Haven (Apocalypse Chronicles Part 1)

by Falter, Laury

  Like me, Harrison seemed to be lost in thought, his shoulders hunched and his head down, when suddenly he leaned away from her. “Whoa,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet.

  That’s when I heard the grumble, a wet, nonsensical sound that came from where Harrison stood. In complete shock, he stepped back, his body straightening and his muscles stiffening.

  “Kennedy?” he quietly called back to me, in a confused daze.

  “Yeah?” I replied, unable to keep my eyes from the woman, whose hands were now braced below her shoulders, pushing her torso up.

  “Run.”

  I raised the gun only to notice what Harrison already had seen. The slide was back. I was out of bullets.

  “Run, Kennedy!” he yelled, just as the noise reached my ears. The distant thundering steadily grew louder until the floor shook beneath my feet.

  It dawned on me that he wasn’t concerned about the woman; not nearly as much as those who were coming down the hall behind her.

  The woman was on her knees now, shoving herself unevenly to her feet.

  “Kennedy!” Harrison barked, but my instinct was to pull out the throwing stars from the back of my pocket and send them into the woman’s head.

  And that’s what I did.

  Her head wobbled and she stumbled back, her eyes flipping upward until they were white, as if she were attempting to see what was protruding from her head. As she fell, despite the roar of feet rapidly coming at us, Harrison stopped long enough to take hold of the stars, place a foot on her hip, and pull the two apart. His force shoved her out of the way of the automatically closing door.

  When Harrison turned to find me standing there, he shouted, “Go, Kennedy! Damn it!”

  But it wasn’t until I saw him moving, following his own instructions, that I turned and ran down the steps. The rumbling that had started as nothing more than a patter was now vibrating the walls. They had reached the door before it could close and were now inside the stairwell. I realized this on a subconscious level as I aimed my attention at taking two to three steps at a time. Harrison did the same, keeping up behind me. I had a feeling he could pass me, but he never did, remaining a buffer in case the others caught up. At the bottom, I shoved open the door, ignoring the heartbeat pounding in my head, and scanned the garage for Old Boy. He was still there, with Doc in the front seat. Mei’s eyes opened wide when she saw us, in the way mine must have when she was racing from her house. She knew what was coming.

  I literally dove into the backseat with Harrison behind me, and he slammed the door closed as Doc took off. Looking back, I watched the flood of people, all of them bloodied and frenzied, swarm from the door we’d just come through.

  In an attempt to settle my nerves, I turned away, toward Harrison, where I found him evaluating me again. “How’s your arm?” I asked because I was sincerely interested and because I felt the need for a deterrent.

  “Fine,” he said, tucking it into his stomach to keep the blood from dripping onto anything but his shirt.

  “We need to get to a hospital,” I announced.

  “What?” Doc said in a nervous, high pitched shrill. Mei turned in her seat.

  “A hospital,” I reiterated.

  “No,” Harrison muttered.

  “No?” I demanded a little louder than intended. “You need to be stitched up.”

  “The hospitals won’t be safe,” Harrison pointed out flatly.

  I stared at him, shocked. “You need stitches. You need antibiotics.”

  “It’ll heal,” he said and added in a mumble while leaning his head toward the window, “It always does.”

  I felt my mouth hanging open from shock and quickly snapped it closed.

  Overhearing my reaction, or perhaps sensing my tension, he explained, “Look around. These people are sick. Where’s the first place you go when you’re sick?”

  Even though it was a rhetorical question, Doc answered, “The hospital.”

  That was enough said on the subject.

  After a few seconds of silence, Harrison brought up a new one.

  “You should have ran, Kennedy.”

  “I did.”

  “Not when I told you.”

  Cleverly avoiding the question, I insisted, “You knew they were coming long before I did. How?”

  His eyes flicked uneasily to Doc and Mei in the front seat.

  “How?” I pressed.

  “I was closer to them.”

