Beverly scoffed, rolled her eyes, snatched a bag of bagels from the shelf, and marched out of the pantry. She went directly for the silver doors which were marked either ‘Refrigerated’ or ‘Frozen’. She pulled up the metal pin on the one marked ‘Refrigerated’, hauled open the door, and disappeared inside. When she exited, her arm was wrapped around a big tub of cream cheese, which she dropped in a not-so-delicate way on the metal food prep counter. As she went about making herself breakfast, the rest of us did the same. I got my oatmeal, Mei opened a can of fruit cocktail and Doc nuked a frozen burrito, cinnamon roll, and an egg muffin. This was after finding the cold walk-ins filled with all you’d expect…frozen pizza, frozen lasagna, pre-made grilled cheese, tater tots, lettuce, salad dressing – everything you’d want for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
My oatmeal was not good and I wondered if the others were doing the same as me…eating more for comfort than hunger. Thankfully, Doc took my mind off this as he shared his thoughts while chewing a bite of cinnamon roll.
“Guess we got lucky,” he mused.
Everyone had a shocked expression as they turned in his direction.
Beverly even dropped her bagel to her side. “How could you possibly believe we’re lucky?” She was speaking for the rest of us, until she added, “Did you get knocked in the head one too many times on the football field?”
Unaffected by her tone, he lifted his shoulders in a gesture that said it was obvious. Only because we continued to stare did he explain. “The food delivery must have shown up this week. I mean, look at all that stuff. Whatever’s happening out there could have started before the delivery. I doubt many others out there have this much food. I’ll bet not many…”
After reflecting on his observation, Harrison seemed impressed. “Your point is…strangely legitimate.”
“Yeah, I mean did you see how much meat they got in there?” Doc asked with a jerk of his head toward the freezer.
He was so astounded that it made us curious enough to look inside for ourselves. Everyone but Harrison, that is. He remained leaning against the metal counter, arms folded across his chest, boots crossed at the ankles. Just before I peered inside, I realized how much he looked like a cowboy, casually indifferent, as if he were leaning against a fence while overlooking the rolling hills.
Then I turned around and found the meat Doc was referring to, and my breath caught in my throat. I recognized it instantly because I’d just seen it yesterday. They were Harrison’s bags of meat. I hadn’t noticed at the time how many there were, or the amount of meat they contained. Now, with them lined up along two shelves, it seemed improbable that Harrison could have carried all that with him. There were so many, and combined they would be incredibly heavy.
Impulsively, I turned to look at Harrison and found that he was watching me intently, waiting for my reaction. His dark blue eyes simmered, turning my stomach into molten liquid. There was no rational reason for him to have lugged anything of that amount back to the school, especially not raw meat. You only do that with things you couldn’t live without. Then Doc crossed between us, disrupting our view of each other, and we were forced to break our stare.
“I mean, who needs all that raw meat?” he choked out as he stuffed the last of his burrito in his mouth.
My thoughts exactly.
“You gonna eat?” Doc asked, twisting his head toward Harrison.
Harrison’s eyes remained steadily on me. “I ate earlier.”
Picking up that something was going on between the two of us, Doc swung his gaze in my direction, back to Harrison and then shrugged, apparently figuring whatever we were doing wasn’t important enough for him to be involved in.
“Did you check the outside, too?” Mei asked.
Harrison tore his eyes from me to glance at her. “Hmm?”
“The gate,” Beverly said, interrupting whatever Mei was about to say. “You know, the tall metal thing with the spikes on top? The thing keeping us in here and the Infected out there? That thing…”
“Yes, Beverly,” he replied tiredly. “I checked the gate. And I was about to make another round.”
“Well,” she replied, settling back against the counter again. “We can’t be too safe nowadays, can we?”
It was a blatantly rude remark, and it made me not want to be around her.
“I’ll go with you.”
He stared at me for a long minute, seeming to evaluate whether I was sincerely offering. “Okay.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Doc said, absentmindedly starting in on his egg muffin. “She has some mean martial arts skills.”
