by Billy Farmer
The man in the house screamed. He was losing the valiant battle he had been waging, and as soon as the Grays were finished, they would be looking for their next target. A single pop could be heard from the direction of the house. The screaming stopped. I quickened my pace.
Chapter 9
A group of Grays could be heard somewhere off to our right. We huddled behind a garbage dumpster while they sniffed and snorted their way past us. Two of the Grays near the end of the pack splintered off from the rest and got uncomfortably close to the dumpster. They looked disoriented. One spun in circles before falling to the ground. He didn’t get up. I wasn’t sure if he was dead, but he wasn’t moving. The other wondered aimlessly off in another direction.
After watching the befuddling show, I glanced over at the child. Her poor little face was covered in snow. Jesus, I thought, could you not wipe the poor thing off. A street over, there was a business with a small portico that would provide a much-needed respite from the elements, and hopefully allow the woman some time to come to her senses. It would have the added benefit of allowing me to think.
Once safely there, the woman, at my urging, listlessly dusted the snow off her child. After wiping the child’s face, she tried to clean her own, but the smooth fabric of her coat, coupled with the weird coating on her sleeves, didn’t function well as a snot rag. Instead of wiping the snot and tears away, her coat sleeve had the effect of smearing them all over her face.
The woman wasn’t much of a talker. I asked her on at least two occasions if she had been injured. She stared blankly in any direction but mine, not bothering acknowledging my spoken words. I hoped it was just shock and that she would come around. I focused instead on things that aimed to do harm to us while she re-swaddled her baby in a pair of thick, pink blankets. After waiting for her to finish with the child, I asked her if she was ready to continue. She looked irked for being asked. She did however give me a slight nod.
I had walked several feet before noticing she wasn’t following me. Instead, she stood under the portico, fidgeting with something in her pocket. I couldn’t see what the hell she was doing, but it wasn’t nearly as important as getting her ass going. I quickly walked to where she stood and reiterated how she needed to follow me. She gathered up what resolve she could muster and finally did as I asked.
The woman cleared her throat. I looked at her, expecting her to say something, but she didn’t. We walked a bit farther before she finally spoke. “Where are we going?”
I knew she had a child, but she was really dragging ass. Not only that, but on the rare occasion she did talk to me, she spoke too loudly because she wouldn’t, for whatever reason, walk closely with me. I stopped. Once she finally got close enough to properly communicate, I said, “The pancake.”
“What’s the pancake?”
That was weird, I thought. The joke of Barrow had been Miley’s building. One of the local tour companies had even added the monstrosity as a stop. When we were on leave in town, and one of the locals heard we worked for Miley, laughs and jeers almost always followed. I assumed everyone knew about the pancake. “You not from around here?” I asked, curious.
She paused for a moment, and I wondered if she was going to stonewall me some more. Instead, she finally said, “My husband and I just moved back from Dillingham to help out with his sick parents. Why?” She replied, barely audible this time and near emotionless.
“Just curious.”
Miley’s office building was called the pancake because it looked like three huge, double-wide trailers had their roofs lopped off and were then stacked on top of one another. Throw in an industrial strength double-door on the bottom floor, a few narrow windows with garishly ornate shutters, some underpinning that matched the shutters to try to hide the metal stilts that elevated it above the permafrost, this God-awful orange paint to round out the decor, and that was Miley’s office building.
She gave me a quick glance before looking away.
“We’re going to Miley Corp. It’s where I work. It’s not too far from here.”
“I think I know the place, now that you mention it,” She paused. “I’m… I’m glad we’re going there. It seems like a safe place,” she said, trying to contort her face in something bordering on a smile.
Something struck me as off about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on what that something was. “Yeah.”
We crouched against a fence extending a good portion of the northern perimeter of the runway, presumably erected to keep fools and drunks from getting hit by planes on landings and takeoffs. H Street was just a few feet away from us on our left, and Miley’s office was not much more than a block away to the east, on the other side of D Street.
If we had gotten there before the snow had begun falling again, I would’ve almost certainly been able to see Miley’s office building from where we stood, but with the fresh round of thick snow I could barely see twenty feet in front of me. “We’re going to have to move. I can’t see anything from here.”
“I won’t be able to keep her from crying,” she said sharply.
I nodded. “I should probably know your name. If I I’ve got to call for you or something, it’s just going to be a little weird, saying, hey, you,” I said, kind of sort of trying to cut the tension.
She acted like she didn’t want to tell me it, but after an awkward few seconds, she finally said it was Kelley.
“Well, Kelley, my name is William. If the baby cries, we’ll figure something out, okay?”
She was a woman of few words. She didn’t bother replying to me. Instead, she indicated she had heard me by slightly nodding her head, not bothering to even make eye contact. She was sort of an angry Avery, I thought.
Over the howl of the wind, I thought I heard voices just up the street from us. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
I’d like to say I was a great leader during those early days. I could imagine my dopey self on a poster. I’d be holding a pistol or maybe a big-ass sword. Maybe there’d be a woman holding onto my leg; hell, maybe it would be Kelley - lord knows she was pretty enough to be on a poster. I’d point that big-ass sword in the direction of my enemies, and my army of lesser men would charge into the void and vanquish them. That would be kick ass. It would also be the biggest lie ever told.
