He walked into the Bass Pro in Orlando and almost ran into a guy who looked a hell of a lot sicker than he felt.
Yep, he thought, just another shitty boring day in retail.
Nick and Webster’s day care
Things on the road were breaking bad. Webster weaved around traffic accidents and used the grassy median when necessary. Nick sat in the seat beside him and recovered from the narrow escape at the college. His hand gripped the dashboard as Webster sped between two wrecked cars, with just inches to spare on each side.
“Where are we gonna go?” Nick asked.
“No idea, but out of here seems like a good start.”
Nick nodded. They passed the Gulf Coast Mall, and he watched a group of infected attack several fleeing people.
Webster didn’t stop at the intersection’s red traffic light. He gunned the truck’s engine and sped through at a stomach-wrenching speed. There was a loud, deep bang of thunder, and Nick thought the engine had blown. Then he saw the smoke rising over the palm trees to the north.
“What the hell was that?”
Webster didn’t answer. Ahead, several cars and a bus blocked the road. There were people fighting, and he could not see a clear way through.
“Hang on, Nick. We’re going off-road for a minute.”
“Shit,” Nick said and grabbed the dashboard with both hands.
Webster angled the truck left and hit the median’s curb. The truck lurched and started to turn to the right. Webster yanked the wheel and corrected its course across the wet marshy grass. They jumped the far curb with a loud bang and then were driving the wrong way down the divided four-lane road. Nick was grateful there was no oncoming traffic.
As they passed the pile up, Nick saw children’s faces in the bus windows. They watched with horror as Creepers attacked the other motorists. Several of the Creepers were trying to enter the bus.
“Webster, we have to go back!”
“Back, back where?”
“To the accident, to the bus. There are a bunch of little kids on it.”
Webster looked in the rearview mirror and then glanced at his friend.
“You know we’ll die, right?”
“Possibly, but they’re just kids. I’m not leaving them to die either.”
“End of the world and you decide to open a daycare.” Webster laughed.
“You afraid of dying?”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I just wanted to make sure we were clear that it’s the most likely outcome.”
“Yeah, I’m crystal clear.”
He turned the wheel right, and once again, they made a dangerous uncontrolled drive across the median. On the other side, Webster turned back toward the accident and shot forward.
“Do you have anything we can use as a weapon?” Nick asked and craned his neck to look in the truck’s bed.
“I have a crowbar and a tire iron.”
Webster brought the truck to a screeching halt twenty yards from the bus. The Creepers paid no attention to the new arrivals … yet. Webster and Nick jumped out and each went to a side of the truck bed. Nick picked up the crowbar. It was about three feet long. He threw it to Webster and then picked up the smaller, lighter tire iron. It felt very inconsequential in his hand.
“Hey, Webster.”
“Yeah.”
They walked toward the chaos.
“I really wish I had kept my commitment to that weightlifting program.”
“Yeah. I really wish I had bought a gun.”
The first Creeper charged them, and Nick opened its skull with the tire iron.
Mrs. Wilkes’s badass solo
Mrs. Wilkes felt bad about threatening those nice kids with a gun, but she knew it was the only way to get them to leave. When that boy ran at the nasties, she realized that their time was up. It would have been suicide to try to move these sick folks into the bus. The task would have required the men to put down their guns, and that would have been the end of it for everyone.
She saw Golden and Brandon run through the gym, and she told them to hurry. She waited a few more seconds and prayed that she remembered the correct switch to turn on the music. She had listened close enough to know that the rock-and-roll music agitated the nasties. Now she just hoped it would draw enough of the things away to give the kids a chance. She didn’t plan to go down without a fight, however. She had secured a rather large caliber pistol a few days ago. It was loaded with six bullets, and she had no extras. It didn’t matter; she was too old to pretend she had the dexterity to reload the contraption. Besides, she only needed to use five bullets to buy enough time to draw the nasties inside. The sixth bullet was her special little surprise, courtesy of Mr. Paul and her career as a science teacher.
She turned the knob marked “Volume” to the full right position where a little white number read ten. The sound system was a monstrous thing that they had used for movie night. She had never heard it louder than a volume three, but that had been plenty loud during the action scenes. Ten, she imagined, would take what remained of her hearing. She said a little prayer and then flipped the switch. Nothing happened and she cursed. She was certain that Golden had done as she had asked; it wasn’t possible the quiet girl had failed her. She laughed when she remembered that the girl had loaded the CD and then pointed to the button with the little sideways triangle. That must be the Play button. Mrs. Wilkes pressed it, and she heard the CD motor whir inside. Then the music blared, and the singer screamed from the speakers. Mrs. Wilkes wanted to rock too.
