by Fitch, E. M.
“Fire in the hole!”
It was Jack’s voice, made soft by the distance but clear in the silent night. The ground trembled underneath her as the first explosion went off and Kaylee had a moment of surprise and confusion when she didn’t hear the terrible blast only felt the quiver in her feet and saw the building wobble. But then the boom of noise rushed at her like a gale and echoed in cracking precision. The concrete wavered and fell and orange flames sprung up to lick the crumbling sides.
“Holy shit,” Emma murmured, her voice low.
“Watch your mouth,” Kaylee corrected more out of reflex than actually caring. But she didn’t think Emma heard her anyway. A second building was falling and loud, thundering booms were sounding as the explosion rent the sky.
“Whose was that?” Emma asked, looking from the billowing column of grey ash and smoke that was rising from the newest pile of rubble. A cloud of dust mingled with the smoke, settling in a dense, lingering fog.
“Quinton, I think.” But Kaylee was pretty sure. It was Jack first, then Quinton, followed by Andrew, Bill, and then their Dad. If they stuck to the plan they each had two explosions to set off.
Two explosions sounded in close time, opposite ends of the city now smoking. They were working their way around, closing off each exit systematically until they got to the girls. The last target was their old high rise. Nick was supposed to do that one. If it fell right, which it should, it would block the last of the roads out. All the infected would be trapped. They would be free.
The fires now darted through crumbling cement in a loose half-circle around the city, the crumbling brick and stone cracking and crashing, and a new noise rose, softly at first and then horrible in it’s intensity: shrieks and moans and guttural cries of hunger. Kaylee saw Emma’s fingers twitch and straighten and Kaylee grabbed them to steady them both. Stubborn as she was, Emma gripped her sister’s hand with everything she had.
“Bill and Andrew’s?” she asked, but Kaylee knew she knew.
“Dad next, then Jack and Quinton again,” Kaylee murmured back. The engine of the motor home spurred to life behind her and Anna jumped from the cab to go start the tanker.
“How long?” Emma asked, her voice tinny from nerves, her eyes scanning the wreckage of their city.
“Shouldn’t be too long now,” Kaylee answered, eyes also trained on the jumble of roads and dead streetlights and homes and stores laid out in front of her. In moments it would be gone, all of it, closed off to them and to everyone else, all she ever knew as a home, gone.
The fifth, and closest, of the explosions sounded followed by a swelling silence. Amidst the moans and shrieks was the sound of bare, rotting feet hitting the pavement, staccato beats that clicked as bones clacked into the concrete and thumped as flesh followed. But, the sounds were soon swallowed by the roar of fire and crumbling of mortar as the sixth, seventh, and eighth explosions blew buildings into the sky.
“Andrew again,” Emma whispered, her eyes darting nervously to the mouth of the tunnel. Its location was out of the circle that the fire had sprung up to create and Kaylee too watched there for any sign of movement.
It was different from the other explosions. The tunnel seemed fine at first, just the noise and the dirt lifting above it giving the bomb away. All the earth around the perfectly round circle rose suddenly into the air, lifting away from it with three times its’ normal width, and just as suddenly, it all fell back again, only now there was no tunnel to support it all. The dirt fell in massive heaps, a steep and rocky precipice now standing where a tunnel once had.
“Just Dad left now,” Kaylee murmured, her eyes following a slow circle around the destructive ring. The barrier could be plainly seen: rubble, stone, concrete, flame, all of it enclosing the infected within the city. Even with functioning limbs and fingers that weren’t brittle and broken, Kaylee would have had a hard time finding a way out. The once smooth, glassy surface of the buildings lay in dangerous ruin, sheer drops and twisted wires and glass to cushion one’s fall.
The slap of boot against the pavement alerted the girls to Anna’s presence. “It’s too long,” she said, stepping out past the girls. The groans of the infected were getting louder in the unexpected silence; it felt as though they were coming closer.
No, Kaylee, stop it.
She knew that wasn’t it, they would be drawn to the flames, to the light, not to the darkened corner of the earth that Anna and Emma and she inhabited. That was why Jack and Quinton had planned it this way.
