The car shook again and Liv whirled around to see Corey standing on the hood, his eyes wide with concern.
“Help me pull her up.” Liv dropped her mallet into its loop as Corey climbed onto the roof.
“Jen, can you stand up?” Liv asked tentatively.
“I…” She hesitated, gently probing her right leg and wincing. “I think so.” Instinctively, she reached up towards the edge of the windshield but found that shards of glass glittered maliciously around the edges. So she took ahold of the headrest above the backseat and pulled herself up to standing.
Corey held out his hand and Liv offered her one as well. Together, Liv and Corey pulled Jen up, careful not to let her scrape against the jagged edges of the window. The roof buckled as they pulled her weight onto it.
Around them, a crowd had gathered and Liv sighed dismally. The ferals clawed at them, their fingertips brushing against their shoes. They were completely surrounded and more of the monsters were trickling in by the second.
Liv turned her attention back to Jen, careful how close she came to the edge of the car. Dark-red splotches grew at Jen’s knee and ankle. Her pant leg was shredded from ankle to thigh. Through the torn holes in her pants, bits of shredded magazine poked through the denim.
“Can you run?” Liv asked.
“Do I have a choice?” Jen grimaced as she flexed her ankle, then her knee. “I don’t think I can run across the cars, though.” She cast a glance down at the ferals below them. “What are we going to do?”
Corey looked back and forth, looking for all the world like a caged tiger. “We make a path.”
“How are we going to do that?” Liv shot at him.
He stared down at the ferals intently. “We just need to do it.”
Suddenly, he lunged. He struck one of the ferals so quickly Liv almost didn’t see it. The feral crumpled to the ground and Corey quickly struck again, desperately trying to prevent the others from crushing forward.
Liv leapt to his side and began to strike the easily accessible heads of the ferals. One by one, they fell, collapsing into a carpet of bodies between the cars. It wasn’t long before the bodies began to fall on top of each other.
“We have to move.” The bodies continued to pile even as she spoke.
“Let’s go!” roared Corey over the groans of the feral hoard. Corey and Liv jumped down from the car first. Their backs were separated only by a small protected gap for Jen to jump into. They pushed back against the ferals that tried to stream in around either side of the car.
There was a muted thud and Jen yelped.
“Are you alright?” Corey called as Liv glanced over her shoulder at Jen.
“Yes.” Jen’s voice was strained. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“Which way should we go?” Corey called.
After a brief pause, Jen replied, “Towards Corey.”
“On my mark, towards me!”
The ferals surged forward towards Liv, seeming to sense that their prey was attempting to escape.
“Can we go now?” she called anxiously.
“Hold!” The path wasn’t clear yet.
The ferals surged forward and Liv bumped against Jen as she took a step back.
“Can we go now?” Panic crept into her voice.
“Hold!”
Liv gritted her teeth and slammed her knife into the temple of a feral. As the thing dropped, its weight wrenched the knife from her hand.
“We need to go!” Liv reached for the screwdriver loosely taped to her thigh. The horde seized the opening and surged forward.
“Go!” The words had hardly left Corey’s lips before Liv spun and ran. Corey held Jen up with his left arm while hacking away at the last feral with his right.
“Go! Go! Go!” Liv shouted, pushing them forward. Behind them, the horde’s scream was deafening as they gave chase.
The cars finally gave way and they were scrambling through the thin grass that had managed to take root on the coarse slabs of rock.
With a shriek, one of the ferals came charging at them from out of the darkness. Liv stepped forward, ready to strike as her heart raced. At the last second, she stepped out of the stupid creature’s path. She threw her arm out, making it as rigid as possible. Her knees bent as she prepared for the impact.
At the last second, Liv shrank away from the impact, reflexively pulling her arm in a bit. She wanted to curl into a ball, away from the creature.
