by Brad Munson
“You’re fired!”
Barrymore could tell that Drucker was ready to jump the principal right then and there. He quickly put himself between the two of them and drew up to his full six-foot-three, his head almost touching the underside of the roof.
“Both of you,” he said. “Stop it. Let’s just take a breath and—”
“We don’t have time,” Pratt said. “They’ll all be back in three hours! We have child care again, don’t you remember? Or do you simply not care?”
“We all care, Mr. Pratt,” Elli Monaghan said, her arms wrapped tightly around her, trying to trap more warmth. She sounded angry for the first time. “You don’t have to be so mean.”
Trini was close to tears. “This is insane,” she said, massaging her temples with a thumb and forefingers. “Why do we need a meeting? Let’s just leave town. Everybody just leave now.” The long sleeves of her polished cotton blouse, usually so pretty in the warm desert sunlight, were dank and limp. One of them was streaked with some dark, ugly fluid from elbow to wrist. She looked weary and scared. They all did.
“Somebody can go over to the Emporium and buy dinner,” Pratt said, trying to sound like the boss. He cocked an eye at the English teacher. “Maybe you, Drucker. Brave the elements, bring back a pizza?”
“No,” Drucker said firmly. “No. If we refuse to do this, then they can’t have the meeting. Then we can just get out of here, like everyone should.” He looked from face to face, his frustration growing. “Come on,” he said.
No one spoke.
Finally he sighed bitterly and gave in. He reached into the pocket of his pea coat and pulled out a soggy baseball cap. “Fine,” he said, jamming the cap on his head. “I’ll start the rush for the exits. ‘Bye everybody. Be well.”
He turned and headed towards the parking lot.
“HEY!” Pratt shouted. The tone of it pulled the teacher up short. He stopped. And turned. And stepped back under the shelter, into the ring of teachers.
Pratt had his little hands on his little hips. “Where are you think you’re going?” he said.
“Home,” Drucker told him very calmly. “Then possibly Hawaii. Oahu, I’m thinking.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Pratt said. “You have a job.”
“You just fired me, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Barrymore was the first to see something different in Drucker’s eyes. This wasn’t the old jokemeister at work. “Douglas,” he said to the principal, “maybe you’d better—”
The bantamweight principal would have none of it. His walrus mustache bristled. “You hear me, Mister? You have a job here. An obligation, though that may be a new word to you. Students will be back here in less than three hours, and I need the stadium seating pulled out, tables set up, chairs arranged, and the porch swept of debris. There’s no time to go home. There’s no time to waste at all. Now get to work.”
“No,” Drucker said again. He turned back towards the parking lot.
Then Douglas Pratt made the worst mistake of his life.
He put a hand on David Drucker.
Pratt reached out and took him by the elbow, intending to spin the teacher around. “Hey!” he called. “What do you think—”
Drucker spun back, eyes blazing. He hit Pratt flat in the nose with a clenched fist, so fast it was little more than a muddy white blur. The principal’s nose made a wet pop and he fell straight back. He grunted as he hit the damp concrete with a hollow whack.
“Jesus!” Barrymore said, more surprised than appalled.
“David, don’t–” Elli started, but it was too late.
Pratt was writhing on the ground, pawing at his nose. “Fuck!” he whined. “Fuck!”
Drucker stepped forward. “You want to know what I think?” he said. He kicked Pratt in the ribs, as hard as he could with his sneakered foot. “That’s what I think! You want another opinion?” He kicked him again, lower this time, and Pratt actually groaned, curled in on himself. “There!”
“David, stop!” Trini said.
“You got me now?” he said and kicked him one last time, square in the stomach. Vomit shot out of the principal’s mouth like a bursting bag, spreading in chunks across the concrete. “You got me?”
Barrymore put himself in front of David Drucker. He was careful not to touch his old friend – he’d just seen what a bad idea that was. But he was huge compared to the mild-mannered English teacher, half again his height and nearly twice his width. The sheer bulk of him made Drucker hesitate, then stop.
