I chuckle. “Yeah. Beam me up, Scottie. This place sucks.”
For a long moment, we lie in silence, looking up at the ethereal light coming from the glowing decorations. Cody is so quiet that for a moment, I think he’s asleep. And then he talks again.
Rolling sideways on the floor so that I can see the outline of his face, he looks up at me. “I don’t feel like sleeping. I don’t think I can.”
I turn my head and meet his eyes in the semi-dark. “I know what you mean. I should be tired, but I’m not. I was just looking at the ceiling, trying to picture my own bedroom. When I close my eyes, I can almost pretend I’m there.”
“You will be soon,” Cody assures me.
Swallowing my fears and doubts, I say, “I couldn’t wait to get out of my hometown. It always felt like everything important in the world was happening somewhere else. Like the whole world was having a huge party, and I was missing it. Now all I want to do is get back home.” I sigh. “Walking through the door of my apartment, sometimes I’d cringe thinking about spending one more weekend in that little box, eating my mom’s vegetarian lasagna…. God, Cody, I’d give anything to do it one more time.”
“You’ll be there before you know it,” Cody reaffirms, “and I’ll be stuffing my face on cheesy noodles.”
“That sounds like you, Han; especially the cheesy part.” I smile. All at once, there’s a glimmer of hope, like that morning with Ian and Sarah. The same little surge of hope that I felt with Cody on the bus when I was driving. Maybe it’s time to voice the question that’s been on my mind. “Do you ever feel calm when we talk, Cody? Like…reassured, somehow?”
Cody smirks. “Are you flirting with me, young lady?”
I instantly regret bringing it up. “Shut up. You probably think I’m crazy.”
“Actually, I don’t,” Cody muses. “It’s funny you mention it; I almost asked you that same question on the bus.”
“Really?” Relief floods through me. “Maybe I’m not such a screwball, after all. It’s just, you’ve got a way of making me feel better…I can’t explain it. Like things are going to be okay.”
Cody says, “I felt the same way with Ian and Sarah.”
“You, too?”
“Yeah, but with you it’s stronger.”
I blush. “We’ve probably spent too much time in that bus together.”
“Maybe,” Cody says. “Or maybe we’re both losing it.”
We laugh quietly together.
“You know what’s really crazy?” Cody asks. “I don’t even know your last name.”
“Evans,” I tell him.
“Hannah Evans of the Rebel Alliance,” he cracks, and I pick up a pillow, ready to throw it at him. A crash interrupts our shared joke, then several smaller bangs follow, just outside our room.
I jolt upright; I grab the flashlight.
“What was that?”
Pointing toward the door, Cody hisses, “Someone’s in the hallway!”
27
Shadows
My heart races. I stare across the dimly lit bedroom toward the door, which stands open a crack. I’m sure we closed it. A footstep creaks in the hall. Quickly, I slip from beneath the blankets, careful not to creak the plastic children’s bed. Balancing on the edge, I grip the flashlight like a weapon, stand, and tiptoe toward Cody, who’s up and ready to strike. Neither of us calls out to the shifting shadow beyond the opened door.
Our serum is out there, in the bus. What if June snuck out and took it, and now she’s done with us?
If you weren’t just kids, I would’ve shot you. I still might.
The shadow takes another few steps, moving out of view. Panic shoots daggers through my body as I move up next to Cody, raising the flashlight, a feeble defense. I’m just about to execute a desperate move when Cody grabs on to me, pulls me close, and whispers in my ear.
“The closet.”
For a moment, I think he’s suggesting that we hide, then I watch him carefully sneak to the door and slide it open. He pulls out Levi’s hockey stick and hands it over, keeping the baseball bat for himself. I clench the short wooden stick. It’s not quite a crowbar—and certainly not a gun—but it’s better than a plastic, battery-powered flashlight. Armed with our makeshift weapons, we creep toward the door, searching for the threat just out of view.
The floorboard creaks underneath our shifted weight.
At the door, I raise the stick and peer through the crack.
A small shadow jolts me.
