Hissers

by Ryan C. Thomas

  “Then what’s your suggestion?”

  “I dunno. In Halo I’d throw a plasma grenade or something. See if it got anybody to move. Wait for their red dot to pop up on my radar.”

  She titled her head and went tight lipped.

  “Okay, sorry. I know, you hate games. Tell you what, we get out of this, I’ll teach you to play. You’ll dig it. You get to kill lots of stupid boys online.”

  Her lips loosened. “Well, maybe I’ll give it a shot for the sake of hurting men, but for now, there’s no way out without opening the gate.”

  “Fine. Just do it slowly.”

  She undid the latch and pushed the gate. It screeched a record scratch across the cement driveway, loud enough to get the dog across the street barking again.

  “Son of a bitch!” Amanita whispered emphatically.

  Seth felt a rush of adrenaline surge through him. “Well, it’s open now. Let’s go.”

  They hugged the side of the house and snuck down to the front bushes.

  Seth peered out around them, scanned the street.

  Empty but for two cars abandoned in the middle, both of their windshields broken. Chips of vehicular glass glinted like gemstones around the tires, twinkling in the morning sun. Almost looked like a head-on collision, but there was no way to be sure.

  He shifted his gaze to the houses across the street. Some front doors were wide open, what looked like clothing was scattered on one front lawn. The now all-too-familiar undead graffiti—bloody hand prints—branded front doors and picture windows.

  He took a tentative step out into the open, looked up and down the street but saw no one moving. No undead, no military, no survivors. Only the dog’s lonely barking serenade let him know civilization once existed here.

  “Okay, run to the cars and stay down. Then we’ll jet to the house across the street, go around it and cut through the backyard. Sound good?”

  “No, a grilled chicken salad sounds good, but it sounds familiar so I’m not gonna complain.”

  “Hardy har. Okay, on three. Ready?”

  Amanita flexed on the balls of her feet, ready to take off.

  “One. Two. Three!”

  Together they sped out past the front yard, hunched down as low as they could go and still run. Their feet slapped the pavement of the road, too loud for comfort. Seth spun in a three-sixty, tried to get a panoramic view of their surroundings. Still alone.

  They were at the cars in two seconds flat, squatting down beside the dented sides of the vehicles. Seth was huffing and puffing again. Amanita leaned up and looked through the driver’s side window, then sat back down. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Me either.”

  “Shit, I gotta stop smoking. I can’t breathe.”

  “Join the club.”

  The damn dog was still barking.

  “So far so good,” Amanita said. “Ready to go again?”

  “Yeah. On Three. One. Two—”

  The dog yelped in pain.

  Sunday, 9:51am

  If he hadn’t already known the way to the crash site, Connor was confident he could follow the smell of fire and be there in minutes. As it was, he and Nicole raced out toward the main road, staying low, gunning for the strips of local businesses lining the sides. Their plan was to get into the alley behind them, take that all the way down toward the public park and then haul ass to the plane.

  Connor kept the gun in his hand as they went, his index finger pointed straight out along the barrel to avoid accidentally pulling the trigger—like he’d seen in so many movies. He’d checked the clip just seconds ago. Thirteen bullets.

  Do I save two for us, he wondered.

  The main road was dead. Not a car moved. Not a person ambled. The stores were all closed, the absence of ambient noise was unsettling.

  Gone were the rushes of car engines and rolling tires on blacktop. Gone were the buzzing tones of cheap neon signs outside of diners. Gone were strident footfalls of joggers and the laughter of children riding bicycles. The traffic light at the far corner was off, swaying ever so gently in the light breeze, a grim reminder of a society that once had laws.

  They reached the sidewalk and turned right, toward Hanson’s Rx, one of the remaining private pharmacies in town and a local institution. Connor used to spend his allowance there when he was younger, in the dollar toy aisle. Knock off Transformers, Lord of the Rings toys that had defects. To a collector it was garbage, to a kid it was treasure. He wanted to slink in now and grab handfuls Tylenol and Advil to help the pain in his leg, but knew they could not afford to get sidetracked.

  The road ahead stretched out for a good mile. Nothing but silence and a handful of cars parked sideways across the lanes. There should be police handing out tickets to crazy drivers like that.

  The small parking lot of the drug store was empty, a Styrofoam cup rolling lonesome across the white parking lines.

  “Back here,” he said, reaching the edge of the building and turning down toward the alley in back. They tiptoed by the giant blue dumpster set in a small fenced in square. A small mouse darted away into a drain pipe on the adjacent building, a coin-operated laundry.

  It would be so easy for someone to bottleneck us in here, he thought. Hissers at both ends, running toward us. We’d have nowhere to go. Only thirteen bullets to shoot. We’d be dead in seconds.

  They stepped over an oily puddle into the alley, the backs of the buildings on one side, a drainage ditch and small incline on the other. At the top of the incline was another chain link fence protecting the far edge of the school’s fields and any other private properties.

  “You still want to do this?” he asked. He already knew what her answer was going to be but a man could hope, couldn’t he.

  They moved deftly for a few more yards, passing rusted back doors with EMPLOYEES ONLY stenciled on them.

