by L. T. Ryan
“Lead the way,” Turk said.
The shadows deepened twenty feet in and they switched on their flashlights, scanning the ground ahead for obstacles. Sarah stopped a couple of times. The encroaching dark was making it difficult for her to determine where they had split.
“Around here,” she said. “Somewhere. It looks so different now.”
Turk understood. “That’s the danger in a place like this. It closes in, swallows you up, then changes on you.”
Sarah continued forward another twenty feet. She turned in a circle, shining the light around. “Here. It was here.”
“You sure?” Turk asked.
“I remember this.” She waved the light back and forth. “See how the path splits in four directions? I went down there.” She extended her arm and the flashlight out to the right.
Turk met her at the spot and scanned their surroundings. “So she didn’t go that way. And chances are she didn’t head down to the beach, or if she did, she’ll realize at some point she turned the wrong way.”
“Or she’ll continue all the way around the island,” Rhea said.
“And she’ll end up back at camp,” Turk said. “So that leaves two possibilities. Rhea, you and Alec head down there.” He pointed off in the opposite direction of the path Sarah had taken earlier. “Sarah, come with me. We’ll head up the hill.”
As they climbed, Turk glanced back often. He could see the white of their flashlight through the vegetation at first. It faded quickly, though, as the jungle swallowed them whole.
“You think she’s up here?” Sarah said.
Turk shrugged, then realizing she probably couldn’t see the gesture, said, “She could be anywhere. Good thing for us this is a small island.”
“Small enough you should hear someone call out your name from anywhere on it?” Sarah stopped and grabbed his forearm. “She never called back, Turk. I’m worried something happened.”
He realized then that the seedling of that thought had germinated on the beach. It was a small island. But small enough to hear someone yell from any point on it?
“You’ve got the hill to contend with,” Turk said. “The competing breezes, too. One sweeping in from the Atlantic. The other from the Caribbean. Sound only carries as far as resistance lets it.”
Sarah nodded, but in the dim light, he saw she wasn’t convinced.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to the top and yell for her up there.”
Ten minutes later the effects of the humidity and lack of wind had kicked in. Sweat coated Turk’s forehead, chest, and back. He wiped a thick layer off his brow. It dripped off his finger. They found a clearing at the top of the hill. From it, the sun set into the sea behind them, the tip finally dipping into the water, painting it in deep purple.
“Should I call for her?” Sarah asked.
“Good a place as any,” Turk said.
She screamed out, “Jennie!” and received no response.
The seconds turned into minutes. They stood there as the island’s insect population overtook the silence.
“Wonder how the other group is doing?” Sarah said.
Turk didn’t answer. He was staring down into the east-facing side of the hill.
“What’s wrong?” she asked after he switched off the flashlight.
“The hell you think that is?”
“What?”
He stepped in close to her so they could both see down his arm and extended finger.
“See those twinkles through the leaves?”
“Twinkles? Where?” Sarah drew in a sharp breath. “Are they moving?”
They sure as hell were. He slid his pistol from the holster tucked inside his waistband. Sarah glanced over, then did the same. She mimicked his posture, both hands on the firearm, extended out, but aimed at nothing in particular.
“Turk, is someone out there?” She glanced over at him, then back at the trees. “They are moving.”
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “We’re gonna move back into the jungle, okay? But I need you to be my eyes. One hand on my shoulder, squeeze to stop me.”
She turned, placed her hand on his shoulder, and then they moved in unison. He kept his pistol up. The lights had increased in both number and brightness. What the hell was going on here?
Sarah’s fingernails dug into the flesh on his shoulder, deep enough they might’ve drawn blood.
“What is it?” he whispered.
She didn’t reply.
A loud shrill whistle tore through the buzzing air. The insects went silent. Felt like the distress call went on for hours. It hadn’t faded into silence for five seconds before another whistle, this time closer, cut through the stillness. Again, a single long whistle.
The one he’d instructed the group to use when there was danger.
At once, the clearing lit up. Lights strong enough to blind him blasted at them from all directions. Turk lifted his free hand to his brow in an attempt to see through the brightness.
“Drop your weapon,” a man called out.
Turk stood there, pistol extended. Sarah butted up against him, her back against his, their sweat blending.
“We have you outnumbered fifty-to-one, and we are all armed,” the guy yelled in an accent Turk couldn’t discern. Almost sounded robotic. “If you want to not die, I suggest what I say you do.”
Nineteen
Addison put two hours between her and the stalls when the memory of staining the bunker door with mud arose. She’d written the word farm, big and bold, so that if Sean reached South Carolina, he’d know where to go next.
And she could feel it to her core that he’d decipher the message without a problem. The connection had been made between the three of them.
How could she face him at her grandparents’ farm, knowing she’d left Emma behind with a stranger? He’d look her in the eye, eyes that pleaded to see his little girl again, and she would have to tell him she snuck out in the middle of the night like a coward, not even telling the girl she’d left.
Addy had stopped for at least ten minutes. She couldn’t go forward. Couldn’t see through her tears.
