Outbreak: A Survival Thriller

by Richard Denoncourt

  We make our move, quietly opening the front door, which is unlocked. Melanie and I look at each other. We’re thinking the same thing. If the door isn’t locked or boarded up, then maybe no one is in here after all. Nevertheless, we make our way inside with caution.

  The interior is dark except where the afternoon light spills in through the broken windows. I see scattered magazine pages, receipts, and other trash in the bright patches. I shine my flashlight on the walls. The bikes are all gone—no surprise there. I pass the beam all over the floor, checking for footprints, but the dust looked undisturbed.

  “They should be around here,” I say. “Let’s head to the back. I looked in through those windows on my way by here yesterday. I think I saw chains.”

  I press the business end of the flashlight to my belly, in case the light gives away our position to someone lurking in the shadows with a gun. We stick to the walls to make ourselves harder to see. Part of me thinks we’re overdoing it a bit. The dust on the floor shows no sign at all that someone has been here recently.

  As we creep along the walls to the back, I imagine shiny new bikes propped up in rows all over the place, wheels hanging on the walls, and parents strolling with their children, thinking of summer bike rides they’ll take together. It had been such an innocent place once. A safe place. Tommy Poretti, the owner, had been one of the happiest people I’d ever known. I remember his booming voice, his thick Boston accent, and his love of bicycles, despite his stocky Italian frame.

  Kip Garrity, his voice belted out in my memory of him. Been watching them Sox? Hey, tell the old Marine I said hi.

  He and my father were old friends. Tommy called my dad a Marine to piss him off. My father returned the gesture by telling Tommy to start stocking motorcycles like a real man.

  Moisture has risen in my eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Melanie says.

  I turn, blinking it away, glad it’s not tears. What kind of a wimp cries about two old men trading insults in a bike shop?

  “It’s nothing.” I shake my head.

  “You used to come here a lot.”

  Now I nod, though I do so grudgingly to discourage her from going deeper. I have to remind myself that Melanie has lost just as much as I have. No reason for me to call so much attention to my own sadness.

  She sees that I’m uncomfortable and makes her way toward the back area, where the repair guys had once been stationed. Telling myself to get a grip, I follow her.

  We search for a few moments until Melanie speaks in an excited whisper that is still dangerously loud.

  “There they are!”

  She covers her mouth, looking alarmed at her own carelessness, then points happily at the chains.

  “That’s them,” I say.

  She lifts a pair of chains, blows dust off of them, and inspects them as if they were diamond necklaces.

  “Perfect,” she says before swinging off her backpack to stuff them inside. “Why do you think the looters left them? Ooh, I wonder if there’s a can of oil around here.” She gets up and starts looking around. “I wish there was a bike here for you, Kip. But you seem like more of a motorcycle guy. Of course, that would be way too loud.”

  I’m about to agree with her but stop at the sound of a ragged moan. It’s coming from outside—so close that I’m surprised there isn’t a rotting head in the window.

  Melanie and I drop to our bellies and crawl away from the patches of light on the floor that threaten to expose us. From our hiding spot around a corner, I slip the clamshell mirror out of my belt, pry it open with my thumb, and lift it to get a view of the windows. The moans haven’t stopped. Now I hear a whole chorus of them.

  Through the empty square, I see only the gray-white of sky. Rising into a standing position gives me a better vantage point, and I gradually see rooftops and a streetlamp, walls and busted windows, followed by human heads and shoulders. A throng of infected, marching up Route 1. The closest ones are only a dozen yards away.

  I stuff the mirror into my pocket and motion for Melanie to follow me in the other direction. We’re on our way to the back exit when a noise makes us freeze—the scrape scrape of feet dragging themselves over dead leaves. It’s coming from the window by the back door, not the front.

  “We’re surrounded,” I whisper.

  Right now, the infected seem to be parting around Tommy’s Bike Shack like river water around a jutting stone. We need to be careful. A single noise loud enough to attract one or two could lead to an entire horde.

