Among Monsters: A Red Hill Novella

by Jamie McGuire

  “You weren’t there! You don’t get to make this decision! This is something Halle and I promised to Mom!”

  “If she were that worried about riding this out with you, she wouldn’t have left. She was right there, Jenna, and she left!”

  “Andrew!” Tavia scolded.

  Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

  Dad’s shoulders fell. “Damn it. Jenna, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m just frustrated.”

  “She didn’t leave us. She is meeting us at Red Hill. That’s the plan. It’s always been the plan,” I said, sniffing.

  “You’re right,” Dad said, his cheeks flushed.

  “She didn’t leave us,” I said again, mostly to myself. “I know her. I know exactly what she is thinking. I would have done the same thing! She wasn’t sure if we would come back to your house. She knew where we would go, though, because we promised each other, and we keep our promises.”

  Dad bobbed his head. “Load up. Let’s go.”

  I climbed into the back, next to Tobin, crossing my arms, and Dad sat in the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition. The engine started, then sputtered, and died.

  “No…c’mon…” He turned it again.

  The engine made a whirring sound, but it didn’t catch this time. Dad slapped the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Andrew,” Tavia said, her voice low and soothing, “we can walk. We can make it. It’ll just take us longer than originally planned.”

  Dad nodded and ruffled Halle’s matted hair. “Okay, Pop Can, get your backpack. Take as much as you can carry.”

  Halle obeyed, pulling her backpack over her shoulders.

  WE KEPT TO THE ROAD.

  Dad half-hoped a car would pass us and pull over, but he also worried that someone would try to take our stuff. I didn’t tell him that it was unlikely since it was only day two, and most people were either worried about getting home to their loved ones or concentrating on fortifying where they were.

  “You don’t know that, Jenna. Everything you know is based on television shows,” Dad scolded.

  “Which are based on common sense and historical facts,” I said.

  “There has never been a zombie outbreak before.”

  “But there’ve been disasters before. The behavior is the same.”

  Dad sighed and shook his head. Then, he stopped and turned around. “Want me to carry him?”

  Tobin had fallen asleep half an hour before, and Tavia had fallen further behind the longer we walked. She shook her head, too tired to talk.

  Dad double-backed toward her, his arms out in front of him. “Give him to me. You’re no use if you’re exhausted. We still have fourteen miles to make before dark.”

  Tavia’s chest heaved, handing her son over. “I’m really regretting my excuses not to walk with my friend Teresa.”

  Dad chuckled, but his smile vanished when Halle pointed.

  “Daddy!” she said, alarmed.

  One of those things, a man, was stumbling toward us.

  “It’s alone,” Dad said. “Probably from the next town. We’ll make a wide run around him and then run for a while to stay ahead of him.”

  “I can’t run,” Tavia said, breathless.

  The thing was coming closer.

  Dad looked around. “We could find a place to hide, but he’ll probably just follow. Either way, we’ll have to pick up the pace.”

  “If we kill it, we don’t have to,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me.

  “I’ll run around with Halle. You distract it. When he turns around, kick his knees out from under him, and then hit him in the head with the butt of your rifle.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up.

  I shrugged. “Or we can run.”

  “What kind of stuff was your mom letting you watch?” he asked.

  “That was from a video game. Are we going to run or not?” I asked.

  Dad and Tavia looked at each other.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew. I just can’t.”

  Dad breathed out as he handed Tobin to Tavia. Dad rubbed the back of his neck and then pulled the strap of his rifle over his head. “Yesterday, I never would have believed that I’d be bashing someone’s head in.”

  “I didn’t think I’d be bait either. We all have jobs to do.”

  He glared at me. “Don’t watch—either of you. I don’t want you to see me doing this.”

  “Just make sure you kick out his knees,” I said. “It’ll be a lot easier.”

  I knelt down, and Halle climbed onto my back. I jerked up, adjusting her position.

  “In theory,” Dad said. “Go on. Give yourself plenty of room.”

