by Jeff Olah
“Nah, I’m pretty sure I know what it is. Just do what you need to do. I think you’ve earned more than a few days off.” Griffin was lying. He had no idea what was happening out back, but he was nearly certain that whoever was responsible would show themselves soon enough. And when they did, he’d need Ethan. The old Ethan.
192
By midafternoon Bryce was less concerned with the trail of blood running from the open wound along his left foot than he was with finding a spot to finally take a break. He wasn’t lost, but he also wasn’t exactly familiar with his current surroundings. Having just narrowly escaped a half dozen Feeders in the parking garage across the street, his friend pointed out the abandoned storefront.
“We can hide over there.” Sawyer was out breath and limping badly. “Just for a few minutes, I have to stop.”
Bryce acknowledged the empty parking lot and the outdoor shopping center beyond. He slipped under his friend’s arm and helped him navigate the four-foot retaining wall just beyond the sidewalk. “We’ve got maybe two minutes.”
Over the wall and starting across the lot, Bryce pulled Sawyer into his hip and began to jog. Leaning into his friend, and just above a whisper he said, “On your right.”
Sawyer eyed the crowd pouring out of the former drug store only seconds after Bryce. His already exhausted legs nearly collapsed at the sight. Letting out a sigh, he stumbled forward. “I can’t.”
Bryce dropped his shoulder, tightened his grip, and again looking over his shoulder, changed course. His chest tightened as he watched the horde spill out from the darkened storefront, growing in numbers with each passing second.
This group was different. They moved faster than any he’d come across and didn’t appear as ravaged as those on the east side of town. It was as if these were merely people exiting a crowded theatre or hurrying to their cars at the conclusion of a concert.
Scanning the fast-moving crowd, his eyes stopped on a woman. She wore black yoga pants, a pair of running shoes, and a white tank top. Her hair was tied up in the back and bounced with each stride. And other than a large wound on the right side of her face, she was not much different than the casual joggers Bryce remembered from nearly six weeks ago.
Those following the dark-haired woman out away from the building appeared much the same. Only a single wound placed along their necks, faces or arms exposed them for what they had become. There was something about the unusual sight that took Bryce back to the first few hours of the initial outbreak. It was in the way they moved, their lack of decay, and their heightened level of aggression.
These people had been recently infected, possibly within the last few hours. But how was that even possible? A crowd that numbered somewhere close to fifty all corralled into the same space, and none of the usual signs of devastation to the surrounding areas. The odds that this was a coincidence were astronomical.
As the horde moved out away from the storefront and into the parking lot, Bryce figured they had maybe twenty seconds. Back over his right shoulder, he looked through the intersection at the corner of Tenth Street and Radar Avenue. Nothing but wide-open streets and sprawling concrete. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
Sawyer began to slow. “Wait.”
“My man, we really don’t have the time—”
Pointing back toward the storefront, Sawyer pulled away and grabbed Bryce’s right arm. “No, look.”
Bryce turned in the direction his friend had pointed and watched as the last few newly-turned Feeders stepped out away from the building, and shook his head. “Yeah, I get it. It’s weird, but …”
He hadn’t seen it before, although as the trailing crowd parted, Bryce noticed the same thing his friend had only moments before. The last to move away from the abandoned storefront, and now slowly backing toward the south corner of the building, was the tall man who’d tortured them for last several days.
Under his breath, Sawyer said, “Cory.”
“What?”
Sawyer balled his fists and began to shake. “I am going to kill him.”
Checking the crowd’s progress and then reaching for his friend’s arm, Bryce began pulling him in the opposite direction. “We have to go now, we’ll deal with this later.”
Sawyer continued to stare back beyond the crowd, but relented. He followed Bryce over a short patch of dying grass and into the street. “What the hell is happening?”
Bryce pulled his friend in close, and although the crowd was now less than ten seconds behind, he focused on the only thing that mattered. “We have to get to The Tavern.”
Sawyer continued to run, shaking his head as his bare feet slapped at the cool asphalt. “That’s two blocks away, we won’t even make it to the end of Tenth.”
Bryce released Sawyer’s arm and gradually increased his speed, now breathing hard as he stepped out into the street. “We’ll make it … but … you’re gonna have to … run.”
Sawyer was fading. With each step he slowed, dropping back a full two strides. He called out. “I can’t … my feet, they’re numb. And my lungs are on fire.”
Bryce slowed but kept moving. The horde was closing in and even attempting to drag or carry his friend would mean they’d both die. His head darting from the corner ahead to the crowd, and then to Sawyer, he quickly calculated the odds and came to the conclusion that they may be overrun regardless of whether or not he stopped to help his friend.
With his heart pounding against the inside of his chest like a jackhammer on steroids, Bryce cursed under his breath and stopped. Pushing away the voices that were screaming for him to run in the opposite direction, he turned back in time to see Sawyer drop to his knees and then fall forward off the sidewalk.
Before starting toward his friend, Bryce made a mental note of the first grouping of five that had broken away from the crowd. Three on one side, including the petite woman in yoga pants and two on the other. Without intervention, they were going to reach his friend at virtually the same time.
“SAWYER!”
