Intruders (Book 2): The Awakening

by Tracy Sharp

  “You guys are from North Carolina?”

  “I’m from Virginia. Rye’s from Carolina,” Daphne said.

  “What all have you seen?” The tone of my question held a bit of hesitation. I didn’t want to pry too much, but my curiosity cut through the small talk.

  Daphne chuckled. “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”

  Memories of what I’d seen underground made my pulse quicken and my stomach tighten. I didn’t want to talk about it. Not at all. But if we were going to be a group, I needed to trust them enough to tell them where I’d been. They needed to trust me. “I’ve seen where they live. I’ve been in the underground tunnels.”

  Daphne stopped walking. I continued for another stride. Rye almost tumbled to the ice again.

  “Watch it,” he said. “I’ll pull a Humpty Dumpty if I hit that shit again.” He forced a laugh that sounded like hiccups.

  “They took you?” Daphne asked.

  I shook my head. I wanted to clam up, but forced myself to tell them. “No. I went down there trying to save people. It was horrible, much worse than anything the deadies could do.”

  “How did you get away from them? There are so many down the—”

  Daphne cut her words, but she’d said enough to let me know she had seen their underworld too.

  “How did you get away?” I asked.

  Daphne didn’t answer right away. She paused for about fifteen seconds and then spoke softly. “They took me. I was in a cocoon.”

  I stared at her, awed. She’d been down there and had made it out alive. “I saw the cocoons. How did you get out of it?”

  “She’s got superhero powers,” Rye said. “She can fly, too.”

  “Shut up and save your energy,” Daphne said, before turning her attention to me. “I have no idea why I woke up, but I did. And there was no way I was going to let those green bastards breed me. I’m pretty fast, too.” She winked at me.

  “Do you really have super powers?” I asked. “I mean, anything is possible these days.”

  Daphne chuckled. “No. Or else I would fly us out of this frozen wasteland. I can sense them, though. When they’re near, my body turns into an electrical storm.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “It starts in the soles of my feet, like little pinpricks, kinda like when your foot is waking up from sleep. Then it moves to my toes. My fingers start to tingle. The closer they get, the more electrically charged I am.”

  “She’s my guard dog. Kinda like that fella up there.” Rye couldn’t point, but he tilted his shoulder in Hank’s direction.

  “That’s Hank,” I said. “I don’t think he tingles when the aliens are nearby, but he sure hates deadies.”

  Hank turned back to me when I said his name. He wagged his tail and then went back to leading our pack. This did feel like a pack. I barely knew these people, but they had seen everything I had…and maybe worse. They’d survived. Hank and I survived. There was a reason Daphne and Rye didn’t take the easy way out and become deadies, or in Daphne’s case, a breeding machine for the aliens. We didn’t have to be lifelong friends. We didn’t have to wish each other Happy Birthday on Facebook. We had something much better going for us than knowing each other’s favorite food. We wanted to survive. We wanted to win this war. We wanted to take back our world from the intruders.

  Hank barked. Being around him for the last few weeks, I’d learned the meanings between his various types of barks. Hank would let out a few short enthusiastic barks after we survived a deadie attack. It was his way of high-fiving me, I guess. This bark wasn’t like those. This was a signal for alarm.

  “Come back here, buddy,” I said.

  Hank ran back and stood by me. I gave him a few head scratches.

  “What did he see?” Daphne asked.

  I shook my head, uneasiness draping over me. “I’m not sure. Probably a deadie.”

  Two slumbering forms appeared from the side of a destroyed shanty. One deadie slipped on the ice and fell face first. It struggled to get to its feet. The other, a woman, marched toward us.

  “Stay with Rye. I’ll take care of them,” Daphne said.

  I was in awe of Daphne’s ability not to blink in the face of death. She walked toward the woman, almost as if she were reuniting with a lost friend. But when she got within arms’ reach, the woman grabbed for Daphne. She stepped to the side and pushed the woman to the ice. Without hesitation, Daphne placed her foot on the back of the woman’s head and slammed it into the hard surface. There was a shattering noise. I couldn’t tell if it was the ice or the woman’s face.