  “Here’s the thing, Connor,” Nicole said. “When my dad left, my mom started going to church. She didn’t want to go but one of her friends from work convinced her to go, you know. Some God-fearing woman who swore the Almighty would save us or bring my dad back or whatever. My mom was pretty devastated at the time so she went. I mean, we both were, devastated that is, but I was younger so I don’t think I even understood what was happening.”

  “Mmm.” Connor was trying to listen but was also busy scanning the alley ahead of them. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was getting at.

  “She took me of course, because she didn’t have money at the time for daycare and I was too young to be home alone. I only remember one sermon very clearly and it was about Jesus coming back from the dead, you know. It was Easter Sunday and I remember all the kids getting a little basket with a small prayer book in it. I think I was just happy to have a gift. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention at first to the service, but I started listening eventually.

  “It was the only time the story of Jesus’ resurrection had been preached to me and the priest was getting sorta worked up about it. He said that guards were put outside Jesus’ tomb to make sure no one would steal the body. These guards were so conditioned to obey orders by fear of death that there was no way they’d leave. I guess in that day any guard who went on a coffee break without permission was immediately killed, but the guards outside the tomb did move away at some point and no one knows why. Also the big two-ton stone out in front of the tomb had been rolled pretty far away, and Jesus’ burial clothes were still in the shape of a body, but his body was gone, like it had just disappeared. The priest said the clothes looked like a moth’s cocoon, which I thought was pretty creepy. And because of all that there is irrefutable proof that Jesus came back from the dead and was God’s son.

  “The priest said the only way all of that could have been accomplished was by divine intervention.”

  “Yeah. It’s a weird story.”

  “Anyway, I said to my mom, rather loudly right there in the middle of the service, maybe they just made the whole story up. Everyone looked at me and Mom was
mad.”

  “My parents weren’t religious. We never went to church. I kinda think the Bible is a lot of nonsense.”

  “But the dead are back, Connor. Only it wasn’t God, it was us. We made this happen. Humans.”

  Connor stopped. He still wasn’t following her point. “What’s that got to do with the story?”

  “If Jesus came back then, maybe it was divine intervention. We’ll probably never know for sure either way. We did this, but we’re not God, nor are we gods. We just think we are. We tried to do something we weren’t meant to do, that we shouldn’t do. No one has gone on record as having come back from the dead since Jesus. And so we just made it up. We made up this fucking story. And it went wrong. And now a town is going to be eradicated. And it’ll continue to go wrong until we set it right. If one of these things gets out alive…dead…you know what I mean…it’ll get worse. We’ve fought wars for two thousand years over stories that were possibly made up, but at least those stories gave some people hope and made others kind. Now we’ve taken God out of the story and proven we can play His part without Him. If this thing spreads, what are they gonna do? Firebomb the country? Firebomb the continent? Think of how crazy the whole world is going to get.”

  Connor sort of saw her point now, disjointed as it may be. It wasn’t that she wanted to get the data, she had to. The data proved man could raise the dead, and only God—whether you bought into religion or not—should be the one to do it. He knew she was smart but he hadn’t seen the true method behind her madness until now.

  “This isn’t just about getting the data to find a cure,” he said.

  “Part of it is, yes, but what if they burn the town, it survives, and someone finds it. It’s the power to beat death, Connor. And it shouldn’t be. It’s a power that belongs to God, not us. It’ll be the end of all civilization.”

  “Yeah but…it’s a double edged sword. They’ll need it for a cure. Somebody has to get it. “

  “I know. But if the military gets it, who knows what they’ll do with it. It was just supposed to help repair wounded soldiers, right? Instead they made a virus that replicates and brings hell on earth. The data needs to be given to the right person.”

  “Who’s that?”

  She finally stopped walking, reached down to her thigh and pinched it. He walked to her, reached down and took her hand, lifted it away from her leg. She was shaking. “I need the pain,” she said.

  “No, you need to hug me. C’mere.”

  He put his arms around her and squeezed. She squeezed back.

  “I know where my father is,” she said. “I found him.”

  He held her tightly, his nose in her hair. “Where?” he whispered.

  “He’s in San Diego. He’s a network administrator for Aminodyne.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  She pulled away from him, her hands still clenched but no longer seeking to be injurious to herself. “They make drugs. Mostly for cancers. They’re geneticists. The whole city is one big biotech hub. He’s just an IT guy but he’ll know who to give this data to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. But it’s the best option.”

  “Is it? He left you.”

  “I know, but I remember him singing me lullabies, bouncing me on his knee. I think he’s still a good person. If I can just talk to him in person.”

  Connor wanted to ask if she was thinking of her father like this because she couldn’t stand not having any parents. Was she just transferring her hopes to a man that had screwed her over in the worst possible way? He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “And you’re sure he’s there?”

  “That’s where he was last time I checked. A couple of weeks ago. I paid an online company to find him. Used Mom’s credit card. The bill hasn’t come yet but I figured she’d kill me when she found out.”

  “You’ve talked to him?”

  “Sort of. I emailed him a few days ago and said I want to speak with him, told him who I was.”

  “And?”

