Arcadium

By Sarah Gray

What is Arcadium? Florence knows but she’s not telling anyone, and it could just be the key to the survival of the human race.

Sixteen-year-old Florence West must journey across a disease ravaged Melbourne with her nine-year-old sister Liss, and she’ll do anything to survive. Mostly that means staying clear of all people, the healthy ones on the run and the infected ones hungry for human flesh. But when she meets a man that speaks no English and a defiant set of brothers, Florence will be forced to question her ways. Because there’s only so far you can go alone, right?

Arcadium is a heart-stopping journey of hope across a ravaged urban land where survival always comes at a heavy price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Gray
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476006338

Sarah Gray

Sarah Gray is assistant professor of English at Langston University. Along with Shiloh Carroll and Michael R. Howard II, she organized the conference "Catwoman to Katniss: Villainesses and Heroines in Science Fiction."

Book preview

Arcadium

by

Sarah Gray

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978 147 600 633 8

Copyright © 2012 Sarah Gray. All rights reserved.

http://sarahjacinda.wordpress.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book please purchase a copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events are either the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

About the Author

Thanks

Skylight (Book 2)

Connect with Sarah Gray

Australianisms

Choose Your Own Journey: Florence West

Chapter 1

LISS SHOULDERS HER backpack and waits in the middle of the road for me. The sun is white-hot today and a severe heat haze rises from the bitumen, making her look like a mirage.

She’s so skinny and small, standing in her white linen summer dress and bulky black Doc Marten boots. Her hair is delicate and flyaway, as if the golden strands are trying to reach out to the sun the way plants do to stay alive.

I know I’m a bad sister for allowing her to be exposed to the harsh Australian elements like this. She’s only nine. All she understands is that food comes from the fridge or the cupboard or the shop, that electricity just is, and that your house is the safest place in the world. How’s she supposed to understand there’s a big gaping hole in the ozone layer right over our heads letting in super sun rays, twice as hot and strong and deadly?

I’ll have to find some sun-smart stuff on the road because I can’t stand to be in dad’s house anymore. I guess nowadays melanoma is the least of our worries but still, why give up good habits just because the world fell into some crazy apocalypse, right?

I motion for her to come back, to stay closer. Liss dawdles over slowly and I reach for her pack. She slides it off her shoulders and sits on the fence, legs dangling.

We each have a backpack and I can’t help but check hers to make sure she hasn’t put anything stupid in there that’ll weigh her down.

I unzip her pack and shuffle everything around. She carries a plastic water bottle, an iPod shuffle, a toothbrush and band-aids. She also has a lighter and a can of aerosol deodorant that spits a mean flame when you use them together, but that’s the only weapon I’ll ever give her. To be honest, it’s a last resort thing. I don’t even know if she’d use it. Things have changed, the world’s gone crazy, but the thought of my innocent nine-year-old sister hacking into the flesh of an infected with an axe or something, well, that just destroys me, and I can’t imagine what it’d do to her brain. I mean, how do you come back from something like that? The infected chase us, try to kill us, but we can always hide away, somewhere out of reach. But I don’t know how to hide from memories of awfulness that sink like black tar through your insides and can’t ever be cleaned out again.

With any luck Liss won’t have to deal with those kind of haunting thoughts, just me. It’s like I’m the courier and she’s the message, and I have to deliver her safely… somewhere. I just don’t know where yet.

Right now all we have is our backpacks and each other.

Suddenly my hand slips over something foreign — square and hard with lots of plastic corners. I dig out the offending item: a Nintendo DS… and charger… and five games in their original big plastic cases.

Liss? I chuck the games on the front lawn and hold up the DS. There’s no electricity, remember? You can’t charge it. It’s a useless hunk of metal now.

Liss crosses her arms. But I want it.

I ditch the DS and zip up her bag. She slings it over her shoulders and pouts, but about five seconds later she seems to have forgotten and is sitting there swinging her legs like she’s bored. She accepts things quickly, but never thinks of the consequences of doing silly things. Like getting us killed for a game that doesn’t even work.

A bubble of irritation slowly expands in my chest and I stand for a moment, balling up my fists, trying to imagine popping it with a needle. The last thing we need is to be fighting and storming off in opposite directions. So I say nothing.

I take a deep breath and double check my own pack, just in case she’s put anything weird in there too. She hasn’t though, it’s just boring essentials: a siphon tube, a plastic water bottle, antiseptic wipes, a pocket-knife and a can opener. That’s it.

