Shore Haven (Short Story): Leaving Liberty

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  I’d hoped I would see the others, but instead, I found myself in another metal, makeshift corridor. The woman led me to a door about halfway down the hall. Muffled noises from outside the metal building echoed around me. I didn’t think I’d heard them back in the examination room. The woman didn’t react, but I could almost swear I heard the sounds of the dead coming from Dominic’s side of the bridge. Most likely, the noise of the bridge had brought some zombies out of hiding on their side just as it had on our side.

  “This will be your quarantine room,” the woman said, opening the door to a metal framed room that reminded me of a prison cell except there wasn’t a toilet.

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to run. I wanted to do a thousand things that I didn’t do as I walked into the room. Before I could turn around inside the cell, the woman had shut and locked the door on me. I rushed to the door to try to stop the lock from catching, but I was too late. I should have made a fuss. Maybe banged on the door and demanded they let me out, but I knew that was fruitless, so I took a seat on the slightly dingy cot to wait out my confinement in the semidarkness of the room.

  A minute or so later, I heard footsteps out in the corridor and the door beside me open.

  Who had been behind me, I wondered. How many of us were left?

  I was sure I was close to the end of the line, so maybe two people.

  I heard muffled voices—probably the same woman who led me into my cell, ushering someone into the next. The person—I’m almost sure it was Brandon, another teenage boy in the warehouse group that I’d had minimal contact with—argued for a second, but it was only half-hearted. He, like myself, probably understood that we would do the same to someone new entering the island.

  For that matter, their group should have done it to me every time I showed up at the warehouse. A zombie could have bitten me or I could have contracted the virus at any point between the hotel and the warehouse. I guess they thought that with their numbers if I turned, they’d be able to put me down easily enough.

  A minute or so later I heard the door on the other side of Brandon open. I was sure Chuck was in that one. I was almost positive he’d been the last of our group. I couldn’t tell if he put up a fight.

  I laid back on the cot, thinking I might as well rest. We were in for a long three days. No sooner than I started to get comfortable, my bladder let me know that it was full. I sat up on my elbows and looked around. No toilet as I already knew. No bucket either. The floors were metal. I couldn’t just pee in a corner.

  I lay back down and tried to forget about my bladder. Maybe someone would come along in a bit to give me something or take me to a restroom. I wouldn’t be an annoyance just yet. The few people we’d met didn’t seem like the kill ‘em at the slightest aggravation type, but I didn’t want to test that assumption.

  I counted to fifty in my head before I heard a faint noise way down at the end of the corridor where Sayo was. I was sure it was the sound of a door opening. Hopefully, Dominic’s people were bringing us food and a bucket. My kingdom for a bucket.

  I heard another door open and what I was sure was a scream. The metal framing of the makeshift corridor and quarantine rooms shook. Only slightly, but they shook. I heard another scream. That one was much louder.

  I’d never heard Sayo scream, but I was almost positive the sound came from her. I wasn’t the only one who thought so because I heard what I was sure was Chuck call out from his cell, asking if the woman was all right. She didn’t answer. No one answered.

  A loud metal sliding against concrete noise was the only reply.

  Were they opening the door to the bridge? It sounded like it. Why? Were their people going to the island? That made sense, though I was sure Chuck said Dominic had no desire to explore the island. Dominic said he wasn’t going to let his people get trapped on it as we were if something happened to the bridge.

  Obviously, he changed his mind, or some of his people had volunteered, knowing there was a chance the bridge might not stay down forever. I couldn’t fathom that happening. If Chuck could control it now, that shouldn’t ever be a problem again.

  I decided that wasn’t the case when our cells shook again. Harder that time, and with it came the sound of zombies. I’d only thought I’d heard it earlier, but at that moment, I knew I had. The noise was so clear, so loud that I would have sworn the creatures were right outside my door.

  Were zombies overrunning Dominic’s people? If so, why weren’t they letting us out to help them?

  All around me, the group I’d come across the bridge with started yelling for someone to let them out, to tell them what was going on, to give us our weapons so that we could defend ourselves.

  The calls were ignored.

  Within minutes, the shaking stopped and the sound of zombies nearly faded. A door down the hall opened, and I heard Diana’s voice. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, asking, but I knew it was her. No one replied. Her voice grew louder as she demanded to know what was going on and where they were taking her.

  I heard a door open and shut, and then the woman screamed out in pain. Seconds later, she screamed again, but that time it was out of fear. The spine curling sound of zombies followed her scream, and my cell began to shake again. My bladder let go. I was too scared to be embarrassed that I was lying in my urine.

  “What the hell is going on out there,” I screamed coming off my bed and rushing to my door. I banged on it, jerked on the handle, and threw myself into it to no avail.

  7

  I continued to scream and throw myself at my door as I heard each door before me open, followed by the screams of someone I knew. The makeshift containment area was growing fragile with each hit I gave it and with every horde that bumped into it as it passed through the opening to the bridge. Their numbers sounded like they were getting bigger each time someone from Dominic’s group pulled one of us from our cell.

