Austin ducked under the railing and caught up to Micah, who was chowing down fast. They walked up the stairs and he said, “You always eat with everyone.”
“Aussie, the sun is going down,” Micah said. He had spent so much time watching the new people that he hadn’t been aware of it. Dinner had been served late today. It was pressing on to evening. The ferals would be out very, very soon and the sorting hadn’t even begun.
“What’s wrong with them?” Austin asked. “Some aren’t right in the head.”
“They gave up their life savings to hide in that harbor and are in shock to be here. Some are rich and used to commanding their world; others are just mental. I don’t know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’ve got to keep the feral ones out of the lodge.” Micah tossed the empty carton and bottle into a bush. “Those are the ones who actually do belong in confinement points, the real ones. Their parents will want to bring them inside.”
Elania and a few others came up quickly. They took place outside the doors to the great room, worry weighing down every brow. Corbin had a new bow. It wouldn’t kill a guard in a watchtower, but he could deliver serious damage to something up to fifteen feet away. Austin had watched the shooting practice.
“Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!”
People flooded up the stairs. Three of the querulous new ones wanted to know why they couldn’t go straight inside to use the restrooms, even though Micah had explained the purpose of the sorting. Austin was annoyed at the persistent complaints. They had just traded one problem in Lorna for another. This was a group of Lornas.
The sorting commenced. A lot of those right on the edge of losing their marbles had been the ones to run after Casper and his nine companions to the fence, so fifteen passed inside without delay. The sixteenth Micah waved to the outside restroom. He went to it and Elania broke away to minister to him. The new people raised their eyebrows and whispered amongst themselves. He asked for the Lord’s Prayer. Elania broke off after the first words and beckoned to Austin. “Would you? I just don’t know all of the words.”
She’d gotten through them fine in prayer circle, but the tension was getting to her. It was getting to Austin as well. At least the little boy was quiet, his chest hitching in the last, silent sobs of his tantrum. Austin recited the prayer with his eye on the crowd as it moved up. The father and daughter were not among them, although Bettina was there in the back. Micah waved in another ten people.
The man destined for the outside restroom took Elania’s hands. “Thank . . . you. You’re . . . you’ve . . . been . . . you’ve been . . . kind.”
“Hoo-AAHHHH?” Everyone whirled around in fear of a feral, but the call had come from Matt. His mother said defensively, “He has autism!”
He also had raging Sombra C! They never let anyone into the great room who had gotten to that stage. Even the man holding onto Elania’s hands stared at the guy in alarm.
An answering call came from the trees. The woman held onto Matt’s arm to prevent him from going after it. He bared his teeth at her. Slowly, his lips dropped to their part. He had his head cocked to focus one eye on his mother. Food was all down his shirt.
The sorting went faster after that, five ins and an out, nine ins and an out, seven ins and an out. Elania wanted Austin to give the prayer again, but he needed to stay closer to the doors. Some of the new ones passed through right away, gluten-free Natalie and still sobbing Tiffany, a family of four with identical 2% stamps, the bathrobe man. Micah sent Adelfo in to reserve her sofa. Austin wondered why she hadn’t sent one of the girls to do it, but Adelfo looked mean. He was actually a dopey, rough around the edges yet friendly guy, but judging solely by appearance, he was mean as a snake.
If Micah thought the game was lost, they’d lost it. She saw farther than Austin did, nuances he missed, and though her blue-green eyes were flat, he sensed that she was worried. A woman streamed in and said spitefully to her, “You’re a child-killer.”
“You’re right,” Micah said, looking straight out to the next ones coming in. “I am.”
“You are not!” Austin whispered in outrage.
“Clarissa was a child, and I killed her,” Micah said. She shook her head at Chris and his mother. “No. He has to go to the outside restroom.”
“My son isn’t dangerous!” the mother insisted.
“Next,” Micah said, and admitted two guys who were fine.
“I’ve lived with Tamera and Chris for the last month and a half,” offered another man who was approaching the doors. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, Chrissie-Wissie?”
