Sanctuary

6:44 p.m. Dec. 1 - Goodwell, Mich.

When Jamie Whitaker stumbled into his kitchen, his parents were already preparing a cooler with whatever food they could quickly assemble, and his little brother Paul was covered in his toughest, heaviest clothes.

Jamie could see Paul was sweating in them and upset, huffing and puffing over the injustice of it, but their parents ignored him.

Jamie’s hand went to the wall, smearing red across the white paint. He dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, which was covered by a small arsenal of hunting weapons, several ammunition boxes, a baseball bat and a few large knives. A few of them Jamie recognized from the butcher block on the counter.

His father whirled to go to the table and suddenly realized Jamie was sitting there.

“Jesus, Jamie, where the hell have you been?”

The boy wiped his hands on his pants. Red streaks appeared on blue jeans.

“I was with Billie Urban,” Jamie muttered, looking at his crimson-tinted palms.

“TV says we need to go,” his fathered relayed loudly in the drill-sergeant voice he employed when issuing commands to his family. He didn’t seem to hear Jamie’s explanation. “There’s some kind of disease. People are attacking each other.”

“They’re dead,” Jamie mumbled. He didn’t look up.

His parents both stopped the myriad preparations they were making for the plans to leave to stare at Jamie. His gaze was fixed on the wood tabletop, which reflected blue-white glare from the buzzing fluorescent bulb overhead. Nearby was his father’s nine-millimeter handgun, so black it seemed to draw light into it.

His father took a step toward him. He put his hands on the table.

“Who’s dead?” He asked.

“Them,” Jamie returned. His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Jamie perceived that his parents’ eyes were still fixed on him. He knew they were about to ask him. So he just said it.

“Billie Urban’s dead, too,” he told them, looking up at his father.

“Paul, honey. Come here,” his mother said, grabbing his brother and pulling him out of the room. Jamie stared into his father’s eyes.

When they were gone, Jamie muttered, “They tore him up and they ate him.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Jamie,” his father demanded in rough, halting tones. Jamie thought his father would have been concerned — but he looked and sounded angry.

“They’re dead. They had … pieces falling off. They look like people, but they’re not.”

A second passed, as Jamie was searching for the right thing to say, but the only word that seemed to fit was one he hadn’t used since he was very small.

“They’re monsters.”

His father held his gaze for a long moment, then turned and walked out of the room. A second later he returned with a leather jacket, which he threw to Jamie.

“On the TV, it said they bite and scratch. Go get your hunting clothes on. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

As his father turned away, Jamie put on the coat to hide the blood running down his wrist and into his hand.

#

They set out in his father’s truck, which was less than a year old and had the extended cab. It was a strong, diesel-powered behemoth that cut a swath through the night with its bright white headlamps. Jamie had the hunting rifle on his lap in the back seat, barrel pushed against the closed door. He was looking out the window and hoping not to see anything.

Snow was building on the edges of the fogging window. Reflected there was Billie Urban’s bloody face with chunks torn off of it. Jamie couldn’t stop thinking about Billie, the things surrounding him as he screamed.

And suddenly, there had been red everywhere, a big puddle melting the snow, surrounded by blue-black man-looking beasts.

From beside him, Paul tapped Jamie’s shoulder and the older boy lurched a little. He turned back and glared.

Concern flooded the small boy’s eyes. “Jamie, what’s wrong with your hand?”

Jamie quickly pulled clear of Paul’s touch and pushed his hand into his pocket without looking at it.

“What’s wrong with your face?” he snapped.

Paul looked away, even more upset, and crossed his arms in front of him. He looked about to cry.
The truck heaved and Jamie’s head smacked the roof. His stomach churned and his arm throbbed. Jamie’s father swung the wheel hard and they fishtailed — Paul’s eyes went wide and Jamie’s hand went instinctively to the rifle, holding it hard against the door beside him so that it wouldn’t bounce away. But Jamie’s father pulled the truck back against the spin and straightened out, and there was another big bump.

This time, the windshield went dark, running crimson. Jamie’s father flicked the windshield wipers on and they went buzzing.

“It’s okay!” His father shouted as though through some sort of roaring sound, even though it was silent but for the engine’s rumble and Paul’s frightened breathing.

Jamie, on the other hand, found himself extremely calm. This scared him, and he felt sweat in his armpits and on his palms.

“We hit one, but I got it,” his father said, his voice calmer now. “He just walked right into the truck.”

“How much farther?” Jamie’s mother demanded.

