by D. J. Molles
“It’s not gonna fit, Clyde.”
“No, I can get it in there.”
“It’s just stuff!”
Clyde let out a frustrated noise and gave up trying to squeeze the wedding album into his pack. He dropped it back into the suitcase. “There’s more important stuff in the suitcase than there is in your duffel. We can just get rid of your duffel.”
“Sir!”
Clyde glanced up, found a soldier standing there shaking his head.
“You can’t take that suitcase.”
“No, we were going to drop her duffel and keep the suitcase.”
“You still can’t take that suitcase.”
“But the other guy said one bag per person.”
The soldier raised his voice. “That suitcase is too big.”
Clyde felt the crowd pushing him out of the way as they moved toward the bus, skipping him in line. But he didn’t think about it at that moment. Just kept thinking about the suitcase full of things he didn’t want to lose. He stared at the soldier in front of him. Clyde could feel his frustration reaching a boiling point. “They said one bag per person! My bag and this suitcase for the two of us! I can’t just throw away everything that’s in here!”
Haley grabbed his arm. “Just leave it, Clyde!”
The soldier just kept shaking his head. “You can’t take the fucking suitcase.”
Clyde stood there, Haley trying to drag him away by his arm. “This is bullshit!” he proclaimed and felt a wash of adrenaline at confronting the soldier. Maybe he should have just cooperated and stayed in line like the soldier with the megaphone had told them…
Someone screamed.
But it sounded wrong. Muffled. Warped. Throaty. Like an animal, but he could tell somehow from the pitch and timbre that it was a person. A dreadful noise. A screech like the sound a madman makes when he has fallen into some excited delirium. And it was not inside the parking lot, but coming from somewhere in the woods.
The soldier no longer seemed concerned with Clyde’s suitcase.
“What the hell was that?” Clyde said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.
The soldier had unslung his rifle. “Just get the fuck back, okay?” Then it seemed like Clyde no longer existed, and the soldier began scanning the crowd. “Sarge! Hey, Sarge! You hear that shit?”
“Clyde, come on!” Haley pulled him toward the bus.
There were three people ahead of them.
Clyde hesitated, unsure what to do.
Grab the suitcase and make a run for it, or comply with the soldier and go without it?
With two people in front of them and Clyde still vacillating, the doors to the bus slammed shut. A soldier smacked the side of the bus, yelling, “Get ’em the fuck out of here!” Then the bus growled and rolled down the narrow path to Highway 55, and Clyde realized there was not another bus there to take its place.
TWO
Clyde stood, dumbfounded. The bus tilted awkwardly as it made the turn onto Highway 55. Clyde and Haley and the other two people ahead of them just stood there, still holding their bags, watching it go.
That was my bus, Clyde thought dumbly.
Another screech, this one coming from a different direction.
“Hey!” Haley yelled at a passing soldier. “Is there gonna be another bus?”
The soldier didn’t even look at her. He had his rifle in his hand and he started jogging to the north side of the high school. The one with the megaphone marched past and Haley tried to reach out and grab him, but he dodged her arm, looked pissed, then glanced over their heads and started shouting orders to someone Clyde couldn’t see.
“Get these people inside the gymnasium! Lock the doors and gimme a full three-sixty around it!” Then he was running to the north side of the high school along with all the other soldiers. A Humvee went past, a soldier in the turret, racking back the big heavy bolt on the machine gun.
The crowd started moving. Like a herd. Like frightened cattle. Clyde wasn’t even sure if they were moving toward the gymnasium. There were soldiers pointing in different directions, and the crowd seemed to be moving in none of them.
He reached out and took Haley’s hand. Her eyes were wide with fear, and he knew his were the same. “Stay with me,” he said, and he clutched her flesh like any separation would kill them both. “Stay with me.”
“We should go!” she said. “We should run!”
The screeching noise again, but this time from several directions. One after the other.
Like wolves calling to each other on the hunt.
He craned his neck and tried to see over the heads and faces of the panicked crowd around him as they surged clumsily on. He could just make out the gray and tan uniforms of the soldiers and their black rifles. When he’d first seen them at the high school, it was so surprising that it seemed like there were dozens of them. Now, looking at them, he realized it was only a small squad. Maybe ten men.
Not enough, he thought. It’s not enough.
He couldn’t keep dragging the suitcase along with him. He let it go. Behind him, someone tripped and fell over it. He didn’t stop, and neither did anyone else. The megaphone was blaring now, squelching on its own sounds, and Clyde could hear the soldier’s voice cracking: “Stay back, or you will be fired on!”
And then, gunfire.
Clyde squeezed Haley’s hand harder. “Run! Run!”
The school gymnasium was forgotten, if anyone had even intended to go to it in the first place. The gunfire sent a panic through the crowd. Everyone began running for the road, breaking for the gridlock of cars that surrounded the school. Like maybe they thought they might all hop into their cars and drive away.
