by Sam Sisavath
“They’re everywhere,” Ted said. “How is that possible?”
“The people they attacked,” she said. “They infect them somehow. The victims don’t die, Ted, they turn.”
“Yeah, but there are so many now…”
“How many people are in Houston?”
“Two million, one hundred thousand, and forty-five hundred at last count,” Ted said without hesitation. “But that was back in 2011. There might have been more since.”
She gave him an amused look.
“I read a lot,” he smiled embarrassingly. “That’s what you do when you don’t have a lot of friends.”
“You don’t have any friends?”
“I have some friends, just not a lot of friends.”
“Well, you have two more now.”
They exchanged a brief, awkward smile, when Vera’s voice suddenly cut through the air like a knife.
“Carly, look!”
Vera was pointing back at a strip mall parking lot they had just driven past. Carly saw it: a police car was parked in front of an Archers Sports and Outdoor warehouse store. The police lights were flashing, but the siren had been turned off.
“What?” Ted said, looking back at Vera, then at Carly. He still had two hands firmly on the steering wheel. “What happened?”
“Stop the car,” Carly said. “I think we found them.”
“Found who?”
“Them.”
Ted stepped hard on the brake, and Carly had to grab at the dashboard to keep from hitting it with her face. She felt a slight thud against her seat and looked back to see Vera rubbing at her forehead.
“Ow!” Vera said.
“Didn’t I tell you to put on your seatbelt?”
Vera made a face.
“Now you know. Carly’s always right.”
“Sorry, kid,” Ted said, his face red.
They sat parked in the street and looked back at the squad car and its flashing lights. They were too far away to see anyone moving inside the Archers, and there were no windows along the front wall to indicate the presence of creatures inside.
“What should we do?” Ted asked. “It’s almost time to go back…”
“Let’s take our chances,” Carly said.
Vera sat up in the back seat and hiked a thumbs-up in approval.
CHAPTER 13
KATE
Like most pawnshops in Houston, this one had a gun rack of rifles and shotguns on the wall, the handguns laid out underneath the glass counter. They spent the next hour taking weapons out of the case and trying to figure out how to load them without accidentally shooting themselves. It was a nerve-wracking experience, and Kate constantly waited to hear the loud boom of an accidental discharge.
The bullets came in boxes, but finding the right ones for the right guns took trial and error, and even when the bullets did fit, they didn’t feel comfortable enough to risk firing off rounds in the store. Eventually, they were able to load a couple of six-shot revolvers and a shotgun. She had to pull back the lever underneath the barrel—or pump it, she guessed was the right word—to load the shell.
Staring at the guns spread out on the counter, she didn’t know whether to feel safe or endangered. Maybe a little of both, and it occurred to her yet again just how ill-equipped she was to survive in a world that didn’t value her creativity or move to the whims of her personal ambitions. She was out of her element here.
Luke, with the sword slung over his back, stared down at the guns and looked as lost and apprehensive as she was. After a while, he said, “Maybe as a last resort?”
She nodded. “Definitely.”
“My mom wouldn’t let my dad keep one in the house. I don’t even know if we loaded them right. What if they, you know, explode on us?”
“Can they do that?”
“I don’t know. They can, can’t they? I’ve seen movies where that’s happened.”
“You’re right, last resort. We’ll use them only if we have to. And even then we should be careful.”
“We already have this.” He drew his sword and walked back to the window. “If they get in, it’ll be through here. I can’t shoot a gun, but I’m pretty sure I can hack off a head or two with this.” He slashed at the air for effect. “How tough do you think their necks are? They looked pretty weak, and when I was hitting them with the bat, they went down pretty easy. They didn’t stay down, but they went down easy.”
Kate thought about Donald. Striking him with the stiletto and how the sharp point slipped into the side of his head, as if the skull wasn’t even there.
“Unless you cut off your own leg first,” she said.
“No way.” He slid the sword back into its scabbard. “I’m getting used to it.”
He pushed the curtains aside and looked out into the strip mall parking lot. She walked over and stood next to him.
They stared at the Wallbys and the Blockbuster store. With the windows covered, they looked foreboding, unwelcoming, even ugly. The Blockbuster in particular looked old and decrepit, like some ancient thing from the past that didn’t belong in today’s world.
“When was the last time you rented movies at a Blockbuster’s?” Luke asked.
She had to think about it. “It’s been a while…”
“Funny, I didn’t even know they still had Blockbusters around. Who rents movies anymore? I stream them over the net.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“You torrent?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this illegal downloading thing. You can get free movies or TV shows and stuff like that.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good to know. Maybe when the power comes back on, you can show me how.”
