by Morris, Kate
She kept him with her and went to the entryway series of closets. With so many children, storage had been an essential part of the building process, and they had a lot of closets, nooks, and spaces with extra storage. When she squatted, he unclenched and stood in front of her again. Avery reached around him into the bottom of the closet. Tristan kept some shooting supplies in this closet now, and she quickly located the ammo can he’d shown her. She pulled out a pair of the high-tech ear protection muffles he’d let her use when they’d gone target practicing. There were quite a few pairs in this can, plenty for everyone, in fact. She took them out of the small case and fitted them over Finn’s tiny ears. Then she adjusted them down to his size. They were convenient. Tristan told her that they also had plenty of the typical, orange spongey ones, but these were a new invention of the military for better ear protection against hearing damage. He wasn’t a big fan because he said they muffled sounds a little too well for sneaking around or, more importantly, being sneaked up on. They would be perfect for Finn. Although she didn’t want to lie to her little brother, listening to those things screaming and ranting outside wasn’t going to help him be less afraid. She even considered putting on a pair, too. Then she realized that she couldn’t. People were counting on her not to be afraid tonight, to be more like Tristan, to lead them.
They rejoined their family in the living room, where everyone was hunkered down. Kaia was sitting on the fireplace hearth, Ephraim was standing near the same slider door where that thing had spied on them, and Renee was sitting in a sofa. Avery sat next to her between Kaia and Ephraim’s positions.
“What do we do?” Ephraim whispered as more screeches sounded off.
Her involuntary reaction of jerking every time they made those noises was not something she could stop. The sounds were so inhuman that it made her uneasy. Her body was simply reacting instead of acting, and Avery wasn’t sure that would ever change.
“Stay quiet,” she explained. “We stay here. As long as we can, right?”
They all nodded in the dark.
“They can’t get in…”
“Theoretically,” Kaia interrupted.
Avery wanted to be upset with her sister’s negativity, but there was truth in what she was saying. “I don’t think they can. We’re safe. Once they realize they can’t get in no matter what, they’ll go back to…their meal. I think they’re just hungry.”
“Let’s hope they don’t look at us like that deer,” Kaia said, and this time got a correcting expression from Avery. “Sorry.”
They sat silently for a long time after that. Each person had a weapon. Kaia had two counting her bow resting against the hearth. Ephraim gave them updates periodically. Occasionally, there would be a pounding, a knocking, or a screech.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “They can’t get in. We’re safe.”
Repeating it the second time only made it sound even more like an exaggeration.
Finn eventually fell back to sleep on her. She was able, with Renee’s help, to lay him down on the sofa beside her and pull a blanket over him. He curled into a tight fetal position with his bunny. The weight of the world was resting on her shoulders tonight. Her whole world, at least. Avery knew she’d not recover from the loss of one more family member. She almost hadn’t before. If it hadn’t been for Tristan’s constant reminders of the remaining children needing her so much, she would’ve succumbed to despair, let that darkness swallow her up.
A noise in the front of the house jarred her out of her melancholy thoughts, and she rose to investigate.
“What is it, Ave?” Kaia asked, creeping up behind her.
“Not sure,” she replied as she peered through the slats on the front doors.
Then she saw one. It was up by the garage. She wished she could see better, but the snow was making it difficult. Kaia tiptoed to the door next to hers to peer out.
“What’s it doing?” she whispered.
“Not sure. Trying to get in, I guess,” Avery answered.
An animal’s loud screech assaulted their ears.
“Shit! That’s our chickens!” Kaia said too loudly.
A moment later, two of them ran towards the front door from wherever they’d been, likely raiding their chicken coop.
“Shh!”
They both instinctively ducked down into a full squat away from the four-inch section of glass Tristan had left so they could see out to ascertain who might be coming down their driveway.
“That was one of our chickens,” Kaia whispered this time. “I’m sure of it.”
“We’re not going out there to defend a few hens, Kaia,” Avery corrected her. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Ave,” she whispered even quieter this time, “what are we going to do if they manage to get in?”
“We’ll get to the truck in the barn.”
“What if we can’t?”
That was something she’d also been considering.
She crawled closer and took her sister by the shoulders, “We should try to get to the truck. If we can’t, and we have to hide inside, I think the basement is our best bet. No exterior doors. We could go into the utility room down there. It has a steel door. Dad showed me one time how he’d installed that in case of a tornado. The room is constructed of cement block walls. The door steel. I know there’s a lock. I already checked tonight.”
“Good. Smart. Yeah, we should do that.”
“Let’s not bring this to everyone’s attention, but why don’t you take some water and food down there? Maybe a few blankets and pillows from the boys’ rooms. Tristan will be home in a few hours. Maybe we ought to prepare just in case they do get in.”
“Yeah,” Kaia said with determined but frightened brown eyes. Avery touched her curly, light brown hair and cupped her cheek.
“It’s going to be okay,” she tried to reassure her again. Kaia just nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll tell Renee our plan. Let’s try to keep Ephraim and Finn calm.”
