“When I’m ready,” he said playfully, rock hard but taking his time. “Good things come to those who...”
A gunshot finished his sentence; followed, seconds later, by the ringing of the alarm bell on top of the grain silo where one of the men was on watch.
Desmond rolled off of Mary and onto the floor. She bolted from bed, threw on a sweater and sweats, then grabbed the pistol from the nightstand. Desmond threw on his pants, grabbed the rifle in the corner of the bedroom, bolted into the hallway, down the stairs, into the living room and to the oversized window overlooking the front yard of their four acres of farmland.
Mary ran to Paola and Luca’s room, two doors down, and threw open the door. Both children were wiping sleep from their terrified eyes. “Stay in here! Remember the plan.” Mary shouted a few decibels shy of a scream, meeting her daughter’s eyes. “And lock the door.”
Luca leaped from the top bunk, then went to the door. “Thanks Mary,” he said, closing the door and turning the latch. Though he looked like a young teen, he was still a child who needed to be locked away.
Mary ran downstairs where Scott and Desmond were staring out the window, a few feet from Linc, all three with rifles ready. She saw the long-limbed black monsters outside, the things which had nearly killed them back at the hotel, and which stalked her dreams nightly.
“Bleakers!” Scott said, his mid-adolescent voice a crack of excitement.
“Who’s on watch?”
“Will,” Desmond said. “He’s on the silo.”
“How many are there?”
“I see four, just inside the gate,” Desmond said. “What about you, Linc?”
“Your four, then one in front of the barn,” Linc said, peering down the scope of his rifle which he aimed out the open window.
A gunshot, from Will, thundered outside, immediately followed by a second and third.
“One by the barn is down,” Linc said, “Will needs backup. Let’s get out there now.”
Desmond was first out the door; Linc just a step behind that. Scott tried to follow, but Linc held up a palm, “You sit this one out, kid.”
“Come on,” Scott pleaded, looking at Mary, who shrugged, deferring the call to Linc. If she had it her way, Scott would be up in the room with the other kids. But that was the mother hen in her, something that she was trying not to push on Scott, who was striving to be seen as a man in the group.
“I said no,” Linc’s deep voice and former linebacker’s body was intimidating, even if everyone knew he was a bigger teddy bear than Mary. “I can’t be keepin’ an eye on you right now. Maybe next time.”
Scott’s eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses and under his straw-colored bangs. He opened his mouth to protest, but Linc wasn’t waiting for an answer. And now was obviously a bad time to make a stand. Scott swallowed and held his rifle in the air. “OK, I’ll hang here, make sure the kids stay safe.”
Linc nodded, slapped Scott on the shoulder, then he and Mary joined Desmond racing towards the gate, 50 or so yards from the house and 200 from the silo at the other end. Two of the dark monsters had broken off from the pack and were circling the silo screeching and clicking at Will, safely out of range, unless one of the creatures started climbing the ladder, which no one had seen them manage to do. Yet.
The pair of bleakers by the gate turned their oversized black eyes toward Desmond, Linc and Mary, who took steady aim and opened fire, emptying their guns on their way to the barn where they could shoot from more safely. Like the bleakers they’d seen in small clusters over the last couple of weeks, these were faster and able to take more bullets than the ones they’d grown used to. Their mouths, open holes with rows of jagged teeth, were wide open, wailing an unholy clicking shriek which drilled into Mary’s brain like the sound of a baby screaming for its mother.
“Shit!” Linc screamed at a bleaker who had taken a bullet straight to the face but still kept walking, without half its head; a horrifying first. Linc threw down his rifle and reached into the holster at his belt and grabbed the Glock. He squeezed off three shots until the fucker fell to the ground, twitching and clicking.
“Inside now!” Linc ushered Desmond and Mary inside the barn, pulling a second pistol from the other holster and firing at the three new bleakers that had appeared from nowhere. Linc, an ace shot, managed to hit the first two in the forehead, then slipped inside the barn and locked the door behind him, but not before he saw something that widened his eyes and sucked the life from his face.
