“Open the door! Open the door!” Amanita came running down the walkway on the side of the house. Seth was close behind. Thank God they got the message, Connor thought.
Nicole leaned back over her seat, grabbed the handle of the back door and opened it to show them it was unlocked. Amanita yanked it open further and threw herself into the car. Seth leapt in next, his sword stabbing across the car’s interior just inches from Amanita’s face.
The creature in the Red Sox hat saw them through the window and head-butted it again.
“Lock it lock it lock it!” Nicole yelled.
Connor hit the power locks just as three more undead body-checked the car and hissed at them through the windows. They raged and threw fists and kicked but the vehicle held together. He backed the car up onto the road, where it shot backwards as the tires finally caught on the asphalt.
He turned and looked out the back window just in time to see a red Hyundai speeding by them on the street. A thunderous boom filled the interior and all four passengers were slammed back into their seats as the Camry plowed into the side of the Hyundai. Metal wailed in protest. Tires squealed. The sword flipped up and struck Amanita in the forehead, opening up a gash that flicked blood onto the seats. “Fuck!”
The engine died.
“The hell was that!” Seth screamed, unaware he’d cut Amanita.
As one, they turned and looked out the back window. The red Hyundai sedan was pushed into the yard of the house across from Seth’s, its car horn now blaring incessantly. The driver’s side door was crumpled in and the window was blown out. Steam was billowing out from under the hood.
“We hit that car,” Connor said, stating the obvious. “I didn’t see it coming until—”
“Goddamit! You almost cut my head off!” Amanita put a hand to her forehead and then held it up. It was coated in blood. “My head. Oh my God, is it bad?”
“You’ll live,” Nicole said, grimacing. “But that woman looks bad.”
Through the blood-smeared back window they watched a young woman with bleached blonde hair sit up in the Hyundai. Her face was lacerated and she was crying. She gave them a cursory glance then frantically tried to restart her car, unconcerned with the accident, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. The more she turned the key and got no response the more her obvious anxiety grew. Her faint, “No no no,” transferred the panic to the four teens watching her.
“Oh my God,” Nicole said. “She’s real. She’s not one of them. She’s speaking.”
“We have to get her,” Connor said. “Seth, tell her to get in. Tell her to—”
The sound and force of the undead running over the top of the car cut him off. In an instant the pack of hissers jumped off the battered Camry and zeroed in on the crying woman.
“No!” Nicole cried. “Leave her alone!”
The pack of raging undead yanked the blonde woman through the broken window, pulling her arms and legs in different directions at once as if she were a wishbone, her body now the focus of a bloodthirsty tug-o-war. Her screams of terror were so shrill Connor thought they would shatter all the glass in the neighborhood. She finally went down under a storm of slashing fingernails and buzz saw teeth, her legs still kicking.
“Start the car,” Nicole said. “She’s gone. We can’t help her. Just get us out of here while they’re busy. Please, hurry.”
The words were almost sinister in their disregard for human life but Connor could not disagree with them. The innate need to survive overrode all thoughts of heroism. He turned the key and the engine rolled over and caught. As he put it in drive, he heard the sounds of a baby crying. They all did.
Nicole grabbed the steering wheel. “Wait. That’s a baby. We can’t…”
They all turned and watched through the back window, wondering where it was and how to save it, but what unfolded next nearly sent them into shock.
The blonde woman rose up, her eyes dark yellow, her face a mess of ragged flesh. She wore only a bra now, and large divots of flesh had been gouged out of her torso. Striated muscle and gray ropes of intestine hung loose from her abdomen. The other undead backed off her and were momentarily confused by the baby’s cries. With a snarl the blonde woman pushed her way through the ravenous monsters and lunged inside the broken Hyundai car window. She slid over the front seat into the back. The entire car began to shake. The baby’s cries cut out right before a gout of blood splashed up against the inside of the back window.
