by Thomas North
The monster turned his attention back to Sarah. She screamed when he opened his mouth again, going straight for her neck. Sarah struggled harder this time, hoping to slip from the monster’s grip. He grabbed her head like he was palming a basketball, trying to steady her for the kill. A drop of saliva rolled from his mouth and landed on Sarah’s cheek. This time she could see his face clearly as he came for her, his wide, cold eyes drawing closer, his blood-covered mouth open wide, the rancid stink of his breath burning her nostrils. She screamed, her previous resignation replaced by sheer terror. She was about to die, in as horrific a way as she could imagine.
Over her cries, there was an eardrum-piercing blast. Mike’s body jerked to the side, and a cool liquid sprayed across Sarah’s face.
Another loud blast, and his body jerked again. Mike's arm went limp, and Sarah, with newfound hope coursing through her, planted her legs on the ground and lunged forward, breaking his hold. Her momentum carried her forward, and she ran back across the station. A third shot rang out.
Sarah regained her balance and spun around just in time to see Mike growl fiercely. Blood poured from a bullet hole in his shoulder and another in his lower torso. The third shot had missed him completely. He was now facing Mary, who was on one knee a few feet away. Sarah blinked in disbelief. In her hands, Mary held a black pistol, the weapon shaking in her grip. Sarah looked back at Mike, and his belt. His holster was empty.
Mary squeezed the trigger a fourth time, and blood and flesh exploded from just above his shoulders, his neck becoming a bloody mass of shredded meat. Mike Williamson let loose a liquid moan, but stepped forward. Mary stood up but didn’t make any move to escape. The skinny girl with long brown hair stood her ground, letting the giant creature lumber towards her. Sarah’s eyes went wide when the former police officer, almost at arm’s length, reached for her friend. He lifted one muscular arm and swung it. Mary tried to move out of the way, but the blow struck her in the middle of the back, sending her sprawling into the wall.
She let out a gasp as the air left her body, and she crumpled to the ground, the gun flying from her hand. Mike stepped forward and looked down at her. She rolled onto her back and looked up, gasping for breath. He opened his mouth, his white teeth and eyes seeming to glow in the darkness, making him look like some kind of Halloween mask. Sarah grabbed the chair that Mary had already used, and smacked Mike across the back. This time, he ignored it. He was fixated on Mary, who was still lying on the floor below him.
"Do it," Mary whispered, still trying to catch her breath, tears welling in her eyes. "I don't care. You took Kyle. Take me too."
He reached for her. His hand was an inch from her face.
And then it wasn't.
Brent slammed his brother to the ground and launched a haymaker at his head, slamming a fist into his temple.
"You two, get the fuck out of here!" Brent yelled.
Sarah stepped forward, eyeing the pistol next to Mary.
"Jesus, go!" Brent yelled. Mike had twisted out from under Brent, who was now trying to get him into a headlock.
Sarah stepped forward and grabbed Mary by the shoulder, hauling her off of the floor, where she was sitting, her face blank and emotionless save for the couple of tears that were rolling down her cheeks.
Once she was on her feet, Mary followed Sarah to the back door. Sarah paused there, then ran back to the middle of the room and grabbed the shotgun. She considered taking a shot at Mike, but knew there was no way she could do that. She'd never fired one in her life, let alone at a moving target who was tangled up with someone she didn't want to shoot... at the moment, anyway.
"Come on," Sarah said.
Together, they ran out the back door and into the alley, and the darkness, and the rain. She checked in both directions before continuing on, pausing in between the two buildings behind the police station.
"What should we do?" Mary asked. She glanced back at the police station door.
"Let's... wait," Sarah replied. "Just keep an eye out."
Mary nodded and again glanced back at the police station. Sarah looked to their rear and then their front. She heard Mary gasp and spun around, afraid that one of those people had gotten the jump on them.
But it was just Mary. She was sobbing now, using the sleeves of her shirt to try to cover her face, saying the name of her now-deceased boyfriend through her cries. Sarah put an arm around her, doing her best to comfort her friend, still holding the shotgun in her other hand. The sound of a gunshot from inside the police station made them both jump.
They continued to wait. After a couple of minutes, the police station door opened and Brent emerged, his face bloody, the pistol in one hand. Sarah checked her watch. The whole thing had taken just ten minutes
"Come on," he said, running towards them. "I opened the door. They're all coming into the station. Let's go get that truck."
He took a step forward, then turned back again, realizing that they weren't following. Mary was standing where she was, her body wracked by sobs. Brent grabbed her by the shoulder.
"Mary!" he said firmly. "You think your boyfriend would want you to stand here and get killed? You think your friends would? You've still got three of them out there that we've got to go get,"
She looked up and turned her head slightly.
"He's right Mary," Sarah said. "Come on. We've lost enough. We need to find Jack and Kate." She hesitated. "And Andy."
Mary thought about it for a moment, and nodded, wiping her sleeve across her face.
"Okay. I'm okay," she said.
Brent nodded, and the three of them went down the alley. The rear door to the police station snapped open behind them just as they were turning onto the street, and the first group of people staggered into the alley. Sarah, Mary and Brent ignored them.