Barely.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Drucker said, catching his breath. “Go on. Tell me.”
Nobody said a word. It was a long time before Pratt pulled himself to his feet, and no one moved to help him.
“We’ll stay,” Trini said very quietly. “For the kids.”
Lightning tore open the sky. Thunder made the floor tremble.
It was going to be a long night.
Twenty-three
Lisa Corman stood in the broken doorway between the Borrego Clinic’s Emergency Room and the hallway that led to the former front lobby. She did her best not to cry.
The clinic was beyond repair. The few able-bodied people – patients and staff alike – who remained after the battle with the monsters had spent an hour salvaging every piece of unbroken furniture or equipment they could put their hands on, moving it all into the wide, carpeted lobby and the long linoleum corridors of the clinic itself. Then Doctor Chamberlain, Dr. Panjandra, and two other men nailed the doors to the ER shut with salvaged drywall and two-by-fours from a shattered sofa. No one thought for a minute that it would actually keep the creatures out if they wanted to get in, but somehow just the sight of it made people feel better.
The sheriff and his men had not been generous with their weaponry. Lisa was well aware: they were on their own until the caravan came to rescue them. And they very much needed rescuing.
She tried calling her daughter’s cell phone again and again, but whatever technological miracle had allowed them to speak earlier had faded away. Now she got the same message on her screen that everyone else had gotten: NO SERVICE. She wondered if that computerized witch “Maggie” had somehow forced the system to work even for a little while, but it didn’t matter now. The signal was gone now;
The parade of victims had slowed to a trickle. She wondered what that meant – if everyone had gotten out, or everyone had died. Meanwhile, the noise from the victims and volunteers who were still in the clinic was continuous, low, almost animal-like: groaning, calling, carping. She knew she couldn’t stand it much longer. She ached for seven o’clock and the caravan out of town.
In the meantime, she worked. She was bandaging the gouged arm of one of the defenders with a confidence and expertise she had not possessed just a few hours earlier. She had some help, too: the beautiful young blonde who had crashed into the clinic – the one who had wrecked the ER and probably saved their lives at the same time – had become a new and unexpected ally.
The girl had been an hysterical mess when she’d crashed the party – literally. But she was better now. Her hair was pulled back from her face, and she had found a clean shirt somewhere. Just a few minutes earlier, Lisa had recognized her for the first time.
“I know you,” she said wonderingly. “You’re that nice waitress who gave me directions.”
The blonde nodded. “I recognized you a while back,” she said. “How’s your daughter?”
Lisa took a breath. “I don’t know. She’s with her dad up on West Ridge. I hope she’s okay.”
Jennie put a hand on Lisa’s arm. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said. “I’d have heard otherwise.”
Lisa started to say something, to ask her how a cute little waitress with poor driving skills could know anything about anything, but then … then she saw a particular glow around this beautiful young woman, a strange and wonderful invisible aura that told Lisa that the girl was telling the absolute truth. She would know, and she’
d … heard? ... nothing. The girl herself suddenly looked surprised, as if she’d just been whispered a secret, then gave her the first genuine smile she’d seen in hours.
Lisa was sure of it now: Rose was fine.
“Look,” the waitress said, “I really do want to help. What can I do?”
Lisa smiled at her, almost pityingly. “Clean up,” she said. “Sorry, but that was my first job here, so now it’s yours – and it’s what we need most. Get these wet and dirty dressings into a pile, and shove the pile outside – we’ll never get around to cleaning them again.”
“I know how to field dress,” the girl said, trying to be helpful. “I was a candy striper and a Girl Scout and everything.”
What, cleaning is too good for you? Lisa wanted to say, but she stopped herself. She could tell: the girl really could help. “Even better,” she said. “You take over here, I’ll move on. Just do whatever Carrie or Doctor Chamberlain tells you to, as fast as you can.” She finished wrapping the wound and stepped away. She made herself smile. “There. All yours. Training is complete.”
