by Alex Barnett
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel, gritty bits of worn vinyl flaking off underneath her sweaty palms. The Burnouts at the head of the herd—the ones that had been the fastest—seemed to be looking back and forth across the width of Mountain Brook. Lydia bit her lip.
“Caleb?” she called.
A Burnout at the very front of the pack suddenly started lurching up the center of the street. They had been spotted.
“Caleb?” she called again, her shaking fingers tightening on the key.
“Gimme a second!”
The Burnouts were moving faster—grouping up in a knot together and rushing forward. Within moments, the street seemed full of them. Had there been that many before? The ones in the lead were barely a few houses away from them.
“Caleb!” she screamed.
“Go! Now! Go!”
She heard the tailgate flip down, and the truck rocked as Caleb threw himself into the bed. Lydia didn’t wait to be told twice. She twisted the key violently, only to realize with shocked disbelief that it refused to turn all the way in the ignition.
“Jiggle it, jiggle it!” Caleb shouted desperately.
“Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?!” She gave the key a few vigorous shakes, and then turned it again. This time the engine roared to life, and the screen set into the dashboard flashed red when the vehicle couldn’t connect to the highway guidance network. She searched frantically for the switch that would allow the truck to be driven manually, crying out when she found it on the opposite side of the steering wheel she was used to. She wrenched the switch down and waited for the screen to go blue before throwing the truck into reverse. She stomped down on the gas just as a single, silver-veined hand smacked against the driver’s side window. She screamed out loud, and then screamed again as the truck shuddered into gear, accelerating backwards faster than she was expecting.
“Girl, what the hell?!” Caleb screamed.
The truck thumped over the curb and onto the sidewalk before Lydia thought to hit the brakes, and she heard Caleb cursing as he was thrown around. She threw the truck into drive, and her eyes flicked uneasily over the dashboard. It was an old model, and didn’t have a lot of bells and whistles on the dashboard, but the truck was a lot…bigger…than Mom’s car. And it had been three months since she had done anything more than ease a car into position in the barricades.
The Burnouts were still swarming towards them. She stomped on the gas again, clutching the steering wheel so tight it hurt. The truck peeled forward, no doubt laying a thick trail of rubber down. She jerked the wheel around, sending the truck careening away from the mob and further down Mountain Brook. How could she get away from the throng without leading them right back home? There were a few side streets she might be able to take…but for the moment, she had to lead the group behind them farther into the development.
The tires squealed again. She tried to remember what Mom and Grandpa had taught her when she was cramming for her driver’s test, but she could barely keep the truck under control as she wove from one side of the street to the other with all the finesse of a drunk on a three-day bender. She side-swiped one of the cars parked on the street, taking out its mirror.
“Stay straight! Stay straight!”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She looked in the rearview mirror, watching the mass of Burnouts stumbling after the truck with animalistic determination. She backed off on the gas nervously, slowing; she had to make sure they followed. With one hand, she groped behind her until she found the latch that opened the back window, nearly sending the truck careening up onto the sidewalk again in the process.
“Can you try not to kill us before we can even enjoy survivin’ that?” Caleb barked.
“Sorry!” Lydia jerked the truck back onto the street and sped up again, weaving around the debris in the road with more confidence. She looked in mirror one more time, hissing between her teeth. The Burnouts were still following, but growing smaller in the mirror. She returned her attention to the road in front of her, quickly getting her bearings, and casting about for some route that would take them home. She and Ava didn’t often run this way, but she was sure she could get them back.
She followed Mountain Brook another few hundred yards, before turning onto another street that she knew dead-ended back at the opposite end of Brook Haven from Meadowbrook Court. Without the Burnouts bearing down on them, driving became much easier. She threaded through the occasional obstacles of abandoned vehicles, kicked over trashcans, and random debris, the harsh rasp of their breathing the only sound in the truck.
Lydia looked around the vehicle’s interior as she drove, curious. Empty candy wrappers littered the floorboards, and someone—Lydia would put money on Zack, given what she knew about him so far—had glued a Wolverine action figure to the edge of the dashboard, so it looked like it was poised to spring at the driver. There was a sour tang in the air when she breathed: the ground-in scents of sweat, blood, and dirt, products of too many hot days spent in the truck’s cab with no relief.
“So…how long have you had your license, again?” Caleb asked at length, breaking the silence. Lydia felt her cheeks color.
“Uh, about three and a half months?” she replied, looking everywhere but Caleb’s steady gaze in the rearview mirror. Caleb was silent a moment, and Lydia waited for him to make the obvious connection. It did not take long.
“Wait,” he said, his words edged with suspicion, “so…you had a driver’s license for, like, two weeks before this all went down?”
“Basically, yes,” Lydia admitted with a sheepish half-smile.
She didn’t tell him she had barely passed the driver’s test in the first place, passing by only two points. There was a rustling sound, and Lydia glanced up into the mirror to see Caleb slumping down amid what looked like a pile of blankets and pillows in the shadowed interior of the truck bed.
“Well, I guess I can’t argue with the results. Thanks for saving my ass back there.”