  We walked another twenty seconds. Then, Tavia stopped, Dad readied himself, and I ran to the right in a wide half circle. The man moaned, reaching for us.

  “Hey!” I said. “This way!”

  He turned to follow, his bloody Oklahoma Sooners shirt ripped at the collar. Raw meat and bone were visible, but the blood wasn’t fresh. Something had chewed on him but not for long.

  I heard Dad grunt, and I turned, but I didn’t come to a full stop. The infected fell just like I’d said it would, but when Dad hit its head with the stock of his rifle, it kept reaching for him.

  “Hit it again!” I yelled.

  Dad swung again, and a loud crack echoed in every direction. It was finally still. Dad nudged it with his boot and then stomped over to Halle and me.

  “I thought I told you not to watch!” he growled.

  I looked back and up at Halle whose hand was over her glasses. “She didn’t.”

  “You! I told you, too!”

  “I can’t keep my eyes closed, Dad! I have to see what’s coming!”

  He thought about that for a moment, still breathing hard. Different emotions scrolled across his face, and then he bobbed his head once before wiping the remnants of the infected’s brain matter off his gun and onto the grass.

  “Good job,” Tavia said when she caught up to us.

  Dad took Tobin again, and we continued on, almost as if nothing had happened.

  I kept Halle on my back, knowing we still had a long way to go. She silently thanked me by touching her cheek to the crown of my head and giving me the slightest squeeze. I grinned. For us, getting along was a rarity. When I wasn’t antagonizing her, she would be bossing me around. We had become so accustomed to fighting that we’d often yell at each other for no reason at all.

  But now, the world had shifted, and so had the things I cared about. The most important thing to me was Halle, and even after two miles with her small yet surprisingly heavy frame, the goal of getting her to Mom kept my feet moving forward.

  We talked while we walked. We ate while we walked. We drank and laughed. All the while, we moved toward the next town, only pausing for bathroom breaks.

  “I’m hungry,” Halle said just as we reached the crest of a hill.

  The sun was hot, and none of us were used to hiking such a distance.

  “It’s snack time, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “We’ve got to conserve food, Halle. We don’t know how long we’ll be out here.”

  “What does that mean?” Halle asked.

  I held out my hand to her. “It means, we can’t have snacks. Three meals a day—that’s it until we find more food.”

  Halle frowned. “But we’ll be with Mom tonight. She can make us something for dinner.”

  “We won’t see Mom tonight unless we find a car. It’s a long way on foot.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  Dad glanced back at me. When I didn’t have an answer, his expression perked up. “Maybe a couple of days, Pop Can. No worries. We’ll get there.”

  “A couple of days?” she asked, her tone rising with each word.

  I cringed. Dad did, too.

  “Sorry, kiddo.” That was all he could offer.

  I squeezed her hand. “The more we walk, the closer we get.”

  “No snacks?” she whined
, her bottom lip pulling up.

  At the top of the next hill, for only the third time in as many hours, we stopped.

  Tobin pointed. “What’s that?”

  “Jesus in Heaven,” Tavia said, dabbing the sweat from her neck and chest.

  “Infected,” Dad said. “Maybe ten?”

  Tavia held her fingers to her forehead to block out the sun. “They’re too far away. Maybe they’re people?”

  Dad pulled his binoculars from his bag and held them up to his eyes. He quickly pulled them back down. “Damn it.”

  “What do we do?” Tavia asked.

  “We can’t get through them,” Dad said. “All there is between us and them is pasture.”

  I looked around. “See any farmhouses or barns?”

  Dad used his binoculars and turned in every direction. “Just a pump house. Doesn’t look big enough for all of us to fit.”

  “Okay,” Tavia said. “What do we do?”

  Dad held out his hands and then let them hit his thighs. “Find a place to hide? Hope they turn in a different direction?”

  “You’ve got a scope,” I said. “Use it.”

  Dad looked down at his gun. “You just want me to open fire on a bunch of pe—”

  “Infected, Dad. You said it yourself. They’re infected. And there are too many of them to handle.”