So she made the decision to return. Not to the stables. No, she’d made up her mind that the only way forward was alone. The responsibility bore down on her with such a weight she couldn’t breathe half the time.
Addison would go back to the bunker and wash away the message so Sean would never attempt to come find her at the farm.
For a moment, she hated herself for being selfish. The feeling led to rage. She hadn’t asked for this. Not to survive. Not to be saved. Not to be brought in as part of a family. She hadn’t asked Emma to join her on her journey.
“It’s not my responsibility!” she yelled.
A chorus of crows who had lingered in the woods rose into the air and joined her with a cacophony of caws. The whole lot of them darkened the sky above her, almost as if they were a harbinger.
Don’t go back, she heard in their calls. The road to salvation is paved with blood, they said. Only to Addison, the blood extended in all directions, yet salvation did not linger beyond the horizon for most. Maybe salvation waited in the bite of an afflicted. The truly lucky would find their souls ripped from their fleshy tombs entirely. But others would not be so fortunate. They’d be trapped in their cages, unable to control the urges to hunt and kill their fellow man.
After resting for a short time, Addison turned her horse around and made her way back. She’d stuck to the highway on her journey out for the most part, keeping it just in sight through the veil of trees. Now she rode in the open on the stretch of dead grass that buffered the living forest from the cold dead asphalt.
Hundreds of cars lined the roadway. Long abandoned and most likely cleaned out. She slowed to investigate a few along the way but found little of interest. There were more dead bodies than anything.
She tried to imagine the scene when all of these vehicles had become stuck. It had to have been early on, people evacuating Charleston. A
good portion of them would have been tourists, enjoying a late summer vacation at the beach. Probably had been filling their bellies with low-country cuisine when the first images of the afflicted appeared on television. Maybe they had family or pets or friends and neighbors to get home to. Maybe they figured they were safer in their own houses.
Their assumptions were right. They acted on them too late.
The lack of afflicted disturbed Addison. Even though the traffic jam had occurred months earlier, there should be some dead lingering in the area.
Was it the storm? Had it sent them away? She considered it, and the thought that lingered in the forefront of her mind was this: Where could they have gone?
From what she’d seen, the afflicted weren’t the brightest group, and they moved with the speed of a sloth most of the time, with the exception of when they attacked. Maybe they smelled blood when they got within a certain distance, but once their hands were on you, it was game over for most.
She spotted the sign for the exit nearest Turk’s bunker and slipped back into the woods. The sunlight diminished and the sweat on her body chilled her to her core. She hopped off her mount for a few minutes and led the horse by the reigns until she warmed up, then got back on.
The path ahead wasn’t clearly marked. She had to reach the second road that cut through the woods, then follow it for about a half-mile, then travel through open pasture. The remaining journey took less than twenty minutes.
Her final approach took her in from the opposite direction she and Emma had arrived the day before. As she closed in on the final hundred yards, she heard voices in the distance. They rose and fell, undistinguishable and indecipherable.
Addison tugged on the reigns. The horse stopped, batting its head left, then right. Stomping one of its hind legs in the dirt twice. Addy leaned over, feeling the coarse mane tickle her neck and chin.
“What is it?” she whispered.
The horse took a few steps back.
Someone laughed in the distance. Someone else yelled something. The words were too hard to make out, but the tone was evident.
“Shit,” she muttered while swinging her right leg up and over the horse. She hit the soft ground with barely an audible thud. Before setting off to investigate, she secured the horse, leaving enough slack so it could dodge and fight back against an afflicted.
A single one, she thought. God help the beast should more dead arrive. At least she wouldn’t be traveling so far she wouldn’t hear the horse’s calls for help.
But would the others?
She moved from tree to tree. She stopped behind each, waited, listened. Single words could be made out, but nothing that raised a flag.
Raised a flag? Hell, the whole thing did. Turk’s bunker had been discreet, yet two days in a row there were people at it.
The field came into view, most of it scorched from the fire. There were ten men, at least, gathered near the opening to the underground entrance. Their banter silenced. Their faces turned grim. She held her breath waiting for what she knew would come next.
And it did.
The first of the dead men was hauled out. Four guys hooked him under his knees and armpits and carried him away. They set him down on a pile of timber and dead grass. The second man emerged. He was lighter. It only took two men to carry him. They dropped him next to the other guy. Their bodies lay distorted on the uneven pile.
A guy carrying a red gas can walked over and began dousing the corpses. He turned the can upright, ensuring every last drop was used. Then he handed it off to a younger guy, maybe around Jake’s age. He kind of reminded her of Jake, too. Same hair color, build.
Her thoughts drifted back to Emma. Were they still at the stables? Maybe she’d made a mistake. Maybe coming back here and seeing this was a sign she should return. She didn’t realize she was biting down on her bottom lip until the pain became unbearable.
The man next to the bodies pulled what appeared to be a pack of matches from his pocket. He attempted to strike match after match, but the wind kept blowing them out. He stood there, tapping his foot impatiently, waiting for a couple of guys to come form a shield for him.
