by Sarra Cannon
Crash nodded and glanced around the room. They had only been here as a group for a few days and they were already facing the possibility of having to get the hell out of dodge. Where would they go?
Without his computers, he couldn’t even come up with a good escape plan.
“I’ll be in the back room then, if you need me,” he said.
As he made his way down the hall to his room, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his entire plan of keeping everyone safe and together in his apartment was about to go to hell.
Sleeping in the complete and utter darkness was harder than Karmen would have thought. There were no sounds at all. No fans running. No hum of electronics in the background. The air was warm and thick without air conditioning and every time she took a breath, she felt her lungs clog with the humidity of it.
The group had spent most of their day playing cards and hanging out by the light of the lantern in the living room. Crash had eventually left his room and joined them for a few games, but he still wasn’t feeling up to turning the power back on. Even without the electricity, there was comfort in being awake and around the others, but there was a vulnerability now that the light was off and everyone was asleep.
She’d never really given much thought to the noises of her old house, but now, in the silent darkness of a foreign place, she missed every single sound. She missed the bathroom fan. Her brother’s music thumping through the wall even though he was supposed to be asleep hours ago.
She missed the sound of Zoe’s violin next door well after the small child should have gone to bed.
She even missed the sound of her mother’s snoring.
What she didn’t miss was the sound of her father’s footsteps in the space just outside her door. Or the way the knob used to creak when he turned it, trying to be quiet so no one else in the house would know.
How many nights of her childhood had Karmen spent huddled up in bed, praying not to hear that sound?
She closed her eyes and listened to the thundering of her heart.
He’s never coming back. He’s dead now.
He was gone. Replaced instead by another threat. An unpredictable one. At least with her father, she knew he wasn’t going to kill her. She knew that no matter what, she could live through it and that someday, she would escape and have her own life.
In this new world, she didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know if she’d be alive tomorrow, much less ten minutes from now. Now, instead of the turning of the doorknob, she found herself listening for the shuffling of feet or the groan of the undead.
It was quiet enough here in the dark that she could almost convince herself she could hear them. They were coming for her now, their footsteps shuffling across the floor just outside the door to the bedroom.
Karmen gripped the edge of her sleeping bag and drew it up tight under her chin. She squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself to breathe.
It’s just your imagination, dummy.
But there it was again.
Not a shuffling of feet exactly, but something else. Her eyes flew open and she stopped breathing completely.
What the hell was that?
She wanted to sit up, but she was paralyzed with fear. There was definitely something outside the door. She could hear it moving around, sliding against the walls.
She was afraid if she forced herself to breathe, it would come out as a scream. They would all wake up and call her crazy. Everyone else was either asleep in the two bedrooms or in the living room. They had all retired early tonight.
Parrish and Noah had gone up to check the roof several times throughout the day and the news was not good. They said the rotters were most definitely starting to come their way. The fire had spread across a good portion of the city, the flames and smoke rising into the air for miles. They needed their rest tonight so they could figure out where the heck they were going to go tomorrow or the day after.
If she woke everyone up for some trick of her imagination, they would never let her hear the end of it.
She convinced her shoulders to relax and opened her throat to let in a tiny whisper of air. Everything would be okay. There was nothing out there.
The door to the bedroom squeaked open and she turned her head and sat up.
“Parrish?” she whispered.
No answer. Karmen swallowed thick air and panic.
“Crash? Is that you?”
Again, nothing. But the door was open. She could feel it.
And then she heard them.
Tiny feet skittering across the floor. The chattering of teeth and an awful, high-pitched squeaking that was definitely not human.
She tried to yell, but nothing came out at first. Not until she felt the first of the rats climb onto her sleeping bag, clawing their way up toward her.
That’s when she finally found her voice and screamed.
The match burned down to her fingertips before she was able to wrap her mind around what her eyes were seeing.
She’d heard Karmen scream and had tried to find her flashlight, but all her fingers landed on was a book of matches she’d used earlier to light a candle.
The apartment was flooded with rats. Hundreds of them. The main door was closed, but they seemed to be coming from somewhere in the kitchen.
What the hell was going on?
But there was no time for questions. The wave of rodents was almost to her, and she couldn’t take the risk that they were carrying the virus. Hell, even uninfected rats in a pack of hundreds could eat the flesh off a person in minutes.
Parrish dropped the match to the ground and reached for the sword propped against the wall beside her. The room plunged into darkness, and she only had her ears to guide her.
She slashed and heard the screech of rats and the thud of their small bodies as they were lifted by her sword and dropped again to the floor.
“Noah,” she screamed. “Help.”
She had no idea what part of the apartment he was in. The back room, she thought probably. He’d said goodnight more than half an hour ago. She hoped he wasn’t asleep.
She hoped the rats weren’t in his room.
How had they even gotten in here?
