Because they hadn’t been looking for it. They hadn’t known what they had been looking for. They would have looked past the people walking in the streets because they wouldn’t have looked out of place. Not when you were only glancing at them as you prepared for a mission report.
The road seemed like it was getting smaller. It seemed like it was a main road, but the businesses had faded away to houses. There were stop signs that he just blew through, not paying them any attention. Trees cut out the little bit of moonlight, and large, leaf-covered branches canopied overhead. There were streetlights, but the world around them seemed to have crept into a darker night as so much light was being taken away. They were relying more and more on the headlights of the Humvee, which were not all that good to begin with. They had spotlights and additional lights that could be turned on, if needed. If Westdale wanted to look around for the switches, he could but, right now, he was trying to just focus on seeing what he could.
“Watch out!” Bernard yelled at him. Before Westdale could react, Bernard was reaching across and grabbing at the wheel.
“What are you doing?” Westdale growled at him as he fought with the scientist. The man wasn’t that strong, but he was fighting to pull the Humvee to the right, which would take them into some yard.
“You’re going to hit those people!”
People? What people? There were only those things out there.
Westdale continued to try and turn the wheel to get them back onto the road, but the tires were spinning in the grass of someone’s yard. They were losing control as the vehicle twisted and turned. Westdale fought to turn the wheel back, but it was too much of an adjustment. They were quickly fishtailing back in the other direction, turning onto another side street.
Westdale barely had time to see the rising of the road and the large metal arms of the railroad crossing. With how they had turned, they were heading right towards them. He tried to fight the wheel to the right. They were still going too fast, and the Humvee was fighting to turn away from him, the wheel pulling in his hands. The whole vehicle was shaking, trying and go in so many directions at once.
This wasn’t going to be good. Westdale knew it as soon as they were twisted in that direction. He tried to straighten out the vehicle so he would hit it square on. They hit the dip at the railroad crossing, then they were airborne.
The wheel had twisted from him, this time pulling itself completely from his hands as the vehicle had hit the side of the rut. They had hit it at a bad angle, and Westdale felt his stomach lurch. He knew that when they came down, it would be bad. With luck, they wouldn’t roll.
However, he didn’t really feel as though luck would land with them.
CHAPTER 22
Rob didn’t need to look back. In that brief second, he had seen enough to know that they needed to get out of the bar. As he watched the woman he thought had been immune to the virus attack the bartender, he realized it wasn’t just the world around them that was shattering. He had started to get used to the bar. It had been a wall of security between them and the things, but he knew they had to leave it eventually. He just hadn’t wanted it to be with so much chaos, and he didn’t want to leave anyone behind. He wanted all of them to go. They were all supposed to leave and get out safely. It was his own promise to himself that he would make sure to get them all out, but he had failed.
He always failed, didn’t he? He had failed all those people in Chicago, seeing them die in that meth lab fire. So many women died because he failed them. He was the protector. He took his oath to protect and serve seriously. He failed that oath, and had promised when he got out of the hospital, he would not allow himself to fail again. Now, people were again relying on him to save them, and he couldn’t. It was all falling apart and he couldn’t save them. He had to save himself and get out of there. If he was to see his son and wife again, he needed to go.
Rob turned, bringing up the closest heavy object he could find, a stool they hadn’t used against the door, and flung it through the front window. Then he was through it, landing on the large metal storm cellar door of the basement. The door was slanted downwards, so he slipped a little. His balance was thrown off, and he felt his bad leg trying to buckle. He thought he was going down because he could feel it bending. His weight shifted, his foot found solid ground, and he was able to stumble forward until he caught itself.
“Motherfuck!” he heard Bruce grumbling behind him. Rob turned to see him on the ledge of the window, easing himself down.
Rob didn’t want to think about the yelling he still heard inside, the calls for help. Those two had chosen to stay behind, so he wasn’t leaving them. This was what they chose to do, and they really wouldn’t have been safe if they had taken the baby. If it woke up, it would have called attention to them. The things would have swarmed to them like flies. They would have had to leave the child.
Yeah, and he would have nightmares about that tonight. He would see babies around him. They would probably add to the fires that invaded his nightmares, add to the women who danced naked through his dreams, their skin burning off. He still saw the smiling face, the old man’s face that had the tooth-filled smile that went from ear-to-ear.
Tina said she would take the baby into the cooler with her. They would all be safe in there. He just had to send in help. He could get help, get the military to come in after them.
But no one would be coming in. No one would ever come into the town. He knew that just as well as Bruce did. There would be no one getting in there. He should have tried harder to get them out of the bar. He should have forced them to come. He could have grabbed the baby and brought her with him. They could have kept her safe.
“Come on. We gotta get to my truck,” Bruce was saying as he climbed down the metal door, his steps booming. The sound echoes like a dinner bell, Rob thought as he tried to make his way down behind the big man, but trying not to make as much noise.