  I look for cover, but there is literally nothing inside the former store to hide us from the windows.

  For once, I am at a complete loss. I’m just plain scared. I hate the feeling of being surrounded. Once, when I was thirteen, a group of kids surrounded me in enemy territory during a game of Capture the Flag. Instead of running or giving up, I started throwing punches.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Melanie says.

  The panic recedes. I look at her face in the shadows, and I see a smile. Goddamn, she’s tough.

  “What is it?”

  I’m nearly floored by her next words.

  “Pass me those firecrackers,” she says.

  It doesn’t take us long to get set up.

  “I’ll count to three,” I tell Melanie, who nods behind the raised compact bow. “Then I’ll light it.”

  Imagine her crouching there and facing the window. One leg is folded beneath her weight, the other extended for balance, her right elbow pulled back to keep the bowstring tight. She looks like an Amazon girl-warrior in modern-day clothing.

  One thing about this picture is strikingly odd, and that is the strip of mottled, red-and-white firecrackers hanging from the arrow.

  Now, imagine me holding a matchbook, about to strike the flame that will ignite the fuse uniting all of these mini-explosions.

  Before this happens, I’ll explain what is at risk. The shot needs to be perfect. High enough so the window’s ledge doesn’t tear off the fireworks, but not so high that the arrow hits the top part of the frame and sticks there. I’m not worried about the sides—it’s a broad window, and I know Melanie is good at this.

  However, one shot is all she gets. If she messes it up, the fireworks will remain inside the building. They’ll go off, and every infected in the entire man-made world will close around Tommy’s Bike Shack to rip open our bellies and devour our internal organs while we die slowly from blood loss.

  “One,” I say, staring at Melanie’s unblinking green eyes.

  God, she’s beautiful. Even with the dirt on her face. For some reason, I see this as a good moment to tell her that.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I tell her.

  A corner of her mouth rises—a desperate smile that floods me with warmth.

  “Was that two?” she says.

  The explosive strip hangs perfectly still, Melanie’s poise steady.

  “No. This is.” I strike a match. “Two.”

  I bring the match toward the fuse, which splits into a web work that will light each cracker in quick succession. A strip this length will pop for a full minute, maybe more, assuming the moisture that has mottled its red-and-white stripes has left it dry enough to pop at all.

  “Three.”

  I fire up the main fuse. Immediately, the bowstring snaps and the arrow disappears. The bow barely flinches. The shot is a clean one.

  She did it.

  From the trees behind Tommy’s Bike Shack, the firecrackers emit a crackling noise that sends chills through my entire body. Melanie and I grab our packs and bolt through the back door, into the trees, where we immediately make a beeline southward, away from the noise.

  As we run, we throw glances over our shoulders to make sure we aren’t being followed. The firecrackers are still popping like mad. Luckily the river of infected was coming from the north, which means our path southward is mostly clear.

  We have to cross Route 1 to get back to the Lubroline station and Melanie’s bicycle hidden beneath the
tarp (“with a dead viral on it,” as she had put it). Now that the firecrackers have probably alerted every infected person within a mile range, we need to make sure we don’t call attention while doing it.

  We skulk on a leaf-covered driveway between a shady motel and a seafood shack. The driveway empties into Route 1, on which more infected have gathered like rioters. Dozens of them head north, hobbling in their eagerness to reach the fireworks, which are almost dead. A couple more go off, and then that’s it.

  “We should fire another one,” Melanie says.

  “There’s one more strip,” I say. “You ready?”

  She nods and reaches for another arrow as I go for the canvas bag in my pack.

  Behind us, a man’s voice says, “Don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking heads off.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Toss the weapons over here,” the man says, “then turn toward me real slow, like molasses.”

  Melanie and I are still crouched against the building, facing Route 1, too alarmed to do anything but stare into each other’s wide, frightened eyes. She’s holding her bow in one hand, the other halfway to her quiver. My fingers are on my holstered Glock. Soon, the infected will lose track of where the fireworks came from and start fanning out, and everyone—including the man behind us—will be in a world of trouble.

