Sanctuary

by Courtney McPhail

  For a moment, she thought she was looking at the femur of a deer but then she noticed the section of rib cage and it was all wrong for a deer.

  No, that was a human rib cage.

  “Oh God,” she breathed out.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Veronica jumped, not realizing that Claudia had come up behind her. Stupid. She should be paying more attention.

  “Be careful. There’s blood,” Veronica warned. “Old blood but who knows if it’s still contagious?”

  Claudia ducked into the sleeping nook and looked down at the pile of bones and blood clothes.

  “Jesus,” Claudia mumbled.

  “What’s the blood from?” Audrey asked, standing behind them and thankfully out of sight of the mess.

  Veronica quickly pulled the sleeping bag up to cover the bones and blood and turned back to the girl with a smile.

  “I think one of the people that were living here got bit,” she replied as she climbed out of the nook, glancing down the dark aisles. She knew it was only the half-truth but the girl didn’t need to know that the one who got bit also ate their companion.

  “Do you think they’re still here?” Audrey asked.

  “No, doesn’t look like it,” she said, not wanting to tell the girl the truth. “I think they might have moved on.”

  “They were livin’ it up while they were here. Got a generator back there hooked up to a giant flatscreen and a stack of DVDs,” Jackson said as he walked up to them. He had a large jerry can in one hand and a couple of DVDs in the other. “Gas for the generator should come in handy. Also got a coupla kids movies. Guess the people livin’ here were into them. Save ‘em for yer sister.”

  Jackson handed the plastic cases over to Audrey who shoved them into one of the pockets on her pack. He tugged at the bandanna that was hanging around her neck. “Put this over yer mouth. Never know when ya might run into a freak.”

  Veronica smiled as he helped her tighten the knot. It was cute to watch him fuss over her, making sure she was safe. He looked back at her and nodded to the painter’s mask that hung from its elastic string around her neck. “Ya gotta do it too.”

  “Yes sir,” she replied, pulling up her mask to hide her grin.

  “Ya’ll find anythin’ else handy?” he asked.

  “I found this under the lantern,” Claudia said as she climbed out from beneath the shelf. She held out a piece of paper that had a sketch on it.

  It was a map. There were lines crisscrossing the paper, sections circled and labelled. It was a hand drawn map of the warehouse.

  “Whoever was here must have mapped it all out,” Claudia said. “They’ve got all the food listed on here. It’ll cut our search time in half.”

  “Alright, let’s load up what we found here and go find the rest,” Veronica ordered.

  They went to work loading up the duffel bags they had brought with them and it didn’t take long for them to fill the bags. There was still plenty more to get, peanut butter and carbs weren’t going to be enough for them. They needed to take advantage of the treasure trove they had here and get as much as they could.

  “We could take back what we have and get the others to come back,” Claudia suggested.

  “Nah, waste of time and gas. Best we take as much as we can in one trip. I can get one of those trucks out there running and we load it up with as much as we can,” Jackson said. “Saw a coupla hand trucks back in one of the aisles. We can use ‘em to haul everythin’ we want to the front door. I’ll go get ‘em.”

  “Nobody on their own,” Veronica said. “You girls take the gas cans and these bags to the door we came in. Jackson and I will get the hand truck and meet you both at the canned goods section.”

  Claudia slung one of the duffels over her shoulder and as she passed her, Veronica reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Eyes wide, yeah?”

  Claudia nodded and patted the gun on her hip.

  Veronica let Jackson lead the way through the warehouse, sweeping her eyes over the aisles. It was quiet, only the occasional scuff of their boot heels on the concrete floor as they walked down the aisle. The silence was eerie, oppressive, almost like it became a sound of its own.

  “I hope we can get one of those trucks out there running,” she said, needing to break the silence.

  “Saw a key box in the front office. We should be fine,” he replied, “And if that don’t work, bound to be more hand trucks, we can just wheel it all back to the motel.”

