by Z. Rider
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
He faced the door. “Jesus, what’s taking them so long?”
Dan checked his phone. He itched to call Ray, ask the status. Itched to be up in his mom’s room, where he could look out the window and see what was going on. She was being quiet up there. Probably standing in the hall, waiting for the go-ahead to reach in and flick the light back off. He and Buddy would take care of putting the boards back when they got upstairs.
A noise came from the far side of the garage. Dan pushed off the wall and stood at the door with Buddy, who rubbed his thumbs across his fingers, ready to do something—anything.
Stepping closer, putting his ear to the door, Buddy said, “I think they’re inside.”
The crack underneath was still dark. Dan heard soft sounds—it irritated him that he couldn’t tell if they were the sounds of people moving under blankets or one of those things flapping its wings.
The end of the house shook as the door to outside thudded closed. Muffled voices came through. Footsteps. After a long moment, the crack under the door lit up.
“Everything okay out there?” Dan bumped against Buddy.
“I think we’re good,” Rich said. “Just making sure nothing hitched a ride in the blankets.”
“Go tell your mom to turn the light off,” Buddy said.
Dan took the stairs two at a time, rounding the corner when he got to the top.
The hallway was empty.
“Mom?”
The TV blared through her bedroom door. He stuck his head in his own room, then the guest room. “Mom?”
Jesus, don’t tell me… He stopped in front of her door. “Mom, are you in there?”
The TV clicked off. The light under the door went out. He stepped back as the doorknob turned.
“Are they in?” She slipped through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind her.
“What the hell were you doing?”
“They didn’t seem interested enough in the lights and TV. I stood in the window.”
“Mom.”
“Don’t tell me I risked my life for nothing. Did they—”
At the sound of feet, they looked toward the steps. Ray emerged first, gave a nod. Dan had never been so happy to see someone in his life.
Jamie was behind him, followed by Buddy and Rich, Buddy’s hand on Rich’s shoulder, Rich looking a little out of breath. Jamie’s eyes, big and dark, engulfed his face. His blankets were wadded in his hands.
Faye headed past Dan, saying, “We saved dinner for you. Let me heat it up.”
While they gathered in the kitchen, small feet came up the steps.
“Janie,” Buddy said, his voice a warning before the girl even appeared in the doorway.
“Uncle Ray?” She was in her pajamas. Maisie the doll hung from her hand.
“Jane-Jane. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“You’re not supposed to be out at night.”
He slid from his chair to give her a hug. “Won’t happen again.”
“Better not or you’re grounded.”
Smiling, he ruffled her hair.
The fact that they were actually there, and in one piece—and not bitten—started to sink in for Dan. Ray turned Jane around and nudged her back toward the stairs. Sarah appeared in the doorway, hugging herself.
“You want to let her sleep up here till we go back down?” Buddy asked.
“No, I’m going back down with her. I just wanted to see everyone for myself.” She looked like she hadn’t slept for a week, as if the night had taken its toll on her all at once. She dragged a lock of hair behind her ear and touched Jane’s shoulder to get her attention.
“Do you need any help with anything?” Faye said.
“It’d be a big help if you could put everything back to normal.”
Faye smiled and went over to hug her.
Dan turned to Jamie. “So what’s the story?”
“I had to get out of Merrimack, you know? My parents were driving me toward suicide.”
“That’s where you’ve been through all of this?”
He gave half a shrug.
“You weren’t bit, were you?” Dan asked.
“No.”
As if Jamie would tell him if he were.
Rich said, “No shame in it if you were. These guys could take care of it. They’ve been doing a good job for me.”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “It’d be pretty tight, five people feeding two, but we’d find a way to make it work.”
“Four, isn’t it?” Rich said.
“I’ll be donating if we have to support two people.”
“Yeah?” Jamie said. He cocked his chin. “What’s stopping you from doing it now?”
The explanation caught in his throat. Ray came in for him with a quick rundown, and Dan watched him talk—never so happy to see someone in the flesh in his life.
“We didn’t want to take chances he’d caught something,” Ray finished.
“Oh good,” Jamie said, “I’d get to get the tainted blood. Good thing I wasn’t bitten.”
The microwave was going, a dinner plate turning inside.
Faye kissed the top of Ray’s head. “Don’t do that to us again.”
“Yes, Mom.”
And all was right with the world, Dan thought, clutching one of the blankets they’d discarded in his lap.
Ray caught his gaze and looked away.
Dan couldn’t help but think there was something hollow in the back of his eyes.
† † †
“The National Guard and local law enforcement are overtaxed with the responsibility of protecting a panicked public. We ask everyone to…”
Ray, sitting on the living-room floor, pushed to his feet. “Cigarette.”
“Me too,” Jamie said.
“Anyone want tea?” Faye asked.
Dan, gnawing the side of his thumb, shook his head. Sarah’s needles made quick, nervous clicks, a baby blanket slowly emerging from yarn Faye had dug from the back of the guest-room closet. At one point during the litany of recorded announcements, Buddy grumbled, “No fucking shit,” his hand gripping a glass of water, because that was mostly what they were down to for beverages now.
