by Sam Sisavath
The bang! of the store’s front glass door slamming, followed by silence.
Five seconds became ten…then twenty…but she didn’t let herself relax until a full minute had gone by without the familiar tap-tap-tap coming from directly below her.
Close one. Real close one.
The sound of rustling clothes as Nate got up and slipped from one side of the attic to the other before sitting down next to her on her left.
“Sounds like we’re in the clear,” he whispered.
“Sounds like it,” she nodded back.
“Tired?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Just a little bit.” He leaned around her to look at Danny. “Is he really asleep?”
She nodded. “Like a rock.”
“A snoring rock.”
She managed a smile.
“You should go to sleep, too,” he said. “I’ll stay up, and you can relieve me around midnight.”
She glanced over at Danny, still snoring lightly to her right. He looked amazingly at peace, as if he were back on the Trident and not trapped in Starch waiting for sunlight as ghouls flooded the streets and buildings around them.
“Wake me up at midnight,” she said.
He nodded.
“I mean it,” she said. “Don’t pull any of that chivalrous crap on me.”
“Midnight. Got it.”
“Nate…”
“Hey, I want to get some sleep, too, okay?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted of sweat and dirt, but somehow, still sweet at the same time.
When she pulled back, he was smiling at her.
“What?” she said.
“I wish we were back on the Trident…”
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll be plenty of time for that later, lover boy.”
“Have you talked to Lara? About getting us our own cabin?”
“We’re not the only two people on the yacht, Nate. Everyone has to share.”
“There’s that room behind the engine…”
“The one we’re holding Gage in?”
“It’s about time we throw that guy into the ocean anyway.” She must have been unable to hide her surprise, because he added, “Being out here, with all that’s going on, it’s given me a new perspective.”
“I’ll talk to Lara.”
“Good. Now, go to sleep. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to think about all those other sexy times while you’re doing that.”
“You have my permission,” she smiled, and laid her rifle across her lap, before leaning against Nate’s shoulder.
For whatever reason, the steady rise and fall of his heartbeat to her left and Danny’s impossibly calm breathing to her right lulled her into a strange sense of serenity. Her bones ached and her muscles were sore, and she didn’t realize just how emotionally and physically draining the last few days had been until she closed her eyes and didn’t want to open them again.
*
“GABY.”
She was asleep, but also awake at the same time. Like floating in a bathtub filled with warm milk, bubbles caressing the bottom of her chin. Soothing and calming, but at the same time dangerous, with the threat of drowning hovering over her head.
“Wake up.”
There was something familiar about the voice, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Like a faded echo, tempting her closer to the surface.
“Gaby.”
She opened her eyes to darkness and Nate’s outline in front of her. He was crouched on one knee, his arm extended forward and shaking her awake.
“What—” she started to say (Too loud!), when Nate’s hand clasped over her mouth.
His other hand was already gripping his rifle and he lifted it now, pointing it across his body at the attic door. She had to look past Danny, still snoring quietly next to her, his head lolled to one side. He looked as if he might fall down at any second, but somehow remained upright despite the odds.
She didn’t dare move a single muscle as she listened while staring at the long rectangular-shaped trapdoor. Maybe she was still groggy and her senses weren’t up to full speed yet, but she couldn’t hear anything.
She glanced back at Nate for confirmation. He must have read the doubt on her face, because he gave her a slight nod.
“Are you sure?” she mouthed.
“Yes,” he mouthed back. “Downstairs.”
She reached down and picked up her AR-15 with one hand and pushed Danny with the other. His eyes snapped open almost as soon as she touched him, and they darted in the direction of the attic door before swiveling over to her.
“They found us,” she mouthed.
His lips moved as he began to mouth something back, but he hadn’t managed to form a single soundless word yet when there was a crash! from below, like a gunshot against the deathly silent night, but not quite as thunderous.
Danny snatched up his carbine and turned toward the door while Nate took up position in front of it with his bolt-action rifle. Gaby crab-walked backward, keeping as quiet as possible even though every step sounded like mini-explosions to her ears. She had always been thin, but the end of the world had excised any fat she might have had held onto from high school. Despite that, she was convinced she was moving with all the grace of a bloated whale as the three of them spread out to give each other as much room as possible in the already cramped attic space.
She didn’t stop backing up until she bumped into the boxes of Christmas trees, thankful there were no decorations inside to jingle or clink on contact. She positioned the rifle in front of her, and out of pure habit reached down with a finger to make sure the fire selector wasn’t stuck on safe.
Danny glanced over his shoulder and flashed her a wry smile. She saw it easily in the semidarkness, so maybe her eyes had finally adjusted to the conditions after all.
She nodded back at him, as if to say, “I’m fine,” but of course he knew better.
