by Raymond Lee
She was afraid to try buildings after seeing what had happened inside the hotel, but in addition to the infected woman shuffling after her she saw a group of monsters down the street headed her way. She needed to get inside somewhere. No one alive was on the street and unlike when they’d first arrived, there were no cars speeding by. The area was like a ghost town. Sky started pulling up on door handles of the cars that had been parked along the street and left there. Eventually she found one unlocked and slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind her. She quickly made sure all the doors were locked and hunkered down in the backseat as the infected woman approached.
The woman’s body slammed into the car as if she didn’t have enough sense to stop moving forward, then her hands pawed at the windows. Sky whimpered as she lay on the floor, watching, praying the woman wouldn’t break the glass and ferret her out of the car. She didn’t know what was wrong with the people, how a virus could make them act so crazy when the worst thing she’d ever gotten from a virus was an upset stomach and sore throat. She studied the woman’s milky white eyes, curious if the infected people could see. This one certainly knew she was hiding inside the car but she wasn’t looking at her. Had she seen her get in the car or was it the sound of the door closing that attracted the woman to her?
A scream full of horror and anguish pierced the air, causing Sky’s entire body to jerk. The infected woman’s head whipped toward the sound and the rest of her body followed, leaving Sky and the car behind as she moved on to the creator of that terrible sound.
Sky’s heart beat furiously as she maneuvered to her knees. As thankful as she was that the woman had left her alone, she feared she knew who had screamed. As she peered out from behind the front seats, her fear was justified. Raven dropped to her knees outside the hotel, her body wracked with heaving sobs as she started to reach toward the dead girl’s body lying there but she let her hand fall away before touching the mangled mess that had once been a young girl.
What was she doing? Sky crept forward, stretching her small body over the seats so Raven would see her when she looked in her direction, but she didn’t look in her direction. She stared at the dead girl’s body and unleashed a sound unlike anything Sky had ever heard before. The cry seemed to reach to the heavens, drawing monsters out of alleys.
A loud thump against the car nearly brought a scream out of Sky but she bit her lip and hunkered down behind the front seats again, pressing her body as deep into the floor as she could get. She angled her head so she could see out the windows and watched the infected slowly but steadily creep forward in her sister’s direction. She prayed in silence for Raven to look up, to defend herself and somehow cut through them to find her as tears rolled down her face. Raven couldn’t die. If Raven died she would die too. She would be alone. She’d never survive alone.
She waited what felt like hours for the sound of shuffling feet to taper off and rose to her knees again. She looked out from between the front seats and watched Raven running away in the opposite direction she’d chosen, a group of infected people shuffling behind her.
“No!” she cried as she watched her older sister grow smaller. “You’re running the wrong way! Come back!” She reached for the door handle and shrieked as a gray-hued face filled the window. White eyes stared at her as the man’s mouth opened and pressed against the glass. A thump behind her indicated another infected person had figured out the car held a special treat inside. Sky cut a glance up the street and panicked when all she could see were the backs of the infected people who’d been following her sister, but no Raven. Her sister was gone.
“She left me,” she whimpered then yelped as both of the infected prying at the car started ramming into it harder, digging their hands against the glass as if it were sand. One slobbered all over the glass, desperate to eat her. She gave in to the urge to cry fully, not the silent tears she’d shed earlier. What was the use in staying quiet? Her sister had left her all alone, surrounded by monsters. It was only a matter of time before they broke the glass and crawled inside to twist and break her like they had the little girl in the street, to eat her. She was going to die in a stranger’s car, in a strange city, all by herself. One of the windows cracked.
Sky climbed over the seats and wedged herself between the driver’s seat and passenger seat, putting more space between her and the infected man about to break inside the back of the car. She watched as the crack spider-webbed across the glass, her fingernails digging into her palms as she clenched them tight, almost as tight as the legs she clenched together to keep from wetting herself.
“Hey!”
She turned her head toward the shrill voice, and craned her neck until she found its source. A tall, thin woman with a blonde pixie cut leaned over the railing of a second floor balcony attached to a hotel across the street.
“Hey you ugly bastards!” the woman screamed before throwing something. It was a shoe, Sky realized as it hit one of the infected in the back of the head and bounced off. Both of the monsters looked in the woman’s direction as she continued shouting at them, calling them names. They peeled away from the car and started shuffling toward her. “Run,” she screamed down as they headed her way. “Get out of the fucking car, kid, and run! You’re not safe there!”
Sky looked around, noted that every infected person on the street was headed in the woman’s direction, including the ones who had been following her sister. There was no way she could get past them to follow Raven.
“Damn it, kid, move your ass before they get too close! Run!”
Sky bit her lip and fought back tears as she crawled over the passenger seat and gripped the door handle. She couldn’t follow Raven, not if she wanted to live, and she didn’t dare try to enter the hotel the woman occupied, not after the nightmare she’d left behind in the hotel she’d been staying in with her sister. Well, that and the fact the woman had drawn the attention of every infected person on the street in order to give her a chance to get out of the car without becoming an appetizer. She looked up the street once more where she’d last seen Raven. The small group of infected people who’d been trailing her sister stepped off the sidewalk, focused on the woman on the balcony across the street. They moved past the line of cars parked along the curb. They moved slow. If she was fast enough she could get past them after all.
