by Mark Lukens
Brooke nodded.
“Did the blind woman say anything to you in your dreams?”
Brooke stared at Kate.
For a moment Kate didn’t think Brooke was going to answer her.
“I told her I was scared,” Brooke finally said, her voice so low it was practically a whisper. “I was hiding in the tunnel. She told me someone would come soon to help me. A woman. She told me the woman would knock on the metal door.”
A chill skittered across the Kate’s skin and she couldn’t help shivering. She’d been the one the blind woman in Brooke’s dream was talking about. Only it was Brooke who had helped her.
“That just proves this is all real,” Max said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s something strange, and it’s real.”
“We need to discuss our plans,” Petra said.
“I think we’ve got new plans now,” Max told her.
“I’m still going south,” Petra said. “Winter will be here soon, and I’m not freezing to death up here in the mountains.”
“We need to stick together,” Max said.
“Yeah. That’s fine. We can all stick together while we head to Florida.”
Max gave up arguing with Petra. He looked at Kate. “I think we should go with you and Brooke. To your family’s home.”
Petra sighed and shook her head in disgust, looking away.
“It’s on the way south, right?” Max asked Kate.
“Not technically. It’s west, but not too far from here. Maybe a day’s drive, depending on how the roads and weather are.”
“But your family lives in a small town, right? A remote place?”
Kate nodded.
Max looked at Petra. “Kate knows this town. She could find a safe place for us to get some food together. We could rest for a few days. Get a better vehicle to go to Florida with. It just makes sense.”
“What kind of vehicle do you have?” Kate asked.
“Nothing now,” Max told her. “We had a big pickup truck.”
“But the radiator took a shit,” Petra said. “We ran into too many rippers.”
“Yeah, literally,” Max said.
Petra glanced at Brooke. “Sorry about the language.”
Brooke gave Petra a shy smile.
Petra almost cracked a real smile, Kate thought, but then she clamped her mouth shut into a tight line again.
“When I met this one,” Max said, gesturing at Petra, “she was on a motorcycle. Some Harley Davidson kind of thing. It was crazy.”
Kate looked at Petra. “Where did you come from?”
“Near Baltimore. I waited a few days before heading south. But when they started bombing the city, I was out of there.”
“Bombing it? Why?”
Petra shrugged. “I think they were trying to kill as many rippers as they could. Maybe it was their last-ditch plan. I don’t know. I just knew I needed to get the hell away from there.”
“We’ve got a car,” Kate said. “The white Toyota out back.” For some reason, Kate thought Max and Petra already knew that the Toyota was her car, and that was part of the reason they had come into the clubhouse to begin with. “It runs,” she added. “But it’s almost out of gas now.”
“That’s it,” Max said, looking at Petra with a smile. “We go down to that trailer park, find a gas can and a hose, get some gas for her car and get on the road. Simple as that.”
CHAPTER 35
Getting the gas turned out not to be so simple.
Petra opened the back door of the clubhouse just a little, peeking out at Kate’s Toyota parked ten feet away. The morning sky was already a deep blue, the first time the sky had been clear in days. Everything outside was sharp and bright in the morning sunshine, the air cold. There was no wind at all, everything silent except for the occasional chirp of a bird in the distance. Petra stood in the doorway, studying the car and the trailer park beyond it.
“You don’t have a gas can or a hose for siphoning?” Petra had asked before looking out the door.
Kate had shaken her head no. She hadn’t found any gas cans inside the dollar store she and Brooke had searched through, but she couldn’t even remember looking for a gas can, and she hadn’t thought about a hose for siphoning until they had left the dollar store. She felt totally unprepared for all of this, like a pop quiz had been sprung onto her, one she hadn’t studied for, one that if she failed she would lose her life, and worse, other people’s lives, a pop quiz from a nightmare.
“I should go alone,” Petra said as she shut the door and locked it.
“No,” Max said, standing up. He already had his small backpack on, his pistol in his hand. “Absolutely not. We’re not splitting up.”
“Maybe we should all go,” Kate suggested.
Petra snorted like that was an insane idea.
Kate didn’t argue the point. She knew Petra regarded her and Brooke as dead weight to carry along. But Kate had suggested they all stay together because she was afraid that once Petra and Max were in the trailer park they might find the keys to another vehicle and take off without them. She didn’t want to think Max would go along with a plan like that, but she couldn’t be sure. If the two of them did leave, then Kate would be back to square one—she would have to search the trailers for sets of keys to another vehicle or find a hose and container for some gasoline.
“Maybe it is better if just the two of us go,” Max told Kate.
Kate bristled, but didn’t say anything.
“We won’t leave you,” Max said quickly. “We all need to stay together.” He glanced at Petra to make sure she was listening to him. “I think we all know that by now.”
Petra didn’t respond, but Kate nodded at Max. She trusted him, even though she didn’t know why. She knew it wasn’t rational to trust someone she’d just met, especially in this post-collapse world, but she felt sure she could trust the man. Max had been a good man in the old world, she could tell. An honorable man.