  “I said toss your weapons and come toward me. Now.”

  Melanie and I do as we’re told. Without my pistol, I feel like I’m missing a hand. We turn around, press our backs to the wall, and lift our arms in surrender.

  The area behind the motel is a strip of parking spaces. The Jeep I saw at the Citizens’ Bank is parked sideways across three of them, facing us. My stomach sinks at the sight of it, especially when I recognize the man with the neck tattoo staring at us from the back seat.

  The one who spoke to us wears the same faded red bandanna and holds the same automatic rifle as yesterday. Instead of standing in the front passenger seat of the vehicle like before, he’s in a shooting stance a few feet away. The rifle is an M16—serious firepower even in a situation like this. You’d have to be insane to bring a weapon like that out here.

  Unless you’re hunting something that might shoot back.

  “What do you want?” I ask the tattooed man in the Jeep, since I know he’s the leader.

  He doesn’t respond. He just stares at me. His eyes are wide, like he’s watching a lottery in which one more lucky number stands between him and a big win.

  Bandanna approaches me, flips the rifle around, and jabs the butt stock into my stomach. I double over, the breath knocked out of me.

  Melanie places a hand on my shoulder. I brush it off and rise, quietly struggling to breathe. Bandanna steps back and aims the rifle’s deadly barrel at me again.

  “Your stash,” he says.

  It’s hard to concentrate while staring down the barrel of a gun that could tear you to pieces. I blink at him, frozen with indecision. My stash is back on Exeter Road, but Melanie’s stash is in the Lubroline station down the street. I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

  “I don’t mean the girl’s stash, either,” the man says as if he’s read my mind. He pulls his lips back in a grisly smile that reveals a twisted mess of brown and yellow teeth. “I know that one probably ain’t shit. Yeah, we’ll get to it later, but what I want to know is where you come from, kid. You ain’t from this part of town, are ya? You got new gear, a fancy pack, a nice Glock. I know there’s more where that came from.”

  I glance at my pistol, which he has kicked back toward the Jeep. No one has moved to pick it up. The driver of the vehicle, who still looks like a wild man from the mountains, stares intently at Melanie. The one with the tattoo hasn’t moved or changed his expression at all.

  They won’t wait much longer for me to answer. There’s no way I’ll give them my address. Then I think: what if they threaten Melanie?

  “Caballeros,” the guy with the neck tattoo says in a surprisingly crisp and springy voice. “Let’s finish this at base camp, shall we?”

  Caballeros. That’s Spanish for “gentlemen,” only there isn’t anything Spanish about him. He’s just having fun. To them, this is probably another day at the office.

  I barely have a chance to blink as the guy with the M16 rushes forward. He jabs the rifle’s butt stock into my face, knocking me out.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Wake up, little scavenger.”

  He says it in a sing-song voice that reminds me of the lullaby that begins with, “Hush, little baby.” Behind my closed and heavy eyelids, I picture the way my mother looked when I saw her crouched in her bedroom, only the keyhole between us, her face covered in slash marks.

  I don’t want to go there ever again. I open my eyes with a gasp.

  The first thing I notice is the dark ceiling high above me, followed by the way the cold, stagnant air smells, a combination of concrete and gasoline. My right eye remains half shut, sealed by what I know is dried blood. It coats my face like a layer of hardened paint.

  Something floats into my field of vision and stops dead center.

  My lucky rabbit’s foot.

  “Guess these blasted things don’t really work, huh?” the man holding it says before flinging it away into the darkness.

  He bends over me until all I see is his repulsive, familiar face, the black rose tattoo staining his fleshy neck. He’s chewing something with a noisy smacking sound. It smells like peanut butter PowerBar.

  “You know, these are quite delectable,” he says with a few more smacks. He holds up the half-eaten bar still in its wrapper. “I haven’t enjoyed one in quite some time.”

