The Hours

by Robert Barnard

  Shambling down Mitford Lane from Rose Park was a herd of forty, maybe fifty former citizens of Cherry Valley. Their clothes were stained and tattered. Their eyes were yellowed and vacant.

  Chloe grinded her teeth together, desperate to stop herself from crying in front of Max. She looked at them all and wondered what they were doing just a day earlier. All of them had lives and stories of their own before all of this. Now, they were part of the same story—a nightmare—one in which they shed all of their humanity and former selves and coagulated toward a common goal:

  To feast on the living.

  The crowd of infected residents converged on Fuller’s Explorer, seemingly drawn toward the sound of the car alarm the way the moth is drawn toward the flame.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Chloe said. “Cover his eyes.”

  Nolan held a hand softly over Max’s tiny, delicate face, pulled the frightened boy close against his chest.

  Chloe couldn’t turn her head. She couldn’t look away. This was the world, now, and there was no sense in ignoring it.

  One of the infected reached into the Explorer and grabbed the mystery woman by the hair. She started to scream and swat at her assailant, and for a moment it looked as if she might break away. But a second, third, and fourth infected reached in, too, grabbed her by the face and neck and pulled her from the Explorer and out onto the street.

  The strange woman kicked and screamed at the dozens of infected that surrounded her, but it was all in vain. They attacked her the way a swarm of white blood cells attack a foreign bacteria. Ceaselessly, mercilessly, and all at once.

  One of the infected dropped to his knees, ripped away her shirt, and buried his face into her stomach. He bit hard and shook his head back and forth, loosening the skin he’d chomped so hard on. The strange woman let out one last terrified and guttural scream, then quieted.

  The pack of infected ate and ate, until one by one they turned from the woman, the way a cackle of hyenas eventually leave their kill, bellies filled and disinterested.

  Chloe stared down at the street. There was hardly anything left of the mystery woman. Her midsection had been eaten through to the spine, left nothing but an oily stain on the pavement where her insides once were. Bare ribs were exposed, her arms were missing. She’d been torn to pieces, and now nothing but the scraps were left behind.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The crowd of infected she had attracted seemed uninterested in leaving the area. They shuffled around the Explorer, it’s alarm still blaring, and crowded the street, until one of them seemed to notice something unusual on the front of townhome 1126:

  Its front door was open.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chloe gasped. “We have to get the fu—.” She stopped to look at Max, whose eyes were still covered, but not his ears. “We have to get the heck out of here. Fast.”

  “What happened?” Nolan asked.

  “One of them has noticed the front door is open. They’re going to come in here.” She patted Max on the back. “Stay up here with Nolan and Mr. Burgie, okay? We’re going to go on a little adventure. I’ll be right back.”

  “Are you crazy? Where are you going?” Nolan said.

  “I need to run downstairs quick. Grab as many things for him as you can while still being able to carry him. Clothes, toys, anything. I’ll be right back up.”

  “Chloe—”

  “There’s no time to explain!” Chloe said, and she raced out of Max’s bedroom and toward the flight of stairs.

  Mrs. Yates and Hannah shared a car, but because of Hannah’s early work hours, Hannah almost always relied on Chloe for a ride to academy. If Mrs. Yates had stayed at home, and Chloe had given Hannah a ride the day before, that meant there was a fairly good possibility that the Yates’s family car was still parked in the small parking garage behind the town homes. What kind of car was it? Chloe couldn’t remember. But if she could find the key ring, she would have the car’s remote. And with the remote, she could walk up and down the parking garage clicking until she found the car that chirped.

  And that would be their ticket out of there.

  Chloe descended the stairs. The front door of the townhome hung open, allowed a wedge shaped shaft of light to spill in to the living room. Chloe inhaled and tiptoed toward a key hook nailed into the wall beside the staircase. She slapped at it with her hands, found a key ring, and grabbed it. The shaft of light darkened, obscured by a passing visitor.

  Chloe slowly backed up the stairs. The rear door of the townhome would have offered the perfect escape route to the parking garage behind the homes, but that opportunity was fading further away with each passing moment.