The beautiful girl actually smiled. “By the way,” she said, “My name’s Jennifer. Jennie.”
Lisa nodded. She would have shaken her hand, but she didn’t want to touch her with bloody fingers. “Lisa,” she said. “Thanks for the help.”
She turned to move on –
– and a gray tangle of desiccated bones, tall as a Christmas tree, reared up from the side corridor and lunged for her.
Lisa screamed and spun away, scant inches from the sharp spikes of the thing as it twisted across the room. It looked like a tornado of sharpened sticks, whirling and whickering in the air.
As she fell against the wall that thing moved with her, blocking her, tearing the plaster to shreds. Lisa reversed direction and went to the left, and a whole new set of limbs sprang out of nowhere and jabbed towards her, curving as they grew.
Lisa took a step back and remembered the puncture wounds that Geoff had mentioned before. Thousands of them. All in one body. All in her body.
She dimly saw Jennie, on the far side of the creature, dash to the side and come back holding something long and black. “Get down!” the blonde said, and when Lisa didn’t move fast enough she screamed it: “Get down!”
Lisa threw herself flat on the floor as the giant scumble slashed at her – and the air exploded with a deafening BOOM! She threw her hands over her head to keep the particles off as it happened again – BOOM! Shattered bones, dry as cornstalks, rained all around her.
A boot slammed into a piece right next to her. Another slammed into a jointed limb on the other side. She twisted her head to look up:
It was Jennie, standing over her, stomping the last of the creature to powder.
“I don’t think it broke in,” she said breathlessly, slipping her smoking shotgun into a newly acquired shoulder holster. “I think the fucking thing actually grew back there from the shit we killed earlier. You think that’s possible?”
Lisa pulled herself to her knees and tried to breathe again. “I think anything’s possible these days,” she said. “And I think I love you.”
Jennie grinned like a school girl, and Lisa realized for the first time just how young she really was.
Oh my God, she thought. I was just rescued by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With bigger boobs.
***
As the last of the sunless light began to drain from the leaden sky, Miriam Lazenby slipped into the darkened room where her husband slept.
She stood by his bed for a moment and looked down at him. He was still a handsome man, as he always had been. That mane of white hair, those piercing blue eyes, that straight-as-a-poker posture. He looked like a general leading his troops, like a visionary minister leading his flock. “Like a leader,” she said very softly, and stroked his cheek with two fingertips. “My leader.” Her fingertips came away glistening with tears.
He was crying in his sleep, and that surprised her. In spite of all the odd and infuriating things he had done in the last few years, she never seen him cry.
She pulled a chair close to his bed and shook his shoulder very lightly. “Alexander? Alexander, it’s time to wake up.”
He rolled over to face her, very suddenly, and seized her hand in both his own. His fingers were dry and rough, and he squeezed so hard it was painful. “My town,” he said, still weeping. “My town, my town.” He bent over her hand and sobbed – tight, gulping sobs, like someone who was inexperienced at weeping.
She stroked his long, freshly brushed hair with her free hand and whispered to him, “It’s all right,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”
“Deseret Nine,” he said. “Fifty-Six. Fifty. Fifty-six fifty!”
“Enough,” she said, not unkindly. “Enough, now. Pull yourself together. We have one more meeting to go to.”
“No …”
She got him sitting up. She put his beautiful head against her breast and closed her eyes and tried to remember what it had been like before. Their first summer together, that first election, the last winter they shared in the open country, before the Syndrome took him. She tried to remember it all at once, to fill herself with memory that would make her strong.
“Just once more, love,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. Just this once more.”
He nodded against her, accepting. She dried his tears and helped him dress.
Thunder rumbled, so deep and long it came up from the floor and out of the walls, rolling down from the hidden sky in dark and secret waves.