“Okay,” Max said, breathing out in relief like he had avoided a big argument. “You two get your stuff ready to go. Only stuff you can carry. But don’t pack your car just yet in case we get lucky and find another vehicle down in that trailer park.”
Again, Kate nodded. She looked at Brooke who seemed to be hanging onto every word Max said.
“Here’s your gun,” Petra said. “Look.” She quickly showed Kate how to eject the magazine from the handle, then she snapped it back in place and chambered a round. She flipped the safety off. “Hold it by the handle. Put your finger here.” She showed her where. “Not on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Keep your arms locked. The recoil isn’t going to be as bad as you think. Aim for the chest, not the head. You’ll miss if you aim for the head. Got it?”
Kate nodded.
“And don’t shoot unless you’re cornered,” Petra added. “I think you know gunshots will alert any rippers in the area.”
“I know,” Kate said, remembering when Brooke shot the man from underneath the van. She remembered how fast the rippers had come.
“My guess is that the trailer park’s been picked over already,” Petra said. “There’s quite a few dead bodies down there in the streets, the bones picked clean. Won’t be much in the way of food or water, but unless other survivors have come along, maybe we’ll find some supplies the rippers have overlooked.”
Survivors, Kate thought. That’s what we are now. She liked the word survivors. As frightened as she and Brooke had been, they had survived. They were survivors.
“You seem very capable at this,” Kate said. “Were you in the military?”
Petra seemed immediately offended and stared at Kate with suspicion in her eyes. Maybe she thought Kate was trying to butter her up or build up some kind of rapport with her. “No,” she answered simply.
Kate left it at that.
“Look,” Max said, smiling at Kate and Brooke, trying to break the tension. “You two will be fine. We’ll be back before you know it. Just get ready
to leave and hopefully we’ll be out there with some kind of truck or SUV, something with a little more power than your Toyota. No offense.”
Kate couldn’t help smiling at his joke. But she knew her Toyota would be the backup in case they couldn’t find another vehicle.
Max and Petra were ready to go, their backpacks on, their weapons in their hands: Max had the pistol and Petra held the shotgun. After another long look out the door, they were outside.
Kate closed the door and locked it. She went to the closest window and peeked through the plastic blinds, watching Max and Petra as they hurried to her Toyota, pausing there for a moment and using it as cover while they scanned the area and the field between the back of the clubhouse and the beginning of the trailer park. They said they had just met each other in the last few days, but they worked well together, like they’d known each other for a long time, like they were feeding off of each other’s instincts.
Like they belonged together.
We need to be together. That’s what Max had just said, and Kate believed him. She just hoped that Petra wasn’t going to talk him out of it.
CHAPTER 36
Max and Petra ran to the first trailer in the trailer park, a doublewide on a corner lot. Running across the field and then the wide, smooth street had been the most exposed they had been so far. Max felt like he’d had a bead on him the whole time, a red dot from a laser on someone’s rifle. He knew it was just his imagination, but it’s how he felt most days. The rippers weren’t the only threat anymore, maybe not even the biggest threat now. The Dark Angels could shoot from trees or buildings. They could think. They were organized.
And the Dark Angels were on some kind of mission, according to Kate. The two men who Kate said had tried to abduct them at a motel had wanted her and Brooke specifically.
Max followed Petra to the rear corner of the trailer. The grass was still wet from all the rain recently, the soil moist. It masked their footsteps, but it also left tracks from where they had walked. The paper trash all over the street and yards was mostly mush now, smeared on the pavement of the streets. There were a few vehicles stalled in the streets, either people who had tried to flee or who had turned into rippers while driving, suddenly unsure of what they had been doing as the first wave of the disease hit them.
Max remembered how it had affected Glen. It had seemed to come on so quickly. One moment Glen was fine, and then he was confused, unsure of where he was for a moment, or even who Max was. He’d started speaking gibberish, mixing his words up, hunting for the right word in frustration, stuttering and drooling, an anger burning in his eyes.
And then the moments of clarity had come. Glen had returned to normal for a little while. In those moments Glen knew something was wrong with him; he knew he was turning into a monster.
“You’re going to have to do it, Max,” Glen had told him, begging him.
Max squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, gripping the butt of his handgun harder, trying to push those memories away. He needed to concentrate right now; he needed to focus on what he was doing.
Petra was on the move, not even looking back at him to see if he was following her. He caught up to her through the row of backyards between the trailers. The park had been pretty nice once, but it wasn’t a high-end place. This was a park where couples had chosen to retire, sinking the little money they had managed to save into a trailer. Many of the trailers had been well-kept; this hadn’t been some seedy trailer court. The owners here had taken pride in their homes, however modest. The landscaping and potted plants on the concrete porches had been meticulously maintained. But now most of those potted plants were either dying or had been tipped over, dirt spilled out. Other plants looked chewed on, like the rippers had tested them to see if they were edible. They had to have been hungry to resort to potted plants. Maybe many of the rippers were that hungry now—desperate, perhaps even to the point of attacking and eating each other.
