by Fitch, E. M.
Kaylee’s muscles unlocked, as though a bolt of electricity had shocked through her and she ran, passing Jack and reaching Emma just as the first of the infected did.
Kaylee pulled Emma to her, lifting her clear out of the ash, a cascade of dirt trailing from her shaking body. But as soon as she stood straight, with a sickening crash, she was thrown to the pavement. Emma landed on top of her, followed by a growling, heaving infected man. His teeth flashed, yellow and broken, sores that were blistered and reddened with blood covered the inside of his mouth and lips. Kaylee gripped Emma tighter, ignoring her cry of pain as she scrambled to free them both from beneath the thrashing man.
A second crash reverberated from above and Kaylee squeezed her eyes shut, clamped her lips tightly, and held her breath as Jack brought an iron pipe down with nauseating precision. She knew he hit his target as a keening screech sounded, as drops of a hot, wet substance rained over her.
“Keep your mouths shut!”Jack yelled. Kaylee pressed her lips even more firmly as she dragged her sleeve over her eyes, wiping the blood from her face. She could hear Emma whimpering and could only hope she was listening to Jack.
But the pounding of feet on the pavement soon distracted Kaylee from thinking about anything else and she blinked her eyes open.
“Hurry!”Jack screamed.“Get up, they’re coming fast!”
Another clunk let Kaylee know that Jack had found a second target and she turned her face from the sound as she hauled Emma to her feet.
“Emma, let’s go!”Kaylee screamed, tugging on her sister. Emma resisted, her sobs nearly drowning out Jack’s yelling.
“Go! Go! What are you waiting for?”
Kaylee grabbed Emma around the waist and lift her, dragging her closer to the window. She turned to see Andrew and her father with their heads sticking from the window, eyes wild and frantically beckoning them closer. Emma was thrashing, shaking her head and sobbing and Kaylee felt her own tears fall, running through the drying streaks of infected blood that had stained her face.
She turned to check on Jack as the window loomed closer. He was swinging full force at a group of swarming infected, catching a woman in the chin. Kaylee watched as a spray of blood painted the brick side of the fire station, two teeth flying from her broken jaw.
“Jack! Come on!”Kaylee called, fear seizing in her chest at the size of the swelling group running towards him. He spared her a quick look before swinging one last time, hitting a large man upside the head, his rotting skull crushing under the blow.
“Kay, lift her up!”came her father’s urgent call and she looked up to find herself directly below the window. As she strained to push Emma towards them, her arms shaking with the effort, Emma thrashed and screamed.
But then Jack was there, helping Kaylee to push Emma up and her father grasped her sister’s arm and Andrew heaved her through. Jack had grabbed Kaylee by the waist, preparing to hoist her up and Kaylee gripped the ledge, ready to pull herself into safety.
And then she froze. Her muscles locked into place, her breath caught in her chest, and her vision went hazy. The worst and most horrifying sound to reach her ears that morning sounded from inside their safe haven.
“Stop! Put me back, I’m bit! I’m bit.”
Emma was sobbing loudly, begging Andrew and her father to chuck her back out, struggling to get past them, back into the throng of infected.
Because Emma is infected.
Kaylee felt the air in her body stop moving, not leave precisely, just stop. Her chest felt blocked, the breath stuck there became stale and stagnant and still she could force no movement.
There was a scrapping sound from above her and she forced her eyes up. She noted at that moment that the pounding of feet on the pavement was still looming closer, that Jack’s fingers were digging into her sides and most likely bruising the skin there as he screamed in her ear, but then Emma’s tear-streaked face was inches from her own, her fingers clawing at the windowsill as she attempted to throw off her father and Andrew and escape the fire station. Kaylee forced out a breath.
“Em.”
“I’m sorry,”her sister whispered through her tears, looking mournfully at Kaylee, and then she was ripped from view. Andrew had given an almighty tug and Emma was gone. The window was darkened and empty and the roar of Jack’s voice broke through the strangled noises coming from Kaylee’s throat.
“Kaylee, we have to go!”
She spun around and choked back a scream. The swarm of infected was closing in on them, there was no chance, no time to get back through the window. Jack was already swinging his pipe at the oncoming crowd.
“Jack! Run!”Kaylee screamed as she tugged his shirt. He gave one last ferocious swing; cleaving through the torso of an elderly, snapping infected woman before turning and pushing Kaylee down the road.
They broke into a sprint. Kaylee had no real idea where they were headed, though somewhere in the back of her mind she had wild, half-formed thoughts of making it to the fenced-in cornfield. Her idea was squashed when they reached the end of the building and she and Jack skidded to a halt. Just as they made the last few steps to the road a veritable wall of infected met them. The groaning, twitching bodies advanced steadily, with very near the same speed and strength of newly infected. Though some staggered on shattered ankles and missing limbs, more than enough were running full tilt towards them.
Kaylee shrieked as a loud boom shook the air around her.
“Keep your head down,”Jack yelled as he grabbed her hand and veered them toward the set of buildings on the right. Kaylee drew a wild breath, her eyes flying around her, searching for the source of the noise. A small group of infected was closing in on them and Kaylee forgot the boom. She ducked her head and pushed herself harder, running faster than she had in over a year. Her limbs ached already and each breath felt like fire as it unwillingly entered her lungs.