The reality of the situation? My leadership was less optimal, as Avery might call it, than I might’ve liked to paint it. Sam probably would’ve called it “hog shit in a nun’s bellybutton” or some other nonsensical way of describing my ineptitude. The fact of the matter was I was paralyzed with fear, and the voices I heard just minutes earlier weren’t helping matters.
We were within running distance of Miley’s. Looking down at the poor baby, I remember thinking how she might not make it if we didn’t hurry, but internal struggles coupled with self-doubt left me paralyzed. The best I could come up with was to err on the side of caution. The baby would be dead just the same at the hands of the Grays or at the bite of the bitter cold. And since the military presence we hoped for didn’t pan out, or at least hadn’t appeared to, the best course was to err on the side of caution.
***
There was a blue duplex just across the street from Miley’s office building. It had stairs leading to a small landing and entrance to the upstairs apartment. The upstairs landing would provide an excellent vantage point over the surrounding area. The few minutes up there scoping the area seemed like a better option than just running for our lives and hoping Miley’s was safe.
Under the steps leading to the second-floor apartment was a small, mostly enclosed cubbyhole just big enough for Kelley and baby. It had wide strips of latticework covering the railing and would provide adequate cover from the wind and snow. I let her know I was going to climb to the top to get a better look. She absently nodded. I think I was starting to grow on her. I glanced at the baby before leaving. She was swaddled in thick blankets, but I worried about her. She would at least be prote
cted from the wind and snow under the stairs.
The surprise of hearing what I thought was a buzzing cell phone stopped me in my tracks. More specifically, I heard the reverberations of a vibrating cell phone off the wooden lattice of the porch. “Did you hear that buzzing?” I asked, walking around to where she sat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about… I didn’t hear anything,” she said.
Either I was going crazy or Kelley was deaf. She didn’t hear the voices I know I heard, and she didn’t hear the loud, vibrating sound coming from two feet away from her. I was exhausted mentally and physically, my nerves were shot, but by god my ears still worked. I decided to let it go. There were other more important matters to attend to.
The landing was a complete dud. I couldn’t see shit from up there. I felt completely impotent and stupid. It was obvious I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. All the landing provided was time: time to feel terrible for all the crappy decisions I had made up until that point. I had endangered my friends’ lives. Not only that, but I had also picked up two other people I couldn’t take care of.
My mind raced with negative conclusions, which was just an extension of how I felt back at the security fence. My friends were probably dead, and that was probably my fault. The military wasn’t there, and I was all alone. If I had allowed it, my mind would have raced in an infinite loop of horrendous outcomes. Instead, I summoned strength and resolve I never knew I had and put a stop to the destructive thinking.
Once I calmed myself, I inexplicably laughed. Kelley probably thought I was crazy, and maybe I was. After all, we were literally fifty feet from Miley’s parking lot. I wasn’t going to learn anything else from the landing. All I was doing was putting the baby’s health in jeopardy because I was afraid to cross the street – afraid of what I would find or not find.
You know how you feel when you buy a Powerball ticket? Although statistically you know you probably aren’t going to win, that doesn’t stop you from thinking you could be holding a winning ticket. I wanted to savor my numbers a little while longer, I guess. I didn’t want to find out I’d lost, because everyone’s a potential winner until they’re not. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had made excuses long enough. It was time to walk across the fifty-foot expanse and see if my friends were there. It was time to check the numbers.
I quickly made my way down to where Kelley sat. Where the hell was the baby, I wondered. Before I could say anything, she said, “I needed to feed her. She was getting fussy.”
Sure enough, she had her inside her parka. “Oh, okay – I’m, uh, I’m going back up there until you’re finished.”
“It’ll just be a few more minutes.”
“Sure.” More time to savor my numbers.
She seemed to be trying to be nice to me. For a moment, I felt guilty for the way I felt about her. I hired a lot of people in my day, though, and my record was pretty good, especially given I didn’t always have top tier people to choose from. I was confident in trusting my gut, and it was screaming not to trust her, especially since I was pretty sure she lied to me about the cell phone. Having said all of that, I was willing to delay my conclusions about her until a later time, especially considering she had just lost her husband in a horrible manner.
But still, if all the electronics were down, how in the hell did she have a cell phone?
Nearly as soon I got back to the landing, I heard a crash to my left, followed by the sounds of multiple broken windows. What the hell! Soon after, I heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow directly below the landing. My first thought was Kelley running off with the baby. I looked to where the noise seemed to be coming from, and it wasn’t Kelley. There was a brief respite of sound, and then I was inundated with the crunching of hundreds of footsteps in snow.
“The fuck,” I said under my breath. A completely naked Gray walked by, no more than ten feet away from the duplex. I quickly switched off my headlamp, so he wouldn’t see me. He was closely followed by Grays in various forms of dress. The naked man was in the minority, but there were others who were nearly as scantily clad has he was. If they were affected by the cold, they didn’t act like it.
