by Ami Urban
But in dire times, everybody had to help everybody else. Karma. If I helped them now and got in trouble later, they might be there to help me out. I didn't really have anyone else to count on. Except Lisa James. Her friend, Sylvia was just too much trouble. "
As we walked past the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino, I instructed everyone to keep their eyes peeled for any signs of life. Fortunately, it didn't look like there were any Biters around.
The streets were deserted of all life, much like the highway. It was kind of weird, too, because I knew there were people still uninfected. They must have just shut themselves in or gotten the hell out of dodge.
"Where is everyone?" Lisa asked amid the silence.
"Dead..." Sylvia's voice sounded weak.
"No." Lisa continued in a whisper. "No. There aren't any bodies. it's as if everyone just picked up and left."
"My thoughts, too." I stared at the road ahead.
"Where should go toward the Eiffel Tower," the rich lady said for some reason.
So, we took a left down South Las Vegas Boulevard."
"You sure about that? How do you"
I stopped short, causing everyone to walk right into me. I heard Lisa's son calling out to her, but I could only focus on what I'd just seen.
It couldn't have been. Absolutely not. Silas was dead. I had not just seen him smirking at me from an alleyway. He wasn't standing there with a huge hole in his chest, blood draining onto his white wife beater.
I looked back at the alleyway; it was dark. Silas was dead. I'd made sure. So, I was either going crazy or death wasn't what it used to be.
"what's the matter?" Lisa coddled her little boy who was trying not to cry.
"I... Sorry, I thought I saw something."
"Jesus!" Sylvia gasped. "Warn a girl before you stop!"
I was breathing too hard to even acknowledge Lisa's friend. When I felt a hand on my arm, I jumped. Lisa was looking up at me with mother written all over her face. It was that or shrink.
"What did you see?"
I looked into the depths of the dark alley. Nothing was there. Inhaling a deep breath, I shook my head. "Apparently nothing."
"We should keep going." Rupert was the one who spoke in a hurried tone. I wasn't going to argue. We came across the foot bridge that butted up against the Bellagio"s enormous pool. I stopped at the edge.
"The water looks so gross." Sylvia stopped to watch the gondolas bump together in the murky water.
"it's safest here " around water." Lisa offered an explanation of how the rabies virus turned its victims into hydrophobics.
"Yeah, yeah." As I began drumming my fingers against the concrete, I could feel the sweat begin to squeeze from my pores as my heartbeat quickened.
They were halfway across when Lisa turned back. "Are you all right?"
"I, uh...I hate water."
She tilted her head to the side, broke away from the group and came to me. "You were all right at the beach."
"That's different." I felt like I was talking too fast. "That's shallow. I can see the fucking bottom. This..." I took my shaky hand off the concrete to gesture toward the pool. "This is... No."
"You have thalassophobia."
I didn't have the focus to joke. "What now?"
"Fear of open bodies of water."
"Yeah, okay."
She put a gentle hand on my arm. "don't worry. There are none of those things around, so we won't even need to think about water."
She was right. I could feel my heart slow, but not all the way. I drummed my fingers against the concrete one more time before sucking in a breath and taking the first step. But she wasn't right. Oh no. she was dead wrong " forgive the pun.
Because as soon as my foot made contact on the bridge, an ear-splitting scream came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. It came from behind Paris Paris. And the other thing that came from behind Paris Paris was a swarm of howling spitting Biters. The weirdest part about the whole ordeal was that I swore the front doors of that chained up casino opened a crack.
"Run!" Rupert grabbed his wife's arm and tugged. Sylvia grabbed Alex and Lisa grabbed Rex. But there was no one to grab me.
"For the love of..." I choked on my own inhalation and just pushed my feet forward. Ignoring a fear was not easy. With every step, it felt like the water was flowing over me. I was closed in. My steps felt too slow. I couldn't breathe. My airway was constricted.
"Jack!"