A trio of infected were overtaking them, feral shrieks streaming from dirty, bloodied mouths. Their yellowed teeth were snapping and their outstretched hands were snatching and scraping as they reached for Kaylee and Jack.
Another ear shattering explosion sounded and Kaylee turned to see a now headless infected man stagger over. His knees hit the ground with a sickening crunch and his torso fell next, lifeless. His fellows fell over his bleeding remnants and Kaylee turned back at the insistent tug on her hand from Jack.
But she understood now what the sounds were. Gunshots. Someone from their group was shooting from the rooftop, trying to clear their way for them. As Jack and she made it across the street and around the corner of the next set of buildings, two more explosions sounded and this time, Kaylee saw the targets hit. A woman staggered in front of her, a red, bleeding hole blossomed on her chest, opening like the petals of a rare flower. Blood seeped from between her teeth and her yellowed eyes rolled back before she fell face first unto the pavement. The child next to her was howling from the hole that separated his right leg from the rest of his body. Jack jumped over his prone form, dragging Kaylee with him.
The road ahead was clear and Kaylee felt Jack steer them towards what had been an abandoned factory even before the infection took hold. The windows had mostly been boarded, though the few that had remained had the glass kicked out, the occasional shard clinging stubbornly. The scramble of footsteps was still sounding behind them, though not as close as before.
“Here,”Jack muttered, lifting Kaylee and shoving her through an empty window frame.“Make for the stairs, we’ll get to the roof and barricade there,”he said, his voice even and clear despite their sprint. Kaylee tried to answer, to affirm that she had understood, but she was unable to properly draw breath. Her tears still ran clear tracks down her face, her chest was heaving with exertion and grief, her heart hammering and yet feeling like a dull, dead weight regardless.
Emma.
“C’mon,”Jack huffed, breaking glass as he followed her through and cutting through Kaylee’s sob. Kaylee nodded as she staggered forward, hasti
ly wiping her sleeve across her eyes. Jack was already several steps ahead and Kaylee hastened to catch up to him. She reached forward to clasp his hand and just as her fingers intertwined with his a sharp crack echoed off the broken walls. Jack had one small moment to look back, one second to lock eyes with Kaylee, mirroring her confused expression before their world tilted.
The floor split open.
Through splinters and shafts, nails and broken crossbeams Kaylee and Jack fell, the remnants of the rotten floorboards raining down with them.
Kaylee landed with a thud on a cold cement floor, her left hip pulsing and throbbing as blood pooled rapidly under her skin, spreading to collect into a large bruise. Her left hand ached, radiating a dull throb up her arm, but she had at least had the sense to use that now-crushed hand to cushion her head. And though her vision swam initially, she was able to shake it clear, to watch the hell she had now fallen into bloom before her.
A clear shaft of light illuminated a circle encompassing Kaylee and Jack, as though they were on some morbid joke of a stage in the spotlight. She could see the dust particles and debris floating in the rays of light, sifting gently through the stale air as they settled. The light stung, casting the shadows into even greater depths, but her eyes adjusted, slowly, as though her very body was afraid of uncovering what she saw next.
Kaylee saw the infected.
A mass of bodies all piled over one another, gasping shallow breaths that rattled through their under-used lungs.
How long had it been since they had seen the daylight? Had they been sleeping here all this time, kept dormant by the lack of sunlight?
But the sunlight reached them now. In massive heaps they surrounded Jack and Kaylee, the tendrils of light offering the faintest illumination to all but the farthest corners of the basement they had fallen into. Their emaciated bodies were stirring, guttural cries and shrieks were beginning to tear from their chests and bile rose to the back of Kaylee’s throat as she imagined how hungry they must be after all this time.
“Kaylee,”Jack whispered, his movements measured and cautious.“Can you move?”
“Yes,”she whispered back, swallowing down the sick and gritting her teeth.“Where?”
“The back, as far from the light as we can go,”was Jack’s hushed plan. His hand was blindly reaching out for her and she grasped it before gingerly getting to her feet. Her hip popped, aching and protesting the weight she forced onto it but she bit down harder and forced her body to move. Jack slid back slowly, checking his footing as he inched closer to her before he turned to pick their way away from the light.
Kaylee all but stopped breathing as they tiptoed through the piles of stirring bodies. A jaw snapped so near her ankle she almost cried out, instead she clamped so hard on Jack’s hand that she heard his knuckles crack.
They had landed in the basement, one that was underused even when people had inhabited the building. Bodies covered the entire floor, garbage scattered among them. But there was no furniture, and there were no workbenches or storage containers, no hiding places of any kind. From the brief look in the limited light, Kaylee could see only concrete, concrete and pipes, with the occasional wire hanging limply from the now shattered ceiling.
“Here,”Jack whispered, pushing Kaylee towards the wall and pressing her between two large pipes that ran down vertically. The concrete was cold and unforgiving against her back, its’uncomfortable temperature already seeping through her thin, cotton shirt. A shiver rushed through her and she envied Jack his hooded sweatshirt. The pipes were rusted but large, Kaylee could no longer see the circle of light in which they had landed. Her vision was limited to the small gathering of bodies just in front of her. They weren’t stirring yet.
