by D. J. Molles
Arnie grinned, chuckled. His loose folds of empty skin quivered under his chin like a wattle.
Greg turned back around. “Go ahead and take us in, Arnie. Slow and easy.”
“You got it, boss.”
They rolled on, Greg and Kyle readying themselves for whatever they might find, while Professor White sulked. They rolled their windows down and laid their rifles on the doors, barrels protruding out, though it was tight to maneuver a rifle in such a small vehicle.
They stopped at the intersection of South Main Street and Front Street, kitty-corner to OP Lillington. The ring of red brick buildings had been partially secured—most of the windows and doors were boarded or covered with some sort of barricade. A few were still open, giving it the look of an abandoned project.
Greg leaned forward again, looked up to the roof of the building, and watched it for a minute.
“No watchman?” Kyle asked.
Greg just shook his head. “Go ahead and take us around back.”
Arnie took them into the entrance, a narrow alley wide enough for a single vehicle. The end of the alley was usually barricaded by a car, which the guards at OP Lillington would roll out of the way for incoming friendlies, like one might open a gate.
The barricade car was rolled away. No one around it.
They crept past, then stopped in the middle of the open space, surrounded completely by all those buildings. The other barricades still stood intact—the Dumpsters and tires and other abandoned cars still stacked up and crowned with loops of barbed wire. It was only the entrance that had been left open. Like an abandoned house with the front door hanging off its hinges.
Greg opened his door, stepped out. He took a moment to survey his surroundings while behind him the others squirmed their way out of the tiny hatchback car. It was very still there in the center of OP Lillington. Greg would still check the interiors of the buildings, just to say that he had, but he already knew that the place was abandoned. He could tell just from the immense silence of it.
“Hellooooo?” Professor White yelled. “Anybody here?”
Greg spun on the man. The professor had his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone and took another deep breath to continue his shouting. Greg slapped the hands away from his mouth, then stood there, glaring.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
White looked concerned. “I was trying to call out—”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?”
“But what if there are people around?”
“And what if they’re the wrong people?” Greg shook his head. “Jesus, it really is astounding that you’ve lived this long.” He turned away from the professor, stood without moving for a moment, feeling out the ensuing silence, listening for sounds of anything that might be coming for them.
Nothing.
Greg started walking for the buildings. “Kyle, you’re with me. Arnie, stay with the professor, please. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“You got it.”
The professor sounded indignant. “I don’t need a babysitter, Greg!”
“Oh, I think you do,” Greg said without turning around.
They cleared the buildings and found nobody, just as Greg had suspected. Nor did they find any sign of somebody. Or any clue as to where they had gone. Like OP Lillington had never existed.
In the quiet darkness of one of the buildings, Kyle spoke up. “You think the infected got them?”
Greg considered it but shook his head. “No. There’d be bodies. Blood.”
“You think…” He lowered his voice. “Maybe the hunters got them?”
Greg just made a face of consternation. “The who?”
Kyle glanced around uncomfortably. “Some of Harden’s guys were talking about these new infected they were calling hunters. Said they were big and fast. Said they hunted like animals. Ran in a small pack. Grabbed people and carried them away, instead of tearing ’em apart right there like the normal infected. Maybe that’s what happened here. Maybe the hunters got them all. Carried them away.”
Greg shook his head again. “Bullshit.”
“Well, what do you think happened?”
Greg shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t know, Kyle.”
Before they exited the building, Greg found a good pry bar lying near one of the outer doors. He picked it up, judging its heft. He seemed satisfied and left the building. In the back parking lot, Arnie and Professor White sat on the hood of the Geo, the professor looking sour and Arnie looking amused.
Greg walked over to the professor and motioned with the pry bar. “Let me show you something, Professor.”
White slid down off the hood and Greg led him toward the entrance. As he passed, he gave Arnie a small nod, and then Arnie and Kyle hopped into the Geo. As Greg and White exited the former OP Lillington, the little old car rattled to life, the fan belt squeaking loudly for a few seconds.
White looked back. “Where are they going?”
Greg rolled his eyes. “Relax, Professor. They’re gonna swing around and pick us up.”
“Well, what’s so important out here?”
Greg just kept walking until they reached Front Street, and there on the corner, he stopped. He pointed across the street with the pry bar. “You see that, Professor?”
White squinted. “What?”
“Directly across the street. Don’t act like you can’t see it.”
White frowned with irritation, stepped past Greg. “My eyes aren’t what they were…”
Greg hit him in the side of his right knee with the pry bar. White cried out in pain, his leg seizing, and he stumbled, trying to grab at his knee. Greg swung again, this time catching White’s hand as it gripped his knee, the impact crushing his fingers. White screamed and collapsed onto the ground, holding up his injured hand.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
Greg ignored him. He swung the pry bar down and finally hit White’s knee straight on, breaking the bone and inverting the joint. Then he went to work quickly on the other leg, getting into a sort of rhythm as he hammered down onto the kneecap while Professor White screamed on and on. He felt the second knee break and then Greg stood up straight, breathing hard.