Is that—?
“Levi?”
I search for the flashlight button. The light dances on the floor as I turn it on and move the beam upward, revealing the bottom of a pair of dinosaur pajamas. The little boy jerks away, taking an erratic step away from the flashlight’s glow.
“Levi!” I hiss after him, louder.
Cody takes up next to me, wielding his bat, nudging the door further open. I find Levi’s shape again; he takes a quick step sideways. A horrible suspicion becomes a certainty: he’s turned. Slowly, I raise the light, prepared to face down the cold, hungry stare of a monster in a child’s body—the snapping teeth of a miniature murderer. But plain old Levi stands at the end of the hallway, blinking innocently at me.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he shrinks away with guilt, holding up the globe. “I wanted to bring this in my room to keep it safe. I didn’t mean to drop it. And then it bounced…”
I release my held breath. “My god, Levi. You scared the hell out of us!”
“Jesus…” Cody mutters.
“Levi!” an alarmed voice calls out. “What are you doing?” Footsteps sound, and June emerges from the end of the hall with her shotgun and flashlight. She seizes her son’s arm. “What are you doing down here?”
“I went into my room to get this,” he confesses, holding up his favorite possession. “And then I dropped it.”
“I thought someone was breaking in!” June says. “You scared the bejesus out of me!”
Relief floods through all of us. We share a nervous laugh.
“Come on, baby.” June apologizes, ushering her son away. “I told you to stay in the room with me.” She continues admonishing him quietly. “You know better than to sneak around alone! Especially at night, and with those things outside!”
A bang rattles the front of the house.
Cody and I look at each other, and then at June and Levi down the hall.
It’s none of us.
“Dammit!” June curses, her eyes widening. “It’s them!”
I turn the flashlight on the long, dusty hallway and toward the part of the living room I can see. Another heavy thud follows the first. Something crashes to the floor inside the house. Glass shatters. More bangs ring out—a devilish cacophony—a full on assault. Heart thudding violently, I grab Cody.
We run in a frantic tangle, reaching the living room, aiming our lights in the direction of the noise. A gaping black hole occupies the place where a boarded window once stood. Shards of glass cling to the window frame. Two infected lift themselves over the sill, moaning. Sinewy, bloodstained arms pull skinny bodies up and over; the two infected roll from the sill to the floor and quickly move to regain their footing. More appear behind them.
“Levi! Get back!” June orders, pushing her son into the hallway. The time for quiet has passed; it’s time to fight. Pulling a stance in front of us, she fires while I provide light. A loud, deadly blast reverberates off the walls and one of the infected falls sideways, half of its face blown off. The other scrambles to get up, but another shell from June’s shotgun tears into its neck, nearly knocking its head right off its shoulders and spraying the wall with shrapnel and gore. The creature collapses in an unceremonious heap. Following the path to flesh, more of the monsters chase their brethren, clinging to the windowsill, grunting, and heaving themselves over. Spinning, June holds out her hand to Cody.
“Give me the bat!”
Confusion crosses his face.
“Now!”
/> He obeys.
Darting to the windowsill with the aluminum slugger, she cracks the stricken’s gripping hands, playing a desperate game of whack-a-mole. For every one that falls, another pops up in its place, climbing with tireless persistence. A loud clatter echoes from the dining room; more glass shatters.
“They’re coming in through the dining room!” June screams amidst her crazed smacking. “Keep them out!”
No time to think or fear, Cody and I bolt toward the dining room, where a dark shadow is already stumbling toward us. Gearing up for a swing, I pull back the hockey stick and clean its clock with a mighty slap shot; the creature drops to the ground. Still alive and seemingly angry, the thing scrambles upward, but my adrenaline has taken over. I raise my stick and overhand the creature’s skull three times in succession, cracking it open like a bone egg. I keep wailing on the fallen menace, well after its legs jerk a last time, barely registering my screams of rage.
