“Turn it off,” Andy whispered and pulled the blankets over his face. “They’ll see.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you if you don’t sort yourself out. I’ll take your van and go by myself if you’re too chickenshit to leave this room because it’s dangerous outside. This entire fucking planet is dangerous.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Shut up. You’re going to work tomorrow. Take your van if you’re too scared to walk. We’re both going to find some people who want to go with us tomorrow. Because we can’t stay here and we can’t survive out there by ourselves.”
Andy took a deep breath.
Jesus, Kyle thought. He sounded like Parker. And Andy reminded him of the younger and weaker version of himself, before he’d toughened up, back when he was still new at this. Maybe Andy would toughen up, too, if he lived long enough.
Maybe.
But Kyle didn’t want to go anywhere with Andy even if they could find other people willing to leave in the van. He was trapped in a room with a useless excuse for a person, and it was his own damn fault. It was his own damn fault that Parker was taken away, and it was his own damn fault that Hughes left. It was probably his own damn fault that he was separated from Annie. For all Kyle knew, Hughes rescued Annie and had already blown town. He’d probably never see her again. He’d never see any of his friends again, and he’d do anything—anything—to get even one of them back.
36
Something stirred in the darkness and woke Parker from a painful and anxious sleep.
He wasn’t sure what it was. Some sound or movement that was just enough out of the ordinary that it sent a soft ping to his internal threat detection system like a shadow moving over his bed in the moonlight waking him from an unpleasant dream.
Parker lay still. The muscles in his lower back clenched around his lumbar vertebrae. He would have seen no better if he were buried alive in a coffin. His brain received zero visual input and compensated by generating a kaleidoscope of faint neon purple and pink splotches in the blackness.
He listened carefully to the night sounds in the cellblock.
Snoring. Fidgeting. Moaning. Whispering.
And: something else.
Something in the walls.
The building was humming. Something was going on. It sounded like—
—water.
Someone was running water out of the tap.
The sound was barely even there. It was not loud and obvious like a shower or a toilet flushing or a running washing machine. No.
Somebody was drawing a tiny amount of water out of the tap, somewhere in the cellblock, somewhere in the darkness.
Somebody who couldn’t stand to be thirsty anymore.
A man’s voice downstairs. “Who’s running the water?”
“Shh.” Someone else.
“I hear water in the pipes.” The same man who spoke first.
“I don’t hear anything.” A woman downstairs. Betty the therapist?
“I don’t either. Shut up. We’re trying to sleep.”
Parker listened carefully. And heard nothing. Whoever had been running the tap shut it off.
“Nobody touch that water until the sun comes up tomorrow.” Chief Beckett’s voice.
Parker imagined a man hunched over the sink somewhere in the cellblock, not daring to move or even breathe now that he’d been caught.
Except that he hadn’t been caught. No one had a clue who’d turned on the tap. The sound was too faint, too subtle, and it was deep inside the building. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, if everyone hadn’t been trying to sleep, no one would have heard anything.
The odds that a person would get sick from the water were one in twenty, give or take, given that forty people drank water earlier in the day and two got infected.
So whoever just filled a cup of water would most likely be fine. Everyone would be fine. Unless more than one person was sneaking a drink. There was no way to know. Parker couldn’t do jack shit about it anyway. All he could do was go back to sleep.
But he was awake now, his back pain acute, and he was nervous enough that returning to sleep any time soon wasn’t going to happen. His brain wouldn’t go there.
He’d suffered insomnia plenty of times. The trick to falling asleep was to just lay there and not care what happened. Stressing about it would keep him awake. Not caring was easy enough. It's not like he had to get up early the next morning for an appointment.
So he lay there and thought about Annie and Kyle and Hughes. He hoped they were still in Lander so he might reunite with them, but at the same time he hoped they had left. If they’d left, they were more likely to make it to Atlanta. Annie would be free. And she had to make it.
Parker was supposed to go with them, though. He was supposed to protect her for the rest of his life and follow her to the ends of the earth. He’d sworn an oath, and though he had plenty of faults, oath-breaking wasn’t one of them.
It wasn’t his fault, though. It was Kyle’s fault. The question was: what would he do to Kyle if he ever saw the little shithead again?
Somebody on the main floor vomited. Not in a sink or a toilet either. Onto the floor.
The whole prison stirred. Those who were sleeping woke up. Those who were already awake sat up, including Parker.
“Who’s sick?” A woman’s voice.
“Everybody stay calm.” Chief Beckett’s voice.
“Shit, man,” Diaz whispered from the top bunk.
“Who’s vomiting?” Chief Beckett again.
What Parker would give right now for a flashlight and a tire iron.
“I think it’s Jamie.” A woman’s voice. “Jamie, are you okay?”
Somebody groaned. It sounded like a woman, but Parker couldn’t be sure.
He sat up all the way and leaned against the wall. His lower back muscles settled down a bit. If starvation or cold or one of those things didn’t kill him, sleeping on the floor might. He wished he could hang by his feet from the ceiling and stretch his back out.