  He takes a huge bite out of it, then tosses the rest away and wipes his hand against his T-shirt.

  The guy is uglier than I remember, his dark eyes embedded in a nest of dirty wrinkles, his black beard like tightly packed pubic hair, sprinkled with grime. As he grins down at me, I notice in the thin yellow light of a nearby bulb or lantern that his teeth are slick with PowerBar he is too lazy to lick away.

  I lift my head to glance at my surroundings, despite my fear that he might hit me for moving. But he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls back and watches me. I see his two buddies in different positions around the long wooden table to which my arms and legs are tied with rope. The skinny, wild-looking driver of the Jeep sits on a wooden crate, while the other stands by a table on which various metal instruments have been laid out.

  Torture devices? Or just tools for fixing the place?

  My head and neck hurt too much to lift any further. Quick glances to my left and right tell me we’re in a dark warehouse full of steel-beam shelves, each a dozen feet tall, and mostly empty. The only light comes one of the shelves to my left, where a gas lantern lets off a weak glow that reminds me of a campfire in a dark forest at night—a place I’d much rather be than here.

  Melanie.

  What have they done with her?

  “Please,” I say.

  “You’re shivering,” the tattooed man says before throwing an amused glance at the others. “He’s shivering. After everything that’s happened, all it takes is three bottom-feeders like us to scare the piss out of him.”

  “Please,” I say again. “Where is she?”

  The black-rose-and-barbed-wire tattoo stretches as the man crosses his arms and looks at me askance.

  “Hey now, how about you let me lead this inquisition?” he says.

  I hate how familiar his voice is, and how harmless I once found it. A sharp pain grows in my head from resting it on the flat wooden surface.

  “You look familiar,” he says. “Tell me: where have I glimpsed your youthful visage?”

  I don’t answer. He shows me the hairy back of his right hand.

  “I asked you a question, young squire.”

  Fuck. Being hit again will sap more of my strength. I have to keep him talking long enough to figure out an alternative.

  “The Exxon station,” I say. “You—you were the cash register
guy—”

  “And you’re talking out your ass,” he says in a single breath, chuckling lightly at the end of it.

  I’ve made him uncomfortable. Good. Fuck him.

  Bandanna interrupts. “I thought you said you were an FBI ag—”

  “Shut your unclean mouth, you rag-headed faggot.”

  Bandanna makes a tsk sound and goes back to whatever he was doing.

  Despite the broken glass in my skull—that’s how it feels, anyway—I lift my head to glance at them again. Bandanna is now sharpening a hunting knife against a whetstone. The skinny, wild one is still sitting on the crate, probably staring at me, though I can’t tell since his long, wavy hair blocks his face from the lantern light. All I see is a black void where his face should be, surrounded by what looks like a wig from a Halloween costume of a serial killer.

  A wave of pain and dizziness forces my head back against the table.

  “Please,” I say again. “Melanie…”

  “Is that her name? Very beautiful. Change the spelling—Melania—and it means ‘darkness.’ Did you know that?”

  “Please…”

  He hammers his fist against the table with a loud bang, so close his knuckles brush my coverall. It’s then that I notice they’ve removed my utility belt, but not my boots—bad news with a little good news thrown in.

  “Enough with that nonsense,” he says. “I can’t stand when you people plead for things. You’re just lucky none of us are partial to boys. As for the girl, well, you can forget about her, Mr. Knight-in-Shining-Caked-Blood. She’s meat.”

  I close my eyes and try to control my panicked breathing. My stomach hurts, and I’m nauseated, probably from hunger, though the gas fumes aren’t helping. How long have I been out? It’s dark in the warehouse, which means the windows are either boarded up, or the sun is warming up some other part of the globe.

  If it’s nighttime, I’m in serious trouble.

  “I can get weapons,” I say. “Give you wha-whatever you want.”

  The guy goes rigid suddenly, puffing his chest and standing as erect as a butler. I expect him to curse or spit at me, but instead he holds out his open palm to shake my hand.