“Well, at least we have something to offer.”
Jameson’s gaze fell to her neck and Phoebe flushed at the contact. It was almost as though a phantom hand had brushed against the skin instead of just his eyes focusing on the healing bite wound.
Before the conversation could continue, Leland swung the door of the store open.
“Phoebe, you okay to help me gather some stuff up?” he called out to her.
Phoebe stood and walked as fast as she could without getting dizzy over to him.
“Don’t be so loud,” she whispered. “What if those things are around somewhere?”
Leland gestured her in, looking contrite for his earlier loudness. There were no carts in the store, so Phoebe scoured the backroom for something she could use to gather things up and carry them in.
“Here, take this,” she told Leland as he joined her in the storage area. One cart had been in use in the back area for returned cans. Phoebe dumped them out and pushed the cart toward Leland.
She took a large cardboard box for herself. “Pull ups for the kids and size six diapers if you see them. Carmen still wears them occasionally. I think we should grab light food and water. Anything you see you think might be useful.”
Leland grabbed a few small sewing kits, three dark blue tarps, several rolls of duct tape, and two gas cans before he even looked at food.
Into Phoebe’s box went several large bottles of water, power bars aplenty, and a small mound of sugary snacks. If they had to be on the road for an extended period of time, things like honeybuns and snack cakes would give the most carbs in the smallest amount. Even if they’d be accompanied by a sugar crash, they were individually wrapped and light. Not ideal, but they would have to make do until they could reach her uncle’s farm.
“I know where we should go,” Phoebe told Leland. “My uncle has a farm. It’s on the other side of the city, so it sucks that I was out on the drive.”
“Yeah, how are you feeling?” Leland asked as they made to leave.
“Awful,” Phoebe admitted. “I kinda just want to go back to sleep.”
“Get back in the back, then,” Leland suggested. “Give us the address of your uncle’s place and we’ll get there.”
Phoebe hesitated as she tucked the box into the back corner of the van’s storage area. “I don’t know the address.”
“Well, do you know how to get there?” Leland asked. He opened one of the van’s back passenger doors and began wedging items under the feet of the children. They weren’t tall enough to reach the floor, anyway, so there was space to utilize.
“Only through the city,” Phoebe admitted. “I don’t know how to get there from here. I don’t even know the name of the little town his farm is in.”
“Well, shit,” Leland sighed. “Do you know any way to get the address or directions?”
Phoebe sat on the edge of the back of the van and accepted the tarps and tape he handed her. By unspoken agreement, they’d decided to block the sunlight from the back part of the van. It would take a few moments and leave them exposed, but if they wanted to protect Jameson, it had to be done.
Leland handed off the gas cans to Elise. “Can you fill these up, too?”
“Doesn’t seem like I’ll have to worry about paying off the card anytime soon,” she said with a smile as she accepted the cans.
“Let me,” Jameson suggested as he relived Elise of the cans. “Sit in the passenger seat and wait for us to be ready to go. Leland can drive the next stretch.”
“Yeah,” Leland agreed as he helped Phoebe with the tape and tarps. “If we can figure out where we’re going.”
Elise, instead of doing as Jameson suggested, joined the kids in the backseat and started helping them change pull-ups and pick out food. They were scared and drained by the situation, but something about Elise calmed them better than anything the others could offer.
After she’d had her pull-up changed and chosen a honey bun for breakfast, Carmen surprised everyone by reaching a hand out and placing it on Elise’s belly.
“Baby,” she said in a soft voice. “Mommy had baby.”
Phoebe went a shade paler as she heard what Carmen said. Leland and Jameson exchanged looks.
“That’s right,” Phoebe whispered. She slumped forward and dropped the roll of duct tape she had. “Carmen’s parents just had another baby. We left him there…”
Leland didn’t know what to do to help take the crestfallen expression from Phoebe’s face. He continued to tape up the back and finished with the task just as Jameson returned to his place by the girl.
Jameson tucked the gas cans up against the back of the kids’ seat and turned his attention to Phoebe.
“You can’t beat yourself up over the people you couldn’t save, Phoebe,” Jameson insisted. “If that’s a habit you get into with this…you’re going to end up killed yourself. You’ve done so much more than most adults would be capable of.”
“But he was a baby,” Phoebe interjected.
“He was probably dead before you even showed up,” Leland said flatly.
Jameson glared at Leland, but Phoebe nodded her agreement. “You’re right,” she said. “And me going in after him would have just killed me.”
“We should get going,” Elise suggested, her voice as soft as when she’d been talking to the children.
“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Leland said. “Phoebe has a good goal, but she doesn’t know the way there. She doesn’t know the town or the address.”
“I think I know a place we can get it,” Phoebe said. She stared at the tarp, eyes distant, as though she looked through it instead of at it. “At the daycare…my mom has an appointment book. All of her important contacts and address information were in it.”
“Can you tell us the way there from here?” Jameson asked.
Phoebe nodded. “Just get us back in the city and I can guide us.”
Chapter Seventeen – Return to the Daycare
Less than ten minutes back in the city, Phoebe was able to direct Leland where he needed to go.