The rest of the hissers tried to pile in through the broken window as well but only managed to bunch themselves up. Then, the blonde woman must have accidentally opened the back door because she fell out onto the street with her baby in her mouth, the car seat still wrapped around its tiny feet. It wasn’t moving as she tore her head away from the infant’s neck, chewing up a mouthful of meat. The baby’s head fell over its back, dangling on a strip of gristle.
Seeing the fresh kill, the pack of undead converged on the blonde woman, fighting for scraps.
Except one. The man who’d had the gun on Seth’s lawn. He was staring in at Amanita, his bloodied mouth showing ruined gums where teeth had been torn out. He still held the gun. It was over his head now, coming down.
The window smashed and Amanita screamed.
Saturday, 10:03
They drove in a daze. Red, sticky goo coated the car.
“I never realized how dark the streets get without power. The houses look creepy.” Nicole was looking out of the passenger side window as the car turned onto Spring Lane.
“Anyone could be hiding in any of these yards and we wouldn’t even see them,” Amanita added. She was wedged between Connor and Nicole in the front seat, doing her best to keep her knees from bumping into the steering wheel. The tiny car was not made to sit three across and they were scrunched shoulder to shoulder.
“I don’t think they hide in shadows,” Connor said. “They don’t seem to care a whole hell of a lot about staying hidden. We’ll see ‘em if they make a run for us.”
“And then what?” Amanita asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
Nicole spun around and gave a quick look at Seth in the backseat. He was huddled up behind the driver’s seat, doing his best to stay away from the broken window across from him. The side he’d been sitting on was tacky with drying blood. “How you doing?” she asked.
Seth gave her a slight nod but remained quiet.
Nicole exchanged glances with Connor, let the implied thoughts about Seth remain unspoken. The boy was retreating into himself. “Haven’t seen anyone in the last few streets,” she said, doing her best to stay positive. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they didn’t make it down this far.”
“They’re everywhere,” Connor replied. “They may have come here and moved on already.” He regretted saying it but he knew the reality of the situation better than any of them so far. His mother and father were dead, torn apart by people he’d once called neighbors. There was no hope for a happy ending to any of this. All they could hope for now was to get to safety, find someone who could come in and wipe out every one of the savage monsters that had taken his family. But even that hope felt hollow when one considered the nature of the curse that had befallen Castor. Whatever was making these…things…behave in such a violent manner was spreading too fast to outrun.
“Well I haven’t seen any signs of struggle anywhere,” Nicole responded. “It may be okay. Turn here.”
Connor took a right onto Jasmine Road, slowed the car while he scanned the street. Ahead of them, the quaint residential road was illuminated only by moonlight. Cars sat parked on both sides all the way down, obscuring the majority of lawns, creating numerous hiding spaces. Anybody could be behind them, Connor thought, living or dead or…changed.
But they don’t hide, he reminded himself. That was one attribute they could rely on. Whether or not it would help them was anyone’s guess.
“Park here.”
Connor pulled t
o a stop outside of Nicole’s house. It looked so forgotten without any lights on inside.
“The car is in the driveway,” Amanita said.
Nicole put her hand on the door handle. “Yeah. That’s good. I mean, at least she didn’t drive off. And the house looks okay. Everything seems, you know, together.”
Nobody spoke for a good five seconds. Then Seth sat up. “Let’s go already, I’m exposed back here.”
Connor turned off the car but left the keys in the ignition. Everyone exited and waited while Nicole fumbled in her purse for her house keys. The now-familiar sounds of screams still managed to make the hairs on their arms stand up, even from a distance.
Nicole opened the front door and stepping inside, caught the smell of something cooking, a sweet mix of onions and grease. She waited to see if Missy, her Mom’s Pomeranian, would come running up as usual, but she didn’t. Nicole’s heart sank and her pulse began to race. Please dear God no, she pleaded silently, don’t let it happen to me, too. The other three teens followed her inside the dark house. Amanita shut the door and locked it behind them.
“I smell food,” Seth said.