Haley dropped the duffel, and he watched it tumble onto the ground, little odds and ends flying out of the side pockets—toiletries and a paperback book. It suddenly seemed ridiculous to him, watching the items that he’d packed. Like they were about to hop on a fucking flight. Like this was an overnight business trip.
He watched his toothbrush skitter across the pavement beside them, like it was trying to keep up. He watched it, and he wondered, and he knew, all at once, that he had been horribly, dreadfully wrong. He had been incapable of grasping the situation. He had not been able to think clearly and now Haley would see it. She would see that he was just lost and scared. That he was out of his depth.
The crowd hit the cars and dissipated like a wave smashing on rocks. They weaved in and out of the cars. None of them was thinking, and Clyde was no exception. He was just running, mind lost in a panicked loop: You weren’t ready. Don’t make Haley pay for it.
They reached their car—maybe that had been his destination all along. They were jammed in on all sides by vehicles, but he fumbled the keys out of his pocket anyway, Haley standing next to him, breath going in and out of her in trembling gasps. Her eyes were stretched and scared and looking north past the school.
His hands were shaking so badly, he could hardly find the car key on his ring.
“Clyde…”
“What?”
She tugged at him, and when he looked up, she was staring at the school still, and he followed her gaze. From their vantage point, he could not see the north side of the school, but he could still hear the gunfire. It was less of a fusillade now and more simply sporadic shooting. And among the pops and cracks of gunfire, they could hear the screeching and the barking of them, too numerous to distinguish the numbers.
And men screaming in fear and pain.
Haley slapped his shoulder repeatedly. “Come on, baby! Come on! Unlock the car!”
“I’m trying…I’m trying…” He went through the keys twice, like he was blind. He knew he’d passed up the car keys, but he couldn’t seem to see them or register when his fingers touched them. He panicked, thinking maybe they had fallen off.
There was the roar of an engine.
He looked up, fingers frozen. A Humvee hauled down the narrow path they’d left open for the buses. There was a s
oldier in the turret, but he was struggling to get the gun turned around. The big tan vehicle swerved and sideswiped a parked car. The soldier in the turret tumbled out, but the Humvee just kept on going. Clyde couldn’t see the soldier amid all the jammed-in vehicles, but he could see the shapes of three people, dressed in civilian clothing. They sprinted after the fleeing Humvee, and the way they ran did not seem normal.
Oh my God oh my God…it’s happening…
The soldier who had fallen out hobbled unsteadily to his feet. He turned and yelled at the three people who were running at him, but if they even heard him or registered what he was saying, they gave no sign. The first one collided with him—a small, balding man in a tan suit—and the other two followed them to the ground as the mass of struggling limbs fell out of view.
Clyde gulped air. He looked down and found the cars keys clutched between his fingers, and he shoved them into the lock and twisted violently. The little knobs just inside the car window popped up and he ripped the door open.
A wave of heat boiled out of the car, causing him to squint and his rapid breathing to seize in his chest. He took Haley and shoved her into the backseat, knowing damn well they were not going to be able to drive out of there, seeming to realize for the first time how monumentally stupid it had been to run for the car. As Haley clambered in, he looked out over the tops of the cars again and could see more figures sprinting through the tightly packed vehicles. They moved with shocking agility, climbing over the tops of them, making strange hooting and barking sounds.
“Clyde!” Haley screamed. “Get the fuck in here!”
He dove in, slamming the door behind him as he did, and slapping the locks down.
Between the front seats and out the windshield, Clyde could see glimpses of them drawing rapidly closer. He sprawled himself over Haley and forced her to lie down. “Put your head down!” he said, and lay flat alongside her, their faces pressed into the seat cushions. “Don’t look up,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Don’t say anything.”
Haley’s voice shook. “Did you lock the doors?”
“Yes! Be quiet!”
The air stifled them like a sauna, hot and heavy. The stink of their sweat. The smell of their huffing, fearful breaths mixing in the air, humidifying it. Clyde dared not close his eyes, though he wanted to shut out the world. He could feel the sweat trickling across his forehead, didn’t dare move to wipe it away. It meandered along his eyebrows, dripped into his eyes. He could feel his hands and arms growing slick with it. The backpack was still heavy on his shoulders.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.
“Baby, what’s going on?” Haley whispered.
“Shh.”
A woman ran up to the side of their car and began pounding on the window. Clyde felt fear seize his heart in his chest, but then the woman spoke, yelled at them, horrifyingly loud: “Please! Open the door! Let me in! Let me in, you motherfucker!”
She stood at the door where Clyde’s feet were pressed, and he looked down along the line of his own body and he didn’t turn his head, but his eyes latched onto hers and he moved his mouth without sound: Go away!
“You sonofabitch! Open the fucking door!”
He mumbled what was perhaps a prayer: “Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.”
“Help…!”
Something hit her. Tackled her to the ground. Clyde flinched and squeezed his eyes shut. Knew that this was a nightmare. Knew that none of this was possible, but for some goddamned reason he couldn’t wake up. He kept closing his eyes and opening them, hoping to wake up in his own bed, bathed in sweat, flooded with relief. But every time he opened his eyes it was just the hot, stuffy interior of the Volvo.
