by Siara Brandt
Floris wasn’t the only one dressed inappropriately. None of them had dressed remotely properly for this trip. None of them had expected the weather to change overnight. Just like none of them had expected to be crammed into a single vehicle, rationing cold food out of cans and sharing water bottles, something that secretly turned Linwood’s stomach. They should be home by now, safe behind their own locked doors, not suck in the middle of nowhere using the weeds to do their private business.
It wasn’t until everyone was done and they got back on the road again, that Linwood heard Mirin screaming about a tick on Bayley. On his backside to be precise.
“Tick!” Mirin kept shrilling. “Vonley, don’t just sit there. Do something! He’s got a tick on him!”
Still screaming about the tick which hadn’t had time to attach itself yet, and so had fallen off by now and was lost inside the car, amidst Bayley’s screams of “Get it off! Get it off!” Linwood tried to concentrate on staying on the road.
The back of his seat being kicked frantically was pushing him to his limit. One more thump and Linwood knew he was going to explode.
“Find the damned tick,” he yelled through clenched teeth, not even caring about the profanity. He knew that if they didn’t find the tick, it could very well find its way to the front of the car and eventually attach itself to him.
“Oh. My. God!” Sitting beside him in the front seat, Floris startled Linwood because she, too, never took the Lord’s name in vain.
“Did I have to see that?” Floris all but shrieked as she spun around and faced resolutely forward.
Linwood could feel the car rock violently. And then there was some more hard bumping against the back of his seat. He couldn’t see anything in his rear view mirror because Bayley was blocking his entire view. He was leaning between the front seats with his face right next to Linwood’s. Had he really pulled his pants down so that his mother could look to see if something else was crawling on him? Yes, apparently he had. Distracted by all the commotion, Linwood finally looked back at the road, jamming on the brakes so hard that the car to come to a screeching, sliding halt.
It wasn’t because of the tick. It was because they had come upon another blockade. Dead ahead.
“Don’t stop, Linwood,” his mother ordered him shrilly. “Go around.”
He only had time for a split second decision. He did what his mother told him to do. He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and swung hard to the left shoulder, speeding right past the roadblock.
The car bumped crazily over the uneven gravel and mud. Tires skidding. Tires grabbing. Then skidding again while everyone in the car held on for their lives.
For a heart-stopping moment Linwood thought that the vehicle would tip over, but by some miracle, they stayed upright. In the rearview mirror he could see people waving at them. Their mouths were open and he knew they were shouting at them. He didn’t know what they were saying but he did know what people were capable of. So he kept going until he didn’t see the people anymore and considered themselves lucky that there were no gun shots.
“Linwood, there’s a road up ahead,” Floris informed him as she squinted over the map. She pushed her glasses up to her forehead. “If we take that, it will take us to- ”
But Linwood was barely listening to her. He was looking a sign that said: ONE-LANE BRIDGE AHEAD. If there was a bridge ahead, it might be a likely place for an ambush. He was learning. He didn’t say anything to anyone else about a possible ambush, but he planned on staying extra vigilant so they weren’t caught unaware again.
The car slowed down but continued rolling slowly forward. Twenty miles an hour. Ten miles an hour.
“What are you doing?” Mirin demanded to know from the backseat, the tension easy to read in her voice.
“Why are you- ” Floris began
“Everybody, shut up!” Linwood shouted.
Nobody said a word after that. There was nothing to say. They just sat there in the stopped car. The bridge before them was nothing but a blackened, burned-out shell. Linwood renewed his tight grip on the steering wheel at the same time that Floris said uneasily, “There’s one of them.”
In his rearview mirror Linwood saw the shuffling figure, head slightly askew, the arms dangling loosely. It was headed straight for them. He wasn’t worried though. It was far enough away that they could leave it behind in a matter of seconds. They had plenty of time. Once they started heading down the road. By the time he glanced in the mirror again, there were two more of them.
Linwood turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. He sat there with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. He tried turning the key again. There was just- nothing. No clicking of a dying battery. No engine trying to turn over. Nothing. The car was as dead as those things headed their way. Except the car wasn’t moving.
“It’s the anti-theft lock!” Mirin yelled from the backseat. She walked him through the steps to disengage the lock and the car immediately turned over, much to everyone’s relief.
Looking back over her shoulder, Floris urged Linwood, “Come on. Let’s go. We can take that gravel road.”
But Linwood didn’t have a good feeling about the gravel road. He couldn’t say why. Something was telling him not to take it. He prayed that it was some kind of divine intervention.
“What are you doing?” Floris shrilled at him. “I told you- ”
Still gripping the steering wheel tightly in both hands, he cut Floris off with a single sentence. “We’re going back. Even if we have to run that blockade again.”
And then he was turning the car around, making an illegal U-turn in the middle of nowhere even though nothing was illegal anymore.