  “Not by more than a few feet,” I countered.

  Realizing I wasn’t going to let it go, he replied only with a stiff shrug before looking back out the window. “I have good hearing.”

  Spectacular audible range. All right, so he has a keen sense of hearing. Why would he dodge my question about it? Why would it make a difference? Plenty of people have good hearing. I considered all this, dissecting the issue, during the drive back to school. It was an automatic assumption that was where we were headed. Mei and Doc paid close attention to the roads, or rather the stumbling people and abandoned vehicles on them, while Harrison and I sat in strained silence. Failing to come up with any reasonable explanation why Harrison would evade my question, I discarded my effort when the parking lot gate, and the crudely shaped hole Old Boy had made, came into view.

  Several figures were mingling there, turning toward the sound of Old Boy’s motor as we approached. They each showed signs of the same trauma we were encountering in others. Doc drove right through the hole without stopping, missing them purely by chance. It was no wonder he was known for his forcefulness on the field. The parking lot was full of wanderers now, more than when we’d left.

  Assessing the situation, Doc said, “I’m pulling right up to the gate. You got the keys ready?”

  “Yeah,” Harrison confirmed. “Kennedy will open it.” He turned to address me. “You’re going to need to crawl over me so you can get through first.”

  I glanced at his arm, noting that the blood had slowed but the raw, torn flesh was still glistening. I thought I saw a sliver of white bone peeking out from beneath it all.

  “I won’t let it touch you,” he promised.

  “No, I…That’s not it. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You can’t,” he replied plainly, sounding convincing.

  We were almost to the gate.

  “Kennedy?” he prompted, his eyes drilling into me.

  “Right.”

  I lifted myself and slid my leg across his lap, straddling him. When I glanced up, he was watching me intently.

  Quietly, to keep his comment between the two of us, he acknowledged, “In another time and place, I would really have enjoyed this.” And even with the man-eaters bearing down on us, he managed to send a pleasant thrill through me.

  A satisfied smile flew across his handsome face and then was gone as I found his hand in mine, shoving the keys into it. “It’s the larger one,” he instructed.

  I nodded and slipped off his lap, into the seat where he’d been sitting. He was now on the other side of the car. I rolled down my window as Doc drove parallel to the gate and slammed on the brakes directly next to the entrance. He stopped us perfectly positioned, the hood and the trunk extending down the gate blocking off those coming for us. There’s definitely something to be said for good reflexes, I thought, and pushed myself through the window.

  I slipped the key into the lock, turned and lowered the lever before shoving the gate aside. It grated along Old Boy’s fender, leaving behind grooves of grey metal, and a pinch in my heart. Without the gate to hold me, I fell onto the pavement, dangerously close to the leg of a guard who hadn’t moved since someone took out a chunk of his neck. Mei came out behind me, landing almost the same way, but I was there to catch her.

  “You first,” Harrison insisted to Doc, who didn’t refuse.

  Despite his stocky body, he managed to exit, albeit clumsily.

  As Harrison leaned out the window, preparing to slide out, I understood why he’d made sure the rest of us went thr
ough the gate ahead of him. The grunts and growls had grown louder in the few seconds it took us to exit. They were almost deafening because the crowd of wanderers were now at Old Boy’s edge, ramming it, clawing across the hood and roof to get at us.

  When Doc got to his feet, he looked up and saw it. “Oh man,” he muttered and reached for Harrison, who was rocking violently back and forth as Old Boy was pummeled. Harrison swung his legs out just as I reached him, catching hold of my hand. But he wasn’t righting himself, he was looking for the keys. Taking them, he darted back to the car, stuck his hand through the window, and heaved out Doc’s backpack and his duffel bag. He was able to slam the gate in place just as the window on the other side of Old Boy shattered, popping loudly and spraying glass across the back seat. As one of them crawled through and came at us, Harrison turned the key in the lock, dropped the lever, and stepped back. He watched the kid, who had made it to the other side of Old Boy’s back seat and was now hissing and swiping at him through the grates.