He stood at the door, frozen, staring at nothing.
“What is it?” Desmond asked.
Linc shook his head, not looking at them.
“I don’t even know where to start, man. I wanna say there are dozens, but that’s just to make us all warm and fuzzy. Truth is, looks like those giant faced fuckers are oozing out of the forest right now. Definitely the biggest swarm we’ve seen so far. Maybe a hundred of ‘em.”
Mary looked out the small barn window toward the house, then over at Will – a speck on top of the silo – but said nothing. Everyone knew the only thing guarding the house and the children inside it was an old man standing on top of a silo 600 or so feet away, and Scott, who was little more than a child himself. Stating the obvious wouldn’t help a thing. Besides, even if she opened her mouth, Mary was half-certain all she’d manage was a whimper.
Six shots popped through the air in neat succession, exactly two seconds apart. Will pulling the trigger from atop the silo and hitting his targets, by the sound of it. The final shot finished with a thud as a bleaker’s body banged against the side of the barn.
Mary found her voice. “We have to get back to the house,” she said. “They’re dead if we don’t.”
As if to prove her right, another shot rang loud; closer, from inside the house. Mary looked back out the window. A bleaker was pushing its way in through the front door of the house; another four were thrashing wildly a few feet behind.
“Desmond!” Mary threw him a sharp look, but he raised his arms in the air, helpless. They were reloaded, but the barn was surrounded. And with only the one small window facing the silo, they had no idea how bad it was behind them. Judging by the visible clusters storming the gate, and the speed with which the bleakers were moving, opening the barn door would be almost certain suicide.
“Let’s give it a second, so we can get our bearings.” Desmond’s voice was cool, but his hand was shaking as he cocked the gun.
“We don’t have a second Dez!” Mary shrieked, “THEY ARE IN THE HOUSE!”
Thunder battered the barn from all sides as dozens of bleakers banged against the outside walls. Another round of shots rattled the air and hammered their nerves, while also sending them a sliver of hope as more bleakers fell.
“It’s now or never,” Desmond said, looking at Linc. “You ready?”
Linc nodded, though he looked like he was holding his shit together with floss.
Desmond opened the door firing, kicked the closest bleaker to the ground, aimed his gun at the creature’s mouth and pulled the trigger, coating the dirt in a putrid brew of chunky black.
Two bleakers rushed Linc, knocking him to the ground as his shots misfired into the air. Mary stepped toward the fallen trio and popped both of the bleakers in the back of their heads. Linc looked up, and despite all the chaos, managed a grin.
Desmond was too busy emptying his Glock into the approaching swarm to notice anything but the roar of Will’s rifle from the top of the silo, and another half dozen perfectly punctuated shots. Will was keeping them alive. But he only had so many bullets. And in the moments between reloads, they were on their own. As Mary, Desmond, and Linc pressed their way into the front yard, they got their first real glance at just how many they were dealing with. A hundred was a conservative guess. It was as if someone sent out a beacon calling every creature within miles to home in on the farm. There was no way Mary could see them getting out of this alive.
The creatures were still pouring in fr
om the woods on either side of the farm.
When will it stop?!
They were going to die today.
She looked over to Linc and Desmond in desperate search for some sign of hope in their eyes. All hope was gone.
Another gunshot from the house pulled Mary’s attention back to the children. She had to get in there. Now!
She raced straight at - and around - a bleaker, racing to the house. She raised her pistol and fired at two of the creatures blocking her path to the house. They fell, but her clip was empty. She stared at the porch where the bleakers were trying to get in the front door, which was somehow blocked, but for how long, she had no idea. Nor did she know if any had already breached the door before it became blocked, as she couldn’t see Scott or hear anything in the house.
Suddenly, shots screamed out from behind and the two bleakers in front of her fell to the ground, heads splattered.
She spun around as a midnight blue SUV charged the gate, tearing through a huddle of bleakers, sending three to the dirt before the truck screeched to a halt, stopping with a squish as it landed on top of a bleaker’s head, popping it like a grape.