Grays filed out between the houses all along D Street before congregating in the street adjacent to Miley’s office. Without the extra light from my headlamp, I couldn’t see far enough to get an accurate number, but considering the number of footsteps and the amount of sniffing and snorting I heard, there a lot of them.
Why hadn’t I fucking gone when I had the chance!
“William,” Kelley whispered from below me. I quickly scanned below us to see if any Grays had been alerted by her voice, but the ones I could see seemed unaffected. I quickly but quietly made my way down the steps, crouching to stay below the railing as I made my way around to where she sat safely in her little nook with the baby still inside her parka.
“I can’t see anything from here. What’s going on?” She asked, being a hell of a lot cooler than I was.
I got as close to her as comfortable before whispering, “Grays. We’re blocked from Miley’s, at least from here, anyway.”
She gave me a questioning look. “Grays?”
“The monsters,” I huffed, leaving it at that.
She nodded.
A Gray sniffed dangerously close. He must have heard me. I put my hands out in front of me, palms towards her, letting her know to stay put. I duck walked my way to the steps leading down off the porch. My legs burned at almost any new activity. So much so that my right leg finally locked up, causing me to have to stop and stretch it for a moment before continuing. I crawled on my hands and knees the rest of the way to the steps that led off the porch.
I peeked around the railing to my right, then chided myself for letting out a quick gasp. No more than five feet away stood at least four Gray stragglers. They were curious about something because they sniffed the air relentlessly, but for whatever reason they seemed contented to sniff in place. The fact that they were agitated let me know they knew something was up, but they were having a difficult time figuring out exactly what it was they were curious about. One of them yelped like a dog. That was new.
There was a noise somewhere to the south of the duplex. Who in the hell would be stupid enough to make that much noise? I wondered. It sounded like a metal pipe being smacked against the airport safety fence. There was a buzz of grunts and inhuman sounds beginning near the fence and cascading all up and down the line of Grays in the street. This was followed by numerous fast running towards the sound. Much to my dismay, there were still plenty of grunts and snorts from Grays who didn’t leave. Still, I couldn’t help wondering if the noise hadn’t thinned the ranks in front of us enough that we might be able to sneak through the line.
My manhood already gone due to my inability to walk upright, I crawled back to the nook. I let Kelley know I was going to see if there was a way forward to Miley’s, and if there wasn’t I was going to try to clear a way back to safety. “Get your pistol ready just in case.” She nodded.
I crept down the steps, trying to stay low and quiet enough to go unnoticed. The four steps off the porch were just about the cherry on top for my increasingly uncooperative legs. A lone Gray was off to my right, his back facing me. He was the only one I saw, but there were others. I was sure of that. The Gray in front of me suddenly jerked his head around to the side, sniffing loudly but not moving.
I inched towards D Street. I cursed silently. The Grays in the street were packed in so tight, there was no way we could make our way through their ranks. I moved a short way towards the airport, but the line was just as thick there. There could’ve been a thousand or more of them blocking our way. Why had I been so damn stupid and indecisive?
I eased my way back several feet away from the street. As bad as I hated to think about it, the maintenance building was probably the safest bet. We might be able to break into a house that was closer, but who knows what we might find inside. I decided on the maintenance building. I
t was the safest bet.
I would need to clear a path back to the maintenance building. I wasn’t sure how I would do it, though. I couldn’t exactly ask them nicely to disperse in an orderly fashion. I quickly glanced around for bottles, cans, or anything like that I could use to get their attention. Then it dawned on me that even if I were to be able to find things to throw, they weren’t going to make enough noise when they hit the snow. That wasn’t going to work. I finally decided I would have to be the noisemaker.
I surveyed a path back to the maintenance building. There were stragglers everywhere. I crept between two of them, miraculously going unnoticed. I moved about twenty more feet before I lightly clapped my hands together. The one closest to me began making odd guttural breaths but didn’t initially move. I clapped again, this time a little harder. The last thing I wanted to do was alert the main group in the street.
The Gray jerked his head up and towards my direction, grunted, then sniffed hard, and took several unsure steps in my direction. The one next to him grunted and moved, and that prompted the next Gray and so on and so forth until I had managed to move a decent-sized group of them away from the duplex. They were surprisingly easy to move. Too easy.
As per usual, when someone gets cocky, mistakes are made. I wanted to hurry up and get them out of the way, so I moved farther away from them while clapping my hands harder. I had no reason to worry because the ones following me seemed to lack the ability to locate me in the heavy snowfall. Like the one back at the house, not all of them were docile idiots. There were smarter ones out there. I forgot that fact.
I had moved them far enough away for my escape plan to work, but I decided to clap one more time for good measure. Not long after that last clap, I heard fast footfalls in my direction. Assuming I was the target, I wasted no time attempting to get the hell away from the quickly approaching footsteps, but I lost my footing in the snow and fell to the ground in the process. My head hit something hard, maybe the rifle, in the snow after my feet slipped out from under me, and I felt like I might black out, AGAIN.