Max felt a little better being between the trailers, less exposed now. But there were also more places for rippers to hide, to spring out at them from the shadows. There were a few broken windows, and most of the trailer doors were either halfway open or torn off the hinges, revealing black rectangles that led into the gloomy interiors.
Petra stopped at the corner of a trailer. She glanced around at the driveways, eyeing potential vehicles for them to take. She looked back at Max and gestured with a nod toward the next trailer with the door halfway open.
Max nodded at her and she was off and running. He followed her, trying to be quiet on the soggy ground, but it sounded to him like they were making a lot of noise: clothing rustling, backpacks shifting, footfalls thumping, heavy breathing.
Petra had her small flashlight taped to her shotgun barrel with electrical tape. She flicked it on as she posted beside the trailer door, then she pointed the barrel of her weapon inside, the shaft of light shining into the darkness. She fanned the weapon back and forth just a little, searching the interior.
Max was on the other side of the door, his gun down by his side. Petra crept up the cinderblock steps and entered the trailer. He was right behind her. She aimed her shotgun and light beam toward the rear of the trailer, at the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Max pointed his gun toward the front, at the kitchen. His eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness inside, and it helped that the blinds and curtains over one of the windows had been torn down, allowing some daylight inside.
The trailer was a disaster: overturned furniture; clothing strewn about; broken dishes, plastic containers, and garbage covering the kitchen floor; crushed and decaying food. There was another scent along with the rotting food, the smell of death coming from the back bedrooms.
“Let’s get a plastic container from the kitchen floor,” Petra whispered. “Something that will hold some gas. I’ll cut a section of garden hose off when we get back outside.”
He nodded.
“You take the kitchen. I’ll check the back bedrooms. Look for a set of keys to that SUV in the driveway.”
Max raised his eyebrows at her. “You know what you’re going to find back there, don’t you?”
She knew. They’d seen it numerous times now in many homes and buildings they had searched. There would be at least one dead body back there in those bedrooms or bathrooms, maybe even two bodies. They would be practically skeletons now with bits of tendons and gristle clinging to the bones. Torn clothing would be matted to their bones and on the floor and furniture, matted down with dried blood like it was a paste. Flies would be buzzing around the bones, and maybe even a colony of maggots, perhaps a few rats scurrying around. Max had even seen a raccoon darting away from a body once.
Max covered Petra as she went down the hall, and then he moved back through the living room, doing his best to avoid most of the trash on the floor. The floorboards creaked just a little underneath the carpeting from his weight. He couldn’t see the entire kitchen floor from the living room because a long bar that probably used to have bar stools in front of it was connected to the end of the kitchen countertop and lower cabinets, jutting out and forming an L-shape, dividing the kitchen from the living room. Off to the right was a small seating area.
He moved around the edge of the bar, bracing himself for the sight of a body. He still couldn’t get used to the bones picked clean of flesh, or half-eaten by scavengers. At least their faces were usually chewed way, their eyes almost always gone, so it made them a little less human.
But there were no bodies in the kitchen, just the sea of garbage and kitchenware all over the floor. A few of the drawers were pulled halfway open, and Max thought maybe one of those drawers would be a good spot to start looking for the keys to the SUV parked in the driveway. The SUV wasn’t a big beast, but it would be better than Kate’s Toyota.
A rustling noise sounded from the garbage all over the floor and Max froze. Something was in the kitchen with him.
CHAPTER 37
Kate and Brooke got their stuff together, which didn�
��t take a long time because they didn’t have much. She packed the cardboard box with their food, and then she folded up the two blankets as small as she could, deciding to take them with her. They smelled slightly musty, but they would keep them warm.
“You get enough to eat?” Kate asked Brooke.
Brooke nodded. She had her drawing tablet and pack of pencils right beside her on the floor, closer to her, like she was afraid Kate would take them from her again.
Kate wanted to apologize for showing Max and Petra her drawings, but she wasn’t sorry. Max and Petra needed to see the drawings, especially Petra. They needed to see that the drawings meant something.
“Wait here,” Kate whispered at Brooke. “I’m going to check the place out. See if there’s anything else we can take with us.”
For a second Kate thought Brooke was going to jump to her feet and follow her, but she didn’t move; she just stared at her.
There probably wasn’t going to be much they would be able to use, but Kate felt like checking. It gave her something to do so she didn’t feel so useless. She’d take a few minutes and look around. Since they’d eaten, they had a little more room in the cardboard box now.
Petra had checked the kitchen this morning, but Kate checked it again. She felt pretty sure Max and Petra wouldn’t ditch them, at least she hoped so, but she had to be ready in case they did. She needed to always have a contingency plan for everything. She’d already been caught off-guard too many times already.
The kitchen was picked clean. It didn’t look like a lot of food had been stored there before. She checked the linen closet. There were a few bedsheets, a stack of table cloths, and decorations for various holidays. Nothing of much use now.
Next, she walked through another large room that might have been a meeting room before. This was the room with the French doors that led outside. Someone at some point had shoved the long table and chairs against the French doors and windows, but that barricade wasn’t going to keep anyone out for very long.
