If he stopped, he’d die. If he tripped, he’d die. If he slowed, he’d die. If just one of them caught him, he’d die. And he could tell by the screams in their throats and their boots and shoes pounding the asphalt that the bulk of the horde was falling behind but the fastest and strongest were gaining on him. So he made an about-face, placed the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder, pointed it directly at the stream of infected and fired.
He didn’t aim and it didn’t matter. The butt of his shotgun slugged him in the shoulder as buckshot blew two of those things into pieces. More were coming, wailing and snarling, and Kyle squeezed the trigger again and took out four more.
The six fastest were down; the rest were farther behind, the closest at the dim edge of the Maglite beam’s radius. He sped away from them in a straight line down the middle of the road, noted the next cross street roughly fifty feet ahead of him, and killed the light as the army bore down on him.
The darkness was total and Kyle instinctively slowed. Neither mind nor body allowed him to run full tilt into the blackness. If he careened into a parked car, the horde would find him and swallow him.
The infected first slowed and them almost stopped. Their footfalls first sounded less urgent and angry, then farther away. They were blind too, and they had no idea that before turning the light off Kyle had memorized the route dead ahead of him: Modest ranch houses on all sides, a fire hydrant on the left, a parked Ford Taurus on the right, then the cross street. Twenty feet. Ten feet.
Now.
He turned left into the inky void and left the infected behind.
Running was impossible now. Kyle could stumble over the curb or a dead body, smack into a tree or parked car, so he walked and groped his way in the dark. Though his heart hammered in his chest and his lungs cried out for oxygen, he forced himself to breathe as slowly and quietly as if he were sucking air through a straw. If he stood there panting and gasping, the infected would hear him and find him. His chest burned and his eyes felt as if they might bulge from their sockets, but he took it as the infected wandered aimlessly about in the blackness, bumping into things and each other. They had no idea that he’d turned left at the cross street, and from the scattered sounds they made, most of them kept going straight.
Kyle felt better after a few moments and kept going, stepping gingerly in case his feet found a pothole or curb. With his left hand out in front of him, he reached the back of a car. Which was helpful. It told him where the middle of the street was and which way it headed. Now oriented, he could walk with a little more confidence.
He had no idea where he was going. No matter. If he could get far enough away from the infected, he could turn on the Maglite again and find his way back to the prison.
The neighborhood grew quieter. Kyle noticed the wind now, soft and dry as air blowing out of a vent in the floorboards. He smelled the desert on that wind. It smelled like sagebrush and dirt. In the far distance he heard a shotgun blast and what he thought was a woman’s scream, followed by the squealing of tires.
He was almost alone. As far as he could tell, the nearest infected were a block behind him now. If he could turn left again and head back toward the prison, he might be able to turn on his light without being seen. But he had no idea where the next cross street was. If he had a tiny pen light he might be able to risk turning it on for a second, but the Maglite would illuminate the street like blazing sunshine.
Kyle could, however, walk another two blocks or so and then turn it on. He’d have plenty of time to get back to the van before they could catch him. So he walked two more blocks, groping his way in the dark, and only encountered two more parked cars on the way.
Then he tripped on something that felt like a body and damn near sprawled into the street.
He stood stock still and listened, his heart racing all over again, and heard nothing nearby. No snarling, no footsteps, no breathing. A faint odor of rotten meat curled up his nostrils; the body he’d tripped over.
Kyle sensed he’d created at least a 300 foot buffer between himself and the infected. If they’d heard him stumble, he detected no sign of it. He was alone, probably, sort of.
He couldn’t know for sure, though, unless he could see, so he braced the shotgun against his shoulder, place his right index finger inside the trigger guard and pressed the button on the top of the Maglite.
The intersection flooded with light. Kyle saw everything now—two-story pre-war houses with gabled roofs, oak trees with trunks like Roman columns, a filthy Mercedes that hadn’t been washed for months, a smashed pair of glasses on the sidewalk and, two blocks behind him, the dispersed edge of the horde.
He must have heard a half dozen simultaneous screams.
Kyle ran with everything he had, circling back in a roundabout way toward the prison again, but several infected, eight or nine of them, appeared in the street two blocks ahead. He could take them out with the Remington, but then he’d have to stop and reload, so instead he went right at the next cross street.
The infected came at him from three directions now—from the left, from the right, and especially from behind—and while Kyle had a healthy head start, he couldn’t outrun them all. He’d have to turn off his light again, but they were far enough behind him this time that he might be able to find a good hiding place first.
Two more bodies appeared ahead in the middle of the street, one a man wearing coveralls and lying in a pool of dried blood, the other a child with its rib cage exposed like a half-eaten kill on the savannah. They lay next to a car with the driver side window smashed, glass shards winking on the ground in the beam of the Maglite. Kyle gave the dead a wide berth and came upon another gruesome scene, a puddle of spent bullet casings in the street and a trail of blood leading into some juniper bushes.
