I hug my father’s head so his face is pressed against my chest, the grenade’s lever jabbing one of my ribs. This keeps it down for now.
I turn ever so slowly—probably more slowly than they expect.
“You made me kill my own father,” I say as I turn. “He didn’t do anything to you.”
With my back to them, I let go of the lever. It pops open.
I have five seconds.
“He just wanted to be left alone,” I say.
Four seconds.
The Colonel sighs dramatically. “C’est la vie, Kipper. We can’t always get what we want.”
Three seconds.
“He wanted me to give you a message,” I say, facing them again.
The Colonel is aiming the Glock at me.
I was right. They never intended to let me go.
Two seconds.
“Oh?” the Colonel says, “and what’s that?”
“Go to hell.”
I toss my father’s head at their feet.
Bandanna fires the M16 but misses me as I duck around the garage.
Perfect timing. The explosion slams the garage doors with a hollow boom. It sends shock waves that rattle my body even as I land behind cover. There’s a metal ripping sound that must be the Jeep being torn apart, accompanied by a roar that reminds me of thunder.
As I lie on my stomach, hands covering my head, I listen for footsteps—one or both men running for cover. But all I hear is the pattering of debris falling back to the ground.
I spit out bits of dirt that have gotten into my mouth and roll onto my back. All I see is smoke. I sit up and grab a rock in case I need to throw it at someone.
No one emerges from the haze, and I don’t hear a single shout or cry of pain.
I still need to make sure they’re dead. When the smoke clears, I immediately see the dusty, broken remains of Bandanna propped against the granite wall, his right side completely torn apart.
The Colonel is in the woods several yards away, in about the same terrible shape as Bandanna. He’s lying facedown, both legs missing. Maybe he turned to run away at the last second. I can barely see the tattoo on his neck from all the dust and damage.
I check his pockets, hoping for keys to the warehouse. Nothing. I check Bandanna as well, but all I get is blood on my hands.
Nothing inside the remains of the Jeep, either. The keys are probably lying in the woods somewhere, little more than bits of twisted metal now.
I race back into the garage, where I left one of the emergency packs my father and I pre-packed long ago for situations in which we had to make a hurried escape. It has all the basics for a few days of survival outside the house. The 9mm is on the floor next to it, along with a few ammo clips. I take all of it and leave through the busted garage door.
The evening sky is darkening into night. The next several hours will be dangerous, more so than anything I’ve attempted so far. Already I can hear moans coming from the woods behind our house.
I shoulder the pack and run as fast as I can toward town, only my compass for guidance.
When my mother worked as a pre-school teacher, she suffered from fatigue that made her irritable and scatterbrained toward the end of each shift. She saw a doctor who prescribed stimulants, the same stuff they give kids with ADHD. After the Outbreak, my father took those drugs and split them up among the different emergency packs and medical kits we kept around the house. His thinking was that if the house came under attack, the stimulants would help us delay sleep while we defended the place.
An attack like that never happened, so I’m sure my pack holds at least two of those pink pills somewhere inside. I’m familiar with their effect already. I stole a few sophomore year to help me study for a final exam.
As I jog, I dig through the pack with my good hand. The other grips the 9mm despite the constant sting from its missing fingernails. Fortunately, the medical supplies are near the top of the pack. Keeping a steady pace, I tear open the kit, find the bag containing the pills, and pop both into my mouth. Then I stuff the medical kit back inside, dig out a water bottle, and take a long sip to wash them down.
I’m not sure if taking the pills on an empty stomach will make me throw up, so I keep searching the pack until I find PowerBars in a front pocket. I wolf down two of them and immediately feel better.
Once the food settles and the pills take effect, I’m able to bolt through the backwoods of Peltham Park without much complaint from my body. The pain is something I’ve learned to ignore.
Still, I wish the explosion had spared the Jeep. With its off-roading ability, I could have stayed off the main roads and cut my ETA down to just twenty minutes. Judging by how long it took me to get there by foot the day before, I know Melanie is at least five hours away.
I see my first group of infected after an hour of running. I take cover behind a tree and watch them shuffle and lurch like sleepwalkers in the dimming light. There are three of them, two males and a female, but with night settling over us, I can’t tell if they’re late-stagers or not. Hopefully, they’re as blind as bats.
I could go around them, but instead I opt for a diversionary tactic. I pick up rocks until I have a handful and start tossing them at a dead tree about twenty yards away. The stimulants help me focus on the tree and nothing else, and I manage to land most of my throws.
With the infected now moving toward the source of the noise, I sneak past them, continuing to launch rocks.
But I screw up.
I’m so focused on diverting the three infected that I don’t see the fourth until I almost walk right into it.
It’s a child. A little girl with knotted blonde hair.
I stop a foot in front of her, right hand still clutching a rock I was about to throw. The girl is shockingly dirty, covered in dried mud and leaves. There’s a long, thin branch stuck to the side of her head.
She’s in bad shape. Her skin is a pale, semi-translucent sheet that wraps tightly against her bones, covered in sores and scrapes. A milky cast over one eye tells me she is at least partially blind. She can’t be more than three years old.