  “She’s a badass,” Rye said.

  Daphne turned to the other deadie, this one was a man, as he struggled on his hands and knees. She kicked him in the face, flipping him over on his back. The shattering sound was almost an echo of the first one, and there was no doubt it came from the deadie.

  “We don’t have time for this shit,” Daphne said, standing between the two motionless deadies.

  ***

  There were considerably less deadies than I’d expected in the city. Rye no longer joked and he couldn’t walk on his own. Daphne and I dragged him while Hank continued to play point. Hank even looked a little puzzled that we weren’t bombarded with the dead.

  “It’s a ghost town,” Daphne said.

  Rye mumbled, but his words were incoherent.

  “We need to find him some dry clothes fast,” Daphne said.

  “There.” I pointed to a sign that lay beneath a shattered window. “Jim’s Outdoor World.”

  “Let’s just hope there’s something left,” Daphne said, dragging Rye faster. His boots bounced off the asphalt.

  The store was still well-stocked despite the obvious ransacking. Someone, or something, must have interrupted the looters. The floor was littered with camping items from a display near the front door — sleeping bags, backpacks, pots and pans.

  “I’m going to get him some dry clothes,” Daphne said, propping Rye against a sales checkout counter. “Stay with him.”

  Daphne leaped over a few sleeping bags, crawled around an overturned end cap of water bottles, and disappeared into the men’s section of the store.

  “You don’t have to stay with me,” Rye said, a violent shudder moving through him. “It’d be better if you got some weapons. If there are any left.”

  The idea of weapons made me smile. “I like weapons.”

  A look of caution moved over Rye’s face.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not dangerous to the living. Unless they piss me off.”

  His brows lifted.

  “Just kidding.” I grinned.

  “You sure?”

  I gave him a wink. “Hank. Stay.”

  Hank sat next to Rye, who lifted an unsteady hand and stroked his back.

  I turned to go find some weapons. My gaze caught a sign that read HUNTING. Not far from that aisle was a sign that read FISHING.

  Hunting was more along the lines of what I was looking for. I headed in the direction of that aisle.

  Time was of the essence, so I began gathering what I could of what was left. It was slim pickings, but I managed to get a couple of military duffel bags, a few hunting knives, one Bowie, a throwing knife, some kind of thing that looked like a cross between a knife and a hatchet, and something called a curved sawback knife. I was surprised that I was able to find that much in terms of blades.

  I also found an action camera that hunters used for deer. I was thinking more in terms of watching the crawlers come skittering out of their holes. Maybe it would help if we could watch their behaviors after dark more closely.

  Even though I already pretty much knew their behavior patterns. I’d seen them firsthand.

  Still, I grabbed the camera and tossed it into the duffel.

  Now, where were the guns? And were there any left?

  There had to be some hunting rifles around here somewhere, if there were any left. I had high hopes.


  I walked up and down the aisles, eyes scanning. It felt strange. Almost like a normal shopping day. Except I was shopping for knives and guns instead of groceries.

  No guns.

  Lifting my gaze, I looked around the store until my eyes locked on an upper level at the end of the last aisle to the right. I saw the reflection of the front store windows in glass, and I knew I’d just spotted the glass cases the guns and ammo would be kept in.

  As I approached, I saw that one of the cases had been smashed. I was amazed that more hadn’t been. It was the apocalypse. The end of days. But there were still guns in the glass cases.

  Something must’ve happened during the last looting session.

  Maybe it had happened at night, and the crawlers had come and dragged the looters underground.

  I blinked away the memories of witnessing my neighbors being dragged across the ground, kicking and screaming, and pulled into the dirt.

  Stop. Get the guns.

  Slowly, I headed toward the upper level. Everything was quiet. Daphne was looking for clothes for Rye. Hank and Rye sat near the cash register, quietly bonding. And I walked toward the area I was sure housed the hunting rifles.

