CRACK.
The first step was wet and his foot slipped quickly, hitting the ground with a soft thud. He leaned his head against the tree, putting his weight onto it. I can’t do this.
SNAP. CRACK.
He looked up at the underside of his fort, tightened his grip on the handholds and put his foot back on the step. He didn’t slip. He would get there. He felt the strain in every muscle in his body, but he was moving. Second step; his foot slipped, but he didn’t go down. He caught it on the second try. Lift. Third step. Lift. Fourth, fifth, sixth. Why did I build this so high? He wasn’t looking where he was going as he went and soon his hand didn’t hit a step. It hit the inside of the fort. He just had to pull himself through the hole and he could rest in the fort. Just one last lift ...
He flopped onto the boards, letting the strain drain from his burning muscles. He breathed heavily, unable to move for a while.
The fort was a plywood floor and one half-wall. It was simple, but it would do.
Eventually, he found enough energy to drag himself to the edge of the boards to look down. He was now glad for all those steps.
A few of the diseased people had followed him through the woods, but they couldn’t pinpoint where he was. One was naked, covered in burns and blood from a huge gash in his head, like he’d been hit with something hard and sharp. Another seemed almost completely unhurt other than a cut on her arm. The rest fell somewhere in between. They wandered the area looking for him, but not looking up. They only want things in front of them.
He silently rolled back over, avoiding any creaks or thuds. He did not want to get their attention. He needed to think of a—
“Ah-choo!”
The sneeze had snuck up on him, frightening him. Below he heard a shuffling in the fallen leaves as they headed for the tree.
They knew where he was.
Alex closed his eyes tightly, wrapping his arms around himself. He felt cold and soaked, and very, very afraid. Tears formed in his eyes for what he was sure was the last time. I have nowhere else to go. I can’t go higher. I’m done.
He opened his eyes several minutes later and tried to quiet his breathing to get some idea of what was happening below. He could still hear shuffling in the leaves as well as their moans and sloppy growls, but that was it.
Very slowly, he rolled over and peeked at them. Three of them surrounded the tree, looking up, their claw-like arms grasping at the air above them. They would walk at the tree, bang into it, stagger back a step, and then try again.
They can’t climb! Alex thought triumphantly.
“You can’t get up here!” he called down, with a trace of a laugh. “You stupid morons! You’re stuck down there!” He spit down on them, the icing on the cake.
He had won!
No food.
No water.
No dry clothes.
No heat.
No one to talk to.
Nothing to do.
Alex made this mental list after a few hours in his tree fort.
The diseased people all left soon after he had gone out of view. They forgot about him or they found something easier to hunt. He didn’t care. They were gone.
“Maybe I can go get stuff from the store,” he muttered. “I can see from up here when they’re not around, so I can make a break for it.” He paused, doubting himself. “But what if they’re here when I get back? I won’t be able to see them then. Then I’m in it deep.” He spent the next few hours trying to come up with a plan that he couldn’t find any problems with.
Finally, he settled on one: “Hope help finds me before I die up here.”
KAITLYN
Though the blinds in Hannah’s bedroom were drawn, and both girls were ordered to not open them no matter what, Kaitlyn knew what was happening outside. The memory of what she had seen the day before haunted her, but curiosity got the better of her when a noise woke her up.
The sound of metal dragging on pavement.
Someone was outside.
They would be saved!
She pulled up the blind and pushed her face to the window. In the moonlight, she saw a person, a woman, walking down the middle of the street with a rope dragging behind her. Either she held it, or it was tied to her arm. At the other end of the rope was a mailbox.
That makes no sense. Why is she tied to—?
Kaitlyn thought of the people from the school. The ones that attacked others. Killed them. She looked more closely at the woman in the street. She was wet. She was covered in something thick and black and red.
She was one of them. And no one was stopping her. They had tried; they tied her to a pole to keep her away, but it didn’t work. Now no one was out there to stop her, or any of them.
They wouldn’t be saved.
She let go of the blind and saw Hannah, wide awake, looking up at her.
“What was it?” Hannah asked.
After a pause, Kaitlyn decided that “Nothing,” was a safe answer. She lay back down. She would try to settle back in—at least pretend to sleep, for Hannah’s sake.
“Oh,” Hannah replied as she settled. “I was worried that the woman with the mailbox was back.”
How many times had Hannah seen her?
Kaitlyn listened for the metal dragging to stop for a long while after that. Each time it seemed to fade, it grew louder again. She wondered how long the woman would stay out there.
A realization began to dawn on her: this was bigger than babysitting, or a new TV, or proving herself. Bigger than all of it combined. It was no longer about acting responsibly in the hopes of being rewarded; it was about being responsible or someone might get hurt.
She glanced over at Hannah. Her eyes were staring right back at her.
She might get hurt.
ALEX
Shuffling sounds from below woke him. Alex knew it was them. He could hear their sickly, gasping breathing; their growls at one another, though Alex had no idea why. Maybe they just hated everything as much as Alex was starting to.