Danny returned her nod anyway before turning back to the door. “Hey, Nate Archibald,” he whispered.
Nate looked over, and matching his pitch, “What?”
“Switch places.”
“Why?”
Danny held up his rifle. “I got more firepower.”
“Oh.”
Nate scooted back while Danny went forward to take his place. They were incredibly quiet for two people moving around in heavy combat boots while slightly hunched over. Danny was settling in front of the door when he froze in place.
Shit, she thought, when the very loud clump-clump of heavy boots moving around in the store below reached them clear as day. If the creatures hadn’t been able to conceal their presence while moving on bare feet, there was no chance at all whoever was down there could while stomping around in boots.
Voices drifted through the floorboards, but they were muffled for some reason, and she could barely make out the words. She did know with absolute certainty there was more than one person moving around (very loudly) below them. It could have been collaborators or some of Mercer’s people, though she guessed it was more likely the former. Only collaborators would so nonchalantly walk around at night these days.
Danny had moved again while she wasn’t paying attention and was now crouched on the far side of the attic door. He laid his rifle down and slowly, very slowly, flattened himself against the floor, pressing his ear against the dirty carpeting.
The voices from below were getting louder—but not necessarily clearer—as they drew closer. She wondered what Danny was hearing at the moment. Maybe he could actually discern what the men down there were saying.
Cla-ching!
She recognized the sound without having to think about it, because she had spent an entire summer behind one of them. That was a cash register opening.
“Dude, really?” someone
said below them. It was a man’s slightly high-pitched voice and it was very clear that time. “What exactly is your dumb ass gonna do with all that cash?”
“I always wanted a new car,” someone else said, chuckling. “I should have enough to buy the whole thing cash on the barrelhead by the end of the night.”
“Leave that shit alone,” a third voice snapped. Another male voice, this one filled with authority. For a moment she thought it might have been Mason (Nate’s right; we should have dealt with that prick when we had the chance), but no, this voice was much deeper.
“I’m just fucking around,” the second voice said.
“Do it on your own time,” the leader said. “Clear the store. We’re running out of night.”
“We’re never going to run out of night, man,” the first man said. “Always gonna be another one tomorrow, and the day after that, and day after that…”
“No, but I’m running out of patience, so get the fuck back on the clock. This ain’t no fucking vacation. You forgot about what happened yesterday?”
Gaby recalled the layout of the store when they were moving through it earlier, doing their very best not to touch anything. They’d even left the door unlocked and the windows uncovered, because the creatures knew if you moved something. She didn’t know how, but somehow they just knew.
Dead, not stupid, right, Will?
The store had a simple floor plan, with the front door opening onto four aisles of products. The cash register was at the very end, behind a counter, and the attic entrance, also behind the counter, was five feet from the register. She guessed that was so only employees could access it. The upstairs room was as long as the employee area below, and they were safe up here as long as no one spotted the outline of the door against the ceiling, even though Danny had made sure to bring up the pull rope.
She listened to the clump-clump of boots moving around below them, then the loud crash of a door being kicked in. That would be the bathroom door in a hallway to their left. More voices, once again garbled by distance and…something else.
Nate, in front of her, hadn’t moved, and neither had Danny across the room. The ex-Ranger still had his ear pressed into the carpeting, doing a very good job of ignoring the smell and filth that clung to every fiber of the rug. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it was cold enough inside the attic that she could see mists forming in front of her lips as she breathed in and out, in and out.
More garbled voices, mingling with the clump-clump of footsteps as the men below them started to drift into the background. Moving away, possibly toward the front door, but definitely away from them.
That’s right, go. There’s nothing here. Just keep going. Search the next building.
Keep going…
As if reading her mind, Nate glanced over his shoulder and smiled. The blue of his eyes was like a beacon drawing her in and calming her nerves. She guessed that he knew it, too, and was doing this for her benefit.
She returned his smile and thought about his request to get them their own cabin on the Trident. It was something she’d been thinking about too, especially since spending time with him meant sneaking around when everyone else was occupied elsewhere. But if Lara finally dealt with Gage, then that would open up an extra room below deck. She could even learn to live with all the engine noise.
“Almost home free,” Nate mouthed to her now, except he was only halfway through “free” when there was a bang!, and the floorboard an inch from his body splintered and a bullet zipped through and punched a hole into the ceiling above him.
A small sliver of moonlight spilled through the hole instantaneously, highlighting a part of Nate’s suddenly pale face as he scrambled away from the spot even as the pop-pop-pop! of someone letting loose with a three-round burst from below shattered the silence.
“Fuck!” Nate shouted, launching himself away from the exploding floor with wild abandon. Splintered wood flooded the attic as he hugged the wall, pieces of shredded carpeting billowing around him like insects.