I drop the rock. I don’t have what it takes to bash in her head. Now I’m not sure what to do.
Can she even see me?
Her nostrils flare, detecting my smell. She opens her mouth and releases a shrill moan that sounds disturbingly like a healthy little girl crying because she’s lost.
I run past her, avoiding her grasping fingers. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me the other three have heard and are now hot on my trail.
Like most infected, they can’t run very fast. But there’s no telling what kind of stamina they possess. I’ve seen infected stand in one place for longer than I thought humanly possible. One guy stood outside my house for more than thirty hours because he caught sight of me on the roof. If that incident is any indication, these three—not four, since I imagine the girl got left behind—will probably chase me for hours.
I book it out of there. I’m still running when the remaining light bleeds out of the sky, leaving the forest dark. It becomes a nightmare of black shapes I think are trees, though my imagination paints them as something much worse. The infected make a racket as they continue to chase me. No doubt my scent is leading them right along.
That gives me an idea.
I stop by a tree with a mess of branches sticking out of it. All of this running has drenched my clothes with sweat. I throw down my pack and rest my gun on top of it, then proceed to rip open the buttoned part of my Nomex suit that covers my chest. Beneath it, I’m wearing a polyester shirt. I tear it off in a flurry of movement.
The fabric is damp with sweat and probably smells a lot like me. I sling it over a branch. The infected are close behind me. I can hear their clumsy footsteps rustling the underbrush.
I pick up the gun and my pack and sprint away at an angle, then swing around to catch them from behind.
The infected run past me, a flurry of inky silhouettes tumbling across t
he underbrush. Gripping the pistol, I dig out an LED flashlight from the pack’s side pocket and wait a few moments longer.
I raise the flashlight, turned off for now, alongside my gun. My aim is shakey.
The infected attack the branch carrying my shirt, making snarling noises that sound like a pack of wolves tearing apart a helpless animal. I creep toward them, pop on the flashlight, and aim the pistol at the frenzied figures that suddenly appear in the beam.
One of the men has gotten caught in the branches, and the other two are trying to push him away to get to the shirt, which is also caught. Those two whirl around to face me. I shoot the closest one in the chest to push it back, then do the same to the other. They stagger. I use the opportunity to take better aim.
Headshots. Both of them. My father would be proud.
After I take out the one that had gotten caught in the branches, I button up my coverall, shoulder my pack, holster my pistol, and shine the flashlight at my compass to reorient myself.
I don’t know how close I am to town, but I keep going.
The Colonel had set a deadline for his return. If he wasn’t back by sunrise, Wheels could have his fun with Melanie. I recall the image of his sharp teeth, so much like those of a piranha.
I guzzle water and inhale another PowerBar, though my appetite has been killed by the stimulants.
And I keep running.
CHAPTER 12
Whispers of daylight fill the sky.
Sunrise hasn’t happened yet, but it will in less than an hour. I stopped checking my watch hours ago after almost tripping across an unseen branch. Time doesn’t matter, anyway—daylight is my deadline.
The trip hasn’t been easy. At this point, my feet are covered in patches of throbbing, wet pain—blisters that have formed and popped. It feels like I’m hobbling across a carpet of stinging jellyfish.
I make it to a familiar intersection on Route 1. To my left is the Exxon station where the Colonel worked once as a cashier.
Fuck him.
Melanie is all I think about as I force my legs to move. I find cover behind the wasted metal shell of a delivery truck tipped onto its side. From there, I study the intersection and the street that branches eastward toward the coast. It should take me to the industrial park where the warehouse is located.
Farther down that road, the infected aren’t much of an issue. This area is residential, and as a result, there are more forested patches of land between buildings. I’ve learned to feel safe in areas with lots of trees. That feeling has never gone away.
I arrive at the warehouse minutes before sunrise. A steely blue light dominates the sky, not strong enough to cast shadows, but enough to see the broken windows of distant buildings inside the industrial park.
I reach the warehouse and stay away from the road in front. My knees burn from having to run while crouching, but I do this in case Wheels is armed with a sniper rifle. Taking the long way, out of necessity, I circle the building while keeping among my friends, the trees.
A chilling question hangs over me: What do I do next?
I’m at the edge of the loading area behind the warehouse, in a dirt lot where I take cover behind a row of massive tanks that were once red but are now a faded rust, the paint cracked and flaky. I look over the edge of one and study the building.
The Colonel and his men did an excellent job fortifying the place. They built barriers made of wooden boards, steel planks, and sand bags perfect for providing cover while shooting. They even erected barbed-wire fences around the personnel entrances to discourage invaders from barging through. The wide loading bay doors that once opened to admit the tail ends of trucks are covered in webs of stainless steel cables bolted in place around the edges. Looking up, I see lumpy shapes along the sloped rooftop—more sandbags stacked to make cover.
I know we used a door earlier to get outside. And I remember a heavy bang after they closed it. It’ll be locked, and I don’t have the proper tools for lock picking or hacking a steel chain. We never packed those into the emergency bags because there simply weren’t enough of those tools to go around.