Lydia sped up a little and bit her lip, staring at Caleb in the mirror. “Are you okay?” she asked cautiously.
Caleb seemed to realize what she was driving at. “I won’t Burn. It didn’t get hold of me long enough.”
“You sure?” she asked, though a wave of relief swept through her, a bit surprising in its intensity. Caleb smiled at her, warmth flooding his dark eyes.
“Positive. Me and Zack both been closer than that and we’re fine. All right, pull over as soon as it’s safe…I wanna get out of here,” Caleb said. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and cracked his neck with a fatigued sigh.
A few minutes later Lydia slowed to a stop in the middle of the street. Caleb scrambled out of the truck bed as Lydia swung the door open, sliding out with her weapon ready. Caleb ran around the side of the truck and slid to a stop beside her. They needed to get moving again, and quickly. They were nowhere near safe out here, and if they had to turn on the headlights, they might as well just spend the whole trip back blaring on the horn and leading more Burnouts back with them.
For a moment, however, they just stood looking at each other. Caleb’s hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and his chest was still heaving from the run. Lydia’s breathing hadn’t returned to normal either, and her whole body felt shocked and shaky from adrenaline.
“We did it,” she said, unable to quite believe it. Caleb nodded.
“We actually did it,” he confirmed. And just like that, they were laughing—breathless, incredulous. Caleb tucked his gun back into his holster, grinning at her in fierce joy. They clambered back into the vehicle, Caleb driving this time.
“So,” Caleb said once they were moving again. “Scale of one to ten, how angry is your grandpa gonna be when we get back?”
Lydia’s eyes widened. Crap, she’d almost forgotten. “Uh…about a fifty-two,” she replied, slumping against the passenger side window. “Probably best if you let me do the talking. He won’t kill me.”
Caleb chuckled, but the sound
died in his throat when he looked over and saw her expression. “Oh,” he said.
“Yeah. But he’ll calm down—once Ava tells him what Zack can do. And I’ll back you and your brother up. It’s not like you made me come with you! And we got all those Burnouts away from the barricade. He’s just—he’s just…”
“Protective,” Caleb finished. “I get it.”
Lydia thought of him and Zack, out on the roads by themselves…all alone except for each other. “Yeah,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess you do.” She leaned back a little further in the seat. “But anyway, he’s not going to kick you out or anything. He might make you dig latrine ditches for a few days, though.”
Caleb shuddered. “Seriously?”
“Hey, don’t complain—he’ll probably make me scrub the toilets.” And by toilets, she meant buckets: large gardening buckets too stained with paint and fertilizer to store drinking water in.
The conversation dried up after that, limited to Lydia murmuring directions. They drove through the subdivision, turning and doubling back a few times when they ran into knots of Burnouts. There were nowhere near as many as Lydia had been expecting, though. Perhaps the herd they had led away from Meadowbrook had attracted more stragglers?
Whatever the reason, Lydia was grateful. She didn’t want to think about Burnouts anymore, didn’t want to deal with the weight of the gun in her lap. She didn’t want to have to make any more life or death decisions. She was still hopped up on adrenaline and danger, the lingering soreness in her legs a reminder of just what she and Caleb had accomplished. It seemed like hours since she and Caleb had jumped the fence in Mr. Grant’s yard. By her watch, though, they’d only been gone for about thirty minutes…and most of that had been spent winding through the neighborhood to throw off any other Burnouts that might have pursued them. Even so, the relief that swept through Lydia when the barricade came into view was strong enough to set her hands shaking all over again.
Caleb seemed to uncoil, tension in his arms relaxing as he drove down the street. Lydia never thought she would be so happy to see that rusted out relic. She leaned forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ava or Grandpa. She was sure they’d be waiting for her and Caleb to return. Not that Lydia was eager for a lecture and punishment detail…but she needed to reassure herself her family was still there; was still safe.
They could barely see in the purple twilight, but Caleb didn’t dare turn on the headlights. Even so, Lydia scanned the top of the barricade and the windows of the houses for movement. There was none. No one waiting for them on the lookout point…no lights on in any of the houses now that the mass of Burnouts had been led away…no one using the last few minutes before night fell to check the barricades.
Nothing.
“Caleb—” she began, unease whispering across the back of her neck and down her spine. She looked over at him to find him staring at the barricade with a confused, worried frown.
“That’s weird,” he said.
He pulled to a stop just in front of the van, and Lydia was about to jump out. The bad feeling was growing by leaps and bounds. As she opened the door, however, she froze.
From somewhere inside Meadowbrook, audible even across the distance, someone screamed in pure terror.
13
Time stopped.
Everything around her was still, the sound of the horrible, fear-filled scream echoing in her ears. No. No, no, no, no-no-no-no. This was not happening. It could not be happening—not now. Tremors wracked her body, her breath coming in harsh pants. She scanned the barricade, looking for some sign of movement, some indication that what they had heard was a mistake. It had to be a mistake.
“Lydia!”