“We’ll get there in about twenty minutes if we don’t have any more problems,” Phoebe assured Leland as he swerved around another crashed car.
The area had taken a dire turn in the first night since being overrun by Rippers. Though some people may have considered themselves safe enough by barricading homes and businesses, the evidence presented in the morning after was contradictory to that opinion.
Any place that had evidence of human occupation in the previous night had been torn into. Hastily constructed barricades had been ripped off and discarded. Blood painted doorways, pavement, windows. Far fewer bodies than expected littered the streets.
Cars which had crashed or been forcibly stopped had been given the same treatment as the van Phoebe and the kids had had stolen from them. Windshields were smashed through. Some doors had been torn off and tossed into the street.
Any bodies on the pavement or left in doorways had been so mutilated they would be unrecognizable as the people they began as.
“Where are the rest of the bodies?” Elise asked. Phoebe was glad someone else had the same thought.
“Yeah, I thought the same thing,” Leland spoke up. He maneuvered the vehicle around a pile of mangled metal that used to be three separate cars. “From the looks of just the accidents, there should be more, right?”
“That doesn’t count all of…that,” Elise agreed as she waved at a clinic which had a banner hanging drunkenly from its front windows. Though the banner declared, ‘safe,’ it was obviously the opposite.
The front doors looked as though someone had gone at them with a supersized can opener. The warped metal was stained with blood and bits of flesh. Around the parking lot, Rippers wandered and bumped into each other. There were not nearly the level of skill, ferocity, and cooperation they’d exhibited the night before.
Leland stared intently at two of the Rippers bumping into cars in the parking lot.
&n
bsp; “Anyone have the same thought I just did?” he asked as he pointed to the two men in what were previously long white coats. One had an arm ripped off and stained his pristine coat crimson. The other had part of his throat torn out and was soaked vermillion from his jaw to the middle of his torso.
“They look like they might have been doctors at the clinic,” Elise picked up on his thought. “Wait, didn’t you watch the news?”
Leland shook his head. “It was on when we got to the apartment, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. Why?”
“The disease that changes the Rippers is highly infectious,” Jameson offered from the way back. “Anyone they bite who isn’t damaged irreparably will apparently turn into one of them.”
“Oh, shit,” Leland said under his breath as he drove away from the clinic and down the road which would take them to the daycare.
“Just past that blue house and it’ll be on the right,” Phoebe told Leland.
Elise’s van slid into the parking lot of the daycare.
“Oh my God,” Phoebe exclaimed as she recognized a new vehicle parked in front of the building. “Oh my God, I can’t believe they made it here!”
As soon as Leland parked the car, Phoebe leapt out and approached the other vehicle.
“Phoebe, wait!” Jameson snapped, but she didn’t listen to him.
The doors of the car opened and two harried, worried adults met Phoebe halfway across the parking lot.
“Allie, Joe, I’m so glad to see you!” Phoebe said as she began to pull them toward the van.
“Hannah?” the woman asked as she followed Phoebe with quick steps and wide eyes. “Is she here? We didn’t…we didn’t see her…in there.”
“I have her in the van,” Phoebe assured them with tears on her face. She didn’t know why she was crying, but the hot tears continued to streak down her face unabated as she pulled the van’s back door open.
Hannah was unbuckled and in her parents’ arms almost as soon as the door cracked open. She cried in great, heaving wails that echoed across the parking lot as she clung to her father’s neck. Allie stroked Hannah’s back in slow circles and tried to calm her with soothing words.
“We kept coming back…yesterday and today. I can’t believe you’re actually here, and she’s here…Thank you,” Joe said. He composed himself and continued, “We’re getting out of the state. Heading north. You should go, too. Thank you again, for Hannah.” He turned back to their car with Hannah clutched in his arms.
“We have a place,” Phoebe assured Allie before she went to follow her husband and daughter.
The older woman gave the teen a tight squeeze and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Bye, Hannah,” Phoebe called to the younger girl. With her face buried in her father’s shoulder, she doubted the girl heard her. “Be safe.”
“Let’s get in quick,” Leland suggested as he joined Phoebe in the parking lot. “Her crying probably drew some of them.”
Phoebe nodded her agreement and they walked toward the daycare.
“I can’t believe Hannah’s parents were here,” Phoebe said. She brushed tears away from her face and smiled for the first time in what felt like ages.
“Yeah, pretty cool,” Leland agreed. “They get they’re family back. Hope it sticks.”
“Thinking it will makes me feel better about all of this since I saw…since yesterday.”
Phoebe avoided looking in the play area out back. Leland noticed her hesitation and wished Jameson could be the one to do this with him. The teenaged girl was resilient, but her skin was ashen and her steps were unstable. Not only was she back in a nightmare, she’d been injured not long ago.
“Let me go first, okay?” Leland said as he approached the door.
Phoebe nodded and held back as Leland pulled the door open.
The smell made them both jerk back. In the enclosed heat, the bodies Phoebe had covered had begun to decompose. The stench of meat left out and forgotten mingled with a visceral scent neither of them had ever encountered.
