Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2)

by Tanpepper, Saul

  Then, all at once, they began to growl.

  "It's happening!" Harrison said. He stood up then, not bothering to stay hidden anymore. "We need to leave now!"

  "The roof!" Susan said. "We can go up onto the roof!"

  "There's no time!" Harry shouted. Both of his boys were moaning in terror, and Fran was crying. Hannah and Bren were babbling on the floor. "They'll climb up there!"

  "Give me the keys!" Harrison snapped. "Who has the keys?"

  "Danny had them! He drove last!"

  "What the fu—"

  "No no! I've got them!" Kari yelled, pushing her way past them and diving into the driver's seat. The Wraiths tracked the noise and rushed to the front. They tried to climb onto the hood. From the cries behind her inside the bus, Kari knew that more were trying to climb up into the broken windows.

  "Go!" Allison screamed. "Gooooo! Oh my god! They're coming in! Help!"

  Kari fumbled the keys trying to fit them into the ignition. She wondered why they hadn't just left them in there to begin with. She could hear people running around behind her, could hear them crying out, shouting. Someone screamed. She heard the soft smack of something hard hitting flesh, the distinctive sound of bones splintering, the sound of glass shattering. Someone fell.

  "Hurry up! Hurry uuuuuup! Oh god, hurry!"

  She shoved the key into the ignition, but it twisted in her fingers and fell into the darkness at her feet.

  "Oh no! Hannah! Don't touch her! Get away! Go go GOOOO!"

  Don't touch who? Kari's mind screamed as she swept her hands over the surface of the floor. They hit the keys and knocked them into the step beside her left foot. "I dropped the keys!" she screamed. "I need light!"

  "Allison! Oh no! Allisonnnnn!"

  "Get away from her!"

  Something slammed onto the roof of the bus. Everything seemed to stop for a second. Everyone froze and looked up. They all heard the scuttling noises. There was a scream, and Fran Rollins shouted, "They're climbing the telephone poles! They're on the wires!"

  "Go! Get out of here!"

  Another crash sounded overhead.

  "There's more!"

  "Get away from the windows! Bren! Hannah!"

  "Daddy! Help!"

  Kari found the keys and leapt back onto the seat. She almost lost them again, then shoved the damn thing into the slot and turned it. The engine roared to life. She shifted into gear and the bus leapt forward, nearly stalling. "Lights!" she screamed. "Where are the goddamn lights? I can't see—"

  The bus slammed into a curb, then hit the light post.

  "We're stuck!"

  "Get her out! Get her out!"

  "How?"

  "Hit her! Push her out with the—"

  "It's Allison!"

  "She's gone! We can't save her! Now! No! Don't touch her! Get back! Don't touch her!"

  "You can't!" Allison screamed. "No! Please don't make me go!"

  "Oh god. Don't kill her."

  "She's gone, Jasmina! No! Get her away. Get away!"

  Kari yanked the shift into reverse and gunned the engine. She could hear people falling behind her as she backed up. She twisted the wheel to the right and aimed for the center of the street, toward the paler gray between the darker walls of the buildings. The engine screamed in protest, then bucked and nearly stalled.

  She could feel the Wraiths behind her, crawling over the outside of the bus, working their way inside, getting at them. She knew that Allison was already gone, had somehow been touched and had only minutes left before the Flense took hold of her mind and turned her into one of them.

  "Get off the bus!" someone shouted. "Allison! Get off!"

  "No! I won't! You have to help me!"

  "You have to go!"

  "Daddy!" Hannah screamed. "Another one's coming in!"

  There was an explosion of a gunshot and a flash of light reflecting off the windshield, blinding Kari for half a second. Then another gunshot.

  "Alli— Oh my god! You shot her!"

  "I had to! Go go go!"

  The bus roared past the garage, and as they went, Kari thought she saw Jonah's and Eddie's faces. But she couldn't be sure.