And then all vision of the basement was taken from her as Jack pressed up close to her, her nose bumping into his chest and grazing against his opened zipper.
“We’ll stay like this until dark,”he whispered, his breath hot against the clammy skin of her neck. She went to answer but found her mouth too dry; she nodded instead. Jack’s hands settled on her waist, she could feel his chest rise and fall against hers with every breath. And the groans and cries of the infected around them grew louder.
Kaylee wasn’t aware she was whimpering until Jack gently shushed her. His arms came all the way around her body and he pulled her against his chest. She was surprised to find she was also shaking.“Quiet now,”he said.“They’re most active when they first wake.”
Kaylee bit her lip and held her breath, releasing it slowly after a few moments. But her blood still rushed in her ears, a low throb that beat to the sound of her sister’s name.
Emma. Emma. Emma.
After all their planning, all the care they took, in one stupid little miscalculation, one error…
Emma’s infected.
Bitten.
Gone.
Just like Mom. She’ll never be my little sister again.
Kaylee couldn’t help the sob that broke through.
“Shh!”Jack warned in a hiss, gripping her tighter against his chest. She buried her face there and felt her tears soak his tee shirt, his zipper scratched against her cheek.
The infected were moving now, the ones closest to the shaft of light were screeching, Kaylee could hear their teeth grinding together, their nails scratching for purchase on the thick concrete walls. The bodies closer to them were groaning, breaths rasping unevenly through filthy throats.
And then came the sound of tearing, of ripping flesh. Kaylee whipped her head up in surprise.
They were eating.
All she could see of Jack was the whites of his eyes, and they gleamed down at her in shock. She turned out of his embrace and pressed her chest to the wall, feeling him push into her even closer as she did. She mashed her face between the cold concrete and the pipe, scraping her cheek as she turned so one eye could see the wakening throng.
In the clear shaft of white light she saw them, the swarm of infected, and they were feeding. Larger men and women were eating their sleeping companions, waking them with their teeth. Strips of streaming flesh were pulled from bone and the victims were waking with screams, backs arching in pain, eyes rolling back as what little life they had left went draining out of them. The basement echoed with groans and shrieks; the musty air became saturated with the rusty, metallic scent of blood. And dark rivers ran from the center of the carnage and out toward the remote corners.
“I’ve never seen them do that,”Kaylee breathed in disbelief.“They’re eating each other.”
“Kaylee, shush, please,”Jack whispered, pleaded, his mouth pressed to her ear.
A boy turned. He was smaller than the adults, thinner at least. He was probably no older than Kaylee when he was bitten. His yellow eyes searched through the darkness and Kaylee drew in a hurried breath.
His gaze zeroed in on their pipe and he stepped in their direction. Kaylee froze, unable to look away, unable even to warn Jack. And it was only now that she realized how very exposed he had left himself, only now did she realize how he must have been trying to keep her protected by placing his own body between hers and the infected; because if this boy found them, Jack would be bit. She reached her hand back to him and found his thigh. She squeezed. It was the best warning she could give.
The boy drew closer; his gaze fevered, eyes wielding. He staggered over a pile of stirring bodies, bodies that had not yet felt the sunlight. He snarled, a ripping sound coming more from his chest than his mouth, and even in the silhouetted light, Kaylee could see the dripping sores covering his lips.
But his footsteps staggered, his body fought him as he drew deeper into the darkness. With a final, shuddering gasp, he fell. His body crashed, unresponsive, over a pile of sleeping bodies. And his fellows didn’t pause to consider what had drawn him into the shadows. They grabbed his heel and pulled, and his feebly stirring body was devoured.
Kaylee felt Jack release a breath and she turned back into him. His arms were braced on either side o
f her and she could feel the tension rolling off him.
“They can’t get us here,”she whispered, rising up on her toes to whisper directly in his ear.
“So long as the light doesn’t shift towards us,”he replied.“It’s only one o’clock. We’ll see soon.”
Chapter Ten
The tears continued to drip down Kaylee’s face until her cheeks were glazed but she wasn’t sobbing any longer. Her eyes felt heavy-lidded and hollow, tools used only for gazing and crying with no effort wasted on conveying emotion.
The light had shifted, but in their favor. As the rays hit body after body, waking them from their extended slumber, the infected woke ravenous. It took only moments for them to turn on each other, to sink filthy, splintered teeth into the remains of their one-time friends and family members. Kaylee and Jack had watched, and with each tear of muscle from bone Kaylee thought of her sister. She remembered Emma’s face as she had matured through the years. The round cheeks of childhood, rosy with youth women had tried for ages to mimic with blush. The growth spurt that had slimmed her and lent distinction to her cheekbones. The month when she had thought glasses were“cool”and so wore a fake pair everywhere. And worse even than that, the one ridiculous haircut with those horrible short bangs. But she couldn’t picture her with yellow eyes, nor fractured teeth, and especially not the wild, feral look that the boy that had spotted them had flashed.