As he approached, Sawyer rolled onto his side and appeared to be attempting to push away from the ground. Beginning to slow, Bryce twisted left and grabbed the small woman by the wrist, and in one motion, jerked her backward and into the two beasts who were trailing. The small grouping of three tumbled into one another and came to rest against the brick building at their backs.
Given a brief window, Bryce stepped right and moved out into the street. Sawyer was now on his back and pushing away from the pair that had come in from the right. He was fighting a losing battle, but he was fighting. That was all Bryce needed, just a chance.
Coming in from behind, the first—a delivery truck driver, still in uniform—had a hold of Sawyer’s right ankle. The overweight male, clad in blue and gold polyester, snapped his jaws frantically only inches from his friends already bloodied foot.
Just close enough to strike, although off-balance, Bryce planted his left foot and kicked the rabid Feeder in the throat. The large man released his grip and cartwheeled backward onto the sidewalk, only feet from the others.
Before he could reach his friend, the last of the five dropped down on top of Sawyer. The former chef couldn’t have been more than five and half feet tall and moved with an aggressiveness that sent a chill up Bryce’s back. The small man in the ten-button white coat growled and snorted as he clawed his way toward Sawyer’s face and neck, intermittently turning to Bryce and baring his teeth.
As the small man turned back, opened his mouth, and began pushing in toward Sawyer’s face and neck, Bryce spotted an opening. He quickly dove head first, coming in at an angle that placed him just above Sawyer’s left arm, and forced the aggressive former chef onto his left side and into the next wave of infected.
Sliding away from his friend and onto the damp asphalt, Bryce pushed away from the ground and back to his feet. Before he could get his head together and react to what was coming, he was grabbed from behind and pulled further into the street. Instinctively, he yelled out
and threw a wild right hook.
Catching nothing but air, he breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed it was Sawyer, now back on his feet and apparently much more alive than he was two minutes before.
“LET’S GO, COME ON!”
Bryce stared back at his friend in disbelief, but unable to come up with a response that properly fit his current level of bewilderment, he simply shook his head and began to run.
“WE GOT THIS!” Sawyer shouted above the crowd. “ONE MORE BLOCK!”
He wasn’t going to question it. Hell, he’d seen what a rush of adrenaline could do many times in the past six weeks and his friend’s couldn’t have come at a better time. However, they still weren’t out of the woods and with one final scan of the streets, he caught a glimpse of the thin man fifty feet beyond the horde, ducking behind a long forgotten pickup truck.
As he turned and began to follow a newly invigorated Sawyer, he began to see this situation for what it was. They weren’t released because they were no longer useful—it was actually quite the opposite. Roland Mayhew must have known that he was being lied to and came to the only conclusion he could. That Bryce and Sawyer would head straight back to the high school to warn their friends.
But the man in the tan leather jacket was only partially right, and within the next few hours Bryce was going to show him why his plan was always destined to fail. Things were about to get serious. Bryce just hoped he had the stomach to do what was necessary to see it through.
“Sawyer.”
“Yeah?”
“Change of plans … we’re going to get Tom.”
193
Zach leaned into the three-foot retaining wall at the edge of the roof and watched as the horde beyond the fences continued to grow. He tossed a tennis ball into the air, pretending to be unaware of the conversation the two women were having less than twenty feet away. And although they spoke in hushed tones, half sentences, and long spelled-out words, he knew exactly what they were talking about.
Carly sat on the ground directly across from Emma. They watched as the sky turned from a light blue to a deep purple, and tipping their heads back, allowed what little sunlight slipped through the late afternoon cloud cover to wash over them.
With her eyes on Zach, Carly rubbed her hands together and pulled down on the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “You think we’re close?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “I had only heard of one other case while at BXF, but I wasn’t allowed access to any of the documentation. No one was. Marcus Goodwin personally saw to it that the entire incident went away very quickly, and quietly.”
Again catching the ball and shifting it from his right hand to his left, Zach paused. Their voices dropped yet again, and he was now having trouble hearing them even as he sat perfectly still.
“A child,” Carly said, “how is that even possible? I thought all of the testing was done at those secluded facilities?”
Emma shook her head and again looked back over her shoulder. “Most of what was reported was buried so deep that only a handful of people at BXF had even heard of the incident. I got bits and pieces from my team, but as soon as I started asking questions, I was assigned a much more time-consuming side project.”
“So?”
“So I stopped asking questions.”
Carly narrowed her eyes and turned up her lip. “Come on Emma, I think I know you better than that.”
Emma smirked. “I stopped asking questions and started my own research, ran through a ton of hypotheticals, but it just never made any sense. The differences between the mind of an adult and a child are too complex to even begin to understand, so how was I ever supposed to—”
Zach had tossed the ball into the air one last time, caught it before it skipped over the wall, and turned to the women. “Miss Emma?”
Caught off guard, Emma sat up straight and turned to face Zach. “Yeah, are you okay?”
“Uh huh,” Zach dropped the ball on the ground at his side and walked with his head down. He stood exactly halfway between the pair and offered them a quiet smile. “I just … I just don’t want you to worry anymore.”
