by Lukens, Mark
“You kill him?”
Luke nodded.
If his story had helped her trust him more, she wasn’t showing it. They were quiet for a long moment. The rippers were still pounding at the bedroom door and walls of the hallways. It sounded like some of them were clawing at the door. Some of the rippers were in the other bedrooms—Luke could hear them trashing those rooms, throwing stuff around as they screeched and screamed.
“I saw a lot of police last night,” Luke finally said. He didn’t bother to mention the fact that he had been chased by them. “I saw helicopters in the sky. A few fighter jets. I watched a military patrol drive by and kill a ripper. But I haven’t heard any sirens at all today. I haven’t heard a helicopter or airplane over us at all. Nothing.”
“This area could be a dead zone now.”
“A dead zone?”
“Yeah. The police and the military could be concentrating their efforts in certain areas, either more populated areas or areas where they have already set up camps.” She hesitated for just a moment. “Or the disease could have spread to too many of the cops and soldiers, turning too many of them at the same time and crippling their armies.”
“It’s going to get all of us, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could be immune.”
Finally, a ray of hope. “Immune?”
“Usually, in any plague, there is a certain percentage of the population of people or animals that are naturally immune. Even deadly diseases of the past like the bubonic plague didn’t kill all the people that got it. People can either be outright immune to the disease, or they get it and their immune system is able to fight it. Certain strains of Ebola viruses, even the most deadly, still spared at least ten percent of the people it infected.”
“So how many would you say are immune to this disease? Ten percent? More?”
“It’s hard to say. Could be ten percent of the population. But many of those immune could be attacked by the rippers, or they could starve or be shot by the police and the military accidentally. I’ve heard some cities were bombed. Many immune could’ve been killed in bomb blasts if they stayed in the cities. Some of the immune could’ve been young children or the elderly, people that can’t take care of themselves. Some could’ve been in prison. If the disease doesn’t kill them, then the rippers will. And if the rippers don’t kill the survivors, then starvation or thirst, or diseases from drinking bad water, or freezing to death will eventually kill them.”
“I get it,” Luke said—there was no need for Wilma to keep going; he understood she was trying to say that even if ten percent survived the plague, far fewer would still be alive a few months from now. “What got you into prepping?”
Before Wilma could answer, they both looked at the bedroom door. The door had just splintered from the latest poundings. The door wasn’t going to hold much longer, and once the rippers were in through the door, it would only be a matter of seconds before they pushed the furniture back.
Luke jumped to his feet and hurried to the closet. He pulled one of the bi-fold doors off and kicked at the corner of the doorway, kicking a hole in the drywall at the bottom of the wall. He crouched down and pulled the drywall away, opening up a hole near the floor at the base of one side of the closet doorway, revealing the wood studs of the wall. “We can tie one end of the rope here,” he told Wilma as he hurried back to her.
She stretched the rope out to him.
The rope wasn’t as long as Luke would have liked, but they’d had to braid enough of the strips of bedsheets together to make it strong enough so that it would hold their weight and not shred apart as soon as they climbed down. He took one end of the rope and threaded it through the hole at the bottom of the wall. He wrapped that end around the doorframe several times and then tied it in place. It would hold, but it already looked like the rest of the rope wasn’t going to reach all the way to the ground.
“You’ll go first,” Luke told her. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She nodded and handed him his gun back.
Luke accepted her token of faith. He reloaded his gun with an extra magazine from his backpack. He slipped another magazine down into his front pants pocket, and then he tucked the gun into his shoulder holster. He slipped his backpack on, tightening the straps.
The door crashed open, bumping into the bed. The rippers were poking their fingers in through the crack in the door, all of them pushing on the door. The furniture was already beginning to move.
“Now or never,” Luke said.
Wilma went to the window and looked out. It was almost dark, just after sunset, the sun well below the houses in the distance. It was still light enough to see, but the shadows were taking over now. “Only a few rippers in the street,” she said when she looked back at Luke. “None in the back yard anymore.”
Yeah, they’re all inside the house now, Luke thought. He handed the rest of the rope to Wilma as the bedroom door pushed open a little more.
CHAPTER 13
Wilma threw the knotted, homemade rope out the window. It didn’t even come close to reaching the ground, just as she had suspected. It would be a good eight-foot drop to the ground near the bottom of the rope.
But what other choice did she have?
She made sure that she didn’t see any rippers in the back yard or the side yard before throwing the rope out the window. There were three or four rippers down the street, well beyond Luke’s pickup truck right now. The afternoon was long gone, approaching twilight—those magical few minutes between late evening and true night, a dark blue tint to everything. The cold air blasted her through the open window.
She wasted no time climbing onto the sill, slipping her legs over the edge. She grabbed the rope, turned around and prayed the rope would hold—if not, then she was going to be on the ground in a hurry.
The rope held.
