Lauren only shrugged.
He led her down a brief maze of corridors and administrative offices, following the signs to the nurse’s office. His main concern was finding rabies vaccinations for the both of them. He had been vaccinated before, after being bitten by a perp’s dog during a drug house raid, but that had been more than a decade ago.
The office was dark and empty. He clicked on his Maglite and began checking drawers and desks. The nurses clearly followed protocol, as everything was locked down. From his pocket, he took out a small black pouch and unzipped it. Inside was a lock pick gun and a tension wrench, which he used on a set of overhead cabinets at the back of the office. The snapping of the gun was extraordinarily loud in the dead quiet of the office, and each pull of the trigger made him wince, expecting the noise to draw unwelcome company.
Given the campus’s proximity to the woods and the nature preservation efforts of the student groups, he figured the nurses would keep rabies vaccines on hand, just in case. He found what he was looking for behind the third cabinet door, and studied the label of the glass jar in the beam of his flashlight.
He didn’t think Lauren had ever been vaccinated against rabies before, so he followed the small print instruction for vaccination after exposure. Lauren would need four doses, one today, and then the other three following on the third, seventh, and fourteenth days. She also needed a shot of rabies immune globulin with that first dose. He found this nearby and set it on the counter, then prepared three syringes.
“All right, come on over here,” he said. Lauren had been standing in the doorway, watching the outer office and hallway beyond while he rummaged for supplies.
He cleaned a patch of skin on her arm with an alcohol wipe, stuck the needle in her bare biceps, and then pushed down on the plunger. After delivering the vaccine, he injected her with the globulin. During his search, he’d grabbed a handful of Band-Aids and stuck one over the small hole and dot of blood the needle had left behind.
Lauren looked at the small bandage and couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Olaf on her arm. She began humming “Let It Go” to Scott’s chagrin.
“Hey, you started it,” she said.
Since Scott had been vaccinated before, he was able to skip the globulin shot. According to the tiny directions, he only needed two doses of vaccine, one today and another on the third day. The shot left a hard lump on his arm where the vaccine was deposited and a muscle-deep soreness. He covered the injection site with Princess Elsa.
He pocketed both the bottles of vaccine and globulin since he wasn’t sure if Shay had ever been vaccinated. Grimly, he realized how optimistic it was to even think Shay was still alive. He hoped that she was.
“Ready?”
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “I guess so.”
He figured that was about as positive as either of them were going to feel about leaving this building and heading back outdoors to deal with the bat-shit crazy bitch Mother Nature had become.
The nearest stairwell was at the rear of the building, opposite the nurse’s office. Pushing through the doors, they found themselves overlooking the University Center’s food court and the glass-walled atrium. Hustling down to the bottom landing, they saw outside a smattering of brutalized canine remains, dead people, and several dogs sniffing the ground, milling around the lawn and largely ignoring one another until they wandered too close.
Scott wondered if he was witnessing a change in their behaviors, as modified by the virus, or if he’d simply been wrong in the presumption that the animals had been acting on a pack mentality. He had thought the dogs, as well as the other animals he had encountered so far, had been hunting as a unit. Perhaps it had only been their single-minded pursuit of a common target that made them appear unified. Given the lack of any other food sources, they seemed quick to turn on one another. They also seemed insatiable in their hunger, which was worrying.
If they had been pack hunters, somehow shedding their domesticity and rapidly returning to their positions as wolves and conforming to such behaviors, then their rash and vicious to-the-death attacks against one another was a troubling escalation.
“Do you think Jacob was right?” Lauren asked, her voice raw and shaky. “That it’s a virus?”
“I think so,” he said.
Not taking her eyes off the dogs outside, she said, “It’s spreading, then. Getting worse, fast.”
For a moment, he wasn’t sure if she was referring to the infected animals or to what had happened earlier in the bathroom. Scott was worried about the virus spreading to humans, and if the aftermath he had witnessed between his daughter, Jeff, and Jacob were any indication, it was already too late. He didn’t know either of the boys, but he had good instincts and in the limited time he had spent with them over several beers, both had seemed stable enough. Not the type to trap a woman in the bathroom and attack her. Granted, stranger things had happened, and he’d seen plenty of oddities over the years, but given the situation they were in his gut told him the boys had been triggered by something else. The virus was transmitting rapidly, spreading like brushfire as it jumped between animal and human.
“Were Jacob and Jeff infected, do you think?” He practically choked the words out, overcome with emotion from the implications. He had to ask, though. Needed the confirmation, or, even better, the denial that would tell him he was crazy and overreacting.
“Jeff was,” Lauren said.
She sounded so sure, so certain, that he didn’t argue.
How long until it spreads even further? he wondered. How much time do either of us have us have left?
His stomach growled, a new distraction. It had been a long while since he’d eaten anything substantial, outside of beer and whatever snacks had been lying around the radio station. Chips, mostly. He needed something more. A thick cut of meat. His stomach seemed to open wider at the mere thought of a nice big porterhouse.