  She smiled as she pictured the sight that would be. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the proper truck then.”

  She had only a split second of warning, a flash of movement from the corner of her eye, but it wasn’t enough to prepare her before she was tackled to the ground. Her elbow cracked against the concrete, numbing her arm, and the breath was knocked from her lungs in a sharp whoosh as she hit the floor and a heavy weight fell on top of her.

  She scrambled to get out from underneath it, her boots scrabbling on the floor for purchase but the weight wouldn’t move. She swung her good arm back, trying to hit what was on top of her but her wrist was seized in an iron grip.

  Her arm was pulled behind her back and she cried out as pain shot up her arm. She looked over her shoulder and saw milky eyes staring back at her from above a spittle coated mouth.

  Oh God no!

  The freak grabbed her hair and hauled her head back, exposing her throat and a heinous growl filled her ears. She screamed, thrashing with a violence that sent pain lancing up her pinned arm but she ignored it. She wasn’t going to die!

  The freak’s grip suddenly slackened and she scrambled away as the weight of the freak was taken off of her. She rolled over to see that Jackson had the freak in a chokehold. It struggled violently in his hold but Jackson wouldn’t let it go, forcing it to the ground. He straddled its back and used his weight to keep it on the ground. He grabbed his knife and plunged it into the base of its skull. It ceased its struggling and Jackson jumped off of the freak and dropped to his knees in front of her.

  “Are ya okay?” he asked, reaching out to pull down the collar of her shirt. He ran his hands over her neck and collarbone, feeling for any injury. “It didn’t bite ya, did it?”

  “N-no,” she stuttered, still in shock from the sudden attack. Her eyes were glued on the freak sprawled behind Jackson, the knife still sticking out of the back of its head.

  It had come out of nowhere. If Jackson hadn’t been so quick, she would have died.

  Facing the spectre of a near death experience, it took her a moment to realize that Jackson’s hands were still on her, sweeping down her arms as he searched for any possible injury.

  “Didn’t get any blood or spit on ya, did it?”

  He started patting over her clothing, searching for any wet spots as his hands skimmed over her shirt. It was only when he palmed her breasts that he seemed to realize what he was doing. He pulled his hands away as if she had burned him, his eyes wide as saucers. She couldn’t stop the bubble of hysterical laughter from popping up and she clapped her hands over her mouth, flattening the painter’s mask she still wore.

  She pulled the mask off, letting it dangle around her neck, gasping for breath as she kept laughing. The adrenaline from the attack was still coursing through her veins, her muscles twitching impatiently as her racing heartbeat throbbed in her ears.

  She had almost died. If it hadn’t been for Jackson, that freak would have--

  “Veronica, are you okay?!” Jackson’s frantic cry broke through her hysterical laughter and she focused on his worry filled eyes.

  “I’m f-f-fine,” she said, her voice still shaky and she cleared her throat. “Really, I’m fine. It didn’t bite me.”

  “It didn’t?” he asked, doubt in his voice as he looked her up and down.

  “No, it didn’t. You stopped it before it could,” she told him, her voice strong again.

  She had come close but it hadn’t happened and there
was nothing to be scared of anymore.

  Jackson looked relieved, sitting back on his heels and running his hands through his hair as he let out a long breath. He was just as shaken up as she was and she felt bad for doing this to him. It had been her fault it had happened. She had let her guard slip and that’s how the freak had gotten the jump on her.

  Concern for him helped rid her of the last dregs of her shock and the fog that had been in her head cleared. She reached out and grabbed his hand.

  “I’m not infected,” she said, patting his hand in reassurance and then she gave him a teasing smile, “But I appreciated your thorough exam.”

  It worked like she had expected, his embarrassment overtaking whatever residual fear was left from the attack.

  “Sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbled, letting his hair fall forward to hide his eyes.

  Running footsteps sounded behind them and a beam of light blinded her as Claudia and Audrey appeared at the mouth of the aisle.

