“Where’s mom?” Their mother worked in Dubuque, but surely she would have come back to retrieve Kimber.
“They wouldn’t let her come back to town. The last time I talked to her she had driven back to town but the army had barricades on all the roads going in and out. They told her the town was quarantined until they figured out what was going on and that no one was going in or out.”
“So they’re leaving us here to die.”
The familiar voice sent a chill across Kimber’s body. She could feel Drew’s eyes on her, but couldn’t will herself to look at her girlfriend. No, Drew was now her ex-girlfriend.
“These things are running around town, killing people, and the most help they can offer is to lock everyone up and tell them to stay inside?”
“The army and the government don’t want it to spread. They aren’t saying much, but the one thing they are saying is they don’t know how it transfers from one person to the next. If we are all infected, its smart to keep us here, away from the rest of the country.” Kimber wasn’t sure if she was on the right side, but if it was the opposite side as Drew, she’d take it. It did seem like a smart plan, even if the government wasn’t exactly executing it properly.
“We need to head to Dubuque and get mom.” Eli wasn’t asking a question. He had to get his mother and he had to protect her and Kimber. If that meant going around a government quarantine and leaving Dyersville behind, he was okay with it. The two siblings made a start to leave, but the others didn’t move.
“Wait...” Rion spoke, causing Kimber and Eli to stop. “I don’t have a car. It doesn’t seem safe to walk home. I have to go check on my sister. She might be home alone.”
Kimber looked at her brother. The two of them were use to it being just the two of them. Bringing other people around always complicated things. For one, Kimber had a small car. Rion could come, but if the other two wanted to tag along, they would have to find another vehicle. Other people also meant other agendas. Already, they were possibly getting sidetracked from finding their mother, to finding Rion’s sister too. Kimber knew Rion’s sister, Emmy. She was pretty young. It didn’t sit right, leaving a child alone while she waited for her pregnant sister to walk home to her. While Kimber was lost in thought, someone made a suggestion.
“Maybe it would be best if we all stuck together,” Drew spoke up.
“As long as everyone agrees to head out of town, I don’t see why not,” Eli said.
“After we get Emmy.” The softness in Rion’s voice was gone. She was standing her ground. Kimber could respect that. Family always came first.
“After we get Emmy.” Kimber agreed.
Four of them nodded. Everyone was in agreement except Nolan. He hadn’t said a word the entire time they were making the plan. He sat on the teacher's desks, his boots resting on the chair, cleaning his fingernails with the pocket knife he had retrieved from the desk drawer. Kimber looked at him expectantly. He looked like he might be weighing the decision.
“Nolan?”
“I haven’t seen Frank,” he stopped, “my dad, since last night. What are the chances it has to do with this? What are the chances he is one of them?”
“Pretty high.”
Kimber thought about the horrors she had witnessed throughout the day after she answered Nolan’s question. Her mother had called and woken her up at nine. Rapid-fire Spanish came through the telephone, causing the youngest Gomez child to sit up straight in bed. She was to find Eli, to get out of town, and head to the house where her mother worked. The family she cleaned for had kept her there, giving her a room in their very large house for her and her children until this all blew over.
Eli hadn’t told Kimber or his mom that he had detention. Kimber assumed he was at work and headed there. When she arrived, there was a red smear on the door of Lucky’s Gas and Grub. No one was behind the counter. The door dinged when she walked in. Kimber called for Eli, but her voice just echoed back to her.