“Move your ass, kid!”
Sky pulled down on the handle and pushed the door open. The second her feet hit the ground she took off running in the direction Raven had fled. She thought about thanking the woman with the pixie cut but feared making a sound and undoing everything the woman had done for her. A few of the infected in back of the group had already taken notice of her and turned toward her as she sped past, the sound of her own heart beating in her ears.
“Keep running, kid!” the woman screamed after her. “Keep run—” The rest of the woman’s instruction got swallowed up in a scream that chilled the blood in Sky’s veins. She kept running, afraid of what she’d see if she turned around. She’d seen enough blood and death to sufficiently scar her for life.
She’d made it past the hotel she and Raven had stayed in and continued racing a straight path down the sidewalk, staying focused on what she could see ahead of her, desperately seeking Raven but she didn’t appear. Her legs started to feel like overstretched rubber bands and her side burned but she pressed on, afraid a hundred monsters would be on her if she stopped. She had no idea if she was being followed, too afraid to look behind her. Her breath came out in hard puffs and tears leaked from her eyes. She’d never been a great runner, PE was her least favorite class, but if she’d known she’d have to outrun monsters she would have run a lot more.
She reached a point much farther than where she’d last seen Raven, farther than she could have seen at all from the car and started to worry. She’d passed quite a few cross streets and alleys. Raven could have turned down any of them at any time. She could have passed her already. She cried harder, the sobs tumbling out of her uncontroll
ably as her legs slowed. She couldn’t keep up the speed. She slowed to a fast walk and looked around as she pushed forward. She saw tall buildings on both sides of the street and a pair of expensive looking cars that were abandoned after crashing into each other sat in the middle of the street. There weren’t any other cars in the area and no people.
She scrounged up all the courage she could and stole a look behind her. A lone infected woman in a tattered pink dress and no shoes followed her. If not for the white eyes and odd walk she might have appeared normal. Sky didn’t recall running past her and didn’t place her outside the hotel. She deduced that the woman must have spilled out of one of the alleys or from within a building she’d passed. A throaty moan from behind her caught her attention and she whirled around to come face to face with a short, chubby man. His T-shirt was stained with something dark, his chin dripped blood and his milky white eyes identified him as one of the monsters trying to eat people. He was close enough Sky could smell the death and rot on his breath.
She screamed and jumped back but the man’s meaty hand clamped around her forearm and tugged her forward.
“Raven!” she screamed as loud as she could, hoping her sister was within earshot, that she’d save her. She couldn’t have just left. She had to be there somewhere, trying to find a way back to her. “Raven!” she cried again as she pulled back, using all her strength to try to break away from the man’s death grip.
The man’s hand squeezed tighter as his mouth opened and his head lowered. This was it, Sky realized. This was the moment she would die and join her parents. She missed them horribly, wished constantly she could see them again but she didn’t wish for that now. She wasn’t ready to die, not without knowing what had happened to Raven, and not from being eaten by a diseased man. What if she didn’t die? What if she turned into what he was? She continued to struggle, trying to break free, all while screaming for her sister from the top of her lungs in a desperate bid to be heard and rescued.
Air shifted over her head and she saw something connect with the infected man’s face. His head jerked to the side as blood gushed out. A man with a baseball bat appeared next to her and swung the bat again, using brute force to bash in the diseased man’s skull.
“Quit screaming before you bring them all here,” her rescuer said in a heavily accented voice as he quickly scanned the street ahead. He wore black from head to toe. His skin was caramel brown, his short hair was silky smooth and nearly black, matching his five o’clock shadow and thick but perfectly arched eyebrows. The eyes beneath those brows were pools of rich chocolate. He jerked his wrist and blood splashed from the bat onto the sidewalk before he looked down at her and frowned. “Shit. What are you, like, ten years old?”
“Nine,” Sky said.
“Fuck.” He grabbed her around her waist and hoisted her off her feet. “Gotta move, kid.”
“Put me down!” she yelled, pushing at his forearm but it was no use. He wasn’t exceptionally tall but he was sturdy and none of the weight on him could be attributed to fat. The arm wrapped around her middle might as well have been a steel clamp. The woman she’d seen approaching her from behind steadily moved toward them as the man stepped off the sidewalk and proceeded to cross the deserted street with her tucked under his arm.
“Shut it, kid, I’m trying to save your life!”
“I have to find my sister!”
“What?” He stopped in the middle of the street and turned in a circle. The infected woman still moved toward them but she moved at a slow shuffle. “Where’d you lose her at?”
“We were staying at a hotel down the street. She ran this way.” Sky pointed in the direction Raven had been running. “I have to keep going until I catch her.”