  He was Stephan Giordano, our school mascot. He had a natural, easygoing sense of humor that made him perfect for the part and left the crowd laughing through tears during games. Go Pioneers…

  I wasn’t sure if Harrison knew him, or had something else on his mind, but he appeared reserved while watching Stephan come at him.

  “Let’s go,” Doc said, nudging Harrison in the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Harrison,” I said, and my voice seemed to stir him.

  He turned and we headed up the stairs to our school’s main entrance. Halfway there, I glanced up to check that we weren’t going to be greeted by another mob of them inside and saw only Beverly staring at us through the glass doors. She wasn’t the best face to find there, but at least she wasn’t going to try to eat us.

  Beverly opened the doors, not bothering until we were inside before asking, “So?” When we didn’t answer, she continued, “What’s it like out there?”

  Doc threw his hand back in a gesture that said look for yourself, it’s happening right outside.

  She was smart enough not to press further and we walked back down the hall where my locker door was still open. A bag of Doritos was missing, which I found on the ground where Beverly had been sitting a few feet away. A book lay next to it, for pleasure reading, not the kind assigned by English class. It looked like it had been comfortable for her while we were gone.

  None of us asked about her dad, and I assumed it was because we all knew the answer. Beverly was here, which meant her dad hadn’t been. This didn’t bode well for either of them. She would need to come to terms with that fact soon, if she hadn’t already.

  Harrison dropped his duffel bag, drawing our attention.

  “We need to get you to the nurse’s office,” I said, which seemed to pique Beverly’s interest.

  Searching for my reasoning, her eyes landed on Harrison’s arm. “Ewww,” she whined, disgust thick in her tone. “Your arm.”

  “Yeah,” Harrison muttered, offhandedly.

  This was the first good look anyone had at it and it was hard not to stare. The shredded skin around the bite was swollen and glossy with a mixture of blood and puss.

  Mei’s face tightened. “You were right, Kennedy. He needs a doctor.”

  “Then why didn’t you get him to one?” Beverly asked throwing her arms into the air in irritation. “You were just outside. You got through the gate. You were in the clear-”

  “He wouldn’t go,” Doc cut her off, and she gawked back at him before swinging her head to Harrison.

  Having overcome my shock on his decision earlier, I changed the subject. Currently, Harrison was dripping blood down his jeans, and even if he didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain, it needed to be dealt with.

  “Beverly,” I said, my tone cautious because I knew an argument was about to break out…one always did when someone asked for her help. They had to force her into it. “You were taking pre-med classes, right?”

  “So?” she replied guardedly.

  “Did they teach you how to use sutures?”

  Her eyes swept warily to Harrison. “No,” she retorted before it became painfully clear she had already portrayed herself in a bad light. Her ego, the size that it was, wouldn’t allow for it, so she immediately corrected herself. “They taught me during training when I volunteered at the hospital.” And with her usual edgy sarcasm, while making it clear we should already know it, she added, “It’s not like I’ve ever done it for real.”

  “Well,” I said, grabbing Harrison’s arm, the uninjured one, and pulling him with me the same way he’d been doing to me all day long, “you’re about to get your chance.”

  The insecurity always so prevalent beneath her surface showed itself, and she hesitated. This wasn’t the time for it, so I commanded her in a voice deeper and more resolute than I’d ever used with her before, “Beverly! Move!”

