Fair Haven Read online

  “There’s a bonfire after your track meet tonight.”

  "I don't go to those," she said.

  "I know." He smiled. "I haven't seen you. You should come. Hang out by the fire, Tyler Marshall is picking up beer..." (He whispered that last part.)

  Marcus never told her what had sparked his sudden interest in her that day in school, but Melody assumed he was drawn to her because she looked tough and weathered after a night in the storm. He had always had a thing for the bad girls, it seemed.

  On the third night, the electricity failed. The TV and the street lights zapped out and the neighborhood went dark, intensifying the sound of screaming and inhuman groans. But hours passed in the darkness and the sounds of those emergency vehicles dissipated, and the gunshots became few and far between. Death choked Fair Haven into a silence.

  The moon fell below the horizon and the landscape grew black. She pressed her face against the ventilation slats, hoping that a glimpse of some stars would bring her some tiny degree of comfort. Her dad had loved the stars. She spotted a bright one—probably Vega, and she wished she could see more. Her mind drifted to her dad's telescope, which hadn't been used since he passed, and she wouldn't get to use it any time soon either, unless she could find an open roof. And with that ridiculous pipedream, she clutched Marcus's photo tight against her chest, and lay down on her cushions, with her eyes wide open and nothing but a drape of blackness before her.

  Be strong my Melon-Bee—she reminded herself. Her father used to say it when she was young.

  Dad had sat down with her at the kitchen table one night, below the Live, Laugh, Love sign on the wall. She had just been dumped by Mark Gilmore for being too much of a tomboy.

  "I've come to talk to you about love," her dad said, "and look where we chose to sit!" He pointed to the Live, Laugh, Love sign and smiled.

  Melody rolled her eyes, still besparkled with glitter eyeshadow.

  "Love should be easy," he had said. "If it's not easy, then you're doing it wrong. I'm not saying it doesn't hurt, but if it hurts, either someone died, or someone did something wrong."

  Dad continued and pointed back to the sign, "Love comes easy when you're with the right one. So does the laughing part. It's the living that's a bitch."

  He had no clue what a bitch it would become.

  When Melody was sixteen, her mom had died after a short battle with breast cancer. No "be strong Melon-Bee" from her dad then.

  Instead, three days later, before the funeral for his wife ever took place, he took his own life, leaving Melody in the hands of foster care. The touchy-feely disposition of her foster father pushed her into homelessness.

  It was a life that—while she prided herself on the fact that she could handle it—was lonesome and terrifying for a young girl. But then Marcus came along and life started improving. Marcus's family took her in for the remainder of her high school years, and eventually she fell in love with him. They became inseparable friends in their senior year. So inseparable that Marcus's mom called them, "M and M."

  Despite the things that happened to her, she prevailed. She worked her way through college, refusing financial assistance from Marcus's parents. She earned nearly everything for herself. She was a fighter. A survivor.

  No stranger to struggle, Melody prepared herself to fight for her life again. Three nights hiding was too long. She held Marcus's photo against her chest and knew she had to be strong. She had to stop hiding from the damn storm and go find her husband.

  2

  The Guy Next Door

  While Melody plotted out a route to Marcus's lab—drawing the map of Fair Haven from memory—she heard another gunshot come from her neighborhood. This one didn't make her flinch, but she crawled to the window to see who had been shot this time.

  Melody peered through the wooden slats of the attic ventilation window to see her neighbor hauling another corpse into the Nickerson's backyard—a woman, scantily clad in shorts and a green camisole. The woman's bloodied bare legs scraped along the pavement and disappeared behind the edge of the neighboring house.

  She pulled her matted, frizzy hair away from her face, and tried to suck in some fresh air through the narrow openings of the window. The morning sunlight beamed through the remaining autumn leaves of the tall elms that lined the street, and a serenity seemed to fall upon her neighborhood that morning. Were it not for the blood stains along the sidewalk, it would have looked like any other day in Fair Haven. Her house sat between four others in the cul-de-sac on Elpis Court, and her attic ventilation window provided a clear view down to the end of the street where it met with Mason Drive.