That was all it took.
He held the lit match, cupping his hand around it. The guys moved with him toward the soon-to-be funeral pyre. They shuffled around like a herd of elephants.
Then they all stopped.
The guy with the match peered over the shoulders of the men in front of him. One by one they turned, too, all looking in her direction.
Addy leaned back. Somehow the sound didn’t register until she heard it a second time.
The horse was neighing fiercely.
She took a few steps back and tripped over a log. Lying on her side, she looked back at the field. About half the men were already crossing it, heading in her direction. Their long rifles were aimed at the ground, or in her general area.
Addison scurried to her knees and began moving. Walking at first. Then picking up the pace. She dodged obstacles, threw her hand around trees, scratching it on the bark, as she used them to change her momentum. Through the woods she saw what was happening.
Afflicted surrounded the horse. The animal bucked and decapitated one as Addy closed the distance. She stopped, lifted the pistol, and put the nearest in her sights. It didn’t matter if the men heard. Hell, it might give them reason to pause.
She unleashed the first round with thunderous effect. The afflicted snapped back and dropped to the ground. Addison didn’t hesitate. She put a round through two more, leaving one last afflicted who was too close to the horse for her to fire. She freed her knife from the sheath and crept up behind the afflicted.
The horse watched her approach and stopped stomping on the ground. The afflicted leaned his head back, shrieked in a way Addy hadn’t heard before. It echoed louder than the gunshots had sounded at the moment of firing.
The knife slid through the afflicted’s neck, past the base of its skull, and into the remnants of its brain. Addison freed the blade, and the dead settled to rest in front of the horse.
She was careful to maneuver around the afflicted on her way to the tree. She sliced the rope instead of untying it. There wasn’t time. The men were closing in. Their shouts overtook the silence. Addison threw her left foot into the stirrup and had the horse moving before her ass had touched the saddle.
She hadn’t made it twenty feet when she heard one of the men yell to the others.
“There’s some stables near here. Bet she’s headed there.”
Whether it was her stomach that rose into her throat, or her heart that sunk to her stomach, she felt her body start to go limp. Upwards of ten armed men would now be heading to the place where she left Emma.
She clutched the reins tight and tugged them, turning the horse toward the stables.
If the men had transportation, horses or ATVs, they had to run back for them. This gave Addison a sizable lead on them. If they intended to pursue on foot, the stables were still a few miles away. At best they’d clear each mile through the woods at ten minutes. She would make it in half the time, at worst.
She dug her heels into the horse’s ribs. The animal pushed hard, weaving through the trees and hurdling obstacles. Everything went past in a blur. Fear could do that.
Anticipation rose as they hustled over the final distance. She began to wonder if she would find Emma and Jake at the stables.
What if the men were already there? What if they had a car or truck near the field?
Even with her direct route, she couldn’t beat a vehicle on the open highway. They’d have to cover some ground off-road, but traveling sixty miles an hour on asphalt rendered that point moot.
She emerged from the woods to find the stables standing. The area surrounding it felt surreal. Impaled afflicted paid her no mind as she hopped off the horse in front of the gate. She had it open and led the horse through within ten seconds, then shut and latched it again. She dropped the reins and ran to the building, calling out Emma�
�s name. The horse trotted close behind her. Even with the barrier, it had no desire to remain in the presence of the dead.
The stable doors flung open. Jake tried to hold Emma back, but she broke free of his grasp and sprinted toward Addison.
“You came back for me,” she said as she slammed into Addy. “You came back.”
Addison lifted the younger girl up and continued toward the barn. “We have to get moving.”
Jake squinted at her as she drew close. “What’s going on?”
“I went back to the bunker,” she said. “There were more of them. Had to be a dozen. They heard the horse, and one of them mentioned this place.”
He hung his head. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit is right. We gotta get moving. Get your horse ready and meet us outside.” She set Emma down. “Go grab your things. Hurry.”
The girl sprint down the aisle between the stalls and climbed the makeshift ladder to the loft.
Addison turned to Jake, who was pacing in front of the open doors, rubbing his scraggly beard.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she said. “Why didn’t you mention there were so many others?”
“Didn’t think we’d encounter them,” he said. “I thought they’d…”
She waited for him to continue, but he stared out toward the field. “You thought they’d what?”
“Go back north.” He stepped through the opening. “You hear that?”
“Back north where? And hear what?” She followed him outside. The distant hum grew into a low rumble. “That’s them, and they’re almost here. We need to get moving.”
Addison darted through the opening.
“Go upstairs with the girl. Stay put and let me handle this.”
She stopped like a ballplayer caught in a pickle, her front foot sliding on loose hay. She turned back to him. “Do what?”
“Just stay up there!”
“Are you crazy?”
“I can handle this, okay. Let me handle it.”
Brakes squealed from somewhere beyond the trees. Doors creaked open, then slammed shut, at least eight of them. Before Jake threw the stable doors shut again, she spotted the first of the men emerging from the woods near the gate.