“I tried calling him again before you got here,” I say, “but he didn’t answer.”
“He probably took six Xanax and silenced his phone.”
The TV clicks into silence in the living room. Jesse and Holly murmur, and I lean off my stool to watch Jesse mess with the modem by the TV. “What happened?”
“Think the internet’s out,” he says.
I reach across the counter for my phone. Sure enough, the Wi-Fi symbol is missing. As I watch, my phone’s data icon changes from LTE to E and then disappears entirely. “Data doesn’t seem to be working, either. But I still have service.”
Internet can be finicky here, especially in the evenings, but data is usually fine. It would be worrisome when coupled with what Jesse showed me earlier, if that hadn’t been completely unbelievable. Pop stands from the couch holding his phone, on which he’s always reading a book or messing around. “Mine’s out, too. Maybe it’s your zombie apocalypse, Jess.” He winks at me and walks down the hall to the bathroom.
Mitch drops her phone on the counter. “Just as well. I wasn’t looking forward to the emails about my latest recommendation.”
“What now?” I love to hear how people flip out at Mitch’s proposals. Mainly, her clients are corporations attempting to go greener, usually for the optics, a word Mitch despises, and they’re dragged to the green side kicking and screaming. Not only is Mitch from Eugene, but she went to Berkeley. They have to know what they’re getting into when they hire her.
“They offered me more money to fudge a few numbers. I said I’d see what I could do and sent them the same report.”
I laugh and, not for the first time, wish I had Mitch’s mettle. Her next words are cut off by a sharp bark. Then another. Willa races for the front door, growling the entire time.
“She’s a good guard dog,” Mitch says. “I don’t know what she thinks she’s going to do with her fifteen-pound self once she has them in her clutches, but she gets points for enthusiasm.”
Jesse walks past the opening of the dining area and out of sight, where the living room continues to the foyer. “It’s too early to be Clara,” Holly says. She picks up Willa, who quits growling, and follows Jesse.
“There’s a guy out there,” Jesse calls. “Coming up the driveway.”
I head for the living room, where he has his hands cupped to the front window. “Is it Dad?” I ask.
“Don’t think so.”
I stand beside him at the glass. The door light is dim, and it doesn’t reach far, but it’s enough to see a figure on the gravel driveway, trudging slowly but steadily for the house. Another shape materializes from the darkness of the road: a woman who limps with the same slow gait. Off in the distance, a siren wails and then fades as the emergency vehicle travels farther away.
“Think they had a car accident?” Mitch asks right by my ear, and I jump.
Jesse unlocks the door. “I’ll go check it out.”
Their dragging steps make my skin crawl. The thought of Jesse outside is so alarming that I yank him back by his shirt and slam the door hard enough to rattle pictures on the wall. “No!”
Jesse’s eyes are wide. “Mom, I’m—”
“Wait until they get here. We’ll help them then, if they need help.”
Normally, I’m all for assisting in a crisis, but I want them to turn around. Leave. It’s a visceral reaction, like that video. Slowly, so slowly I can barely stand it, the man hits the front walk. We gasp when he reaches the light.
He’s around my age, dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks. The shirt was once white, though it’s now a deep red, still wet and glistening. His right arm is shredded meat, and it ends in exposed bone instead of a hand. But it’s his face that makes me woozy. One cheek is close to gone, an ear missing. His eyes search the window, the door, yet at the same time appear dull and unfocused. His head moves in little jerks. His mouth twitches. Blood cakes his lips and teeth.
“What the fuck?” Jesse whispers.
The man trips on the front steps. He doesn’t put out his arms to break his fall, doesn’t flinch as he lands on the brick. He has no reaction except to raise himself up with his one hand, get back on his feet, and stand swaying in the light. The woman catches up to him, though neither acknowledges the other’s existence. Her eyes are just as vacant. Skin pale. Mouth bloody. She wears a skirt and blouse, though only the top of her blouse remains, and her abdomen is a gory, gaping hollow. With a wound like that, you should be bleeding out on the ground. You should be dead.