He looked around and saw there were about twenty of the things around them. They weren’t on top of them, yet, but they would be. They were surrounding them. While it wasn’t a closed circle, it would be enough.
“Keep moving!” Rob called out to the man as he saw an open path and started running towards it.
Bruce pointed, calling out after him “My truck’s over there. Where are you going?”
Why couldn’t the man see? If they ran to his truck, there were more of them there. Sometimes you have to run away from something to get there. The best way between points A and B was not always to go straight. Sometimes it was better to go around the lake to make it to the beach.
Yeah, the beach…where he should have been. It was summer. He should have taken his wife and son to the beach. It had been a nice day. He should have taken them swimming, maybe have done some fishing. When was the last time he had taken Jake fishing? He really couldn't remember.
“Look at all them. There’s a path here. We make it over to that road, there are less of them down that street. None of them seem to be by the tracks over there. We can cut up on the railroad tracks and come back to the crossing. We can’t just run straight through them,” Rob was saying as he rushed towards the gap. He was trying to keep as much of a distance from those things as he could.
These things were something more than what they saw. He had figured it out in the bar. He had a feeling there was something to the spiders that each of them claimed to have seen. It didn’t make sense they couldn’t see the things, but the infected always seemed to see them. If there were spiders, maybe they needed to avoid just getting bitten, but Denise had never been bitten. They needed to stay far enough away that something couldn’t crawl on them.
“We can run faster than those things.”
“Not if they gang up. Come on.”
Rob wasn’t waiting around for him. He made it past one that looked like it had lost most of his arm, the skin torn away down to bone. He wasn’t sure if the things had been eating if off the man, or if the man had done it to himself. If see
med like, in the transition stages, the people had become very self-destructive trying to claw out the spiders. Every one of the things around them looked like, at some point, there had been some kind of self-mutilation. Even the ones who had been mostly eaten showed some kinds of claw marks around the face and eyes. He wasn’t sure what that meant.
He came near one woman who was missing her leg. He could see the stump as she crawled towards them. What was left of her mouth was opening and closing, her teeth exposed, and part of her cheek was clawed through. She reached out another hand and pulled on the cement, making her way closer. Rob could see that three of her fingernails were gone, the tips gnawed off.
He made his way clear of her and was across the road and into the yard. He was just beyond the edge of that glow of the streetlight, and could see that Bruce was quickly coming behind him. Rob turned and took a minute to study the world around them. It had changed so much in a day, but if you took away those things, you could almost not see it. The lights came on in the houses that were set on timers, the streetlights came on as if life still existed. In the darkness sweeping through the town, the night sky could almost not even been seen in the horror that had invaded.
He knew that if he closed his eyes, he would smell the barbecues. In the house behind him, the small ranch house with the large window, he could imagine a forty-something cooking steaks; kids were playing in the yard, screaming and yelling at each other, collecting the fireflies as they flew in the twilight; a song was playing on the mp3 player they had hooked up to a speaker outside; the smell of dinner would float out from an open kitchen window; and the wife would be sitting in a lounge chair, just watching the peacefulness of the kids’ chaos.
That world was gone, and he couldn’t close his eyes to think about it. The world had changed in the course of a day. Nothing would ever be the same again.
It had all happened so fast. Change wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be gradual, not in the course of one day. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
He could almost hear the sounds of the distant highway, although he knew it must have just been his mind playing tricks. There was a distant roar as something tore down the street blocks away. Back in his own town, he often heard that sound five to six times a night when one of the locals had decided it was time to try and race down the main drag, knowing that the chief was, more than likely, out of town patrolling one of the neighboring communities that paid for him to check on them. Sometimes the kids would get caught, or sometimes he would just happen to come up there to have a talk with them when they would park their cars outside the sweet shop afterwards.
That sound had become comforting. It was a sound he recognized, and it had somehow become one he associated with home.
“Do you hear that?” Bruce asked as he came up behind Rob. The man was already puffing a little, but not because of the exertion. Rob turned and looked at him, seeing that the things behind him were working their way up onto the grass. It did seem like they had lucked out when they had come out of the bar. Most of the ones that had been towards the front had been more of the slow, maimed ones, ones that had maimed legs and would chase after them slower than many of the others.
Rob could still see the bar. It was only a little down the street because they really hadn’t come that far yet, and he saw about ten of the things had stayed there, still pounding on the front loading door. Looking closer, he realized they weren’t pounding on the door. It looked like they had gotten part of the door twisted and were climbing in the building. If the kids hadn’t made it to the cooler, it was too late.
They still had to get across the next street and climb the fence that followed along the side of the railroad tracks. He figured they could run along it. If they were inside the fence, they could avoid the things and run straight down the tracks. Of course, he couldn’t see any of the things caught in between the fences that bordered the tracks, but if any of them were in there, they would be trapped.
