Hissers II: Death March

by Ryan C. Thomas

  Connor nodded, the sense of urgency growing stronger as even more dark shapes appeared on the river banks. He checked to make sure the backpack was secure on him, then climbed onto the felled logs. Olive climbed up next to him. Together they looked down and saw dozens of undead beneath the water, reaching up, their hands perhaps only two feet from the surface.

  “Jump headfirst,” Connor suggested. “We’ll get farther underwater if we dive.”

  “Kid, I’m gonna jump to the Pacific if I can. Ready?”

  “No.”

  “Me either.” She grabbed him and hugged him.

  He buried his head against her chest, her wet shirt sticking to his face. She was shivering but her soft flesh was somehow still comforting to him. He knew it was an inappropriate thought, but for some reason right there he wanted to kiss her. He knew he was too young, and she looked at him as just a kid, but he also knew he was developing real feelings for her. Not just as a teenager would for any attractive stripper he’d see in a magazine, but as someone he needed in his life now.

  Or maybe he was just scared to death and didn’t want to die without feeling loved.

  She pushed him back, looked into his eyes. “Okay, kid, let’s go!”

  Together they turned and dove, hitting the water like Olympic swimmers. Conner cut deep into the cold, blackness and leveled out, his arms stretched out before him, his legs already kicking. The backpack and his sneakers made it harder to move fluidly, but he fought against them and swam with every muscle, letting the current increase his speed. He opened his eyes in the water but saw nothing except a void. How far ahead of the hissers had they dived? Were there any beneath him right now? Where was Olive?

  A minute later the need for oxygen overtook him and he rose to the surface, still kicking and doing an overarm stroke. He risked a glance around and saw the hissers on the banks running alongside him. Olive was behind him, maybe six or seven feet. “Swim!” she shouted when she saw him.

  He turned back and put his all into it. His lungs burned and he was chilled to the bone. The hissers kept pace with him on the banks, and he was beginning to wonder just where he would be able to extradite himself when his knees touched bottom. No, he thought, this isn’t far enough yet. We’ll have to get up and run and the things on the banks will catch us. He heard the rushing sounds of water as the spider monsters hit the bottom too and rose out of the water, their sibilant cries of hunger no longer muffled by the river. He could hear Olive’s ragged breathing as she came up beside him and dragged him to his feet. “Get up and run. There!”

  Ahead of them he saw what she was pointing at. A fence line cut across the water on both sides of the river, denoting private property. Whoever owned the land had claimed both sides. While the fence didn’t run over the river itself, it continued on either side, leaving them in an unobstructed middle lane.

  Pushing through the current, they passed through the fences and watched as the hissers on the bank got caught up. It still left the spider monsters behind them though, which were sounding closer and closer.

  Connor steered toward his left and hit the sides of the river bed. The river cut a gully here and the banks were up to his shoulders. He grabbed an exposed root system and hauled himself up, turned back and saw Olive reaching for the same handhold. Her years of dancing had toned her arms with thin ropey muscle and she was able to yank herself up in a flash, just as the spiders came tearing through the fence line.

  Connor sucked in new breath and together they ran up a dewy incline toward a lone cottage while behind them the spiders fought their way up the muddy banks, and the hissers scrambled over the tops of the fence, still in the game.

  Connors legs burned and his wet clothes made it nearly impossible to move without stumbling. Both he and Olive were at their exhaustion point, and unless a miracle happened, they were not going to make it to the house before the undead got them.

  That’s when a voice rang out from the house in front of them. “Hey! This way!”

  Up ahead in the darkness, a man was waving them forward. A rifle pointed skyward in his hands, and as they ran that rifle lowered down and took aim. Bang! Bang! The bullets fired past Connor’s head and struck something solid behind him. A second man stepped out of the door up ahead, a 12-gauge cradled in his hands. “Hurry!” he shouted. “Move your ass!”

  Please don’t fire the 12-gauge, Connor prayed. He knew the spread from that weapon wouldn’t just hit what was behind him, but also himself, Olive, the trees to his sides and anything else in a fifteen foot radius.