  But just the silence hanging in the air and the broken glass made me nervous. I felt my skin break out in gooseflesh as I slowly climbed the five stairs leading to the raised level.

  My gaze swept across the area as I climbed. A grin lifted the corners of my lips as I took in the cases. The smashed case was empty. But there were a few others that remained untouched. I spied several guns.

  But below them, all but the jutting feet hidden by the short wall on either side of the stairway, was a person.

  The legs were splayed open, as if the person were sitting on the floor. His engineer’s boots jerked, one after the other, and then went still. Then they each came off the floor again.

  He was dying, or had already died and was coming back.

  My flesh prickled, and I wanted to turn and book it down the stairs. I took the last two steps up.

  The picture became clearer — a man in a camouflage jacket over combat pants. Half his face was gone, and he held a long barrel pistol of some kind in his hand, which had dropped to his lap. He’d apparently messed up his suicide because he was still kind of moving.

  God knew how long he’d been sitting there, twitching.

  But worse, as I came fully into the small room, my gaze caught on several bodies lying on the floor in front of the glass cases. They’d all been shot in the head, and they’d bled. A lot. There was pooling all over the hardwood floor. Dead people don’t bleed. So these people had been shot while they were alive. But why?

  Maybe there had been a blind panic to get the guns. Several people fighting to get to the gun cases. One case got smashed, and then Mr. Camouflage shot them all — seven, by my count — and them himself.

  It must’ve just happened because the blood was still running onto the floor around him.

  Why had these people not been taken by the crawlers? Had they been holed up somewhere? Maybe these were the friends and neighbors of Mr. Camo. Maybe he had a bunker somewhere, and after a week or so together, they were going a little nuts. Maybe he kicked them out, and they’d come here in search of guns.

  Then it had gone bad.

  The bodies ranged in age from early twenties to late sixties. And judging by the way several of them were just now opening their vacant eyes, they were all going to wake up at the same time.

  Maybe they’d already been awake, and just needed an incentive to get up.

  “Oh, shit,” I murmured, sliding my boot knife from its sheath. I had a duffel bag full of blades, but in times of stress, I always find myself reaching for the familiar. My boot knife had saved my bacon more times than I could count.

  Still, some backup would be preferable on this occasion. “Daphne!”

  “Yeah!” came the reply. She sounded like she was at the other end of the store.

  “I need a little help! We’re not alone!” I stepped forward and jabbed the knife through Mr. Camo’s ear: a most efficient way to kill deadies if you could reach them. The tall ones who were now getting up would be a little harder.

  Mr. Camo stopped twitching.

  A shuffling sound let me know that one of Mr. Camo’s victims was behind me. As I yanked my knife out of Mr. Camo’s head, a low moan underlining a strange, wet, gurgling grunt let me know there was more than one.

  I swung around, facing a man and a teenage girl, a mere couple of feet away from me, as Daphne came bounding up the stairs. “Oh shit.”

  “That’s what I said.” I slid the duffel to her. “Grab a blade. There’s a nice variety in there.”

  She had a gun in her hand, but leaned down and grabbed the hatchet knife combo. It was wise to save our ammo whenever feasible. She swung the hatchet blade and caught a dead man in the side of the head. He crumpled to his knees and fell sideways, his momentum helping Daphne yank the weapon back.

  She nodded, lifting it slightly. “I like this.”

  “Not bad, huh?” Another deadie was getting a bit close, and he was on the taller side, so I had to jump up a little as I buried my knife blade up under his chin, piercing it up into his brain.

  Daphne swung the hatchet end of her new favorite weapon down through the top of a former Jim’s Outdoor World employee’s head as he began scrambling his way up. The hatchet end stopped him immediately and he fell backward.

  “What the hell? Why are there so many in one spot?” Daphne wiped the back of a hand across her forehead where a few wayward strands had clung to the sweat there. Putting deadies down was hard work.

