“No!” Hannah screamed through tears. “You said outside was bad! You can’t go! You said!”
Kaitlyn watched the younger girl have a fit. Hannah was a different person from the day before. The clever girl who beat her at chess; the happy girl who was excited to share her room; the reasonable girl who told them frankly that her mother had died when she was born—they were all gone, replaced by a small, scared child worried that her whole world was disappearing through the front door.
Dave held his daughter, rocking back and forth. “It’ll be okay, baby. You’ll see.” Kaitlyn saw tears stream down his face, too. He was leaving his whole world behind, even if it was just for an hour. “I promise,” he said, rubbing the back of Hannah’s head.
He had opened the front door, leaving the screen door closed, both to get started and to get a better view of what he was walking into. Though Kaitlyn shivered just at the idea of what she had seen out there and wouldn’t go too close to the window, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing out.
None of those things are out there, she thought. That helps.
Her gaze snapped back to Hannah and her father when the younger girl yelled. “There’s a dog out there!”
“What?” Dave said, confused. “A dog?” he looked out the door, eyes darting back and forth. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. Her words were muffled as she spoke into his legs.
“Then what are—”
“There!” she yelled again.
“Where?” he said, standing, taking a better look.
Still no dog.
“Boo, you’re just hearing things. You have to—”
“There,” Kaitlyn said, taking a step toward the door. “I just heard it, too!”
Dave raised his finger to his mouth to silence the girls. The only sound they could hear was the muffled sound of Hannah breathing heavily into denim. Then, the distant sound of a dog howling.
It sounded like a big dog. A frantic one.
Would those people go after a dog? Kaitlyn wondered. Not meaning to, she pictured the thing tearing at the person’s arm in the crashed car. Would they do the same thing to a dog if they got a hold of one? Why would they—
“It’s okay, baby,” Dave said, kneeling in front of Hannah. “That dog sounds far away. I don’t think it will bother me.”
“Just don’t go near it, okay?” she said through choked breaths.
“Don’t worry,” he said, wiping her tears away from her dark eyes. “I won’t go near it. I’ll go in the opposite direction, okay?”
Kaitlyn looked to her mother, who watched, wringing her hands. She couldn’t remember seeing her mother cry since her father moved out two years prior. Now, watching the parting between father and daughter, they were both nearly brought to tears. She caught Kaitlyn’s eye, looked at her long and hard, nodded, as a tear formed in her eye, and then gave a brief smile.
That smile is for me, Kaitlyn thought. She made her decision.
Joanne motioned toward the kitchen and Kaitlyn quietly followed her.
Neither Dave or Hannah noticed. They just hugged each other in silence.
When Kaitlyn came back to the front door just a few minutes later, nothing about the situation had changed.
Almost nothing. But, at the same time, everything.
Dave still knelt on the floor, hugging his daughter; Hannah stood, arms wrapped around her father’s neck, sobbing lightly.
“Okay,” he said as he stood. “I’ll be back in one hour.” He checked his watch. “That’s 9:13 exactly. Okay?”
Hannah nodded, clearly drained. There was no fight left in her even if she had wanted to try.
“You stay here and take care of Kaitlyn and Joanne, okay?”
She nodded again.
“Maybe you can let Kaitlyn win a game of chess? Huh? Make her feel better?”
She tried to hide the smile that appeared despite her tears.
That was the sign he had been waiting for. He smiled back at her. “Joanne?” he called. “Kaitlyn, I’m heading out now. I’ll be back in one hour!”
He looked up to Kaitlyn’s face. His mind must have been on a thousand different topics, otherwise he would have noticed that something was wrong.
“One hour, okay?” he repeated. When she didn’t respond, he finally noticed the strange, blank look on her face. “Kaitlyn?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You can’t go, Mr. Moore.”
“Now, Kaitlyn, don’t worry. Your mother will— Joanne? Your mother will be here, and I’ll be back in one—”
“You can’t go.” She looked up at him, a tear trickling down her face. “Mom already went.”
ALEX
“Oh my God, that’s gross!”
The shout, followed by surprised barks from Shadow, jolted Alex awake. Squinting his eyes against the light pouring through the window, he looked at his watch. 8:11 a.m. He hadn’t checked the time before he went to sleep, but he was pretty sure he’d slept for at least twelve hours. His arms, legs, and back were still sore, but he felt good otherwise. The fog that had been in his brain for the last few days had cleared, and he sat up quickly from the mat.
Looking across the room, he saw Ryan, still in his mat-fort but leaning out, looking to the commotion. When Ryan saw Alex, he ducked back, only a sliver of his face visible in the light.
Nicole and David stood at the window facing the street, craning to get a good view. The curtain ruffled in around them.
Alex stretched and worked a kink out of his neck. “What’s up?”
David turned excitedly to Alex. “The barricades! They worked!”
“They kept the mudmen away?” Alex said. “How do you know? Did you see them?”