When he glanced toward Lauren, the craving grew. He could practically see the twitch of a pulse in her carotid, and his gums felt achingly tight, as if his teeth needed to get up out of his jaw and stretch out a bit. He did the only thing he could and looked away, back out the doors ahead of him.
The dogs were avoiding each other, for now. He knew that would change the instant they pushed their way outside and became fresh targets for each of these bloody-muzzled, four-legged freaks. But they had to leave the building, if not now then eventually. He needed to find Shay, find out what was happening outside, and if the mayor and Sheriff Tremblay had been able to mobilize any kind of a response.
His hope was slim, though.
Stay here, and they’d slowly starve to death. Maybe there was enough food in the UC’s kitchens, but how long would that last now that the power was out and the refrigerators were dead? He knew the university was in between semesters, so the kitchens likely weren’t as fully stocked as they would be during the fall or winter terms when more students were around.
They could have a million hamburger patties and chicken breasts in those freezers and it wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t the quantity that was an issue, it was the viability. Once those freezers lost their cool and the meat started defrosting and hit room temperature, they would be useless sooner rather than later. They would have to move on, if they didn’t die here first. If they didn’t turn on one another and murder each other like those dogs.
He tried to push aside the dark thoughts, but it wasn’t easy.
They were wasting daylight, standing here watching, waiting, twiddling their thumbs. They had to move.
A bike rack was right outside, just a few paces away. He could make out the chains securing each bike in place, the thick padlocks securing them.
“We’re going to have to pick the locks,” he said. “It’ll take time.”
“How do you want to do this?”
“Those dogs are going to come for us, fast and all at once.”
He thought about giving her his gun while he worked on the locks, but the nightma
re images that followed—her missing and getting swarmed and torn apart—made him reconsider.
“I don’t know if we can make it to the dorms,” she said. She looked down at her bare legs, the skin covered in goosebumps.
“No. Maybe not.”
He took out the black pouch and withdrew the lock pick gun and a tension wrench, handing them to her.
Holding up the slim wrench, he introduced her to the tool. “You put this tension wrench in the lock, and then insert the gun, pull the trigger a few times, and the padlock will pop open. It’s going to seem very loud, though.”
He said nothing of the pressure they would be under or how quickly they were going to have to operate.
“I’ll deal with the dogs. Maybe they’ll get smart and get scared off by the gunshots.” He said this, knowing it was nothing more than false hope. The animals were too far gone, past the point of no return, lost in pure mania. Lauren didn’t look as if she believed him either.
He gripped the door’s push bar, prepared to shove it open.
“On three,” he said, counting down with his fingers.
“Now!”
He bolted through the door, gun at the ready to cover Lauren. She darted straight for the bike rack and knelt beside it. The dogs were already taking an interest, even before the loud metallic snapping noise of each trigger pull from the lock pick gun.
Scott aimed and fired, the noise of his pistol far louder and booming over the frenetic barking. He killed one dog, then another, the two that were closest. Three more were pounding across the lawn toward them, and he fired off a quick succession of rounds, blood flying along with the ropes of spit hanging from their jowls. Growls turned into pained whines that either turned into shallow death rattles or were abruptly silenced.
A brief quiet descended, and then he heard the snapping of the lock pick gun resume as Lauren went to work on freeing a second bike.
Their backs were to the L-shaped wall of the UC’s rear entrance, leaving the ninety-degree arc before them the main worry. He was glad he didn’t have to watch both their fronts and backs. Only front and one side.
That exposed side posed the most danger, and he realized just how dangerous and open he was mid-turn as a rushing noise cutting through the grass.
A Great Dane ran forward, opposite Lauren, and leapt over the bicycle rack. The giant dog plowed into Scott, toppling him to the ground. He held onto his gun, even as the Dane bit into his shoulder and wrenched loose cloth and the skin beneath, an intense, hot wave of pressure clamping across his upper chest.
Scott screamed, pressing the muzzle of his sidearm against the Great Dane’s skull, and pulled the trigger.
The pressure eased, his torso on fire.
“Dad!” Lauren screamed.
A chocolate Lab was eyeing her with clear intent, stalking her from the other side of the bike rack. She stayed kneeling beside the bike, gave the lock pick gun one last trigger pull, and pulled the padlock free.
The Lab shoved across the narrow bike rack and sprang toward her.
Lauren slung the bike chain out toward the dog, cracking him right across the snout. Before the dog could recover, Scott fired, not bothering to aim carefully, and saw blood spray from the Lab’s rib cage as the force of impact plowed him over. The dog lay on its side, whining and growling angrily.
“C’mon!” Lauren shouted, pulling one bike free and toward Scott.
He hopped onto the seat, his movements far slower and labored than his daughter. Blood was sheeting down his chest, his uniform shirt clinging to his sticky skin, uncomfortably tight and sodden. He pedaled as quickly as he could, but he was weak, faint, and already falling behind Lauren.
More dogs were coming, their commotion announcing their presence before they even cleared the side of the building and crossed into the open field before them.
Scott fired, took out one more dog, and then his chamber ran empty.