  Connor rushed up a small backyard patio covered in concrete, ducked low and and went under the man’s arms. He heard Olive enter the house behind him. The sound of shotguns filled the space behind him, and before he could turn back to look a muscular arm had him and he was being pulled forward down a set of stairs. The night air grew even colder, and a collection of voices swam up at him as he found himself going down into a basement.

  The shotgun blasts stopped and a series of doors slammed behind him. Gruff voices followed him down. He could hear Olive asking where they were but no one was answering. They were shuttled to the back of a cold room, past a collection of old workout equipment and a clothes washer lit up by candles, then shown a hatch in the floor. “Go down,” a voice said. “Watch your step on the ladder. You fall it’s a thirty foot drop to the cement. You’ll break an ankle. But we got towels down there. You can dry up. C’mon, don’t worry, just get going.”

  Shivering from his cold, wet clothes, Connor began to descend a rusted metal ladder into more darkness. When he touched bottom, he turned around and saw a low tunnel lit by more melting candles. He followed their glow to a large metal door and stopped. Olive came up behind him and put her hands on his back. Whether or not she was trying to reassure him of their safety he couldn’t tell.

  A man brushed by him smelling of wood smoke and beer and opened the door. “C’mon, get in,” he said.

  Connor and Olive stepped into a small bomb shelter as the second man finally entered the room in the rear and locked the door from the inside. He set his shotgun against the wall and leaned back against the door.

  Seated against the walls, eating what smelled like Chef Boyardee from small bowls, was a group of around ten men and two women dressed in dark blue. They all stared back with scrutiny. It wasn’t until Connor saw the the red-headed man leaning against a far shelf that he realized the significance of this group of people. The badge on the man’s breast glittered in the wan light coming from a small bulb attached to the ceiling.

  Cops.

  SATURDAY 1:12 am

  “You got a girlfriend?” Amanita sat under a blanket on a recliner, one small hand playing with her new haircut. In her other hand she held a fireplace poker. It was either that or one of the knives, but she knew this worked as a weapon. She could still see the face of the girl whose head she’d pushed a poker into back at Seth’s house.

  Doug put out the cigarette he was smoking, one of three left in a pack he’d found in a messy bedroom along with an old Zippo lighter. “Girlfriend. Yeah. Had one,” he said. “Didn’t work out.”

  “Ever married?”

  “Me? Hell no.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “I dunno. I’m just not that marrying kind I guess. Staying with one person forever, getting so that you can’t stand the sight of each other after a while. What’s the point? Why would anybody want that? Me, I’d rather take my chances with life on the road. Gimme the highways and my truck and I’m good.”

  “Well lotta good that did you.”

  “Hush it, now. You’re ruining my spirit.”

  “Just saying. The open roads are pretty much death traps now.”

  “Yeah well… why’re you asking anyway? You wanna get married, Am? I hardly know you but I don’t know you’re the marrying type.”

  “Eat a dick. What’s that supposed to mean? Jerk.”

  “Whoa, hold up there, girl. I’m just sassing you.
I just mean you’re pretty independent, I don’t know some guy’s gonna wanna deal with that. Takes a certain kind of fella who can let his woman be in charge.”

  “Well I do want to get married.”

  “It’s just because you’re young. You get older you might feel different.”

  Amanita shook her head. “No I won’t”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I know. I mean, I want someone to be in love with. Someone who will love me back. If anyone will be around later in life. Anyway, by the time I find real love, you’ll be old and senile so you won’t be able to try and talk me out of it.”

  “Well then good luck, darling. Least it’s good to hear you having some hope that you’ll grow old and meet someone. That’s a good thing. You’re we’re-all-doomed mentality is an acquired taste I just can’t swallow. Things will work out. You’ll see. We’ll get to San Diego, hole up at one of them bases and let the military do their thing. Maybe we even find your friend. This Connor fellow.”

