by Sam Sisavath
Ghouls! her mind screamed. There are ghouls in here!
Her finger tightened against the trigger.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, swallowed up by darkness, but it must have only been a few seconds, because the alleyway door opened behind her and sunlight flooded inside. Peter hurried through, his breath flooding out in long gasps. In the brief few seconds that the door was opened, she confirmed that she was inside a hallway with old walls, peeling paint, and a vinyl-covered floor.
“Milly!” Peter shouted.
His voice echoed just before he let the door slam shut behind him and they were, once again, swallowed up by the same black void as a few seconds ago.
“Oh my God,” Peter said, his voice breathless.
“What is it?” she said, keeping her eyes forward at…nothing. There was a big fat nothing in front of her.
“The door,” Peter said, the panic rising with each syllable. “There’s no doorknob on this side of the door, Gaby. I can’t open it!”
Gaby glanced behind her, searching out the door, trying to find the doorknob in the sea of nothingness. She couldn’t locate it, and the only reason she even knew Peter was standing next to her was the smell of his sweat and his out-of-control panting as he ran his hands over the metal door.
It’s a trap. They led us right into a goddamn trap.
She heard a click before a stream of light flashed across her face, illuminating the peeling and old faded multicolored patterns over one side of the wall. Peter, with a flashlight, swiveled the light back to her. She winced, and he quickly took the bright light away.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You brought a flashlight?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You’ve had it this entire time?”
“I—”
“The cave, Peter,” she hissed. “Why didn’t you use it when we were back in the cave?”
“I…forgot I had it.”
“Jesus,” she said, and looked away. “Never mind. Show me where we are.”
He turned the flashlight down one side of the hallway, then swiveled around and did the same to the other side. There was a nightstand with a vase and dead flowers draped over the lid behind them. And beyond that, just a solid wall. The other side, on the other hand, showed an intersection about twenty yards further down, pointing left and right.
“Can you hear her?” Peter whispered.
She shook her head but then realized he probably couldn’t see. “No. Can you?”
“No…”
“There’s only one way to go. Can you find any windows?”
He moved the flashlight along the walls. First one side, then the other. They only saw old, discolored, peeling wallpaper. “Nothing,” he said.
Of course not. Because it’s a trap. They lured us in here.
You idiot!
“Keep beside me with the flashlight,” she said. “If I turn, you turn. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Do you have your gun out?”
“Oh.” She heard him pull the 1911 out of his waistband and cock back the hammer, the soft click sounding overly dangerous in the blackness. “Okay.”
God, she hoped he didn’t accidentally shoot her. The chances of that happening had been pretty high back in the gas station with the lights to see with. Now, with only the flashlight, she had a very bad feeling.
“Peter,” she said.
“Yes?”
“See what you’re shooting at before you shoot, okay?”
“Okay,” he said uncertainly.
She sighed, then said, “Let’s go,” and started forward into the darkness.
CHAPTER 11
KEO
Lake Dulcet was a city of 23,000 or so people, about half the size of neighboring Lake Charles. It had a decent downtown and the surrounding areas were a concrete jungle like every other city. Despite the sun, it would have been a pleasant walk if Lorelei, who hadn’t said a word when they first met earlier in the day, didn’t suddenly transform into a chatterbox.
The teenager talked about everything. The ghost city around them, the fact that they were walking instead of driving, or how she needed a haircut. Keo tuned her out the best he could, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Can’t we get a car?” Lorelei asked. “There are so many cars around. Can’t we use one of them? I’m tired of walking. How long have we been walking? It feels like days. Weeks. Months. Right, Carrie?”
“Uh huh,” Carrie said absently.
Lorelei reminded him of Shorty. Annoying. Carrie was more like Zachary. Quiet, unless she needed to say something. Lorelei liked to talk, even if no one was responding to her.
“Look, there’s a truck,” she said behind him now. “It’s nice. I like the color. Can we use that truck? Keo? Are you listening to me?”
“No,” Keo said.
“Carrie?” Lorelei said. “What about the truck? Can we use that truck? My feet are so tired. I think my legs are about to fall off.”
“We’ve only been walking for three hours,” Carrie said.
“It feels longer. It feels like months.”
“Well, it hasn’t been months. Now be quiet for a bit, okay?”
Lorelei sighed and lapsed into silence. Keo was able to once again enjoy the stillness of the city and their unhurried footsteps. They kept to the shades provided by the buildings while Keo kept both ears open for the first sound of pursuing vehicles.
There were three trucks, likely more than two men in each one. Well-armed men playing soldiers. The uniform didn’t bother him, but the weapons did. He had the submachine gun, but he was now saddled with two civilians, which put him at a disadvantage. All it would take was one of those cars to stumble across them by accident and he was screwed.
He thought about Zachary and why he was following up on a dead man’s promise.
You really are the dumbest man alive, you know that?
Carrie had walked up beside him. “She’s got a point.”