Kaia nodded again and rose to go about her task. A short while later, they were still hunkered down in the living room for the time being. Avery wasn’t sure if that meant all night until Tristan came home or the sun came up, whichever came first, or just until those things breached a door or window or managed to break glass and pry the wood off of one.
She managed to sneak away to check on Kaia’s progress in the basement and gave it her stamp of approval. Her sister had even thought to place a solar lantern in there and two flashlights.
Little Finn was still asleep, thankfully. Ephraim was trying to be so brave but kept nodding off in the chair near her. Kaia was pacing around, checking window slits and door gaps to spy on those things. She’d sometimes come back to report in on her findings. Renee was next to her on the sofa lying behind Finn dead out. She pulled the white and black Aztec print caftan up a little higher onto her friend’s shoulder and rested her hand on Renee’s slim hip. Avery was so scared for her friend. Renee wasn’t sure yet if she was pregnant. She wanted so badly to tell Tristan and ask him to somehow find her friend a pregnancy test on one of his many supply runs, but Renee desired to keep it under wraps. She’d been raised a Christian who thought all life was a gift, and yet she found herself questioning if that were true right now, too. Would bringing a child into this world be a good idea? Would it survive? Would Renee?
Avery glanced down and realized she hadn’t tied the laces on her hiking boots yet and bent over to do so.
They were all wearing their shoes, she’d noticed, and she’d put Finn’s on earlier, too. For being so sure that the monsters couldn’t get inside their compound, Avery knew the others were lying to themselves as much as she was, or they wouldn’t have bothered to put on their shoes in case they had to flee. Some lies were like that. They provided comfort to the person telling them, even if that person knew the real truth.
Chapter Six
Tristan
They ran faster this time as the fireworks died down, the screams and calls of the night cr
awlers increased in frequency and proximity, and the sound of gunfire began. He breached unhindered the fence where visitors to the plant would’ve entered and jogged to the side of the building where he would find a point of ingress.
They’d split into groups while he went off on his own. The building in front of him wasn’t that huge, so he found a window, climbed through it, scanned the area quickly, and left it through a man door. Then he was jogging in the snow toward the next old building, which was much bigger and slightly more dilapidated.
He made it to the building in fast time without running into anyone or any night crawlers. He wasn’t wearing a vest because he’d given his to Roman. Wren was wearing Spencer’s, and Alex didn’t get one, either. Maybe if they all lived through this, he could take a trip back out to the small base he’d left to see if any other supplies were still there. The Army was supposed to have sent people in to clean it out, but when he and Avery and two of the kids had gone, there were plenty of supplies still to claim if the bogus Department of Homeland Security thugs hadn’t come back to loot the rest. Plus, he was curious to explore the secretive part of the building where his former lieutenant’s office had been.
A person rounded the corner ahead of him, but his body was turned halfway toward the area he was leaving. He stumbled and fell in the snow and stood again. He stumbled again and struggled to get up while holding his leg. It was definitely a man, a tall one, but he didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. That mattered little to Tristan as he raised his rifle.
“You little shit! Get back here!” someone yelled, drawing the stumbling man’s attention that way.
Tristan slid back into the shadows with his back against the wall. The one who kept falling was slightly backlit by the moonlight as the cloud cover lifted momentarily. The man was hunched over, holding his ribs now, and breathing so hard Tristan could hear him from fifteen yards away. He raised both arms, winced at the pain he must’ve been experiencing, and offered a gesture of surrender.
“How’d you escape, you little punk?”
Escape? This was a prisoner, not one of the criminals and not one of the night crawlers. The second the other man pursuing him came into view from around the corner, Tristan pulled the trigger on his rifle. From somewhere else, by the sounds of it inside the building, more gunfire sounded off in a much hollower tone. Greenish gray smoke filtered out from one of the many broken windows, letting him know Spencer or Roman was inside and using the smoke grenade as cover since he had the only other one Tristan had brought.
The man holding up his hands, or attempting to, fell backward in surprise at the person in front of him who was just shot and killed. He landed in the deep snow. Tristan rushed over. He kept his rifle aimed at him just in case his hunch was wrong.
Someone behind him took a shot, the round hitting the brick building beside him and spraying his face with mortar that stung. Tristan swung and took a knee simultaneously as he pulled the trigger and hit the guy in the shoulder. The high caliber round knocked him down. Tristan ran over and added a kill shot. Then he jogged back to the other man, who hadn’t risen from his position in the snow. He was just sitting there against the wall in a defeated manner with his arms raised.
“Who are you?” the man- teenager by the looks of him- asked nervously.
“Here with Wren and Alex. Who are you? Elijah?”
The kid nodded vigorously, and there was something familiar about him that Tristan couldn’t put his finger on. He’d have to deal with that later, though. Maybe he just resembled his brother.
“Where’s Jamie?” he asked quickly and helped the injured kid to his feet. He was no kid, though. He was huge, a hulk of a teenager if he’d ever seen one. Tristan wasn’t exactly short or puny, but this kid made him feel that way. He had to weigh in at about two-forty.
“Still inside. Right through there,” he indicated an open window. “I was trying to get to help, get to my brother.”