  The fight wasn't over behind her. She could hear more glass breaking as the metal pipes they had brought with them were used against the creatures. Metal slammed into glass and against more metal. The men shouted, directing each other. Susan shouted. There was a another sickening thud.

  Kari wanted to turn around. She needed to turn around and see. "What's happening?" she screamed.

  "Anymore? " Harrison yelled. "Are there anymore?" He sounded out of breath.

  "I don't— No. No!"

  "Stay alert. Spread out. Watch the windows! Hannah, get away from there!"

  Kari kept driving, caroming from one side of the road to the other. They passed the last structure and the landscape opened up in front of them, glistening in the starlight. The road became a silver vein, straight and unbroken.

  Behind them, the inhuman things that had once been human gave chase, loping along on naked feet, somehow running faster than any human — or anything that had once been human — should be able to.

  The survivors, men and women and children alike, wept. They wept because they were still alive and untouched. They wept for Allison, whose lifeless body lay folded over the window frame through which the Wraith had reached her. The hole in her skull from the bullet Nami had fired sprayed blood against the side of the bus and onto the road, leaving a trail.

  Nami sat beside her, not daring to touch her. He sobbed for the woman he had secretly loved.

  Still weeping, he pulled off his belt and wrapped it around her ankles like a lasso. Then he pulled it tight and canted her out the window. Nobody came to help him; nobody came to console him.

  He turned his eyes away from the pale lump in the road. He didn't want to see what the Wraiths would do when they reached her.

  In his mind, he was already imagining it.

  What Jonah saw in the warehouse had deeply troubled him, but by the time they exited the shop twenty minutes later and headed for the bus, his mood had significantly improved. The search had yielded a better-than-expected outcome. In his arms were two cases of Penzoil SAE 5W-30 weight motor oil. In his estimation, it would be enough to get them to the evac center.

  He had to be careful carrying it. The cardboard holding the plastic bottles had gotten wet at some point and was flimsy, threatening to disintegrate at any moment.

  Danny followed along behind him with a case of radiator coolant. He had suggested to Jonah that they come back for it in the morning, reasoning that at least one of them should have their hands free in case they encountered trouble. But Jonah didn't want to leave it behind. It was only fifty yards to the bus, and he was pretty sure the town was completely empty, despite what they'd just seen inside the shop.

  But the moment they stepped out onto the street, he knew he'd been wrong. Again.

  "Shit!" he whispered. "Go back, Danny!"

  He spun around, nearly losing the oil as the sides of the box began to fail.

  "What fo—" But Danny saw the Wraiths converging on the bus. He ducked back, sucking in air in alarm.

  "Get back inside!"

  As soon as they were in the shop again, Jonah set the cases on the counter, not bothering to chase the loose bottles that avalanched onto the floor. Danny set the coolant beside them.

  "What do we do?"

  "The warehouse," Jonah said. "Get in the warehouse."

  Danny's face went white with fear. He didn't want to go in there, not again.

  "We've got no choice. It's the only place we can secure the doors."

  Their arrival twenty minutes earlier had been through a smashed front door. The glass was scattered everywhere, and the brick which had done the job lay in the middle of the mess, half buried beneath a season's worth of dead leaves. Evening was rapidly bleeding the sky of light, but there was still enough coming in through the opening and the row of dusty windows i
n each of the three rolling gates for them to make their way around.

  As Kari and Nami had reported, a single vehicle occupied the maintenance section of the building. It was parked in the central repair bay. The ancient heavy-duty pickup truck sat like the empty shell of a giant terrapin, its hood propped open and nothing but a dark, empty space in the engine compartment staring out at them. For some reason, the sight gave Danny a chill.

  Jonah aimed the light from the cell phone down through the engine compartment and into the shadows in the pit below. Something moved, either a number of small things or a single large one with multiple appendages capable of reaching into the far corners of the space. He stepped away in fright before letting out a nervous laugh. "Rats," he said. "I can hear the babies."

  The animals' claws made dry, ghostly sounds as they scraped against the cement floor.