They ran around the building behind the police station and down the street, coming back onto Main Street, to the front of the station. Most of the people that had been besieging the Allentown Police Department building had gone inside, but there were still stragglers, people staggering around here and there like phantoms in the still darkened early morning hours.
"Ignore them," Brent ordered. "If we move fast enough they won't be a problem."
They continued running, giving several of the people a wide birth. When the SUV was a few feet away, Brent pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and hit the unlock button. The lights on the truck flashed. Brent jumped into the driver's seat. The two women got into the back. Brent started the truck and backed it out of the parking space, just missing a person who had been drawn to the bright lights.
Main Street itself was still crowded with dozens of people, the truck headlights illuminating most of them for just a couple of seconds, brief flashes of pale skin, broken bodies, and empty gazes. Sarah's mind was elsewhere though. The image of Kyle's body flashed through her mind, though she did her best to chase it away. Seeing a friend die had been bad enough, but seeing him ripped apart, mutilated, torn to pieces – that was something she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Brent drove for just a couple of minutes before he guided the truck to the side of the road next to a small wooden sign that had “Dr. Phillip Browning, DD” engraved in golden letters. Leaving the engine running, the three of them jumped out of the vehicle and ran up the short concrete walkway, the cold rain splashing on their faces. Brent tried the door, but found it locked. He pounded on it, hoping Andy would hear, but trying not to attract unwanted attention.
They waited, but heard nothing. Brent pounded on the door again.
“Andy?” he said, still trying to keep his voice down. “Andy, can you hear me?” He pounded again. He soon realized he was being answered by pounding on the other side. “Andy?” he said. Sarah ran to his side.
“Andy!” she yelled excitedly, dropping any pretension of trying to stay quiet. The pounding from the other side continued. “Andy, open the door!” Sarah yelled.
The pounding continued. Sarah was
about to yell again, when a loud, distinct, raspy moan came from the other side of the door. Sarah stepped back, shaking her head. She continued stepping backwards slowly, and bumped into Mary, who grabbed her by the arm.
“Let’s… go back to the car,” Mary said, her voice wavering.
Brent turned around.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“We can’t… we can’t just leave him like that,” Sarah said. She had tears in her eyes, but was doing her best to hold herself together. Brent looked at her with admiration. She was a tough girl. She and Mary both were.
“Okay, you two go back,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Sarah looked him in the eyes, and nodded. Together, she and Mary returned to the SUV. Brent stepped back and gave the door a hard kick, then another, and then another, checking over his shoulder nervously, hoping the noise didn’t draw anyone to them. With one more swift kick, the door splintered and opened slightly. Brent stepped back. Sarah, watching from the safety of the vehicle, closed her eyes.
A second later, a gunshot, an echo, and it was over.
Mary hugged her as the tears finally came. She didn’t bother to look up, only hearing the door open and close, and feeling the truck starting to move again. After a few minutes, she wiped her eyes and looked around. They were moving down the main road out of Allentown, in the opposite direction from which they’d come just two days earlier. Brent was looking straight ahead, concentrating on driving, trying to weave around as many people as he could to avoid damaging the vehicle.
15
HAD THAT ONE look, an unspoken communication, had been enough? He wondered. It had been nothing more than a meeting of eyes, a non-verbal acknowledgement of what would have to be done. Still, when Jack had gone to sleep that night, he'd worried that maybe they hadn't communicated what he had thought. He'd read somewhere ˗ maybe it had been in one of his 101 classes ˗ that non-verbal communication was as much, if not more, important that actual speaking. But he found it difficult and finicky.
He thought they'd almost read each other's minds. But maybe they hadn't. Maybe Kate had been thinking something completely different. It was a question that repeated in his brain even as he finally and reluctantly drifted off to sleep.
Then a single gunshot in the middle of the night ripped him out of his slumber, and he thought his worries had been answered. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when it came. He jumped out of bed, expecting more shots, but was greeted only with silence. His watch read 4:05 am.
He rushed out of the room with his flashlight. In the darkened hallway, he saw the body lying on the floor, face down. The back of its head was disfigured and matted with blood, a detail he didn't spend much time looking at.
Another figure was sitting in the chair in the hallway, unmoving, head slumped down.
“Kate,” he said. She turned and looked him in the eyes.
“He got up," she said. "Just a few minutes ago. He got up, and he didn't say anything, but I could tell. It was his eyes, Jack, they looked wrong. They looked empty, like he wasn't even in there anymore, like it was just some kind of machine.”
Jack nodded slightly. "Just like all those people out there."
"Yeah," Kate replied. "I opened the door and he came at me, so fast, like he wanted to kill me. And then I shot him, and he fell."
“You alright?” he asked.
She nodded. She had tears in her eyes, and wiped them on her sleeve.
“I know I had to do it. But it wasn’t the same as the ones downstairs. We heard him talk, had conversations with him. He was a real person.”
She paused.
“All of them are real people, I guess. But…it was different. And I mean, what if he could've been cured? What if his family comes, and, and... and they cure this and they know that he can't be cured because I shot him.”
"I don't think there's a cure, Kate?"
"How do you know?" she asked.