It was dark, but the moon and stars gave him enough light to see his own breath.
He thought about all he had lost in the last day: his house, his friends, his dog, his family. He was all that was left. He stayed awake as long as he could, listening to the shuffling as they passed below him, terrified that one of them would figure out how to climb up at him.
He was drifting off when he heard it shuffling in the leaves below. He knew it was just one. Then, the sound of something hitting wood. A shoe hitting the first step. Then the second step.
Frozen with terror, he tried to scream for help, but all that came out was a gasping crack from his throat.
The steps came up steadier.
Suddenly a hand—a bloodied, mangled hand—came through the hole. Then another. The pale light from the moon gave them a sickly, white-green hue.
Alex tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t. He tried to look away, but his eyes were glued to the opening.
The bloody, distorted, snarling face pulled itself up through the hole.
It was his father. And he had the disease.
He climbed up through the hole, dragging what was left of his legs behind him.
He pulled himself up Alex’s legs. Alex was paralyzed with fear.
He pulled Alex’s face to his own, a thick mix of blood and spit oozing onto him.
Cold, dead white eyes stared into him. Recognizing his son, but not caring. He raised his head to bite into his son’s neck ...
SNAP!
Alex woke with a jolt and quickly rolled to get away from his diseased father…
…and fell into confusing space, until he hit the ground with a thud. In a painful daze, he looked around. The sun was shining.
Then: blackness.
DAY 4
ALEX
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. Do you even know this kid?”
“Yes. And what do you want to do, drop him here? Real nice.”
“No, I didn’t want to
go in the first place. This is stupid. This is really, really stupid.”
“We’re fine.”
Alex was being carried. He opened his eyes and then shut them against the sun. “Hello?”
“He’s awake.”
“No, really?”
They dropped him. He hit the ground hard, but ignored the pain to deal with more pressing issues, like who was carrying him. He shaded his eyes from the sun to see who it was.
It was two other kids. Kids he didn’t know.
No. He recognized the boy from school. David. David something. He looked at the other one—a tall girl, all in black and not too happy. He had no idea who she was.
“You all right, Alex?” David asked him.
“Uh ... what?” Alex asked.
“Oh good.” The girl sighed, walking away. “He broke his brain.”
David shook his head. “Alex, are you okay?”
Alex’s head was killing him and his whole body ached. He remembered falling out of a tree after a nightmare. It had felt so real; the image of his father’s bloodied face still lingered when he closed his eyes.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he lied.
“Okay, good,” David said. “Think you can walk?”
Alex moved his legs back and forth. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
“What were you doing in the woods, anyway?” the girl asked him.
“I was hiding,” he said simply.
“Well, you did a real bang up job with that!” she snapped, turning away again. “Jesus, all that noise! You’re lucky we found you before the deadies did!”
“Deadies?” Alex asked.
“Stop calling them that,” David said. “It’s a ridiculous word.”
Alex paused for a moment. “What noise? What noises was I making? Did I say anything?”
“Not you,” the girl said. “Him.” She pointed down at Alex’s feet.
Alex sat up. Tears welled up despite his shock. “She’s a girl,” he said. Shadow sat looking at him, her head tilted. His mind raced: how?
“So,” David said, somewhat awkwardly. “The good news is, we found you because of the noise that she was making.”
Alex sat, waiting for the bad news. David paused.
The girl sighed. “The bad news is the deadies heard it too, and now they’re following us. So good job.”
“Please stop calling them that!” David said, frustrated. “You’re making them sound like the bad guys on some kids’ show or something!”
“Oh,” his sister replied, “you got a better name for them?”
“Mudmen,” Alex said absently, thinking back to his nightmares; nightmares of creatures attacking people, turning them into themselves. People he knew. “They’re mudmen.”
“Mudmen,” David said, mulling it over. “I like it. Sounds more like a real thing.”
“I didn’t call them deadies to meet your approval,” Nicole said. “It’s just what they are. They are dead. They are not made of mud. Morons.”
“Deadies sounds like ... like they’re from the Care Bears!” David said, laughing.
“I wouldn’t know, spaz!”
“Yeah right, Nicole! You watched the movie last summer with Kim and Lindsay!”
“Kim and Lindsay are six!”
“Exactly!”
Alex was alarmed by how calm these two siblings were acting, even though they had just told him that more of those things were coming after them. He looked down at Shadow, who now followed along obediently, as if she had never left his side.
How did you get out of there? He tried to visualize the moment at Mark’s house, but now it seemed almost cartoonish. Not nearly as terrifying as it had been. Two bumbling, mindless, drooling maniacs, chasing a dog around the small room, almost like an episode of Scooby-Doo. There were windows in Mark’s basement, but way too high for Shadow to get out. The back hatch! They sometimes left it open for Buster! Maybe you gave them the slip and snuck out that way? Maybe they found it too? Maybe they’re ...
“So, where are we going, guys?” he asked, forcing out of his mind the image of those crazed, murderous monsters now roaming the streets.