  Dad’s T-shirt was damp with sweat. Still, he used it to wipe his face. His five o’clock shadow was crowding his dry lips.

  “Dad?” I said.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You’ve also got the gun you took off the bridge.”

  “I know.” He narrowed his eyes at a row of round hay bales. “Tavia, get the kids on top of those. I’ll climb onto one a little closer and then fall back to you if I have to.”

  “That’s your plan?” I asked.

  Dad grit his teeth. “Jenna, damn it, would you just do what I say?”

  “I know how to shoot a rifle,” I said.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “I said, no! Now, get your ass on that hay!” He pointed with one hand and thrust the binoculars at me with the other.

  I frowned as I snatched the binoculars from his hand, and then I led Halle to the field, stepping through freshly cut grass to the round bales.

  Gripping his hunting rifle, and with the semiautomatic hanging from his shoulder strap, Dad walked west, toward the group of infected. I helped Halle climb up first, and she helped pull Tobin while Tavia and I pushed. Then, I cupped my hands and helped give Tavia a leg up. It wasn’t perfect, and it took her a couple of tries, but she finally climbed to the top and then reached down for me.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  “You sure, honey?” She watched me climb to the top.

  “Yep,” I said, breathless but smiling, as I sat next to her.

  My mood didn’t last long. I held the binoculars up to my eyes and located my dad. “He’s picking a round bale. They’re still a ways from him.”

  “It’s stucky,” Tobin said, trying to wipe the hay off his hands.

  “It’s just for a bit,” Tavia said, pulling him onto her lap and brushing the hay from his clothes.

  “He’s getting into position.” I watched Dad lay onto his stomach before he pulled the pin on his rifle. “I hope he remembered to keep his ammo handy.”

  Tavia hummed in disapproval. “You sure don’t trust your dad, do ya?”

  I lowered the binoculars and looked at her. “He…yeah, he’s smart. But my mom loves this stuff. I just wish she were here. She thinks ahead. Dad thinks about…girls.”

  “I bet she doesn’t love it now, and I bet the only girls your dad is thinking about are his own.”

  I made a face, embarrassed, and then I put the binoculars back up to my eyes just as Dad took the first shot. “He got one!”

  He shot again, and his body jerked with the recoil.

  “He got another one!” I let the binoculars fall to my lap. “It’s really loud. It’s going to draw more.”

  “We’ll just have to skedaddle before then, won’t we?” Tavia said.

  Dad shot several more times. He didn’t even have to fall back. He took down most of them and then hollered at us to climb down.

  “C’mon, Halle!” I said after I hopped down. “Jump!”

  She leaned over, her hands reaching out for me, and then she fell forward. I barely caught her. I set her feet on the ground and then held out my hands while Tavia lowered Tobin to me.

  “Hurry!” I said to Tavia.

  She climbed down fairly quickly, and we jogged to the hay bale Dad had shot from, but he was on the other side of the road, diverting the few infected that he couldn’t bring himself to shoot.

  “Look away, Halle,” I said.

  Tavia shielded Tobin’s eyes as we hurried past, a tiny sob escaping from her throat.

  Dad danced around the infected children with various wounds, all three of them younger than me. I only looked long enough to make sure they weren’t following. When I heard three cracks, my shoulders shot up to my ears.

  “Did you…” I began.

  Dad shook his head, having a hard time with concealing his emotions. “Just made sure they couldn’t keep up. Walk faster.”

  He picked up the pace, and we did the same, desperately wanting to create distance between us and the mess of bodies we’d left behind.

  In the distance was a field full of scrap metal, old cars, and a few rusted tractors.

  “Daddy! Cars!” Halle said.

  “We won’t be going anywhere in any of those, Pop Can. They’re just there for parts.”

  “Oh,” she said, deflated.

  “Cars, Mama!” Tobin said, pointing.

  Tavia touched her fingers to his dark hair. “That’s right! You are so smart!”