A grin rose up on Harrison’s face, making his perfectly chiseled features more defined.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’ve noticed.”
He pinned me with his eyes again, freezing me in place, making that burning sensation course through my belly again. How could I be so attracted to someone who was gradually revealing that he had fairly disturbing quirks? And who, by his own admission, wasn’t safe? Ridiculous as it was, I was drawn to him. The fact that I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as his stare bore into me was proof enough. I didn’t want him to stop, and yet I was unsettled by him continuing. Finally, he shifted his eyes, freeing me, and launched into delegating responsibilities that he and I had discussed on our walk around the interior.
“Mei, would you mind finding a food inventory list?”
“Sure, I’ll check the computers.”
Beverly’s disdain was clear as she sarcastically pointed out, “They’re probably password protected.”
Openly ignoring her, Mei repeated her answer to Harrison. “It won’t be a problem.”
And for some reason, maybe by the confidence in her tone, I believed her.
“Doc…Beverly, would you mind going through the lockers for anything useful?”
Beverly’s face twisted in a frown. “You want me to pilfer from my friends?”
“Your friends won’t mind,” he replied.
He didn’t articulate it but his statement seemed like a double message to me. They won’t mind because they’re your friends and want the best for you in a situation like this, and they won’t mind because they’re in all likelihood dead, or eating someone who is.
As a sign of truce – or to insist she follow his command – he handed her the ring of master keys he’d been carrying with him around the premises. It was a gesture, and we all knew it. He was saying: These are important, I’m handing them to you, accept my generosity and let’s move on. Answering him effectively in her naturally crude Beverly way, she scowled, grabbed it from his hands, and turned her shoulder to him.
He withheld a smile and we left them in the kitchen to head back to the main entrance. Along the way, I couldn’t keep myself from sneaking a look at him. It was the same profile I’d watched over the last year, strong, handsome, and alluring, but it was different now. He was appealing for another reason. He was good with people, probably better at understanding and dealing with them than most of my previous friends, who made careers of manipulating others’ emotions on a whim.
“What’s up?” he asked suddenly, shifting his eyes to me.
“Back there, you were…impressive.”
His eyebrows rose, making it clear he hadn’t expected me to deliver a compliment. “Impressive? How?”
“You assigned roles and everyone did it willingly.”
“Not Beverly.”
I chuckled under my breath. “For Beverly, that was willingly.” A few more steps and I summed up what was on my mind. “You know how to lead, Harrison.” I understood this well enough. I’d seen it in my dad and the men he was friends with.
“Lead?” he said, sounding stunned. “To lead you need someone to follow. We’re all in this together, Kennedy. No one person is greater than the others.”
I smiled to myself, which he noticed.
“You disagree?” he asked.
“Not at all. I was just thinking that, once again, you sound like a l
eader.”
He broke his stoic expression to laugh at himself, but that was his only response, and I was left thinking he still didn’t believe me. We’d reached the main hallway by then and were heading for the doors. Despite what we’d soon be encountering, I noticed the austere blueness of the sky. It was striking, and the sight of it made me realize something else of greater importance. Over the last year, I’d paid some attention to the weather, and knew when rain was expected or the sun would shine, but this was the first time I remembered appreciating it. Strange, especially considering the circumstances we were in.
Once at the doors, we stopped to survey what we’d soon be entering.
“There are more of them,” Harrison mused.
“Yeah…” I replied, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.
Most of the bodies had been plucked clean, with only the skulls, hands, and feet remaining. Left with no one to chase and no bodies to chow down on, the majority of the Infected were calmly roaming between cars and each other. They weren’t interacting, only skirting around each other if they met head-on. There was no eye contact, no vocalization, no gesture of recognition. They existed in a complete stupor…until Harrison opened the door.