I don't know who called my name because the swarm of Biters was taking all my attention. Their howls were getting closer. One of them even leapt at me, just missing the heel of my shoe. The snarling became almost deafening. But I was almost across the bridge. I could see beyond. I could see...
I could see the gondolas floating in the water.
"Jesus Chri—"
My sentenced petered out because a Biter had grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked hard. Getting angry wasn't an option. Logic was no longer a thought process in my mind. I was terrified of having to get in the water. All I could think was...
"Shoot now. Ask questions never." My hero"s quote seemed to knock me partially back into reality. I spun around and aimed the shotgun right at the Biter's head and pulled the trigger. No thoughts. Just nothing. Pure fight or flight.
A few more Biters ambushed me, pushing me back into the concrete ledge. The black water loomed below me, taunting me. Each lap of a wave against the wall sounded like laughter.
I held up my shotgun for protection as one Biter chomped at me. Its teeth smashed together, inches from my face. Blood dripped from a wound on its head, flowing down over its eyes. It reminded me of Gene Simmons from KISS.
"Holy shit! Were you born that ugly?" The toe of my shoe made contact with the Biter's gut, sending it doubling back enough for me to run the rest of the way across the bridge to the...boats. The Biters were on my heels. Lisa was calling out to me.
I was in a hurry. I wasn't thinking. All my body was telling me to do was jump in the boat and paddle as far out as I could. By the time we made it to a safe distance, I was breathing hard; my pulse had skyrocketed. The howls of those diseased things reverberated off the water. Then they started jumping in.
One after the other, they jumped over the bridge and into the water. When they made contact with it, they began to scream and flail until they went under for good. We were safe. But as Cynthia breathed a sigh of relief, panic was squeezing into a ball inside my chest.
The bridge seemed to stretch out infinitely in front of me. It zoomed out until the Biters were tiny little things splashing around. I could see oncoming ripples in the dark water. When the first one hit the boat, it jarred us. And there was nothing to grab onto. I made the mistake of peering into the water. I couldn't see the bottom. The long oar plunged down, but the water was so deep that I couldn't even see the end of it.
My hands flew to cover my face and I fell backward, rocking the boat even more. "Jesus Christ. Holy shit. I can't do this."
"what's your problem?" Sylvia spoke up.
"He has thalassophobia. Jack." Lisa put a hand on my back as another Biter jumped into the water. More waves hit the boat until I curled into a ball.
"Jack."
"No! I can't do it! We have to get out of here. we're going to die!"
"Jack." Her tone never faltered from calm.
Another Biter jumped in. Another waves crashed into us.
I growled deep in my chest. "Make it stop!"
"Jack. Tell me about your family."
Water splashed onto my bare arms, causing me to retract. "What?"
"What was your father like?" Lisa reached for the oar to paddle toward the bridge. I grabbed her wrist.
"Don't."
She tensed, but remained calm. "All right. Just focus on you. Tell me about your father."
I put my hands back over my eyes and tried to focus my thoughts. "Um...he was a...an alcoholic. A real fucking douchebag."
"Go on."
More water splashed into the
boat. "Jesus... Uh... He beat my mom a lot."
"When's the last time you saw him?"
"Uh...years ago. My sister was on his side. She was young. Went with him. Thought he was innocent. I went with my mom."
"What was your mother like?"
"She was sweet. Um...nice to everyone. Big heart. Stupidly na"ve, though."
"How long ago did she die?"
I jerked my head up to look at Lisa. Her features seemed pretty sincere. "How did you...?" The boat bumped into something hard. I almost fell over again. "Fuck!"
"It's okay." Lisa's hand was on my arm again. "we're back on dry land."
"What?" I took a look around. Sure enough, we were back at the front of the pool. All the Biters were floating face down in the water. One was still splashing around but would soon quiet. I couldn't scramble out fast enough. When I was clear of the water, I pushed my back against a stone wall, then I looked toward Lisa.
"How did you do that?"
Her eyes widened. "It's my job. I have to keep the patient focused on giving answers to keep the panic at bay."
I ran a hand over my face. "So I'm just a patient?"