The truck slowed and hung a left. Jamie’s face pushed against the glass again — he was starting to relax — when he saw figures against the white. They dragged through the snowdrifts on the sides of the road. Jamie knew they were walking toward the lights, the motion.

Toward the truck. Toward him.

The truck dragged slow again, his father downshifting, and Jamie looked through the windshield to see streetlights ahead and a big white church in front of them.

It was the center of town, about four miles away from their house, where there were more street lamps and two blinking yellow lights (one at the intersection of Main and State and one in front of the McDonald’s). There were trucks and cars in front of the church — some of the in the parking lot, most of them on the lawn in front — and men with guns standing at the front, behind a large white fence.

The area around looked mostly clear, and Jamie let out a sigh of relief.

His father shifted down again and the truck rumbled to a stop. His mother was stepping out of the truck already, helping Paul get out of his seatbelt, and his father turned around in his seat.

He handed Jamie a key ring.

“These are the copies for the truck and the house. Don’t lose them.”

Jamie eyes grew wide as he took the keys. He’d backed the truck down the driveway, and driven it in second over to the woodshed, but he’d never really driven before. But he could see in his father’s eyes – he wasn’t just holding these relics. They were his charge.

His father stepped down from the truck, shouldering the shotgun with its strap and then holstering his handgun. Jamie jumped out, landing heavily in the snow with the rifle, and followed him in.

It smelled outside, like rotting food and garbage; like something on fire. The cold wind carried it with snow that clung to the air. His father walked heavily toward the church, Jamie and his family following. The big doors were swung open and they marched into a hot room that was filled with people.

They were everywhere, crying and screaming and shouting and talking. Some were nailing boards to the doors and windows. Others were trying to organize the small group of refugees in the church.

There were at least two hundred crammed into the church. Jamie’s father led the family to a pew near the front, furthest from the door. There were people standing near all the windows, most of them with guns, and Jamie recognized nearly all of them from town, or from the local stores, or from school.

Earl Riley shouted toward them and Jamie’s father snatched the hunting rifle and stalked off with it and the shotgun at hand. There was a small throng surrounding Earl of heavily armed men. His father took a place among them and instantly they were all turned toward him, awaiting instructions.

Father Lawson was bent over a few pews away from Jamie, tending to Mrs. Samuels, who was bloody – Jamie could see even from this distance. She was heavy, and it looked like her arms, which were as large around as Jamie’s leg, had large chunks missing. She howled her pain but the drone of the chapel-turned-fortress drowned it out.

Jamie watched Father Lawson for a few moments, then started to look around. There were lots of people who were hurt. Most had gouges on their arms and hands. There were a lot of first aid kits around. Red had collected in pools on the soft blue carpet in more than one place.

Father Lawson finished with Mrs. Samuels (Jamie noticed that her five-year-old son, Luke, was not with her) and headed to the podium. He looked tired, his eyes sunken and face taught. He leaned against the podium and put his head in his hands.

Jamie approached him with slow, deliberate steps. He could feel fresh blood trickling down his arm and it pulsed with pain up to his shoulder.

“Father?” he asked tentatively.

Looking up, Father Lawson’s brow creased and he looked, for an instant, incredibly disappointed.

“Jamie Whitaker.” His face labored into a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I did somethin’ bad, sir.”

“Oh?” he asked, but it was more of a sigh. “Like what?”

Jamie’s hands went into his pockets, a habitual motion that was a tell for his guilt. He looked at his feet.

“James.” Lawson put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “You can tell me. I’m only here to help.”
His eyes met Jamie’s, and the boy started crying in short gasps.

“I killed Billie Urban,” Jamie yelped in a low voice, sucking in air in tiny pulls.

Father Lawson’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. He set his big hands on the podium.

“Tell me what happened.”

Jamie wiped his face and sucked a deep breath. He squinted under Lawson’s newly heightened scrutiny.

“We were walking home down by the schoolyard,” Jamie explained, his voice tiny and halting. “Some guys were there and they started bothering me and Billie. Billie told them – Billie told them ‘fuck off.’”

Father Lawson nodded slightly, acknowledging the bad language without condoning it. It was his custom to try to make young boys feel understood, and because of this Jamie and many others placed a lot of trust in him.

“They chased us,” Jamie stuttered. “The older boys. They said they were gonna bust us up. We ran to the road.

“But when we got to the road, there were all these people out there. There was a car crash and a lot of people were stumbling around and bloody.”

Father Lawson was quiet, maybe holding his breath. He seemed to be considering what Jamie was telling him. The boy continued to sob in silence.

There was shouting, fast and loud, at the front of the church. Father Lawson and Jamie turned to see Jamie’s father and the other men moving toward the windows and doors. Jamie recognized the echoing pops of rifles firing.