Chapter 12
The sky was a black void everywhere she looked. There was no moon. There were no stars. At least the darkness was from nightfall and storm clouds, not from clouds of black smoke, Lise told herself. They were lucky there. Extremely lucky.
“I think the rain put the fire out,” Mirin whispered beside her.
Lise hoped she was right. Driven from home by a raging forest fire, they’d had to run for their lives. She didn’t know where they would go if her house burned down but it looked like the fire had swept southward when the wind had veered. With more luck, her house had been spared. They had been lucky, too, with the rain but they needed a little more luck. They needed shelter for the night and the house rising up before them could provide that, as long as there were no surprises inside.
“How many people did you say lived here?” Mirin asked.
“I didn’t,” Lise answered her.
She didn’t know how many people had lived here or what had become of them. The only thing she was certain of was the people gathered around her in the darkness. Now that they were back, it was like they had never left. The only good thing they had taken away from their experience was that they had gotten a firsthand look at what they were up against. No one talked about going back to the city anymore. Not openly at least.
“I’m going to go check it out,” Lise finally said.
She wasn’t as brave as she sounded. Just the thought of going into that big dark house and not knowing what was waiting inside for her was terrifying. But what choice did they have? Staying out in the woods at night was a terrifying thought, too, full of all kinds of risks she didn’t even want to think about.
“I’ll go with you.” Vonley offered.
Surprised by the suggestion, Lise knew it was just a token offer. If there was any way out of it, Vonley wouldn’t go. He was probably even more afraid than she was which would make him a liability rather than an asset. Gillie, on the other hand, was a different matter. When he dropped to his knees beside her and whispered, “I don’t like the thought of you going in there alone. We’ll go together,” she knew his concern was real.
“No,” Lise whispered back. “Someone needs to stay behind in case something happens here.”
Knowing better than to argue with her, Gillie said that he would do
his best to have her back, which was more than she could say for the rest of them. She was thankful that they were all back together again. Maybe not willingly, but they were lucky to have made it back at all from all she had heard. They had seen all they had wanted to see of zombies. The walking dead. Whatever they wanted to call the murderous, corpselike beings that hunted the living. So had she. On their way here through the woods, they had run into several of them, one of whom was stark naked and had a big branch sticking out of its chest. They had run in the opposite direction, but the fact that it was still out there somewhere in the darkness had to be on everyone’s mind. Of course, there was every chance that there was one of them in the house that she was about to enter, maybe more than one, but she wasn’t going to know that by sitting here guessing. There was only one way to find out and that was by going inside. Unfortunately, no one had thought to bring a flashlight. There hadn’t been time for it.
Mirin was at her side again, whispering, “There’s no one in there.”
And how could she know that? Lise wondered as she turned and stared at her sister’s pale face in the darkness.
“I don’t hear anything,” Mirin said as she blinked back at her.
After a silence, Mirin asked another question. “How will we know if something is in there?”
“I think my screams will give it away,” Lise said as she turned back to the house.
Mirin didn’t have anything to say after that. Like the rest of them probably did, Lise almost jumped out of her skin when something screamed out in the dripping void of blackness that surrounded them. The sound unnerved her, she admitted inwardly. It must have been one of those things. It hadn’t sounded like any animal she had ever heard. But it hadn’t sounded quite human, either. Everyone else huddled closer around her and Lise knew she couldn’t wait any longer.
Cold, wet foliage brushed against her as she moved forward. Once inside the picket fence that bordered the yard, she stopped to listen and to get her bearings. She had almost reached the porch steps when another screech from the darkness brought her head around with a jerk. Just another reminder, she told herself, that they couldn’t stay in the woods all night. The sooner they found safe shelter, the better. So she did her best to gather up enough courage to open the front door, even though the thought of entering the unknown darkness of the house frightened her so much that she had to force herself not to turn and run. She crept up the porch steps as quietly as she could, and then, with her hand on the doorknob, she knew it was now or never.
She had just begun to turn the knob when her hand suddenly drew back. That’s when she smelled it. Rotting meat. Rotting flesh. Not from inside the house, but from something outside in the darkness with her. Something she couldn’t see.
She heard something moving around in the bushes that surrounded the porch. She still couldn’t see anything. When she finally did see the zombie, she saw that it was headed straight for her.
She threw the door open and, once inside, she slammed it behind her. She stood with her back braced against the door, only belatedly realizing how lucky she had been that the door had not been locked. But she wasn’t going to let herself think about that. She was inside. She was safe. At least from the immediate threat outside.
She could hear the zombie thumping around on the porch and crashing into chairs. It even slammed hard against the door, which meant it knew she was inside and had the presence of mind to try and get at her. It also meant they were able to climb steps, a short flight of them anyway. She backed away from the door, forcing herself to concentrate and to focus.
Utter darkness surrounded her, and a silence so deep she could almost feel it. She could see brief glimpses of the room she was in whenever lightning flickered beyond the windows. But then the darkness would come again and she had to rely on her hearing and her other senses instead. Feeling for obstacles in the darkness, she took a tentative step forward. And then another. She bumped her shin on something hard and unmovable, a chair. As she waited for the pain to subside, she knew she had to make a decision on which way to go. She felt for a wall that was briefly illuminated by the lightning. And then she froze.