Two armed strangers — decked out in black outfits that looked like SWAT gear and ammo belts - leaped from the truck and opened fire on the bleakers. The driver stayed inside, threw the car in gear, then raced toward the thickest part of the swarm, mowing bleakers a handful at a time, covering the windshield and sides of the otherwise spotless SUV with gooey slop.
Linc fell into formation with the two soldiers, both clearly trained, picking off bleakers shot by shot.
Desmond raced to her, handed her a clip for her pistol, and they ran to the porch where three bleakers were trying to open the front door, which had been blocked by a fallen light fixture. All the bleakers had to do was kick the obstacle aside. But they kept opening the door over and over expecting the same movement to yield a different result. Mary was glad to see the bleakers’ brains were still moving slow, even if their legs had learned to go faster. Desmond and Mary opened fire from behind and painted the porch in black.
“You’ve got this.” Desmond said. “I’ll cover the outside, make sure nothing else gets in. You get to Scott and the kids, okay? Scream if you need me.”
Mary nodded, then stepped inside the house, gun raised, looking first toward the living room on the right, then toward the kitchen on her left. Two pairs of bleakers; four total. The first two were rifling through the kitchen; one was pulling out a butcher knife, looking at it with its head turned like a dog trying to figure out Algebra, while the two in the living room were roaming in circles, seemingly lost.
Relieved by their lack of attention, Mary flew up the stairs, hoping none had thought to hit the second floor. Her hopes were dashed when she saw the trail of blood on the wooden floor leading to the end of the hall where Scott lay in front of Paola’s door, trying to fight off two bleakers with his bolt action rifle. His shirt was bloody and he looked minutes from bleeding out.
“Paola?!” Mary screamed, “Are you okay?!”
“MOM!” Paola’s panicked voice yelled from the other side of the door.
Scott looked up to Mary, eyes glazed. “I’m so sorry, Mary,” he sobbed when he saw her.
Mary said nothing, just opened fire on the pair of bleakers at the bedroom door, then shifted her aim to the third bleaker who managed to take the rest of her bullets without having the decency to drop.
FUCK!
“Stay inside!” she yelled again, then ran to the end of the hallway, swinging her arm in a wide arc and lodging the butt of her gun into the surprisingly soft back of the bleaker’s skull.
The bleaker turned to Mary, its mouth, with its jagged rows of malformed teeth, agape. She took another wide swing, making matching entry and exit wounds on each of the bleaker’s cheeks, chunks of wet black flesh and teeth hitting the wall and floor. What was left of the monster’s mouth collapsed on itself as it rattled a wretched sound of surprised anger, stumbled, then fell to the floor, thrashing.
Scott slid the rifle along the floor to Mary. She picked it up and swung down, taking out the rest of the creature’s skull until it stopped moving.
“Where are the bullets?” she asked, sure that she’d drawn the attention of the four bleakers downstairs and would need to be armed.
Scott pointed to his duffel bag at the end of the hall – the same bag they’d found him with two months ago when they first saw him, dehydrated on the side of the road in lower Tennessee. It was a kid’s bag, black, with white lettering which read: BOMB TECHNICIAN: If you see me running, you'd better start running too!
Mary stepped past him, feeling a bit shitty not to bend down to check his wound but also recognizing that she needed to prepare for the other monsters or none of them would get out of the house alive. She reached into the bag, retrieved the box of bullets as sounds of the bleakers stumbling up the stairs caused her hands to shake. She slipped the first bullet into the magazine, then the second. A bleaker was at the top of the stairs, clicking and shrieking, mouth open wide.
She slid the third bullet into the magazine, then tried to squeeze the fourth, but it was a tight fit. She struggled, hands shaking, fingers betraying her, pressing hard to get the bullet into the chamber as the creature moved closer. She wished like hell that the boy didn’t have a bolt action. But that’s what she had. Four bullets. Four bleakers.
Fuck!