Then she heard the growling. It was low and guttural. A blood covered person was crouched low, bent at the knees. His hands were pressed against the floor, sniffing and tilting his head upwards. Kimber thought he looked like Eli’s co-worker, Thomas, a kind, quiet boy, who was always nice to her. He must have been distracted by the ding of the front door when Kimber entered the gas station. In between his arms laying on the floor, was Sam Thorne, Eli’s boss. Sam’s throat was ripped open, blood spilling on the floor. Her eyes widened in horror as the blood covered monster bent down and sank his teeth into Sam’s already open neck. Kimber slowly took a step backward. As quietly as she could, she moved to the glass door. The only thing standing between her and her freedom was pulling open the smeared door, which she had now realized was probably the blood of Sam Throne. She braced herself to move as quickly as she could when the door was open. The ding had drawn the attention of that thing and she didn’t know if it would come after her or not. Quickly, Kimber opened the door and the bell sounded. The sound of movement came from behind her but she didn’t look back until after she pulled the door shut. The creature came barreling around the aisle and slammed into the door. It ran like an ape or a gorilla, on its hands and feet. It kept trying to come through the glass instead of opening the door and going around. Whatever happen to this person, it didn’t seem like it had the same intelligence as other humans, most of them anyway.
After that, Kimber had run home to get a weapon. A long kitchen knife was all she could find. It would have to do. She packed up a couple of bags and headed back out to get Eli. Dyersville had never seemed that big to her, but when you were looking for one person and had no idea where they were, it seemed endless. She would never have thought about looking at the school if it weren’t for Eli’s friend Jasper. It was Saturday and the school would be empty. She called Jasper to see if Eli was with him. He wasn’t but Jasper offered up the information that he was in detention today. It was much too late to still be in detention, but Kimber hadn’t looked at the school yet and decided to give it a try.
“I guess I’ll go with you then,” Nolan said, sticking his knife in the top of the desk. He didn’t seem happy about his decision, but it was made.
“My car isn’t big enough for all of us.”
“Neither is my truck.” Said Eli. Kimber knew Nolan had a truck too. It wouldn’t be any bigger than her or Eli’s vehicles.
“We can take the Tahoe,” Drew said. It was the only option really. Once they had Emmy it might be a tight squeeze, but they could manage. Dubuque was only thirty minutes away.
“Do you have your phone?” Eli asked as they picked up their stuff to head out.
“No, I broke it.” Kimber looked at her feet. She had tossed it against the dash of her car when she left the party the night before. It was an action to the bottled up rage she held inside after seeing Drew kiss that geek, Jo. Sometimes the hot Spanish tempers her and her brother had could be very destructive. It was only after she went to use her cellphone to find Eli that morning that she realized she it was unusable. Kimber felt stupid for letting Drew get to her that much and for breaking the very thing she would really need that day. Thankfully, her mom still believed in keeping a home phone.
“Where’s yours?”
“Mr. Sales locked it up before he left.”
Drew jerked her head towards the desk.
“The lines are pretty screwed up, though, it took me almost an hour to get through to Jasper. I haven’t been able to get back through to mom at all.” Kimber hadn’t thought about her mom’s safety for most of the day. She was too worried about her missing brother. Kimber hoped their mother was safe. If anyone could keep her safe and sound, it was the rich people she worked for. Having grown up poor and watching her mom work for people that were wealthy, she knew that they always had the best of things.
“Jasper was the one who told me you were here, Eli. He said Dubuque seems pretty normal. People are supposed to stay in their homes and people who don’t live there are gathering at the hos
pital. He was on his way to work. Apparently, Wal-Mart doesn’t give you the night off when the world is ending.”
It was a joke, but Kimber’s words surprised even her. Was this the end of the world? She shook her head. That was how it went in the movies, but this wasn’t a movie.
“Shall we then?” She asked, pretending to escort them out the door like she was a butler with a flourish of her hands.
“After you,” said Eli, cracking a smile. The two of them had always been better together and if the world was ending, Kimber wanted to be with her brother.
The lights flickered and the five teens were plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER SIX
The hallway was lit up by a few emergency lights, but it was barely enough light to see what was in front of them. The motley crew of five left the classroom and headed toward the exit nearest the parking lot. The other four tried to be as quiet as possible, hoping not to let anyone know they were out of the safety of the locked classroom. Nolan walked just as he always had, not loudly, but not as carefully as the others. His stance was proud and walked as if there was nothing to fear. In his mind, they didn’t know if there really was.