  “Is everything okay?” Nolan shouted from the top of the stairs.

  “Shut up!” Chloe whispered.

  “Huh?” Nolan asked.

  The front door of the townhome groaned open. A man in a bus driver’s uniform stood in the doorframe, highlighted by the sun behind him. Dozens of other infected circled the Ford Explorer.

  “Keep that kid’s eyes covered,” Chloe grunted, “and get him into his grandmother’s room.”

  “Chloe—no, why?”

  “Just fucking do it, Nole,” Chloe mumbled.

  The bus driver scratched his stomach, then wiped some blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his arm. “Is everything okay, lady?” he asked, plainly, before letting out a thundering belch that stunk of sulfur and rot.

  “You shouldn’t be able to talk,” Chloe said.

  The bus driver laughed. “Why not?” He paused. “Listen, you feeling okay? I just passed by this home, saw the door was all banged up—”

  “You’re one of them,” Chloe huffed. “You just don’t fucking know it. If you can understand me, then go—the fuck—away.”

  “You seem really stressed out, ma’am,” the bus driver said. “I oughta call the cops.”

  “I am a cop. There are no cops!” Chloe was panicking. She continued to walk up the steps, backwards, her eyes fixed on the man at the front door.

  The bus driver stopped laughing. His yellow eyes narrowed, and he noticed the gun gripped tightly in Chloe’s right hand.

  “What are you gonna do with that, miss?” the bus driver asked. “You gonna—you gonna fuckin’ shoot me, why? ‘Cuz we ate that lady out there? Was she a friend of yours?”

  “I liked your kind better when you didn’t talk,” Chloe said.

  The bus driver stopped. “I need help, miss. I keep—I keep phasing in and out. Like I’m here one minute, and not the next. I don’t know what’s happening.” He spit onto the rug. “My mouth tastes like pennies.”

  “That’s because you just ate somebody. You’re already dead and you don’t even realize it,” Chloe huffed. She was nearly at the top of the stairs.

  “You wanna use that gun, you better use it now, and you better make it count. If you gave me the chance, I’d tear that pretty blonde head right off the top of your neck and suck on it like a slice of watermelon—”

  Chloe raised her pistol, fired twice. One shot hit the bus driver in the neck and the other in the head. He slumped to the floor and a puddle of tarry, black ooze poured out of his wounds.

  Three other infected, not standing far from the front door, heard the commotion and pushed their way towards the front entranceway to investigate.

  Chloe spun on her foot, grabbed Nolan’s shoulder, and charged toward Mrs. Yates’s bedroom.

  “Why are we going in here?” Nolan asked.

  “Keep that kid’s eyes covered,” Chloe said.

  Max started to cry and cry and cry.

  The three charged into Mrs. Yate’s bedroom. Chloe locked the door behind her—some good that would do—then grabbed Mrs. Yate’s dresser and tipped it over in front of the door. The dresser crashed to the hardwood and its drawers rattled out.

  “That should buy us a little time,” Chloe panted, and she skipped across the room toward the window opposite the bedroom door.

  “We
’re jumping out the window?” Nolan asked.

  Chloe pulled the blinds wide open. “Not a window. A balcony.”

  The black curtains at the front of the room split apart, and light flooded over the three where they stood. For the first time, Nolan got a good look at Mrs. Yates. He felt like he might be sick.

  Downstairs, they could hear the sound of footsteps and crashing. The infected from the street had spilled inside, had started to rummage through the downstairs rooms.

  Chloe slid the sliding glass door of the balcony open, and motioned for Nolan to step outside behind her.

  “I don’t see how this is any better,” Nolan said.

  Chloe ignored him and stepped out onto the balcony. Immediately beside it, separated by a narrow divider, was the balcony of the townhome next door.

  “We have to climb over,” Chloe said. “I’ll go first.”

  Chloe straddled the narrow divider and bent one leg over the balcony. When it hooked onto the neighboring balcony, she took a deep breath, and slid her other leg up and over to the connecting guardrail. Once there, she pulled herself up and over the railing.

