Crisis Event: Black Feast

by Shows, Greg

  Sadie opened the package of silver foil and began moving from one bike to the next, tucking the thin sheets of metal down into each gas tank opening, making little bowls that were balanced precariously between slipping down into the gas tanks or falling off and sliding to the floor.

  “This one’s locked,” Callie said.

  Sadie pulled out her multitool and tossed it to Callie. “Slash its tires. Then do the rest of them.”

  When she’d covered the five open tanks with silver foil, Sadie moved from one bike to the next, spilling a small pile of potassium permanganate into the silver foil bowls.

  “What are you doing?” Callie asked after puncturing the first bike’s tires with a hammer stab that drove the blade down through the rubber treads.

  “Giving these morons something else to think about,” Sadie said.

  Callie moved from bike to bike, puncturing each tire before holding the multitool out to Sadie. Sadie took it and closed it and smiled. She tucked it into her back pocket again, then dug into her parka and pulled out the keys to the Honda.

  “Take my pack and the flashlight and find the motorcycle. It’s down the creek to the west,” Sadie said.

  “No way,” Callie said, though Sadie could tell she didn’t mean it.

  “Go on,” Sadie said. “I’ll have to run fast and I can’t do that with a pack.”

  “Thank you for coming back for me,” Callie said, and she hugged Sadie.

  Sadie, having had little human contact in the previous nine months, felt strangely happy about Callie’s sudden affection, as if some part of her she’d forgotten about was waking up.

  She was sorry to see Callie turn away and hurry through the gray kitchen door.

  The gray door was still swinging on its hinges when a nearby lightning strike sent out a boom of thunder so loud it seemed to shake the building around her.

  “Jesus,” Sadie said, and pulled out the little squeeze bottle of glycerin and shook it. There was plenty left inside.

  She took the cap off and put it in her pocket. Then she stood next to the bike farthest away from the kitchen entrance so that when the time came she could move toward the exit as she worked, then run straight out.

  As the thunder faded, she heard more shouting from the gymnasium. It seemed to be getting louder. Angrier.

  “We got to…” someone shouted, but the rest of the sentence was garbled.

  Despite being tempted to leave the bikes and move closer to listen, Sadie stayed where she was. She imagined her grandfather smiling at her for maintaining discipline and sticking to the task at hand.

  But the truth was she was too scared to move away from the kitchen.

  She didn’t want to get caught and end up naked inside a cabinet somewhere, waiting for some sadistic freak with a butcher knife to torture and rape her before turning her into beef stew. So she stood and watched the candle flame flicker and twist and cast creepy shadows on the cafe walls while the lightning strikes continued to lash the land and the thunder rolled on and on and on.

  What finally made her move was the boy. He was fifteen or sixteen, Sadie guessed, and after what Sadie guessed was ten or twelve minutes, he appeared in the darkness before her, almost as if he’d materialized at the front of the cafe.

  Sadie shook her head.

  She must have drifted off or something—not exactly a survival strategy with a future.

  The boy carried a flashlight, and while Sadie was still registering his presence, he clicked it on and shined the light in her face.

  Sadie brought her pistol up and told him to get it out of her face, which he did, but only after a couple of seconds of blinding her with it.

  “You’re pretty hot,” the boy said, pointing the flashlight toward the floor. He kept coming toward her, despite the pistol she had pointed at his face, as if he had no fear of firearms, or didn’t believe she knew how to use it. “Wanna be my girlfriend? I’ll protect you, long as you’re a good lay. My daddy said I could have the next girl.”

  Sadie considered shooting him on the spot, but decided against it as long as he didn’t pose an immediate threat.

  “Get on the floor and don’t move,” Sadie said, and in the flickering candlelight the boy smiled, revealing the same sharpened canine teeth the man in the cop suit had presented. Sadie pulled back the Beretta’s hammer and said: “Get down and don’t move and I won’t kill you.”

  The boy’s smile quickly turned to a snarl, but he didn’t charge at her. Instead he knelt and lay flat on his belly. He kept the flashlight on, and its beam pointed across the floor toward Sadie’s feet.

