Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗

By the time the virus spread through Oregon and reached California and Idaho, the U.S. government knew what was happening. Containment was no longer possible, but at least they knew what was coming. New York, Miami, and Boston might not have had a single case before they knew what was coming. Maybe the Army was out in the streets. Northeastern Canada could have cut itself off completely for all Hughes knew. The Caribbean islands almost certainly did. Puerto Rico and Cuba might still be intact.

But Seattle was the worst place to be. Hughes’ family stood no chance, not only because they lived at ground zero but because of his wife’s … situation.

Sheila had been depressed for years. She went weeks in a row without leaving the house or even getting out of bed except to use the bathroom. Hughes earned just enough from his job that she didn’t need to work, so when Tyler was born, they agreed she should spend at least a few years taking care of their son. But it wasn’t long after she became a stay-at-home mom that she sank into a personal hell from which she never emerged.

Hughes never did figure out why. It wasn’t because she stayed home. He hadn’t forced her. He wasn’t that type of guy, and it was her idea anyway. She seemed to love it at first. She took more pleasure in taking care of that boy than anything else. But something switched on or off in her head and sent her spiraling into a void.

Sheila’s morbid depression frightened their son Tyler. He was too young to understand it. Hell, Hughes didn’t understand it either. At least he was an adult and knew these things sometimes happened to people, but he had no idea how to explain it to a six-year-old. Tyler did his best, though, to handle it stoically. He didn’t cry, didn’t complain, didn’t needle his mother about it. He was going to be just like his father. At least he would have been had he survived.

Hughes guessed she had some kind of chemical imbalance that altered her personality, but she never had a brain scan, never saw a doctor who did anything more than prescribe pills. And one day she just pulled the sheets over her head and never got up again, at least not for long.

The one day in her life when Sheila should have stayed in bed was the first time in over a month that she went into the living room and opened the curtains to let in some light.

Five of those things burst through the window.

She knew what was happening out there. Hughes had told her, but she paid little attention. News of the plague didn’t seem real to her clouded mind, as if it were just some story on the radio. It had to be seen to be believed, and Sheila hadn’t seen anything. It didn’t fully register for Hughes either until he went to the hardware store for supplies and found the door ripped off its hinges, the shelves stripped down to leftovers, and one of those things hunched over the body of the store clerk.

Or maybe Sheila just didn’t care. Perhaps she surrendered. Surely it must be easier for a morbidly depressed person to face the fact that the world was circling the drain. Sheila’s world had already circled the drain. Maybe she was suicidal there at the end. Opening the curtains was just her way of taking a bottle of pills. Hughes had to admit that was possible.

But he never wanted to know for sure because he’d never forgive her. One of those things damn near took Tyler’s head off before Hughes put a bullet through its spine.

His poor boy. Tyler fell to the kitchen floor, convulsed like he was being electrocuted, and bled out in less than a minute. At least he didn’t suffer for long, and he died before he could turn. Hughes didn’t have to put his boy out of his misery, nor did he have to shoot his boy to defend himself. Hughes doubted he could have done it. Unlike Sheila, his survival instinct was still intact, but if he’d had to kill his own son, even in self-defense, it would have been the second-to-last thing he ever did.

Sheila wasn’t as lucky as Tyler. She, too, was bitten, but she was bitten in the back while running into the bedroom. Hughes popped the one that bit her and finished the other three off in the hallway, then he barricaded himself next to his wife in the bedroom and did everything he could to make her last hours comfortable. He waited until she slipped out of consciousness before suffocating her with a pillow.

He buried them out in the yard before he left town.

Hughes hadn’t grieved yet. He had not even started. That particular circuit in his head had switched off. A whole series of pathways in his brain just went dark. He noticed it happening. The emotional part of his personality went into sleep mode and stayed there.

Maybe something like that was what happened to Annie, only she lost her memory instead of her feelings.

Hughes knew his emotions hadn’t died, though. They were just resting. They would be back.

Lane will be one lucky bastard if he dies one way or another before it happens.