Chapter 5: Warning
Evelyn POV
I hung up, and my heart was still pounding.
If Ethan ever asked me about it later, how was I supposed to explain?
I got to my feet and went to the window. Fat raindrops were striking the glass.
The storm had come.
At eight o'clock I called my brother right on time.
Everything was still normal for now. Communications hadn’t cut off, and all seemed calm.
When I heard that he had stockpiled a great deal of supplies and sealed the front door, the weight that had been hanging over my heart finally dropped away.
"Ethan, once the rain stops, I'm coming to Los Angeles to find you."
"Don't go running around,You must stay safe, understand??"
After all, I was the one who had come back. Useless as I was, I still knew a thing or two about how to survive the end of the world.
"Evelyn, we already maxed out our cards. You sure this rain is going to last ten days?"
That was when a jarring voice cut in.
"Marcus —"then came Ethan’s sharp rebuke..
The unease in my heart flared up anew.
I knew my brother's temper; once he made up his mind, no one could budge him.
And the friendship between him and Marcus wasn't mine to meddle in.
God, just please don't let Marcus turn into one of those things.
By the time I hung up, the rain had turned into a downpour.
I hung up the phone and stood at the window, watching the crowd in the street. In the heavy downpour, people scrambled to escape.
A man tripped and fell. A stranger stopped to pull him to his feet, but was tackled instantly.
Some got tackled while they were still running.
Others were pulled down while they were still running.
On the streets, you can’t tell who’s human, who’s a zombie. Not until they lunge for you do you realize…
The zombies at the end of the world weren't like the ones on television — stiff-bodied, slow-moving, draped in rotting flesh, jaws gaping wide.
The freshly turned were nimble and felt no pain; they craved blood, preferred raw meat, and their teeth were sharp and pointed, red threads of veins swimming through black eyes.
A bite from them didn't infect you and turn you into one of them — it meant being chewed to death while you were still alive.
At the thought of it, I began to shake without meaning to.
That tearing pain going on and on, the helpless screaming, and then at the very end dying with that last breath still stuck in your throat, tortured to death in the most literal sense. I never wanted to feel that again.
Under the sound of the falling rain were shrill screams, and faintly, beneath those, something like howling.
I knew tonight was only the beginning. The virus would break out across the city tomorrow morning.
In my last life, it was this same hour.
I was with Derek and his friends in that house in Pacific Heights, drinking, rolling dice, laughing until my throat hurt.
At midnight a man went down with no warning at all, and everyone laughed at how badly he held his liquor.
He started convulsing. When his eyes opened again they were latticed with red, and he lunged at the person on the couch.
They were still laughing, until he sank his teeth into the man's chest and tore his way down to the belly.
The man being bitten screamed for help; people pulled at him, someone swung a chair into the attacker's head, and it took seven or eight men together to drag him off while the girls shrieked and backed away.
The bitten man lay on his back, covered in bite marks, a hole torn open in his stomach, his intestines just visible.
Derek barked "Stop screaming, call 911," then drove the jagged bottom of a smashed beer bottle straight into the man's heart.
I figured that had to be the end of him, but the man was still going as strong as ever.
It wasn't until someone crushed his skull with a baseball bat that he finally went down, slowly.
The living room was in a shambles, with blood everywhere.
The person who had been bitten died from excessive blood loss.
Two people dead, and nobody knew what to do with themselves.
The girls huddled together, sobbing quietly; the men sagged to the floor.
I thought the worst of it was behind us. It was only the beginning.
The thick smell of blood drew a good number of the zombie from the neighborhood; they ringed the house, hammering on the door and the glass.
Eventually someone remembered to call 911, but the line wouldn't go through at all.
"What are you all standing around for? Get to the second floor!"
At the critical moment it was Derek's shout that moved them, and everyone bolted for the stairs.
Our house had a wooden staircase, and the second floor was built out over open space, with no other way up but those stairs.
With the ground-floor windows about to give, Derek waved a few men over and they cut the staircase apart with a chef's knife and a hand saw.
That made the second floor safe enough, and everyone got through the rest of the night with their hearts in their throats.
Early the next morning, people were dizzy and weak, their whole bodies aching, their throats raw as if they'd been cut, collapsing one after another onto the floor to groan.
The internet was nothing but attack footage, the hospitals were in chaos, and the storm washed the streets without ever washing the blood away.
On the third day the water got into the houses, the power and the networks went down, and the city seized up.
By the fifth day the low ground was all underwater; people hiding at home had no choice but to move higher, and anyone without food had no choice but to go out looking for food and medicine.
That was my whole reason for stockpiling the way I had.
My thoughts came back to this suite.
The end of the world was here. If I could keep myself and my brother alive and well, that was already more than I could ask.
Then a chill came over me, seeping out from the seams of my bones. Shivering, I threw myself onto the big bed and wrapped all three quilts around me, and I was still cold.
I knew medicine wouldn't do any good. Those pills were for later.
An hour later, I broke out in a sweat, my body heavy and my mind foggy. By the early hours of the morning, heat crashed over me as if I were roasting over an open fire.
I spent the whole night burning and freezing by turns, with the shrill screams drifting up from below now and then, fraying my nerves one stroke at a time.
The top floor held only this one room, as quiet as a place the world had forgotten.
The building itself was anything but quiet; howls and pounding on doors came in waves.
On the third night, wind and rain beat against the windows without letup.
My ears are sharp; I caught the ding of the elevator.A moment later, hard knocking started up.
Bang, bang, bang." Miss, are you there? Open the door."
