Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  “The windows are boarded up, Elijah,” she observed as they approached the back door.

  “Pull your mask on,” he said, not commenting on the windows.

  She did as he said, and he did the same. Today, they were both wearing leather gloves, something Jamie had scavenged for everyone at that sporting goods store. He said the leather would be better than latex medical gloves to protect against germs or getting hurt, too.

  They walked to the door that Lila told them would lead them right into the kitchens. Elijah tried it, got zero movement from the knob, and kicked once at the door. It startled her. She thought they’d try to pick the lock or break a window or something. He kicked two more times, and the door slammed inward against a wall.

  He turned to her and nodded. Then he flicked on the flashlight he’d brought and went inside. It was the dishwashing area where pans and stacks of white plates and pasta bowls and silverware were also stored. Everything was neat, clean, and organized. It was also untouched and unearthly silent for a restaurant. The alarm didn’t go off, either, which was strange. She wondered why nobody had set it when they’d last left. That seemed odd because the keypad for the code was right by the door they just entered. Wren put it out of her mind and followed closely behind Elijah.

  They went past a deep, walk-in freezer and a large pantry full of food and supplies.

  “We should take whatever we can haul outta’ here when we leave,” he said, to which she nodded.

  They walked through the kitchen, also immaculately clean and went into the actual restaurant through a set of swinging doors. The faint tinge of basil and oregano still clung to the air, although the restaurant had been closed for a while now.

  “We’ll take a lot of this liquor, too,” he said. “I read in the First-Aid book that you can clean a wound with liquor. Just in case someone gets cut or something.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she agreed. “Or, in case it all comes to an end, we could get drunk.”

  “True,” he said, grinning like he normally did. She breathed a slight sigh of relief at it. “Let’s find the stairs and go up to the apartment Lila told us about. We need to find those guns if they’re here.”

  Wren took quick glances around to check out the place as they walked. It did look like a nice restaurant. Linen tablecloths, fresh but now dead flowers in a vase on each table, lots of stained glass windows, beautiful old woodwork.

  “Over here, Wren,” he called softly.

  She had fallen behind staring at the menu written on a chalkboard near the bar advertising the special of the day and the wine selection for the evening. Wren sped up and jogged to the other room where Elijah had gone.

  “Here, there’s a door leading to a hallway. I think this is where it is. The door’s marked ‘private’.”

  Wren looked down the dark hallway and felt a moment of dread and hesitation come over her.

  “Okay. Lead the way,” she finally said, trying to squash her unrealistic fears.

  Elijah went first, and she followed. However, they both froze at the sound of music coming from the second floor above them. He held his finger up to his lips as if he felt the need to tell her to be quiet. That was entirely unnecessary.

  He swiped a hand through his blonde hair and brought the bat up in front of him as his foot set down on the first tread of the stairs leading up into the unknown. Wren looked behind them with longing but turned back and followed closely. His footfalls made more noise than hers. On one step, his weight caused it to creak, and that caused her to physically cringe. She whipped her head around to look over her shoulder again.

  Elijah kept going. She fell behind again, worrying about someone coming up the stairs after her. At the top of the stairs, he went through another door. Wren joined him and was halted by a strange smell accompanying the Italian opera music, which sounded ironically enough like something they would’ve played in this restaurant.

  Other than the music, there wasn’t noise. She half expected those night crawler people to come running at them from one of the open doorways into other rooms. Mostly it seemed like a storage overflow for some things that must not have been needed downstairs. Extra chairs were stacked one on top of the other against the wall of what was once a living room. Linens and glassware were in crates and boxes on the floor. Ahead of them was another hallway that looked like it led to bedrooms. Lila said the original owners had lived in the apartment above the restaurant. It was cluttered but had been organized to provide walkways through the stacks of boxes and belongings and restaurant supplies.

  Elijah found an antique record player on a side table that was spinning the opera music and shut it off. The silence seemed just as eerie as the constant droning of the soprano’s voice. They both waited in the silence a moment before Elijah nodded his head that he thought it was safe. A fly buzzed near her face, and she batted it away.

  “Let’s find the wardrobe Lila told us about. She said it was in a bedroom,” he recounted.

  They went down the dark hall, and Elijah flicked on a wall switch, which didn’t bring on the overhead lights. He went into the first room to their right, a small bathroom. Flicking that switch up and down did nothing, as well. That would probably explain their alarm system.

  He led the way down the hall to the next bedroom, which was small and decorated for a girl. It was missing a large wardrobe or bureau and only contained a twin bed and a small dresser. They kept going.

  The last room on the left was probably the master bedroom. Elijah pushed open the door cautiously, causing it to squeak. Wren looked behind them. For some reason, she felt like someone or, more likely, something was going to sneak up on them. The only thing that assaulted them was a horrible smell. She even coughed and covered her mouth with her hand through the mask. Elijah crept inside with the baseball bat up against his shoulder as if waiting for someone to pitch him a ball. Wren made her way to the queen size bed and picked up a white piece of paper in the center of the neatly made bed. As she read, Elijah pushed open the door to a connecting bathroom.