“Draw them to us only ever in the end, leave the supplies and the vehicles at the last target,” Jack had said, listing it off-handily, like he was copying a school assignment he had completed already before.
“Behind the last target,” Quinton had corrected Jack. Kaylee remembered the conversation clearly, remembered how afterwards Jack had warned her that it might sound like the infected were getting closer.
“But they’re not,” he had said. “They just get really loud. It feels that way, but you’ll be safe.”
Kaylee believed him. And she trusted him. But still, the shrieks were terrifyingly loud.
“Why isn’t the next one going off?” Emma asked and it was only because she was her sister that Kaylee could detect the trace of fear in her voice.
“Soon,” Kaylee reassured, squeezing her fingers.
“No, it’s been too long. Something’s wrong,” Anna murmured, slipping the pair of night vision goggles Quinton had produced over her curls and unto her face. Anna cursed softly.
Kaylee didn’t have the time to ask for clarification before she heard the whine of a motorcycle. The engine revved as it climbed the hill to the empty stretch of highway where they were positioned. Backlit by fire, two men struggled to keep a third on the bike between them.
“Dad!” Emma cried, running forward as Quinton and Bill let the bike fall away from them and dragged Nick over to the motor home.
“I’m fine,” Nick replied gruffly, hissing when Anna reached for the hem of his jeans.
“He dropped a blasting cap,” Quinton informed.
“Two of them,” Nick corrected. “I didn’t exactly drop them,” he hissed again and swore when Anna pulled the material to cut it away, “I got knocked back and fell on one, the other landed on my foot.”
“Quinton, Bill, get him inside,” Anna instructed, tossing her goggles to Kaylee and yanking open a side compartment of the motor home. She dragged a large bag out before she slammed the hatch shut, the shiny reflectors sewn into the straps shining in the limited moonlight.
“Watch out for the boys,” Quinton told Kaylee as he took hold underneath Nick’s arms. “They’ll finish up and be right along. Bill, Em, grab that other leg.”
Emma and Bill each took a leg, Bill careful of Nick’s injury. Emma spared a glance past Kaylee and into the night before Anna shouted down at her. “Move it along! Emma, I need your help here.”
The smoke billowed upwards, smudging the inky darkness a dusky charcoal. The stars and the sliver of moon were blotted out. An orange glow that almost mimicked a sunrise stained the earth. And the trembling of concrete, the crack of stone, the shrieks of the infected all mingled, rising in pitch and dropping like waves crashing the shore. Her father was groaning from inside the motorhome.
Kaylee jammed the goggles unto her face, feeling a near sickening desperation to do something, anything, helpful. She scanned the horizon, her head jerking back and forth so quickly that all she caught were greenish-gray blobs of rotting flesh moving quickly through her view. They lit up the lens and confirmed that they must have had some human warmth left to them.
Kaylee took a deep breath and blew out. She forced her eyes to find her landmark, her old floor, the floor Anna and Bill and Andrew and her family had all shared. Her eyes followed its line to the ground, past the gaping entrance doors that had been hanging off their hinges for years to the cold, cracked street below where two motorcycles were left recently abandoned on their sides, the front whe
el of one still spinning.
Two boys were crouched over some dark, lumpy shape. And they didn’t see – couldn’t see – the sets of shining eyes that were roving closer.
A scream caught in her throat – because who would hear it? Not Jack and not Andrew. And no one was near her and no one else saw. What was it Quinton had said: Watch out for the boys?
She couldn’t stand and just watch.
She ran, her sneakers slapping against the pavement and over it. She threw herself into the tall grass that lined the road. It caught and pulled, not just grass but brambles and thorns and bushes all grabbing at her legs with wet, snagging branches. But her goggle-clad eyes didn’t lower to see, to avoid. She crashed through, eyes only for those strangely glowing discs that were closing slowly in on her boys.
There was something wrong with those eyes. She knew instinctively; even as she struggled to maintain her balance, even as her toe caught a curb and nearly sent her sprawling; these weren’t the infected creeping closer. They were too low to the ground, not even her height, maybe half that. And their eyes glowed, not just with fierceness or intensity, but reflective, catching in the firelight and sending it flashing.