"I don't," he said. "I just don't think so."
Jack felt relieved that he hadn’t been the one to do it, as much as he hated to admit that to himself. He wanted to think of himself as the man, the fearless hunter-gatherer, the unflinching warrior when times were tough, who did what had to be done. But that wasn't him, and his relief at not being the one to kill Phil told him that better than anything. That was Kate. Quiet, soft-spoken, librarian Kate was the warrior. Not him.
Phil hadn't been much more than a stranger to them, but he’d invited them into his house, and had probably saved their lives. It wasn’t his or Kate’s fault. Phil’s death warrant had been sealed before they arrived, something they both now understood. Whatever it was those people had, there was no getting better. There was no coming back.
He put his arms around Kate. They hugged for a few minutes in as much silence as the people outside the door granted them. Afterwards, they took the sheets off the bed and wrapped the body in them, then dragged it back into the bedroom.
"Do we just leave him there?" Kate asked.
Jack nodded. "For now," he said. "If this ends soon, maybe someone, hopefully his family, will be able to come and take care of him properly. If it doesn't..."
He paused.
"I hope we won't be here much longer either way," Kate said.
"Tell me about it," Jack replied.
Jack took another look at Kate. Her eyes were dry. She had let herself cry for a few seconds, and that was it.
Jack grabbed the .38 off the bed. Phil wouldn’t have much use for it now. They went back into the hallway and sat down, their flashlights the only light in the house.
“I can stay up,” Jack said.
“No. Go back to bed. I’m fine,” Kate said sternly.
“Are you su—“
“Yes. You need to sleep too. Go.”
Kate was obviously not in the mood to argue about it. Jack gave her another hug and went back to the bedroom. Kate dropped the magazine from the pistol. She opened the box of loose rounds and grabbed a single bullet, snapping it into position. She slapped the magazine backed into the gun and set it down on her lap, the barrel facing the door.
16
"WHY DIDN’T YOU honk the horn?" Sarah asked. "How are they supposed to know we’re here?"
"They probably heard our engine," Brent replied. "I wasn't going to attract more of those peop˗ things. They were all over the fucking place as it was. We just sat there for a couple of minutes and they goddamn near surrounded us."
Sarah slumped back in her chair. "So what then? How do we pick them up if we can't even get near the house?"
Brent thought for a moment. He'd pulled the SUV back onto the main road and was driving slowly away from town. He didn't want to leave the area, but he also didn't want to stop. Stopping, he'd realized very soon after he got behind the wheel, was a bad idea.
"There's no way you can get ahold of them?" Brent asked. "Cell phone? Text message? Anything?"
"Hypothetically," Sarah said. "If my phone wasn't dead, and at the police station."
"Mary?" Brent asked.
"No," Mary replied. "Same as Sarah."
"Well that's terrific," said Brent. He pulled a U-turn and started going back towards town again.
In a couple of minutes, they were passing the driveway of the house where Jack and Kate were. Brent drove past it, and kept going, then turned around again.
EVENTUALLY SHE FELL asleep. She didn't dream. She didn't hear the sound of the truck, its headlights off now, come up the driveway and stop. She didn't hear it turn around and go back down the driveway when the people started staggering out of the house, curious to see what their new arrival held for them.
But she heard the silence. And that did wake her.
She opened her eyes to the dim orange glow of the flashlight, its battery starting to wear down. She'd left it on. Oh well. They had two more, she thought, looking around, trying to figure out what had woken her.
She looked towards the door and realized what it was. She stoo
d, picking the pistol up from the empty chair beside her and approached the dresser. She walked to the side of it and pressed her ear against the crack between the dresser and the door, and listened. She could still hear noise below. Footsteps. Some banging, probably the people bumping into things, she thought. But they weren't at the door. It didn't even sound like they were on the stairs, though she didn't know for sure.
She stepped back and shined the flashlight on the door and dresser, an act that didn't serve any real purpose, and then turned around and walked down the hall. She went into the bedroom where Jack was sleeping ˗ and snoring loudly ˗ and grabbed his shoulder. He sat up stiffly and let out a sharp yell.
"Jack, it's just me!" Kate said, shining the light on her face. He looked at her, his eyes wide, breathing heavily, and nodded.
"Sorry. Just was having a bad dream," he said. He looked around confusedly, seeing the still-dark window. "It's not the morning yet."
"Almost," Kate said. "It's a little before five."
"Okay," Jack replied, still half-asleep.
"I think those people are gone," she said.
He blinked twice and looked her, suddenly looking very awake.
"Gone?" he asked.
"Well not completely gone," Kate said. "I mean they're still down there. I can hear them. But they're not at the door."
Jack frowned. "Why?"
"I have no idea," Kate replied.
Jack swung his feet off of the bed and put them on the floor.
"Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, then," he said.
"What?"
"Let's go," he said. "Let's get out of here."
"Go where?" Kate asked.
"Anywhere," Jack said, getting up. "We find the keys to Phil's car. Or we hike down and find a car. We can get to one of those emergency shelters. Our food is almost out anyway, unless we want to starve ourselves."
"You want to go now?" Kate asked.
"Yeah," Jack replied.
