by Sam Sisavath
Dead now. Keo had broken his neck. Snapped a vertebrae or two (or three) and cut off his breathing. It was a hell of a way to go, and Keo didn’t feel the least bit sorry for the guy. Well, maybe just a little bit.
No one told you to chase me through half of Louisiana, asshole.
He opened his eyes to semidarkness. Thin slivers of moonlight pierced pieces of furniture that had been upended against a window at the back of the room. A metal filing cabinet, chairs stacked on top of one another, and a sofa. There was no real order, as if whoever had put the barricade together simply shoved as much as they could find against the opening and hoped for the best.
Thoom-thoom-thoom!
The figure leaning over him looked concerned. Stringy blonde hair fell across an oval-shaped face and brown eyes that still managed to look bright in the dark room. “You really lost a lot of blood. I didn’t think you’d make it.”
Keo couldn’t move. He didn’t want to move, either. Every rise and fall of his chest sent a stabbing pain from the tip of his toes all the way up to his damp head. He felt the chill of medical ointment over the left side of his face, which was now covered in a strip of bandage. A long strip of bandage. He didn’t want to touch it, because that would tell him just how long it really was.
Maybe Gillian will like it. Scars add character, right?
“Where am I?” he asked. His voice sounded muffled, like he was talking through a mouthful of cotton.
Thanks for the broken nose, Pollard.
He could feel the break at the bridge of his nose, but it didn’t really hurt. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Inside one of the offices in the first building,” the woman (girl) said. “We dragged you in here. Brian wanted to shoot you, but I talked him out of it.”
“We should have shot him,” a male voice said from somewhere in the background. “That was Pollard’s order.”
“Pollard’s dead,” the girl said sharply. Despite her age, she was clearly in charge. “Nothing he says matters anymore. He’s the one who dragged us down here from Corden in the first place. Rupert’s dead because of him, too.”
Rupert.
The kid who had been patrolling with Fiona when he stumbled across them yesterday. (Or was that two days ago? He was losing track of the days again…) The last time he saw the teenager, he was keeling over after getting shot in the gut by his own people.
Which would make the girl Georgette.
“We found him and his sister hiding in a cellar near Corden,” Fiona had said. “They’d been there since all of this began.”
The teenager gave him a half-smile. It wasn’t completely friendly, but it was far from malevolent. “Stitching you up is becoming a habit, mister. What kind of name is Keo, anyway?”
“Gary was taken,” he said. Then, “You’ve done this before?”
“What’s that? Stitch you up?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the one who sewed your head back together last night. That means I’ve saved your life twice now.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
He had forgotten about the creatures outside the office, but they hadn’t forgotten about them. Keo looked over as much of the room as he could from his supine angle on the floor. It was one of the offices near the front of the building. He recognized it because he and Norris had gone through all of them the first day they arrived at the park. The door was locked down with a large oak desk and a pile of furniture behind it. From the clothes and boxes of supplies lying around, he guessed that at one point there had been more people in here. Until last night, anyway.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
The legs of the desk were pointing back at him, the flat top pressed against the doorframe. The heavy furniture quivered each time the creatures smashed into the door from the other side, but it held, thanks to chairs and an old white sofa shoved against it as additional reinforcement.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
He and Georgette weren’t alone in the room. Besides Brian, the man (boy) whose voice Keo had heard earlier, there were two other women. The oldest looked to be in her twenties with short hair. She sat huddled in one corner, arms thrown over her knees, staring at the floor. If it were possible, she would have merged with the wall at her back. Her entire body fidgeted in tune to the thoom-thoom-thoom!
The fourth person in the room was Brian and Georgette’s age. They were all teenagers, though they looked older these days. They had grown up fast, but their youth still peeked through the dirt and anxiety, even in the darkened room.
Brian sat next to the window, clutching an AR-15. Blue eyes pierced the darkness back at Keo. The attempt at intimidation was there, but the kid didn’t have it in him to make it work. He was the only one in the room wearing a gun belt and black clothes. Georgette, along with the other two girls, was in cargo pants and a T-shirt. All four (five) of them were slicked with sweat inside the sealed room.
Thoom-thoom-thoom.
He was lying on some kind of blanket. He wasn’t surprised to see his gun belt, MP5SD, and Ka-Bar knife (still in its sheath) resting in a pile next to Brian. They had also taken his watch for some reason.
“What time is it?” Keo asked.
“Does it matter?” Georgette said. “It’s night.”
Keo didn’t press the question. She was right. It didn’t matter. Night was night, and when darkness came, they came…
A sudden rush of pain made him clench his teeth.
“Here,” Georgette said as she took out something from her pocket. She reached down and pulled his head up from the floor.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something for the pain.”
He opened his mouth and let her deposit the octagon-shaped pill onto his tongue. He eagerly swallowed it.
Pain, pain, go away…
She laid him back down. “You really lost a lot of blood.”
“You mentioned that…”
“What I mean is, you’re probably not going to live through the night.”