  He reminded Danny to look for oil, then made his way over to the supply shelves. Danny glanced back into the pit, his pulse still pounding in his temples. He knew Jonah was right about the rats, and yet his mind kept conjuring images of other creatures lurking in the darkness. His ankles felt suddenly much more exposed than he wanted.

  "Nothing here," Jonah said in frustration. Most of the boxes had been torn open, their contents clearly rifled through by other people in the past. "Brake pads and hoses, filters. Random bits and pieces. Nothing we can really use."

  "I think we should come back in the morning, Jonah."

  "Don't you think it's strange that there aren't any tools? This place has definitely been picked clean."

  "Here's the drum," Danny said. He'd edged his way back toward the front, to where there was more light. He gave the metal barrel an experimental tap. "Might be oil. Sounds like it might be half full."

  Jonah joined him, frowning. "No easy way to pump it out without electricity. Keep looking."

  He found the doorway to the warehouse behind the supply shelves, propped it open, and went through. A solitary window, high up in the wall, provided almost no light.

  Danny stepped up beside him. Air whistled through his teeth. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  The room was large and mostly empty. A single wooden chair sat in the middle. It was turned onto its side. Small piles of garbage collected in the corners. Ropes and chains hung from the rafters.

  "There's nothing here, Jonah. Come on."

  But Jonah was already making his way around the room, peering closely at the dark stains dripping down the walls. He stepped carefully over the dried pools on the floor. He stopped by a set of chains bolted into the wall and rattled them with his pipe. Thick blood caked the links, stiffening them. He could smell it, the rotten coppery tang. Dried blood and clumps of something that might've been flesh or fabric. And clumps of hair.

  "Jesus," he whispered.

  "Jonah, we need to go."

  The splatter pattern reached to chest height, hinting that whoever had been bound there had either been shot or hit hard enough with some object to cause serious damage.

  He crossed back to Danny. The look on his face was pale and grim. "You're right. There's nothing here. Come on."

  Danny let out a sigh of relief. "Right behind you."

  "One last place to check, though." Jonah's voice sounded pinched, and for once he looked scared. He headed back into the shop. "Give me a hand with the truck first."

  "The truck? Why? It's useless."

  "I want to check out the pit underneath."

  "The rat's nest? Come on, Jonah. It's almost dark. We'll come back in the morning."

  "We're here now. It'll only take a minute."

  "There's nothing under there."

  Jonah faced Danny. "When I was in high school, I used to hang out where my older brother worked at a body shop. They would keep supplies down in the pit, although it was against safety regulations. I think I saw something down there. I need to know."

  Danny watched him in disbelief, anger rising up inside of his chest as the reckless teenager pulled open the driver's side door. The released emergency brake let out a loud thud that reverberated through the shop. He wanted to smack Jonah.

  "Go ahead and give it a push back, Danny. Careful you don't fall in."

  Danny did as asked, and the truck began to roll back. After it had gone about eight feet, Jonah then pressed on the brake. The pedal sunk immediately to the floor, but the truck kept rolling.

  "You're going to crash!"

  Jonah leapt out. He pushed Danny out of the way, then heaved a tire from an old stack under the rear wheel of the truck before it could slam into the metal supply shelves, where it would raise one hell of a racket.

  The vehicle hit the tire, bounded forward, and came to rest a few feet away.

  "That was close."

  "That was stupid!" Jonah hissed. "I should've checked the brakes first. I should've realized they'd be dead!"

  "Can we just check the pit and get the hell out of here?"

  They found the oil and coolant, along with a half dozen bottles of wiper fluid that had half evaporated away, as well as a full toolbox. But the tools were pneumatic and therefore useless to them.

  Rats scurried out of a nest they had built in a ragged tarp dumped there, They ran about the pit floor, squealing in fright, then dissipated into the drainage vent and the sewer beneath the floor.