“They’re coming!” Someone shouted.

A few screams sounded, but just as quickly everyone in the church fell into a tense silence. The men were barking orders at one another as they ran back and forth from the boarded windows, aiming out some of them. The men standing guard outside were louder, yelling over the sounds of their weapons.

Then there was a shriek, loud and terrible that carried more pain than Jamie had ever heard.
Instantly he thought of Billie Urban, and in Jamie’s mind the sound came from him.

The front door of the church was swung open (it was barred with a two-by-four that someone had turned into one of those flat locks you see in castles in movies) and three of the men who’d been outside ran in. When they’d arrived, Jamie had seen five.

“They don’t die!” One of them was shouting, his eyes wide and nearly spinning in his head. “You can shoot them all day! They don’t die!”

Jamie muttered, barely audible to Father Lawson, “They’re already dead.”

Lawson looked down at him but Jamie didn’t meet his eyes. The people in the church were murmuring and crying.

Jamie’s father turned to address the crowd. “Listen up!” he shouted, and everyone quieted.

“We need to keep our heads. These things – these people – are slow and stupid and not very strong. They’re only a problem when they get in crowds. As long as we stay inside and keep them off the building, we’ll be fine until the Army shows up.”

His words were comforting and Jamie could hear people begin to relax. He turned back to Father Lawson.

“Billie Urban saved me, Father,” he stated. He’d stopped crying and Jamie was aware the blood no longer trickled down his sleeve. “One grabbed me, my arm, and Billie hit him with a stick and I got away. But they grabbed Billie.”

Jamie paused, sucked in a deep breath, and said, “I ran away.”

Father Lawson stared down at him, instinctively putting a hand on the young man’s shoulder. Jamie struggled to focus on him. He felt tired suddenly, his eyelids and limbs heavy, and cold throughout.

The men were looking out the windows, preparing for the eventual arrival of the monsters, Jamie thought, when there was a scream inside the church. He and Father Lawson whirled toward the sound – where Mrs. Samuels, now on her feet despite an ocean of blood staining her white blouse, had grabbed hold of Mrs. Webb, who was a certified nurse and who had been taking care of her, and Mrs. Samuels was biting Mrs. Webb’s neck and Mrs. Webb was screaming and blood was spraying everywhere.

Jamie observed this with a calm he couldn’t understand and his mind was screaming for him to be scared, but his body refused to react. Father Lawson backed away a few steps.

Even from here, Jamie could see the change in Mrs. Samuels as people’s shock ran out and they started to scramble away from the dying Mrs. Webb and the feasting Mrs. Samuels. Her skin was gray and her eyes – her eyes were white, as if frozen, as if a cloud had come over them. She looked like Jamie’s old dog Bib, who had to be put down when Jamie was ten because the old Doberman had gone blind. Bib’s eyes had just gone away.

Jamie knew what was happening before anyone else. Jamie’s father and the other men were descending on the scene with knives and guns, firing at Mrs. Samuels while others screamed, but Mrs. Samuels half-ignored them. Mrs. Webb was making little sounds on the ground, like blowing air through a straw into a glass of chocolate milk. The men formed a circle around Mrs. Samuels, coming in slowly, looking for the best way to stop her.

Distinctly among the chaos, Jamie heard his father’s voice: “Try to cut off her head.”

But Jamie didn’t cry.

Infinitely calm, Jamie turned to Father Lawson, who’d stepped close to the boy when he’d heard the scream to protect him. Jamie looked up at him, and Father Lawson would later recount how young the boy looked at thirteen on that night, how young and innocent but frighteningly unfazed.

Jamie pulled his hand from his pocket. He held it up in front of Father Lawson, who reflexively took a step back in fear. Jamie’s arm was pale gray until it disappeared into his sleeve.

His vision was hazy and growing more so by the second. His eyes were going away. But Jamie didn’t cry, as much as he wanted to. He couldn’t.

“Father Lawson,” he murmured, his breath escaping more than words did, air leaving his body like rats from a sinking ship. “Am I going to Hell?”

Lawson was crying. He smiled, and this time it wasn’t forced, but by then Jamie couldn’t see him. He placed one hand on Jamie’s head and ruffled his hair. With his other, he reached behind him to the altar, where he’d seen someone drop a big knife, maybe a machete. He drew it up carefully into a tight grip.

“No, James. You’re not going to Hell,” Lawson said, and his voice was soothing and quiet and Jamie couldn’t help but feel better.

“You’re leaving it.”

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