The worst thing Leland could compare the powerful stench with was the dead dog he’d had to move away from his aunt’s mailbox two summers ago. And as a comparison, they were nowhere near the same level.
“You can stay out here,” Leland suggested.
Phoebe covered her face with the top part of her shirt. She grimaced and said, “Don’t be stupid. I can find the appointment book a lot quicker than me telling you places I think it might be. Come on.”
Leland rolled his eyes and held open the door. “After you, then,” he mumbled.
Phoebe took a deep breath of untainted air and stepped forward. Three steps into the daycare, she heard Leland follow.
“Just stand watch here,” Phoebe suggested in a whisper. “I should be able to grab it quick and we can get going.”
Leland stood near the door and kept it cracked. Getting some fresh air into the building would be helpful, he thought.
Phoebe moved among the draped sheets and blankets she’d placed over the small, mangled bodies of the children she used to care for. She tried not to look at how the fabric molded to the misshapen forms beneath and instead focused on finding her mother’s appointment book.
“Desk?” she asked herself in a whisper. She shuffled through some papers, opened the squeaky drawer. The appointment book wasn’t there.
For a moment, Phoebe felt a shock of terror. Had it been in the van when it was stolen? No, she told herself. She’d seen her mother bring the book in and she hadn’t gone back out to her vehicle before she’d been killed.
“So where did she leave it?” Phoebe muttered to herself.
Before she moved to the shoe rack, where her mother sometimes dumped stuff if she was in a rush, Phoebe heard a thump from the back area.
She jumped and skittered back toward the front door. When nothing came at her, she decided she’d heard either something from outside or her mind had played a trick on her. The sound had been muffled. Even if there wasn’t a direct threat, hearing anything made her think they needed to get a move on. The place wouldn’t stay empty forever.
Phoebe made her way over to the shoe rack and saw her mother’s light jacket. When she’d opened the daycare at 6a.m., it had been chilly. Phoebe picked up the light gray coat and clutched it close to her.
“Oh, Mom,” she whispered. Tears squeezed out of her eyes as she brought the fabric to her nose and inhaled the barest hint of her mother’s perfume.
When she lifted her mother’s jacket, Phoebe saw the small black appointment book resting underneath. She picked it up and held that to her chest, as well. The last remnants she might ever have of her mother. She held them to her like the precious mementos they were.
“Got it?” Leland asked as he approached.
Before Phoebe could respond, a louder thump sounded from the back. Leland’s raised voice had caught the attention of whatever had made the noise the first time.
Phoebe shushed him, but their presence had been made. The door to the closet in which she’d hidden with the children burst open. With a shrill wail, a noticeably infected man tumbled out.
Phoebe screamed at his torn, bloodied appearance and stumbled back. “Get away!” she hollered as the Ripper came at her.
Leland raised the metal baseball bat he’d taken from beneath the convenience store counter. As Phoebe ducked a swing from the attacking man, Leland put all his upper body strength into a swing of his own.
He clipped the seemingly rabid man on the shoulder and spun him away, right back toward Phoebe.
The man pounced; barely deterred at all by the solid blow Leland had landed on him.
Phoebe shrieked and batted his hand away as he clawed his way toward her. Blood that had yet to dry soaked through the blankets Phoebe had used to cover the murdered children and drenched her pale blue leggings.
The Ripper dragging himself toward Phoebe was missing an eye but the uninjured one was an unblemished, warm chocolate orb. Hal
f of his shaggy blond hair had been torn from his head and several teeth had been knocked out in a previous struggle. Phoebe thought for some reason it’d be even worse to be torn into with the jagged remnants of his damaged teeth.
“Leland!” Phoebe yelped as she scrambled backward. The room spun and only solidified when her back hit the far wall of the bedroom. She didn’t feel like she even had enough strength to stand when she needed to leap up and run away.
Leland came up from behind the man and swung the baseball bat once more. He hit the Ripper square in the head with so much force the man’s face struck the wall beside the corner Phoebe had wedged herself into. Bones cracked and protruded from his torn cheeks. The previously undamaged eye collapsed under the viciousness of Leland’s swing.
Thick, dark blood smeared against the wall. There was much less of the stuff than Phoebe anticipated there would be, and some of it seemed to be drying out. What slid from the wounds seems more like wet sand than blood.
“Come on. We gotta get out of here.” Leland held out his hand to Phoebe to help her up.
Phoebe stumbled but Leland steadied her. “I think I’m still a little woozy or whatever from the fall,” she admitted.
“No, Leland, I don’t want to wait outside,” Leland mimicked Phoebe’s earlier protests about him entering alone. “It’ll just take longer if I stay out here and don’t go in to try and get my ass munched on.”
“No comment,” Phoebe muttered. “Let’s just get back to the others.”
“Just follow my lead this time, okay?” Leland said in a kinder voice as they stepped into the parking lot.
“Oh, no,” Phoebe said. There were three Rippers in the parking lot.
Leland wore a determined expression. “They pulled the van right up to the door,” he pointed out. “Just get in where the kids are and climb into the back, okay? I’ll get in the driver’s seat and we’ll haul ass.”
The New Night Novels (Book 1): Rippers: A New Night Novel Page 9