  By the time Jonah and Danny stepped outside with their supplies, the sky had gone from yellow-gray to deep purple and was edging on black. Neither had spoken again about the blood and chains in the warehouse, but it had weighed heavily on their minds. Jonah was excited about the oil, and both were eager to return to the bus for their own separate reasons.

  Except that the bus was under attack.

  Now they were stuck inside the nightmare warehouse. Daylight was gone, and the only barriers between them and the killer beings outside were a few thin walls and questionable doors. They had no weapons, no food, and no water. And they had limited light.

  The bus's motor roared to life in the distance. The gears crunched, then there was the sound of a crash. A moment later, the engine's whine rose as the bus approached the shop.

  "We can run for—"

  "Sit down, Danny," Jonah hissed. "They'll come back for us."

  Afterward, once the silence and darkness swallowed them up again, Danny lowered his face into his hands and quietly sobbed.

  * * *

  They slept little that night inside the cold, empty warehouse. In fact, other than the hour or two when Jonah managed to doze off while seated against the door to the automotive shop, neither of them spent all that much time doing much of anything but pacing as quietly as they could.

  The darkness and silence were infuriating, driving them both to imagine ever worsening fates for the bus and its occupants, each one more grisly than the last. With each hour that passed without their friends returning, their hopes grew dimmer, their nightmares more horrific.

  "I can see you."

  Jonah had set the chair upright on the floor and was leaning on the back of it. He looked over in the direction where Danny's voice had come. "What?"

  "There's light."

  Danny materialized out of the shadows, a vague shape taking on the familiar form of the man. He pointed toward the ceiling, where a dull gray rectangle glowed in the wall— the warehouse's only window. "Morning's coming."

  "About time."

  "I don't know how much more waiting I can take."

  "They'll be back once the sun's fully up," Jonah said, but he didn't sound too sure of himself. "Just sit tight."

  "Where do you think they came from? The Wraiths, I mean. One minute there were none, and the next they were all over the place."

  Jonah had been wondering that same question through the long night. If it were true that they had been in this place all along, hidden away inside the ghost town buildings while he and the others had walked unknowingly among them, then it also had to be true that the Wraiths had waited for nightfall to attack the bus.

  H
e just couldn't accept that.

  But neither could he dismiss it outright, and so he struggled with the uncertainty all night. The fear was like a living thing crawling over his skin, scratching at him, trying to find a way inside. He kept trying to push it away, to keep it from entering. He knew that once the fear entered, it would take hold on his mind, and then take over. He couldn't let it.

  The Wraiths had to have come from somewhere else. Perhaps they'd been drawn across the desert by smell or sound. Or perhaps simply by coincidence.

  It was no coincidence.

  Where had they come from?

  The only logical explanation was that the Wraiths had followed the bus all the way from the dam.

  No, not possible. How could they travel all those miles in just a few days? Those things are still human, after all.

  Except they weren't human. Not anymore. He'd seen what they were capable of, both in the days before arriving at the bunker and the day they had escaped from it. The Flense turned people into something else, something both superhuman and inhuman at the same time. People became creatures with abnormal strength and resilience. They lost all constraints. They consumed with a hunger that seemed insatiable, yet at the same time they seemed not to require food or water at all. They ran like animals, covering ground faster than any human being possibly could. They jumped higher and climbed better. They could suffer more injury, seemingly without pain.

  So maybe it really was possible that they had tracked them all the way from the dam, maybe even following the strong scent of the burning oil.

  Running nonstop at six miles per hour, they'd need only forty or fifty hours to cover the hundreds of miles the bus had traveled.

  It would be a grueling pace for any human, but maybe not for a Wraith. And the numbers worked out with uncanny precision.

  If that were so, then it could also explain where they had come from to begin with and why he hadn't seen them in the weeks he had spent outside the bunker fixing the bus.

  They followed Micheal Williams down the river. They're the infected from Bunker Two.

  And if all that were true, and they had followed the bus, then they would have met up with Finn and Bix on the road.