The woman spots us. Her mouth opens with a rasping hiss that travels through the glass. She staggers into the bushes with a sudden fervor, and we jump as her hand slams the window, leaving behind a dark blot. Blood. Maybe hers. Maybe not. Either way, it’s horrible. It’s mesmerizing. Horribly mesmerizing.
The woman is too short to see inside, but her palm beats without stopping. Another hand joins hers. The man’s gruesome face comes next. His mouth hits the glass and moves side to side, smearing blood and saliva in an arc.
“What’s going on out there?” Pop calls from the hall. “I—” He enters the living room and watches the hands pound the glass. Three hands, now that the woman uses both of hers.
My explanation sticks in my throat. There aren’t words, not for this or for the cold, creeping terror that increases with every strike. I want to turn off the lights and hide in the basement. I want to crawl under my bed with the imaginary monsters because these monsters are fucking real. These monsters can see us, and I have no doubt they’re out for blood.
“The lights,” I manage to say.
I trip for the floor lamp while Mitch gets the switches. In unspoken agreement, we leave the outside light on. This isn’t the kind of thing you want wandering around unseen. No fucking way do you let these things out of your sight.
“Mom?” Holly asks in a small voice.
I wrap my arms around her. She presses her face into my shoulder, and Willa’s breath comes in quick blasts on my side. I wish I could do the same as Holly but with my own father, who’s edging toward the window.
“Daddy, no!” I whisper.
He raises a hand in reply and stops a foot away, his broad frame bent to see out the glass, then turns to Jesse. I can’t see his face well in the dark, or hear what he says, but Jesse nods and leaves for the kitchen.
At the rattle of the knife drawer, I transfer Holly to Mitch’s arms and follow. Jesse has placed two knives on the counter, and he holds my good chef’s knife up to the dim light of the stove hood. I take it from his trembling hand. Mine is no steadier.
“We might need them,” Jesse says. “What if they break the glass?”
His face and lips are pale, but his eyes are ready to fight. Ready to fight what’s outside—ready to fight me if I fight him on it. Though I love him for that, there is no way in hell he’s going near those things. “I know. I’ll use this knife.”
“Mom, I think they’re zombies,” Jesse whispers. He’s broadened out like his dad, has the same straight nose and cheekbones for days, but currently he looks closer to the chubby-cheeked little boy who’d wake from a nightmare and crawl into my side of the bed.
Maybe they aren’t zombie zombies, but they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter. I’m completely unequipped to deal with this, but I’ve always tried to be the person my kids need—a joker, a hardass, strong, comforting—even if I have to fake it. I’m not going to stop now, and I’m faking it big time.
I take Jesse’s arm with my free hand and look him in the eye. “I think so, too.”
He swallows, then squares his shoulders and grabs the knives from the counter before we return to the living room. Pop, Mitch, and Holly stand away from the windows. The beating hasn’t ceased, though it’s slowed somewhat. Mitch’s phone screen lights up as she dials 911, then darkens when she lifts it to her ear.
After the third attempt, Mitch shakes her head. “They’re not answering.”
She turns to the right and drops
her phone to the floor. A face peers through the picture windows; another man, bloody, with a sagging mouth. My hand tightens on my knife. I’m not sure I could use it—I don’t know what the hell I’d do with it—but it makes me feel better.
Pop herds Holly and Jesse toward us, picks up Mitch and me on his way, then shuttles us all through the kitchen and into the hall. Enough light comes from the stove hood to see everyone’s wide eyes and expressions of disbelief.
“We have a problem,” Pop says, and I almost laugh. We have a problem, all right. Three of them. I press a hand to my chest to keep in the hysteria. “We need to close the gate. We could end up surrounded if there’s more.”
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Holly asks. “Like that video.” Jesse puts an arm around her while she fights her tears with shaky breaths. “Are they?”
No one answers. Finally, Pop says, “They sure look that way.”