As they made their way slowly past the lockers and other classrooms, Nolan couldn’t help but scoff at this band of misfits. Their plan was ludicrous. They were supposed to travel clear to the edge of town to find some girl that probably wasn’t even alive. If Frank was more than likely dead, there was no way a ten-year-old girl was still alive. Frank had been tough and when sober could take down a man twice his size. He was scrappy and knew how to fight, using his leanness to his advantage. When Nolan had come home from school with a black eye from a bully, Frank had taken the time to teach him how to fight someone who was much larger than him.
“You’re smaller, so they will underestimate you. You should use that to your advantage.” His dad had said, his stance wide and open. Frank stood the opposite of how Nolan had when the bully approached him. He had been closed off, fists up, trying to protect himself. They sparred all afternoon and into the evening. It was the best memory Nolan had of Frank.
A shadowy figure moved ahead of them. Nolan held his hand out to stop the group. He waved it up and down, without speaking. Had they not seen something move ahead of them?
“What?” Eli asked.
“I thought I saw something.” Nolan looked again, but nothing was there. “I guess I was wrong.”
They began to walk again. Metal creaked, as a locker door swung open ahead of them. The whole group froze. Nolan was right, though the thought didn’t comfort him in the slightest. Something, or perhaps someone, was in the hallway with them.
Eli moved them all closer together.
“We can fight it.” He said, his voice nothing but a whisper, but everyone heard. Nolan shook his head. Fighting whatever was lurking in the hallway was a very stupid idea. They didn’t know how strong it was or if it had a weapon. The best thing they could do was run.
“We need to run. How far is the Tahoe parked from the school?” Nolan’s voice was low, just as Eli’s had been.
“First row in the parking lot.”
“The sound of us running will draw it to us faster,” Eli insisted.
“We can’t fight it. We don’t know what it is, let alone how strong it is. Three of us are girls, one is pregnant. It’s a bad idea.”
Nolan wasn’t afraid to fight someone. He knew how to take someone down thanks to his old man, but if it came at the girls, he wasn’t sure he or Eli could protect them. No matter what his reputation said about him, Nolan wasn’t about to put three girls in harms way if he could avoid it. He felt it was his responsibility to keep them safe.
“Stay as quiet as possible, but move as quickly as you can.” Nolan looked at Rion, unsure how quickly the expectant mother could move.
“Can you help her? I’ll cover the other two.” Nolan asked Eli. He was a better man for the job. Rion was timid and fearful and he didn’t have the patience to deal with her if things got intense. Eli nodded and the group started to move again. He kept close to Drew and Kimber, moving them along. Eli and Rion were behind them. He chanced a quick glance at them. Tear streaks glistened on her cheeks in the dim light as Rion walked. Nolan knew he should feel something for the girl, but she got herself into this mess. It wasn’t his fault, but he still felt a little sympathy as the girl waddled along after them.
After what seemed like hours but was only mere minutes, the group reached the first set of double doors. The parking lot was dark. The streets that led up to the school were also drenched in darkness. The power outage must be town-wide. Nolan opened the door for the group. Kimber and Drew walked forward, Kimber a little behind Drew. The tension between the two of them was thick enough that even Nolan noticed it, but he didn’t care to ask what was going on. Rion came through next and then Eli. Just as Nolan was about to exit with them, two slimy, blood covered hands grabbed his shoulders.
Nolan was pulled to the ground. His head bounced off the hard hallway floor and his vision blurred. Two hands slid around his neck and the person who had pulled him down was on top of him.
Person was not the right term for this thing. It may have started out as one, but it was disfigured and looked more like a walking corpse than the human it had been. Its eyes were bright yellow and seemed to pierce into Nolan’s own watery blue ones. A large chunk of the creature’s neck and shoulder was missing. It looked like a large animal had taken a bite out of it for lunch. A mixture of saliva and blood leaked from a hole where the thing’s mouth was supposed to be and fell on Nolan’s shirt. There was no jaw, so it couldn’t really be called a mouth.