“He’s here with the rest of us.”
Elijah Brannon gasped, then flinched and grabbed his side.
“Broken ribs?”
He nodded. “Think so.”
“Try to keep up. Let’s get your friend.”
He led the way, handed a pistol to Elijah, and had to assume the kid would know how to use it. There was no time for instruction.
“It’s ready to rock and roll, so don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you are, too.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
They climbed through a window, presumably the one Elijah had used to escape. Then he followed Elijah down a hall and into another room, and Tristan was immediately met by the vision of a man hanging from a ceiling structure by metal chains. There was just enough moonlight spilling through to see him. He was shirtless, bleeding badly, and unconscious.
“Let’s…”
Tristan was cut off as a man burst through the door at the other end of the room. He zeroed in on him, knowing the man probably didn’t see them yet as they were shrouded in shadows. He had to be sure it wasn’t one of their friends.
“Looks like some of your buddies came for you, asshole,” the man said to the unconscious one. “Boss said to move ya’. We’re going on a little ride.”
That was confirmation enough. Tristan aimed through the darkness and pulled the trigger. It was a direct hit to the middle of his wide chest, and he flew back against a wall where he grabbed his chest and fell over face first onto the concrete floor.
“Stay down,” Tristan ordered quietly as Elijah tried to rise beside him from his crouched position.
A second later, two more men ran in. Tristan made sure they were also not Spence or Roman. They were concerned about their fallen comrade, though. Swearing and giving away their positions, Tristan easily shot them both. Not before the second one got off a shot of his own that went through a window near them. Outside, a night crawler screeched its disapproval. Tristan jogged over and finished the first one off.
He took a second to open the door to peek and found the hallway completely empty again. Then he barred the door with a piece of discarded steel pipe and returned to Elijah.
“I let him down. They must’ve tied him back up.”
Tristan wasted no time in freeing her uncle, but he just fell in a heap. Elijah tried to keep the man’s head off the concrete floor.
“It’s okay, Jamie,” Elijah said to the man, who gave no indication of even being alive. “We’re getting out of here. This is a friend of my brother. We’re leaving.”
“Is he alive?” Tristan asked and squatted to feel for a pulse, which he finally found but grimaced at how weak and slow it seemed.
Outside, one of the creatures screamed. It was nearby this time, much nearer. Gunfire popped off at an automatic fire pace, which let him know about his enemies’ weapons. Of the three dead ones in the corner, two only carried baseball bats. The other had an AK-47.
“We need to move.”
Elijah said, “I’m not sure how we can with Jamie like this.”
He looked at the dying man, then at Elijah.
“Sir, he’s the only family she has.”
Tristan nodded and handed him his rifle. Then he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over the seeping gut wound. It would have to do until they could get him some help. Where he wasn’t sure. Most of the hospitals were either closed or wouldn’t take new patients for fear of them having the virus.
“You cover my back, ya’ hear?” he ordered and stooped to sling the man over his shoulder. He wasn’t lightweight, either. This was going to make things much more difficult.
“Yes, sir.”
“Blast away, but don’t hit our people. Let’s move.”
At the window, the night crawler was trying to get inside. Tristan ignored it and walked to the door.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” Elijah said in a steady voice.
Good. He was going to have to rely on the kid to keep them alive. At least he was holding the rifle cor
rectly.
“Gimme’ my pistol,” he instructed and was handed the .45, which he took in a one-handed grip while keeping his left arm slung over the unconscious man’s back. “Open it slowly.”
Elijah did so, looked over his shoulder at him, and nodded. They walked slowly but kept making forward progress through the building. Office spaces were off to their left and right as they went down a long hallway that eventually ended at another door. Going through that one was trickier with a man over his shoulder, but Tristan managed, and they ended up in a hallway that had a “cafeteria” sign hanging crookedly there by one nail.
Gunfire close by alerted them both at the same time. Then he saw a flash as someone jogged away down the hall. He and Elijah were concealed by some sort of large piece of metal equipment that must’ve been moved into the hallway and out of the cafeteria after the place closed down. They would have to go out more into the open in a second.
“I think he went that way,” he overheard Spencer whispering.
“Spence!” Tristan called out.
A moment later, Spencer, Roman, and Wren appeared before them.
“Oh, thank God!” Alex blurted and grabbed his younger brother in a one-armed hug.
“Ow,” Elijah stated.
“Sorry.”
Wren brushed past them, “Jamie!”
“He’s out,” Elijah stated as she reached for her uncle’s face.
“Let’s get the hell outta’ here,” Spencer said, gaining their attention again. “Don’t worry about anything else right now.”
“Lead the way, man,” Tristan ordered. “Alex, pull up the rear.”
“Got it,” he stated firmly.
They shuffled through the abandoned building around equipment, workspaces, and even some sort of former boiler room until they were at the main entrance.
A man dashed by, and Spencer shot him in the thigh. Wren finished him off and then shot someone coming from the other direction. If Tristan doubted her steadiness in a fight before, he surely didn’t now. She showed no remorse, nor did she hesitate. He’d just like to know why.