Kyle ran another block and found a city park with a baseball diamond, a swing set, a merry-go-round and a cinderblock building housing two restrooms tucked beneath oak trees with monstrous arms and wintry claws. The building had a flat roof and a green plastic garbage can next to it. He made a beeline for the restrooms where he could hop onto the garbage can and climb onto the roof. From up there he could thin the herd with the shotgun. He still had a boxful of shells bulging in his front pocket, and when he ran out he could turn off the light and wait for however many were left to wander off.
The nearest infected were still 200 feet behind him as he approached the building. He had maybe 30 seconds to haul himself onto the roof, though he’d have to throw the shotgun and flashlight up first. He reached the building, stopped at the trashcan, turned around and aimed the light behind him.
No, he did not have 30 seconds. At most, he had only 20 before the vanguard ripped him apart. He stepped away from the trashcan, gripped the shotgun with both hands and tossed it up toward the roof.
He did not throw it hard enough. It arced upward and almost made it over, but it clipped the lip and bounced away from the building and onto the grass.
Kyle was out of time.
He scrambled onto the trashcan.
Fifteen seconds.
The trashcan was full, heavy. It took his weight and held steady.
Ten seconds.
With his arms extended over his head, he reached the lip of the roof with both hands.
Eight seconds.
He bent his knees and jumped for momentum, then pulled up and straightened his arms, bringing his waist up level with the edge of the roof.
Five seconds. His feet were still within grabbing distance.
He heaved himself forward and crawled onto the building as the horde broke like a screaming wave beneath his feet.
Exhausted, his chest heaving, Kyle rolled onto his back. He wanted to lay there for an hour, but one or more of those things might do exactly what he had just done and follow him onto the roof, so he scrambled to his feet. They’d only be able to come up one at a time. Kyle could kick them off.
He could see okay with his flashlight down in the grass, and now he knew what
he was facing. There weren’t 100 infected below him, but easily 200, some drawn to his fallen Maglite like insects as many more surged against each other and the building. None tried to climb, but the walls and the roof thrummed beneath Kyle’s feet. The horde’s seething mass would surely attract the infected from all over town. Kyle was about to be encircled by nearly every single one of those things within a square mile.
They couldn’t see him if he kept his head down and away from the edge of the roof, and if they couldn’t see him they’d eventually forget he was there, but they wouldn’t move on any time soon, not with the Maglite flooding the park. Kyle was at the center of the only bubble of light for perhaps a hundred miles in any direction.
He lay on his back and placed his hand on his abdomen.
Thousands of stars shimmered in the sky like shattered diamonds. His body felt as heavy as lead. All he wanted to do was sleep until morning. The infected would stumble away when dawn arrived like a lit match in the sky, then Kyle could hop down, retrieve his shotgun and make another run for the prison.
A faint voice from the primitive part of his mind told him, don’t you dare go to sleep. He might never wake up. One of those things might remember that he’s up there, haul itself up like a nightmare apparition and kill him.
What a strange turn things had taken, he thought as he sat up and rubbed his face. After crossing a thousand miles of wasteland with two people he loved and one person he hated, he’d given up on the two people he loved and was risking his life for the person he hated. He didn’t even know if Parker was still alive, and if he was still alive, Kyle couldn’t be sure Parker wouldn’t break him in half at the first opportunity.
Some kind of truck or SUV—Kyle couldn’t see anything but the running lights—appeared six blocks away and stopped. The infected below turned toward it with a curious look of almost wonder on their faces. They didn’t move, though, not at first, and a hush fell over the park.
The driver shouted. “Annie!” It sounded like Hughes.
The infected stirred.
“Annie Starling!”
My God. It actually was Hughes, out looking for Annie in the Suburban.
“It’s me, Hughes!”
The horde screamed and surged.
Kyle hit the deck in case Hughes opened fire, but Hughes did not open fire. Instead, the Suburban’s tires crunched hard and angry on the asphalt as Hughes turned around and drove away to the west as the horde followed.
Kyle just stood there on the roof with his mouth slack for a couple of moments as the truck and the wave of infected receded. The swings on the playground squeaked in the wind. If another person were to show up at that moment, they’d have no idea anything had even happened.
The Remington and the attached Maglite lay on the grass. Both seemed undamaged. Kyle’s path to the prison—and hopefully Parker—was open.
41
After the infected poured out of the cellblock, Tawnie rewarded Parker with a warm and wet kiss, as if he was the one who had saved everybody. God, what a moment of delirious heaven. It positively melted his insides. It had been so long since a woman had kissed him, more than two years, so long that he had resigned himself to never touching another woman again. For a while there, he wasn’t sure he’d even see another woman again besides Annie, and he never had the slightest chance with a woman like Annie.
He shouldn’t have the slightest chance with a woman like Tawnie either. Parker wasn’t stupid. She took comfort in him because he was there and because she’d thought she was going to die.
Parker ignored the few dozen others still alive in the cellblock. He didn’t know them, couldn’t see them and didn’t care about them. He could hear their inane conversations, pointless speculation about who had arrived with flashlights and keys, when they were coming back, what was going on outside the walls, what had happened to Steele and if anyone would ever be able to turn the power back on. Nobody had the first clue.