  “And he said okay.”

  Sunday, 9:58am

  The hisser broke through the fence across the street, exploding wooden slats out like dynamite. A dead Jack Russel terrier hung limp in its mouth, canine blood cascading down the creature’s torn shirt.

  That sight alone might have been enough to illicit a fearful yelp from Seth and Amanita, but what really made their hair stand on end was the third arm jutting straight out from the undead abomination’s chest. Like a wily snake it whipped back and forth, grasping at air, searching for prey.

  Seth and Amanita, peeking out from around the bumper of the cars, each swallowed lumps in their throats.

  “That’s fucked up,” Seth whispered.

  Amanita put a hand to her mouth, stifled a cry. “Oh, my God, I know him!”

  It was Jason Drake, his greasy blond hair hanging down in his face like a California surfer. The boy she’d wanted to so badly to talk to last night. The boy she’d thought could finally piss off her parents enough to get a real rise out of them for once. The boy she thought she might even bother to spend some real time with. He was a jerk, sure, but he was hot, and it’s not like she planned on marrying him. She just wanted to know what made him tick, what his arm would feel like around her. As she looked at him now, watching his head swivel from side the side, the dead dog whipping back and forth in his jaws, she cursed God that she would never get to kiss him just once.

  Such a waste.

  But then she looked at Seth, huddled nearby, saw the way his fists were balled up already, remembered how content she’d felt as she lay with him last night, and thought that it was probably a blessing this bad boy Jason had joined the dead. He’d just annoy her in the end, because he wouldn’t be genuine. He’d use her, because that’s what assholes did. They used you and ignored you. He was nothing but real trouble, hot or not.

  “It’s that asshole Jason Drake,” Seth said, as if reading her thoughts. “I hate that prick.”

  “Well, he’s dead now so the universe worked out, I guess. Should we wait until he…it…leaves?”

  Seth shrugged. “Figure we got about forty-five minutes still. If he leaves we’ll be okay.”

  But Jason didn’t leave. He put all three hands on the small dog and ripped it out of his mouth, bursting canine entrails onto his Nike sneakers. He slurped down the dog’s intestines as if they were giant noodles.

  He tossed the dog away. The carcass did a Frisbee spin and landed on the hood of the car.

  He opened his mouth and hissed, ran straight for the cars as if he were playing catch with himself.

  Am felt the hot hand of paralysis grip her.

  Seth, likewise, had gone completely still.

  Jason leapt up on the hood of the car, picked up the dog carcass, and tore another chunk out. Only this time, he looked down and saw human meat cowering below him.

  “Ah shit,” said Am.

  Sunday, 9:59am

  The alley ended at an intersection, just across the street from the south side of the park. The quickest route to the plane would be to cut across the open fields. Almost the same route they took last night when they found General Davis.

  Only problem was there was absolutely nowhere to hide besides some flimsy bleachers.

  “Do we run or walk?” Nicole asked. “That’s a long way out in the open.”

  Connor wanted to say run, because he just wanted to get across the open space as fast as possible, but truth be told walking slowly and staying behind the bleachers was probably the better option.

  Then again…the Lieutenant General had been right. It’s the anticipation that kills you. Screw it. “I say run.”

  “Yeah, I agree. How’s your leg?”

  “Going pretty numb, but I’m betting on that being a sort of blessing.”

  “If you fall—”

  “I won’t fall. But if I ever do…just keep running. You know how to get to the fort. Just get this stuff from the plane and get there
.”

  “Hey, none of that talk. This is a team effort, remember? If you fall then I fall.”

  “Yeah, but I won’t jump off a bridge if you do so don’t even think about it.”

  “Not following you there, sport.”

  “Nothing. Something my mom used to say. You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Hunched down, they scooted across twenty yards of open grass to the first set of metal bleachers, grasshoppers leaping out of their way as they went. They stayed behind the back, hoping the criss-crossing supports might camouflage them a bit.

  When they came to the edge of the baseball field, Connor opened the gate to the dugout and slinked inside. Across the field he could see the hills ringing Jefferson River, could almost make out the exact spot where the fort was.

  At least if they encountered trouble they’d be near the rendezvous point. Whether or not they could run there in time was another story.

  “We’re gonna have to cut straight across,” he said, looking toward the street where the fuselage lay like a beached leviathan.

  Nicole laughed. “I’ve never run on a baseball field. How dumb is that?”

  “Well here’s your chance to impress the scouts. And lucky for you there’s no need to hit every base.”

  They hightailed it as fast as they could, kicking up clods of sod in their wake. Every time Connor landed on his left leg searing pain from his wound shot up his body. They reached the waist high chain-link fence at the back of center field and climbed over. Connor had never been able to hit a home run over this fence, but he figured he would someday. Now, if he made it out alive he had no intentions of coming back to Castor.

  Just one hundred yards of open grass between them and the road, then a hop jump and skip to the plane crash.

  “You hear something?” Nicole grabbed him and yanked him down behind some metal trash cans. Bees swooped in and out, probably dining on discarded soda cans.

  Connor did hear something, a sound that made his stomach go tight. He turned back and looked at the field they’d just crossed.