At the sound of the door’s base scuffing across the bottom threshold, the Infected – all of them – ran for us. Harrison and I froze. It couldn’t have taken longer than a few seconds for the mob to swarm toward us, but it felt like months passed as we stood there, waiting to see if the steel fencing would hold them back. When the collision came, the metal bars quivered but held steady. Only the arms and protruding parts of the faces of those on the front line made it past the frame. Each one of them was clawing at us. Most were clamping their mouths in what seemed to be an effort to take a bite.
Harrison drew in a deep breath and exhaled, and I knew he was nervously waiting for confirmation on what he’d already promised the others – that our only line of security would hold. Relieved that it did, he stepped out and down the steps. As I trailed him, I had the feeling that if it hadn’t held, he wouldn’t have panicked over it, and that made me feel secure with him. He could be relied on to keep his head in an emergency. That trait was quickly showing itself. And what it meant to me was that I wouldn’t need to protect him, although I would without hesitation if that ever became needed.
I took my eyes off the Infected long enough to kneel at the security guard. Having only done a cursory inspection of his gear yesterday, I knew now would be as good a time as any. We were stockpiling resources, which meant we planned to stay a while longer. I hoped it wouldn’t be too much longer, but hope could only get us so far. We had to be frugal about what was available to us now, at least until the military arrived to pull us out.
Ignoring the flies landing on his corpse and the smell of decomposition, I dug through the guard’s pockets, pulling out a Smith & Wesson tactical pocket knife, Smith & Wesson LED flashlight, and Smith & Wesson nickel handcuffs. This guy had been a fan. I was surprised that the firearm I’d taken from him earlier was a Springfield XD.
Harrison kept his focus on the Infected who were still clawing at us, growling and groaning. As I stood, Mrs. Beckett, my fifth period teacher, shoved her way to the front of the line, knocking one of the administrators whose name I didn’t know against the bars. Neither seemed to notice. I watched them for a second, realizing that they had probably been courteous to each other just two days ago, maybe talked about the warm weather or the pop quiz Mrs. Beckett had warned she’d be giving to us next week. Clearly, that was no longer going to happen. Now all common social interaction seemed non-existent. Whatever else this infection was doing, it noticeably took away their emotions or any sensitivity to other human beings. It was also rapidly decaying their bodies. Their skin seemed to be sinking back against their skull, not by much but enough to show a difference, leaving their eyes darker and more hollow in their sockets. Their spine also seemed to be degrading because they were hunching over now, or leaning to the side when someone else wasn’t pushing against them in an effort to get at us.
“You ready?” Harrison’s voice broke through my internal conjecture.
I nodded and we started down the sidewalk between the school and the gate, with the Infected stumbling along after us.
“They’re following,” I pointed out to Harrison in an offhand, detached way, sounding more like I was commenting on my preference for combat boots over sneakers.
“We’re enticing,” he replied without looking their way.
I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but the fact he didn’t break into a smile was somewhat telling.
“What do you think about dropping a sign from the overhang?” I suggested, tilting my head at the concrete awning that stretched over the main entrance.
Harrison scrutinized it and said, “How about hanging them from the roof?”
“They’d be more visible there,” I replied.
He then nodded, which told me that we’d come to an agreement.
We walked at a good pace around the perimeter with our fans tracking us the entire way. Others, who had previously been far out of earshot, detected our passing and sprinted towards us, only to be blocked by those who remained pressed up against the gates. We walked to the end of the building and turned left, coming up on the North-side parking lot. It looked virtually the same as the one in front of the main entrance. The same atrocities covered the ground, more Infected charged the gate. The only differences were that Old Boy wasn’t parked at the opening. Instead, there was a body, mostly devoured but identifiable by the size and by the buzz cut. Mr. Packard…The way his body lay, pressed against the bars, nothing else around him but the hungry standing over him, it all made him look…deserted. And it felt like a grave injustice. He had dedicated himself to saving lives and had given his own in one final effort.
Harrison must have recognized him too because he turned to me and asked, “You all right?”
I had to suppress the sickness in my stomach and swallow back the lump in my throat, but the word finally got out. “Yeah.” There was nothing I could do for him now, I realized, which only left me with a deeper sadness.