Caleb’s cry, right next to her ear, startled her out of her panic. She jerked in her seat. His hand closed over her wrist, but she shook it off. Control. She couldn’t help Grandpa and Ava—everyone on Meadowbrook—if she panicked now. And they needed her help. She refused to think otherwise. Gunshots and blaster fire echoed in the night, unmistakable even muffled by the distance.
“Let’s go!” she snarled.
Everything felt strange and slow as Caleb obeyed, stomping on the gas and sending the truck squealing the last few dozen yards to the barricade. She watched her own hands eject the half-spent charge cartridge from her blaster and slap a fresh one in with strange detachment. Grandpa and Ava needed her. That was all she could let herself think, all that there was room for. Caleb checked his own gun with frantic, shaking hands. Another scream pierced the air, followed by more gunshots. He caught Lydia’s wrist again just as she was about to throw herself out of the cab.
“Stay close,” he warned, his eyes steely. “No matter what, we gotta stick together.”
Lydia nodded once, acknowledging the sense in that, as much as she wanted to just scale the barricade and find her family. Caleb squeezed her wrist, and then opened his door. They leaped out of the truck, and Lydia’s heart felt as though it stopped in her chest. Outside the truck, the sounds were worse. Lydia searched the barricade with scared, frantic eyes for the point where it had failed, where it had let those things in…but there was none. Everything was still intact. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting over it and finding the people they loved.
She scaled up the barricade, her hands and feet flying over holds. She hauled herself up onto the van’s roof as Caleb swarmed up behind her, her weapon already in her hand as she rolled to her feet and stared down onto the small patch of street she had grown up on, lit only by the first gleams of moonlight in the sky.
Some small, broken sound tried to leave her, but there was no air in her lungs for it to use. Meadowbrook was overrun. It was filled with Burnouts, what looked like a larger group than the one she and Caleb had just led away from the barricade. The things were swarming like ants out of a destroyed hill. They crowded around the Royces’ front porch, a giant knot of them—at least two dozen, maybe closer to thirty—clawing at the door. Even as she stood there, she heard glass shattering, and another spatter of gunshots. There. They were still alive, over there.
She couldn’t bring herself to look over at Eric Grant’s house, or Grandpa’s. The silence from the second-story windows was telling. Either they had left the houses and run for the Royces’ or…
She refused to think about or.
“No,” Caleb groaned. “No, this isn’t supposed to happen! This is why we led the group off!”
The things would notice them soon. They had seconds to figure out what to do. Seconds to form a plan. Lydia’s eyes darted around the court, trying to find something that would tell her what to do, what would help the others. They didn’t have enough ammo between them to make much of a difference. There were too many Burnouts…they would be surrounded, and either pulled down or forced to retreat back out into the neighborhood.
“We need more firepower!” Caleb said, as though reading her mind.
And just like that, she knew what she had to do. Her gaze snapped to the only unoccupied house on the court. It was smack in the center of Meadowbrook, flanked on either side by Grandpa’s house and Emily DeSantos’s. It was also one of the points they had divided the weapons stash up into, for emergencies.
Right by the front door were three of Grandpa’s hunting rifles, and another pistol that belonged to Andrew. Grandpa and the others might not have had time to run for the emergency weapons at the McCain’s. Even if they had, she and Caleb would be able to circle around through the backyards to Royce’s. If the backyards were blocked, they could jump the fence out into the scrubland behind Meadowbrook. It wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was all she could come up with. It was their best chance.
She tugged at Caleb’s sleeve, pointing to the house when he glanced over. There were numerous Burnouts between them and the house…but most of them were swarming the Royce’s. If they were fast, they should be able to make it. Lydia didn’t wait for his acknowledgement, just checked that the safety was off her weapon one more time and slithered off the
van. She hit the ground running, trusting Caleb to follow her. There was no time to look for Grandpa or Ava, no time to figure out who was holding off the frenzy at the Royce’s—who was still alive. There were at least two dozen Burnouts between them and their destination. The only choice was to flat-out run for it.
Almost as soon as her feet touched the ground, the Burnouts saw her. Lydia tightened her grip on the blaster and clamped down on the instinct that wanted to fling every single Burnout around her to the ground, press down on them until they were crushed and destroyed and no more threat to the people she cared about. She couldn’t, though; she had to save every scrap of energy inside of her until it was absolutely needed.
She didn’t break stride, as first one, then another, and another turned, their mouths gaping open and their skeletal, silver-veined hands reaching for her. The nearest one ran for her with surprising speed. Lydia clenched her jaw and darted forward, ducking under the thing’s arm as it made a wild grab for her. She felt the Burnout’s fingers skate over her shoulder as she passed.
Another hail of gunfire went off, underscored by a man’s voice yelling. Screaming. Lydia couldn’t recognize the voice; couldn’t place the sound of it. All she could do was keep running for the McCain’s. She fired as she ran, taking out a pair of Burnouts getting too close. The whine of Caleb’s gun going off joined with hers, joined with the sounds from the Royce’s, joined with the howls and groans of the Burnouts into an onslaught that turned Lydia’s blood to ice water in her veins.
Time. She just needed a little more time, and then she could do something to help whoever was in the house. Just a few more seconds.