“That’s right, Clayton!” exclaimed Tamera, giving a firm nod to him for his support.
“He can’t come in!” Austin barked. Chrissie-Wissie couldn’t even formulate an answer on his own, for God’s sake! He was nothing but a big bag of infection now. The guy’s upper lip curled as he looked to Matt in challenge. Swinging his head from side to side weirdly, Matt opened his mouth wide in a threatening way. Their mothers tugged at their arms, trying to get them to break eye contact.
“Just young guys feeling their oats, you know what I mean? Best to keep them separate,” laughed the man who had called the feral dude Chrissie-Wissie. As he went through the doors, Austin exchanged a look with Corbin.
We’ve lost.
“Please bless me?” a girl asked Elania, who put her hand to the girl’s forehead and said God was with her. That wasn’t part of Judaism, to Austin’s knowledge, but Elania knew how to give what was needed, to step past boundaries.
Unmoved by the pleas and demands of the mother, Micah pointed Chris to the restroom and beckoned people to the doors. The mother tried to lead Chris around her and Austin put out his pole to stop them. “She said no.”
“Get out of my way! This is ridiculous!” Tamera was shrieking as the father of the vanished girl appeared and cried, “I need you guys to help me! She’s right on the edge by the trees, just come up behind her and she’ll move this way.” Bettina went out to assist in rounding up the girl.
“We aren’t going to argue about this!” Austin said when Tamera pressed on the pole. “The sun is setting and they’re going to come out. So get him into the restroom and get out of my face!”
“We don’t . . . want him . . . in . . . this restroom,” called one of the people who was going inside it. That was their problem to work out, not Austin’s.
“No,” Micah said about Matt. “He’s way too out of it to be in the great room.”
“Let’s go, man,” said the droopy-eyed Derek. He lifted his pole. The rest of the people began to force their way inside the great room. Elania broke off in the middle of a prayer to exclaim, “Hey!”
Austin braced his pole to block them. What had tipped off Micah was the sheer size of the group, all of them having each other for power instead of needing to make new connections. They could impose since they had the numbers to do so. Derek pressed his pole against Austin’s and shoved. Corbin took aim with his bow, shouting, “Back off!”
Outside, Bettina screamed in terror.
Austin backed away from the confrontation, causing Derek to stagger. Feral figures were headed to the lodge at a fast, stiff-legged gait. “Close the doors! Micah, we have to close the doors!”
The door to the outside restroom slammed and a hard thump followed of the log pushed into place. Four ferals were coming up swiftly after Bettina, and she was leading them right to the great room. Everyone surged inside, the women pulling in Matt and Chris and no one able to stop them. Elania tripped on her way from the restroom and Austin dashed over in case she fell. They sprinted for the great room as Corbin forced one of the doors closed. Micah hefted the plank into her arms. Austin pushed Elania in front of him and spun around to slam the other door closed. The ferals had caught up to Bettina, who screamed when one grabbed her shoulder.
Micah dropped the plank into the brackets. The ferals hit the opposite side with a colossal bang that shook the doors in the splinte
red frame. Bettina screamed, “No! No!” and a feral roared. Something crashed into a wall, possibly Bettina herself. Then she screamed from farther away. Austin and Elania pressed on the trembling door, Micah and Corbin against the other one.
“Oh my God! You can’t leave them out there!” Natalie shouted in hysteria.
Forcing all of his weight upon the door, Austin lost his temper and shouted over his shoulder, “What the fuck do you want me to do, open these doors and let them in?”
The preschooler was screaming in his sister’s arms. The normal half of the new people retreated in fright to the corners, whispering to the old-timers if the room was secure. The man in the bathrobe was braver, and asked what he could do to help. Micah sent him to make a round of the windows. The weird ones stood around the doors in a mixture of bewilderment, vague fear, and disbelief. The mothers separated Matt and Chris to opposite ends of the great room.
The father was screaming Willa’s name outside a window, and then he was just screaming. Pounding resounded from the door of the outside restroom. The people within there were also screaming. Austin broke out in a sweat as a feral roared only inches away from his head on the other side of the wood.