We never carry food; in this world it’s the new gold. Everyone wants it and if they know you’ve got it there’s no telling what they’ll do. I’m no expert at this, but I figure staying as low and incognito as possible is the way to survive. No big flashy weapons, no large groups to slow you down. Just fast feet, great hiding skills and a place to run to.

Flo? Liss says in her bored whiney voice.

I shoulder my backpack and step into the baking sun. Yeah?

It’s hot.

Cue inward eye roll for my genius kid sister. It’s funny because before the infection we didn’t really get along. At all. When my parents got divorced we both took a side and joined the battle. I stayed with mum over the other side of Melbourne and Liss moved with dad to the northern suburbs, where we are now. But fear does weird things to a person, and my first thought in the outbreak?

I have to get to Liss.

And I did, and it’s the only thing that’s been driving me since. We don’t know what happened to dad or mum. I assume they’re infected like nearly everyone else. So now it’s just Liss and me.

Walk on the footpath, I say quietly. There’s more shade.

Liss slips off the fence, cruises over to the nature strip and we walk. The sun glare is insane, we’re both squinting. It must be thirty-five degrees minimum, but at least it’s a dry heat. I can’t stand muggy and humid.

Within seconds I have an ultra snazzy sweat moustache beading on my upper lip. Thank god there are no remotely attractive guys around to see me like this.

Usually I wear this brown leather jacket I flogged from a store (after the apocalypse began, mind you, I’m no thief) because I hate to bare skin. If I need to take out an infected person I can’t risk them biting me or flicking blood everywhere and infecting me too. But it’s just too damn hot today, so I’m down to my black skinny jeans and this flimsy white t-shirt that you can totally see my dark coloured bra through. Maybe if I’d known the apocalypse was coming I’d have dressed more appropriately. But it seems you don’t get a warning when your world’s about to collapse.

Liss stops a few metres before the intersection and I creep along a fence. I tilt my head so I can just see into the adjoining street.

It’s all the same as before, single story brick houses with parched front lawns and dried up plants curling in on themselves. The colour of brick varies from sandy beige to flat out brown to this dried blood red. Every house shape is different, set out on their blocks of land randomly like a Tetris game exploded. Most windows have shutters open or curtains closed; just a few are boarded over or blanked out with newspaper.

Slowly I do a full scan from left to right. Movement is what the infected seem to go for, and people move an awful lot. I straighten and beckon for Liss to follow. We carry on to the right, along the shaded side of the street.

Liss hooks her thumbs under her backpack straps. How long till we get there?

I look across at her. It’s amazing what kids can take, she always seems so unaffected. How fast can you walk? I say.

We carry on like this all day. Stopping at each intersection, checking the way is clear and then moving on. At noon we stop and drink half our water. Liss sits on the grassy nature strip and stretches out her legs. I stay standing, always on guard.

Liss holds out her arms. Do you think I’m getting a tan?

I quirk an eyebrow. What do you need a tan for?

Liss thinks about it for a moment, shrugs and points straight ahead. My school’s just over there.

Yeah? I screw the lid on my water bottle and shove it back into my bag. Bet you’re glad you don’t have to go back.

I bet you’re glad. You always complained about High School.

I wipe the sweat off my upper lip. Yeah, but I only had one year to go and I would’ve been free at last. I turn my head and listen for a moment, but it’s all quiet. I want to say fat lot of good school did for teaching us how to survive but I try not to get cynical in front of Liss because I know that no matter how much we might have fought in the past she still looks up to me. That she’ll become what I am. Come on, I say. We should keep moving.

I pull Liss to her feet and we keep going. An hour or so later we pass two abandoned cars in the middle of the street. A red Holden t-boned into the side of a silver Volvo.

Liss stops when I lift my hand. Bloody Volvo drivers, she says.

I can’t help but smile. That’s something she got from dad. For him, any other car on the road was a pile of rubbish and must have had a blind driver at the wheel.

I walk over and peer in the Volvo’s cracked windscreen. Thankfully there’s no one in it. I move around to the Holden and see the dried blood splattered across the inside of the windows. The passenger door is open, but there’s no body left. Actually that’s a lie, I can see a gnawed off foot, still wedged under the accelerator pedal. The rest of it’s gone; without a doubt eaten by the infected.

I back away, and check the Volvo for anything we might need. The keys are still in the ignition but when I turn them over it doesn’t start. The boot is full of decomposing groceries but in the glove compartment I hit the jackpot: a pair of chrome aviator sunnies and a sealed bag of Chupa Chups.