Parrish slashed again, turning her body around in a circle to get more leverage on her blade.
Her sword began to glow with an icy blue frost. Her eyes drank in the light, grateful she could at least see the critters rushing toward her. But God, there were so many of them.
She frantically looked toward Crash. He was asleep on the couch and even though she shouted his name, he wasn’t waking up. She had to do whatever she could to protect him.
Karmen screamed again, and Parrish’s stomach tightened into knots.
Where the hell were Noah and the girl? If the others didn’t start helping her fight these things, she had no idea what they were going to do. There were too many of them.
Parrish kicked and spun, slicing rats to pieces. Their blood sputtered up into her face and across her clothes. Her stomach lurched at the gore of it, but she had no choice.
This new world was about survival no matter what.
And keeping the ones you loved alive.
Parrish forced her stomach to settle. She tightened her fist around the hilt of her sword and kept swinging through the darkness.
Finally, a light shone down the hall, and Noah called out to her.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Where did these things come from?”
He pushed through the mass of rodents, beating them down with his bat.
“I don’t know, but I think they’re infected,” she said. She sliced through another group of them, but they just kept coming. “Where are the others?”
Crash stirred, and then, wide-eyed, jumped onto the cushions of the couch. He closed his eyes and power kicked on for a moment before clicking off again. He cursed and shook his head.
“Dear God,” Parrish whispered. The lights had only been on for a second, but it had been enough to see what was re
ally inside the apartment with them.
It had to be thousands. Thousands of rats.
“What are we going to do?” she shouted. “We can’t possibly kill them all.”
She and Noah made their way to the couch and climbed on top with Crash. Even with all three of them fighting, they were barely keeping their little space on the couch clear of the rodents.
From the hallway, an eerie red glow lit up the darkness. Parrish strained her neck to get a closer look, but she couldn’t tell what was making that light.
Please, do not be some kind of super-rat like those zombies the other night.
She shuddered. That was the stuff nightmares were made of, and she’d had her share of nightmares lately.
As the red glow spread across the room, though, she noticed the rats fall into some kind of daze. They stopped moving, their eyes locked on the red light.
The girl stepped forward, walking slowly and deliberately through the mess of rats. Her palms were covered in red flames, and she held them in front of her as she walked.
Parrish held her sword still, ready to attack if the rats started coming toward her again.
They were entranced by the fire, somehow, their beady little eyes glued to it.
“What in the—” Crash started, but Parrish grabbed his arm and shook her head.
She had feeling the girl was concentrating very hard, and the last thing they needed was for her to drop her focus right now.
The girl made her way to the center of the group of rats, and then slowly lowered to a crouch. Parrish couldn’t believe she was getting so close to them. What was she planning to do?
None of the rats moved. They were mesmerized, completely under her control as she turned her hand palm-up and brought it toward her chin. She blew a puff of breath across the top of the fire and the flames rolled forward in a wave.
The rats screamed as the fire enveloped them, their furry bodies bursting with a bright red light that spread through the entire group of them in an instant. Parrish raised her hand to her eyes, squinting against the light.
When she looked again, every single rat in the place was dead. Their bodies were burned and still, but the fire had not caught anywhere else.
“How did you do that?” Parrish asked, letting her sword drop to her side. She’d never seen anything like it.
“I don’t know,” the girl said, shaking her head. Her hands trembled at her sides. “I didn’t know I could do that.”
Parrish collapsed onto the couch, wincing at the stench of the burned bodies. They were safe and they were alive, but damn, they were definitely going to need a new place to stay.
A rat skittered across the floor in front of him. Its eyes were milky and clouded and there were sores along its back.
The boy stood up, grabbing the map he’d laid out to study.
He ran to his bedroom and shut the door. He probably should have killed it. It was obviously infected, but for now, he just wanted to shut it out.
The second he took his hand from the door, a vision seized him so strongly that it brought him to his knees on the carpet.
He leaned forward, his eyes closing as an image forced its way into his mind.
A girl with a blue sword. She was fighting rats, too. Hundreds of them. Her eyes glowed almost purple in the light of her sword, and he recognized her in that moment.
He’d never seen her before in his life, but he knew her. He knew those eyes. That sword.
She was his leader. The girl with the infinity sign as her symbol. And she was in trouble.
He struggled to hold on to the vision, but as quickly as it had taken hold, it released him. The boy collapsed onto the floor, his chest rising and falling with each labored breath.
Pain shot through his temples and when he tried to open his eyes, his vision blurred. He closed them again, wincing against the pain.
I’m coming for you, I promise.
He wasn’t sure how he’d be able to help her when she was so obviously skilled with a sword, but when he connected to her power here in the city, he got the strong sense that she was alone and afraid. If only he could reach her, maybe he could help her remember who she really was.
