“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”
“What if someone had tried? It doesn’t seem like it would do any good, but how would you have perceived it?”
“Words were just sounds. And they were weak sounds. They were the weak sounds of prey, like a sheep bleating as it runs from a lion. If someone had screamed in my face loudly enough, it might have slowed me down for a second, but that’s about it.”
She heard a scream outside, followed by a gunshot. The sounds were a little more muffled in the attic than they were downstairs in the bedroom.
“It’s dark up here,” Nash said.
Annie didn’t mind. The darkness felt peaceful. She was so weak that she only wanted to sleep, and darkness would just make it easier.
“I should go get some candles,” he said.
“What for?”
“So we can see,” he said, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her.
“Why do you need to see?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to see?”
She didn’t want to know what the attic looked like. She was content with the mystery. She had no idea how big the space was and what else was up there. Was it empty? Full of boxes? The floor could be littered with skulls for all she knew.
“How long do you want to stay up here?” she said.
“Until the cold comes back,” he said. “Then we can go out.”
“And then what?” she said. He’ll take her to find her friends?
“I’ll take you to find your friends,” he said.
Kyle knew exactly what he needed to do before he even woke up.
The instant he opened his eyes, he rose from his makeshift bed of blankets and pillows on the floor of Andy’s room. Andy was sitting up in bed and rubbing his head.
“Do you have a credit card?” Kyle said.
Andy paused before answering. “Why would I still have a credit card?”
“A driver’s license?”
“No, man.”
It didn’t matter. Kyle wouldn’t need to jimmy the lock. He could use a crowbar.
His watch read 9:30 a.m. Two hours past sunrise. Practically late in the day. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep until well past three o’clock in the morning.
He heard three rifle shots downtown. “Has that been going on all morning?”
“I have no idea,” Andy said. He had bags under his eyes.
“How long have you been up?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“And you’re still just sitting there?”
“Should I be getting ready for a meeting?”
Kyle shook his head and slipped his feet into his boots. His mouth tasted like warm sleep. He wanted to suck on some toothpaste, but he could do that when he returned.
“Where are you going?” Andy said.
“I have shit to do,” Kyle said and laced his boots tight.
He wasn’t going to explain himself yet.
He donned his coat and grabbed the crowbar. He parted the curtains a crack and peeked outside. No one and nothing was out in the parking lot. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Then he left.
The air outside was chilly, but still above freezing. He hated the Wyoming cold but wished it would return and coat the infected with ice.
The crowbar felt solid in his hand, like an iron extension of his arm. It was a formidable weapon against the infected if he didn’t face too many at once. It was no match, though, against men carrying guns.
So he marched toward the motel office intending to break through the glass door. Then he remembered that the last person to use it was Max the motel manager. Max was infected when he came out and wouldn’t have locked the door behind him.
He heard glass breaking a few blocks away, then the chilling scream of one of those things.
Kyle pushed the door open.
The motel office smelled sour, like a bit of rotting trash left behind. On the counter was a mess of papers, a computer monitor and a bell for guests to ring if the clerk was in back. A pool of what looked like vomit had dried on the floor. Behind the counter was a door with the word “Private” on it.
He searched behind the counter and didn’t find what he was looking for. Just some three-ring binders, a box of old credit card receipts and two unlabeled room keys, probably for the housekeeper.
He’d find what he wanted in back behind the Private door or he wouldn’t find it at all.
Kyle had never worked at a cheap motel before, but if the place was his, he wouldn’t rely solely on the cops for protection. He’d expect to deal with trashy people every day and creepy people at least once a month if not once a week. And once a year, he’d likely face somebody dangerous. Having a baseball bat on hand would be good enough most of the time, but not every time. Almost, but maybe not quite.
He didn’t see a baseball bat or anything else that would work as a weapon anywhere in the office. What he wanted would be in the back or it wouldn’t be anywhere.
The Private door was unlocked. Behind it was an unkempt living space with Salvation Army furniture, laundry on the floor and boxes of crap everywhere. There was a closet just to his right. If what he wanted was anywhere, it would not be in the bathroom or the kitchen or anywhere else far from the office. It would be there.
He opened the closet door and found what he wanted at once.
A shotgun. Leaning against the wall next to some winter gear.
It looked brand-new, as if it hadn’t been fired even once since coming out of the crate. The entire body was gunmetal gray, including the stock, and it said Remington on the side. He didn’t know what kind of Remington it was, but he knew a badass-looking weapon when he saw one, and this one was bad-ass.
On the closet shelf he found a box of 25 Herter’s Select Target shells. He opened the box, counted nine missing and placed the loose shells in his coat pocket.
The shotgun was heavier that it looked. He checked it and found it was loaded, probably with the nine from the box. He wasn’t sure where the safety was, but he’d find it.
He left the office and returned to the parking lot. An SUV, probably with one of Steele’s guys behind the wheel, passed the motel on Main going at least 60 miles an hour.
He let himself back into Andy’s room.
“Ho-ly shit,” Andy said when he saw the shotgun.
Kyle grinned.