His concerned gaze sweeps to me, but it diminishes some after he takes me in. Nothing in this world matters more than Holly and Jesse. I’d die for them, I’d fight for them to my last breath, just as he’d fight for all of us.
“I’ll go out the back,” he says. “Get my truck and try to lead them out. I might need someone to close the gate.”
“I’ll do it,” Jesse says.
Pop’s truck is behind the house by his RV. My stomach turns at the thought of going outside, but it heaves at the thought of Jesse going. “No,” I say. “I will.”
8
Rose
The sliding glass doors in my bedroom lead to the covered patio, and it isn’t until I see our king bed that I remember Ethan’s out there. I dispense with that thought before my brain goes into overload and concentrate on zipping up my coat.
Pop shines a flashlight out the glass. “Nothing,” he says. “Ready, Rosie?”
“No, but yes.”
He takes my arm. “If something happens, you run for the house. You do not wait for me. Understand?” I nod, mainly because arguing would be futile, but the chance I’d leave him is slim to none.
“Be careful,” Holly whispers.
Jesse opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. “If—if they are zombies, only head wounds will kill them. You have to get the brain somehow.” He seems embarrassed he’s said it, and I quash another hysterical laugh.
“Good to know,” Pop says, sliding open the door. “Back in a jiff.”
Mitch puts her arms around the kids’ shoulders. “Careful.”
The air on the patio is cool and damp. Rain is coming, as it usually does until mid- to late June. The world feels humongous. Big and ungated and ready to attack from all sides.
We begin the walk through the grass. Our property mostly levels out here until closer to the back fence, and though Pop’s fifth wheel isn’t far, it feels like two miles. My shallow, edge-of-panic breaths are loud in my ears. My lungs burn from the surplus of cold air.
“Almost there,” Pop says. His white pickup looms ahead, parked just outside the camper. “I’ll run in for my gun first.”
He opens the passenger’s side door for me. Once I climb in, he shuts it gently and moves to the RV. I watch him mount the steps and go inside, then see a brief flicker of the flashlight through the window. Only the back of the house and surrounding land are visible from this spot, along with a stretch of road that’s hidden in the blackness of night.
A minute passes. Another. Pop should be back by now. I turn in my seat, mouth dry. I should’ve gone with him. One of them could’ve gotten into the camper somehow. The image of him dying on the floor of the fifth wheel’s living room, weakly crying out for help, grows so strong that I grip the door handle. Thirty seconds and I’ll go after him. Sitting alone in the truck, in the dark, is torture.
I’ve counted to twenty by the time he appears and sits behind the wheel. “Damn gun safe battery died and wouldn’t read my fingerprint. Had to find the key.”
I cringe as the engine roars to life. Quiet the truck is not. He puts it in gear and rolls toward the house with the lights off, veering left to go around. From here, it’s a gentle slope to the gate. The plan is to lead them to the road, then quickly reverse up to the opening, thereby shielding me from danger when I jump out to close the gate. Pop wanted me to drive, safe in the truck, but I was sure, with the way my body trembles, that I’d end up landing the truck in a ditch. Or worse, ramming it into the fence and destroying the only protection between us and these monsters.
“I’ll put on the lights in a—” Pop cuts off as a sedan’s headlights bounce along the road, moving in our direction.
We watch in silence. The sedan illuminates five more people—if you can call them that—staggering down the asphalt. The three outside the house aren’t the only ones. When the car nears, it swings into the oncoming lane. One of the figures lunges for it, and the car knocks the body into the opposite lane with a thunk of flesh on metal.
The sedan speeds on toward town with the remaining four bodies tagging along. The one it threw to the side struggles to stand and then lumbers after them. Like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t just hit by a car. My eyes adjust to the gloom, and I spot the three who were at the living room windows heading for the road.
“I’ll get down to the gate once they’re through,” Pop says. “Then we’ll close it from the inside.”
“Okay.” I try to keep my voice steady.
