had ever made it back down to the Read House, and Nick didn’t know.
“The hospital people said they’d leave it down at the shelter if they could get it here,” he said.
“Fat lot of good it would do us. ”
He rubbed at his eyes and then turned off his phone altogether. “It’s got a pretty roomy interior. More roomy than any patch of carpet we’re going to find in the hotel. And I’ve got the keys. If we can find it, we can sleep in it. If you want to,” he added without any embarrassment or reproach.
I looked up at the Read House, or what I could see of it from beneath the canopy. It was a big brick thing, solid and sturdy looking, with the weight of history and expensive renovations holding it up and holding the masses safe inside. It struck me as infinitely more secure than an SUV filled with video equipment parked haphazardly outside in the rain, where there were—let’s be honest—zombies.
But at every hotel window I saw people crushed and tangled, sleeping however they could cram themselves, with lights, televisions, and radios turned on and turned up in every room.
I looked back out into the rain and still saw no sign of a river lapping its way up onto the cement walkways. And though there were crashes, sirens, and far-flung wails of engines and alarms, the darkness on the street looked quieter.
“All right. ” I hardly had enough energy to squeeze the words out. “If you can find it, I can sleep in it. ”
He dashed off into the rain and I waited. Twenty minutes later he reappeared to lead me back behind the hotel and up into the parking garage. Up on the second floor, pinned and squished between a Hummer and a minivan, the Channel 3 SUV was less parked than abandoned.
We wrung out our hair and our clothes.
He reached inside and threw all the expensive equipment out of the back area, into the driver’s and passenger’s seats. He unloaded the rear a piece at a time, and then, when it was as clear as it was going to get, he reclined the back seat until it lay flat and open.
I crawled into it and stretched out beside him, then curled into a ball.
And then I guess we went to sleep.
17
Picture Show at the Paper Plant
Nick was snoring beside me, which was a decidedly peculiar way to wake up.
I came to sometime after dawn, to a sky still gray and a city still heavy with rain. The parking garage had become a temporary camp like every other near-dry place downtown. People were sleeping and sitting in cars, around cars, on top of cars, and in some cases, underneath them—laid out flat like children do when they play under the bed.
Inside the news SUV, the windows were foggy and everything smelled like wet carpet. My clothes reeked. My hair had conspired with the mud and rain to give me dreadlocks that would’ve done Medusa proud.