She turned as the first Creepers poured in through the front door. The kids had closed the rear door, and it shook on its hinges as the nasties tried to tear it open. The nasties charged across the gym floor, and she leveled the big gun on the closest. Her first shot took it in the chest, and it fell back as others passed it. The recoil almost caused her to drop the gun, but she had had the foresight to hold it with both hands, so she was able to regain control. She fired three more shots and killed two of the nasties. They were close now, and she needed to save the last two bullets for her surprise ending. She hadn’t counted on the gun’s kick and feared she might miss her target. The gym had filled quickly and only the makeshift barricade of boxes and cots prevented them from immediately getting to her. One pulled poor Mrs. James from her bed. Mrs. Wilkes had felt guilty for spiking everyone’s dinner with oxycodone, but now it appeared a blessing.
She steadied her aim at the pile of cylinders in the corner of the triage. She had spent most of the day collecting both the full and empty ones and building her little pile. She had lost count, but there were a lot of oxygen tanks there, piled in with several five-gallon gas cans from the generators and a pile of fertilizer left over from the school’s ground-keeping area, the latter of which the triplets had been kind enough to carry for her when she told them she wanted to make an indoor garden. She had opened the valves on several tanks and had poured gasoline around the entire pile. Gasoline, oxygen, and nitrogen fertilizer was the cocktail of choice in homemade explosives. She had added a few of her own special ingredients from the chemistry lab to ensure a hot and fast acceleration. She just needed a little spark. There hadn’t been time to build a proper switch. The first bullet hit a gas can but nothing happened. If it came down to her lighter, she would use it, but she preferred a little distance even though her death was unavoidable. She prayed again and tried to see her target clearly. A Creeper had breached her little fort and was coming at her.
“Please, Lord, just a little bit of help for an old woman.”
She pulled the trigger, and the bullet found its mark and made a pretty blue spark. The explosion was epic.
Caroline makes a run
Caroline was an intelligent woman with a mind of her own, but when Devin called her and told her to stay put and wait for him, she didn’t question it. She saw enough on the news before the cable went out to kno
w that something bad had happened to their world. She was afraid, but more than anything, she trusted Devin. He said he would come, and he would; and if he didn’t, well, then, it didn’t matter what happened to her anyway. The two of them were like those birds she had read about in psychology, the ones who imprinted on their mothers. She and Devin had imprinted on each other back in junior high school. She knew it was overly romantic to think of them as mated for life like wolves and orcas. Still, it had always felt that way, and he had never given her reason to think otherwise.
There was a crash in the kitchen, and she got off the sofa. The golf club in her hand didn’t provide much comfort. Her roommate, Samantha, crawled through the broken window. Caroline almost rushed over to her, and then Sam looked up and a sick, desperate scream came from her mouth. Sam’s eyes were blue, cloudy, and full of hate. They were so different from the warm brown eyes that had been there at breakfast.
Caroline didn’t really think; she just went to the trapped creature and raised the golf club. It was a present for Devin, and while she hated to use it, she had no other choice. She brought the club head down hard on the back of Sam’s head. The girl-creature screamed angrily and tried to grab Caroline. She wound up and hit the creature again; this time she remembered to use her hips just as her father had taught her a long time ago when she was twelve and had played her only softball season. A large indentation in the shape of the club head appeared in Samantha’s head, and then she went still.
Caroline backed away; her breakfast threatened to escape her stomach. Down the hall came another crash, and then the bedroom door opened. Caroline didn’t recognize the man, but he had the same hateful cloudy eyes as Sam. He ran at her, and outside she heard gunfire. She had intended to stay put, but she thought Devin would understand. She ran for the door, swung it open, and ran at full speed toward the street. Something grabbed her arm, and she spun around, ready to use the club for what it was worth. Devin smiled at her.
“Told you I’d come. Hey, is that my early Christmas present?”
Brandon shot the Creeper that came through Caroline’s front door.
Austin steals home
Austin was in a full sprint when the hospital exploded. The force of it was like a large hot fist in his back, and it lifted him into the air and threw him across the street. He came down hard on the sidewalk; the baseball bat flew out of his hand and landed in a large sandy lot. He stayed down for a moment, hands over his head as large chunks of debris rained down around him. When it ended, he looked up and saw two men running across the sandy lot. Well, actually, it was more like a gallop.
He stood up, grabbed his Yankees hat, and put it on backward. His bat was half the distance to the advancing things, and they were closing fast. He calculated the distance in a second and took off at a full sprint toward the bat. It would most certainly be a tie at the plate. He cursed to himself knowing how much this would hurt. He put on even more speed and then went into a slide on the rough ground. His pants tore, and he felt the skin scrape away. It worked, though, and the Creepers sped by him with open and empty arms as he slid between them and grabbed the bat. There was just enough force left in the slide to propel him into a standing position. Blood and injury aside, it was a perfect slide. He turned and they came at him. He dodged the first and got a clean solid hit on the second’s jaw. The infected went down with a howl, and he jumped over it and turned back to the first. It came at him in an awkward gait, and Austin had time to sidestep it while he brought the bat around. He caught it on an upward angle under the chin and heard its neck snap. The other was getting back to its feet, but Austin didn’t wait. He was certain he could outrun it and he did.