  Two more had pushed themselves up from where they’d died on the floor, and headed toward me. A third was already heading toward Daphne, and there was another one shambling up the stairs.

  This situation was getting out of hand fast. “Behind you!”

  Daphne looked at the approaching deadies, an older hunter in his sixties and a female Jim’s Outdoor World employee, and buried the hatchet in the older man’s head, and then bent and grabbed a large, curved hunting knife and headed toward the female. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me like that? It’s not polite.”

  The dead young woman grunted, and then let out a low screech, baring her teeth.

  Daphne plunged the knife into the young woman’s ear. “I don’t like your sales pitch.”

  I started laughing, almost missing the deadie in front of me, and then put my strength into it and stabbed him through the eye. “You’re gonna get me killed, cracking me up like that.”

  “Listen, if we don’t make some light of this, we’ll go crazy.” She stood, breathing heavily, heading to the old man with the hatchet through his forehead. He staggered around, confused, hands batting at the handle. “That didn’t go in quite far enough.”

  “Through the back of the head works well, too,” I told her.

  She dug through the duffel and found a straighter blade, and then pushed it through the lower back of the old-timer’s skull. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  After a few minutes of catching our breath, I said, “To answer your earlier question, I think this guy went postal and just started shooting. I think he didn’t like so many people blocking his way to the guns.”

  Daphne gave a single nod. “Understandable. But then why shoot himself?”

  I shrugged. “Who can say, really? Just lost it? I wonder if he was holed up with some of these people beforehand? Or maybe not. Maybe he just suddenly saw the futility of trying to survive to fight another day and took himself out.”

  “Daphne? Zoe?” Rye’s voice drifted over from the lower floor. There was no panic or urgency to his voice, so I figured he was just checking on us.

  “I’ll go check on him,” I told her, gathering up the clothes she’d dropped on the stairs. “You load up on guns.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” she said, and headed toward the glass cabinets.

  ***

  At the cas
h area, Hank was still beside Rye, but was now standing, ears perked, a low growl coming from deep in his chest. “Everything okay?”

  Rye had pushed himself up and leaned against the counter. He was still shivering badly. “I don’t know. You tell me. He got kind of agitated a few minutes ago. I could tell he wanted to leave to go check on you but he wouldn’t abandon me. Good dog. But he started growling a minute ago, and he’s standing. He looks a bit perturbed.”

  Hank did have his guard stance on, and he stared at the front door area. Something that he didn’t like was lurking somewhere. Outside or in? I was getting tired of killing deadies.

  Then, all at once, several sets of hands began hitting the huge window wall, and low moans and shrieks sounded, muffled from beyond the glass.

  My heart rate kicked up a few notches. “Shit. Where did they come from? We need to get moving.”

  A shudder moved through him. “That’s along the lines of what I was thinking, too. Is Daphne almost done?”

  “Here, get out of those wet clothes before you get hypothermia and put these on.” I placed the package of underwear, package of socks, jeans and athletic undershirt, and sweatshirt on the counter. “Daphne’s getting guns. I got a duffel bag of knives. What size are your feet? I’ll get you some boots. What else do we need?”

  “Size twelve. I need a jacket, and we need some pots and pans. You’ll find that stuff in the camping supplies. Or we can just pick up some of the spilled ones from the front of the store. There were a bunch spilled everywhere when we came in.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Rye managed a chuckle, which was my intent. “Stay, Hank.”

  Hank stayed but wouldn’t sit. He didn’t like that I was walking away. His eyes looked worried as they shifted between me and the glass wall where the deadies had gathered. Somehow they’d figured out we were in here. Maybe just seeing us moving around in here had been enough to catch their eyes.

  “Don’t worry, boy. I’ll be quick.”

  “Okay,” Rye said. “But I’ll still worry.”

  “I was talking to Hank.” Then I realized he was just trying to lend his own levity to the situation. “Oh.”