***
Jennie was stuffing the last of the dirty and bloody rags and clothes into the last of the big, black trash bags when Geoff Chamberlain came to find her.
“Well,” he said, gruff and staring at his hands. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She smiled. “Yeah. Talk about your odd coincidence.”
He shrugged. “I’m beginning to think there aren’t any coincidences in this town. Not anymore, anyway.”
She nodded as she finished filling the bag and straightened up. “Look: I’m sorry I wrecked your clinic. Somebody was chasing me. I had nowhere else to go.”
He had started shaking his head as soon as she’d started the apology. “No worries,” he said. “It actually worked out all right. I mean, we’re all still alive. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah,” she said with a tentative smile. “A very good thing.”
“And I should be the one apologizing to you, I think. I mean, that guy going all crazy at the party.”
She almost blushed. “It’s okay. I’ve handled worse.”
He grinned. “I bet.” Then he realized what he’d said. “I mean, sure, in your line of, um, I mean with your, um … wow, I sound stupid.”
“Actually,” she said, “you sound cute as hell. How about we get the hell out of this town and then apologize to each other all over again?”
This time his smile was full of relief and even a little delight. “That sounds good,” he said. “Can’t wait.”
She gave him a quick nod. “Neither can I.”
Miriam Lazenby called his name from the next room over. A beat later Lisa Corman called for Jennifer.
“We have to go,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “We do.”
They went back to work.
Twenty-four
Tyler Briggs ran out of ammo just a block away from Dos Hermanos Public School. The rain was lashing at him so hard and fast it actually made his exposed skin sting. His legs were aching; his arms felt heavy as iron. He had no idea what time it was or how long he’d been walking; he only knew that he’d passed the corner of Cottonwood and Bel Air half an hour ago and the school should be right in front of him.
Just on the other side of all those monsters.
He had been attacked half a dozen times since he’d left the outskirts of the Emporium. Some of them were almost familiar now – the bedsheets of tissue he knew were called flumes, the knife-edged
thornwheels that spun through the air and – luckily – bounced off his Army-issue body armor with little more than a cut and a bruise. He’d seen another galloper and at least two swarms of the tiny, lethal bone spiders, too, and fought his way through or simply avoided them.
But the pounding wind and water just would not stop. He was trapped in an endless world of noise and flying debris and rain so dense it choked, and it seemed intent, focused, on bringing him down.
He leaned against a metal signpost with a placard that said SCHOOL on it. He wrapped an arm around it for support and hung there, quite nearly exhausted. He had been in Dos Hermanos for little more than a day. He had never been more tired in his life – not as a soldier, a trucker, an enforcer, a bouncer, or a drug runner. Never.
He peered down the street through the billowing clouds of mist and saw the edge of a three-story stucco building close up against a drive-in parking lot. There was a stone-based sign in front of it. He couldn’t read it from this distance, not clearly, but he could guess what it said: DOS HERMANOS PUBLIC SCHOOL.
He was there. Finally: there.
A woman wrapped head to toe in plastic bags staggered out of the storm on the opposite side of the street. She had one hand clutching a child no more than five, wearing a soaking-wet snow suit and two hats lashed to his head with rough twine. Or maybe, Ty thought, it was her head; it was impossible to tell under the multiple layers of waterlogged cloth. The woman’s other hand was wrapped around the handle of a rolling grocery cart that was crammed with a mad collection of personal items: bundles of clothing, a laptop, a bag of canned goods, a FedEx box with a makeshift label that said PERSONAL. She was dragging them both, child and cart, to the corner of Bel Air, wobbling and lunging against the wind, desperate to make it the rest of the way.
Ty pushed himself away from the sign post. He braced himself to cross the torrent of water rushing down the side street, ready to help. The woman paused at the corner just for a moment, right next to a brick planter overflowing with rainwater and mud. She was pulling herself together, getting her bearing, turning towards the school –
