It’s Melanie.
“Get in,” she says. “Hurry!”
The infected arrive.
I twist away as the naked man dives toward me. He misses by an inch. My back slams against the wall, followed by the back of my skull. The impact puts me in a daze.
Melanie’s arm reaches around the doorframe and grabs the fabric of my coverall. She yanks me into a warm, dark room and slams the door shut as I land against concrete, everything suddenly black around me.
I push myself up and holster my pistol, eyes searching the darkness for Melanie. This part of the warehouse is stuffier than where I awoke the night before. The smell of gasoline, though still pervasive, is mixed with another smell that reminds me of an old, untended garden.
No time to explore smells. Wheels is probably running toward this very room.
“Where is he?” I ask the darkness in front of me. I have to shout over the battering the infected have unleashed against the building.
Melanie responds by cupping my face with both of her hands and kissing me.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” she says. “Are the others dead? Did you kill them?”
“Yeah, they’re gone. But Wheels—”
“I hurt him. I don’t think he’s lucid.”
“What?”
“Hold on.”
Something scrapes against fabric. Her hand sliding into her pocket. A scratching noise is followed by a loud pop as Melanie lights a match. She holds it in the space between our faces.
A rifle shot from the main storage area startles us. Wheels is firing—but at what, exactly? Have the infected gotten inside?
Melanie blows out the match. I have to raise my voice to be heard over the pounding against the walls.
“You said he’s not lucid. What does that mean? Is he infected?”
“No. I drugged him.”
“How? Melanie, what—”
“While he was up on the roof waiting for you, I managed to escape.” She presses herself against me and speaks into my ear. I’m assaulted by the thick scent of her hair, the warmth radiating from her body. I put my arms around her.
“Then what?”
“Then I thought about leaving, but I knew you’d come back for me.”
“You did?” I feel a surge of affection for her.
There’s another shot from inside the warehouse, followed by a shout of helpless anger. Wheels must be shooting at phantoms now.
“I went looking for a weapon,” Melanie says. “I found this room, which is where they were keeping my bow and arrow, and a few other things.
“What?”
“I’ll show you.”
She ignites another match and brings it to a table a few feet away, where she lights a candle. She blows out the match and steps aside. I can only stare in open-mouthed wonder as I approach the table. Her bow and quiver lie at the far end, but the end closest to us is covered in drugs—not pill bottles but packaged marijuana, cocaine, and others, all wrapped and ready to go.
“I think they were drug dealers before the Outbreak,” Melanie says, flinching as an unusually aggressive infected throws its entire weight against the door. It’ll hold for a while, but not long.
I look around the room. The shelves are packed with even more bricks and packets. The bundles of weed, wrapped in transparent plastic, look brown and dry inside their shells. Some of the shelves contain shoeboxes with the covers removed, exposing neat rows of tiny glass bottles—the kind you stick a needle into to extract the fluid inside.
Wheels fires another shot, and I hear him yell, “Get out here now,” followed by, “Oh, fuck!”
“I shot him with an arrow right after he lit those fireworks,” Melanie tells me. “I laced it with this just in case it only nicked him.”
She takes a bottle off a nearby shelf and shows it to me. It’s about the size of a shot glass, a quarter full of a transparent liquid I can only identify by reading the label.
“Lysergic acid die…” I don’t finish. “It’s LSD.”
“How do you know?”
“Chemistry class.”
“Mr. Rothschild?” When I nod, she says, “What does it do exactly?”
I shrug and put down the bottle. “It makes you trip.”
“Like, hallucinations?”
“I think so. I remember him saying it could cause paranoia. How much did you use on that arrow?”
“I soaked the whole tip.”
“Good.”
We both go silent. I don’t hear a peep from Wheels.
“He’s stalking us,” Melanie says. “We need to get out of here and go someplace safe.”
“Not outside. The infected aren’t going anywhere. Not without a meal.”
“Oh God. My mom and my sister must be freaking out. I can’t die here. I need to go home.”
Her eyes glisten with fresh tears that catch the candlelight. One slides down her dirty cheek. I wipe it away with my gloved thumb, which reminds me of holding my father’s severed head. I can still feel the sticky blood inside my gloves.
“I won’t let you die,” I tell her. “I promise.”
She nods and looks down at her bow and arrow on the table.
“We have to kill him,” she says.
I pull the 9mm out of my chest holster.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
Melanie is about to speak when a loud burst goes off in the building’s main storage area. It almost sounds like the grenade I used to kill the Colonel.
Only it’s much worse than a grenade. I recognize the sound, and it tells me that Wheels has ditched the hunting rifle.
Now he’s using a shotgun.
CHAPTER 13
“Come out, come out,” Wheels says, his voice muffled by the wall between us. “I’m gonna find you and your little bitch.”
I’ve blown out the candle. The room is pitch black again. I stand by the door and listen. The fact that I can hear his voice over the incessant pounding of the infected means he’s close. The windows that look out into the storage area have been boarded up, but a sliver between two of the boards lets me see stacks on the other side, silhouetted against the glow of lanterns he has set up.