  She wanted nothing more than to see Marcus coming home so they could evacuate up north together. But each day that passed brought death to her doorstep, heartache, and the sickening realization that she may be on her own once again.

  She wiped away the sweat beading on her forehead and sat against the attic wall, inhaling the stench of her own waste. Fear had been taking over and for that last night, she had been too afraid to venture downstairs for the toilet, so she had relieved herself in a five gallon empty bucket coated with a layer of dried up beige paint. The smell made her sick to her stomach, but she was more sickened with herself for hiding, sitting on her ass and doing absolutely nothing to better the situation.

  Her neighbor, with his rifle hanging from a strap on his shoulder, came out of the Nickerson's backyard after he dumped off the woman in the green camisole. He cut across the open street, watchful of his surroundings, wearing a black tee shirt and jeans, and he walked with a slight limp. Melody had seen him before over the summer, mowing his lawn at sunset—with that same limp—but she couldn't remember his name.

  He sat down on his front porch to watch for more intruders. This stranger next door became Melody's constant in a world of insanity, protecting her neighborhood—protecting her—from the incoming infected. Like having her own loyal, protective, German shepherd dog. He sat on a rustic Adirondack chair as the sunlight trickled through the trees and danced upon the wood of his front porch. His tee shirt stretched across his muscular chest and his rifle rested against the denim on his inner thigh. His presence brought an unusual feeling of security for Melody.

  “Good boy,” she whispered and laughed under her breath. She must have been losing her mind.

  She wished she could remember his name. Marcus had introduced himself to the guy a few months ago when they had moved in, but the name escaped her. Marcus had expressed that he didn't like that guy next door. He didn't tell her exactly why. “Something off about him,” he had said.

  His name was Joe or Gary, or something plain. She wished she had introduced herself, but casserole-slinging, friendly neighbor wasn't really her style. She tended to have a better relationship with dogs than humans.

  While she did see her neighbor on those few nights at sunset when he mowed his lawn, he always caught her eye, but she never felt any substantial attraction to him until the neighborhood fell apart.

  A physical attraction most likely brought on by the stressful, life-threatening situation outside. Melody was too rational for schoolyard crushes. It didn't matter anyway, because Marcus was the man she had come to rely on. He was the only person that could touch her without making her cringe with distrust. Marcus—her rock. Her constant. He had earned her trust over a period of years, so it took her by surprise when this neighbor-guy, Joe Rifle (or is it Gary Rifle?), came along and made her weak in the knees.

  "You're probably a big douchebag, aren't you?" she said, watching him on his porch.

  The heat of the attic became unbearable on the unusually warm autumn morning. The same abandoned cars that had been there for days, lined the street—the white unmarked van, the green Volvo with its door open, and the blue convertible.

  Her neighbor's front door opened behind him and the face of a lovely brunette peeked out for a second. Melody's heart sped up, excited about another survivor. A sound that came from a few houses down the street distr
acted her from the neighbors.

  Squealing of tires on the pavement pierced the air, and a Ford pickup hauling a boat—a Carolina skiff with a red lightning bolt detail—pulled out of a driveway.

  The neighbor guy directed the pretty brunette inside, and he lunged from his porch to flag them down. The truck stopped in the middle of the street before the boat trailer had even cleared the driveway. There were two passengers in the cab of the truck, and sitting in the open truck bed was a woman in a yellow dress and a man in a football jersey.

  Melody looked to her neighbor, her personified German shepherd, and wondered if that boat was his ride out of town—and she wondered if he would take her with him.

