Zone One

The line of ceramic teapots above the fireplace hopped to the floor at the tremors. They don’t have earthquakes in Massachusetts. In goddamned Connecticut, either, but Mark Spitz didn’t put it past that territory to figure out a way to outwit geological process, out of spite. No, the monster vehicles approached. The vibrations surged into him through his feet. He reached the kitchen and the barrage started. The bullets penetrated from every direction, shredding the wainscoting and knickknacks, the hard-won bounty of a hundred internet auctions, casting splinters and shards into the air like the confetti guts of firecrackers. A pebbled-glass lampshade jigsawed, the chandelier’s dead bulbs popped, and the wooden doors of the media center finally revealed the vulgar flat-screen TV hidden inside, that lost treasure. He hit the floor. Beyond the walls, a woman spat orders. She was authority. The gunfire halted. Resumed. Mark Spitz rolled over on his back. Debris and glass roiled in the air, the long three-tined forks and oversize ladles hopped from their hooks. The kitchen was ruined, he thought. He mourned the kitchen, its stolid German cappuccino maker, the retro-style juicer with its cool mercury lines, the stainless-steel fridge’s long-barren ice dispenser. Bit of a fixer-upper, needs TLC.

One of the dead bumped open the swinging doors. Some ex-kid in a denim vest festooned with buttons detailing the slogans of doomed causes and the unphotogenic candidates stumping for esoteric platforms. The doors bounced back and clocked it in the face. Mark Spitz fired, missed, and then his bullet smeared away the top of the thing’s cranium as three high-caliber bullets burst through its chest. The artillery paused again. Boots pummeled the stairs and kicked in the front door, not that there was much of it left, he reckoned. Isolated shots crackled in the yard-picking off the remainders. How many of them were there? Bandits? He’d dealt with bandits. The scenarios impelling bandits toward their ill works were nothing compared to the visions slithering in his head. Bandits were a restaurant out of tonight’s special and late trains and undependable wifi. He could handle bandits. He said, “I’m alive in here! I’m alive in here!” The kitchen doors swung open again. He looked up.

He never got to ask Margie what finally made her crack. If she pushed Jerry off the roof into their hungry arms or if he slipped. She disappeared into the woods when the convoy took a piss break. Captain Childs wasn’t going to wait. “Those are the kind that get you into trouble,” she said before ordering them to move out. The caravan continued north for another two hours. Mark Spitz and Tad slumped in the bucket seats of the armored vehicle, eavesdropping on the young men muttering into their headsets. He pictured himself laid out on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, plugged into machines and bottles. They’re not using the siren because he is going to make it. They are specialists. They will not let him perish.

He climbed up the ladder into the crisp daylight. A corporal helped him out of the hatch and off the transport and he was inside Camp Screaming Eagle.

Safe.

Saturday’s visit to the local military installation was not as auspicious. Mark Spitz registered the manic vibe the moment he left the jeep. Bozeman had parked over on Hudson, per Ms. Macy’s interest in seeing the Coakleys, and because “parking is a bitch” over by Wonton Main. Same old, same old. The local blizzard was under way, and the machine gunners up and down Canal shuddered over their weapons in neurotic fervor, rending the bodies of the things beyond the barrier with a profusion of high-velocity projectiles. The thunder the soldiers made had reverberated between the buildings all day, so much so that it had scurried beneath his attention until he got close. The fallen skels were hidden by the wall, and from the amount of artillery expended Mark Spitz imagined the hostiles changed into some new variety of monster, a second transformation that would induct the survivors into the next devastating ring of hell. Wide scaly wings, rapier-length fangs, a ridge of spikes popping out of their spines. You thought you knew the plague? It was just getting started. Act II of the End of the World following the intermission, let’s wrap this up, folks.

“I apologize for the noise, Ms. Macy,” Bozeman said as they walked to the corner. “A lot of them showing up for Lunch today, as we say around here. Breakfast, too. Beaucoup activity the last few days, I’m sure you’ve been briefed.”

She didn’t hear him, distracted by the evanescent currents of white flakes. “It looks like snow.”