The attack lasted a long time. Then some of them left the foyer. No one dared to leave the doors until it was silent. Just as Austin was turning around with the intention of going to the sofa, a man said, “It sounds like they’ve gone away. Can we open it up now so Jason, Willa, and Bettina can get back in?”
“No!” Corbin shouted. Austin had rarely seen friendly, mild-mannered Corbin so enraged. He’d been pushed too far. “Once they’re closed, they stay closed!”
“But they’ll die!”
“They’re already dead,” Micah said.
Was Austin going to have to stand here at the doors all night to make sure no one opened them? The preschooler traded off screams for whining and Matt’s abrasive mother told Adelfo to move over on the sofa. He refused and she practically sat down on his feet. Someone complained that the restroom had no toilet paper or soap in the dispensers. “Does anyone have tissues?”
“I had some, but they took my purse,” a woman answered.
Austin pressed his ear to the door and listened for sounds of life. All was still. The man came over to discuss the issue of just peeking out for the others. He was calling Micah honey and asking how old she was. She didn’t answer. One of the men who had been on the hill for a week said, “The doors have to stay closed. That’s final.”
The guy put up his hands to placate. “But if we’re all here to close the doors quick if someone comes-” The switchblade clicked open.
“Careful, Ross, she’s the law in these parts!” Derek called jokingly, and waggled his chest around like he was swinging big breasts.
Matt’s mother was continuing her bid for Adelfo to shove over. Sofas couldn’t be reserved for people. Someone thumped on a window and cried, “Aaaaa-AAAAAA!”
“Aaaaa-AAAAAA!” Matt echoed. Going to the window, he pounded on the planks nailed across it.
“Get him away from there!” Austin bellowed. His mother threw over an insolent look, intending to do nothing to get back at Austin for the bridge. The man in the bathrobe hurried over instead to stop Matt from pounding. Chris let loose a gravelly scream and Matt turned. His lip curled.
The call repeated from outside. More joined in with chatters and grunts. Some were moving around the lodge, the sounds starting near the fire and trailing past the windows. They faded, and then strengthened at the doors. Nails scratched on the wood. “Eh-eh-eh?”
“Chris, stop!”
“Matt!”
The guys were heading through the great room for each other. People moved quickly out of the way. Tamera got up to catch Chris, but Matt’s mother just raised her voice louder. The feral outside the doors yelled. The new women with higher viral loads winced at the racket, which was bothering Austin when he barely had an infection. The whining and sobbing of the kid, the hoots and squawks outside, the yelling parents and the guys roaring as they raced for one another . . .
“Oh, fuck,” whispered Micah.
They collided at full force by the doors, Chris toppling over from the blow. He rolled onto his side and snapped at Corbin and Elania, who hastily jumped away. Matt delivered a stiff-legged kick between Chris’ shoulder blades. An uuuhhh broke from the downed boy’s throat. The grunt was not accompanied by a grimace of pain. He was beyond that. It was just the air being driven from his lungs.
“Stop him!” Tamera demanded, pulling fruitlessly on Matt’s arm. He knocked her away and focused one eye on Chris.
“Matt, come here right now!”
Their voices were drowned out by the animal cries of the battling feral boys. Chris thrashed onto his stomach and got to his hands and knees, Matt giving him a stiff-legged kick to his abdomen. The ferals outside heard the fight and roared. Fists struck the doors and one of the hinges sloughed away as easily as eraser dust.
Austin leaped for it and Matt hit him across the back with the force of a battering ram. As Austin slammed into the wall and whirled around, Micah buried her blade in the guy’s chest. Matt jerked away and she lost her grip on the handle. His mother screamed and got up from the sofa.
Chris tackled Matt. Forgetting the hinge, Austin scrambled to get away. The guys almost landed on him, and they rolled to the trembling doors. The ferals outside struck the wood with ringing blows, the upper corner without the hinge bending inwards.
We’ve lost, Austin thought in horror. The doors were going to come down and the animal cries were exhilarated. They knew.