I don’t see movement on the roof, so I make a run for it, my destination a low wall of sandbags halfway between me and the warehouse.
Something cuts the air next to me and smacks into the pavement.
I throw myself toward the sandbags and press against them. Did he shoot from the roof or a window I neglected to see? Either way, the good news is that he’s shooting at me and not at Melanie.
The sandbag behind my head vibrates as another slug hits it. I flinch and try to flatten as much of myself against the ground as possible.
“You get up right now,” Wheels shouts at me from above, “or your little girlfriend dies.”
He’s going to kill her anyway. Does he think I’m stupid?
Breathing hard, my chin scraping the pavement, I look for a better position of cover closer to the warehouse. His voice gives away an important detail of his location: namely that he’s shooting from an elevated position higher than the first floor. From that elevation, he won’t be able to shoot me as long as I’m pressed up against the building, not unless he stands at the edge of the roof or leans out of a window. If that happens, I’ll put a bullet in him.
“I swear to Christ I’ll do it,” he shouts, and now it sounds like he’s very high up, probably the rooftop.
I consider his threat. The man is clearly a psycho, but would he really kill Melanie right away? Or would he be smart and keep her hostage a while longer?
It’s a tough call, but I make the assumption she’s safe. Wheels probably knows by now that I got the best of the Colonel, as well as Bandanna, who I’m pretty sure was their best marksman. If Wheels even has half a brain in that cannibal head of his, he won’t waste the most precious resource and last line of defense he has: a girl I clearly love.
“You shoot her,” I say in my loudest voice, “and you’ve got nothing. Your friends are dead. I’ll have all the time in the world to hunt you down!”
“Is that right, Kip?”
There’s amusement in his voice, and not the sort of arrogant, condescending amusement I’m used to from the Colonel. Wheels isn’t fully confident about his situation. Maybe he has a trick up his sleeve.
“Take all the time out there you need,” he says. “Hell, I even got something to keep you entertained in the meantime.”
I hold my breath and wait. Then I hear it, a soft smack against the pavement next to the building, followed by a sizzling noise, and the firecrackers begin to go off, one after another.
I can hear Wheels laughing over the mini-explosions. It hits me that those fireworks might be how the Colonel and his men found us in the first place. Curse that old man in the window. If only we had passed him by.
Smoke. Those firecrackers are notorious for kicking up smoke. I already catch its heady, sulfuric stench. I look around the sandbags and see a cloud of it against the wall. It flashes bright orange with each pop.
A chorus of human moans and guttural grunts rises in every direction. Infected. They’re coming to explore the noise. I can see flashes of movement in the trees—ruined bodies sprinting toward me, or at least lumbering quickly.
Wheels is still laughing. I chance a look at the roof and catch sight of him peeking out from behind a low wall of sandbags similar to mine, a hunting rifle propped against the top edge.
I fire the 9mm at him without taking close aim. The slug pings off the roof. He dips behind the sand bags, and I use that sliver of time to throw myself over my own wall of cover and sprint to the warehouse. Immediately, I flatten my back against the wall.
The last firecracker goes off. The smoke billows up, thick enough as it crosses his line of fire that I know I’m safe from his aim. I bolt along the wall, hook around the corner, and scan the unfamiliar terrain on this side.
This side of the warehouse is just as heavily fortified as the back. I see a door that I assume is the one we used earlier. It’s the only o
ne on this side of the building that isn’t boarded up.
Of course it’s locked—a steel deadbolt that requires a key. Shooting it won’t do much good, either. It’s the same brand my father and I used back home. Tough to break, even with a gun.
A hole has been drilled through the door at eye level. I look through it and see only darkness, and yet it feels like someone is staring back at me. An unlikely possibility. Even if Melanie has broken free of her bindings, I doubt she would be standing by this door just waiting for me to come knocking.
I hear a sharp yell from above, followed by gunfire.
Wheels.
What could he be shooting at now? Firing at the infected won’t do him any good. Maybe he tripped and fired the rifle by accident? The roof is slanted, so it’s possible. And that would explain the yell that was definitely his.
Sweat pours down my face. I’m cold and shivering now, gritting my teeth at the sudden wave of hopelessness that chills me to the bone. I’ve reached a dead end. The only option is to look for another way in, maybe around the front, something I missed before.
The moans grow louder, accompanied by the rustling of bodies moving through the woods, and finally the clapping of feet against pavement in the back lot.
The infected know I’m here. They’re coming for me. I might as well use my gun on the door, though I’ll have to lock it back up somehow once I get inside. Assuming the bullet even breaks through the lock.
I stand back several feet and grip the pistol in both hands.
A swarm of infected appears behind the warehouse. From the corner of my eye, I see them rounding the tanks, making a beeline toward me.
I place my finger on the trigger.
A naked man heads the pack of infected. He’s about ten yards away, hands clawing toward me.
So close. They’ve gotten so close, so fast.
I curl my trigger finger. Press it against the metal.
I hear a click.
Releasing the trigger, I watch as the door handle turns. The door swings open.
My pistol goes up, ready to shoot at Wheels. I imagine him standing there with his own weapon raised.
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