“That’s a Remington Versa Max Tactical,” Andy said.
Kyle raised his eyebrows.
“Where the hell’d you get it?” Andy said.
“Max’s office.”
“Did you know it was there?”
Kyle shook his head. “No, but I’d want something on hand if I ran a dump like this, so I figured Max probably would too. Wish I’d have thought to check sooner.”
“Wish we had it yesterday. It would have worked great against that enormous infected.”
“I didn’t get it for the infected.”
Andy looked puzzled. “I assume you aren’t planning on shooting yourself.”
Kyle raised the shotgun up to eye level. The thing was a beast. “Nope,” he said. “I’m getting Parker out of that prison.”
38
Hughes knew Frank Nash was not coming home.
The neighborhood was disintegrating. A half dozen bodies littered the street in front of the house, and Hughes knew there were at least as many dead bodies inside the houses. The infected were breaking in, and they were also breaking out if they were infected from tap water. Hughes watched from behind the curtain as six of them prowled the street in a pack.
Lander was finished.
Wherever Nash was, he was either hunkering down or he was dead. Hughes couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t even know if Nash had Annie or not.
She could be anywhere. Locked in a building, hiding in somebody’s backyard or basement, dead or on a highway to Minnesota. Hughes didn’t have many options. He couldn’t go door-to-door, there was no point staking out any one place
in particular, and he couldn’t go down the list of addresses for people who worked at the hospital. Not with all of those things running around.
There was only one thing he could do—drive down every street and yell Annie Starling’s name as loud as he could. If she was free and uninjured, she could run out to meet him.
He used the filter from the sporting goods store to fill four bottles of water from the tap and placed them into his backpack. Enough to last the rest of the day. Then he bundled up in his coat, armed himself with his pump-action Persuader, checked the street to make sure it was clear, patted his pockets to ensure he had the keys and went outside Frank Nash’s house to the Suburban he’d parked at the curb.
No one was out on the street. He was safe for the moment.
He pressed the key fob and the Suburban doors thunked.
There was no point calling Annie name in front of Nash’s house. Obviously she wasn’t in there. So he opened the driver’s side door, sat behind the wheel, placed the key in the ignition, then stopped himself.
He had no idea where she was, which meant he had no idea where she wasn’t. Deciding that she couldn’t possibly be in any one place in particular was a bad idea. If he did it once, he’d do it again, and if he did it again, he’d make a habit out of it, and making a habit out of it meant he might screw up and miss her.
Hughes had to call Annie’s name at every single location in town, even if he was certain she had to be somewhere else. So while he knew she wouldn’t answer and come running, he called out to her anyway.
“Annie! Annie Starling! It’s Hughes!”
Annie startled at the sound of her name.
“Annie!”
She felt a galvanizing thrill somewhere between excitement and dread.
“Annie Starling!”
Was that Hughes?
“It’s Hughes!”
It was Hughes.
“We’ve been found,” Doc Nash said with fear in his voice.
“Thank God,” Annie said. “That’s my friend.”
“You know that person?”
“I came here with him from Seattle. Go. Bring him inside!”
Nash lowered the ladder out of the attic and scrambled onto it.
Annie heard what sounded like a large vehicle engine starting outside. It must be the Suburban. She didn’t know how, but Hughes found her.
Her mind raced for a moment until she had it. Of course. She was hiding next door to Nash’s house. Hughes had tracked her there from the hospital.
Nash was in the hallway beneath her now.
“Hurry, doc,” she said. “He thinks we’re at your house.”
Not once in her life had she been so relieved to hear a friend’s voice. She felt as if she were basking in sunlight and laughed like a giddy girl as her body released all its tension. She was going to be okay.
But then she sat upright. Nash had climbed down the ladder in such a hurry that he’d forgotten to take a kitchen knife with him.
She heard the front door open and close, then Nash’s faint muffled voice outside. “Hey, there.”
Hughes shouted, “Look out!”
Annie didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She thought she heard a scuffle but had no idea what was happening.
Feelings of relief somersaulted to dread. Her stomach roiled. She felt a heaviness in her chest, and the back of her throat ached.
“Hughes!” she shouted as loud as she could. “Doc!” She was still weak from blood loss and didn’t have enough energy to yell at full volume.
She heard a shotgun blast.
“Hughes!” she shouted. She wasn’t sure anybody could hear her.
Annie had to get down the ladder and out in front of that house.
She didn’t dare go outside unarmed, though, even if Hughes had his shotgun. She was too weak to climb down the ladder one-handed, so she dropped one of the kitchen knives through the trap door and onto the floor.
Her head swam as she placed her right foot onto the ladder. She had to stop for a moment or she’d fall, and she’d fall onto the knife she just dropped. She wanted to cry Hughes’ name again, but she didn’t have enough energy to yell and climb at the same time.
The Suburban’s engine idled outside. She hoped Doc Nash and Hughes were standing over the body of a now-dead infected, Nash telling Hughes that Annie was upstairs in his neighbor’s attic and how he’d rescued her from the mayor.
