The first time I saw the apartment building I thought it looked like a bunker; it never occurred to me that we’d end up using it as one. Nicky’s the one who actually lived there—or at least she and her dad moved in there when her mom kicked them out. She was the one who suggested we take shelter there. It’s not like we had a lot of other options and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But isn’t that always the case? The ideas that seem so good in the moment turn out to be the worst when everything is said and done?
The Overlook—that’s the name of the apartment building—was a massive chunk of a structure that sat just outside the interstate loop circling Uptown (how pretentious does a city have to be to call it “Uptown” rather than “Downtown?”). It was made of concrete and half dug into a hill so that three sides had a long, thick foundation and the fourth faced the road.
Most importantly, though, it was the closest place we could think to run when the outbreak began raging through the city. We’d been on a senior class field trip to Discovery Place when it happened. I’d just stepped outside with Nicky and I was thinking about how hard I’d worked to make sure I ended up partnered with her for this project and then
BAM
.
Nicky didn’t know what made the sound and at first, neither did I. I couldn’t place it—it was loud but not a gunshot, solid but not familiar. I was still trying to figure it out when I saw the body lying broken on the ground. Nicky hadn’t seen it yet and I tried to keep her turned away. Then there was another
BAM
and she started screaming.
The man landed not five feet away, one leg completely shattered underneath him from the fall. Another hit right after that, and I swear to God it seemed like it was raining bodies (later, Felipe would start singing “It’s Raining Men” whenever Nicky brought this up. It took her a while, but eventually she started laughing at the joke—what else could you do?).
Nicky had already jumped back under the Discovery Place awning, but like a moron I just stood there. “Jonah!” she screamed at me. “What are you doing?”
I was never able to explain it to her in a way she understood, but I couldn’t stop staring at that first body. Later I’d realize that bits of his shattered leg had sprayed across my pants. But inthat moment I just kept thinking that there are 206 bones in the adult human body and I wondered how many of them were broken in the fall and from which story of the skyscraper he’d plummeted.
There was something impossibly beautiful about the moment. All at once I grasped that the man had lived this life and in an instant it was gone and I’d been there to see it happen. How many people get the experience of watching the moment someone dies? The switch from “something is there” to “something is not”?
I guess now that’s kind of a moot question; at the time, though, I remember being awed.
It was looking up that shocked me out of my reverie. There were more of them coming, tumbling through the air like acrobats. I stumbled back and Nicky grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety. No lie—two seconds later a body hit right where I’d been standing.
He was the first to start moving. He was so broken up it was impossible to tell where he’d been bitten, but it was the only explanation. The only way someone who’d just been dead could suddenly be not-dead.
When the first dead guy came back to life—not that guy on the sidewalk, but a man from the West Coast who’d ended up on the news weeks before—we all should have run. That’s what I know now.
But when the president gets on TV and tells you that everything’s under control, that the disease has been contained, and the best thing you can do is not panic and try to live your life as normally as possible—that’s when you’re in trouble. That’s when your parents send you off to school when they should be packing you up and raiding the
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