“She said she was going to make tacos tonight.”
“Mom? Mom? Missy?” Nicole called out for her mother and the dog but got no reply beyond the echoes of her own voice off the walls. The kitchen was empty, a frying pan on the stove with browned ground beef still waiting for a cook to stir it. It was an electric stove but she turned the burner’s dial to the off position just in case the power came back on. She continued on into the dining room, which was empty, and the bedrooms, which were also empty. She came back to the living room and found her three friends waiting for her.
“Sorry,” Amanita said.
“But the door was locked. There’s no indication anyone broke in,” Nicole said. “Wouldn’t there be broken windows and overturned furniture? I don’t get it.”
“My house was fine,” Amanita said. “I think most people stepped outside to see what happened.”
“But we’re far enough away…”
“It’s spreading fast,” Connor added. “Who knows how quickly it got to this street. People go outside to talk, stand around, some undead thing comes charging out of the shadows a few minutes later. Who knows.”
Connor’s thesis made sense, and in fact was almost surely what had happened. Her mother must have heard the explosion, grabbed Missy like she always did—the dog had separation anxiety if she wasn’t picked up every ten minutes—and stood around gossiping with Mrs. Henry from next door. Maybe they saw the orange sky over the plane crash, stayed outside a while waiting for news. It would only take two minutes, maybe three, for one of those undead creatures to run over here or at least start a domino effect that backed up this way.
“But why? Why do they want to kill everyone? Why!?”
Nobody answered or offered much in the way of consolation and Nicole didn’t really expect it. Connor’s parents were dead, Seth’s and Amanita’s were missing as far as she knew, and now her house was empty. It was par for the course.
She sat down in the middle of the floor and began to cry. “Why? I don’t understand any of this. I don’t want to be here any more. I don’t want my mom to be—” she pointed through the front door. “—one of those things.” The tears came so fast they stung her eyes.
She felt an arm around her and let her head fall into the chest of her comforter. She’d expected it to be Amanita but it smelled like a boy. Connor. She’d been hoping to get close to him tonight, but not like this. There was nothing exciting or romantic about this and Cosmopolitan’s “How To Get Your Man” advice column sure as hell didn’t cover this scenario. She’d wanted to steal a kiss from Connor after a beer or two, after she’d worked up the courage, just a little lip-to-lip action to dwell on for the next few days, but instead she was sobbing in his arms because their parents were dead and they were probably going to die themselves if they didn’t find help soon and the world was going to hell.
Amanita sat down beside them, put her hand on Nicole’s head and stroked her hair. “Nicole, I really am sorry. You know how much I love your mom. But I need to ask you something.”
Nicole ran a finger across her eyes to clear her tear-streaked vision. “What?”
“I need to borrow shoes. My toes are cut to shit. What size are you again?”
“Um…six.”
“Damn. You have big feet. I need a five.”
“My mom is a five. Well, five and a half.”
“Close enough. Where does she keep her sneakers?”
For a split second Nicole almost said she didn’t want Amanita wearing her mother’s sneakers. Every one of her mother’s possessions suddenly felt very sacred to her. She didn’t want to ruin the memories associated with them by covering them in blood.
Oh, what does it really matter now, she asked herself. We need to get help and Am needs to be able to run. Self preservation first, grieving second. Get a grip on yourself or you’ll be dead in no time. And don’t you think for one second Mom wouldn’t want you to get out of here and get help. “In the hall closet. Just dig around and you’ll find a pair. There should be a couple of different ones in there.”
While Amanita rooted around for the sneakers, Connor got up and checked the phones which, he reported, were still dead. Seth randomly flicked on lights and then gave up and said he’d look around for a flashlight. Nicole remained on the floor, letting the reality of her new life sink in. She was alone now, just like Connor. Her mother was just a passing moment in time that had ended without warning. The last thing she’d ever said to her mother was that she was staying over at Am’s house and would be home by noon tomorrow. A lie. Her last words to her mom were a lie!