From as far away as across the side street and into the large fields surrounding the homes, more Infected were continuing to be spurred into action and were running in our direction. Through the throngs, I could see that those homes had windows broken and cars parked across their lawns, and I knew they hadn’t been spared. The mob moved with us, growing in size, until we reached a part of the fence lined with thick shrubs. There, they collected in a pile, squeezing, pressing the faces and bodies of those in front through the rungs until their cheeks were swollen and contorted. No, no sensitivity at all…We left them there, grappling to get at us and turned the corner to the back of the school. This was the delivery area where doors opened to the back of the kitchen and to the maintenance sheds. As my eyes swept the vicinity, I stopped abruptly, which alerted Harrison.
“What?” he asked, his shoulders visibly stiffening at my uncertainty while he shifted to search for what had spooked me.
He wouldn’t recognize it, though, unless he had hung out with Beverly.
“Her dad made it.”
He was about to ask “who” until it came to him, and his head swung back and along the single row of parking spots offered to the janitors and maintenance crews just beyond the gate. There were two pickup trucks – non-commercial, dented, and rusting. And then there was a Mercedes Benz, kissing Mr. Packard’s fence, its grill having slammed into several bars until they slanted slightly inward. It hadn’t left a hole, but it had been dangerously close to becoming one. Tire marks grazed the pavement behind it indicating that it had screeched to a stop. It was polished and pristine, and the driver’s side door was open. In the back part of my mind, I recognized that the interior light was not on, which meant the door had been ajar for a while, sapping the car of its battery.
Simply in the fact that Harrison’s shoulders remained rigid and
his handsome face was hardened into a frown, I knew he had seen what I had. And I appreciated the fact that he didn’t try to make an attempt to comfort or reassure me. He knew as well as I did that my ex-friend’s father hadn’t made it safely inside and was in all likelihood dead, and Harrison wasn’t going to insult me by trying to cover it up. Instead, he gave me a long, close look, with those navy blue eyes that I was certain took in more detail than most others, before reassuring himself that I was all right. Only then did he turn. And that’s when it happened.
A gust of warm wind – the kind that carries thunderstorms to the Chicago area during summertime – drifted by us, although this one wasn’t carrying rain. I knew this when Harrison’s rigid shoulders rose several inches, and while I caught nothing from that gust other than that a storm was heading for us, I was certain he’d detected something else.
“Kennedy?” Harrison asked quietly, focusing his attention on the corner of the large trash dumpsters in front of us. “Do you still have your stars?”
I was already pulling them out. I realized then that I had the guard’s knife in my other hand.
“Harrison?” I said in a whisper, my heart beginning to pound quicker from the adrenaline. “Take the knife.”
But he shook his head, keeping his back to me, and never moving his sight from the corner where they’d landed. This was because he knew something I didn’t…That he didn’t have the time.
The man lunged out from behind the trash can, dragging his right leg behind him. He’d lost a shoe, and part of his foot. But it was the odd angle that he used to tow his leg which made his lunging wobbly. It had been broken, but he didn’t appear to notice the pain, apparently shutting off that part of his consciousness in order to reach us. Just like the others, his skin was sinking in and there was a vacancy in his eyes. He reached Harrison in seconds. Harrison’s wide hands grabbed the man’s head and threw him to the side. While this was effective in throwing the man off balance, it didn’t impede him, and I wondered what Harrison’s strategy might be. When Harrison stepped around him and slipped an arm around his neck, it came to me. He was going to break it. But I was already in the motion of drawing up the guard’s knife, eye-level with the man, and crossing the distance between us. As Harrison twisted the man’s head and the crack resounded across the delivery area, my hand was unable to stop its thrust and the knife landed perfectly in the center of the man’s temple. There was a brief moment of silence as we waited for the man to respond, to fight back, to continue his attack on us. But he did nothing, other than to slide down Harrison’s body until Harrison stepped back. From there, he fell the remainder of the way to the pavement.
Haven (Apocalypse Chronicles Part 1) Page 9