David looked at him, smiling. “Our fortress!”
Nicole stopped. David and Alex also stopped and turned to face her. “It’s a community centre, David,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not a fortress.”
Leaning over to Alex, David kept smiling. “Not yet.”
KAITLYN
“We need to do something.”
Kaitlyn overheard Hannah’s father from downstairs.
She could tell he was frustrated after being stuck in the house—staring out the window—for three days now. Her mother was too. Both tried to hide the fact that they had no food, that water was running out, and that they had no real means of staying warm. She was aware of all of it. They were trying to protect her—to keep her hopes up—but she was tired of being treated like a little kid. This was her chance to re-establish the fact that she was mature, responsible, and trustworthy. She would protect Hannah from the same things that her mother and Mr. Moore were trying to hide from her.
Maybe Hannah hasn’t noticed. No. It’s her house. She knows that things are weird. I just have to keep her distracted.
They played chess. Kaitlyn was impressed at how good Hannah was, though she was beginning to understand that the small girl was much more intelligent and intuitive than she would have otherwise guessed. When she had met her, Kaitlyn guessed she was five or six, though she knew that she was actually nine. She did say she was small because of—
“What can we do?” her mother asked downstairs.
There was a long pause. Kaitlyn could picture the intense stare—at least from her mom, looking for an answer. Mr. Moore, still staring out the window with his bat in hand, ready to smash anything that came toward the house. She waited, listening to the silence that seemed to last forever, wondering which adult would say something first.
“It’s your turn.” The silence was broken by Hannah, who had rolled over on the floor and looked up at her.
“Sorry,” Kaitlyn said. “I was thinking of something else.” She examined the board and moved, smiling as she moved her bishop to take one of Hannah’s pawns. “Didn’t see that one coming, did ya?”
“Actually,” Hannah said, sitting back up, “I did.” She promptly moved her own bishop to take Kaitlyn’s. It also put her directly in line with Kaitlyn’s king. “Check.”
“How did you—?” Kaitlyn stammered, slightly stunned. She saw that she could easily take the bishop with her queen, so all was not lost. As she touched her queen she looked at Hannah.
She was smiling.
“What are you planning?” Kaitlyn asked.
Hannah hid her smile immediately. “Nothing. It’s your turn.”
Kaitlyn pulled her hand back. She had won the first two games, but lost every game since. She got the impression that the small girl had just been getting a sense of how she worked. Kaitlyn had no chance from then on.
She saw Hannah’s next move. If I just move— No, there was another place. Hannah had her. And another. She was trapped. Not in checkmate, but one move away from it.
“Ranna Drive,” she heard her mother say from downstairs.
Ranna Drive? Why is mom talking about our street?
“That’s too far,” Dave said.
“I’m not saying that’s the first place we go,” her mother replied. “We make our way there, looking in houses or stores or whatever. If we find stuff, great, we bring it back here. If we don’t, I know there’s everything we need at home.”
Dave sighed. “We’re safer here.”
Are they planning on leaving? The idea of going outside, especially to go all the way to her own house—a good forty minute walk at the best of times—made her shiver.
Evidently Mr. Moore had the same opinion.
“We can’t go, Joanne. It’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe here either,” her mother replied. “Not
once we run out of food.”
“We’re already out of food!” Dave exclaimed.
“They can hear you up there, you know!”
“They already know it, Joanne! It’s not hard to notice!”
Kaitlyn tried to stop listening. She had to get back to the game; to keep Hannah distracted. But Hannah was already in the hall at the top of the stairs listening intently. Somehow Kaitlyn hadn’t noticed.
The jig was up.
Hannah looked up when she joined her in the hall. With a slight smile, she took her hand and led her down the stairs. Though they didn’t try to be quiet, it was clear that neither of their parents heard them as they approached the living room.
“It’s not that bad,” Dave said. “Once things calm down outside, then we can—”
“When will that be?” Joanne interrupted. “This could go on for days, or even weeks!”
“It won’t,” Dave said, though his voice gave away that he wasn’t sure. He glanced out the window. Nothing at that moment. “Things will quiet down soon, and when they do ...” he turned away from the window, and saw the two girls standing in the doorway, behind Joanne.
Kaitlyn looked down at Hannah. She looked so small.
So weak.
So hungry.
Dave must have thought the same thing. Staring at the two girls, he swallowed. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Joanne said, still not aware of the girls behind her.
“Tomorrow morning,” he continued, “I’ll head out tomorrow morning. Find some food, medicine, whatever. I’ll find it, and I’ll bring it back here.”
“We’ll all help—” Joanne started.
“No,” he said. “Just me. You stay here, with them.” He nodded toward the girls.
Slowly Joanne turned to face them.
Tears streamed down Hannah’s face.
“You can’t go, Daddy,” she said, sobbing. “You ... you can’t!” She ran to him, and wept in his arms. He held his trembling daughter, the bat still clenched in one fist.
“I have to, Boo,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I have to.”
ALEX
Rise of the Mudmen Page 12