She shimmied down the rope, hand-over-hand, using her legs only a little. She had practiced on a rope in the gym many times, and she was more than strong enough for this. As she worked her way down, she tried to glance around, making sure that there weren’t rippers from the front yard racing towards her. She was halfway down now, and she glanced back up at Luke, who was framed by the window, already positioning himself to come down the rope right after her—the rippers had to be almost inside the bedroom by now; she could still hear them slamming against the door up there.
When she was close to the end of the rope, she had no choice but to drop to the ground. It wasn’t that far down, so she should be okay. But as soon as she landed, she felt a popping in her right ankle. She went down immediately.
God, please don’t let it be broken.
The air was cold and her body hadn’t been loose, or maybe she had just landed wrong. She rolled onto her side and grabbed her ankle, wiggling her toes inside her boot to make sure she could move them. Her ankle wasn’t broken, she was pretty sure of that, but it was sprained or jammed badly. She hoped it was just a nerve stinger.
She had to get up and put her weight on it—the true test. She pushed herself up from the ground, standing, but keeping most of her weight on her left foot. As she shifted her weight to her right, she felt the stabbing pain in her ankle moving down her foot and up her calf.
A thudding noise startled her—footsteps. Someone was running. At first she looked towards the street where she had seen the other rippers, but no one was coming.
And then a ripper slammed into her from behind, knocking her off her feet.
The ripper was on top of her, and Wilma struggled to think of where he had come from.
From the vacant lot—had to be. Maybe he had been hiding behind the fence.
The ripper was a man. He was scrawny, but so much stronger than he looked. He held her down, pinning her arms to the ground. His mouth was open wide, drool dripping down onto her face, a fog of rotten breath rolling towards her. His eyes were wild with madness. He screeched, and the sound of
his voice was almost inhuman.
Was he calling more rippers, or was he crying out in victory?
Wilma didn’t care; she flipped her body to the side with all the strength she had, knocking the ripper off balance enough to kick him off of her with her good foot. She was back to her feet in an instant, and she heard the thudding sound again—running footsteps. Only this time, there were six of them running down the side yard towards her.
She struggled to get her gun out of her shoulder holster. One ripper she could fight. But seven of them?
And there would be more. There had been hundreds on the street before, and there were still dozens of them inside the house. Some of them had to have seen her through the window climbing down the rope.
There were rippers in the back yard now, pounding at the gate, pushing on it. The whole fence was wobbling back and forth, sections of it about to collapse.
A second ripper slammed into her before she could get her gun out, tackling her from behind like the first one had done. She was down on the ground again with this ripper on top of her, snapping his jaws at her. But this one was heavier and much stronger. She wasn’t going to flip this one over as easily as she had the first one. This ripper looked like he was in his mid-thirties, and he had large muscles under his dark skin. His teeth looked so large and strong.
As the ripper bent down to bite her throat, his head was rocked back and to the side, a pink mist exploding from the side of his head. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped over, falling to the side of her.
Wilma wriggled out from under the man and got to her feet as the scrawny ripper launched himself at her with another screech.
Spit. A bullet tunneled through the scrawny man’s forehead, knocking him down to the ground.
She pulled her gun out and aimed it at the other six rippers running towards her.
Spit. Spit. Spit. Spit. Spit. Spit. She watched as all six of the rippers, four men and two women, dropped to the ground, all six of them with bullet holes in their foreheads.
Wilma looked back at Luke; he stood next to the house, right underneath the dangling rope. He had his backpack on, his gun aimed at three more rippers heading their way. He shot all three of them from twenty yards away, all three dropping to the ground in the increasing darkness.
“You okay?” Luke asked as he rushed to her.
“You got them all,” Wilma said.
“Come on, we need to go. There’s gonna be a lot more coming. Can you run?”
“My ankle. I think it might be sprained. But I’ll run if I have to.”
More screeches sounded from the front of the house, and then the crashing of doors, windows, the thrumming of dozens of running feet on the front porch. They were coming from the house, and more were coming from the street.
Wilma and Luke took off running. She tried to run as fast as she could on her bad ankle.
Luke ran slightly ahead of her, aiming his gun as he sprinted towards the pickup truck. They were almost to the truck when Wilma saw four more rippers running down the street towards the pickup truck from behind it. One of them was carrying what looked like an aluminum baseball bat.
Luke shot all four of them while he was running, dropping all four of them.
Where did he learn to shoot like that?
“Keys!” Luke yelled as he darted around the front of the truck to the driver’s side.
Wilma dug the set of keys out of her pants pocket and threw them at Luke.
Please catch them.
Luke caught them even though it was almost dark. He opened the door, slung his backpack inside, and jumped inside the truck. He was already starting the pickup when Wilma opened the passenger door and slung off her backpack and pulled out her gun. She plopped down in the seat and slammed the door shut. The door locks thumped down after Luke put the truck into gear.