  The truck's tires shrieked again, nearly running over the neighbor's feet, and the boat with the red lightning bolt pulled away without her or Joe Rifle. The truck squealed around the corner onto Mason Drive at the end of the street, but then came to an abrupt stop. Five infected people staggered behind it in pursuit. The truck stopped out of sight behind the house on the corner, but the boat could still be seen at the end of Elpis.

  Seconds later, there were screams and the tires peeled out again, and the boat disappeared. The woman in the yellow dress, who had been in the back of the pickup seconds ago, stumbled into view from around the corner and headed back down Elpis Court.

  "What the hell?" Melody said, watching from the attic.

  "Do something," she said to herself, but she was struck with some fear-induced immobility. The same fear that had kept her from helping Mrs. Nickerson. "Do something!"

  Clenching her jaw, she forced herself to move. She hunched over and crept across the creaking boards, forced open the attic hatch door, letting the ladder clunk to the floor.

  A gush of cooler air swept upward through the attic hatch and Melody stuck her head through the opening in the ceiling to look for danger below.

  She snuck downstairs with her metal baseball bat in her hands, leaving the dank atmosphere of the attic behind. The freshness of the air outside of the attic seemed to bring some relief to the violence of her heart thumping against her chest.

  Melody peeked out her bay window on the first floor to see the slender woman in yellow, draped in blood and closing in on the end of the cul-de-sac. The bright floral sundress sagged from her sun-crisped shoulders.

  Melody feared being spotted, so she backed away from the window. Her neighbor rested his rifle against the porch railing to get the woman in yellow in his sight.

  Fear enveloped Melody. She had survived these days by making sure her presence was unknown, so stepping out that front door could very well be the end of her. She stood in the window and watched. That woman could attack her, or that man next door might not be trustworthy. She played whack-a-mole with her thoughts of uncertainty while her sweaty palms lubricated the handle of the baseball bat.

  The woman in yellow gripped her throat with her small hands as her wound gushed with blood. She was weak and looked to be seeking help by the desperation in her mannerisms.

  Neighbor-guy handed his rifle to the girl inside his house, and darted off his porch with a blade attached to his hip. She worried for him, being exposed, especially since there wasn't enough research done about this disease.

  "Screw it," she said, pulling her medical bag from the hall closet. She managed to don a surgical mask and a pair of purple, latex-free gloves within a couple of seconds.

  Exhaling a steady calculated breath, she shoved the walnut table that was barricading the door to the side. She measured the weight of the baseball bat in her hand while her heart hammered against her breastbone. Then, she cracked the door open, one inch per heartbeat.

  3

  Across Town

  Kayla Hartford's bare legs trembled within the confines of her tight skirt as she held the handle to the breakroom door and debated whether or not to explore the rest of the building for survivors.

  She peeked outside the door first, and the foul stench of death rushed in. Kayla pulled her blazing red hair into a tight bun, death-gripped a broken wooden chair leg as a weapon, and tiptoed barefoot down the hallway between the cubicles on the fourth floor. Sunlight trickled in from behind the gaps in the shades of the tall skinny windows as she maneuvered around her coworkers' dead bodies. It took every bit of strength she had to keep from screaming or vomiting. This was not how she envisioned her college experience.

  Kayla had gotten as far away from her parents as she could get, applying to a small school on the other side of the country where she could claim her independence. Since her arrival at the end of August, she dyed her hair to fire-engine red and tattooed a butterfly on her pale shoulder—still encased in a layer of youthful baby fat. Now, her bold move to be her own person was kicking her in the ass. Trapped without family, without friends, and without love, Kayla had no idea what it took to survive in life (with or without the infected).

  When the stories of the attacks had begun, and she was a first-hand witness to a kid on campus attacking his best friend, she ignored the dean's suggestion to go back to their dorm rooms (or to the infirmary if not feeling well) and she got the hell off campus. It felt like the right thing to do. Based on the news reports from two days ago, she was right. The campus had been overrun.