She had light brown eyes, and despite the bruising around her mouth and cut lips, she was more attractive than he had given her credit for this morning. Like most women he had met since the world went to shit, Carrie had very few extraneous pounds on her, which helped exaggerate what he guessed was a generous B-cup under that white T-shirt.
He looked away before she could catch him sneaking a peek. “What’s that?”
“Why didn’t we circle back to the marina after the soldiers left and take one of those trucks? They looked in pretty good shape.”
“They weren’t. I checked when I first got there. No gas, and the batteries are dead.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, listen.”
She did. “What am I listening for?”
“It’s quiet.”
“And?”
“Sound travels these days. Even if we could find a working vehicle, you don’t think your friends would hear a car rumbling down these streets? There are three of them out there looking for us. All it takes is one. Right now, they don’t have a clue where we’re going. That’s our advantage.”
“Do we know where we’re going?”
“South.”
“I was hoping for a more concrete answer.”
“South, until we fall into the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Funny,” she said, then glanced up, shielding her eyes against the sun. “You think we’ll make it out of the city before nightfall?”
Keo didn’t have to look at his watch before he answered, “No.”
“What time is it?”
“Two in the afternoon.”
“You didn’t even look at your watch.”
“I don’t have to.”
“It doesn’t get dark around this part until after six. So we have four hours or so?”
“Sounds about right.”
They walked in silence for a moment. Behind them, Lorelei was loudly unwrapping something. A few seconds later, he got a whiff of one of the Teriyaki-flavored Jack Li
nk’s jerky he had given them before taking off. One of the few foods he was carrying around in his pack from last night.
“She’s eating again?” he asked.
“She eats like a horse,” Carrie smiled. “Were you in the Army?”
“What makes you think I was in the Army?”
“You’re really good with that rifle.”
“It’s a submachine gun.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One’s a submachine gun, and the other’s a rifle.”
She smirked. “So were you in the Army or not?”
“Not.”
“So how are you so good with that…submachine gun?”
“Experience,” Keo said.
“Were you living in the marina?”
“I was lying low on the sailboat that they sunk. Me and a couple of guys. After we tested out the silver bullets, we were heading south down the lake. First Song Island to check up on it, then the Texas coast for me.”
“What happened to your friends?”
The same thing that happened to the rest of the world. Their numbers came up.
“Bad luck,” he said instead.
“That’s it?”
“Yup, that’s about it.”
She didn’t say anything after that, but he caught her sneaking a look at him every now and then. Not really at him, but at the scar along the left side of his face, very visible under the bright sunlight. Pollard’s good-bye gift.
“What?” he said.
“How’d you get that?” she asked.
“I cut myself shaving.”
“Must have been one hell of a shave.”
“You have no idea.”
*
They made it to the outskirts of Lake Dulcet around five. Not quite within the city limits anymore, but not quite in the boondocks just yet, either. Lorelei was still grumpy about having to walk, though Keo was impressed with her and Carrie’s stamina. With the sun already starting to dip in the horizon, he began looking for a place to hide.
They walked under the open sky along a street flanked by ancient looking power poles. Trucks were sprinkled in the parking lots of businesses and industries around them. He glanced backward, remembering the suburbs they had passed an hour ago, and thought about going back. Last night’s run across the rooftops had convinced him he needed a place with a basement. Or, failing that, a place that could be easily defended. He couldn’t hope to survive in attics the rest of his life.
“What?” Carrie said, walking beside him.
“The suburbs,” Keo said. “I’m thinking we might have to backtrack to one of the houses we passed earlier. One with a basement.”
Lorelei had stopped in the middle of the street. She put her hands on her hips and looked around. With her hair in a ponytail, she was actually a very pretty girl, if a bit too thin. The boots she was wearing that they had liberated from a shoe store a few kilometers back looked two sizes too big, but that was only because her legs were toothpicks.
“What about that?” Lorelei said, pointing.
Keo looked over at a large building inside some hurricane fencing.
“The warehouse?” Carrie said.
“No, the RV,” Lorelei said.
It was a white recreational vehicle housed inside a garage with an open wall attached to one end of a warehouse. The RV sat in the shade, which only reminded Keo that he was sweating badly under the heat.
Carrie glanced over at him. “What do you think?”
Keo walked over and scanned the area. The grass inside the fence was burnt, mostly dead, with the occasional spots of weed. There were two, maybe three dozen groupings of gray cinderblocks, as if their owners had planned to build something in the wide-open spaces but never got around to it. Two swinging gates were closed tight with rusted-over chains and a large padlock. There was a gas station next door, its windows broken some time ago.
“What do you think?” Carrie asked again.
“Let’s check it out,” Keo said.
The fencing was cheap and stood only six-feet high. It was easy for Keo to scale; he waited on the other side as Carrie and Lorelei did the same.
“Couldn’t you just shoot the lock?” Lorelei said as she struggled up the fence one inch at a time.
“Too noisy,” Keo said.