  “Are you Bryce’s son?” Sadie asked, and brought the glycerin bottle down next to the foil cup. The boy said nothing, and remained sullen as he looked up at Sadie. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Right here, bitch,” a voice came from the other side of the room. “You don’t move and I won’t kill you, though I bet my Daddy’s going to kill you after he’s done passing you around to the boys. Now drop that gun.”

  “Crap,” Sadie said, and turned toward him. She played her light over him and saw he was taller than the first boy, and had a few long wisps of hair growing out of his chin. Slung over his shoulder and pointing at her was an AK-47.

  Sadie’s heart revved and fear rose up her back like a viral chill. Almost by reflex, she squeezed the glycerin bottle and sent several drops splashing over the gas tank.

  Some of the drops actually splattered into the silver foil cup, and within seconds—in the time it took for the first boy to get to his feet and put the flashlight beam on her—smoke began to rise.

  Sadie raised her hands straight up, and moved to stand right beside the second bike. There was a quiet “shhht” and purple flame shot up from the silver foil as the permanganate ignited.

  “What’d you do?” the second boy yelled, his attention fully on the bike’s gas tank.

  “Chemistry,” Sadie said, and when the boy didn’t respond or point his AK-47 at her, she dropped her hand and squirted more glycerin, this time right into the silver foil cup.

  When the “shhht” sound came again Sadie backed out from between the bikes, took two steps sideways and moved to stand between the next two. The second boy, having recovered from his shock swiveled his rifle toward Sadie. He was too late. Sadie was already squirting glycerin at the third gas tank.

  “Get back!” the boy with the rifle said.

  Sadie stepped back quickly, awaiting the third ignition, which came a second later and distracted the boy long enough for her to turn and run for the kitchen.

  “Hey!” his brother yelled, and he fumbled with the little pistol he’d had tucked into the back of his pants the whole time.

  The boy with the rifle pulled the trigger, but he was flustered and scared, and bullets went spraying wildly across the cafe.

  “Get her,” he yelled at his younger brother, who had gotten his pistol out and was already running after Sadie.

  Sadie sprinted hard through the kitchen, jumping over the hogtied woman and noting the white-handled meat cleaver buried in her skull. A pool of blood had poured out since Callie killed her.

  Sadie felt a pang of panic, wondering if she’d made a mistake trusting the girl. What if Callie had blown off the backpack and run straight for the creek? What if she’d already found the bike and started it and rolled out?

  If that was the case, Sadie was as good as dead, though she wouldn’t die without killing some of the cannibal freaks coming after her.

  She glanced at the food cabinet as she ran, and noted that Callie had taken more than the box of candy before she’d left. Then she was sprinting past the guttering fire beneath the grill.

  She caught a nose full of the cooking flesh, and her stomach went wild, growling for something more substantial than a Rice Krispie treat.

  “Hold up!” someone yelled. Sadie glanced back to see the boy she’d put on the floor. He was coming through the gray kitchen door, his gun raised to fire, when the gas tank wen
t up

  Sadie heard the “whooooompf” and saw the flash as the fireball spread and engulfed the dining room.

  Sadie leapt into the loading bay area and turned to run for the rear exit door. She wasn’t sure it would open, but since it was only twenty feet away and would get her out of the building immediately, she took the risk. She tried to ignore the way her boots were crushing the scattered bones and squishing down into the piles of human feces she’d seen earlier but couldn’t dodge now.

  She failed.

  “Sleeping in a burned out car with a dead body, killing two men, exterminating a pack of feral dogs with a chlorine bomb, and running the poop and bone obstacle course,” Sadie said to herself as she shoved at the exit door’s lock bar. “My bucket list is getting shorter by the minute.”

  When the door swung open and she stepped outside Sadie was blinded by a wall of white light. A lightning strike blasted a tree to splinters two hundred yards away. The thunder boomed almost immediately, and Sadie smelled the fresh ozone, and despite the white spots dancing in front of her she turned and ran along the back of the building.