  Harrison noticed, swinging his head in my direction to catch a glimpse of my expression before chuckling at my determination. Beverly trailed us the entire way to the nurse’s office and begrudgingly set up the suture kit once I’d dug it out of the nurse’s drawer. The room was located in the administration offices, and even though it was late in the day, there should have been people milling around, shuffling papers, clicking on keyboards. The weight of the silence made me feel like we were doing something illicit, like we’d broken in and were trespassing here. Harrison and Beverly either felt it too and didn’t want to disturb the peace or didn’t have anything to say to each other. It was probably the latter because not a single word passed between them as she went about cleaning and mending the wound. Other than a few appalled exhales and disgusted grunts from her, no sounds were made. Harrison didn’t express any discomfort, even as she dug the needle through his skin. He didn’t cringe, look away, or make any attempt to soothe the pain. His handsome face remained fixed on the needle threading through his arm. Again, his resistance to pain registered with me as odd, but I decided that it couldn’t be bad. His superb hearing and high threshold for pain have, and likely still would, come in handy.

  While Beverly worked on him, I strolled around the office, looking for something that might be of help to us without having any idea what that might be. There were empty chairs, computers still humming with the password login page up, stacks of paperwork, pictures of family members, flowers in vases. All of it was so familiar and none of it was useful. My feet, by chance or subconscious insistence, stopped at one office in particular. It was closed with a dim light filtering through the frosted glass. A name and title were etched across it: Dick Packard, Principal. I was torn between going in for one last look around and intruding on a dead man’s space or leaving it closed and letting it become a memorial. My body reacted before I had a chance to weigh my options and I reached out to turn the knob. The door silently swung ajar and I swallowed back my discomfort as I entered.

  His chair sat vacant, and again I felt like I was encroaching on sacred ground.

  Stop the drama, Kennedy. Get on with it, I told myself. Mr. Packard would understand the importance of finding and preserving resources in emergency situations. The military accolades decorating his wall prove it.

  I stepped farther inside.

  I’d been in the office a few times before, while waiting for him to drive me home when I hadn’t brought Old Boy to school. It was basic enough, a beaten up desk, a leather desk chair, some books, a plant. He didn’t put much thought into his surroundings unless it related to a threat. Through the windows leading into the administration office, I could see Beverly hunched over Harrison, her face anxiously close to her work, his face emotionless and almost impatient for her to finish.

  I moved to Mr. Packard’s desk and opened the drawer. A ring of keys lay inside. They looked strangely like masters. Mr. Packard wouldn’t have left his office without them, so they must be a back up, I reasoned.

  “Two is one, one is none,” I whispered, referencing an old military phrase my dad had drilled into me
.

  I picked them up and slipped the carabiner through my belt loop, and came to a halt. Underneath them was a TV remote control, and if there was a remote control, there must be a TV. Picking it up, I hit the power button and heard the static charge as it crackled to life. Spinning around, I chased the sound, landing in front of a broad old armoire. After a tug at the doors, I found that they were locked, and immediately sought the keys at my waist.

  “Reports are flooding in from New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago…” a woman was saying on the other side as I finally swung them open to reveal the flat-screen TV inside.

  It wasn’t the local news. Mr. Packard had it tuned to the national news, and the anchor appeared jittery as she delivered her report.

  “Major international cities have been affected as well including Dublin, Frankfurt, and Moscow.”

  “They’re all going through the same-” Beverly started to say as they came up behind me.

  “Shhh,” Harrison and I commanded her. Instantly, she snapped her mouth shut.

  The anchor shuffled through some notes on the desk in front of her and then raised her eyes back to the camera. “For those of you just tuning in, The National Guard, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security are responding to known threats.”

  “Lot of good they’ve done for us,” Beverly remarked.

  “SHHH!” We shut her up again, which she responded to with a scoff.

  “They are working alongside the CDC,” the anchor added.

  Harrison bristled at the mention of the agency’s involvement, his back straightening and his shoulders rolling back. I noticed it but was too immersed in the reports of this eminent threat to give it any further thought.

  “So it’s biological,” Beverly muttered, looking down at the latex gloves she’d slipped on. She’d been a properly-trained candy striper so I could see what she was thinking in her expression. ‘How close was Harrison’s blood to her hand? Had any gotten beneath the glove? Had any gotten inside her?’

  “They turn instantly,” I said, intentionally disrupting her line of thought.