Just another big family night at home, except that Ray had something he wasn’t telling Dan, and Dan couldn’t get him alone for a moment to pin him on it.
Long minutes passed.
Ray and Jamie didn’t come back up.
The house was thick with stale air. Too many people, too few open doors—too few cracks for the fresh air outside to get in. Hemmed in by the boards over the windows, Dan was about to climb out of his skull.
And Ray’s behavior was gnawing at his guts.
He got to his feet.
“Are you all right, honey?” his mom asked.
“Yeah. I’m gonna grab some ibuprofen and go to bed.” Under the blankets, he could pretend it was just really dark outside instead of going all to hell. He gave her a peck.
He had no intention of sleeping, though. He stepped over Ray’s mattress on his way to his bed.
Ray had to turn in eventually.
He hoped.
He stripped down to his shorts and slipped between the sheets, half worried he’d get up in the morning and find Ray’d spent the night on the couch, avoiding him. Avoiding telling him what he was pretty sure he already knew. He just wanted Ray to tell him was overthinking things, that there was nothing to fucking worry about. Scout’s honor.
He felt like he could still hear the click-clicking of the knitting needles from down the hall. He crossed his arms over his eyes. Waiting.
The floor creaked outside his door, but the footsteps headed across the hall.
A toilet flushed.
Dishes rattled in the kitchen.
After a while, the house went silent.
† † †
When he woke, he was on his stomach, hugging his pillow. He moved his eyes toward the door just as it eased open
a crack—something he sensed more than saw in the pitch-blackness.
A body bumped the doorjamb, and he pictured Ray misjudging the distance as he tried to slip through in the dark.
The door clicked softly shut. A belt buckle jingled quickly, the soft sweep of leather sliding over denim.
“Hey,” Dan whispered.
“Sorry. I was trying to not to wake you.”
He pushed onto his elbows. “I was awake anyway.”
The sounds were so familiar—Ray toe-heeling a boot off, then nudging it out of the way. He sat on the mattress on the floor to pull the other one off. Cigarette smoke wafted off his clothes.
“What happened when you went to get Jamie?” Dan asked.
“I had to do a little running around to find him.”
“Let me guess: it wasn’t the good part of town you found him in.”
“Is there a good part of town? Jesus, I’m bushed. I was gonna take a shower, but I don’t think I can stay up that long.”
Dan stretched on his side, his cheek against the pillow.
The blankets on the floor rustled as Ray got under them.
“Feel better?” Dan asked.
“Being in bed? Fuck yeah.”
“I mean after getting Jamie.”
It took a little time, but a “Yeah” finally came. Another stretch of minutes passed, Dan listening to Ray breathe. Listening to his hand scrub his face.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Ray said finally, and Dan didn’t know if he meant the two of them or if he was talking about Jamie—or all of them. “I’ve always been glad I met you, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Who knew freshman football would have paid off?”
Dan smiled.
“Man, I was shit at it,” Ray said. “I hated getting fucking tackled, everyone piling on me over a ball.”
“I know. Everyone could see the whites in your eyes when you were running up the field.”
After a moment of quiet, Ray said, “We had a good run.”
“I don’t hear the fat lady singing yet.”
Ray rolled over. When he said, “’Night,” his voice was pointing toward the bookshelf.
Dan closed his thumb in his fist to keep from chewing the nail down to bleeding. At least his headache was backing off. See? People get headaches. It hadn’t come with any buzzing or crazy thoughts. He was just worried as shit about the possibility that everything had suddenly taken a sharp turn for the worse. “You’d tell me if you got bit, right?” he said.
Ray mumbled something and pulled the blanket over his shoulder.
Dan thought about the zombie apocalypse. And how at first light he’d slip out to Ray’s car to make sure buying a gun hadn’t been part of what had taken him so long to get back.
Just in case.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dan startled awake. A thin crack of light crept along the edge of the plywood nailed over his window. When the engine outside cranked to life, he realized what had woken him: the shutting of a car door.
“Shit.”
His feet thumped the floor. He struggled into his jeans as the car backed up.
That he couldn’t even look out the fucking window drove him crazy.
Barefoot, he pounded down the stairs and out the front door in time to catch the glint of Ray’s bumper as it disappeared around the curve.
“Fuck.”
Back inside, Jane swung her heel against the leg of a kitchen chair, scooping an oversized spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth.
“Ray gone?” his mom asked, pouring a cup of coffee.
“Did he say where he was going?” Dan asked.
“To pick up supplies.”
“Did anyone go with him?” He hoped Ray had taken Rich. Heck, he even hoped he’d taken Jamie. Taking anyone meant he wasn’t doing what Dan thought he was doing.
“Rich headed out fishing. Buddy’s getting ready for work. And Jamie, I believe, is still sleeping. Coffee?”
“No. I’m gonna see if I can catch up to him.”
“Honey, if he’d wanted you to go…”
“No shit, but I’m going anyway. How’d he seem this morning?”
Her spoon clinked the side of her mug as she stirred. “He seemed all right. Gave me a nice hug before he left.”