Maybe they could help each other.
But there was something odd about his connection to her. She was at once both close and far away, almost as if he were thinking of two different people. How could she be here in the city, but still far away?
He didn’t have an explanation. Maybe when he reached her, there would be answers to all his questions.
When the pain in his head had gone away, he spread the map of the city on the carpet and went back to his task of planning. He must have left his red pen in the other room, which was a shame, because now he was too scared to go back out there and face that rat.
If it was infected, maybe that meant the Dark One could see him through its eyes. Was that possible? Had she gained so much power she could control humans and animals alike, seeing through their eyes whenever and wherever she wanted?
The boy knew it would be a mistake to underestimate the Dark One’s powers. She was an ancient kind of evil, cunning and meticulous. And she’d had a very long time to think through her plan, trapped down there in her prison of ice.
She was not free, but she had eyes everywhere now.
The boy stood and grabbed one of his mother’s shirts from the closet. He forced it under the door, sealing all the cracks so that no light shone through.
Just in case, he thought, and went back to his planning.
The gate that had stood between them and the outside world lifted, bringing with it the first rays of sunshine Crash had seen in days.
He squinted, looking out at the block he’d lived on for the past four years.
The street outside the apartment was still littered with the corpses of the dead they’d killed on their way inside. They were starting to stink, not that anything could compare to the way the inside of his apartment smelled right now.
He’d never been more disgusted in his life. There was no way they could stay in that hell-hole now. After only a few days together in safety, they were being forced to leave, but he figured it was just as well. Between the fire and the hordes of zombies headed their way, it was better to get out as early as possible and try to find a new place to hide out until they had a better plan.
Parrish and Noah loaded more of the supplies into the back, but space was limited. Crash had hoped they’d be able to carry more, but with five people and all their gear, they were going to have to get creative about loading the rest of the supplies.
He should have rigged a way to strap them to the top of the vehicle. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
There was no telling what things would be like outside the city. From the videos he’d watched, most places had gotten looted pretty hard, everyone scrambling to get water and food before the entire world went to hell. Supplies would be limited out there, so they were lucky to have the food, water, and ammunition he’d managed to get his hands on before the virus made an appearance.
Still, it wouldn’t last forever. They’d have to be careful not to use it up too fast. Or have it stolen by some kind of raiding party on the road. People out there would be desperate and scared, and that could mean some pretty ugly encounters with survivors.
Not to mention the undead.
Luckily, the streets here in the Trinidad section of D.C. were quiet this morning. The fire from the explosion the other night had forced hordes of rotters out of their hiding places, so he’d been afraid they were going to see a lot of them today, but so far, so good. If they got going in the next half hour, they might be able to get out of town without too much trouble.
“That’s the last of it,” Noah said, coming to stand behind him at the gate. He jogged into the street and picked up the shotgun he’d dropped there a few days earlier. “It doesn’t look too bad out here, does it?”
“I’ve seen a few stragglers on the cross streets,” Crash said, “but it
’s surprisingly quiet.”
“What about the roads out of town?” Parrish asked. “On the way into the city, there were some ugly pileups and traffic jams that made it impossible to stick with my mom’s car. We had to abandon it a lot sooner that I’d hoped.”
“I’ve got a few possible routes mapped out,” Crash said. “I’m bringing my best two laptops and my GPS, too, so that should help us if we get into any trouble with finding a way out. We can’t afford to lose the Humvee and get stranded on foot.”
“Do you need anything else from inside?” Noah asked. “I think we’re all about ready to go.”
“I’ll do a final check and get the girls,” he said. “You guys go ahead and get inside. We’ll meet you out here in a few minutes.”
Crash walked down the stairs to his apartment for the last time, his stomach tense and his heart heavy. This had been his home since shortly after his mom died and left him on his own. He’d created a life for himself here, and an identity separate from anyone and anything else he’d ever known. It wasn’t going to be easy to leave it all behind.
“You ladies about ready?” he asked when he walked into the apartment. The stench of dead rats made the idea of leaving a lot more enticing. Holy crap, it smelled in there. He was surprised Karmen had spent more than five minutes there after what had happened.
“Are there a lot of rotters on the streets?” Karmen asked.
She seemed different this morning. Vulnerable and maybe even, dare he think it, nice.
“Only a few here and there,” he said. “Grab your bag and go straight to the Humvee. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
“Where are we going to go?” she asked. “Do you think there’s any hope of a government safe zone still active out there?”
Crash shook his head. “It’s unlikely, I’m sorry to say. I think we’re going to be on our own.”
Karmen’s eyes filled with tears, but she looked away quickly. Probably trying to hide it from him. Heaven forbid the ice queen actually had some soft spots.
He touched her arm and when she looked up at him, he thought she looked fragile and terrified. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay. We’re together now, and I promise, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