“Jamie?”
Another groan.
The sounds were downstairs in or next to the common area. A safe enough distance away. Beckett was down there and could take care of it.
Maybe.
“Jamie.” More urgent this time. Like somebody yelling a whisper.
Silence.
“It’s definitely Jamie.”
“Where is she?” A man’s voice.
“In the bunk above mine.”
“Get out of there,” the man said.
Parker heard movement on both floors of the cellblock. Lots of people stirring and fidgeting, but nobody actually going anywhere. The prison was pitch black. No single location was better than any other.
Unless you were in the same cell as an infected person.
“Get out of that cell and close the door,” the man said.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Beckett said. “I’m coming to you.”
“Down here,” said the woman who was presumably Jamie’s cell mate. “We’re three or four cells down from you.”
Parker heard something that sounded like a growl.
“Get out of there, lady.” The man’s voice again.
Then a ruckus, a brief struggle, followed by a high-pitched wail.
“She bit me!”
Gasps and curses and frantic motion filled the cellblock.
“Oh man,” Diaz said. “Oh man oh man oh man oh man.”
Parker felt a massive swarm of movement on the floor below him. People moving in the dark, trying to run and colliding into walls and each other.
Then two screams. The first, the scream of an infected finding prey. The second, the howling of a person in pain. The first sounded female. The second, male.
“I’m bit!” It was the voice of Chief Beckett.
Parker bolted out of his cell. He was past the door and heading straight toward the stairs that led down to the common area before he even realized what he was doing.
&n
bsp; He was going downstairs to help because he could. He wouldn’t turn if somebody bit him. He had less to lose, so if he didn’t go down there to help, he’d be the most useless human being in the cellblock.
One person after another crashed into him in the hallway. He was swimming against a current of humanity trying desperately to get as far away from the infected as possible, and he was stunned by the force of the tide. He had hands in his face, elbows in his neck and his ribs, shoulders in his chest, and even a knee in his groin. He half expected a broken nose. Terror seemed to make everyone twice as strong.
He found himself deadlocked with another man who tried and failed to steamroll him.
“Outta my way,” the man said, “outta my way outta my way.”
Parker grabbed the man by both shoulders and shunted him off to the side.
A woman shrieked down below.
A swirl of voices all around him.
“Does anyone have a cigarette lighter?”
“My mouth.”
“Fuck you, man.”
“I can’t move.”
“When does the sun come up?”
Parker found the stairs in the dark the hard way—by expecting his left foot to touch the floor and going downward and airborne instead. He pitched forward into someone running up the stairs and nearly sent both of them tumbling.
“Oof,” a woman said and shoved Parker in the chest.
Parker grabbed the handrail and stepped off to the side and out of the woman’s way.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs and found himself seemingly alone on the floor of the common area. Much of the jailhouse din was above him now since so many people on the main floor had surged up to the mezzanine level.
The sounds below froze his blood: growling, moaning, panting and crying.
“Chief?” he said.
“Here,” Beckett said. Somewhere off to the right.
Something growled. An infected to Parker’s left. It heard prey but couldn’t see any better than Parker could.
God, why couldn’t there at least be some moonlight?
“I’m coming to you,” Parker said to Beckett.
“Better hurry,” Beckett said. He sounded weak, on the verge of passing out.
Someone crashed into the left side of Parker’s body with incredible velocity and knocked him into one of the metal tables bolted into the floor. He felt a hard boom of pain as his right knee slammed into the metal bench.
Hands clawed at his torso and he felt the pressure of teeth in his shoulder that couldn’t quite find purchase in his flesh through his jacket.
He clawed at the person—the thing—trying to bite him.
His hands found the head of a woman. Smallish. Long hair. Delicate neck.
He grabbed the back of her hair and pulled her head away from him.
She screamed in his face. The reek of halitosis made him gag.
He did not want to do what he had to do. This woman was healthy not ten minutes earlier. Dehydrated, for sure, but otherwise a healthy and normal human being.
She grunted and thrashed and managed to get her head free of his hands.
Parker dropped his chin to his collarbone. With her head free, she could go for his throat.
Instead he found hers, first with his left hand and then with his right. He wrapped both hands around her larynx and squeezed. She gasped and made strangling noises and flailed at his chest impotently with her hands like a human-shaped animal.
Parker put all the strength in his body into his hands around her neck. Something finally gave in her throat and she went limp. Parker let her go and she slumped to the floor.
It was that easy, and yet it was so hard. He flexed his hands and shuddered. His chest tightened and his throat felt thick. He was dizzy and wanted to sit down, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t done yet. The chief was going to turn soon.
“Beckett?” he said.
“Here,” Beckett said. Ten feet to the right.
The other sounds in the cellblock—yelling, crying, screaming and cursing—became a blur of noise in the background.
“Sitting at…one of the…tables,” Beckett said.
Parker made his way toward the sound of the chief’s voice in the darkness, groping with his hands in front of him.