The fourth bullet slid into place and she clicked the magazine into the gun’s stock, glanced up to see the bleaker barreling towards her, slid the bolt back and forth loading the chamber, then raised the rifle as the bleaker was nearly on top of her. The shot ripped through the bleaker’s chest and launched it back into a second bleaker who had come into the hallway.
“Desmond,” she screamed, “I need you up here NOW!”
No reply. She fired a second shot, taking out the second bleaker’s face.
Outside was a thunderstorm of chaos. It sounded like more bleakers, more engines, more gunfire, more shouting.
More of everything.
Mary managed to squeeze off two more shots, bringing down the third bleaker, before the final one — that she knew of, anyway — got through and was on her. The monster clawed at her arm, tearing the fabric of her sweater, but narrowly missed her flesh as she squeezed out of the way. Her rifle fell, just out of reach as the creature stood to its full length and glared down at her with its alien eyes. Its mouth opened wide and it leaned over, shrieking so loud that she had to cover her ears or risk her eardrums being burst.
The bedroom door behind the bleaker swung open and Luca ran into the hallway, screaming.
“NO!” He charged toward the bleaker, punching the back of its body. Luca looked to be 14, rather than the eight years his lifetime provided. And though 14 was bigger than eight, it wasn’t big enough to stand against the six foot five or so bleaker who turned around and swatted an angry black fist at the boy, sending him sprawling back along the bloody hardwood floor. The bleaker turned back to Mary, who watched as Paola slipped into the hall and put her arms under Scott’s armpits and dragged him into their room. Scott’s eyes were closed and Mary feared the worst.
Once she had Scott inside, Paola cried out, “Luca, come back!”
Mary screamed. “Do what she says, Luca! Now!”
The bleaker turned its attention back toward Luca. The boy got up, sliding in Scott’s blood, then scrambled into the bedroom, buying Mary a half-minute to grab her rifle from the floor. Luca slammed the door shut a nano-second before the bleaker slammed the weight of its body against the door, clicking and shrieking. The door burst in and the creature lunged towards the opening.
One bullet.
Mary aimed and pulled the trigger but missed.
She cried out as the creature stepped into the room with the children. With her child.
“No!” she screamed, jumping up.
Just then Desmond appeared with two of the black outfitted men, all armed.
Mary stood up and ran into the room as Paola ran into her arms and buried her head in her mother's chest, sobbing. Luca wrapped his arms around Desmond's waist. “Sorry I couldn't help,” he said.
"You don't need to be sorry for a thing,” Desmond said, then put his hand on the back of Luca's head.
“What happened?” Mary asked Desmond.
He shook his head. “You don't even want to see what's outside. If these men hadn't shown up when they had, we'd all be dead.”
“Who are they?”
“Don't know yet, but there are a lot of them. Six cars and more than a dozen men, at least. And it looks like another car was coming when we came inside.”
“I think Scott might be dead,” Mary said, trying not to cry as she gestured to the boy laying on the floor. She knelt next to him, feeling for a pulse and shook her head. Blood soaked the floor beneath him. Even if they managed to start his heart, there was no way to replace the lost blood.
The sound of several sets of heavy footsteps echoed into the living room, then fell quiet. Seconds later, footsteps creaked up the stairs. Two tall men stepped into the hallway and in front of Paola’s room. The taller of the two — a near giant with a broad face and crooked nose — studied the room, then nodded his head. He approached one of the two men with Desmond — a tiny soldier with a thick Brillo of chestnut hair — and said, “Looks like we lost Rutu and Sal.”
The soldier shook his head. “They’ll be missed,” he said.
Desmond looked down to Scott. "We're down one, too."
Without a word, Luca knelt by Scott.
Mary started towards Luca, but Desmond squeezed her hand, pulling her back.
“Let him try,” he said.
Luca sat down on the floor, legs crossed, and closed his eyes, going to a place in his head no one understood.
The hallway settled into a lingering silence, most of them likely believing that they were witnessing one child mourning another.
Yesterdays Gone: SEASON TWO (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER) (Yesterday's Gone) Page 2