“Holy shit,” William says, grinning. “That seemed to work.”
“Let’s find out for sure,” Liv says, dipping the bucket into the tub and scooping up a gallon of the now pink water.
Dan brings the bowl, and all three of them go back upstairs to join Dennis, who’s sitting by the window staring down into the courtyard.
Dan can tell he’s looking at his mother, who’s still lying down in the gravel next to the horde of zombies. To his surprise, though, as Dennis turns to face them, there’s no tears in his eyes.
“Did it work?” he asks.
“Looks like it,” William says, pointing to the bucket in Liv’s hand. “We’ll find out in just a second.”
Liv brings the bucket to the window, lifts it up, then tilts it and pours the whole thing out. She makes a quick swing from right to left, spreading the pink water out over as large an area as she can.
Dan hears the water splash down over the zombies like a gush of heavy rain. They all huddle together by the windows and look down.
“Jesus goddamn Christ,” William breathes. “Will you look at that?”
Dan feels a shimmer of elation in his gut. Almost all of the zombies have collapsed in a big pile, only four or five still standing, waddling around clumsily among their fallen comrades. And as soon as they touch some wet clothes, they too topple over. In less than ten seconds, there are no more living dead people in the courtyard.
“It fucking worked,” William says, turning to Dan with a broad smile. “You little genius! You just saved the fucking world, you know that?”
“Well, let’s not—”
Dan is cut off as William grabs him in a bear hug, squeezing the air from his lungs as he lifts him up, covering his forehead with kisses.
“I love you, I love you, I love you!”
“Okay, okay,” Dan croaks, laughing. “Put me down please.”
William puts him down and steps back. Liv smiles at Dan warmly, and even Dennis seems to be relieved.
“This is very good news,” Dan says, feeling like he ought to say something. “If this keeps holding true, that we can dilute the potion as much we want, then there’s actually hope of reversing this thing.”
“Yeah,” William says, clapping his hands together. “But we’d better get to work, because we have this crazy deadline, remember? And it literally is a fucking dead-line.”
Dan hasn’t forgotten about the nuclear threat hanging over their heads, though he’s been pushing it to the back of his mind, focusing instead on the task at hand.
“Okay, so how do we do it?” Liv asks. “How do we get the water out to people?”
“That’s one problem,” William says. “Another one is, how do we tell people about it?”
“How about YouTube?” Liv suggests. “Can’t we just film what we just did and put the video online? We’ll share it everywhere we can, social media and all that. It might go viral. That’s the fastest way of reaching people.”
“You’re right,” William says. “The thing is, are people still concerned with checking Facebook? Maybe most have even lost their phones or internet connection. Then we can’t reach them.”
“How about the radio?”
They turn to look at Dennis, who’s been quiet so far.
“I noticed Holger has one in the bunker,” he goes on, shrugging. “I think I know how to put out a livestream.”
“You do?” William asks, obvious surprise in his voice.
Dennis nods. “I’ve always been good with … tech stuff.”
“Great!” Liv says. “Let’s get on with that.”
“There’s one more thing,” William says, putting a hand in his pocket and taking out a piece of crumbled-up paper. “One of the soldiers gave me his number. In case we found out something important. I think this more than qualifies. I’ll give him a call and tell him about it. I don’t know, maybe he can do something … postpone the attack or whatever. I think it’s worth a—”
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice from down in the courtyard.
They all stare at each other for half a second, then they rush to the windows.
Dan expects to see someone coming from the driveway. But the woman is standing right in the middle of the pile of zombies. Her clothes are torn, her hair all messy. She looks around, holding herself.
“Hello?” she calls again, her voice weak. “Anybody? What … what happened?”
“Hey!” William calls out. “Up here!”
The woman flinches and turns her face up at them. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“You’re at Old Mile Drive,” William tells her.
“How did I get here?” the woman says, looking around. “What is all this? Who are all these people?” Panic is working its way into her voice.
“She must be delusional,” Dan says in a low voice. “We’d better go down there and—”
“Ooh,” someone groans.
Dan sees one of the zombies starting to move—it’s a young guy on the far left, some yards from the woman. He sits up and looks around, groaning some more.
“Oh, no,” Dan hears himself say, feeling his gut drop. “It didn’t work after all.”
“Fuck, I knew it was too good to be true,” William says. “Hey, lady! Get out of here! Run away!”
“No, wait!” Liv says, pointing. “Look at him. He’s … different.”
The guy looks around, rubbing his forehead, and Dan can tell Liv is right. He’s obviously not acting like a zombie; more like someone who just woke up from a coma. “What the hell?” he mutters. “Where am I?”
“What is this?” the woman asks again, starting to make her way out from the zombie pile. “Someone tell me what happened, please!”
“Yeah, I’d like to know that too,” the guy says, getting to his feet, swaying uncertainly for a moment before finding his balance. “Ooh, man, my head is killing me …”
“Holy … hell,” William breathes, looking at them.