He tripped over someone on the floor, and when he stumbled forward, his feet slid as if the floor had been greased.
He went down hard on his stomach. Liquid covered his hands and soaked into the front of his pants. Even in the dark, he knew it was blood.
He’d tripped over a dead body. Someone had bled out.
“That’s Frist,” Beckett said. “I think.”
Beckett’s deputy.
“Frist!” Parker cried.
“He’s dead.” A man’s voice Parker didn’t recognize. Sounded like he was right next to Beckett. One of the chief’s other deputies, probably.
Parker stood and wiped the blood off his hands onto the lower part of his pantlegs.
His arms throbbed.
“Where are you, Beckett?” Parker said.
Something growled a few dozen feet in front of him.
Someone else gasped.
Beckett didn’t answer.
Parker heard movement in the cells.
The prison was quieter now. A couple of people were crying and moaning, but nobody was yelling anymore.
He groped his way forward until his hand found somebody’s shoulder. A man’s.
“Shh,” the man said. It wasn’t Beckett. “I got this.”
“Beckett?” Parker said.
“Boss?” the man said.
A sound in front of him, like someone’s knee or head hitting the bars on one of the doors.
Something was slinking around.
“He’s out,” the man whispered. “He’s my chief and I will take care of it. Go upstairs.”
Parker felt useless. He didn’t want to suffocate Chief Beckett, but he had to do something. He was the only person in that cellblock who was immune. It was like he had a superpower, and he’d be wasting it if he sat upstairs in the corner.
Someone banged into one of the cell doors and Parker heard another growl. Then a grunt. A scuffle.
And a scream.
Found prey.
Followed by a woman yowling in pain.
Parker moved toward the sound. Someone or something scurried away in the darkness.
No one else moved. No one else breathed. No one wanted to draw attention to themselves, not even those who were in pain.
Parker stood stock still and exhaled as slowly as possible.
Goddamnit, he wished he could see. He’d happily trade his immunity for a pair of night vision goggles. Those would give him a much better superpower right now.
A woman had been bit. Parker had no idea where she was.
But the infected that bit her was close. It slinked across the floor like a giant blind cat.
Parker didn’t know how many infected were downstairs. Perhaps just one or two, but he didn’t know how many others had been bit like Beckett and were going to turn.
“Has anyone else been bit?” he said. Aside from the woman who had just been bit a moment ago.
One of the cell doors slammed shut.
Movement all around, from the left, from the right and from even behind him.
Jesus, there were at least three of them. Moving toward the sound of the door slamming.
“Here,” a woman said in a pained voice.
Was that Betty the therapist?
One of those things screamed a dozen or so feet to the right of him and something else hurled itself against metal bars.
It wasn’t a good idea to take on three of those things by himself in the dark, but what choice did he have?
“Betty?” he said.
Something snarled in his direction. The infected knew where he was.
He took a few steps to the left.
“Betty, is that you? Were you bit?”
Something moved r
apidly toward him.
He took three steps back.
“Yes,” Betty said.
Movement toward the cell again.
Betty had locked herself inside so she couldn’t hurt anyone after she turned. But she was going to turn all the same.
“Is that you, Jonathan Parker?”
He felt a painful knot in the back of his throat. “It’s me, Betty.” He couldn’t swallow.
He took two silent steps to the right and bumped into one of the tables.
“Shut up!” A man’s voice. Beckett’s deputy. From the table behind him where Parker imagined Beckett’s prone body now lay.
Then a scuffle from the same location, followed by thrashing and screaming. One of those things found Beckett’s deputy.
Parker heard gasps and murmurs from the mezzanine level, and also from the cells in front of him.
“Here!” Betty yelled. He heard the sound of banging against the cell bars. Betty was kicking them. To draw attention to herself and away from the others.
The death struggle between Beckett’s deputy and one of those things continued. Parker groped his way toward the sound.
“Here!” Betty shouted.
Two infected screamed. One on each side of Parker.
Then he heard something huge slamming against a cell door.
“Come and get me, you sonofabitch!” Betty shouted.
“Jesus Christ!” Beckett’s deputy yelled out in pain.
Shouts of terror and astonishment filled the cellblock again.
The common area was crawling now with the sounds of the bitten and the infected.
“Oh my God.” A woman’s voice from upstairs.
Someone or something scurried across the floor and brushed Parker’s shoulder.
“Oh no.” Another voice from upstairs.
Whoever or whatever rushed past Parker found the stairs.
And climbed.
Parker heard snarling and grunting up there, a collision, and the all-too-familiar sound of an infected that had found prey.
Two sounds came next. First, a man yelling in pain. Then the screams of dozens of people in terror.
One of those things made it up the stairs and bit someone else.
There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, and the cellblock came apart.
Parker didn’t even try to do anything. What could he do? There were too many infected to stop, and at least one of them had just vanished into the crowded population upstairs. He just stood there on the floor of the common area as first one and then another of those things made its way up the stairs and chewed its way through humanity.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 35