I’m thankful for all the noise the infected are making. It’s more than enough to mask any sounds I might make opening the door. I don’t have my gun anymore, so I’ll have to use the spare hunting knife from the emergency pack, then stealth to gain the advantage.
My hand is already on the doorknob when Melanie speaks.
“I’ll go with you.”
I hesitate. We had agreed that she would stay here with the 9mm. If Wheels is wearing body armor, the bow and arrow won’t do her much good.
I look back, though I can’t see her in the dark. Occasionally a pinprick of light appears in the door’s viewing hole as the infected move past it.
“I really think you should take the gun,” Melanie says. “You can’t go out there with just a knife.”
“You keep it. Stay here and wait for me, and if I’m not back in ten minutes…”
“I know,” she says.
Every muscle in my body tightens with the urge to hold her again. My nose still holds the scent of her hair.
“Melanie,” I say.
I can’t find the words to express what I feel. She finds them for me.
“Kip, come back to me.”
“I will.”
I turn the knob, open the door just enough to slide through, and shut it again as quietly as I can. Immediately, I fall into a crouch and study my surroundings. The stacks at this end are arranged in a more grid-like fashion, creating aisles of space.
I sneak through them, listening for my enemy. But Wheels has gone dark again. He might be crouched in one of the aisles, waiting for me. Overhead, a suspended metal walkway bends around the storage area, hugging the walls.
No, he wouldn’t be up there. Not if he’s using a shotgun. A weapon like that is more effective at close range.
I glance into the empty ai
sles as I move through the main storage area. Despite the additional lanterns scattered throughout, it’s too dark to see much of anything. Armed only with a knife, I keep to the outer aisle in hopes I’ll come up behind him.
A blast shatters my train of thought and sends me ducking toward the center. The hunting knife has slipped out of my hand. I’m completely unarmed now.
At the sound of a footstep, I hook around a stack as another blast tears through the space where I had been standing. The pellets make a ringing noise against the metal shelves. I drop to avoid ricochets.
I scramble on knees and elbows to find better cover. The clapping of boots tells me Wheels is running after me. Either he knows I’m not armed—it suddenly hits me how brash I was to part with the 9mm—or he simply doesn’t care.
“Where are you, Kip?” he croons into the darkness, and I hear something clicking. “Come out, come out.”
The clicking must be coming from the shotgun. He’s loading it. A heavier click tells me he has just snapped the barrel back into place.
I’m not an expert in shotguns since my father hated them and collected rifles and pistols instead, but I know enough from my own research to have an idea of what he’s carrying. I’m pretty sure it’s a double-barreled shotgun. If so, he has to load it after every two shots.
I can’t make that assumption without evidence, though. If it’s actually a pump-action shotgun, he might have as many as eight rounds at his disposal before he has to reload again.
The space is more open near the storage area’s center, the stacks fewer and farther apart. I feel around for something I can throw across the room to distract him. On a shelf above my head is a pair of paint buckets. I nudge one ever so slightly, but it’s either full of paint or stuck to the shelf. One next to it feels empty.
I hear a footstep nearby, then another. Does he realize he’s being this loud?
The empty can comes off the shelf easily. I hold it in one hand while, with the other, I struggle to unstick the heavier one without making a sound.
I fail at that task. The dried paint around the base makes a ripping sound as the can comes off.
Boots scrape the floor as Wheels runs toward me.
I toss the empty paint can to my left. It lands somewhere with a hollow clatter. He immediately shoots at it—a boom like the entire warehouse caving in, followed by more ringing of lead against the shelves.
I maneuver around the nearest stack, taking the heavier paint can with me. His careless shot has just confirmed his location.
There he is, back turned to me. He’s only a silhouette against the dim lamplight.
I swing the paint can as he turns to aim at me. His head is just a black lump above his raised shoulders, but my aim is accurate. I feel the impact a split second before the shotgun coughs out another ear-shattering burst, its muzzle flash lighting the darkness.
“Fuck,” he roars.
The can, heavy as it is, definitely hurt him. He isn’t down for the count, though. Not even close. He whips around to face me. By now, I’m on the floor, having thrown myself backward to avoid the blast.
His shoulders rise as he takes aim.
The word shit tears through my mind, accompanied by the body-length chill that comes from anticipating a world of hurt.
Except there is only a click.
The shotgun went off twice, meaning he has to reload.
I never give him the chance. I’m up in a flash, every muscle in my body tight with the excitement that comes from being alive after tasting certain death.
My first move is a head-butt. As I’m thrusting my forehead toward his nose, I catch a glimpse of the shotgun’s barrel and realize I’ve made a terrible mistake. He’s holding the weapon parallel to his chest. With a powerful push, he slams it against my collarbones before my forehead can connect.
I’m thrown off balance and stagger back. As I reach to grab hold of a shelf, he lands a kick against my stomach that knocks me down.
The remaining air goes out of my lungs as Wheels drops all his weight onto me. Straddling my chest, he lifts the shotgun above his head and drives it down toward my face.
I deflect it using both arms, almost fracturing a bone or two.
Ignoring the pain, I drive my right fist into his side, going for the lowest ribs. My knuckles hit a hard, padded surface instead.
Body armor.
“Fuckin’ amateur,” Wheels says.