He turned the headlights on and Wilma saw the group of rippers from the house right in front of the truck, with more of them still jumping off of the front porch of the house. The other rippers had already torn down part of the back fence and many of them were scrambling over top of the fallen wood panels.
Luke shifted into reverse and glanced at the rearview mirror as he stomped down on the gas pedal. The tires barked in the night air for just a second and then the truck’s motor roared as they drove backwards, running right into the rippers behind them, running two of them over. Two rippers, one from each side, clamored over the side of the bed of the truck, falling down into the back.
Wilma turned around and rested her arms over the back of the seat, aiming her gun at the two rippers in the back of the truck. She shot both of them in the head, the first bullet shattering the back window in the process. One of the rippers was knocked back and out of the bed of the truck by the impact of the bullet. The other one collapsed down into the bed, lying motionless.
“Hold on!” Luke said as he hit the brakes and spun the truck around in the middle of the street, turning around so they could drive away from the house, away from the larger horde of rippers running towards them.
More rippers were pouring out from the front yards of other houses, racing towards their truck, drawn by the noise and commotion. Some were throwing rocks and chunks of concrete as they ran towards the truck, the projectiles bouncing off the side of the truck, but none of them hitting the windows yet.
When the truck had skidded into the other direction, Luke shifted into drive and stomped down on the gas pedal, speeding towards the rippers that had formed a line across the street.
“Holy shit,” Wilma said. “Where the hell did all of them come from?”
CHAPTER 14
A line of rippers stood in the street in front of their pickup truck as Luke raced towards them—they weren’t moving. He glanced at the rearview mirror as he sped down the street and saw that there were a lot more rippers behind them. They had no choice but to drive right through this line of humans spanning the entire street, stretched out like children playing a game of Red Rover. If he could have, Luke would’ve tried to drive around them, maybe even up on the sidewalk, but there were too many other vehicles on the sides of the road.
“Hold on!” Luke told Wilma again, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that she was already bracing herself, her seatbelt already on.
Luke plowed into the rippers like they were bowling pins. The line wasn’t single file, and there were more rippers behind the first line of defense. It was only going to be a matter of time before the dead and injured bodies he ran into slowed the truck down, their crushed-up flesh clogging up the wheels.
As the truck tore through the mass of bodies, Luke saw flashes of limbs. Faces were contorted in pain, rage, and madness. Wild eyes glared back in the light of the headlights for a millisecond before being run down, mouths open in screams, hands slashing at the truck with knives, bats, golf clubs, pieces of wood and rocks, and other weapons. Other chunks of blocks and rocks still pelted the truck from both sides as they continued on through the mass of bodies, the engine screaming, drowning out the wails and cries of the rippers being torn apart and crushed.
One chunk of concrete bounced off the windshield on the passenger side, leaving behind a spider web of cracks. Wilma instinctively shrank back from the impact, but then she was back up again, her gun in her hand, ready to shoot. She kept looking back at the bed of the truck, making sure that other rippers hadn’t climbed onto the back of it.
Luke kept going. He kept his foot pressed down on the gas pedal, his hands gripping the steering wheel as it bucked, the whole truck bouncing back and forth as if he were driving along a heavily rutted road. The back tires spun on the street, already spinning in pools of blood and slick muscle and fat.
He was sure they were going to bog down at any second and get stuck—the truck was beginning to lose traction, the blood and other fluids slowing the truck down as if he were trying to push through an oil slick. The mass of rippers behind them was going to catch up to the back of the truck at any moment, and th
en they would be trapped inside.
“Come on,” Luke yelled through gritted teeth as he kept his foot jammed down on the gas pedal.
For just a moment Luke was sure this was the end—the truck was going to bog down and the other rippers would catch up to them. He was sure his death was coming. And then the truck lurched forward, somehow catching traction on a dry area of the concrete road, the last of the rippers falling to the side. The other rippers in front backed away.
Not all of them were so willing to sacrifice themselves, Luke thought.
They were free from the rippers, the truck gaining speed as they raced down the neighborhood street. Luke swerved slightly to avoid hitting a few other stragglers, but most of the rippers were backing off of the street towards the tangle of parked and wrecked cars, and the front lawns beyond them.
It’s like they all decided to step back at the same time, Luke thought. Like they had all thought the same thing at the same time.
But communication like that was impossible, wasn’t it? The disease or plague, or whatever the hell it was, had turned them into mindless animals. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all pulling back now, watching and waiting as he sped down the road.
One of the truck’s headlights had been knocked out, but the other headlight still provided enough light for Luke to make out the road in front of them through the narrow shaft of light, enough light to avoid hitting any more rippers unless he had to, and to avoid parked, stalled, and abandoned cars and trucks in the middle of the road.
They came to an intersection where two cars had crashed head-on into each other and had been left there. The windows were all smashed out and both driver doors of the cars were wide open. Luke saw dark bloodstains all over the interior of both cars as the truck’s lone headlight splashed over the wreck when they passed by it.