He somehow managed to smile up at her.
She looked back at him, confused. “Why are you smiling? I just told you you’re probably going to die before morning.”
Gillian, he thought, but was unable to turn her name into actual sounds. Instead, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. Either the pill was having an effect, or the pain was becoming unbearable.
Either/or.
He didn’t particularly care which one it was. Sleep was sleep. And right now he needed as much of it as he could get, even with the bloodsuckers knocking on the window and door, trying to get in at them.
Keep at it, boys. Keep right on at it.
I’m gonna go to sleep for a bit while you keep on keeping on…
*
“I didn’t kill your brother,” Keo said a few hours later.
He wasn’t sure how long he had slept, but it felt like another lifetime ago that he had first woken up inside the office surrounded by monsters outside the door. His entire body seemed recharged. Then again, it could have just been the pill she had given him.
Either/or.
It was impossibly silent not just inside the room, but outside the building as well. The creatures, Georgette said when he woke up, had stopped trying to get in about thirty minutes earlier, though she still refused to tell him the time for some reason. Maybe she thought he was going to die before morning and didn’t want to give him false hope. Or maybe she was just being slightly vindictive and didn’t want to give him something he had asked for twice now.
It remained dark inside the room, except for the thin slivers of moonlight that managed to make their way through the haphazardly put together window barricade. Keo could just barely make out Brian, dozing off next to the window, the AR-15 lying dangerously across his lap with the barrel pointed at Keo. He wondered if that was on purpose or just a not-so-happy coincidence.
�
��I know,” Georgette said, after a while. She was sitting somewhere next to him against the wall. “Darren told me.”
“Who’s Darren?”
“He’s the guy who shot Rupert. He said it was an accident, that he thought my brother was you.”
“He told you that himself?”
“Yes. He was crying when he did.”
“What happened to Darren?”
“He died last night when those creatures got inside.” She paused, then, “A lot of people died last night.”
Keo didn’t say anything.
“I guess you got lucky those things found a way in,” Georgette said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.”
He wondered if she was looking at him this very moment, trying to gauge his reaction. He hoped not. Keo had never been a particularly good liar, and he wasn’t sure he could hide his culpability in last night’s massacre if she was eyeballing him at close range.
“Pollard would have really made you suffer, you know,” the teenager said. “That’s why he insisted you stay alive that night. He wanted to kill you himself, for killing Joe.”
“I had no choice with Joe.”
“Yeah, I figured. He was kind of an asshole, anyway. Charming one second, and smarmy the next. I never really liked him that much. I don’t think anybody did.”
May you rot in hell, Joe, you lying little shit.
“Why did you save me?” Keo asked. “After everything that’s happened?”
“We didn’t want to be here, chasing after you and the black guy. But we didn’t have a choice. Rupert said we hitched our wagon to Pollard, so now we have to ride along wherever they go, even if means leaving the others behind in Corden. So here we are. Now that Pollard’s dead, though…” She shrugged. “It was his vendetta, not ours. I don’t care if you live or die, honestly.”
“You saved my life, so you must care a little.”
She sighed. “It’s not in my nature to let someone die if I can save them. Thank your lucky stars.”
“I’ll just thank you instead.”
“Whatever.”
“How many more survivors are still left in Corden?”
“About fifty stayed behind. Pollard only brought the ones he considers his soldiers. Me, Darlene, and Justine are part of their support staff. My dad was a vet, and I used to work with him all the time at his clinic. He taught me a lot, and I guess I’m the closest thing Pollard has to a doctor. Sad, I know. Darlene and Justine cooked and cleaned for them. Which is why we’re going back to Corden tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t you leave earlier today, after Pollard died?”
“Duh,” she said, sounding so young that it momentarily took him by surprise. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t die first, you idiot.”
Keo smiled. “Thank you. Again.”
She frowned. “I still don’t think you’re going to make it to morning.”
“I’ve been known to buck the odds.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
Talking was easier for him than moving, but not by much. He continued to ache all over, though the pain from his side seemed to have lessened noticeably. Unfortunately, the entire left side of his face probably wasn’t going to stop tingling anytime soon.
“Die! Why won’t you fucking die already?” Pollard had shouted at him.
Screw you, old man. I got a promise to keep.
*
The loud crack! of a rifle snapped Keo awake, the fog that had been floating around inside his skull throughout the day lifting instantly. Or at least, that’s what he told himself as he sprang up from the floor and cursed the resulting ripple of pain.
Brian and Georgette were at the window, peering through the small spaces left open around the barricade. It was still dark—probably early morning. Past midnight, he was sure of it.
“Did you get them?” Georgette asked.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. He pulled his AR-15 from a hole and shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“How many did you see?”
“Two? Maybe three?”
“Well, which one is it? Two or three?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, Georgie. Either two or three, okay?”
Georgette sighed. “I think they went back into the woods. I don’t see them anymore.”
“I might have gotten one of them,” Brian said. He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “That must be why they’re retreating.”
