Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(38)

side of the vineyard, we found a cottage. Pretty little place tucked into the woods. We managed to get the pregnant woman into it, and we locked the door, closed the shutters, and pushed all

the furniture against any opening where the dead could get in. There was food and water and a TV and a laptop. The owners were nowhere around. While the others helped the woman settle down

on the couch, I turned on the TV, but all we got was a ‘please stand by’ message from the Emergency Broadcast System. So I turned on the computer and skimmed the news. The Internet was

still up. Do you know about the Internet?”

“Yeah. They cram all that old-world stuff into our heads at school.”

Sacchetto nodded. “Well, I was able to access news feeds from all over the world. By then it was everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Europe, Asia, Africa. Cities were in flames. Some areas had

gone completely dark. The military was in the field, and the authorities were saying they were making headway, pushing back the dead, stopping their advance.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was

even true at the time. My cell phone was back at the police station, but I sent e-mails to everyone I knew. I didn’t get very many replies. Those that did get back to me said that it wasn’

t happening where they were, but as the day went on, they stopped replying to my e-mails. The situation kept getting worse and worse, until it was spinning completely out of control. The

news reports were all mixed up, too. Some of them said that the dead were moving fast, some said that they couldn’t be killed, even with head shots. One reporter, a guy who was a really

well-known news anchor from New York, reported that his own family had been slaughtered, and then he shot himself right on camera.”

“God …,” Benny said breathlessly.

The artist snorted. “I was never much of a believer, kid, but if there ever was a God, then He wasn’t on the clock that night. That’s something you can debate at Sunday school. For my

part, I don’t see much evidence of any divine hand in what happened.”

“What happened then?” asked Benny.

Sacchetto took a breath. “I stayed glued to the Internet all day, mostly watching news feeds of these huge battles in New York and Philadelphia, in Chicago and San Francisco. And overseas.

London, Manchester, Paris. Everywhere. One field reporter, a woman who was braver and crazier than I ever was, got all the way into Washington DC when the Air Force tried to reclaim the

city. Jets were laying down napalm, and I saw whole masses of zombies burning on the lawn in front of the White House. They were still walking toward the troops who were making a stand on

the other side of the Mall, but they burned as they did so, dropping to the ground as their tendons melted. Crawling until the fire destroyed too much of their muscles, or maybe till it

boiled their brains. Wave after wave of helicopters fired on them. The helicopters hovered ten feet above their heads and used machine guns. Miniguns, I think they’re called. Firing

hundreds of rounds per minute, tearing the zombies to pieces. I guess if you went by that footage, then it looked like we were winning. But I sat at that computer for more than twenty hours,

and one by one the news feeds went offline. Then the power went out, and we got no news after that. The TV … It never came back on, so when we lost power, it was useless anyway.”

Even though Sacchetto spoke of places Benny had never seen and technology that no longer existed, the images of carnage and desperation filled Benny’s mind. When they were out in the Ruin,

Tom had reminded him that there had been more than three hundred million people living in the United States on First Night. The thought of all those people, fighting and dying in just a few

days … It made Benny feel sick and small.

“What about the pregnant lady?” he asked after a long silence.

“Yeah … well, that’s the real story. That’s the story you want to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“That woman … She gave birth that night. There was a daybed that we wheeled out into the living room, and made her as comfortable as possible, but we didn’t know what we were doing. I

sure as hell didn’t. The others helped. I … Well, I just couldn’t. You’d think someone who was around blood all the time—sketching crime scenes and all—you’d think I could take the

blood and mess from her giving birth. But I couldn’t. I’m not proud, and I don’t even understand that about myself … but there it is. I was still cruising the Net when I heard the baby

cry. It was right about then—right after the baby started crying—that the first of the dead began pounding on the door.”

“The baby … ?”

“It was a girl,” Sacchetto said, but he looked away. “We didn’t know the mother had been bitten.”


“God!” Benny’s mouth went dry, and when he tried to swallow, it felt like he had a throat full of broken glass. “The baby too? Was it a …” Benny couldn’t make his mouth shape the

word.

But Sacchetto shook his head. “No. I know there have been a lot of stories about infected mothers giving birth to babies who were, um, monsters. But that’s not what happened.” He cleared

his throat. “Years later, when I told this story to Doc Gurijala, he said that maybe the disease, or whatever it was, either couldn’t cross the placental wall or didn’t have time to do