He laughed. “You really think the power’s going to come back on?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I don’t think it’s ever coming back on,” he said. “When I was in middle school, we took a field trip to a power plant. There were all these buttons and switches and hundreds of people had to keep the place working around the clock. One person doesn’t show up, someone’s got to replace him. You can’t run a power plant with just a few people.” He shook his head. “I don’t think the lights are ever coming back on, Kate.”
“You’re probably right.” She glanced at her watch. They may have lost all power in the city, but as long as there were batteries, her watch would still work. Behind her, she could hear the ticking of a wall clock. “Two hours until it gets dark. We should keep looking for more supplies.”
Luke looked up toward the sky. “Did it always get dark so soon?”
“It’s always like this in late November.”
“Funny, I never noticed until now…”
*
In the back rooms, Luke found a couple of big safes but no combinations. Undeterred, he retrieved a sledgehammer from one of the shelves.
“That’s not going to work,” Kate said.
“You don’t think so?”
“Not in a million years.”
He started wailing away at one of the safes. She stood back and watched him, hands over her ears to keep out the loud, clanging noise. She shook her head.
He gave up after a half-dozen tries that left one of the safes dented, but no closer to opening. Sweating and gasping for breath, he crouched, using the sledgehammer as a resting post.
“Told you,” she said.
He made a face and tossed the sledgehammer down. He found a crate in a corner, sat down, and closed his eyes. “I’m going to rest for a while.”
“Take your time.”
She went back to the front of the pawnshop and worked her way through a rack of second-hand women’s clothes. Most of them were dusty, cheap, and hopelessly out of style. She searched for a shirt and pants that would fit, locating a white shirt and black slacks among the camouflage hunting gear and oversized tees.
She changed in the pawnshop while Luke got going again in the back. She could hear him tossing boxes around and cur
sing.
She was glad to be out of the torn blouse and skirt. She didn’t realize how much they smelled until she had stripped them off into a pile next to her then threw them into a nearby trashcan. She looked for sneakers and socks and found them in another aisle, along with something to tie up her hair.
She grabbed some clothes in Luke’s size and tossed them at him when he came out of the back room.
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” he asked.
“They’re covered in blood.”
“Oh.” He looked down at himself. “I didn’t even notice.” He took the clothes into the back room to change.
There was a fridge in what she guessed was an employee lounge. Inside were bottles of water and an old Red Delicious apple that had turned a pale shade of brown. The fridge smelled of rotten air when she pulled open the door, so she grabbed the bottles and slammed it shut again. She found unopened strips of Jack Link’s beef jerky inside a drawer underneath the cash register. The find made her giddy.
*
“Gatorade would have been better,” Luke said.
“Evian would have been better,” she said. “Or Perrier. Or red wine. I could go for some red wine about now.”
“I’ve never tasted wine.”
“You’re too young; that’s how it should be.”
“I hear in France kids drink wine when they’re ten, sometimes even younger than that.”
“Did you know the French invented French fries?” she asked.
“Really?”
“No. I’m just messing with you.”
“Oh, ha ha,” he said.
She laughed.
“So who invented French fries?” he asked.
“We did. They say Thomas Jefferson was the first one to ever eat them ‘served the French way.’”
“Hunh. You learn something new every day.”
They were sitting on sleeping bags that Kate found on a back shelf. They were careful to set up in the middle of the pawnshop, hidden from the front windows in case the creatures looked in, but close enough to rush forward and defend if necessary. The prospect of actually doing that filled her with dread.
The beef jerky went down with some difficulty, but Kate hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch yesterday afternoon, and her stomach growled loudly, eager for each new strip of beef. She had almost convinced herself not to eat it when she saw how much sodium was in each piece. But once she started eating, she couldn’t stop. Her stomach wouldn’t let her.
“I guess you don’t eat this stuff on a daily basis, huh?” Luke said.
She made a face, and forced another strip down with a gulp of warm water.
*
Sundown came at 5:30 p.m., and it was pitch dark outside before they realized it had happened. For a moment Kate forgot to breathe. It had gotten so dark so fast that it took her breath away, and all she could think was, My God, when did that happen?
Then she heard the sound of the city waking up.
Then she heard them.
There were a lot of them, moving in different directions. She could tell that much from the scampering nature of their movements. She imagined this must be what it sounded like if you paid attention to cockroaches moving in the dark. When they leaned out from behind the shelves and looked toward the window, they saw dark figures moving across the window, a constant stream of odd shapes and sizes.
“How many do you think are out there?” Luke whispered.
His voice sounded even younger than his fourteen years. She could feel his fear, radiating from every inch of his body. She understood exactly how he felt and had to put both hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.
“A lot,” she whispered back.
How many? Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands…
She felt something strange—plastic and metallic—and looked down in surprise to see she had picked up the machete without realizing it. Her fingers were a pale white as she gripped the handle. She willed herself to release some of the pressure and uncurled her fingers slowly.