  She rubbed her fingers over some of the burn blisters on her shins. “Connor has a flashdrive.”

  “Say what now?”

  “Connor has this little drive that has—”

  “It important?”

  “Very. I didn’t know if I could tell you this before I didn’t really know you, but I know I can trust you now, and so you gotta sorta kinda listen to me here because it’s important. And I do wanna get married and I think there’s a way we can ensure it. Well, not that I’ll get married but that I’ll at least have the chance. And you can have the chance to get old and stupid.”

  “What more can a man ask for?”

  “So there’s this disc…” Amanita took a good ten minutes to fill Doug in on what a flashdrive was (computers were not the man’s strong point), what they’d found in the crashed plane back in Castor, and what Connor was planning on doing with it. When she was finished Doug lit up another cigarette and blew the smoke out in front of his face as if he might find answers in it.

  “Explain to me again why didn’t you give it to the military?” he asked.

  “I told you, they started this. They lied about everything. They killed my friends, and thousands of people.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. They don’t want to hurt people. I mean, okay, some of the marines I’ve known in my life were certifiable, but as a whole they aren’t. And no wonder they’re losing the battle here. They need that info.”

  “Not for nothing but I’m with Connor on this. I’ve seen how they’ve been treating people. This way if he gets it to the labs out in San Diego, we can give the information to everyone, not just Uncle Sam. You said yourself you saw a helicopter fly over you and it didn’t try to kill the things outside the garage. Every experience I’ve had with them has been bad. They fucking killed my parents.

  “Seems to me they were trying to get you all to safety.”

  “And at the first sign of those things they shot and killed everyone. Their orders are shoot first, ask questions later. I don’t want them to have the ability to make this epidemic happen again.”

  Doug blew out another ring of smoke and watched it dissipate. “I’ll give it to you that everyone should likely get the information on that disc. Everyone who can use it anyway, which isn’t me, but I would think I’m only six degrees away from Stephen Hawking, so maybe it’s worth making it public knowledge. Course if all the scientists who’re still alive can get it, who’s to say this won’t happen again.”

  “Assuming it can be stopped.”

  “Hey now, I heard hope in your voice not minutes ago, don’t lose it. My point is this: your friend gets some pertinent information off that disc that explains how the virus came about, then it could be replicated, right?”

  “I think he has to take that chance”

  “You have no idea where he is? I hate to be crass here, Am, but he could be dead.”

  “I’ve considered that. In which case there’d be no reason to go to San Diego. We could find another base somewhere. But I need that reason, Doug. That’s where my hope is coming from. And plus I could get a good tan, go surfing, eat Mexican food. I know it has tons of calories and is super fattening but I don’t care anymore. God I want a really good burrito for once, you know. My Dad made burritos sometimes when he was really high. I loved them. What they had at Taco Bell wasn’t the same. Christ, I just want to break into a mall there and get some heels and a Nicole Miller dress, like in all those stupid TV shows about rich kids in Santa Monica I used to watch. ”

  “I don’t know from heels, but I’ve gigged in California enough to tell you they do have amazing burritos. Give you major gas though.”

  “Oh, c’mon, not again.”

  Doug chuckled, put out the cigarette. “No, I’m dry. You’re safe.”

  “Thank Christ.”

  “You realize this changes things. We can’t be smelling the roses all to the West Coast, we gotta get moving stat. First thing in the morning we need to find a truck and get on the road.”

  “We could go back and try to find that rape van you left behind.”

  “Thought you said they didn’t touch you?”

  “It’s just a saying.”

  “Not funny. And that van is a lost cause. I’m not fighting through hissers and wolves again.”

  With a yawn he pointed at the front door. “Since I’ll be driving if this works out, I’m gonna get some rest. You keep watch. If anything gets the hair on your back standing up, you wake me.”

  “If I had hair on my back I’d kill myself.”

  “I have hair on my back. It ain’t so bad.”

  “Ugh, gross.”

  “Bite your tongue, missy, some women like a silverback.”