“Go!” he told her, ejecting the clip and reaching for another, a lightning bolt of pain shooting through his torso and up his neck to remind him of his ruined shoulder. He fought through the agony and slammed a fresh clip in, but reloading the gun had been nothing more than wasted time. “Head for the road. There’s no way we can make it to the dorms.” The dogs were nearly right on top of them.
One went right for Lauren, but bless her, she still had that damn cricket bat. She brought it up and swung for the fences, as if she were back on the softball field. The side of the dog’s head collapsed, an eyeball popping free as he crashed into the ground, screaming in agony and pawing at his ruined face.
Scott shot the other two, but it was too damn close for comfort.
“C’mon!” he shouted, pedaling beside her and keeping his gun ready. “C’mon,” he said, softer this time, more to himself. Keeping a grip on the handlebar with his ruined arm hurt like a bitch, and it took some coaxing to get his fingers to work properly. Every jostle and bump sent a fresh blister of agony through him.
Lauren pedaled mindlessly, her entire body quivering from too much adrenaline. Her stomach was twisted up in turmoil and her limbs were jittery, the way she felt when she drank an excessive amount of coffee and not nearly enough food.
Each time she blinked, she could see—too clearly—Jacob’s skull, shattered open, his brains bashed into jelly and leaking out of his head out onto the bathroom floor where it mingled with his blood and the filthy tile grout. She saw Jeff’s leering eyes and his spit-slick lips as he fondled himself, covered in gore.
She pedaled to put as much distance as she could between their bodies and hers, the devil’s own hellions practically nipping at her heels.
She pedaled as if lost in a trance. Eventually, she took notice of her surroundings. Back on US 31, a dead traffic light hung over the intersection. To her right, the three-building strip mall with a restaurant that only served breakfast, and mostly only omelets and pecan rolls at that, a knick-knack shack that catered exclusively to customers looking for doodads like birdfeeders or goofy decorations made entirely of wood, and a Little Caesars. To the left, a tattoo parlor, a 7-11, and a Mexican restaurant that she refused to eat at because it had originally been a funeral home and that kind of creeped her out.
How the hell did we get here? she wondered.
The university was well behind them, and as she turned to look toward the rear she saw a number of animals shot dead. Her father had come to a stop several yards back, and she circled back to pull up beside him.
Scott was slumped forward over the handlebar, one foot on the pavement keeping him upright, if only barely. His injured arm hung limply at his side, blood running down from beneath the torn shirtsleeve and over his forearm, collecting at his fingers and swelling into a steady drip.
“Dad!” she shouted, jumping off the stolen bicycle.
“I need a minute, sweetie, that’s all.” His breathing was ragged, his skin bleached white.
“Can you make it across the street?” she asked. “To the 7-11?” They’ve got to have gauze in there, right, or something at least?
He tilted his head up, but it clearly took a deal of effort. He was able to nod.
“Jesus, you’re pale.”
He gasped as he worked his injured arm back into place on the handlebar. Then he decided to holster the gun at his hip and used that to steer instead, letting the wrecked limb fall free.
She hopped back on her bike and easily overtook her dad, who was pedaling much slower. “I can scout ahead,” she offered.
“It’s not safe.”
“And what good are you?” she said, immediately regretting the biting sting her words clearly carried. She didn’t even know where those words came from, that upswell of vitriol taking even her by surprise. She swallowed back the inexplicable anger, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t she said, “That came out wrong.”
“No, you’re right,” he said eventually.
Seeing her father so badly wounded jolted her. She had never seen him so frai
l, so weak. She had always thought him strong, but he clearly was that no longer. Her grip tightened on the cricket bat.
She missed home, her room. Her now-dead and useless Kindle, and the Spider-Gwen and Hack/Slash comics that were loaded onto it. Her posters of Muse and CCR. All that was history now, a bygone era. That was the old world, she thought. A world of safety and comfort. In this new, mad world, there was no room for the weak.
No room for Jacob. No room for Jeff.
No room for her own father. Not anymore. Not in the state he was in.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
That question brought with it an explosive clarity, and she found herself repulsed by the anger residing somewhere deep inside her. She forced her hand to relax and for her grip to loosen. Forced herself to stop white-knuckling the bat. She shook her head to clear it of the nasty cobwebs that had somehow collected there.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s right across the street. We’ll get you patched up.”
She broke away from his gaze, not liking the look that resided in his eyes. He knew, and something primal coiled there, a trace measure of self-protection lurking behind the bloodshot sclera and the wet, puffy rims of his eyelids.
She pushed forward and he followed.
As with the rest of town, the 7-11 was dark. The automatic sliding doors hung twisted at awkward angles, popped out of their frames like loose, barely attached teeth. Beyond was nothing but rows of shelves concealed in the growing darkness of deepening shadows.
She dropped the kickstand and gripped the bat tight, casting a look over her shoulder toward her father. He licked his lips, his eyes practically lost in their empurpled, swollen orbits. The way he looked at her, his eyes settling on the stretch of her tanned thigh, unsettled her, and she told herself she was imagining it. His lips were shiny with spit and blood. He nodded, then jutted his chin out, urging her forward. He was sweating hard, his skin a chalky white.
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