  When the door opened to the cell two people down from me, I heard screams coming from Edge Borrow. An explosion followed the screams. I heard the woman who examined me call out from somewhere close to my door.

  “What the hell was that?” I assumed she asked the person who was pulling us from our cells.

  I couldn’t hear the reply. The screams of panic and fear grew worse from the town behind us, and gunfire filled the air.

  “How the hell did that happen?” I heard the woman ask. She was closer to me that time.

  Again, I couldn’t hear the reply.

  I’d stopped screaming and throwing myself at my door when I’d heard her speak. From the confusion in her voice, I knew something had gone wrong with whatever their plan had been for us.

  “What’s going on out there?” I asked, trying to sound like I hadn’t heard them first injuring then siccing zombies on my friends.

  “Paula? Paula? Wherever you are, run,” I heard a male say. By the way the voice sounded, I could tell it’d come over a radio.

  “Jaylen? Where are you? I’ll come to you,” the woman outside my door, Paula, said into the radio.

  “You can’t leave,” I shouted. “You have to let us out. At least give us a fighting chance to survive what’s going on out there.”

  I don’t think she heard me. Those in the cells on either side of me were screaming for someone to let them out as well.

  I didn’t hear another word from Paula or any of the other people who’d brought us here. All I heard were screams, moans from the dead, and bodies hitting the metal container.

  The contraption we were in shook, rocked, and every so often slid along the concrete road on which Dominic’s people had built it.

  I resumed throwing myself into the door. By the sounds of it, my neighbors were doing the same. None of us seemed to pay any attention to the back end of the container, or at least I didn’t until a loud bang came from that direction. A dent, almost in the shape of a body had formed in the metal. A second later, another body hit the wall, and then a third. That time the container lifted off the gro
und a foot or so.

  The zombies were attacking from all sides. I don’t think that was what Dominic intended. A part of me did a little happy dance that his plans had backfired, but the part that was stuck in the cell was freaking out.

  I couldn’t do anything but stand in the center of my cell and listen to the war going on outside. The air filled with the sounds of creaking, moaning, bending as the metal container slowly gave way under the pressure of human and zombie bodies and smooshed in around me.

  Never in my life had I had a panic attack, but I started having one then.

  There was no air in the room. All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. The room couldn’t be losing oxygen. The metal was bent open in places. Air was coming into my cell. Why couldn’t I breathe? I rushed to one of the cracks, gasping, sucking the air in rapidly, but my panicking wasn’t helping me take in the proper amount of oxygen. Tears rolled down my face.

  More and more bodies pounded into the back of the container. Bullets that barely missed me flew through the metal. I think one got the person to my left because I heard him scream then hit the floor.

  Had it been Chuck? I knew he was the last in our group, but had I been next to the last in line? I couldn’t remember. But Chuck was strong. He was our leader. If he was dead, then we were all dead. It was just a matter of time.

  Another bullet flew by my head. The hole it left in the back wall filled with blood and brain matter that ran down the wall. The lights in the room flickered. They hadn’t been bright to begin with, and I’d assumed they were solar powered.

  No, I thought, looking at the light bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. No, you can’t go out. You can’t leave me in the dark.

  The lights flickered again before going out completely. I threw myself into my door, and that time I felt it give a little. Or at least I thought I did. It had to because the back wall of my cell was caving in from all of the bodies pressing against it, and if it gave all the way it would spill zombies in on top of me, and I would be trapped.

  I hit the door, again and again, not paying any attention to what was happening on the other side of my cell. My eyes stayed on the slowly bulging frame of the door. More bullets flew by me. One even grazed my arm, but I didn’t feel it.

  The last time I hit the door, I felt something push back as if there was a person on the other side trying to get in the room with me. I froze. I watched the doorknob, what I could make out of it anyway, to see if anyone was trying to unlock it. No one was, but someone was pushing on the door, trying to get inside.

  “I’m in here,” I screamed. I twisted and turned the doorknob, but didn’t have the strength to break the lock. “I’m here,” I screamed again to keep the person from giving up on getting to me.

  Not once did it occur to me that the person wasn’t trying the knob either. Nor did it occur to me that there was more than one person on the other side of the door or that they might not be a person at all. I just kept screaming and pulling on the door.

  I’m not sure how it happened. I don’t know if the flimsiness of the hastily put together structure had finally had enough, but almost simultaneously, the back wall caved in, and the door to my cell gave way.

  I fell flat on my back, my head aimed toward the back wall as they did so. My skull cracked when it hit the metal floor. The bones in my ribs, legs, and feet shattered as the door came down on me along with the weight of countless zombies. The fall had knocked the wind out of me, but the punctured lungs were what kept me from screaming.