He dropped the pry bar on the ground.
Professor White sobbed uncontrollably. “It hurts! It hurts!”
Greg raised his voice over White’s blubbering. “While conducting a routine scouting operation into the disappearance of the group at OP Lillington, we were attacked by a pack of infected. Unfortunately, during the ensuing struggle, we were unable to save Professor White.” He bent down and made eye contact with White. “How’s that sound?”
“You bastard!” Spittle flew from White’s mouth. “You fucking bastard!”
Greg just shook his head. “You should’ve learned when to keep your fucking mouth shut, Professor. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets gone.”
“I’m sorry,” White muttered. “I won’t say anything else! I promise!”
But Greg had already turned his back on the professor. He walked to the Geo and sat down inside, closing his door against White’s rising voice as it begged and pleaded for them not to leave him there. Greg motioned Arnie on, and they sped off, leaving the professor on the sidewalk, hollering desperately as he attempted to crawl after them, dragging his crumpled legs behind him.
Greg looked into the backseat at Kyle.
The kid’s face was pale.
“You gonna be okay with this?” Greg asked.
Kyle seemed shaky, but he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m okay.”
* * *
The pain in his legs was blinding. Like they were caught in a mechanical crusher, one of those big ones they used to turn cars into little cubes of scrap metal. He crawled after the vehicle, dragged himself along the sidewalk, elbows and palms scraping into bloody messes against the rough pavement.
The car made the turn onto South Main Street, headi
ng toward the bridge over the Cape Fear River. Heading back toward Camp Ryder. And then it disappeared. White lay there, one arm outstretched after the vehicle like he might just reach out and grab it. Then he collapsed, weeping in agony and despair.
He lay there for a moment, just trying to overcome the pain. Just trying to make himself move more. He didn’t want to die right there, but the pain was so bad he didn’t think he had the strength to keep going. Maybe Greg would come back for him. Maybe it was all just a cruel trick, to teach him a lesson so that he wouldn’t talk bad about Jerry anymore.
“I learned my lesson!” Professor White screamed in desperation. “I’m sorry!”
A scraping growl echoed off the buildings.
Fear flooded his system. He evacuated his bowels in terror.
“Oh, no! No!” He hitched himself up onto his raw and bloody elbows, trying to look behind him. All he saw was a lean, sinuous form ducking behind a building, only a block from him. “No, no, no! Somebody help me! Please! Help me!”
He looked back toward South Main Street and there, just in front of the railroad tracks, he could see a figure. Standing there next to the woods. At first he thought it might be an infected, but it was astride a dirt bike. White didn’t know whether it was friend or foe, a bandit or just a regular survivor. In that moment, it didn’t matter. He would take anything over being eaten alive.
He raised his hand weakly. “Help! Help!”
The figure rolled forward on the dirt bike.
“Over here!” White yelled excitedly—someone was going to save him! “Please! Help me!”
The dirt bike worked its way around the railroad tracks, and then onto the road. And when it hit the concrete, it turned, heading away from Professor White, and the engine gunned, loud enough that he could hear it over his own cries for help. He thought maybe it was a mistake, maybe the man on the dirt bike just needed to get around a median or something.
But in the following quiet, he could hear the sound of the dirt bike’s engine fading.
Fading.
And then nothing.
He stared in the direction it had disappeared to. Who the hell was it? Why wouldn’t the person come help him?
A guttural noise behind him.
He looked and didn’t see anything.
The same noise again, this time from above.
Professor White looked up. And screamed.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
CHAPTER 1: Killbox
CHAPTER 2: The Hub
CHAPTER 3: Bad News
CHAPTER 4: Gray Areas
CHAPTER 5: Dissension
CHAPTER 6: A Long Night
CHAPTER 7: Strangers
CHAPTER 8: A Delicate Matter
CHAPTER 9: Fighters
CHAPTER 10: A Narrow Window
CHAPTER 11: Trouble Brewing
CHAPTER 12: Rumors
CHAPTER 13: Sanford
CHAPTER 14: Evolution
CHAPTER 15: Diversion
CHAPTER 16: Going Up
CHAPTER 17: The Den
CHAPTER 18: A Simple Equation
CHAPTER 19: Talks
CHAPTER 20: Hard Truths
CHAPTER 21: In the Woods
CHAPTER 22: Odd Cargo
CHAPTER 23: The Prisoner
CHAPTER 24: Old Friends…
CHAPTER 25: … And New Enemies
CHAPTER 26: New Realities
CHAPTER 27: Traitors
CHAPTER 28: Tipping Point
CHAPTER 29: Bad Things
CHAPTER 30: The Coup
CHAPTER 31: Jerry
CHAPTER 32: What Doesn’t Kill You
Extras
Meet the Author
Also by D.J. Molles
A Preview of THE REMAINING: FRACTURED
Orbit Newsletter
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by D.J. Molles
Excerpt from The Remaining: Fractured copyright © 2013 by D.J. Molles
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto,cover photo by Arcangel Images. Cover copyright © 2014 by Orbit Books.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: January 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-40421-1
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