“Shit, Mom.” He jogged down the hallway. Yesterday’s t-shirt, boots yanked over bare feet. His keys confounded him. Not in his pocket, not in his jacket, not on the nightstand. He checked his dresser, the kitchen counter, even the workbench in the garage in case he’d set them down on his way in last time he’d gone anywhere.
Sarah and Buddy were upstairs by the time he accepted the fact that Ray had taken his goddamned keys with him. “Mom, can I borrow your car?”
“Something wrong with yours?” Buddy asked.
“Honey, you don’t even know where he was going.”
“Who?” Buddy asked. “Jamie?”
“Ray.”
Faye said, “He told me he saw a place while he was out yesterday that might have some food. But that could be anywhere.”
“He’s not going to get fucking food.”
The room went silent.
He wished everyone staring at him looked more like they got it and less like he’d lost it.
“What’s going on?” said a lazy voice from behind him.
Dan spun.
Jamie, scratching his rumpled hair, yawned in the doorway.
“What happened yesterday?” Dan said. “When did Ray finally meet up with you?”
It took forever for that fucking yawn to pass. When it did, Jamie’s voice was still thick from sleep. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at the clock.”
Dan grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him out of the doorway. Tempting as it was to keep shoving until he tripped down the stairs, he made a sharp turn with him instead, slamming his shoulders against the wall. “Was it after fucking dark?”
“It was starting to get dark maybe, yeah.”
“Did you see any bats?”
“No. But I was trying to get in the car. He’d pulled right up to the steps.”
“He didn’t get out?”
Jamie shook his head.
“Okay, good.” He kept hold of Jamie’s shoulders, staring down at nothing while he thought. When he looked back up, he said, “How long had it been getting dark?”
Before Jamie could give him another line of bullshit about clocks, he cut him off with, “How long had it been since you felt like, ‘Shit, I need to get inside?’”
Jamie’s eyes cut away.
“How fucking dark was it?”
Dan shoved him. The pictures on the wall jumped—third-grade class portrait, a photo of his dad grinning in wading boots, Dan in his marching band uniform with the hat’s strap digging under his chin. He let go of Jamie and stalked into the kitchen. “I need your keys, Mom.”
“I’ll need to move the truck,” Buddy said as Faye pushed back her chair.
“I really don’t care if I have to drive across the fucking yard to get out.”
“You think he’s been bitten?” Buddy said.
“I just about know he’s been bitten.”
“Stupid fucking asshole. Come on.” Buddy hauled his coat on. “We’ll take the truck.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Buddy slowed. The neighborhood was dead, everyone huddled in their apartments or long gone for points west. A soccer ball lay abandoned in the dirt at the edge of a sidewalk. Curtains rippled in a window, someone clutching them back to watch the truck creep by. The corner of Ray’s driveway appeared beyond Buddy’s weather-beaten fence. Buddy turned in, tires crunching loose pebbles. After ten feet, the asphalt fell apart. Dan held his breath as Buddy pulled around the corner of the building to the parking area.
But he knew even before they rounded it that Ray’s car wouldn’t be there.
“He might have broke down somewhere and walked,” Buddy said.
T
he Ford’s engine rumbled.
A shopping bag kicked up from the dirt and swept across to catch in the straggle of dead weeds between the parking area and Buddy’s back yard.
“Maybe he’s getting supplies like he said,” Buddy offered.
Dan shook his head. “Go to Sound Block.” It was the one other place he knew Ray had a key to.
Buddy put the truck in reverse and did a three-point turn. “All right. Where’s it at?”
“Out by the airport.”
The truck spit pebbles as Buddy gunned it out of the driveway.
At a traffic light on South Willow, Dan stared at the BatteriesPlus building. Sun glinted off the windows, save one that looked like a missing tooth—black with jagged edges around it. A man appeared, framed in it, the collar of his hunting jacket turned up. He threw a few stuffed shopping bags out before he hauled himself through, white clouds of breath leading the way in the cold.
Buddy punched it, and they sped through the intersection.
When they came around the corner for Sound Block, the site of the Fury made Dan go rubbery inside. Had they found him too late?
Buddy cranked the truck into the lot and braked sharply. It was still rocking back when Dan threw open the door and jumped out. He grabbed the door handle and jerked. Pain shot up his arm. Shit. He reached for his keys—and stopped, swearing, when he remembered he didn’t have them.
“What’s up?” Buddy asked.
Dan kicked the door—not that Ray would hear, tucked deep in the building. “Goddamnit.”
None of the rehearsal rooms had windows. The only two on the building were the grimed-over pair at the office.
“Just a sec.” Buddy climbed over the tailgate, his boots thunking on the bed. The slam of the toolbox lid hitting the back of the cab echoed in the empty lot. He jumped down with a hammer, stuffing a pair of leather work gloves in his back pocket. Dan followed him to the corner of the building.
“Cover your eyes.”
Dan turned and crouched, his arm across his face.
Glass shattered. He spun back around. The jagged hole wasn’t big enough to climb through. Buddy pulled the gloves on and started yanking shards from the frame. They cracked as he tossed them on the ground, the sounds thin and sharp.
“Step up.” Buddy locked his fingers at knee level. Dan put one foot in there, the toe of the other against the wall, and pulled himself through as Buddy boosted him.