I head back to Liss and hand her the sunnies.

Cool, she says, trying them on. They’re too big for her face and make her look like a bug.

Very terminator like, I say, ripping open the bag of lollypops. What flavour do you want?

Is there any watermelon?

I rummage through the bag. Of course there’s watermelon, it’s like the best flavour they have. I throw one to her. Liss almost catches it but it bounces off her fingers and clatters across the concrete. I watch her chase it and wonder how she’d ever survive on her own. I take a cola one because I know Liss won’t eat those, and we head off again.

By six o’clock a cool breeze starts to pick up and I swear it’s like freaking heaven. I can tell Liss is getting tired but she doesn’t complain. That’s not her style. She just states the obvious like it’s hot in the middle of summer or they’re coming when a horde of infected are heading straight for us. It’s super helpful.

What do you want for dinner? I ask, trying to distract her.

Something cold like… peaches.

Is that all?

Maybe some Oreos too.

I wrinkle my nose just as Liss stops. We’ve come to a big intersection, leading to a main road. She hangs back and I creep forward. It’s clear in both directions, though I can’t see that far into the distance because the road curves away. In front is a big half-finished housing development, surrounded by a nice high chain-link fence.

I wave to Liss and cross the road, waiting for her on the other side. We going in? she asks.

It’ll be dark soon. We’ll be safe here for the night.

Liss scratches her elbow. Me first?

I glance over both shoulders. Yep. Just stay at the top until I give you the all clear, yeah?

For all her visible frailness Liss is actually pretty decent at climbing. She scales the three-meter fence with no problem and straddles the top. Kay, I’m good, she calls down.

Liss holds on as I climb, wobbling the fence back and forth. When I reach the top I realise we’ve got a pretty good view of the estate from here. The buildings on the left are just frames but the ones on the right have roofs and walls and hopefully lockable doors… not like the infected can turn door knobs, but normal people can be just as threatening.

What do you think? Liss asks. The breeze plays with her loose hair.

I point to the far corner. I say we walk around to that side and find shelter. It looks quiet.

Liss nods. No blood.

No blood, I agree. That’s a good sign. If the infected were in here they’d be trailing blood everywhere. We’ll hole up in one of those houses. I bet that portable office will have food.

Liss nods and begins to climb down. I’m about to follow but I hear something and freeze. Liss pauses, clinging to the mid section of the fence, and looks up at me.

I search for visual clues but can’t see anything strange. The noise is subtle and slowly growing louder: sweeping sounds like jeans scraping along the bitumen. I glance around but can’t see the source so I wave at Liss to keep going. I pause a moment longer, feeling an ominous chill spread through my bones.

The sound is on the other side of the fence, somewhere down the road we just came off. Scraping and scratching and shuffling and moving, heading in our general direction. It’s a sound I’ve heard too many times before. Infected people are coming.

Liss is watching me carefully as I step down. What is it?

Nothing probably. My hand lingers on the fence. Have you still got your iPod?

Liss nods.

Why don’t you put it on?

She stares at me for a second and then does a scan of the road before pulling it out of her bag.

What are you listening to? I put my hands on her shoulders and walk behind her.

Liss puts the buds in her ears, presses play and pauses it again. Michael Jackson. Thriller.

I shake my head. How ironic.

Liss presses play and I can just hear the tinny tune coming out of the headphones.

A scream rips though the naked air. Liss hears it too and her head snaps round.

A man, maybe late twenties, comes tearing out of nowhere, running toward us.

His eyes lock onto mine and widen. Help me, please! he screams. He’s frantic, barefoot and there’s blood on his arm. Even if he weren’t possibly infected I still wouldn’t help him. My only priority is Liss.

He smashes his whole body against the chain link fence making it wobble and clang. Bad move buddy. Noise is the infected people’s second favourite thing.

Liss looks from the man to me. I place my hand over her ears, point her head in the direction I want to go. We keep moving. There are no deviations from the plan. We’re walking along this fence line the whole way, even if we do have a crazy man shouting at us.

Hey! The man bangs the fence with his palms and tries to get me to look at him. I mean, really? Here’s a grown man asking a sixteen-year-old girl and her kid sister to help him. I press my lips together and keep going, trying to ignore his stupidity. I do want to say something helpful like just climb the damned fence or maybe run! These are two fantastic pieces of advice in any apocalyptic situation. But I never ever talk to strangers now, it’s just too dangerous. One word is enough to form a bond, and I can’t have anyone hanging off us. Everyone just wants somebody to look after them, so when things go wrong they can blame that someone else. I won’t be that person.