  He hugged his train.

  If we had to travel with a toddler, I’d pick Tobin any day. He was quiet, and he minded his mother. Tavia could keep him calm when necessary. We had been so lucky so far. I wondered how long that would hold out.

  “Cars, Mama!” Tobin said again.

  An engine sounded in the distance, and Dad herded us off the road. The sun hit the vehicle just right, so it took a minute for me to see that it was a silver minivan. They were going so fast that I wondered if someone was chasing them, but the moment they saw us, the tires slowed.

  A man about Dad’s age rolled down the window. A dark beard surrounded his hesitant but polite smile. “Going to the next town?”

  His wife sat in the passenger seat, looking behind her and whispering, comforting whoever was in the backseat.

  “For now,” Dad said. “We ran out of gas a ways back.”

  The man looked to his wife, and she gave her permission.

  “Listen,” he said, looking to Dad, “it’s too dangerous to walk. We’re headed to Shallot. My in-laws live there. We’ve been driving all night from Midland.”

  “You made it here all the way from Midland?” Dad asked.

  “It wasn’t easy,” the man said, holding up a pistol.

  His wife held up one, too, looking sheepish.

  Dad glanced down the road. “We would appreciate you taking us as far as you can. I have some money—”

  The man held up his hand and shook his head. “It’ll be a tight fit with the kids back there, but you’re welcome to ride along.”

  Dad turned to Tavia, and she let out a breath of relief.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” she said. “C’mon, Tobin. You found us a car!”

  The man hit a button on the ceiling, and the side door slid open, revealing a girl a little older than Halle, maybe ten or eleven, and a boy Tobin’s age.

  “Well, hello there!” Tavia made her way to the third row, past the two captain’s chairs the children were seated in.

  She sat next to the wall and situated Tobin on her lap, leaving plenty of room for Halle and me, but I wondered where Dad would fit.

  “Just, uh…your littlest can fit n
icely on the floor between our kids, if you don’t mind,” the man said.

  Dad climbed in and sat near the other wall, and I sat in the middle. Halle sat on the floor in front of my feet, scooting back against my legs.

  The door glided closed, and then the man pressed on the gas. A wave of relief washed over me.

  “I’m Brad,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror for a moment. “My wife, Darla,” he said.

  She turned around and flashed a sweet smile.

  “Our daughter is Madelyn, and our son is Logan.”

  Dad pointed to himself. “Andrew.” He pointed to the rest of us. “Tavia, Tobin, Jenna. And Halle is on the floor.”

  Everyone traded the customary nice-to-meet-yous.

  For the first time in hours, I felt my body slowly relaxing from being on alert since I’d opened my eyes that morning. It didn’t take long to realize that none of us smelled very good.

  “Dad,” I whispered, “we are stinking up their car.”

  “Sorry,” Dad said to the adults in front. “We’ve been walking all day. We don’t mean to offend.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re not at our best either,” Brad said. “Her parents were supposed to head down to visit later today, but when we heard the reports, we knew they wouldn’t chance it, and Shallot is tiny. We’ll have a better chance there than in Midland Her parents would worry if we didn’t come.”

  “I’m taking the girls to their mom. She’s not far from there.”

  “If we can, maybe we could run you up there in the morning? Depending on the gas situation, of course. We just used our last can an hour ago.”

  “That would be …” Dad laughed once, his shoulders relaxing as relief washed over him. “That would be extremely kind of you.” He hooked his arm around my neck and pulled my temple to his lips. “We’re going to be okay, kiddo. You’ll be with your mom this time tomorrow.”

  “Don’t jinx it,” I said. “We’re not there yet.”

  “WHAT THE HELL?” Brad said, stomping on the brakes.

  Just as I reached for and missed Halle, Darla whipped around and caught her before she hit face-first into the console.

  “Whoa!” Darla smiled at Halle when she looked up. “You okay, sweetie?”

  Halle nodded, and then Darla looked expectantly at her own kids. They bobbed their heads at the same time.