  “Oh, shit!” he yelled and stumbled backward as she read the suicide note of a man named Contuccini, Lila’s old boss.

  “What…what is it?” she asked and ran toward him. “Elijah?”

  Elijah grabbed her shoulders to hold her back. Wren only got a glimpse of a considerable blood splatter against a white shower wall before he slammed the door and ran down the hall. She could hear him vomiting in the other bathroom. The hand-written and signed last will and testament of the restaurant owner slipped from her fingers to the floor. Her hands were shaking. She turned in a circle and held her middle as an uncontrollable chill passed through her entire body. It wasn’t because the building was cold, either. Her eyes locked on a tall wardrobe dresser, an antique from probably the nineteenth century, standing on the other side of the room near the bed.

  Elijah returned and stood next to her. She pointed. Words weren’t necessary. She didn’t feel capable of conversation right now anyway. They were about to loot from a man who’d recently lost his entire family, his wife and two children, and had signed over his business to a nephew named Dominic who lived in Clearwater, Florida. He’d lost everything he cared about according to his final words and had nothing left to live for. Wren had felt the full weight of his despair in those final words. And now they had to take his guns.

  Neither of them spoke while they did it. She and Elijah simply hauled out the four long rifles, one shotgun, and six boxes of ammo. None of it was for the shotgun, though. She found a .22 in the wardrobe, but again no ammunition for it. When they were done carrying out the weapons, they looted the poor man’s business, as well, taking as much food as they could load until the sun started to go down again. By the time they were done, they had emptied out the pantry of dried pasta, red sauce that was in huge jars meant to go far, fresh meat from the deep freeze that Elijah declared was still partially frozen, and many jars of spices and parmesan cheese. They also took over a dozen bags of di
nner rolls from the massive, walk-in deep freeze, about thirty-pounds of butter, rings of salami, jars of olives, cans of vegetables in three-pound bulk cans. It seemed like a lot. It was a supply meant to keep a restaurant stocked up for probably a few weeks or more. They loaded the liquor last into empty cardboard boxes they found outside by the dumpster. They took as much as they could fit in the bed of the truck, which was full to the gills by the time they were done.

  “I’m surprised nobody hit this place yet,” he remarked as he settled the last box of alcohol bottles down in the bed next to a bunch of loose cans of green beans.

  “People haven’t figured it out yet. They haven’t gotten desperate enough,” she assumed. “I guess they still think the government’s going to keep bringing them food and supplies. That the military’s just going to drop food and meds every week.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said and opened her door for her and shut it after she was in. Then he jogged around the front of the truck and got in, too. “It’s not going to take them long to realize the government isn’t going to feed them forever. Those shipments are going to stop soon.”

  They drove away from the restaurant, not bothering to lock the back door, which probably wasn’t possible anyway since Elijah kicked it open.

  “We got a lot of stuff today,” she commented, still trying to bridge the silence gap between them.

  “Yeah, this should all help a lot,” he said and turned right. She was pretty certain this was still Canton. She listened as Elijah kept going. “I hope your un…Jamie finds a good load, too. We’re going to need a lot.”

  “Hopefully that hospital he’s going to go to with Alex is safe. I don’t want either of…”

  It was the last thought she had.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The other vehicle literally came out of nowhere. The traffic lights were still working. His had been green, so he’d gone through it. Then before he could even react, a green car slammed into them from Wren’s side. He tried to maintain control as the wheel jerked in his hands roughly.

  “Dammit!” he yelled loudly as their full-size pickup truck did a one-eighty in the middle of the intersection. Then they were hit again from a car coming the other way. “Son of a bitch!”

  He glanced quickly at her to make sure Wren was okay. She was slumped sideways against her door. There was blood on her window.

  “Wren?” he shouted and reached over to touch her as a group of men coming toward their vehicle with guns caught his eye through her cracked window. “Shit!”

  Elijah squared back up in his seat and tramped on the gas. The truck had some smoke coming from under the hood but was still running. He could hear sirens in the distance, but that didn’t mean they were coming to help them. The green car had all four doors open, which meant to him that this was an ambush and the men aggressively running toward them were of ill intent. The truck peeled out, leaving black strips of rubber on the asphalt behind them. He had to bump a small SUV in the other intersection waiting for the light to turn on their side, but Elijah didn’t stop. He hit the driver’s side front bumper, pushed it out of his way, and floored it. They could’ve been like Principal Russo, men who would do anything to fulfill their own sick needs, to satisfy the evil inside them, or to pillage their supplies from the back of their truck. Any of those scenarios weren’t going to happen, not on his watch.

  He heard a few rounds connect with the back of the truck, maybe the tailgate, but he didn’t stop. He just kept pushing on the accelerator. One glance in his rearview mirror confirmed his worst fear. The men in the car had hijacked the small SUV he’d bumped into while fleeing and were now pursuing him. And Wren was still not responding when he called her name and shook her shoulder.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he said aloud as he took a turn on what felt like two tires. Some of their loot in the bed of the truck went flying out. That didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was getting her to safety and away from those men.