And they still had to climb the fence. That was beyond the streetlight, but there was still enough light for him to see, so he didn’t think there were any there. There weren’t any trees by the tracks, so everything should be clear. They just had to make sure not to get hit by any trains.
But no trains had come though that he could remember hearing. They must be rerouted or blocked. Maybe it was a dead track. He was too far away from it to know. It made sense, though, that they would have stopped the trains. Why let a train through when you had quarantined everything else?
“It’s getting closer. Listen,” Bruce said. Rob had heard it, but kept pushing it to the back of his mind. Still, that roar of the engine was getting closer. Very close. In fact, most of the things had turned away from them, starting towards the side street parallel to the tracks. Only the crawler seemed to still be noticing them, working her way one outstretched hand at a time.
He rushed into the streetlight, hurrying across, wanting to make his way to the tracks as soon as he could. They had to climb that fence while the things weren’t noticing.
“Rob!”
Rob turned to see Bruce still standing there, then he looked to see where Bruce was pointing It was an Army Humvee rushing down the road. They were saved. The army had arrived!
Before thinking, he took a step towards it, holding up his arms and flailing them. “Hey!”
The things seemed to be too caught up in the sound of the engine that they didn’t notice him. As they started to stumble towards it, it plowed through them, the heavy armor high enough that it forced the things to either get flung out of the way, or fall underneath and get crunched under the large tires.
Then Rob saw as the vehicle lost control. At first, it fishtailed towards them, but then it started going wildly back and forth. It didn’t take long. It had been going too fast, then it had raced into that dip of the railroad tracks, going airborne.
* * * *
Rob was the first to reach the vehicle, surprising himself with being able to push back the pain biting through his lower back. Ever since the accident, whenever he had tried to run, he had fought against the limp. It always pulled at him. It slowed him down and he would often curse at it. Damn his leg. Dammit to hell for keeping him from being able to help, for reminding him of how he couldn’t help. He wasn’t young and healthy anymore, and his body loved to send painful reminders to him whenever he tried to push himself beyond his limits.
“I’ll get the driver. You check to see if there is anyone in the passenger seat,” Rob called to Bruce, who was laboring to keep up. He could hear the man’s hard breathing, but knew it meant he was still behind him. The things hadn’t gotten to them yet, which was good because they had rushed to the vehicle without focusing or being too careful. The large vehicle had done a decent job of clearing the way, so it hadn’t been that hard to follow its path.
He could hear slow, dragging steps on gravel and didn’t have to turn to know that the things were coming.
The Humvee was upside-down, and Rob ran to the driver’s door. The door looked like it had been crumpled on its outer edges, but was still closed. Rob reached for the handle and pulled. He was worried the rolling of the vehicle had maybe wedged the door closed. He was thankful when, with a slight groan, the door actually opened, revealing a man in what looked more like a space suit than anything Rob had ever seen before. It was obviously some kind of hazmat suit.
These men were part of the team that had come into town. Something biological was going on. That made everything worse, and Rob even had to wonder if it was smart to get out of there. He wasn’t a scientist and didn’t know how something like that spread. What if they did make it out, only to carry it somewhere else? What if he took it home and gave it to his family? Could he live with seeing his wife or Jacob as they slowly tried to claw their eyes out, then tried to eat him?
But if he didn’t try to get out, he would never see them again. He would know if he was infected long before he got home, right? He didn’t need a doc
tor’s degree to see what happened to these things as they changed. He would be able to tell if he was getting that way. He would know. He could stop himself.
Rob reached in to pull the person, he wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, out of the vehicle. The man hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, and had taken a good tumble while they had been flying through the air. He was heavy, and Rob had to put in a lot of effort to get him out. He heard something inside him pop, his right side suddenly feeling like it was lower and there was a numbness flooding through his lower back, but the thing inside the vehicle was moving. Then Rob dragged him out and onto the grass. The Humvee had landed in a large open field just beyond the tracks. Bruce’s truck was parked in a gravel lot in the far corner. They were almost there.
Rob eased the person to the ground. He could hear a groan from the other side of the Hummer. When he heard pounding, he looked up to see Bruce fighting with the door. When he couldn’t get it open, he pounded on it, kicked it, then Rob watched as the man spat on it in disgust. Finally giving up on it, he had come around to the driver’s side and eased the other man out that door.
So far, it didn’t seem like either one of them was stirring. They must have been knocked out, but they still didn’t know if either was alive. Rob didn’t like it, but they were probably going to have to get these men out of their suits.
He reached down and grabbed the zipper along the chest of the first man’s suit.
“What are you doing?” Bruce asked, eyes wide.
“We need to see if they're okay.”
He ripped the zipper down the length of the suit, pulling it off his upper body. Bruce reached past him and grabbed the man inside the suit. Rob heard him grunt as he struggled to pull, then saw as they pulled out a man in a camouflaged uniform. As Bruce lowered him down, Rob bent over him, reaching to the man’s neck to check for a pulse.
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