Now she couldn’t apologize, couldn’t tell her how much she loved her. All that was left was stuff, mementos that could not ask her how her day was or hug her when she needed it. Just stuff. The family pictures on the table near the couch, the folded up jacket draped over the easy chair, the chotchkies on the shelf near the far wall—most of them bought by Nicole as birthday and Christmas gifts when she was little, two cheesy paperback romance novels on top of the entertainment center—dog-eared as Mom was wont to do to keep her place. Just stuff you couldn’t apologize to now, no matter how badly you wanted to.
“The sneakers fit,” Amanita said, sitting back down beside Nicole. “Can you do me one more favor? As my best friend?”
“What?”
“Be real. Tell me what my forehead really looks like? Because it’s throbbing like a motherfucker and I don’t for one second think it’s a scrape. Be honest.”
“Honestly…you’re gonna have a scar if we survive.”
“Fucking Seth.”
“There are bandages and ointments in the bathroom. C’mon, I’ll fix you up.”
Nicole used the light from her cell phone to find gauze and hydrogen peroxide under the bathroom sink. The sink itself was still working, which she took as a good sign, a sign that civilization was still intact. Unfortunately she still could not get cell phone service but decided to tackle that after she cleaned up the sword wound on her friend’s head. For now, it felt good to be occupied with something, anything, that would get her mind off of her mother’s disappearance. “Here, hold the phone up like this so I can see what I’m doing.”
Amanita took the phone and held it above her head, bathing most of the bathroom in a light blue hue.
“Now hold still, this might sting.” Nicole poured the hydrogen peroxide onto a wad of toilet paper and dabbed it at Amanita’s cut.
“Motherfucker that burns!”
“I told you. Geez, it’s deeper than I thought. This might need a stitch or two.”
“I’m gonna kill Seth, I swear to God.”
“Well, don’t kill him yet,” Connor said, sticking his head into the bathroom. “He just found us a flashlight. And when you guys are done, we need to figure out where to go next. We’re gonna need all four brains working here.”<
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“Why can’t we just stay here?” Nicole asked. “We can hole up in the basement or something. The phones and power are bound to come on soon, right? And there’s food and water and…and…” She trailed off, afraid to say what she really wanted.
Connor said it for her. “And maybe your mom will come back? Nicole, I know how you feel, we all do, but we can’t wait around hoping that—”
“Don’t make me feel bad for wanting that. I’m sorry about your parents but my mother could still be—”
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Honestly. I just think…if this situation keeps progressing like it is, we’re going to have company soon enough and I think we should get out of the neighborhood. Sure there’s food and water here but there’s no way to call for help, and you saw what just two of those things can do to break into a house. If they see us in here they won’t stop until they get in and get us. That’s why we need to talk about this.”
Nicole felt bad for jumping down Connor’s throat. His parents had just been feasted upon and morphed into raving lunatics right in front of his eyes after all, and even though she had no idea where her own mother was, it didn’t mean she should assume nobody else felt for her. God, I’m losing my mind on an emotional rollercoaster.
“Okay, two seconds and we’ll be right there.”
“No sweat, we’re gonna eat some of this taco meat if that’s cool. We’re starving and it’d be better to be fueled up in case we have to hide for a while.”
“Go ahead. I know you have to heat the taco shells up in the oven, but that’s not working, so there’s probably bread or something on the counter near the fridge. Forks and spoons are in the drawer near the dishwasher. Plates are in one of the cabinets. Just open them all ‘til you find ‘em.”
After Connor left, Nicole used her phone again to find some Band Aids in the medicine cabinet. She put one across Amanita’s new battle wound and washed her hands.
“He’s nice,” Amanita said. “He’s no hottie like Jason but if this night had turned out differently maybe it would have worked for you two. I mean, if he liked you back. Not that he wouldn’t because you’re a hot piece of ass, but, well, you know what I mean.”
Hissers Page 10