One of the creatures had stopped in front of the window. Its skeletal, silhouetted figure looked like a puppet moving behind the curtains of a puppet show, lit up by a flashlight. In this case, the flashlight was the moon. There were two windows at the front of the shop, on either side of the door, and the creature had stopped in front of the window Luke had broken to get inside. It was standing there much longer than it should, as if it was looking at something, seeing something amiss.
Luke tensed up next to her. Both of them had stopped breathing.
The creature continued to look at the window. Maybe it had noticed the bent burglar bars. Maybe it saw or heard or smelled them.
Could they do that? Could they smell them?
Luke gripped his sword, the sharp blade pointing at the ceiling. He had taken it out of the scabbard. When had he done that?
He nodded at her, as if to say, “I’m ready if you are,” and again she was taken aback by just how young he was.
She looked back toward the window.
The creature turned its head quickly, as if its attention was snapped elsewhere. It disappeared from the window, even as new creatures rushed by, silhouettes appearing one second and gone the next in an endless blur.
Luke let out a loud breath. She did the same, feeling a little light-headed for a moment. How long had she held her breath? It had seemed to take forever for the creature to finally move on.
“That was a close one,” he whispered.
“Yeah…”
He slouched, the sword still clutched tightly in his hands.
She didn’t have to say anything, and he didn’t have to tell her, but she knew neither of them were going to get any sleep tonight.
Then they heard it, in the distance. There was no mistaking the noise. It was loud, like thunderclaps.
Gunshots.
As soon as she said it, four more shots rang out, one after another.
They exchanged a look, scrambled to their feet, and hurried to the window to the right of the door, keeping low in case one of the creatures stopped to look in again. More gunshots broke the night air, and the intensity of movements outside seemed to become frenzied in response.
Luke used the point of his sword to brush aside a piece of curtain, enough to give them a glimpse of the parking lot. It was teeming with them as they moved toward the streets all at once. They looked like a horde of stampeding cattle, moving swiftly with an unnatural but graceful gait that struck her as odd and impossible.
There’s so many of them…
The creatures moved with purpose. Not running toward the street, but surging toward the sound of gunshots. Soon it was hard to tell where one creature ended and another began—there was a mass of blackness moving like an ocean wave underneath the moonlight.
She thought about the machete in her hand and the sword in Luke’s, and realized with sudden terror just how ridiculous they had been to think they could ever defend the pawnshop if the creatures discovered them. How long would they have lasted? A minute? Two?
They sat still in the dark underneath the window for the longest time, not saying a word, listening to the dwindling footsteps.
The gunshots continued for a while, then began to fade.
Then there was just the eerie, suffocating silence again, the noise of a city waking when it should be sleeping.
“You think they got them?” Luke whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“I hope it wasn’t those guys in the police car…”
They moved quietly back to their bedrolls. Luke lay down and closed his eyes, the sword on the floor next to him, his right hand gripping the handle in a tight clutch. An absurd, almost comical image of him waking up from a nightmare and accidentally stabbing himself flashed across her mind.
It wasn’t until ten o’clock that she felt the first hint of drowsiness nagging at her. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but nothing happened. She opened them and stared at the ceiling ins
tead, listening to the darkness.
The wind lightly tapped against the wall, and she listened for the distinctive crack of gunshots. She longed to hear it. It was proof someone else was out there besides her and a fourteen-year-old kid.
Midnight came and went.
She couldn’t keep her eyes closed, or stop herself from hearing every single noise outside, no matter how trivial. Her hands, palms flat against the cold tiles beneath her, felt every little insignificant vibration.
And there were no gunshots…
“Luke,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“Are you asleep?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither. Tell me about your family.”
“Are you going to tell me about yours?”
“If you want.”
“I do,” he said.
“Okay.”
She heard him take a deep breath. “My mother’s name is Patricia, my father’s is Thomas. I’m an only child…”
CHAPTER 14
WILL
Will heard gunshots, somewhere down Richmond. On a normal night, with traffic and the sounds of a city shifting from day to night, he wouldn’t have heard them at all, but this wasn’t a normal night. Without the distraction of daily life, the faint pop-pop-pop echoes might as well be thunder.
He and Danny were on the roof of the Archers Sports and Outdoors store, lying prone near the edge. They watched a small group of ghouls emerge from the 24-hour Walmart Superstore to their left. The group soon ballooned, and Will stopped counting after 300. They darted into the darkness, toward the sound of gunfire.
“That’s the last time I go shopping at Walmart,” Danny said in a low voice.
“When was the last time you went shopping at Walmart?”
“I’m just saying. I’m not going there now.”
“You heard that, right?”
“Gunshots? Yeah. How many rounds did you count?”
“Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. More than one?”
“I’m guessing two. Maybe three?”
“Either or,” Will said.