“This is so hard…”
“It’ll be easier if you climbed without talking.”
“Whatever,” she said, and threw her legs over the top and dropped down into his arms.
He set her down. “See?”
She made a face and looked around them.
Next, he caught Carrie as she came down. She was surprisingly light and he probably held onto her longer than necessary. He also noticed that her arms had conveniently gone around his neck as he lowered her to the ground.
“Thanks,” she said, and actually blushed a bit.
“Sure.”
He thought about Gillian, waiting for him on the beaches of Santa Marie Island…probably. For all he knew, she had never made it to the island. For all he knew, she and Jordan and the boat were somewhere at the bottom of a river…
Keo unslung the MP5SD as they moved across the wide-open spaces. Like the last five hours, the only sound he heard was a minor wind and their footsteps. The warmth against his face was growing unbearable, and he wiped at a fresh bead of sweat.
There were zero vehicles (other than the RV) inside the lot, which told him that the place was being used for storage. The lack of a sign or company logo was a bit confusing, though. Then again, if they weren’t doing business out of here, the people who ran it wouldn’t necessarily need to advertise. Even with all those excuses, the emptiness, combined with the encounter with the soldiers this morning, made him jumpy.
And I thought the woods were dangerous…
“You think the fence can keep them out?” Carrie asked, glancing backward.
“Not in this lifetime,” Keo said. “But maybe it’ll deter them anyway. If they’ve been through here before—and chances are they have—they won’t bother coming in again unless we give them a reason to.”
She gave him a doubtful look.
“What?” he said.
“You talk about them like they’re smart. Like they can think.”
“Carrie, look around you. What do you see?”
She did. Then, “I don’t understand.”
“They did this. One night. That was all it took. Now tell me—can stupid, mindless creatures that can’t think do something like this?”
“I guess not.”
“These things—these ghouls—might not be the smartest kids in class anymore, but they can still think and reason. Never, ever underestimate them.”
She nodded solemnly.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s see what’s in the bus.”
“It’s an RV,” she smiled.
“Same difference.”
The RV used to be white, but it was now a faded gray color with long brown and black patterns, like the Nike swoosh, from front to back. It was about thirty feet long and eleven feet high, give or take a few inches, and parked along the length of the garage, taking up the entire space with a few feet to spare up front. Despite the deflated tires and dust-covered windows, it seemed to be in relatively good condition.
“It looks cool,” Lorelei said. “I’ve always wanted to travel around the country in an RV. My parents used to—” she stopped and didn’t say anything else.
Carrie walked over and put an arm around the girl, and the two of them exchanged another one of their brief, private smiles.
“Stay here,” Keo said. “I’ll check the warehouse first.”
He left them at the RV and walked around the warehouse. He ran his free palm along the building’s side, feeling the heat that the metal walls had been absorbing all day. There were closed windows at the top, but too far to reach from ground level. Both front doors were locked, and pulling at them didn’t get him anything. More layers of dust along the door
s themselves and there were no telltale signs that they had swung open recently.
He located a smaller side door and two large ones at the back, but all three were similarly locked. It wouldn’t have taken much to pry them open, but if the creatures—or one of their human lackeys—stumbled across the damage, they might know someone had taken up residence. If that happened, he’d have to defend a large property by himself. He could probably count on Carrie to lend a hand, but Lorelei, not so much.
I should just dump them. Both of them. Gillian would understand.
Probably…
He headed back to the girls.
“Anything?” Carrie asked when he reached them.
“Doors are locked.”
“Can we break into them?”
“We could, but we shouldn’t. It’s a big warehouse with too many access points. I doubt it’ll have a basement or anything more secure than an office or a bathroom. If they catch us in there, we’re sitting ducks.”
“So where, then?”
“Let’s check the RV first.”
He wiped at the thick layer of dust over the security window on top of the RV’s door. He peered through it, but despite the bright (falling) sun, he couldn’t see more than a few feet inside. He glimpsed the driver’s seat, the big steering wheel, and what looked like an empty can of Diet Coke on the floor.
“Stay out here,” he said to the girls.
They looked back at him, as if to say, “What, you thought we were going to go in there with you?”
He smiled to himself then tried the door. It clicked open without a fight. He pulled it all the way open and slipped inside, sweeping the immediate area with the MP5SD. He took out an LED flashlight from one of his pouches and ran the beam over the seats in the middle. He was greeted by the very good sign of dust along the headrests and the smooth surface of a table to his right, half-encircled by a booth with plastic seats.
He moved up the aisle, boots squeaking softly against the vinyl flooring. There was a small kitchen complete with sink and range to his left. A dining table was fastened to the floor across from it, and more booth seating. Two doors at the very back. One opened up into a small bathroom and the other into a surprisingly spacious bedroom with a twin-size bed that had a wooden frame in one corner and an oak dresser on the other. There was a single window at the back, but it was blocked by the warehouse wall on the other side.