They weren’t even free yet, but that was fine with him. He hoped that whoever had showed up earlier took their time coming back, because the minute he and Tawnie were free, she’d ditch him. She would either wander off by herself or glom onto somebody else. Somebody younger, more attractive, more capable and more virile.
He only had a short time with her and wanted to savor her delicious femaleness and her make-believe love as long as he could.
They lay together in darkness, her head resting on his chest and his hand on her back. She didn’t kiss him again. She might never kiss him again and certainly wouldn’t fuck him, but it was better than laying with a hooker who said she loved him for money. Tawnie’s feelings were real at that moment; they just wouldn’t last. And if he knew it, she knew it.
She eventually pulled away from him and sat up in the darkness. “What do you think’s going on?”
Parker wanted to reach for her but held off. “Whoever opened that door,” he said, “has to deal with the infected before coming back in here.”
“Sure,” she said, “but—that was an hour ago. Whoever let them out might be dead.”
She got up and moved to the bars. He yearned for her but said nothing. She had a point. Whoever opened that door might never come back. If so, Parker could spend a lot more time with her—what little remained of the rest of their lives.
Parker huffed and hoped she didn’t notice. If she wasn’t going to return to the mattress, he’d be better off falling asleep and fast-forwarding time. He turned over and faced the wall, willing Tawnie to come back and give a man drowning in loneliness a little more respite, but she hovered near the bars as if staring into the black and invisible void might bring the rescuers back.
And after a while, it worked.
“Flashlight!” she said. “Someone’s coming.”
“The guards are back!” A man’s voice from the mezzanine level.
“Thank God,” said a woman.
“It’s just one person,” another man said.
“One light,” the woman said, “but there could be more than one person.”
The flashlight beam bobbed around in the lobby for a moment, then disappeared. Whoever had entered the building wasn’t coming straight to the cellblock.
“Help!” Tawnie shouted.
“Back here!” a man Parker didn’t know shouted.
“Let us out!” A woman this time.
Parker rubbed his eyes with his palms.
“Here he comes,” Tawnie said.
Parker looked up and saw the flashlight beam again, coming closer this time. The door opened and a cold blue light flooded inside. Whoops, cheers and applause broke out in the cellblock.
Parker saw Tawnie’s face for the first time in hours. She hadn’t washed in days—like everyone else, she was afraid of the water—and he could see from the lines on her cheeks that she had cried sometime recently. He had no idea. She’d done it quietly.
“I’m looking for the master key,” the stranger said. Jesus, it sounded like Kyle. “Parker, are you in here?”
Holy mother of fuck, it actually was Kyle.
“Kyle?”
“Parker?”
“Right here.”
“Hold tight,” Kyle said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” The door closed and darkness returned.
Parker couldn’t believe it. The punk-ass kid came to rescue him.
The floor seemed to tilt at a 45-degree angle. The hell? It didn’t compute. Parker wouldn’t be locked up in the first place if it weren’t for that bastard.
“He’s a friend of yours?” Tawnie said.
“Yeah,” Parker said, stunned by his answer.
“What about Iowa?” she said.
“Iowa?”
“You said you would take me to Iowa.”
Of course. And he meant it too. “You’re coming with us.”
“But you haven’t asked him yet.”
“We were on our way to Iowa before I got tossed in here.”
He was not being entirely honest with he
r. Yes, he and Kyle were on their way to Iowa, but only because Iowa was on the way to Atlanta and Annie had to get to Atlanta. They weren’t going to Iowa, exactly, they were going through it. But Tawnie could come. Maybe she’d even travel with them to Atlanta.
That would only happen if Annie was okay. Parker had been so sure he’d never get out of the prison alive that he’d stopped even wondering what happened to Annie.
“Kyle!” Parker shouted.
And where the hell was Hughes? Why was Kyle here by himself?
Kyle’s flashlight appeared again and he returned to the cellblock.
“I think I found it,” he said. He stepped inside and placed something Parker couldn’t see in the doorway to keep it from closing again. It sounded like an office chair with wheels for feet. Parker saw that Kyle’s flashlight was the long and heavy kind cops liked to carry and that he’d duct-taped it to a shotgun barrel.
Kyle navigated around islands of piled up viscera in a sea of dried blood on his way to Parker’s and Tawnie’s cell, pinching his nose as he stepped over burst ribcages, gnawed limbs and even a stray severed head missing an eyeball.
“Jesus Christ,” Kyle said.
Parker still couldn’t believe it. Only one explanation made sense: Hughes ordered Kyle into the prison because he was somewhere else standing watch over Annie.
“Let me guess,” Tawnie said in a husky voice and reached through the cell bars toward Kyle. “You’re Luke Skywalker and you’re here to rescue me.”
Parker clenched his teeth.
“Something like that,” Kyle said.
“Where’s Annie?” Parker said.
“Hang on,” Kyle said. “Let me get everyone out first.”
“What about Hughes?”
“Hang on,” Kyle said again. The key in his hand was a huge metal thing with a rounded grip half the size of a fist and a blade longer than a finger from knuckle to tip. Parker held his breath as Kyle placed it in the lock and turned it to the left.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 40