He slaps me hard enough to throw stars across my vision.
I cross my arms over my face, no clue what to do next. I’m certain he’ll hit me again.
He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls my arms apart and lowers his head over mine.
“I’m ex-Navy Seal, kid,” he says. “You don’t have a chan—”
Before he can finish, I whip my head toward the dark mass of his face. This time, the head butt lands like it should, and I’m treated to the painless impact of solid bone smashing into something soft—his nose, probably.
He swings at me and hits me in the face. Four knuckles crash into my cheekbone. My eyes roll, and I smell blood—his or mine, I can’t tell. Despite the pain, I react instantly. Pausing would only give him time to plan his next move.
His ear. That’s what I go for when I slap my flattened palm against the side of his head. It lands about how I want it to, enough to stun him long enough for me to grab his body armor, swing my legs, and roll him off.
As we scramble to get away from each other, Wheels suddenly ducks low to the ground. He charges toward me so fast, I barely have time to prepare for a tackle.
Barely. I drop all my weight on my left heel and spin away from him, narrowly missing his charging shoulder. Whirling around to face him, I drop into a defensive stance in case he tries another one.
His dark shape hunkers in front of me. He’s bent over now, fumbling with something on the floor.
A hollow scrape of metal against concrete tells me he has picked up the shotgun. By the time he lifts it past his waist, I’m no longer standing in that spot. I’m swinging myself around the nearest stack to put something—anything—between us.
He hasn’t reloaded yet, so I imagine he plans to use the shotgun as a club. With the stack between us, I’m protected. Now, though, I’ve given him all the time in the world to reload.
“Where’d you go, kid,” he says in a raspy voice, and I hear the snap of the shotgun being cracked open, followed by the click of a shell being slipped inside.
An idea strikes me. How heavy are these shelves, anyway?
Wheels speaks again. I think he says, “Time to…” though time to what, exactly, I’ll never know. Time to die, probably.
And maybe he’s right—but not yet.
I heave with all of my strength and manage to tip the shelf over on top of Wheels.
He dives out from under it but doesn’t make it all the way.
The shelf lands with a bang so loud I barely hear the shriek of agony from Wheels. Then there is silence, which is even more startling. The infected have momentarily stopped their wall bashing. I imagine them standing out there, gaping stupidly at the inch of space in front of their faces, trying to figure out what the noise was.
They give up, apparently, because the pounding resumes a moment later.
I walk around the toppled stack to find Wheels lying on his stomach. The shotgun is on the floor by his hand, and I kick it away before he can grab it. He lashes out to grab my boot and misses. I step back in case he has any other surprises. Already, I’m wondering how to finish this.
Could I really kill him? A helpless man with no weapon?
“You fucking pussy,” Wheels says, grunting and squirming beneath the weight crushing his legs below the knees. “They’re gonna tear you and your little girlfriend apart, piece by fucking piece.”
“You were a Navy Seal?” I ask him, not sure why I do.
“You bet I was. A little pussy like you has no idea what that means and never will. So go ahead, fucking kill me. I don’t care.”
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“You were never a Seal,” I say. “I’m going to forget you ever said that.”
Wheels makes a violent fff sound that I imagine is the beginning of a curse directed at me.
My boot never gives him the chance. I kick him in the face, hard enough to turn his head a full ninety degrees in the other direction. I don’t stop there. Incapable now of controlling the rage sizzling through my nervous system, I kick and stomp with the mindless fury of an infected until, eventually, my boot lands in what feels like a soupy mess.
The rage subsides, and I question whether or not I’ll feel something later, some kind of shameful acknowledgment of what I’ve just done.
Probably not. Things are different now, and I vaguely understand what my father went through in the warzones of the Middle East, where killing an enemy soldier never really hit you on an emotional level. The way he explained it, your mind found ways to justify it, to make the enemy seem less human, so you wouldn’t feel bad about killing.
Regardless of how I might deal with it, Wheels deserved to die.
I don’t stick around. I scream out Melanie’s name, but there’s no way she can hear me above the bashing of infected fists against the warehouse walls. I grab the lantern and make my way to the office.
She’s in there, but her back is turned to me as she busies herself with aiming the 9mm at the door. The warped lines of light around the curved edges tell me the infected are close to breaking it off the hinges. Another minute, and they’ll be inside.
“Melanie,” I shout.
She still can’t hear me. All of her concentration is on the pistol and the act of keeping it leveled at the door.
I tap her shoulder. She whips around, and I duck at the sudden threat of a gun barrel leveled at my face. When no shot is fired, I rise slowly with my hands up.
“Kip,” she says, and I can hear the relief in her voice above the commotion. “Take it.”
She passes me the 9mm, then goes after her bow and quiver. I’m not sure how much good either weapon will do against the horde.
“Follow me,” I tell her, grabbing a lantern.
We leave the office. I pass her the lantern so I can lock the door we have just shut behind us. Luckily for me, the Colonel (or his predecessor) was paranoid about fortifying every door on the inside as well as the outside. This one uses a steel beam that can slide horizontally through metal fixtures. Better than a simple deadbolt.
Outbreak: A Survival Thriller Page 10