Emma pulled in her legs and started to stand. “We aren’t worried, not at all. We just want to be sure that you’re okay.”
Zach paused for what seemed like an eternity. He looked from Emma to Carly and then back to Emma again. “Am I going to die … like my sister?” He quickly pointed back over the retaining wall. “Am I going be like the monsters?”
He had watched and listened for the last several weeks as Emma put him through tests that she insisted weren’t actually tests. She tried to disguise them as games, although without Mr. Ethan around, they just didn’t seem to be any fun. Throwing a ball, running as fast as he could, lifting those heavy weights in the gym. And then Miss Carly putting the cold metal thing on his back.
Zach thought she called it a Stethoscope, but he’d never heard that word before and had no idea what it meant. She told him she was listening to his heart and even let him listen to hers. He didn’t hear anything but a bunch of whooshing noise, and that wasn’t what he thought a heart sounded like. He thought it was supposed to sound more like a drum, but he wasn’t sure.
Emma wiped at the corner of her eye and smiled. “No, I think you’re gonna be just fine. Maybe even better than fine.”
Zach pulled at the corners of his t-shirt and looked back toward the street. “Do we have to play more games today?”
Emma turned to Carly and then back to Zach. “How about we forget about those games for today and just relax. Maybe just sit up here and wait for the sun to come back out?”
“Okay.” Zach’s smile widened. “Can we go get Mr. Ethan and Mr. Tom?” He paused a moment and looked back toward the door to the stairs. “And Mr. Griffin … and Miss Helen?”
Carly nodded and followed Zach’s eyes back toward the stairwell. “Emma, whatta ya think?”
Emma pushed away from the wall and blew into her hands, rubbing them together. “I think the guys are finishing up out back, but if we hurry we can meet them over by the pool. Maybe we can even go by the kitchen on the way and get something for everyone to eat, oh and I think Griffin said something about a rematch?”
Zach ran back to grab the tennis ball and then started after Carly and Emma toward the stairwell. He couldn’t move quickly enough and nearly lost his footing as he reached the door. Having been accepted by the group and taken in as one of their own, he cherished every moment they spent together, but his enthusiasm reached a whole new level when his new family came together as a whole.
“Can we go get Mr. Ethan first? I want to show him how I shoot the basketballs.”
Reaching the third floor and moving out into the hall, Carly turned to Emma and raised her brow.
“I’ll go check,” Emma said. “I think he might still be sleeping. He was out late last night looking for supplies. But I’ll bet as soon as he wakes up he’s gonna be real hungry.”
Zach’s smile quickly faded. He knew something was different about Mr. Ethan, but he just didn’t know what. He hadn’t spent any real time with his best friend in over a week, and although Emma told him otherwise, he was beginning to think Mr. Ethan may never speak to him again. He’d lost his parents and his sister to those monsters who were outside, he didn’t want to also lose the man who had saved his life.
With his head again hung low and his voice barely above a whisper, Zach turned his eyes toward the opposite end of the hall. “It’s okay Miss Emma, I understand.”
194
His stomach gurgled yet again, demanding that he put something in his system besides alcohol. As Ethan sat at the top of the stairwell and peered down into hallway below, his friends’ voices reminded him of why he was here, but also why he was in his current state. He knew he needed to find his way out of the cloud of anxiety and depression that living in this new world had triggered. He just didn’t know how.
Ethan leaned to the left, took a deep breath, and reached for the
bucket that held the last of the twenty-two-ounce bottles. He pushed it to the edge of the top step and paused, staring down at the pair of luke-warm bottles.
Again his friends’ voices carried from the corridor one floor below, his mother’s laughter unhinging something inside he forgot was there. It wasn’t worry, concern, or dread. It was something much different, and for the first time in weeks, he wanted to be with them.
Sliding back into the wall, his mind still a bit foggy, Ethan used the railing to pull himself up into a standing position. His knees were weak and the lump on his head still ached as he again looked down at the bucket.
“Okay.”
With his right hand atop the railing and his ability to even stand on one foot in question, he quickly kicked the bucket down the long flight of stairs. The clear plastic container cartwheeled end over end and tossed the pair of unopened bottles out onto the tile floor below where they shattered almost simultaneously.
As he stared down at the mess, the next voice he heard was Shannon. She seemed to be overly excited about whatever it was she was discussing and far removed from the disheartened conversation the two had shared only three days before. She told him that she didn’t understand, but somehow still tried to take responsibility for his current condition. And although he attempted to explain a few of the things he was struggling with, Ethan found it easier to just pull away.
Still holding tight to the rail, he took a measured step down and waited for the stairwell to stop spinning. Another spill from this height would do much more than simply damage his ego. If he was going to rejoin his friends and make an attempt at a heartfelt apology, having them come to his rescue for the second time in the same twenty-four hour period wouldn’t be the ideal way to start things off.
Taking the rest of the staircase one cautious step at a time, Ethan then moved out into the hall below and started toward the voices. He thought about what he’d say, and how they’d respond. They wouldn’t be expecting him, and although his head wasn’t completely in the right place, he was sure his intentions were. Whatever came of the next few minutes, he at least wanted them to know that he was still here … with them.