“A little help here!” Nolan yelled, holding the monster at bay with his own hands, his vision still a blur. The knife he always carried was in his pocket, but his arms were already buckling. He couldn’t hold it off with one hand while he reached for the knife. His arms were going to give way.
Eli reached over the thing’s shoulders and pulled it off of Nolan. It hit the wall with a sound that went squish. Nolan jumped up to his feet and searched his pockets for his knife. It wasn’t a long one, but it would have to do. He pulled it out and ran to the thing. It was starting to crouch down, readying itself for an attack. Nolan drove the knife through its forehead. It stopped moving immediately and dropped to the floor.
“That’s the secretary,” Eli said, casually.
“No wonder we were locked in there all day.” The secretary becoming one of those things explained partly why they had been trapped, but it still didn’t explain where Mr. Sales had run off to. Probably to save himself.
Kimber, Drew, and Rion came back in now that they were presumably safe. They wanted to see what was happening to the people of their little town.
“What is it?” Rion asked, holding her arms around her belly in a protective manner.
“I don’t know.” Nolan spat on the ground. “But it smells disgusting. Its pretty strong, almost stronger than me.”
“Almost, right,” said Eli, shooting him a teasing look.
“I think they’re reanimating,” Kimber said, stepping closer and kneeling down to look at the high school secretary, Mary Ellen. “See these?” She pointed at the chunks of missing flesh from the corpse's neck and shoulders. “Those are bites. They tried to eat her and she became one of them.”
“Like a zombie?” Drew asked.
“Exactly, that has to be it. They’re zombies. They are eating people, the people die, and then come back to life to eat more people.”
Nolan looked at her as if she had just declared that she was the queen and they were all her servants. This was crazy. Thankfully Eli agreed.
“Get your head out of the movies, Kimber. This isn’t Dawn of the Dead. There are no such things as zombies.”
“But there are!” She insisted. “There are spores and viruses that spread through the animal world that are just like what we think of a zombie viruses to be. Why is it so far fetched to think eventually one of thos
e could mutate and do the same thing to us?”
Eli shook his head and looked at Nolan. They were on the same wavelength. “You’re sisters nuts.”
“Yeah, I think so too. We should get going. Mr. Sales could be lurking around here somewhere as one of these things too.”
“Zombies,” Kimber said, shoving her brother who was purposely not saying the z word.
“Nah, he probably ran to save himself.” Nolan was willing to bet good money that their teacher was long gone.
“Do you really think so?” Rion pipped up, the tone in her voice filled with concern.
“He hit the pavement as soon as they told him what was going on. That’s probably why they called him to the office this morning.”
Nolan looked at Rion as he answered and saw a look of relief on her face. He didn’t understand why she would be concerned about someone who clearly wasn’t concerned about four of his students. The slime ball had left them in there to presumably die. But like most things, it wasn’t his business and he kept his mouth shut.
The parking lot looked like a war zone. How had it changed so much in twelve or so hours? Litter was scattered everywhere. Blockades were pulled in front of the exits, trapping cars in the parking lot. The barricades would have to be moved before they could go anywhere. Nolan and Eli headed to move one while the girls climbed into Drew’s copper colored SUV. Drew drove up to the grab the boys. Rion sat in front, ready to direct Drew to Meadow Grove trailer park. Eli and Nolan climbed in the back with Kimber, and they were off.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The street lights flickered back on during the drive to Rion’s trailer. She wished she had a phone to call her sister. It would be nice to know if she was even alive and that they weren’t walking into something they wouldn’t be able to get out of alive. There were no cars on the road. The streets on the way to Meadow Grove looked just a bad as the parking lot had. Maybe they had always looked that way and her mind was just playing tricks on her, making things seem worse than they were. Litter blew in the wind, a car was pulled up on the curb, lights on and doors open. Rion didn’t know what would cause someone to abandon their car like that.
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