  For a brief second, I thought about Samantha and Maddie. Not once had I regretted leaving them until that moment. My last thought wasn’t of the two women, though, it was a prayer that Dominic was dead and that I died before the zombies that were coming down on top of me realized that I was still alive. More metal and bodies fell in around me. The last thing I saw was broken, bloody teeth coming toward my face.

  ~~~

  Please turn the page for an exclusive look at Shore Haven.

  Chapter 1

  ~~Samantha~~

  “She’s turned,” a male voice behind me said.

  My body wanted to sag in relief at hearing a human voice attached to the movement behind me that I’d been trying to ignore. It didn’t, though. It couldn’t and stay alive. I hadn’t heard any moans aside from those that were coming from the body in front of me, but that didn’t mean the dead wasn’t creeping up on me.

  “I fucking know she has,” I said with a snarl.

  I put a little more force behind the grip I had on the shopping cart in front of me, as my sister jerked, spasmed, and lunged for the newcomer and me from the other side of it. I’d had her pinned in the corner of the shopping center with the cart for a while, not knowing what my next move was going to be, but knowing that in that position one of the dead could easily sneak up behind me.

  If I were honest, though, I’d much rather one of them kill me than my baby sister. The logical part of my brain knew she wasn’t my sister anymore, but that didn’t stop me from seeing her as such.

  “Then kill her already,” the man said. His voice wasn’t as harsh as it had been at first. “Or I will.”

  “The fuck you will. That’s my sister,” I said in a louder voice than I knew was wise.

  The longer I stayed the way I was, the higher the chance I had of bringing more down on us, and shouting wouldn’t help matters.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Fine. Then we’re leaving you here with that thing.”

  We? There was a “we.” I didn’t dare turn around to see for sure, but the mere thought that I wasn’t alone in the world was a relief.

  “I can’t kill her, you asshole,” I said, surprising myself at the anger in my tone. I took a deep breath and continued. “I don’t have a weapon. I’m out of ammo, and I dropped my sword out there somewhere trying to get her away from the horde. She had a bat, but I don’t know where it is now. If I let her go, she’s going to come after me. I’m also aware of the fact that if I stay here like this one of them will find me and kill me. So, if you’ll be so kind as to hand me a weapon, I’ll put her down.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off my baby sister as I spoke. Bile rose in my throat at the sight of her dead eyes and gray skin. My head spun a little at the thought of having to kill her.

  Until that moment, I hadn’t encountered anyone I knew. Maddie and I had been on the island alone, playing tourists when the shit had hit the fan. She’d graduated from college in May, and the trip to the island was a graduation present from me to her. Some fucking present. If my parents were still alive whenever I made it back home, they were going to kill me for getting her eaten by a zombie.

  “Don’t you dare give her a gun. She could have set a trap for us,” another male voice said from behind me. That person sounded big and young—a college football player or frat boy. The voice confirmed that the first man hadn’t been lying about the “we.”

  “Yes, I’m risking my life to trap you, whoever and however many of you there are. You, whom I didn’t even know was coming,” I said. The last came out in a grunt as I shoved harder on the shopping cart to pin Maddie more firmly to the corner. The two men were distracting me, and my grip had slackened. I still didn’t dare to turn to look at them.

  “Don’t be an ass, Russ. Why would she be trying to trap us? Here. Do you know how to fire a gun?” the first man asked me.

  “Not well, but yeah,” I said, cutting my eyes to the man who had stepped up beside me and was handing me what I would find out later was a Ruger SR9c.

  “I’ll hold the cart, and you point and shoot,” he said, placing the hand not holding the gun out to me on the handle of the cart.

  I took the gun from him but didn’t trust him to hold the buggy, so I leaned forward, putting all of my weight into it. With two hands, I aimed the best I could with my sister pushing from the other side to get to me and pulled the trigger. My arm jerked, and the shot went to the right of Maddie’s head. The bullet didn’t faze her. I took a deep
breath and tried again. That time I got her in the shoulder.

  “Jason, man, kill that thing and let’s go. We’ll be here all night attracting more of them if she keeps going on that way,” Russ said.

  “He’s right,” Jason, who was the man who’d handed me the gun, said in my ear, and I jerked at how close he’d gotten to me. “You’ve got one more chance to take her down yourself. If you miss that time, that’s it. I’ll have to do it so that we can move on.”

  I nodded, conceding their point. I took another breath, aimed, and fired. That time I hit my sister in the forehead. The second her brain matter splattered the concrete wall behind her I turned and vomited. The cart rolled a few inches away from me and toward the body.

  The people behind me didn’t say a word for a long time.

  Russ finally said, “Jesus, you act as if you’re new to the apocalypse. Where have you been hiding since the shit hit the fan?”

  “Shut up, Russ,” Jason said.

  Still bent over dry heaving, I looked from around my legs. I saw the one that I hoped was Jason take a step toward me.

  “I’m all right,” I said, righting myself and turning awkwardly to face them. In the adrenaline rush of trying to fend off my sister, I’d forgotten about the gash in my right thigh. I stumbled a bit in my movements from the pain, and the four people who had been standing behind me went on alert. Two women had been with the two men, but they hadn’t said a word or made any noise until they saw my wound. All four, even Jason, began shouting and pointing their guns at me.

  “Fuck, man, she’s been bitten,” Russ shouted.