  Nolan could hear footsteps coming up the stairs behind him, said: “We have to hurry.”

  “Hold on,” Chloe said, and she examined the neighboring balcony. At the front of it was a potted plant. She picked it up and tossed it against the sliding glass door with all her might. It smashed through the door, shattered the glass into giant, pointed shards. When she reached around to unlock the door from the inside, she was shocked to find that’d been left unlocked.

  “I should have checked that first,” Chloe mumbled. “Figures.”

  All of the broken glass scattered about the neighboring balcony and bedroom added an unnecessary layer of danger to the situation, and Chloe wasn’t particularly proud about it.

  “Hand me Max,” Chloe said. “Carefully.”

  “What are you doing over there?” Nolan said.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just hand him to me.”

  “Okay buddy,” Nolan said. “You have to be really still, okay? Pretend you’re a rock. Can you do that?”

  There was a pounding on the bedroom door behind him.

  Nolan felt the sweat on his forehead start to bead. He outstretched Max over the balcony, wholly aware of how precarious the toddler dangled from two stories up.

  Chloe reached out and grabbed Max, pulled him snug into her arms.

  “You have to climb over yourself,” Chloe said. “I’m holding Max. There’s broken glass.”

  Nolan swallowed and looked down. It wasn’t too far of a drop, but the thought of falling still bothered him. Would it kill him? Of course not. Would it leave him horribly injured in a world that was now devoid of paramedics and doctors? Probably.

  The banging at Mrs. Yate’s bedroom door quickened, and the door started to rattle.

  “They’ve made their way inside,” Nolan croaked.

  “All the more reason for you to hurry up and get over here,” Chloe said.

  Nolan hooked his leg over the railing of the balcony, pressed his palm firm against the divider. He swung one leg over, latched it onto the neighboring balcony. When he went to swing his second leg, his palm slipped, and he lost his grip.

  “Shit!” Nolan shouted, and he sprung to the neighboring balcony, wrapped his fingers tight around the rail, and pulled himself up and over it.

  “Very graceful,” Chloe said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Nolan said, and he dusted himself off.

  “We’re going downstairs and out the back toward the parking garage. Then we’re going to find Hannah’s car.”

  “Okay,” Nolan said. “Let’s do it.”

  Even from next door, the three could hear the sound of Mrs. Yate’s bedroom door being pushed open, the sound of the tipped dresser squeaking and scratching against the floor as it slid.

  Chloe hurried through the well kept master bedroom of the neighboring town home and down the stairs. The layout of the home was a complete mirror of Hannah’s.

  “There’ll be a back door right here,” Chloe said, “just around this corner—”

  Chloe spun toward the kitchen, only to be met with a shotgun pointed in her face.

  “The hell you doing in my home, girl?” a large man with an equally large beard asked.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “We just need to get through—”

  “You the one causing all that ruckus next door? The car alarm? The one who shattered my balcony door?”

  “Sir—I’m not—we’re just—listen,” Chloe bounced Max in her arms, held her hand cupped over his eyes. “I don’t want any trouble, we just need to pass through—”

  Before she could even understand what’d happened, Chloe’s face was covered with a fine mist of blood. It was warm as it burst against her face. She blinked, confused. It had all happened so fast. She stood still as a statue, wrapped in a blanket of shock…shocked that after all she’d been through, she could still be shocked.

  Nolan had turned the corner to the kitchen, saw Chloe fidgeting and stuttering with Max hugged against her chest, saw the large man with the large beard pointing his large gun at her…

  And he didn’t even hesitate. He drew the Glock he’d been carrying up to eye level, and before Chloe could even react, before the large man with the large beard and the large gun even noticed he was in the room, Nolan fired. The round pierced the neighbor’s chest, and he dropped to the ground.

  “Nole—Nole—Nolan,” Chloe shivered. “Are we okay?”