And still, the boys crouched.
Kaylee pulled a breath, her lungs seizing at the unexpected activity. But she was better prepared this time. The running and exercising with Anna had helped; her limbs weren’t burning, her lungs didn’t ache. She thought of yelling, Andrew and Jack were closer now, she had breeched the perimeter of the city, she could see what they crouched over, short, thin metal tubes that she knew contained explosives, she could almost see their faces. But the noise…
Everywhere, everything was so loud. Fire roared as she had never heard it roar before, not the soothing ministrations of a hearth fire but the hissing and snorting of a giant beast. It boomed and crackled, random explosions releasing into the sky as she ran past from some source of fuel they had either looked past or forgotten. Kaylee had one ridiculous moment where she pictured herself in the Fire Swamp, and Wesley would be there to save her from the spurts of flame proceeded by popping noises. But there was no uniform warning here. An old lamppost shuddered and fell, swaying into collapse at Kaylee’s feet. It caught her foot as she leapt over it, the heavy brass bouncing upon impact with the asphalt. Kaylee’s palms hit the pavement first, scraping against the damp asphalt before she could drag herself back into a run. The sound of the lamps fall didn’t even register. Kaylee couldn’t hear her own footfalls, could barely hear the useless shout she released when she finally realized what was stalking Andrew and Jack.
They moved like a pack, shoulders slinking, heads held low to the ground, eyes focused on their prey. Like a pack of wolves the dogs stalked, moving ever closer.
And still Andrew and Jack didn’t see. But Kaylee saw, saw clearly with the aid of the goggles that large Dobermans and Labs and even a terrifying Great Dane were grouping ever closer. Their teeth were bared, muzzles foamed with spit; unrecognizable as pets, fearsome as predators.
In a moment of clarity, Kaylee scooped up a brick that had tumbled ages ago from a step she was passing. It felt crumbly in her hands, red bits rubbing into her skin, but there was weight to it. She hurled her arm back and threw, sailing the brick over Jack and Andrew’s heads.
She missed, but only barely. The Great Dane she had been aiming for yelped, breaking line and skirting to the side. And it was enough. Jack looked up. Kaylee saw him shout and push Andrew toward the building and she knew she could have turned, run back to Emma and Anna and her Dad, run from the chaos and the madness of buildings that were still falling and the fire that was slowly ringing them in. But Jack was there, and Andrew, and she couldn’t. So she kept forward, stooping to pull another brick with her and pushing her goggles off her face and around her neck. She ran past Andrew, who shouted at her in surprise, his eyebrows drawn in anger. She ran past him to Jack who was squeezing the trigger of his handgun. She was surprised she could hear it but she could, the loud, shocking crack of a bullet piercing the air as the gun discharged. The Great Dane fell motionless. But it’s fellows closed rank, snarling and advancing they came and Kaylee was loath to realize that her only weapon was one, lone brick.
It happened so fast that Kaylee didn’t remember falling. But she did fall. They heavy weight of fur and paws and snapping teeth flung her down. Jaws snapped so near her ear that she instinctively pulled away, her head whipping back and cracking into the pavement. The Doberman had attacked her from the side, jumping her and crushing her to the concrete like a jackrabbit. Her vision swam and she saw stars, not real ones, but the blurry, indistinct kind she had seen when Jack’s strong arms had cradled her that first night they met.
A shot sounded.
And again, warmth, liquid and terrifying coat her stomach. But this time, it also sprayed her neck, caught in her teeth. The heavy weight of the dog fell on her, pinned her to the cold ground, and she knew the blood wasn’t hers.
“Get up! Get up!” Andrew roared and Kaylee could just make out what he was saying. Her head still swam but she shook it as clear as it would go and heaved the heavy weight of fur and bones and matted blood off her body, half rolling from underneath the carnage. Andrew stood over her, wielding a shotgun, discharging shot after shot and sliding cartridges into the barrels with practiced ease. Jack stood by him, shoulder to shoulder, and they together advanced past Kaylee, putting themselves between her and the dogs.