  Somehow, despite the roaring thunder, she heard the second and third bikes explode one after another. She smiled as she ran, but then as she glanced back the boy with gun came crashing through the door. She pulled her own pistol and fired at him without looking.

  More lightning hit, even closer now, and thunder boomed, and she couldn’t tell if the boy was shooting at her, but by then she was only fifty feet from the corner of the building. If she made it around the corner she’d be able to get out of his line of sight, which might save her life.

  She put her head down and poured on as much speed as she could. Five seconds later she whipped around the corner, glancing back to see if the boy was there.

  He wasn’t, but Sadie didn’t slow down. She continued along the side of the building, running out to the parking lot where the dust-covered truck sat, its windows already completely covered over. Ahead of her, the Allen Science Building was a roaring, raging blaze.

  Cursing herself for lack of trust, dreading what she’d find when she looked inside, Sadie stopped at the truck and opened the driver’s side door.

  The pack was gone.

  A chill went down her arms and joy erupted in her chest.

  Callie would wait for her. She’d have bet money on it.

  I’ve already bet my life on it.

  Sadie ran parallel to the burning science building, reaching down to lift her dust-streaked respirator up to her face. She huffed several deep breaths and ran again.

  She didn’t slow or look back until she came to the bridge on the lightly travelled road. When she saw no one following her, she jumped down into the creek bed and kept running.

  She ran slower now, trying to keep herself from reaching a state of total exhaustion and oxygen debt. She kept a count in her head as she splashed through the gray sludgy water, doing her best to ignore the corpses and body parts floating atop the creek or strewn along the incline above it.

  She shivered in the cold water, but tried to look on the bright side: at least the blood that had soaked her leg would wash out.

  Almost two minutes later Sadie saw Callie jump down from the fence and pull the tarp off the Honda. Behind her, she heard the sound of barking dogs, and the roar of a bike engine.

  Sadie kept running, her lungs burning as she took shallow breaths and tried not to cough. Callie saw her coming and immediately stepped over the back of the bike and shoved the key into the ignition. Sadie saw her wrist twist, and heard the engine turn over. The tarp Callie had pulled loose flapped on the ground, next to the rifle.

  Lightning flashed, hitting the tops of trees off to Sadie’s right. Thunder deafened her.

  For an instant Sadie thought Callie was going to kick the bike into gear and race off, but instead she hopped off, bent down and grabbed the tarp and began folding it.

  Sadie sprinted the last hundred feet and climbed up the stair-stepped rock and concrete retaining wall.

  “It’s about time,” Callie said, panting as she slipped off the backpack. “This damn thing’s heavy.

  Sadie laughed and climbed the fence, feeling a surge of joy at how close they were to getting away.

  The joy died fast when she heard the barking dogs and the revving motorcycles amidst the booming of constant thunder.

  She turned to look behind her and sucked in her breath.

  Two Rottweilers were sprinting after her, both splashing through the gray water and bounding ahead in big determined leaps.

  Sadie jumped down from the fence, helped Callie finish folding the tarp, and shoved it into the pack. She tied the rifle to the pack with paracord and shrugged it onto her shoulders. Then she threw her leg over the bike and said, “Come on!”

  Callie nodded. She picked up the box of candy she’d topped off with a dozen or more cans of food and opened one of the Honda’s saddle bags. The cans thumped down into the bottom of the bag, and were followed by the candy.

  The saddle bag filled up before she’d emptied the box, so she hopped around the bike and did the same with the other bag, dumping in another dozen cans from a brown paper sack she’d used to carry them off.

  Sadie’s admiration for the girl shot up like one of her grandfather’s skyrockets.

  “How the hell did you carry all that?” Sadie asked.

  Callie didn’t have time to answer. The two Rottweilers had reached the retaining wall and were scrambling up the stairsteps, their claws scrabbling at the rocks and concrete.

  When they got to the top of the wall the two dogs leaped for the fence, both hitting the chain link at the same time. Sadie was relieved when the chain link held.