He couldn’t get to the doors to brace them with Chris and Matt fighting there.
Chris sank his teeth into Matt’s neck, blood spraying out in an arc that went five feet. Tamera pleaded with people to help separate them, but everyone was cringing away from the vicious attack. The parents with the 2% stamps ran into the restroom with their kids and slammed shut the door. Matt’s mother tried to slap Micah, who blocked it and slugged the woman so hard that it echoed.
The ferals pounded in unison and the doors bent in. Frantically, Austin looked around the room. There was no way out save through the boarded windows, and those would take time to access. Pry off the planks and climb out, dash through the ferals in the darkness to the nearest oak . . .
“Get away from the doors!” Corbin screamed at the zombie boys. He shot an arrow into Chris’ back. Tamera screamed, the ferals pounded, the doors bent in farther, and Austin was being hauled across the room.
“Get the fuck off my sofa!” Micah shouted at Adelfo, who leaped away from it. “Austin, help me turn this over!” She ripped off the cushions and threw them willy-nilly, Austin having no idea which way to turn the sofa or why. When he tipped it outward, she screamed, “NO!” and did it the other way. The sofa was too heavy for one person to move alone, so they used their combined muscle to get it over. She shoved it up against the wall with his help.
Shelter. She was making a shelter. This was all they could do, hide under a tipped sofa and pray.
“Corbin! Elania!” Micah shouted. Elania scrabbled through the crack with Corbin on her heels. He brought his bow in with him.
Austin said, “Micah, get in!” and she shoved him to go in first.
He didn’t argue. They could argue about that later. Austin glanced over the room for one last second. People were shouting to brace the doors, which couldn’t be reached. Blood was spraying out in arcs from the zombie boys, who had their hands at each other’s throats. Fists were banging on the restroom door and women were begging for the family inside to unlock it. Dozens were shrinking along the walls and one guy had loosened a board from a window. A hand came through the darkness and closed around his throat. All of it happened in a heartbeat.
The doors bent inward. And fell.
They toppled over Matt and Chris, who were crushed underneath them as ferals raced into the great room. A collective scream tore out of everyone. Austin dropped and cra
wled under the sofa. Micah pressed herself into the tiny space that remained, everyone cramming over to free up a few more inches so her head wouldn’t be stuck out the hole. It was a horrible position to hide in, Austin crouched over like a turtle. A little light was coming through the gap around Micah. All he could see was a piece of floor and the wall.
He flashed back to the party, the spinning lights from the disco ball and the music, the screaming and running and shooting. Zaley’s blood running down her arm . . . For one panicked moment, he was convinced that they had forgotten Zaley out there in the great room. Her voice was in the pealing chorus.
This was how they were going to die. He listened to the screams and cries, the thumps and pounding, and he prayed. To hear it and not see it . . . he didn’t know if that was worse or better. Screaming echoed through the wall. Some people had run outside to the hill.
There was no longer a lodge. It was only a refuge with those big doors and now they were down. The great room wasn’t safer than anywhere else on the hill. Tomorrow night, if there was a tomorrow night for the four of them, they had to climb a tree after dinner.
The screaming was endless. Something struck the sofa but didn’t tear it away. The back wasn’t quite flush with the wall, and blood began to drip down it. It was bright red until it fell into shadow. The dark streams went down to the floor. Gunshots rang out in the distance.
His knees and back were in pain. He lifted his head until it touched the underside of the sofa back, and stretched out his legs on top of Elania and Corbin. Then he lowered to his belly. That helped his aching muscles and one of them squeezed his foot. Although he wanted to cling to the sofa, to help weigh it down, there wasn’t anything to hold onto without exposing his fingers.
They could only wait.
When the screaming stopped in the great room, they stayed under the sofa. Ferals wandered in and out, chattering and hooting. Micah whispered that they were swiping at the overhead lights high above. Another one was kicking a wounded person on the floor, who groaned until a really hard kick brought it to an end. Austin wanted to throw up. People were still screaming outside on the hill. The guards were shooting at them.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 102