The silence is broken by the wail of police vehicles and the honk of fire engines from the direction of town. Although muffled by distance, my heart speeds up. I’m positive the reasons for all that noise are walking down the road. There are probably many more in town, where there are tens of thousands of people.
Pop’s pistol sits in his lap, the barrel carefully turned away from me. I’ve shot it a few times at his insistence, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not against guns—I just have no use for them. They frighten me a little, but not as much as those bloody bodies do, and I’m thankful it’s here. Thankful Pop is here. I’m an adult with two adult kids, but his presence has always made me feel safe. You fuck with Sam McGann at your own risk, and I’ve never been happier for that fact.
The woman is first out of the gate, followed by man one, then man two. A minute after the second man hits the asphalt, I breathe again. Pop puts the truck in neutral and coasts on the quieter grass, then stops at the end of the driveway. “I’ll get it. You wait here.”
Our fence is made of four-foot-high, wood-framed panels with thick gauge welded wire in their centers, though its posts extend to six feet and are connected by a wood top rail. It isn’t the strongest fence in the world, and it won’t hide us worth a damn, but it’s better than nothing. I long for a tall privacy fence or the thick logs of Fort Clatsop up in Astoria. Concrete would be even better.
Pop opens his door and steps out. He pushes the gate closed while I grip my knife and cringe at the familiar squeal of hinges I always forget to oil. He latches it, stands for a few seconds looking down the road, then returns to the truck. Once inside, he says, “I’m going to park against the gate. That way nothing can push it open.”
“Good idea,” I say, then suck in a breath. “Ethan. He needs to get in.”
Pop looks me over with keen eyes full of questions, the first of which is likely Where the hell is Ethan? I don’t have the answer and now am genuinely worried. If there are eight of those things here, on our quiet road, then town must be swarmed with them. Less than a mile up the road, the houses sit closer together, more like suburbia. Another mile, and you’re in Eugene with its closely packed houses, stores, and downtown.
“Ethan’s smart enough to park his car near the fence and climb over,” Pop says, and I nod. He moves the truck to the gate and turns it off. “All right, let’s get back to the house. I’ll go first.” Pop leaves through his door, and I scoot across the seats to follow, since my side is flush against the fence. “Have to grab something from the back. Wait here.”
I step to the gravel driveway. This went easi
er than expected, and my body hums with relief. I close the door quietly and turn to face Pop, who’s coming around the tailgate. I whisper, “What do you th—”
The figure closes in. There’s a brief moment to comprehend the man isn’t Pop before he slams into me. I stumble back and hit the ground. He follows me down, his weight forcing the air from my lungs. In the dark, I can barely see who—what—has me pinned, but he smells like shit and urine and raw, bloody meat.
I lift my arms to cover my face. He dives into my neck. Dull, burning pain follows and is immediately overtaken by panic. I shove at his torso, buck my legs, but though I succeed in moving him down an inch or two, I’m no match for his weight.
My knife. It has to be close by. I push at the monster’s head with my left hand and snatch at grass and gravel with my right until my fingers hit on the wooden handle. I grasp it in my fist, bring the blade into the air, and stab at his head. It barely makes a dent. I hack its neck, its shoulder. Every jab sinks deep, but the mouth never stops grinding. It never pauses.
Breathless panic turns to a shrill, piercing scream. The thing lifts its head. When he comes for my face, I thrust the knife into the open space and drive it upward, barely aware of a gunshot nearby. The six-inch blade disappears into his mouth, driving so deep that only two inches of handle peek from between its lips.
It drops onto my chest, and I scream again. It doesn’t move. Doesn’t gnaw. I squirm to get out from under the body before I lose my mind entirely, but it’s lifted and tossed to the side, and then Pop is on his knees beside me. “Rose? Rosie!”
My sobs are loud in the silence. This amount of fear is too much to keep inside. Pop holds me by the shoulders as I rise to my feet, gulping for oxygen. My neck hurts like a fucker. I lift my hand to the spot and probe gingerly. When I draw it away, the pale skin of my fingers is dark with blood.
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 5