Survivor by James Phelan

anything? Couldn’t there be one who I could take from, an escape from reality?

17
    â€œN o!” I screamed, sitting up with a start. Caleb was looking down at me. He had shaken me awake.
    â€œYou okay?” he said.
    I nodded and he walked away.
    I was wet with sweat, hot, could see it was light outside.
    â€œWhat time is it?” I called out.
    â€œJust after ten,” he hollered back.
    â€œWhat?!” I found my watch on the floor. Almost eleven. I was too late for Felicity. Again.
    Shit.
    Even if she were alive, even if she’d found my note and bothered turning up when I said I was going to, after two no-shows, she’d not bother turning up again, would she?
    I lay back, holding my head in my hands. I drifted from my disappointment in myself for oversleeping to thinking about the nightmare. I tried to shut out the visions but they remained fresh and vivid. Caleb was in it, the girls too—both Rachel and Felicity. We were running, but not from Chasers. We were up the top of Manhattan somewhere, up north, trying to get out, and soldiers were following us, hunting us; four of them, on horseback.
    I sat up, caught my breath and calmed my heart rate. I got dressed fast.
    I found Caleb upstairs on the terrace. He stood on the roof of the bookstore, glassing the city with powerful binoculars. The day was clear and the sun was nearing its lonely peak.
    â€œYou seen Dawn of the Dead ?” he asked me.
    I watched him, thinking about the way he made jokes whenever he could, because the alternative was—what—to be scared out of his wits? “The zombie movie?”
    â€œYeah,” Caleb said, looking down at a group of docile Chasers drinking from a large flooded crater on Park Avenue. “Remember that scene when they’re on the roof in the mall? There’s that gun-shop owner across the parking lot?”
    â€œYeah,” I said and laughed. “They picked out lookalikes in the crowd.”
    â€œAnd the gun store dude sniped them off—pop!” Caleb laughed. “Check out down there.”
    He pointed, passed the binoculars, and I tried my best to zoom in on the spot.
    â€œBill Clinton.”
    â€œNo way!” I said. It may well have been him. “Looks a bit skinny, though.”
    â€œCouple of weeks of this liquids-only diet will do that.”
    â€œNext to him; blue jacket.” I passed the binoculars over.
    â€œYeah?” he replied, scanning left. “Ha, no way!”
    â€œWay,” I said. “That’s Lady Gaga.”
    â€œGood eye.” He put down the glasses, took a big breath, looked around at what was left of his town. There were a couple of fires burning to the north, Harlem maybe, tall plumes of black smoke twisting into the air. “You look at this too much, gets you angry.”
    â€œWho do you think did this?” I asked.
    â€œIf I had to guess . . .” Caleb said, scratching his chin, “I’d say it probably had something to do with the DHARMA Initiative.”
    â€œOkay . . .” I laughed, remembering it from one of my favorite American TV shows. “So, what, we’re gonna realize we’re all dead in the finale?”
    As soon as I said the words I felt sick. But Caleb only saw it as a joke.
    â€œYeah, something lame like that,” he replied. “What I do know is that if this infection were a zombie plague, it would be classified as a Class Four outbreak.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œDoomsday event—the worst kind of outbreak.”
    â€œAnd you know that because . . .”
    â€œLook around.”
    â€œI mean, you know the classification number?”
    â€œRead it in a book about surviving zombie attacks.”
    â€œI don’t want to know,” I said as we went indoors. “Seriously, I’ve done all right so far, all alone, so to start reading fictional survival guides . . .”
    â€œIt’s actually been pretty useful,” Caleb