“I hate to break it to you, kid, but you’re the first little girl I’ve seen run past here today and I’ve been watching the street for hours. We have to get inside.”
“She’s not a little girl, she’s nineteen!”
“I haven’t seen a teenager either.” He cut a glance to the infected woman approaching, muttered a curse, and took off running. He completed crossing the street despite Sky’s protests, slipped down a narrow alley next to a convenience store, rounded the building and pushed through a back door, never releasing his death grip on Sky.
“I have to find my sister!”
“You have to shut up,” he ordered from behind clenched teeth as he pulled the door closed behind them and set her down before sliding the bolt and shoving a standalone freezer in front of it. “I’m not so sure how good they see but I know for sure they can hear.”
Sky stomped her foot and growled, fighting against the urge to scream at the man. She knew he was right about the monsters being dangerous and he had definitely saved her life, but the longer she stayed locked inside the building with him, the farther Raven got from her. “My sister is out there!”
He stared down at her, his free hand on his hip, the other still wrapped around the bat, and let out a frustrated sigh. “Come here, kid. You have to see something.”
He led her through what she assumed was a storage room and pushed through a set of swinging doors that led out to the convenience store floor. He scanned the store as he led her down a center aisle, past the checkout and up to the front of the store which was floor to ceiling glass. Various posters advertising products had been taped to most of the exposed glass, hindering their view, as well as the display shelves filled with products lining the wall. A fold-out chair sat next to the front doors.
He sat her in the chair and crouched next to her. “This is what I’ve been doing for the last three and a half days. I’ve been sitting in this chair from sunup to sundown watching what the hell is happening out there. As you can see, I have a clear view of the street from here. I’m telling you, honey, your sister didn’t run down this street. You’re the first uninfected person I’ve seen on foot since I put this chair here and started monitoring. A teenaged girl wouldn’t have made it past here without me seeing her. She must have turned down a side street or something. I’m sorry, kid.”
Sky stared out the window. The advertisements taped to the glass hid her from view of anyone outside. They’d have to directly look through the glass doors at just the right angle to see her there, but she could clearly see if anyone ran down either side of the street. The man was right that he would have seen Raven if she’d run past. Sky tried to count how many cross streets she’d sped past but lost count at five. She’d been so focused on catching up to Raven she hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings to really count the cross streets let alone the alleys. She balled her hands into fists and pressed her lips together, struggling to keep it together, to appear strong. She lasted all of five seconds before her face crumpled and she bawled like a baby.
“Hey, hey,” the man said, still crouched at her side. He pulled her to him, burying her face into his chest so his shirt could soak up her tears and muffle her sobs. “If you didn’t see her that means she’s still running somewhere. She’s alive.”
“You really think that?” she asked between sobs.
“If you didn’t run past her body on the street I’d say it’s a safe bet. I take it you lost your parents in this?”
She shook her head but didn’t pull away. “They died in a car crash two years ago. It’s just me and Raven.”
“Raven’s your big sister?”
“Uh huh.” Sky realized she was speaking freely to the man and pulled away. She made a quick swipe at her cheeks and sniffed. “I’m not supposed to talk to you. You’re a stranger.”
“I’m not nearly as strange as what’s out there,” he said, tipping his head toward the street. “I’m Wladimir Torres. Most everybody calls me Torres. What’s your name, baby girl?”
Sky looked at him. He didn’t look like a bad man, but he looked like a man who could be bad if he wanted to be. Her sister would probably think he was hot, but he also was what she’d call beefcake. His black T-shirt barely managed to stretch over his muscles.
Raven always told her beefcake guys were trouble.
“Honey, I am not going to hurt you.” He raised the hand not holding the baseball bat. “My hand to God.”
He had saved her life. Sky looked through the glass and saw the infected man’s body crumpled on the sidewalk. That could have been her, would have been her if not for Torres. “Sky. Sky Bleu.”
“Like the color?” His eyebrows rose as a grin worked at the edges of his mouth.
“B-L-E-U.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Well, now we aren’t strangers.”
“I still can’t stay here. I have to find my sister.”
He frowned as he looked past her, out the glass. His shoulders sagged. “Do you notice it’s getting darker out there?”
She followed his gaze and noted the darkening sky. “She’s all alone.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Someone might have helped her like I helped you. That might be why you ran the same way she did but didn’t see her. I know for a fact she didn’t come this way. She might be holed up inside somewhere like we are.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“No but I know it’s going to get real dark real soon and if it’s dangerous out there now it’s going to be even more dangerous then. Would you say your sister is a smart girl?”
Sky nodded.
“A smart girl would get off the street as soon as possible, especially if she saw it growing dark. You’re not going to find her out there tonight. You’re safe here.”
“She’s looking for me. She’ll be worried about me. She’ll keep looking.”
Torres’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Why was she running ahead of you? How did you get separated?”
Sky took a deep breath and gripped the hem of her damp shirt, wishing she still had her teddy bear. “We were in a hotel. I won a trip to meet Emma Whitman so we flew out here from Kentucky.”
“Ah, that explains the accent.”