  “No more fucking around,” Nolan said. “If anyone ever points a gun at you or that child again,” Nolan said, and he pointed at the lifeless body on the ground, “that will be my response. Every. Fucking. Time.”

  Nolan kicked a kitchen chair out of the way and opened the rear door of the neighbor’s townhome. Chloe followed his lead, and the two started their march towards the parking garage.

  The violence and the bodies, those no longer haunted her. Chloe figured they never would. But Nolan—sweet Nolan, with his panic attacks and his historically gross aversion to violence—his sudden coldness in the face of it all?

  That was truly chilling.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “How do we know which car is hers?” Nolan said, and the two started a light jog through the parking garage.

  Chloe held Max with one arm, outstretched the car’s remote with the other. Frantically, she repeatedly clicked at the lock button. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Max held onto Chloe, buried his head against her neck and sniffled. He was tired, hungry, and scared. He’d been left locked in his room since the night before. All of the commotion with these two new strangers was chaotic and stressful.

  Chloe and Nolan were nearly at the end of the first floor of cars when a small, boxy Jeep at the end of the garage chimed.

  “That’s it,” Chloe said, and she pointed at the black Jeep.

  Chloe rushed to the vehicle, opened the rear passenger side door, and set Max down carefully in the car seat.

  “I’m hungry,” Max mumbled.

  “I know sweety,” Chloe said. “We’re going to my house, and we’ll eat there, okay? I’ll make you whatever you want.”

  “I want…a peanut butter sammich…and…candy.”

  Chloe kissed Max on the forehead and smiled. “Whatever you want, champ. Your wish is my command.” She fastened him into his booster seat and shut the door.

  “Who’s driving?” Chloe said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Can you handle it?”

  “I can,” Chloe said. “Can I trust you won’t drive crazy? We’re carrying precious cargo now.”

  “What?” Nolan said. “You don’t think I considered you precious cargo when I drove us before?”

  Chloe walked to the driver’s side of the Jeep. “I’ll drive.”

  “Fine by me,” Nolan said, and he climbed into the passenger seat.

  Chloe plugged the key into the ignitio
n and turned it. The Jeep made a whiny, grinding sound and the engine refused to start.

  “Shit,” Chloe said, and she smacked the steering wheel.

  Nolan said, “Try again.”

  “Oh?” Chloe said. “Because I thought we might give up and walk.”

  At the front of the parking garage, some of the infected who had crowded the front of the townhomes had seeped their way in. They shambled into the garage, walked with arms outstretched toward the whining Jeep.

  Chloe turned the key again. This time, the engine fired. The small motor in the front of the vehicle hummed to life. Chloe pressed the accelerator, and the small SUV whizzed out of the garage, past the shambling horde who watched the vehicle with fervent curiosity.

  Chloe let out a long exhale. She adjusted the mirrors of the vehicle, caught her reflection in the center rearview. Her face and hair were stained with blood.

  “Can you look around for something for me?” Chloe asked, calmly. “A fast-food napkin or something.”

  “Sure,” Nolan said. He popped open the glove box in front of him. Inside were some papers and pens, which he pulled out. Among the papers was a photo of Hannah and her mom, smiling together at the beach. Nolan quietly inserted it back into the glove box and handed a paper napkin to Chloe.

  “Thank you,” Chloe said, and she started to dab her face. It didn’t help much, but it still made her feel better.

  “Shit,” Nolan said, and he kicked his foot.

  “What is it now?” Chloe asked. She carefully steered the Jeep down Mitford and back toward home.

  “Fuller’s duffel bag full of guns,” Nolan said. “They’re back in the Explorer.”

  Chloe laughed. “Well. We’re not going back now.”

  “We have to,” Nolan said.

  Chloe said, “Don’t be crazy. You saw what we just got away from.”

  “But we’ll have nothing,” Nolan said.

  “Better to have nothing than be dead,” Chloe replied.

  Chloe pulled the Jeep into the driveway of her home. The home her father had bought. The home that her, and Nolan, and Dana, and Jim all shared together, once upon a time. A home that was only half full now.