  Kayla's parents, and everyone else she had left behind in California, were not answering their phones. Her daddy gave her an emergency credit card, but there were no flights leaving anywhere. Driving cross-country alone didn't seem like a smart idea given the state of things, so she went to the only other place she knew—her internship out in Fair Haven that she started two weeks prior.

  Many of the employees that showed up to work on the day the infection spread to Fair Haven had opted to stay within the safety of the building that first night, but by the second day, the building had already been overrun with the infected.

  Kayla had been sheltered on the fourth floor with several others when they got word that the mailroom kid, Nolan, was bitten on the arm. He turned ravenous within a couple hours of exposure and then lashed out at Sue from accounting. Nolan bit Sue in the neck, then Sue attacked others within ten minutes. Ten minutes was all it took for Sue to lose her mind and go totally bat-shit savage. Many fled the building, but those that remained on the fourth floor were trapped by the infected employees who stumbled out of the elevator.

  Kayla and three others were stuck on the fourth floor. The infected scrambled down the hall toward her, so she kicked off her heels in a sprint to the break room. She held the door for the others, then slammed it shut before any infected could get through.

  The four of them barricaded themselves inside that room, living on unclaimed lunches and vending machine food for days and washing up in the tiny sink in the restroom.

  The window in the breakroom allowed in a small amount of light, but the bumpy privacy glass did not give a view of the outside world. They relied on a nineteen-inch flat screen TV bracketed in the corner to tell them what was happening out there, and the news paralyzed her. There seemed to be nowhere safe to go, so when the list of quarantine zones was finally announced, they lit up with the prospect of being rescued.

  Knowing that danger still lurked in the building and outside, Kayla had begged them not to attempt the trip. They refused.

  "We're running out of food," Helen said—a middle-aged woman with a scant frame and a skin tone that suggested she may have a meth addiction.

  "It's only a couple of miles to the high school," Victor, her fellow intern, said. He pleaded that she go with him, but Kayla was too terrified to face the infected.

  "Please, guys...let's stay here for now. We're safe."

  But all three of them were anxious to get moving. Victor left her with a candy bar and a bag of chips, before he kissed her on the forehead and walked out the break room door with the others.

  Moments after they left, she could hear them screaming from down the hallway. Kayla had opened the door to run to their aid, but Victor was at the end of the hall, pinned to the g
round, being attacked by a man in a white coat—one of the scientists from the lab downstairs. The others, Helen and Jonas, fought through the doorway to the stairwell, leaving Victor behind.

  Kayla screamed and shut the breakroom door, sobbing in hysterics. She sat against the wall with her eyes peeled open, and her vision blurred from the overflow of tears pouring from her sockets. Immobile with fear and hopelessness, she felt her mind slipping into insanity.

  When the power quit across town that night, Kayla spent the night locked within the blackness of the breakroom bathroom, sleeping on the cold tiled floor. It occurred to her that she could end her life, but there was nothing in the breakroom to do the job. No rope. No knife—unless she could saw through her wrists with a butter knife. Perhaps she should impale herself on the broken wooden chair—and with that morbid suggestion, she came to her senses.

  "Mind over matter," she assured herself.

  She hadn't heard anyone outside the breakroom door since her coworkers had left. Perhaps it was over—she hoped. Perhaps it was over, but the rescue teams hadn't arrived at her building yet. So she picked up her wooden chair leg with the splinters at the end and took the risk.

  She left the breakroom and vomited a small puddle of bile onto the tiled floor by the fake potted palm tree in the corner. So much blood stained the floors beneath her bare feet, it was difficult to traverse the hall without stepping in it. Helen's thin body lay dead with a metal rod impaling her abdomen—the same metal rod that Jonas had carried out of the breakroom to use as a weapon the day before. Her corpse propped open the heavy door to the stairwell. The stairs were pitch black and daunting, but there was no other way out of the building.

  She called into the darkness, "Hello?" and her voice echoed off the walls of the stairwell.

  4

  The Encounter