"Nice to see your jokes are back." Sylvia huffed.
Taking a moment to shake the panic off, I feigned a grin. "Oh, they're back, baby. With a vengeance."
"The people who kidnapped your daughter could be anywhere," Lisa said to Rupert and Cynthia. "I'm not even sure"
Something hurtled at us, slamming into the concrete with a metallic thud. Lisa jumped so far I thought her head would hit the tree branch above her. The rich woman screamed. "What the hell was that?!"
"Momma!" Lisa's kid called.
"It's all right, Rex."
"Was it a bird?" Sylvia wondered aloud.
I started up the stairs toward the sound.
"Wait." Lisa stopped me as I was about to set a foot on the dry road. "Is it safe?"
I looked around, not seeing any more Biters. Just the same, I tightened my grip on the shotgun. I wasn't going to take any chances. Lisa seemed to think my intuition was spot on, because she followed me, along with the rest of them.
When I reached the cause of the sound, I stooped to pick up a metal bar between my feet. I inspected it against the hard sunlight streaming through a thick set of fall rainclouds.
"What is it?"
"A wrench." The crow-bar shaped wrench was long and heavy with a black body that curved at the star-shaped head.
"A wrench?" Sylvia twisted her face up.
"Yup. it's a Torx Wrench. Pretty standard," I said. "You use it to"
"I've seen that before!" Mrs. Meyers cried all of a sudden. "One of those hoodlums was brandishing it at us when they took Rosalie!"
I opened my mouth to say something, but she tore it out of my hand, waving it in her husband's face.
"don't you remember this, Rupert?!"
"I...suppose..." Her husband took a step back.
Mrs. Meyers stopped, turning her head to the right and left. She settled on the direction the wrench had come flying from. In front of us, a replica of the Eiffel Tower jutted up into the sky. I'd seen it before in a magazine, but I never understood why they'd recreate something that already existed. It just gave lazy people an excuse not to travel.
"that's where they took her! that's where they took Rosalie!" Without warning, she took off toward the entrance.
"Cynthia!" Her husband yelled after her, frustration in his face.
Me? I didn't even hesitate. I shoved my rifle at her husband, ignored his questioning look, and dove after her. She didn't even make it to the door. I caught her around the waist, almost tackling her. Then, I picked her up, dragging her back kicking and screaming. Her foot made contact with my shin. I winced.
"Let me go, you brute! Rosalie needs me!!"
"Sorry, Mrs. Meyers." I set her down. "I can't let you go off by yourself. that's how you get killed."
"Momma, what's wrong with lady?" Lisa's son was cowering behind her, hugging her knees. She reached down and rubbed her fingers through his hair. My mom used to do that to me when I was little.
"Don't worry, Rex."
"Cynthia, please." Rupert coaxed his wife while grabbing a hold of her upper arm before she could get away. Even though the coax sounded more like a scolding, I abandoned her and took my shotgun back from him. I marched over to Lisa, lowering my voice so only she could hear.
"I think I'm gonna go scout out the place," I said. "Someone threw that wrench, and if I can find them, maybe I can get some answers."
"Be careful please." She nodded. I agreed, cocking my gun. When I passed by Mr. Meyers, I looked him straight in the eye.
"You prepared to use that handgun?"
"What are you talking about?" He tried to pretend like he didn't know what I was talking about, but he didn't fool me.
"The Ruger you got stashed away in your belt." I didn't bat an eye. "Are you prepared to use it if one of those things comes out while I'm gone?"
"How did you...?"
I inhaled a sharp breath through my nose.
He swallowed, but nodded. "I...I've practiced on the range a few times. I can use it if the need arises."
"Good. I'll be back in a minute."
I stalked off toward the entrance of the tower. The glass doors were dirty; handprints in grease, blood, and something else I didn't care to know were smeared across the surface. There was a chain and huge padlock wound through the brass handles. I nudged it with the barrel of my shotgun. None of those things were going to get through those doors. There must have been people in there. And there must have been another way in.