Somewhere ahead of her in the inky blackness, she had heard a noise. She tried to keep her bearings as well as keep track of the door that led back out of here, trying not to panic at the thought that she could very well find herself trapped between two threats. Groping blindly, with more urgency this time, her hand scraped across something sharp, something that made her gasp in pain. She didn’t know what it was, but she was sure she was cut and bleeding.
Ignoring the pain, she forced herself to slow down. To think. Panicking was only going to make things worse.
She heard a low groan in the darkness. That’s when she knew with a certainty that she wasn’t alone. That’s when it became almost impossible not to panic.
Lightning flashed again and she saw two things at once. One was the door directly ahead of her. Second was the shadow that slowly disengaged itself from the blackness and became the form of a man.
There was never any choice. She reached the closed door in front of her at the same time that a rattling growl behind her filled her with almost mindless terror.
The door must not have been latched all the way. Expecting resistance, Lise was caught unaware as she burst headlong into another dark room.
A flash of lightning revealed a dark form here, too. This shadow, like the other one, was bigger than she was. And it was close. Alarmingly close. She had no time to think. Or to react. If things went black around her, there was no way to really tell. She was aware only of a million bright pinpoints of light bursting behind her eyes at the same time that a deep, masculine voice ground out, “Oh, hell.”
Chapter 13
Reacting instinctively, Jes slammed the door closed. Almost immediately something slammed hard against the other side of it.
Feeling the jarring impact against her back, Lise made a soft sound like a whimper. Whoever, whatever, was in the darkness with her shifted her body as another loud thump hit the door. Iron fingers closed around both her shoulders, fingers that were quite possibly the only things keeping her on her feet. At first, the pain in her face had all her focus. But soon, the fact that she wasn’t alone jarred her consciousness and she started to fight.
Lightning flickered and lit up a face that was only inches away from her own. She drew her breath in sharply at the same moment that she heard, “Are you all right?”
She stopped fighting as soon as she recognized the man and the voice. It was the FBI agent from the funeral home.
Was she all right? Just barely. But somehow she managed to nod.
First and foremost, Jes had to make sure she was all right. A blow to the face could do a lot of damage. Exactly where his fist had landed he couldn’t be sure but he knew she had to be in some serious pain.
Lise was in pain. She was also shaking from head to toe now from the adrenaline surging through her body. Maybe it accounted for the fact that everything felt surreal. Still half dazed, she turned her head, trying to clear it, trying to focus on the lightning beyond the window.
When Jes finally realized she was able to stand on her own, an audible sigh of relief escaped him. At least she was conscious. Hopefully she was going to stay that way.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked her again.
“Yes,” she whispered. It was all she could manage.
She could see his frown even in the darkness. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She didn’t add that she had thought about him more than once in the past few months, had wondered if he was one of the ones who had survived.
“I’ll answer your questions when we’re safely out of here.”
He was right. Right now there were more pressing issues. Like the zombie doing its best to get at them from the other side of the door.
“I want you to stay right here while I take care of that,” she heard. “Do you understand?”
She nodded an
d he steered her away from the door when it thumped violently again.
And then he was gone.
Lise held her breath waiting for him to return. She could hear noises but she couldn’t tell what was going on. When he did return, he wasted no time in grabbing her arm and leading her quickly out of the room. “Back porch,” he said as she tried to keep up with his long strides.
She was surprised to see that everyone else was already huddled together on the back porch. They immediately started asking questions. What were they even doing there? Lise wondered. They were supposed to be waiting in the woods. And what about the zombie on the porch? Apparently that wasn’t a threat anymore, either.
She heard Mirin ask, “What happened to you?”
“She’ll be all right,” Jes Rawlins answered for her.
“What did you do to her?” Mirin asked in her suspicious voice.
Jes Rawlins didn’t answer her question. Instead he replied grimly, “We all need to get inside. I’ve already checked the upstairs rooms. The house is clear.”
Everyone wasted no time shuffling into the house and the door closed behind them. Only then did Lise breathe easier.
Most nights Lise slept by fits and starts. Even though they were in a strange house, last night was different. She had slept more soundly than she had slept in a very long time. Beyond the bedroom window, she could see that the sun was already up in a clear blue sky.
There was a soft knock and the door opened a scant inch. Sitting up, she told whoever it was to come in. The door opened wider and Jes Rawlins stepped into the room.
She had been nearly overwhelmed by the man’s presence in the darkness. By daylight she found that he wasn’t any less daunting. He was wearing military pants and what looked like some kind of black armored vest over a black shirt. Various gun belts, fully equipped with weapons, were strapped to his waist and both thighs. There was even one on his arm. He was the perfect description of the term armed to the teeth.