“Kinda,” said Nicole, still looking out the window. “I can’t look at ‘em anymore.” She turned away from the window. David jumped back to his previous position to look out.
Alex’s curiosity was piqued. He rolled to his feet quickly, adrenaline and excitement pushing him toward whatever they were looking at. Before he got to the window, the feeling turned to dread. Shadow began barking. An angry bark. The way she had barked at Mr. Watts. Something was wrong. Something dangerous.
“Calm down, buddy,” he said, scratching the top of her head. His eyes were stuck on the window. The dog gave a few more snarling barks before sniffing at the air. She whimpered, but followed Alex to the window. They had seen a lot of gross things over the past few days. Whatever had happened outside—according to Nicole—was worse.
There were four of them. One, he recognized from the yard the previous evening. The other three were new. All four were impaled on the barricade pikes, held in place, in standing positions.
“Oh, gross!” he exclaimed. They didn’t look real. They were motionless and limp, like puppets hung up to keep their strings from getting tangled when they were no longer being used.
“Yeah, it’s super gross,” David said. “But, that’s what the spikes are there for.”
“I thought they were just to scare them off,” Alex said, turning to the other boy.
“Naw,” David said, still looking out at them. “I don’t think they get scared. Or anything. I don’t think they think.”
“You would know, spaz,” Nicole said from behind them, over her shoulder.
Above the dead creatures on spikes, leaves rustled in the morning breeze. Some flitted to the ground in spiralling arcs. Alex took a deep breath, hoping to get a revitalizing lungful of fresh air; the scent of a brand new day.
What he got was a terrible stench.
“Oh my God!” he gasped, coughing out the smell. He staggered back from the window.
“What?” David asked, turning to him, concerned.
“That stink,” Alex said, wiping his nose to wipe away the odour. “What is it?”
“Oh, that,” David said, nonchalantly. “I guess it’s coming from them.” He gestured to the impaled figures through the window.
“Ugh, it’s gross!”
Alex said, pulling his shirt up over his mouth and nose. The smell of his own sweat was like a breath of fresh air in comparison. He went back to the window to continue watching the mudmen dangle.
“Oh my God, you can smell them from here!” Nicole said behind them, plugging her nose. “We have to do something about them!”
“We’ll just close the windows,” David said, as he tried to do so. It budged an inch, but not nearly enough to stop the rank breeze from coming in.
“Nice try, Hulk,” Alex said to him with a smirk. It was the first joke he’d made since they found him. Maybe since this whole thing started. With some effort, he slowly shut the window completely.
The smell lingered.
Nicole looked back out at the bodies. “We can’t just leave them out there!”
“Why not?” asked David. “Maybe they’ll act as a warning, like ... like when tribes or whatever put heads on pikes outside their villages!”
“Yeah,” she replied, her arms crossed in front of her, “but you just said that they can’t think. If they can’t think, they probably don’t care if their buddies are dead.”
David thought about that. “Probably not, no. But, I mean, they’re not hurting anyone out there.”
“They stink,” she said flatly. “And it’s not even noon yet.”
“So?”
“So if it stays nice and sunny out, they’re just gonna bake and stink more and more.”
“So? We’ll have the window closed.”
“Yeah, but the stink might bring more of them!”
“Yeah, but the barricades will stop them too!”
“Not if there’s like a hundred of them!”
“There’s not a hundred of them!”
“How do you know?!”
“There’s not.”
“Just go get rid of them!”
“I—” David stopped the rapid back and forth.
“What?” Nicole took a step back. She had gotten closer and closer to her brother with each argument she made.
David chewed on his lip. “I don’t wanna go out there. With those ... things.”
“Oh my God,” Nicole said shaking her head. “You killed them!”
“What?” David said, wide-eyed. “No, I didn’t! The spikes did! And they might have been dead before that! You’re the one that was calling them ‘deadies’!”
“You killed them this time, David! Your stupid trap!”
“My stupid trap saved our lives!”
“Whatever!”
“Oh, good one, Nicole!”
“I’ll help.”
Nicole and David both stopped and looked at Alex.
“What?” they said in unison.
Alex swallowed. “If you guys wanna go out and move those ... things ... out there, I’ll help.”
“Thank you,” Nicole said, insincerely. She then turned back to David, glaring. “Glad to see that someone is being helpful today.”
“Helpful?” David said, shocked. “I built those things! I’ve been building things this whole time! Those are my spikes!”
“So they stopped because of you?”
“Yes!”
“They are stuck on your spikes?”
“Yes!”
“Glad to hear you admit it,” Nicole said with a smile. “Go grab some gloves from your little workshop. We’re gonna help you move those things.”
David looked defeated. “But ...”
Nicole walked away. “But you’re dealing with the grossest ones.”
David stared after her, not knowing what to say. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
Alex nodded at him. “Nose-plugs too, if you got ‘em.”
Alex could see only darkness at the bottom as the three of them walked downstairs. All of the windows and doors had been boarded up by David and Nicole after they had arrived. It was also musty smelling, though that must have just been the smell of the wood as the centre had only been closed up for a few days.