I raise my light and shine it into the dining room, past the piles of junk mail, toward the side door where we heard the first noise. It doesn’t take long to spot the breach: the bureau is still in place, but another board lays on the floor, surrounded by shattered glass. Dirty footprints track a violent path across the linoleum. I think of what June told me earlier.
The nighttime increases their animalistic urges.
More are already inside.
“Hannah!” Cody cries, frantically looking around for them.
An infected bashes into him, toppling him back through the threshold. Before I can help, a shadow lunges at me, knocking me sideways against the wall. All at once, a stricken’s rancid breath and groping hands are all over me, as if I’m a human-sized plaything. Digging its overgrown nails into my shirt, it tears at the fabric, intent on getting to the tasty flesh beneath. I shove for all I’m worth, taking a haphazard swing, cracking something in its gaunt body. The thing hurls itself against me, but I get my feet under it and trip it over a dining room chair and into the table. Envelopes and empty boxes tumble. My flashlight falls to the floor, spinning in a useless circle, strobing the dining room with light. The stricken flails and grabs like a wind-up toy wound up too tight. I fend it off, barely aware that I’m screaming, oblivious to the shotgun blasts in the living room. The creature and I heave each other back and forth in a deranged version of a schoolyard shoving match. It feels like I’m fighting a reeking shadow rather than a raving, infected lunatic. Finally, I get a momentary advantage, and it falls over the mess from the dining room table and to the floor. I raise my hockey stick high and club it. A few swings miss and dent the table or whack the floor, but eventually, I’m striking flesh. I hit it until it stops moving. I slump over the table but get right back up.
The infected aren’t finished.
Reclaiming my light, I shine it toward the broken window just as another stricken drops into the dining room uninvited. I race to where the creature squirms on the floor, desperate for purchase. Its scraggly hair spills around its ugly face. Whether it’s a man or a woman, I can’t tell and I couldn’t care less. Quickly learning the vulnerability of the human—or infected—head, I flat blade it hard enough to turn its cheek, then rain edge blows onto the top of its hard skull. My hands sting with the reverberation of the kiddie-sized sports gear, but my efforts pay off: the thing’s dead. Very dead.
“Cody! Where are you?” I look around frantically.
“Right here!” He rejoins my side, picking up a dining room chair, wielding it in front of him like a first-time lion tamer. Sweat pours down his forehead. There’s no time to ask how he survived.
More infected reach through the window frame, trying to get a grip. Cody rears back his chair and swings, knocking a few of the infected hands off. His next strike smashes back another creature but breaks the bulky object almost in half. The furniture weapon clatters to the floor, but he grabs one hefty wooden chair leg and keeps swinging, barely fending off our attackers. Raising my hockey stick, I take up beside him, bashing the fingers or heads of any creature foolish enough not to learn its lesson. One or two require more than one hit, but we ward most off with our shoes, hands, or makeshift weapons. More gun blasts echo from the front of the house. In between them, June hurls threats and obscenities, adding insult to injury with her words and her weapon.
Before long, the house is quiet, save the ringing in my ears.
I shine the light out the dining room window, illuminating a respectable pile of bodies, bashed and dented from our quick-and-dirty implements, lying inert in the grass. Nothing moves beyond them.
Stepping back, I flash the light around the dining room, revealing a few more of the dead. Among them, I recognize the creature sprawled on the floor by the table, a glazed look in its dead eyes. Nearby I see the creature that attacked Cody, lying near the threshold with a candlestick holder lodged in its head.
“All we need is a couple of candles and a match,” I tell Cody, through gasping breaths, “and we can set him on the piano.”
Cody chuffs. I slowly move the flashlight over his body then mine, ensuring we haven’t suffered any serious wounds; I seem intact and so does Cody.
Dripping with sweat, I barely register the blood trickling down my face or the fresh tear in my t-shirt.
It takes me a moment to hear the soft, soothing words of June, consoling Levi in the other room.
The moonlight is just touching the apple orchard, and all’s quiet on the front.
28
Until Dawn
“We gotta lock this place down. Now,” June says.
“What about the bodies?” Cody asks, rejoining her in the living room.