  “Think!” he demanded of himself. Cool under pressure. Stay calm. Find a hole. Take a deep breath. The phrases his coaches had drilled into his head over the years started piling up at the forefront of his brain.

  Elijah dug his cell phone out of the front pocket of his jeans and dialed his brother. He got that damn busy signal. Then he dialed again, and the call went through.

  “Alex!” he yelled. “I need help. We got into an accident…”

  “An accident?” his brother asked with confusion. “Are you…”

  “Listen! These assholes are chasing us. They were shooting at us. I can’t shake ‘em. They’re still back there. Wren’s really hurt. She must’ve hit her head.”

  “Is anything broken? Is she bleeding?”

  “No. I don’t know. She’s not conscious.”

  “Can you make it to the corner of Mill and Jenkins?”

  “Where?”

  “Close to the Chic Fil-A, idiot!” his brother shouted impatiently.

  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be right there. Gimme ten minutes.”

  “You got ten minutes,” Alex said. “If you aren’t there in seven, we’re comin’ after you.”

  “We’re coming down Wales Drive,” he relayed.

  “Got it,” Alex said and held on the line.

  Elijah felt better with his brother still on the line with him, like he was a life preserver out in the middle of a lake at night.

  “Jamie’s gonna snipe those assholes if they’re still on you,” Alex relayed. “Just lead them here.”

  “’Kay, I’m just worried about Wren,” he admitted, glancing at her again.

  “Just get to us. And do it without getting yourself shot,” Alex said. “Then we’ll deal with her.”

  A bullet whizzed by the driver’s side door, startling him as it hit the large mirror. He sped up even more and passed someone ahead of him, going across the double yellow lines. Then Elijah ran the next light, pissing off someone who had to swerve away from him in order not to be hit. It slowed down the men in the stolen SUV behind him. But then they were speeding to catch back up. They shot at him some more. He wondered if a bullet could come through the metal of the cab and strike her. That made him push the truck even harder. They fired off a few more rounds at them.

  “I heard that. Was that the assholes shooting at you?” Alex asked with worry and anger in his voice.

  “Yeah, man,” he answered.

  Elijah swerved around two people yelling at each other in the middle of the road. It looked like things were about to escalate there, too. He curbed it and kept going.

  Then their pursuers hit a rear tire. “Damn! I think they shot out one of our rear tires. Shit. I’m having trouble.”

  “We’re coming to you. Be there in a sec,” Alex told him. “Keep pushing the truck. It’ll drive, E.”

  “Okay, man,” he said, wondering if this was going to be the last time he ever spoke to his brother.

  He drove another mile until he saw sparks coming from under the truck’s bed.

  “Shit,” he swore again. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep the truck moving forward.

  “Wh-what happened?” Wren murmured, touched her forehead, and pulled away bloody fingers.

  “Take it easy,” he said and gripped her shoulder. “We’re almost there. Keep your head down.”

  From out of nowhere, Jamie’s SUV shot out from a church parking lot on his left. He was hanging out the passenger door as Alex drove. He was also shooting his rifle at the car behind Elijah. He counted three rounds before the SUV went careening into a parked car along the street. Then Alex came to a screeching stop in the middle of the street next to Elijah, who also pressed the brakes. He watched with interest as Jamie exited through the open window and stalked forward. He took a fast glance inside the cab of the truck at Wren, who was starting to get her bearings. Jamie went past them and raised the rifle to his shoulder. Elijah watched out her window, pressed a napkin to her injured, bleeding forehead, and observed Jamie walk casually over to
the small SUV. He fired two rounds through the windows, sending blood spraying with kill shots. Then he wrenched open the driver’s side door, leaned in, and pulled something from his hip. Elijah thought it might’ve been a dagger. He’d seen that on his hip a few times. He looked away when Alex banged on his window.

  “Is she okay?” his brother asked after Elijah opened the door.

  “I don’t know. I think she hit her head when those jerks crashed into us.”

  “Follow me into that parking lot. We’ll pull around back and move your load into the bed of this,” his brother instructed.

  They left Jamie to deal with whatever he was doing, which Elijah wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He just followed Alex, barely able to make the truck turn into the lot. They parked behind the massive church as the truck came to a choking halt next to the SUV and shut itself off. It could not have chosen a better time to give up.

  “Elijah, get her into the Escalade!” Alex shouted. “I’ll start moving shit.

  He nodded and got out, running around the front of the fatally wounded truck to her door. It was then that he saw the extent of the damage done to their truck. No wonder she’d been knocked out. There was no way he was getting her door opened, either. It was crushed. Elijah ran back around and climbed into the cab again.

  “I’ve gotta get you out my door, Wren,” he said, still worried because she wasn’t talking. “Do you hear me?”