But it was too late. The creature slammed into her arm and shoulder with full force. The impact rocked through her as though a truck had hit her, and she rocked backwards. Elli let out a strangled cry. Though the child had been mostly silent, the sudden, forceful impact was too much for her to bear silently.
The feral lay flat on its back and Liv lunged forward, driving the screwdriver into its eye.
“Whoa,” said Corey. Liv whirled, adrenaline roaring through her blood. “Where did a suburban mom learn to clothesline someone?” Shock was written plainly across Corey’s face.
“Movies.” Liv’s voice was dazed as she rolled her shoulder. It would be sore in the morning. “Let’s go.”
Liv ducked underneath Jen’s other arm and together they ran. But the horde was still gaining on them. The strongest were beginning to separate and pull ahead of the group, drawing ever closer.
“We have to move more quickly,” Liv said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, ’cause up until now we’ve been holding back,” Corey shot back at her.
“We aren’t ever going to lose them at this rate. We have to do something or they might just chase us till we drop.”
Trees and dense bushes cluttered the edge of the road. They might be able to lose the horde, or most of it, if they could lose themselves in the brush. But they would never be able to carry Jen that way. They had to stick to the road.
The footsteps were growing louder, nearer behind them, and Liv didn’t dare look back to how closely they were being pursued.
“There’s some buildings up ahead.” Even Corey was becoming breathless and Liv was outright gasping as she attempted to draw in the air her body desperately needed.
“A McDonald’s and a couple other small places,” she managed to say.
“When we get closer, I’m going to slow down and break right.” Liv wanted to protest but she couldn’t summon the words as she sucked in air. “I’ll take out a few and draw the rest away. You guys run as fast as you can to your place. I’ll meet you there later tonight.”
“That is suicide,” Jen said, horrified.
“I can do it on my own.” Corey’s eyes were locked on the road ahead of them. “Besides, we don’t have many other options to consider. Unless either of you has some fabulous plan C you haven’t shared.”
Neither Jen nor Liv said anything.
“You have to run. Run like you have never run before. Do you think you can do that, Jen?” Corey asked.
She swallowed and nodded.
“Alright. Get ready.” Liv’s stomach twisted in knots.
This is insane, she thought. There was no way any of them could survive this. The ferals would almost instantly overwhelm Corey by the sheer force of their numbers. Then eventually Liv and Jen would be overwhelmed as they limped along.
“One…” She didn’t want him to go, but she could think of no other alternative that offered any hope.
“Two…” Liv clung tightly to Jen as Corey shifted the weight towards her.
“Three!” He turned abruptly and Liv could hear his footsteps slow down as he turned around and quickly fell behind them.
Tears streamed down Jen’s face—whether from pain or fear, Liv couldn’t tell.
“He’ll be alright,” she muttered under her breath.
Behind them, she could hear the sounds of fighting. Shuffling feet. A wet smack. The resonating smack of a body falling to the ground. Followed by another. And a third.
The sounds faded away as they plowed forward, the large golden arches of the McDo
nald’s sign rearing up ahead of them.
They swung right, avoiding a jammed intersection and steering clear of the overpass, and went around the side of a small strip mall.
Footsteps reached Liv’s ears, fast and heavy. There was only one set that she could hear.
“Corey?” Jen’s voice was hopeful as she pushed away from Liv and sprung around to face them. Liv swapped the screwdriver for her mallet once again and turned.
It wasn’t Corey.
Instead, a man clad only in a pair of dirty boxers and copious amounts of blood dashed at them. The right half of his face, including his ear, had been torn away. What was left of it was contorted into an enraged mask as he bore down upon them.
Liv stepped in front of Jen
“Keep going,” Liv hissed. “I’ll be right behind you, but you have to keep going.” Jen looked as if she wanted to protest, but she stayed silent and began to hobble away.
Liv sneered at the man as she turned her attention to him. She was tired. Tired of running. Tired of fighting. Tired of being scared. Of the three, there was only one she had control over and she would not let her fear control her any longer.