  “You okay?” Claudia called out as they rushed towards them.

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” she replied, pushing herself to her feet and Jackson joined her. “Found the guy who was holed up here.”

  Jackson moved over to the dead freak and retrieved his knife, carefully wiping it clean on the freak’s shirt. He held it gingerly between two fingers as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a rag, wrapping it around the knife.

  “Should look for some bleach or some other disinfectant to clean it,” he said.

  “We saw cleaning supplies earlier,” Claudia said. “Two aisles down from the peanut butter.”

  “Okay, let’s find the hand trucks and get back to work,” Veronica said, turning her back on the dead freak.

  “Are you really okay?” she asked. Veronica wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders and smiled at her.

  “Of course,” she replied. “It’s going to take more than one freak to get me.”

  They found the hand trucks at the top of one of the aisles and Veronica sighed in relief. The wheeled platforms would make all of this go faster and the faster it went, the sooner they would be out of here.

  Claudia grabbed the handle of one of the hand trucks and swung it around. “Hey Audrey, want a ride?”

  The girl smiled and hopped on the platform, sitting down cross legged with her back against the handles. Jackson took the handle of the other one, leaning over it so his forearms rested on the handlebar and they followed behind the girls.

  “Thanks for saving my life, by the way,” she said to him.

  “S’nothing,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulder. “Shoulda seen it before it got its hands on ya.”

  “I was the one who got attacked, I should’ve been the one to see it first,” she told him in seriousness before lightening her voice to a teasing tone, “And it’s not nothing. I was also touched by how concerned you were that I might have been hurt.”

  He shook his head at her but she could see a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Yer obviously over what happened if’n yer back to teasin’ me.”

  “I’m only half teasing,” she told him. “I do appreciate the concern. Though next time you want to feel me up, better to ask politely first.”

  She left him sputtering out some denial or excuse as she skipped ahead to join Claudia and Audrey up the aisle where they had come to a stop. Pallets stacked higher that she stood lined both sides of the aisle, filled with canned goods and she grinned. There was enough here to feed an army.

  Despite the fact that she had almost just died, today was shaping up to be a good day.

  Subject File # 744

  Administrator: You don’t talk about Franklin.

  Subject: That’s because I hate thinking about it. One wrong step and it would have been over for all of us. Any time I think about that place, I can’t help but thinking about how many more of us could have died there.

  “How’s it coming over there?”

  Kim turned around at Malcolm’s call but then she realized he was talking to Alan and Hillman. They were both sprawled on their stomachs, halfway hanging off the building as they worked to loosen the scaffolding. Alan lifted himself up and looked back over his shoulder.

  “We’re almost there, a couple more minutes.”

  “Hurry, I’m not sure how much longer this is going to hold,” Malcolm called back. He was standing with Quinton and Anderson on the half-finished floor by the hole they had tried to block off.

  They had gathered pieces of plywood that were meant to finish the rest of the floor and laid them over the hole in the floor. They had used a couple bags of concrete to weigh the plywood down but it hadn’t done much discouraged the freaks. They had climbed up the scaffolding and the boards heaved as the freaks pushed up on it.

  The men were trying their best to hold the boards down but each time the freaks pushed, the boards rose a little higher. She could see that the men were exhausted and she wanted to go over to help him but she knew she had to stay at her post.

  Malcolm had assigned her and Trey stood to the south end of the building to watch over the freaks that were milling inside the gate. When Alan and Hillman had started loosening the scaffolding down, the noise had drawn the freaks towards them. She and Trey had put enough of them down that the rest had retreated to the gate to wait and watch. Occasionally a bolder freak would try to make a run for it but she or Trey would put it down before it got close.

  She found herself sneaking glances at Trey as they worked, wanting to make sure that he was okay. The life and death nature of the situation had her own anxiety near her breaking point and she worried about how he was coping with his own. Yet every time she looked at him, he was calm, sharp eyes keeping watch on the freaks, his finger never hesitating on the trigger. He was in his element here and she was still not accustomed to seeing her son as the stone faced soldier he was becoming.