She lowered her other foot onto the ladder and braced her arms on the floorboards of the attic.
A vehicle door slammed shut outside.
She quickly dropped her right foot onto a lower rung.
The vehicle outside was moving. It was leaving.
Hughes couldn’t leave! He’d found her. What happened to Nash?
She lowered her left foot and gripped the top rung of the ladder with her hands.
The sound of the vehicle outside faded.
Hughes was actually leaving.
Had Doc Nash been killed? Just like that?
Her body went into flight mode. She had to get down the ladder and out in front of the house right this second.
She could lower herself more quickly now that her entire body was on the ladder. She reached the floor, picked up the kitchen knife, and dragged her exhausted self to the front door.
The street in front of the house was silent by the time she made it outside. She did not see Hughes. She did not see the Suburban.
She did, however, see Doc Nash face down on the dead winter lawn with an appalling wound in the back of his neck. He had bled out into the grass. Next to him lay the body of a gut-shot woman, the infected who had attacked him. Hughes had taken her out with the shotgun blast, but not quickly enough to save the doc. And not quickly enough that Nash could tell Hughes that Annie was there in the house. Nash died without Hughes even knowing who he was.
She dropped the knife onto the porch. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t believe that what had just happened had actually happened.
Hughes was just around the corner and she couldn’t catch him. She wouldn’t be able to catch him even if she had all her strength and could run.
But she heard him calling her name again.
“Annie Starling! It’s Hughes!”
She screamed, at first incoherently in an explosion of desperate relief. He wasn’t just driving off. He was taking his time looking for her.
She managed to scream out his name. “Hughes! I’m here!”
But she still couldn’t scream loud enough. What little strength she had had already left her. Hughes wouldn’t be able to hear her over the Suburban’s idling engine.
Her chest tightened so hard it hurt. She wanted to cry. Instead she picked up the knife.
Don’t cry, Annie, she told herself. Run.
Hughes did his best to avoid and ignore the infected, but there were too many.
They repeatedly charged him on residential streets when he stopped to call for Annie. Each time he took care of them with the Persuader. The shotgun’s powerful kick would leave a bruise on his shoulder by the end of the day, but he didn’t care.
Hughes almost got shot in the face once himself when two men wearing the Steele militia’s unofficial uniform took on a pack of them near a gas station. He’d stopped six blocks away, pausing at an intersection across from a boarded-up tavern with a cowboy boot on its sign. Steele’s men probably hadn’t seen him, and he doubted they’d give a shit if they had. Several infected hurled themselves at their black Chevy Tahoe as they drove in circles and fired out the passenger window. Hughes hit the gas and turned the wheel but he wasn’t fast enough. A bullet smacked through the windshield and tore through the passenger seat headrest before ripping into the back seat.
There was no telling how many of Steele’s men were left. Their numbers were down, though, and not just from the firefights with Elias and Carter a couple of nights earlier. Hughes saw desert camo fatigues on at least six dead bodies and two infected.
>
Lander’s response to the outbreak was startlingly supine. Most people in town just hid in their houses. Rather than form armed neighborhood protection units, they sat there and took it. Those who were inclined by personality and temperament to form neighborhood protection units had already done so months earlier when they became Steele’s militia, and they’d been decimated by Elias Sark’s insurrection. And since the mayor had locked up the cops and the sheriff’s deputies, both Steele and Sark crippled Lander’s ability to resist an attack at the worst possible moments.
After two hours, Hughes had driven down every street in Lander searching for Annie and didn’t find her. He finally pulled into the parking lot of a closed convenience store at the edge of town and sat hunched and heavy behind the wheel, wondering if he should start again over the same ground or widen his search.
If Steele’s men stashed Annie somewhere and kept her under guard, he’d never find her, but if she’d escaped from the hospital herself, she could have slipped out of town in the darkness.
Hughes couldn’t picture her stealing a car. First she’d have to steal a set of keys, and there wasn’t a chance she knew how to hot-wire anything. She’d be on foot or on a bicycle. Perhaps on the road, and perhaps in a rural cabin or house.
So it made more sense to widen the search. She could only be so far away. Rural Wyoming had few roads to choose from and there weren’t many hiding places in the desert. If she hid within sight of the road, she’d see the Suburban coming and could run out to meet him. He’d have to go slow, but she couldn’t be more than 50 miles out. Hughes could spend the afternoon covering most of that area.
He needed fuel, though—the Suburban was down to a quarter tank—so he headed back into town and took the first residential street to the end where modest working-class houses gave way to a light industrial area with a truck yard and a self-storage facility. The truck yard crouched behind a cyclone fence and a locked gate, but he could siphon gas out of one of the cars in front of one of the hardscrabble houses. He didn’t see anybody or any of those things around.
He stopped the Suburban in the street next to a 20-year-old gray Honda Accord with rust damage along the bottom that must have had at least 300,000 miles on the odometer. It was parked in front of a plain white ranch house with peeling paint and a dingy yard with sere brown grass. A wooden chair with a curved back had been left near the curb, its owner apparently hoping someone might take it away.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 37