I stare straight ahead and from the corner of my eye I see them coming. The man is jogging alongside the fence, following us and rattling the chain links, his back to the road. The infected zero in on him like grains in an hourglass rushing toward one tiny gap.

I move my right hand forward so it acts as a blinker for Liss. It’s about to get very ugly for this man with no apparent running or climbing skills. I’ve seen it all before but I don’t want Liss to.

There are eight infected people, running wildly towards him, arms outstretched and mouths gaping. The infection seems to suck all the pigment from their skin and renders them pale white. Not like sexy vampire pale, mind you, more like a weary faded fabric worn to its last threads. And they’re so gross with dirty flesh tendrils hanging from their teeth, beards of dried blood and fingers scratched down to bones. A few are missing arms or great chunks of flesh and one even has a giant hole in his stomach, through and through.

Common sense says all of them should be dead, but nothing seems to stop them once they’re riddled with the disease, that is except for killing off their last driving engine: the good old brain.

The man doesn’t even turn around when they reach him. He just keeps trying to catch my evading eyes. The infected slam him up against the fence and lose control. I concentrate on looking ahead, steadying my breath and steering Liss.

The man screams, lips pressed against the wired diamonds of the fence. It’s soon accompanied by the porous sound of tearing flesh. Not a great sound. Not something anyone ever really wants to hear.

The infected are probably ripping him limb from limb and feasting on his insides now. The screaming becomes wet gurgling and I can’t help it. I actually look down at him. He raises his twitching hand, reaching for me through the throng of bodies gnawing at him. All I can think is should have jumped the fence, mate. And if he had, he would have been fine. Part of me, some distant and pushed away part, feels bad for him. But like an echo it disappears. I snap my head away and focus on what’s in front of us. It’s every man, woman and child for themselves now.

The infected aren’t interested in following us since they have an easy feed at their feet, and we kept on walking, slowly, slowly, so we don’t attract any unnecessary attention. Nobody ever notices someone calmly walking but we all notice the person running like a madman.

At the end of the housing estate I can’t hear the gross moans and gargling sounds anymore so I drop my hands and tap Liss on the shoulder. When she turns around I mimic pulling invisible earphone from my ears. She puts the iPod away.

Should we get some food? I ask.

She gives a tiny nod.

After my appetiser of human grossness, I’m not at all hungry but food is strength and we always need to be stronger.

I decided to scope out a house first. Just to be safe, I leave Liss in an

Reviews for Arcadium

[sjgirl-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This lost a bit of momentum for me in the second half, still, it’s an entertaining, fast-paced read.With a zombie apocalypse taking their parents, Florence has made it her mission to protect her nine year old sister, Liss. Along the way, Florence has developed rules for survival, all of which she’s passing on to Liss, chief among her rules is avoid interacting with other people, however, that rule is about to be tested big time. I loved the relationship between the sisters, it draws you into the story immediately, you see how much they care about each other so it’s easy as the reader to become invested in them, too. I liked Kean well enough (though it surprised me that his behavior at the mall didn’t leave Florence angry and require an apology, it just seemed a bit out of character for her to end up cool with it, laughing even), but the more standout supporting characters for me were Trouble and Henry. I liked the fairly unique complication each brought to the plot, with Trouble not speaking english, and Henry in a wheelchair, they added some interesting challenges to the standard survival tale. The first half of this book I probably would have given five stars, it’s more simplistic, the basics of finding food, shelter, and other supplies, not knowing if you can trust other people you cross paths with, that’s the kind of survival story I most enjoy, sort of reality based I guess where you can envision yourself in the characters’ shoes. I don’t want to spoil anything by saying where these characters end up, just that along the way circumstances change, and for me, it kind of felt like the shift from the more basic survival stories of the first season of Lost or the first couple of seasons of The Walking Dead compared to the later years when they turned into something somewhat more convoluted that I just don’t find quite as engaging. That said, it’s not like the book went super far off the rails, it’s still interesting, I wasn’t tempted to quit reading at any point, it’s just a personal preference thing where the simpler story of the first half connected with me more, the character decisions and the action just felt more organic. Lastly, I just want to note that there’s a fun choose your own adventure style bonus chapter at the end of the book where the reader as Florence, must make the right decisions in order to reach her sister at their father’s house.