Or—are they? Are her eyes really completely empty?
The more Finn stares into Lone’s face, the more he begins to sense a remnant of her old self. She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to recognize him, as she just keeps running her hands over the glass and growling at him.
But maybe … maybe that’s her way of communicating? Maybe she can’t talk or move normally anymore, but who’s to say she’s not still in there? After all, how else would she have found him, if she wasn’t at least partly herself still? Maybe she could even be cured!
She shouldn’t be out there with all the rest of them.
The thought awakens a new feeling in Finn: fear. If he just leaves Lone own her own, who knows what might happen to her? She could be run over by a car or shot by the police. He can’t risk that. He can’t risk losing her for good.
So, Finn begins picking out more tacks. The blanket falls to the floor, exposing the view completely and letting the evening light pour into the room. Finn doesn’t notice, though; he just stares at his wife, who has by now greased up most of the window with her hands.
“Lone,” he whispers, placing a hand on the glass.
She eagerly tries to kiss his palm, and it causes Finn to tear up.
“I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says, choking up. His hand goes for the hasp. A tiny voice at the back of his head shouts to him, telling him he’s making a big mistake, that Lone can’t be saved, that she’s dangerous and wants to hurt him.
But Finn can’t believe that voice. He can only believe what he sees, and knows Lone’s eyes seem even more human than just a moment ago, as though simply seeing him has cured her a little. If he lets her inside the room, she’ll probably become completely herself once more.
“I’ll help you, dear,” he whispers hoarsely, as the tears pour down his cheeks. “I can’t live without you, you know that.”
His hand unlocks the hasp.
No! the voice shouts.
“Yes,” Finn croaks, smiling as he opens the window.
TWENTY-TWO
Mille pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. She’s sitting in the window looking out over Holger’s back garden, where the last of the sunlight is coloring the grass orange.
It’s almost eleven o’clock, and even though this has by far been the longest day of her life, she barely feels tired. Her body is exhausted, of course, but her eyes don’t feel like closing.
She can still taste curry from the stew Holger served. To her surprise she found herself ravenous and she cleaned off her plate in no time. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning.
Her brain is still fighting to keep up. It feels like it can’t really update its software, like it doesn’t want to compute how everything has changed. She should have been in Prague right now, she and Krista should have been lying in bed next to each other in a hotel room with two other girls from the class. They should have been complaining about the long, warm bus ride and talking about what sights they were going to see tomorrow morning.
Instead, Krista is dead, just like Mads and the rest of the class. Same probably goes for most of everyone else she knows. And she herself is sitting here, in a guy’s house with two other strangers and a German shepherd, as they simply wait for the world to end.
She looks around at the others. Dan is huddled in one corner of the couch, sleeping with a thin blanket wrapped around him. William is sitting on a chair, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the television, where the sound is turned down to a whisper. He looks like a soccer fan intensely watching a game which he bet a lot of money on—except it isn’t soccer on the screen, but a news report. They keep showing footage from the air and video recordings from cell phones. A lot of it is censored, and the reporters warn again and again about “strong imagery.”
The dog is lying faithfully right next to William, halfway dozing, but raising its head now and then, as though constantly listening for something no one else can hear. Holger is the only one missing; he’s down in the bunker to prepare something or other—he has barely taken a rest since they came here.
Mille didn’t understand half of what William told them during the tour of the bunker. All the technical stuff about how the generator produces power from the windmill and the solar panels, how the rainwater is cleaned and filtered, and how the security systems work went right past her. All she knows is that Holger obviously thought of every tiny detail when he built this place, and that you could probably live down there for years.
But who would want that?
She gets an image of herself four years from now, pale and long hair, not having stepped outside the bunker for even a second, the only company has been her three involuntary roommates, the rest of the earth’s population dead and the zombies are the only ones wandering around.
What would she have to live for in a scenario like that? Survival, and nothing else. Mille gets the chills.
It probably won’t come to that. They still have time to stop it.
But the news reports don’t seem great. Mille has also checked social media on her phone now and then. At first, she mostly read grieving posts from the relatives of those who died on the bus, and other people offering their condolences. Then, other kinds of tweets began ticking in, like:
WTF is going on in this town?? Anybody know anything?
And more and