“What’s happening?” Keo asked.
Georgette glanced back at him. “There were men outside, wearing some kind of white—” she turned back to Brian “—what did you call it?”
“Hazmat suits,” Brian said. “I’ve seen it in the movies. But not that bulky kind. These were sleek, like soldiers would wear. They were carrying rifles and I’m pretty sure I saw one of them with a gun belt.”
“And masks, right?”
“Right. They were wearing gas masks, too.”
Keo looked at Georgette, then over at Brian. Or the back of Brian’s head, because the teenager hadn’t looked away from the peephole, his AR15 still clutched tightly in his hands.
“You don’t believe me?” Georgette said.
No, Keo thought, but said, “Men in hazmat suits and gas masks? Out there at night?”
“It’s true.” She sounded slightly annoyed. “You can believe me or not, but we’ve seen them before, back at Corden.”
“What did they want?”
“How the hell should I know?” She turned back to the window and said to Brian, “You see them?”
“No,” Brian said, shaking his head. “I think I scared them off—”
Pop-pop-pop!
The wooden sections of the barricade splintered as bullets punched through them, the loud burst of automatic gunfire filling the night, so chaotic and sudden that it made everyone in the room, including Keo, jump slightly.
Brian lunged to the floor while Georgette spun away from the window and threw her hands over her head. Keo stayed down as a couple of stray rounds made it through the furniture, flew past him, and speckled the wall on the other side. Chunks of wood filled the air and more than a few ping-ping! off the heavy metal filing cabinet.
Darlene and Justine, the other two girls, were huddled in the dark corner together, arms and legs tangled. Keo would have thought there was just one person in there if he didn’t know there were, in fact, two.
Brian crawled along the floor and got behind a wall. “Holy shit!” he shouted over the gunfire.
It continued for a few more minutes, telling Keo that there was definitely more than one shooter outside. There had to be at least two, or even three, as Brian had guessed. Of course, he didn’t understand why they were shooting at the window when they clearly knew they weren’t going to knock the barricade down from the other side. The furniture, mixed in with the cabinet, was at least a good 200 to 300 pounds—
He looked toward the door, moving so fast that he regretted it immediately. Pain flashed through him again, but he managed to shove them aside and shouted at Brian, “The door! It’s a distraction! Watch the door!”
Brian stared back at him, wide-eyed. He looked as if he were still trying to process what Keo was saying when something massive slammed into the other side of the door.
It sounded like a hammer.
Or maybe a sledgehammer.
BOOM!
CHAPTER 18
“The door, Brian!” Georgette shouted. “The door!”
If Keo’s warning hadn’t done it, Georgette’s voice had a different effect. Brian scrambled up from the floor and ran across the room. Georgette was racing alongside him, and the two threw themselves into the smooth underbelly of the large desk to keep it pinned against the door.
BOOM!
The desk shook with every blow, as if every bloodsucker outside the door was smashing into it with everything they had all at the same time. Keo had never seen the creatures muster that kind of force. They weren’t stro
ng. Whatever had happened to them, whatever had stripped them of their humanity, hadn’t given them any special strength.
So how were they exerting so much force?
Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was something else. The blows took a while. It wasn’t the rapid-fire thoom-thoom-thoom that he was used to. No. This was more deliberate, as if whoever (whatever) was wielding the blunt object—and it had to be an object; flesh and bone couldn’t make that kind of noise—had to summon a lot of strength for every blow.
A sledgehammer. It had to be a sledgehammer. Or something else equally large and capable of that kind of force—
BOOM!
Then something else occurred to him and Keo looked back at the window. He hadn’t realized it until a few seconds ago, but the gunfire had stopped just after the attack on the door began.
He stumbled up to his feet even as another BOOM! sent Georgette reeling. She gathered herself and lunged back into position, pushing the desk into the door with her entire body. Brian was doing the same thing. Looking at them, Keo couldn’t fend off the image of two kids trying to hold back a dam. It was only a matter of time…
He snatched up his MP5SD from the floor. It was still loaded and he moved toward the window and peered out through one of the dozen or so new holes that had been punched into the wooden sections of the barricade by the last round of gunfire. His eye hadn’t fully adjusted to the darkness when—
BOOM!
Something equally heavy and equally destructive slammed into the window and actually made the heavy filing cabinet tremble slightly. A two-pronged attack!
Keo stuck the MP5SD’s long suppressor into one of the holes near the middle of the window, where he would expect to find a target, and squeezed the trigger.
He was rewarded by what sounded like a man’s scream.
He leaned forward and peered through another one of the openings.
The hell…?
Two figures—both wearing white hazmat suits that clung to their bodies—were moving away from the window. One was on the ground while the other one was pulling him backward by the shoulders. They were both armed, with rifles slung over their belts, gun belts with hip holsters, and gas masks that covered their faces, the breathing apparatus jutting out like tusks. An abandoned sledgehammer, the metal gleaming in the moonlight, lay on the grass.