  “Ooof! Ooof! Ooof! Ooof!” they both barked, and their jaws snapped at the air between barks.

  Sadie pulled out her 9mm and sighted on one of the dogs. But she couldn’t bring herself to kill the animal. It was no threat to her if it didn’t jump the fence. Besides that, if it was vicious it was likely that way because of the jerks at the college.

  “Go!” Callie said as she climbed onto the bike behind Sadie. “Go!”

  Sadie nodded and tucked the pistol back into her parka pocket. She kicked the bike into gear, let out the clutch, and the two of girls went rocketing out of the yard and onto the street like the devil Sadie didn’t believe in was two steps behind her.

  Chapter 10

  What’s the fastest way to the square?” Sadie asked. They were stopped at the intersection in front of the abandoned shopping center next to the college. The Honda rumbled quietly beneath them.

  “Left,” Callie said, and pointed.

  “Is there a slower way?” Sadie asked. She had come down this road less than three hours earlier, when she’d decided to approach the campus on foot. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the campus now.

  “Straight ahead,” Callie said. Sadie nodded and released the clutch, and they rolled slowly forward, dodging abandoned cars as they entered a residential neighborhood much fancier than the one with the “old people” houses in it.

  Sadie turned up a driveway, then rolled onto a sidewalk and accelerated, trying to put some distance between the two of them and the college.

  “Anyone alive in those?” Sadie asked as they rolled along a street of mansions.

  Many of the big houses had collapsed roofs, but not all of them had succumbed to the heavy blanket of dust. Some were fairly free of dust, while others were layered with varying gradations of the stuff.

  “I don’t know,” Callie said, just in time for the two of them to see the flash of white and hear the near-instantaneous roar of thunder, which went on and on as they turned the corner at the end of one block and started up the sidewalk of another.

  Sadie was relieved when the thunder began to fade, but her relief was replaced by terror when she saw the dust leap up a foot from the Honda’s front tire. She heard the crack of the gun. Then the roar of two speeding motorcycles came echoing down the si
dewalk behind them.

  “Crap,” Sadie said, and cranked the throttle back.

  The Honda hesitated at first, giving a sick lurch that scared Sadie so bad she thought she was going to vomit. But then the machine leapt forward and picked up speed, and she zipped across the grass between the sidewalk and the street, jumping off the curb and onto the asphalt.

  A quick swerve to the left took the bike through a narrow gap between two abandoned cars in the middle of the street. Sadie felt Callie’s arms tighten around her and she ground her teeth against the pain from her injured back and sore kidney.

  She didn’t quite make the swerve as sharp as she should have and her right knee dragged along the dusty bumper of one of the cars. Something jagged caught her pants and the flesh beneath it and tore a chunk right out. But then they cleared the gap and Sadie turned the bike so hard both of them were nearly thrown off.

  Sadie fought for control of the bike, got it, and straightened up and raced along between the rows of stalled cars in the middle of the street, down a valley between mansions that had collapsed or burned to the ground.

  People went crazy even in the rich part of town.

  The swerve maneuver bought Sadie and Callie a few seconds free of gunfire, but then bullets began to smack against the windshields and fenders of the cars they were passing. Off to the right and slightly behind were two men on Harleys. They were racing along the sidewalk.

  The man in front looked a lot like Big Jim had looked—huge and vicious.

  “Bryce, I take it,” Sadie said to no one. Behind him was the boy who’d chased her out of the kitchen.

  The man steering the second bike wore a buzzcut and a beard. The boy behind him was the other kid from the cafe. His hair was singed down to the skull and he was glaring at Sadie with so much hatred he didn’t look human.

  “Get my gun!” Sadie yelled. Cassie let go of Sadie’s waist with her right hand and dug into Sadie’s parka.

  Sadie felt the pistol slide out and she saw Cassie’s arm extend and she heard the shot when Cassie pulled the trigger. She glanced right in time to see Bryce squeeze the brakes and drop speed quickly, forcing the bike behind him to slow as well.