Suddenly, she charged forward, preparing to meet the creature head on. Instead of swinging the mallet, Liv held it in front of her like a lance, the head braced against her chest.
The man didn’t falter from their collision course and neither did Liv. The handle of the mallet slammed into the feral’s ribs, spinning him around and sending him to the ground.
Liv skidded to a stop and spun on him. She swung the mallet in a wide arch over her and brought it down squarely on the back of the feral’s head as he attempted to stand up. The body flopped lifelessly back to the ground, his head now a mushy pile of hair, bone, and brain.
Liv snarled down at the man. Angry. How dare he make her afraid? How dare he take away her world? How dare he separate her from Colin and threaten her daughter’s life? How dare he—
A guttural shriek cut her thoughts short. She looked up, back in the direction they had come from, and she felt all the color drain from her face.
Corey’s ploy hadn’t worked.
The horde, now barely a hundred feet away, was closing the distance between them. There were so many of them. The ferals filled the road and spilled over onto the grass and the parking lots of the small strip mall. They cried for her, screams of hunger and rage.
Liv spun and sprinted towards Jen. She hadn’t gotten far. Liv ducked under Jen’s right arm and looped her arm around Jen’s waist.
“You have to move faster.” The words were harsh and though they were her own, Liv flinched away from them.
“I’m trying!” Jen snapped back.
“They are right behind us. If we”—Liv made sure to emphasize the pronoun, trying to soften the blow from before—“don’t move faster, we’ll be screwed.”
“Maybe we can find someplace to hide,” Jen’s puffed and her brow furrowed with exertion.
Liv knew Jen was hurt. Running on her shredded ankle and knee must have been excruciating. But the ferals didn’t care if they were hurt. It only made them easier to catch. The anger finally faded away as Liv watched Jen. She was hurt and she wasn’t complaining. She might be slow, but she gave it everything her broken body had to keep herself going.
“If we stop at a house, they’ll surround it and we’ll be trapped.” Liv’s mind raced as she tried to come up with a solution. They were running through more houses now. They all looked the same as all the others. It was the subdivision just before the one that she and her parents lived in. Liv didn’t know the name of it. She had never needed to know it.
What was around them? Across the street was a brand-new subdivision with barely a handful of houses, some of which weren’t more than frames. Just on the other side of this name-unknown subdivision was some farmland with a rickety, old red barn surrounded by bales of hay. Across the street from that was another farm with a barn, a shed, and a house. That farm always had a small herd of black cows wandering around.
For a moment, Liv found herself wondering if the cows could be infected. If any or all animals could be infected. She hadn’t seen any infected animals. Not yet at least.
But neither of the farms would work. None of the structures were large enough to keep Liv and Jen from getting immediately surrounded. None of them were sturdy enough to keep the ferals out for long. What else was close by?
“The school!” Liv shouted triumphantly. Just before Fox Ridge, her subdivision, there was an elementary school. It was new, built just two years ago. The building wasn’t gargantuan but maybe it was big enough to block the horde of ferals as they tried to go through the walls rather than around them. Maybe if they were able to get through the hallways they could get out the other side before the ferals knew they had left.
It was a lot of maybes, but they didn’t have any other plan.
The houses gave way to open farmland. They sprinted past the old red barn and into the open field as Liv pushed Jen harder and faster than she thought possible. Liv kept her eyes pointed forward, fixated on the speck of the building she could see through a narrow line of trees.
“We’re almost there. Just a little further,” Liv wheezed breathlessly. Jen didn’t respond. All of her efforts were focused on keeping her mangled leg moving at their grueling pace.
The dull, brown brick building reared up behind the thin line of trees that had been left when the bulldozers had come through to flatten the land for the builders. Behind it stretched short green grass and a small playground.
Liv didn’t allow them to slow down as they reached the trees and the small incline that dipped down towards the school. They stumbled and staggered until finally regaining their footing in the small parking lot meant mostly for teachers.