“We’ll deal with them later. Right now, we need to make sure nothing else gets in.”
She’s right. Working together, we quickly pick up the fallen boards while she retrieves a box of nails and a heavy hammer from a kitchen drawer. Cody and I lift the plywood to the living room window, lining up the screws with the existing, stripped holes, and June bangs in new nails, re-securing the barriers.
“Damn screw gun doesn’t work without a battery charger,” she grouses.
We do the same for the dining room window.
Knowing it wasn’t good enough last time, we fortify the blockade with the dining room table, the couch, and the loveseat. Soon, the place is reordered and mostly empty, save the battered stiffs. Levi stares numbly at a corpse with a fist-sized hole in its head. Blood pools around the remainder of the infected woman’s skull; her leg is bent in the wrong direction. Her hair is the same black and gray mixture as his mother’s, and I wonder how many times he’s witnessed such violence. Too many times in his young life, I’m sure. Hell, once is too many times.
“Why don’t we drag them all to the dining room?” June suggests.
Getting to work, we do as proposed, moving the bodies far enough away that they aren’t in view, but close enough for easy transport later. Most we can carry; some we drag. Gripping the legs of a fat man, I grimace and swallow bile as his tattered shirt rides up his stomach, exposing several cherry-sized shrapnel holes in his gut. Trails of blood drip from the fresh wounds, making zig-zag patterns over his hairy stomach. Noticing my nauseated reaction, Cody does his best to keep things moving quickly, and I do my best not to picture myself in place of the dead. How easy it would be for the roles to be reversed.
Our gruesome business finished, we stand vigil in the living room, taking stock of our situation.
“I suppose I oughta get you your weapons back before you destroy my whole dining set,” June says. She goes off and retrieves them, handing me my crowbar and Cody the handgun. “Here you go. You’ve earned them.”
Cody looks down at his handgun, and I grip my familiar weapon; it feels heavy and solid after the hockey stick.
“How many rounds do you have left?” June asks Cody.
He ejects the magazine and counts. “Six.”
“I need more shells for my shotgun,” June says, moving toward a hall closet, pulling out a
n ammunition case, getting more.
“Do you have any other guns?” I ask her.
June looks grim. “Trevor had a Ruger and a Glock, but they were stolen on one of his supply runs, as I mentioned. Stuff you need is harder to find than you think these days. Any easy pickings have long been looted. All the obvious places—gun stores, sporting goods, Walmart—already empty. In the early days, people used too much ammunition, thinking they could snuff out the infected. Of course, that wasn’t possible. There were too many of them; those cowboys were easily overwhelmed. Our neighbors’ stashes were ransacked, our seed grain is gone…hell, we’ll be lucky to pick apples next month. I’ve thought about going on supply runs with Levi, but it seems so risky. For now, we’ve been laying low and conserving ammo.”
Cody and I nod, quickly learning the rules of the new world.
June goes quiet a moment, listening. Hearing no further threats, a small smile creeps over her face and she gives a curt nod. “You were both pretty resourceful tonight. Maybe you’re not as dimwitted as you look.”
For the rest of the night, we keep a quiet vigil in the living room, listening to the chirp of crickets and the hoot of barn owls. Rustles in the grass outside give us a couple of false alarms, but none turn out to be human-sized predators. After a while of uneventful waiting, we breathe a little more easily. June brings some pillows and blankets in, setting them up on the floor. We all sit quietly on them, but none of us truly relax.
“I don’t think any of us are going to sleep tonight,” June says, to all our agreement.
I’m amped up from battle, anxious. I don’t even feel tired anymore. I know I must be exhausted, but my body has given up on the idea of sleep. I’m over it.
The darkness feels even deeper than it did before the invasion. Or maybe it’s the thought of the bodies in the next room. The coppery odor of blood creeps in to where we sit on our haunches, shifting uncomfortably. More than once, Levi cranes his neck to see into the dining room, looking for the (hopefully) dead monsters just out of view.
Alive Again | Book 1 Page 13