  He moved to the large couch and laid down, a butcher’s knife close at hand on the floor. After a minute, Amanita got up from the recliner and put her blanket on the floor next to him and rolled herself up in it. She could hear Doug drifting off to sleep above her, comforted by the fact he was close enough to protect her if he had to. If was kind of true what he said, she thought, about men having a hard time dealing with her personality. Everyone in school had treated her that way too, like someone to avoid lest there be drama. She’d preferred it that way, but ultimately it hadn’t won her too many friends. If she ever did get married, she now resolved to maybe not be so full of attitude. At least she told herself she’d make an attempt at not always being a bitch. But as soon as Doug started snoring loud enough to crack the plaster in the walls, she thought, no, screw it, if I acted that way I wouldn’t be me. Somewhere out there, she mused, there is a guy who will take my bad with my good. Although so far the only one proving it was Doug.

  From outside she heard new sounds now. What sounded like approaching rain, and trees swaying, and what maybe was a plane in the distance. No doubt the military seeking out targets. Or maybe some government big wigs flying around high above the danger. Then the sound disappeared and she couldn’t be sure she’d even heard it.

  The next few hours were lonely as she lay there listening to the Doug’s snoring. At first she was thankful because it was stopping her from dozing off, but then as her eyes grew heavy she began to wish he’d stop and just let her sleep. Ultimately, her eyes did close and she began to dream of her parents and of Castor. Not a good dream. Not the kind where you’re back where you want to be months or years prior to whatever traumatic event you’re suffering, but a current dream where people are still dead and nothing you to do will change it. Seth and Nicole were impaled on giant bones that jutted out from the side of the pizza place near her house. Their eyes were open and they were angry with her. She saw her parents’ bodies walking in an alleyway that didn’t even exist in real life, and they too looked angry.

  She woke with a start and saw that an hour had passed. Doug was still impersonating a Harley and it was still black outside. She got up, took the last cigarette from the pack and lit it up. After two drags she squished it out and fought ba
ck nausea. “What the hell did I ever see in these fucking things?”

  Not knowing what else to do, she lay back down and stared at the ceiling and tried to remember the words to the Johnny Cash song they’d been singing a couple nights ago. It was something about never forgetting those blue eyes and always missing someone you loved, and it was sad, and it kind of wanted to make her cry. Maybe it wasn’t such bad music after all. Some time later, she fell asleep on the job again.

  SATURDAY 2:45 AM

  It was cold spaghetti and meatballs but it was good. Connor wolfed it down so fast he choked. Olive hit him on the back with a flat palm. “Ease up there, kid, you’ll kill yourself on fake pasta.”

  He cleared his throat, swallowed hard. “Mom stopped buying this years ago. She said it wasn’t a good source of nutrition.”

  “Well it ain’t.”

  “I don’t care, it’s better than anything I’ve had in days.”

  The red headed man came over and sat in front of them, scooted over the small space heater on the floor. Introductions had already been made a while ago. His name was Sean McCarthy, a local deputy who’d grown up in Wisconsin and had the telltale Green Bay accent to go with it. Unlike most of the other officers in the room, he’d kept his hair at a normal length. The mustache, however, was a spitting image of what rested on every other male face around him.

  “You guys feel warmer now?”

  “I dunno about warmer,” Olive said, “but my ass ain’t itching from wet jeans anymore.”

  “Gotta tell you, I haven’t seen such a wild thing as you two coming down that river like Huck Fin in some twisted Mark Twain kinda nightmare. Oh yeah.”

  “Wasn’t fun,” Connor replied.

  “You bet. But it hasn’t been fun down here either. This whole thing hit us about four days ago. We had some warning, believe it or not, but we didn’t really believe it, and then there just wasn’t enough time to mobilize. The town’s too small to deal with this big a catastrophe. We called in for state support but by then all the resources were stretched too thin. My partner, Mark, he made a stand in the street outside the station, and it only took a few minutes to see we were not going to have enough numbers to fend it off.”