They covered the span of the parking lot in a few seconds and slammed into a small side door. Liv yanked on it desperately but it was locked. The first outbreak had occurred on Saturday, so it only made sense that the school had been locked up tight for the weekend.
“Can you cover me while I get us in?” Liv looked to Jen uncertainly.
She nodded wearily and held up her baseball bat. “Just hurry.”
Liv raised her mallet and slammed it against the small glass window in the door. The glass didn’t even splinter. She stared at it for a moment then quickly slammed the mallet into it twice more.
“We’ve got company. How are you doing with the door?”
Liv smashed the mallet against the glass again, and finally a sliver of a crack appeared. “Trust me, we’ll be inside the moment it’s open.”
Twice more she hammered against the window and the delicate webbing spread but the glass didn’t shatter. “Fuck!”
“Liv, you have to hurry!”
Liv growled and threw herself mallet-first at the window. Glass tinkled to the ground and bounced off her boots.
“Get the door open!” Jen screamed as she swung her bat at a woman who raced up to meet them. Across the parking lot, ferals were flooding out of the thin line of trees. Hundreds of them. For a moment, Liv’s heart stopped.
Then she reached through the tiny window, careful to keep her arm, even though it was somewhat protected by the magazines, from brushing against the jagged edges of the window frame. With a quick slap, she hit the bar that stretched across the inside of the door and yanked on the exterior handle.
“Inside now!” But Jen couldn’t move. She was struggling with a feral who had come too close and taken hold of her bat. Now the slim piece of metal was the only thing between her and it.
Liv lunged forward, her mallet falling on the creature’s shoulder and obliterating the bone. The feral fell to the ground with the impact, but they didn’t have time to finish it off.
“Let’s go!” She grabbed Jen’s wrist and spun back to the door. Once again, Liv reached through the shattered window and slapped the long bar across the inside of the door to pop it open. She yanked hard on the door and threw it open.
Footsteps pounded against the ground behind them, and they scampered through the door. Liv spun and pulled on the bar to close the door faster.
Dirty fingers crusted with blood reached through the window and grabbed ahold of the empty frame. The feral pulled against the door, heedless of the glass that bit into its skin.
“Jen! Help!” Jen took hold of the bar and pulled. More fingers appeared along the edge of the window and along the slim crack that separated the door from its frame.
Liv and Jen strained against the growing number of hands. More fists beat against the door as the ferals crushed forward. They were strong.
They weren’t going to be able to hold the door closed. Slowly, the slim line of light between the door and the frame was widening. The ferals were going to come flooding in.
“We’re going to have to run. Maybe we can lose them in the halls,” Liv said through clenched teeth.
Jen didn’t respond. Liv looked at her, expecting to find her deep in concentration, trying to hold the door closed. Instead, Jen’s eyes were locked on the widening gap in the door.
“Jen, we have to go.” She looked back at the girl and saw tears sliding down her cheeks. Liv looked back at the gap.
Then she saw it and her breath caught in her throat.
Corey’s face was pressed against the narrow opening in the door. His teeth were bared as he snarled at them. Flecks of blood were dark against his face, and his shirt was darker than Liv remembered.
“Oh god,” Liv whispered. She couldn’t look away from him. They hadn’t known each other long, though it had seemed longer than the few short days it had actually been. But he was her friend. To see him snarling back at them as he attempted to rip open the door and savagely tear them apart was almost more than she could bear.
Liv forcibly ripped her gaze away from Corey and turned towards Jen. “We have to get going,” she said firmly. “He would never want anything to happen to you. We have to go or we will die here.” She nudged the girl’s shoulder with her own. “We have to fight, Jen. It’s fight or die. I need you fighting with me because I don’t want to die here. I don’t want Elli to die here.” She knew the last bit was a low blow, but if it was what Jen needed to get herself moving, then so be it.
Devour: Death & Decay Book 1 Page 20