Cleveland Avenue was a mess, and he ran between wrecked cars. His leg burned from the slide, and he knew that he needed a better plan. A Creeper charged him from his front left. He wouldn’t be able to run past it, so he stopped and waited. It must have been a homeless man because it was thin and its clothes were dirty and ruined. The bat made short work of it. In a small overgrown parking lot next to a store, Austin saw a motorcycle on its side. The driver lay several yards away, his head a bloody pulp from the impact with the brick wall. He ran to the bike and hoped it would start. He picked it up off its side and found the electronic ignition switch. He pressed the Start button, and the motor came to life. He jumped on; he didn’t have any experience riding, but he didn’t have any other option. He let the clutch out too fast, and the bike lurched forward, almost spilling him to the ground. He regained control and took off down Cleveland with no idea of where to go. He worked through the gears as he worked through the disabled and crashed vehicles. There was no traffic on the other side of the median. When the bombs fell, everyone turned and headed back south. It was risky but still safer than weaving through the pileups and stopped cars. At the intersection, he cut across and flew down the northbound lane in the wrong direction. Up ahead, he almost missed the waving girl.
Fashion for the apocalypse
“Damn! Dead end,” Adam yelled from the front seat.
“Yeah, no shit. I told you to take Crystal and not try Forty-One and Daniels,” Annie said from the backseat.
“Hey, shut up, bitch. You’d be dead if we hadn’t come along.”
“Well, thanks for giving me the extra five minutes of life before driving me to my death at this intersection.”
“You can just get out and walk if you don’t like the odds in here.”
“Hey, man, chill the fuck out,” Brad said. “Annie’s right. You should have gone down Crystal.”
“Don’t be a sellout; bros before hoes.”
Brad punched him hard in the arm.
“Hey!” Adam yelled and rubbed his arm.
“Don’t call her that. She’s Devin’s sister.”
Adam calmed down a bit.
“You’re right. Hey, Annie, I’m sorry. I’m just a little nervous.”
She leaned across the front seat and kissed each of them on the cheek. Brad blushed.
“It’s okay, and thanks for saving me back there. Come on, I got a plan,” she said and jumped out of the car.
“Shit, wait. Where are you going?” Adam called, but he and Brad followed.
Ahead, the traffic had stopped and a pile of automobiles burned black smoke. For the moment, there were no infected, but that wouldn’t last long. People stood by their stopped vehicles and talked without any understanding of what was happening.
“Where are we going?” Brad asked.
“We’re gonna cut through the Bell Tower Mall, then cross Daniels, and cut through the woods all the way to Walmart,” Annie said.
“Walmart?” Brad asked. “Why are we going to Walmart?”
“Supplies,” Annie answered.
“There’s a Target right up the street.”
Adam smiled. “No good. Target doesn’t sell guns, right, Annie?”
“No, they do not. But I want to stop first for some clothes.”
“You want to shop for clothes in the middle of all this?” Brad asked.
“Damn right. I’m not wearing this uniform to the end of the world.”
Adam and Brad shook their heads but knew it was pointless to argue.
“After Walmart, I need to go home and check on my folks and my sister. I’ll understand if you boys have somewhere else to be.”
The northbound lane was clear and they crossed. Annie stopped on the side of the road and watched with disbelief.
A motorcycle was coming fast and in the wrong direction.
“That guy is gonna get himself killed,” Brad said.
“Holy shit,” Adam said. “Annie, isn’t that Austin?”
She laughed. “Yep, it is.” She waved at him.
I call shotgun
Connor waited in the parking lot for Devin and Brandon as promised. He had two large duffle bags at his feet and a shotgun in his hands.
He was doing a fine job killing everything that came at him. Devin swung Caroline’s Camry into the lot and skated around a wreck near the entrance. He pulled up next to Connor, who smiled and waved as if it were an ordinary day.
He picked up the duffels and stuffed them in the backseat next to Caroline. He paused in between to shoot another Creeper that rushed from the side of the store. He jumped in and closed the door, and Devin sped off through the parking lot.
“Where we headed?” Connor asked his silent friends.
“Fort Myers,” Brandon said from the passenger’s seat.
“What’s in the bags?” Caroline asked.
“Guns”—he smiled—“lots of guns.”
“Good thinking, my friend,” Devin said.
“I think we’re making a mistake, though,” Connor said. “Fort Myers is a long drive.”
“Sorry, bro, I’m going to check on my family. Nothing is changing that.”
“Oh, I’m cool with that, Dev. Orlando is pretty much fucked, I think.”
“Then what’s the mistake?”
“No offense, Caroline, but this Toyota is not really the end-of-the-world vehicle we need.”
“Don’t have a lot of options. My car is dead, yours is crap, and Devin’s is back at the house,” Brandon said.
You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 Page 15