A few days? How much longer will it go on?
One of the boards covering the window could be moved to look out; everything they had done to protect themselves inside the building would have been pointless if they walked right into the middle of a crowd of mudmen. A ray of light shone straight through as David peeked out.
After a few seconds of craning to see as much as he could, David gave the thumbs up. The three of them agreed to talk as little as possible—limiting the noise meant less chance of anything hearing them. Thumbs up meant that the coast was clear.
Their plan was simple: Alex and David—dressed in long, thick coats from the centre’s Lost and Found and thick rubber gloves David had found in the basement—would pry the mudmen off the spikes with a rake and a long gardening hoe. Then, they would shove or roll or somehow get them to the dumpsters across the lot. The whole thing should only take a few minutes. Nicole would stay by the door to act as a look-out and keep the door open in case they had to make a run for it. All three were glad that David had found a package of thin, white painters’ masks to lessen the smell from the dangling bodies.
When they opened the door, because it recessed about five feet into the building, everything looked so normal. The lawn across the street was thick and green, leaves were scattered around, blowing in the breeze. Birds chirped nearby.
Reality crashed back down as they walked out and saw the mudmen on the pikes. Nicole stayed behind and gave both boys a thumbs-up and a nod. David and Alex looked at each other. Neither wanted to go first, so they stood nodding at each other to go ahead.
When neither did, Nicole grew impatient. “Just go!”
Alex heard the venom in her low voice.
Neither moved.
“David! Go!”
David shook his head, wide-eyed at the idea of going any nearer to the dead mudmen.
Suddenly Alex raised his hand; he had an idea. He made a fist and shook it three times. David nodded. The leader would be decided by rock/paper/scissors.
One. Two. Three.
Alex’s rock beat David’s scissors.
David gave Alex his best pleading look. He put up two fingers: Best two out of three?
Alex shook his head. Fate had decided. Rock/paper/scissors was not to be argued with.
David sighed, looking at the row of limp but still standing bodies. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. Alex followed directly behind him.
Large flies circled the mudmens’ heads. Blood and some other goopy fluid (for a moment Alex thought maybe it was mud) splattered them, dripped out of them, and had pooled at their feet. They all had large wounds on their faces, arms, legs, torsos, everywhere. They had been through something pretty rough, all before getting impaled on seven-foot pikes and baked in the sun for hours.
They were a mess.
The closer the boys got, the more details they took in. The patterns on their clothes. The brands of shoes they wore. Each step told them a little more about who these four had been before they turned.
When they got about five feet from the spikes, David stopped abruptly. Alex, with his eyes on the mudmen, almost walked right into him.
The most vivid fact about the creatures was that they were dead. Flies landed on their eyes, in their mouths, everywhere. Not a flinch. They weren’t breathing. They weren’t moving. Their clothes, matted down with filth, barely even moved in the breeze. They were dead as dead could be.
David let out a heavy sigh of relief, just as the closest one turned its head and looked right at him. One of its eyes was milky white, the other, just a pulpy hole. It let out a low moan, raised its arms toward the boys and took a ‘step,’ pushing the pike further into its own body.
“Jesus crap!” David blurted out, trying to scramble away, but falling into Alex instead. Both boys hit the ground, trying desperately to get to their feet. The things weren’t dead. Or they were, but they could still move. They could still get them and eat them.
Helpless, with David clambering on top of him, Alex thought
of the mudmen he had seen over the past few days. Some had been burned. Some had lost limbs. Some had bled out. They all kept going.
They can’t be killed.
David finally got to his feet, unconsciously pulling Alex up with him. The two boys ran back to the door, screaming.
NICOLE
Nicole was able to take in the entire scene; all of its players and setting. She screamed when she saw the things—now two of them—moving. She desperately wanted to run back into the building, but she had to wait for the boys. It seemed like they were taking forever, but they finally got there. Once she, Alex, and David were back inside, she slammed the door.
The would-be clean-up crew stood in the lobby, leaning solidly against the door, panting. David crumpled to the floor, hyperventilating.
After gaining some control over herself, Nicole felt the need to ask, “They did move, right?” Another gasp of breath. “Like, I didn’t just imagine that, right? They actually moved?”
Alex, still focusing on the floor, nodded. “Yeah.” Gasp of breath. “One did, anyway.”
“I saw two of them move, definitely,” Nicole said. “Maybe all of them.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” David said between breaths. “It almost got me! They’re all alive, and they’re going to get us! Sooner or later they’re going to get all—”
“We have to get back upstairs, before they get in here,” Nicole said. She knew that David would spiral out into a full panic if she didn’t stop him “You guys okay?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah.”
David dragged himself to his feet, but said nothing. At least he seemed more manageable now.
Once they got to the bedroom, they slammed the door behind them. Nicole checked that Ryan was still in his fort, then helped Alex block the door with a pile of mats. All they could do was wait for the inevitable.
Rise of the Mudmen Page 15