The first shooter hadn’t even stopped firing when someone else joined in. The second shooter strafed the ceiling, clearly trying to cover as much ground as possible, maybe somehow even tracking Nate’s footsteps. God knew Nate wasn’t exactly being quiet about his movements as he dodged the chasing bullets.
“Shit!” Nate shouted again.
Gaby scooted slightly forward, took aim with her rifle, and fired into the floor. She grouped her shots around the visible bullet holes in the carpeting, hoping to hit whoever was down there even as they continued firing up at them. She pulled the trigger again and again, the hammering of her gunshots like thunderbolts in the closed confines, each empty brass casing flickering and disappearing into the jungle of carpet strands. The crush of each discharge boomed inside her ears, but after a while they became little more than a buzzing noise in the background.
She was still shooting, spacing her shots across the floorboards, when there was a sudden flood of cold air. She looked up just in time to see the attic door swinging up, then a figure lunging toward the opening.
Danny!
He was there one second and gone the next, disappearing through the rectangular slot before she could even form his name in her head, never mind actually calling it out loud.
Danny’s disappearance was followed by a single pop! from below, then two more shots—pop! pop!—coming in such quick succession that all three rounds had to have been fired in the space of less than two seconds.
Then…nothing, except for her own ragged breathing to fill the silence. She kept waiting for more shooting, noises—anything.
Nate had pushed off the wall and was trying to peer through the dozen or so holes that the shooters below had created and she had added to. She couldn’t tell if he could make out anything despite the streams of moonlight pouring through from the bullet holes below and above them.
“Anything?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Can’t see shit.”
“Danny’s down there.”
“I know.”
Two more quick shots, followed by the very obvious clatter of a rifle skidding against the tiled floor below.
Danny!
Gaby scooted forward and spent a second trying to look through the bullet holes in the floor the same way Nate had done earlier, but the carpeting was too thick and they still covered up too much for her to spy anything on the other side.
When she looked up, Nate was already at the door looking down. He glanced over, saw the question on her face, and shook his head. “It’s too dark,” he whispered.
She hurried over to him, no longer caring about making too much noise. At this point, everyone (everything) who was in the area already knew where they were. She looked down the opening, realizing that Danny had never unfurled the ladder before he took the plunge. He had simply jumped down like an idiot, not knowing what was waiting for him down there.
Carly’s going to kick your ass if you die, Danny.
The silence inside the store below her had lengthened to thirty seconds…
…forty…
“Danny,” she whispered.
There was no reply.
She exchanged a look with Nate.
He didn’t say anything, but nodded back as if reading her thoughts and saying, without actually saying the words, “Go for it.”
She smiled back at him, reveling in the fact that they could have a conversation without having to say a word. The last few weeks on the Trident had been some of the best nights of her life, even if they did have to sneak around most of the time. Not because the adults didn’t already know, but because there were also a lot of kids on the boat.
Looking at him now, his blue eyes calm and understanding despite the harrowing last few minutes when it probably felt like every bullet in the world was trying to kill him, gave her a flush of pride.
She returned her focus to the opening, to the sea of black on the other side.
Nate put a hand on her
shoulder. The feel of his skin against hers, even through the thermal clothing, was warm and soothing, and a silent promise that he would be there, no matter what awaited them on the other side.
She took a deep breath and jumped down.
CHAPTER 23
KEO
“HOW’S THE FACE?” Keo asked.
“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “Is there still an 800-pound gorilla sitting on my forehead?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Then I guess it’s better than the last time you asked. Which reminds me: stop asking.”
“I’m just worried about you.”
“Hey, it’s nice that you care, but once every hour is enough, don’t you think? Especially since we’re not going anywhere anytime soon. If we ever get out of here at all, which in this case is looking unlikely.”
“There you go, being all positive again.”
She gave him a wry smile. “I try.”
“Try harder.”
“Whatever.”
Keo pressed against the cold metal bars and glanced toward the closed front doors, their rectangular frames illuminated by the dipping sun on the other side. They had sealed off the barn an hour ago, followed by a flurry of activity outside. He had heard more than a few of the vehicles roaring to life before taking off.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said, glancing down at his watch: 4:24 P.M.
“How long have we been in here?” Jordan asked from the other side of the small cage.
“Three hours and change.”
“It feels longer.” She paused for a moment, then added, “What do you think they’re doing out there? Why hasn’t anyone come in to talk to us yet? I thought they were going to interrogate us for information.”
“I don’t know,” he said, and looked up at the ceiling. He could just barely make out the lone, silhouetted form through the wooden slabs. He wasn’t sure where the other one had gone, or when.
“I wish they’d get it over with,” Jordan said. “The wait’s killing me.” Then, “Sorry, wrong choice of words.”