  “We got a rush on the fence here,” Banks called out from his watch point over on the east side. “Get that shit down now!”

  “We’re almost there,” Hillman called back.

  “Kim, Trey, get over there!” Malcolm called out from his watch point with Anderson and Quinton at the scaffolding where the others had fallen. “Mendez, Banks, you too!”

  Kim put the strap of her rifle over her shoulder and walked over to the main support beam, looking over her shoulder to make sure Trey was following her. He was right there, holding his rifle out in front of him for balance as they crossed over to the half floor to join the others.

  “The second we step off of this, they’re coming through,” Malcolm told them, struggling to keep his balance as the wood shifted beneath him. “We need a head start so we’re gonna pull the wood off and then shoot the hell out of as many as we can. Everybody ready?”

  They didn’t need to say anything, their pointed guns doing the talking for them. Malcolm, Quinton and Anderson moved off of the plywood and flipped it over as the freaks burst up through the opening.

  Gunfire sounded and her ears started ringing as they fired at the freaks and they dropped back down to the ground. Their heavy bodies took down the others that were climbing up behind them, giving them a lull and a chance to step towards the opening so they could fire down at the rest.

  Kim’s finger let go of the trigger when she saw the horrific sight through the opening. Dead freaks were piled on the ground and their live counterparts were stepping on them, using them as stepladders to get at the scaffolding. Each freak they hit was just another rung in the ladder for the ones they missed

  “Shit, we can’t stop ‘em!” Malcolm said, looking back over his shoulder. “Kim, get Trey and get over to the other side.”

  “You two go too,” Anderson said, pushing his gun into Malcolm’s hand before cupping his hands to his mouth. “Banks! Mendez! Get over here now and get out!”

  “What are you doing?” Malcolm asked, his eyes wide with confusion.

  “I’m already dead,” Anderson said, lifting his arm to show the b
ite mark. “Let me give you a head start.”

  Before they realized what was happening, Anderson jumped down through the opening, right into the arms of the slavering freaks.

  Kim was frozen in place, shocked at what had just happened, and it took her a moment to realize that someone was pulling on her arm.

  “Mom, come on,” Trey said, giving her arm another tug. “They’ve got the scaffolding down. Let’s go.”

  He was right. They couldn’t let Anderson’s sacrifice be for nothing.

  She followed Trey back over to the main support beam, Quinton and Malcolm behind them. They walked over it to where it met the crossbeam that led to the outer scaffolding. Trey went to step out on the narrower beam but she stopped him. No way was she letting her son go first.

  “I’ll go first,” she said, moving in front of him. “You come behind me and Quinton and Malcolm can go behind you.”

  She stepped out on the beam, being careful where she put her foot and how she balanced her weight on it. This beam was much narrower than the main support and a single misstep could send her falling to the ground. She wanted to look up, away from the drop but she needed to look at her feet to keep her balance.

  She could see freaks standing below, staring up at her as she walked across the beam. They seemed perplexed by what they saw, trying to figure out how to get up to them. A couple walked away from the gathered group and she wondered if they had realized they needed to climb to reach them. The freaks appeared again, one of them holding a drill, the other a wrench. They looked up and her heart jumped in her throat when they both pulled their arms back and threw the tools up at them.

  “Get down!” she shouted back to Trey as she dropped onto her stomach, wrapping her legs around either side of the beam. She looked over her shoulder to see that had Trey followed her example, gripping the beam tight with his legs and arms. As he pressed his cheek flat against the metal a wrench sailed over him.

  She craned her neck to see Malcolm and Quinton behind them, Quinton perched on the beam as he fired down at the freaks. Malcolm was still standing on the thicker support beam, firing down at the ground below with Mendez and Banks at his side.