But there were worse things than dogs coming now. The commotion had brought them. Awakened by fire and famished by disease they hovered on the edge of Kaylee’s blurred vision. Not close yet, but getting closer, they ran. Her stomach threatened to empty and Kaylee forced herself to swallow. Her pathetic weapon lost, she stood motionless behind Andrew and Jack.
“The fuse!” Jack turned to yell, not lowering his gun. “My pocket. The fuse!”
Kaylee’s eyes darted lower, to the back pocket of Jack’s jeans from which a coil fuse and metal casing peeked.
It was a blasting cap, not yet assembled because they shouldn’t have needed it. Her father had two ready to go. But those two were gone and Kaylee would have to assemble this one now.
In the orange glow Kaylee focused, tuning out the shocking booms of Jack and Andrew’s weapons and training her eyes on her task. Her mask hung heavy around her neck and Kaylee had to discard the idea of using it when she noticed the crack traversing one lens. She crouched on the pavement, fell to her knees, the coiled fuse unfurling in front of her.
The metal blasting cap gleamed golden in the light, warm to the touch. Kaylee held it carefully between her forefinger and thumb, just as she was taught, and lowered it onto the squared end of the fuse. It slid on as easily as though this were something she had done a hundred times. But, as she held it triumphantly in the firelight and her eyes scanned the ground for a set of crimpers, she couldn’t find any. And even though she knew it was stupid, and dangerous, and reckless, she put the cap in her mouth and bit down, praying to whomever would hear her that her bite would land far enough down on the smooth metal to dent it and hold the fuse in place and not so far as to set off an explosion that would free her of all her teeth.
The metal bent and dented under her pressure and she held still. But no explosion sounded and she didn’t have time to thank the heavens for sparing her her teeth. Jack was shouting.
“In the bags!”
And she only barely understood what he meant but she half crawled – half flung herself to the base of her old apartment building where a pile of fifty pound bags, they could have been dry dog food, garden fertilizer, birdseed, were stacked into a rough pyramid. A shorter fuse unraveled down past these bags and so Kaylee followed the walls, her fingertips lightly grazing the cold, rough concrete as she ran, until she saw the second stack of ANFO. She stuck the blasting cap through the rough fabric of the first bag she reached and uncoiled the fuse, brought it trailing back with her to where Jack and Andrew still stood shoulder to shoulder.
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br /> In the short moments she was gone the scene had changed. The dogs left alive were being consumed by a swarming mass. Hundreds of infected were coming, scrambling over one another, jerky movements, but fast just the same. Their skin was mottled and grey and in some cases falling off, a tidal wave of walking death crashing towards them.
Andrew turned to run to the longer fuse, his lighter open and his thumb flicking it to life. Kaylee just saw the spark of its start from the corner of her eye. She was rushing towards Jack as he fired his first useless shot. Individual infected rushed forward. Kaylee crammed her hands into his pockets, searching. He shot again. She tried again. Jacket, front pockets, back. And then her fingers wrapped around cool metal and his lighter found her hand and she turned.
The shots comforted her as she bent to light the remaining fuse. They let her know Jack was still behind her. Andrew was racing past. He lift his motorcycle and kicked it to life just as Kaylee’s flame caught on the fuse.
And why she heard it, why it registered, she’d never know; but something in the air, the wind, the very ground, trembled and shuddered and she stood, eyes wielding and flashing at the lone infected that was stumbling towards her from around the darker corner of the apartment building.
The world shifted and then stopped.
The roar of the flames, the burning fuse, the dull throb of Andrew’s bike, even Jack, they all dissolved. Here, in this moment of silence, in this fracture of her world, her mother stood, her arms outstretched as though to embrace her daughter and her eyes, once clear and beautiful, locked on Kaylee’s.
Later, she may have blamed her head injury and the way the stars still blurred, but in that moment, Kaylee’s arms extended, as though ready to accept her mother’s embrace. In that instant in time, she remembered her mother’s breath on her neck and in her hair as she gripped her tightly, already smelled her perfume, felt the warmth of her unconditional embrace.