Other entrances under one of the tower"s enormous legs were also bolted shut with padlocks. There was a side street just beyond the building, so I headed for it. There really wasn't anyone around for miles. There had to be someone inside the tower; why would the doors be locked from the outside?
As I rounded the corner, the Paris Casino and Resort came into view. It was a huge, x-shaped building with a white exterior and windows that reflected the setting sun. I looked back from where I'd come, but I couldn't see Lisa and the others anymore.
Ah, Lisa...
I couldn't stop thinking about her for some reason. Yeah, she was gorgeous"a great body, young, vibrant. But she was so serious. And she had a kid which meant baggage, but he was pretty well-behaved. The night before when we'd camped out in the Jeep, I'd offered to stay watch in case anything happened. It was harder than ever to stop looking at her. I wanted to grab her; kiss her; do other things to her...
A metal clang echoed to my left. I spun around, bringing my shotgun in front of my chest. How could I let my guard down so easily? No more thinking about the hot little piece traveling with you, Jack; you have to focus!
In front of me, a huge, green overhang curved around the sidewalk. Underneath, dark shop windows stared at me. The wind blew an empty recycle bin into the glass window of a store. It thumped, but it wasn't the same sound I'd heard.
"Somebody there?" I swung my shotgun around in all directions.
"Yeah, somebody's here, man."
I passed by my old best friend as he leaned against a post. "You're not here, Silas." Out of nowhere, my head started to throb. Silas chuckled, the hole is his chest stretching and releasing more red goo.
"If I 'ain't here', then why are you talking to me?" He fell into step beside me, mimicking my movements with a pretend gun. "Scared yet, Jack?"
"I'm not scared. Go away." I kicked a piece of trash out of my way, sending it skittering into the street. The sound was deafening.
"Nope." Silas had always been stubborn like that. "I'm not going away until you tell me why you did it."
"Did what?" I kept my voice low.
"Killed me and just left me there."
I spun around, lowering my gun so I could see his face. It was still Silas's face all right"all gaunt and chiseled. But he was real pale, like a ghost. I could see blue veins making a map across his skin. He crossed his arm
s over his bleeding chest, waiting for an answer.
"You shouldn't have been joking like you were, Silas. It was stupid. It got you killed." I felt bad for talking to him that way, but he needed to know the truth.
A frown broke his face in half. "Listen to you, tryin" to justify your actions and shit. don't gimme that. you're a murderer."
"I am not."
"Yes, you are. And you shouldn't keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell that hot little piece of ass about me, huh? Why didn't you tell her what you did?"
"Don't talk about her that way."
"What are you gonna do, Jack?" He smiled like a jester. "Kill me again?"
"Shut up!"
The metal clang filled my ears again. I spun around with shotgun aimed, and came end to end with a stranger doing the same. He held a mean looking pistol at arm"s length, aimed straight at my chest. He was wearing all kinds of leather and was decorated in piercings from head to toe.
"Who are you, man?" He pulled the hammer back.
"I don't wanna hurt you," I said. "I'm looking for a little girl."
The punk narrowed his eyes at me. I stood my ground, forgetting all about old Silas.
"Look..." I lowered my shotgun. "I'm on your side." I put both hands up in a defensive pose. "I'm just looking for a little girl."
The punk stood his ground. "You and me both." He was still pointing the gun at me.
I paused for a moment. "We met a couple on the side of the highway. They said some guys came out and kidnapped their daughter. Know anything about it? She's about eight years old, blond, blue eyes, goes by Rosalie."
It was his turn to pause. "that's exactly who I'm looking for."
"What do you mean?"
"Those morons she calls mom and dad are fucked."
"Keep talking."
He finally lowered the gun. "I stopped to help them, too. I'm guessing they gave you that song and dance about some freaks bringin" her here."
I gave him a skeptical look. "Yeah. They mean you? Did you take her here?" I nodded in the direction of the fake Eiffel Tower.
"No," he said. "They did."
I sighed. "Who?"