Another figure dove onto the ground, just behind the first, and Clyde could feel their car rocking as a struggle occurred against the side of it. The noises of the woman were not screams or shouts anymore but hoarse, breathless sounds of terror. And they were drowned out by something else. By growling. By the muffled pop of breaking bones. By the wet rending of flesh.
And whatever was outside of that door, only inches from Clyde, it spoke strangled, malformed words. And Clyde could hear what it was saying, even as the desperate woman’s thrashing died away. “Where is it?” it shouted, as though it were searching through the woman for something. “Where is it? Where is it?”
Below him, smashed into the backseat, Haley’s entire body shook as she sobbed quietly.
Clyde didn’t know what to do. His mind was white-hot with panic, and at the same time, almost lost and spaced-out in the otherworldliness of it all. Things that could not possibly be happening were happening to him right now, and it was a horrific sensation that felt like a black hole in his gut. That thin door was all that separated him from being ripped apart, just like he’d seen in blurry images on the news. And he knew it was happening here. It was happening here like it had happened everywhere else, even though he wasn’t ready.
It can’t happen here, he thought.
But it was.
It was happening whether he was able to wrap his brain around it or not.
The struggle finally died, but the mad creatures outside the door did not move on. It seemed they were caught in a frenzy. And Clyde watched, peeking over his shoulder and feeling his bladder spasming as though he might wet himself. He could see their arms, their hands like gnarled claws, rising and falling and ripping at that poor, stupid woman on the ground, splashing blood and gristle onto the windows so that he looked away and felt faint.
Haley was nearly in hysterics. Her eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them, unblinking. Her chest was hitching rapidly, almost wheezing like she couldn’t catch her breath. It seemed incredibly loud to Clyde and he reached up and put a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the noise. It was like he didn’t exist to her in that moment. She just kept staring at the gore on the window, and his hand over her mouth did not seem to register with her.
There was no end to it. The sounds continued, the splashing blood continued. There was no relief from it, and if it lasted a full minute, it may as well have been eternity. Lying there, half on top of his wife, his hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet while he waited for those mad things to go away, please, dear God, go away!
He could hear other people screaming now. The sounds of it were far away, and he seized on that desperately. Maybe they were moving farther away. Maybe he wouldn’t be stuck in this car forever. Maybe the madmen outside of his car would go away and he and Haley would be able to get out of there.
For the first time, he thought more than one step ahead. They would not be able to take the car. If they got out of the car, they would be exposed. They would have to go someplace. But where? Should he try to make a run for the school gym, where the soldiers had told them to go? He couldn’t think of a reason why that was a good idea, and the concept of going back toward the school just seemed ridiculous.
Then he thought about their home, maybe six or seven miles north of where they were. They could make it on foot. They could get there before it got dark, no problem. But what was there? The place that he had called home now seemed like some forgotten rock floating out in space. Behind enemy lines. He didn’t picture it now with its manicured lawn and well-pruned natural areas, or the colorful little windmills that Haley liked to put out near the azalea bushes. He pictured it surrounded by mobs of mad men. Hostile and comfortless.
But they could not stay in the car. They would bake to death if they stayed inside.
Haley worked her mouth out from under Clyde’s hand. “I think they’re gone,” she whispered.
Clyde just lay there for another moment, listening. Still in the background, he could hear the sounds of terror that made his stomach weak and sick. But outside the car, there was silence. The heat baked them, the sun coming in the windows. Every bit of him was sheened in oily sweat but somehow he was still shivering, his body covered in gooseflesh. He leaned up, craned his he
ad toward the window.
Haley covered her eyes with her hands. “I don’t want to see it, Clyde.”
The higher he pushed himself up off the seat, the more he could see of the scene outside the window. The narrow space between the cars was bathed and spackled in it, and his pulse became rapid and weak and he could feel his stomach convulsing, his mouth watering along the sides, the saliva pooling around his tongue. But he couldn’t stop looking at it.
It doesn’t look real, he thought.
And then he vomited onto the floorboard of the car.
Haley didn’t seem to react to this. She just turned away from him and wept.
When he had recovered enough of himself to look around and make sure the coast was clear, he wiped his mouth and leaned over his wife’s body, grabbing the door handle on the passenger side, farthest away from the mess of the woman who should have just kept on running. He didn’t open the door just yet.
I killed her, Clyde told himself. I killed her by not letting her in.
Haley wouldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t pull her hands away from her face. He reached up and pulled them away for her, forced her face to look at him so that they were inches away. He could see her nose curl at the smell of the vomit on his breath.
“I’m gonna open this door,” he said, still speaking quietly. “And then we’re going to run. We’re going to run for that patch of woods, right there. And when we get there we are going to lie down and we are going to stay quiet.”
Haley looked mystified. “How long?”
“Until they’re gone.”
“What if they come back?”
Clyde had no idea. “We’ll figure it out. But we can’t stay in here.”
