“They’re distracted on the other side now. Should be clear.”
Sure enough, only a few stragglers are out in front of the emergency entrance. Joel slows the Toyota to a crawl, and the survivors search the area for any evidence of struggle or escape. Everything looks fairly calm. Michael sees no bodies lying dead on the ground and feels a distinct relief. But who knows what lies farther in? He does see movement in there, but it’s the crooked crab movements of the infected.
The infected.
It’s the first time that word has passed through his mind in any natural kind of way. He can’t recall it being uttered by any of the survivors, but his concussion is probably to blame for that. He quietly considers the word, its implications, but the line of thought dwindles away into pain-threatening contradictions. His mind refuses to even acknowledge the notion of some otherworldly infection.
Or perhaps possession is a better term.
The thought makes him shudder.
The whole scene in front of the hospital has the feel of an area attacked and then hastily abandoned.
“I think everyone got out,” Joel says.
“We can only hope they had time to grab blood and medicine,” Rachel adds.
“Right.”
“I hope they’re okay.”
As Joel picks up speed, Danny speaks up.
“Is there any … any food?” The words comes out quietly, meekly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Danny,” Rachel says, twisting her body to look him in the eyes. “You’re hungry? When’s the last time you ate?”
“I’ve been making peanut butter sandwiches every day, and I never ran out, but I got a little tired of those. There’s cereal, but the milk went bad. So did all the turkey.”
“Meat’s gonna be tough to come by, little dude,” Joel says. “But right now everything in the supermarket is free, so I’m sure we can find you something. Can it wait an hour or two till we get a better idea what we’re up against?”
Danny bows his head and seems to dig himself in for a wait.
Michael’s right hand is aching in its clutch of his forehead, and now he realizes that the pain has eased enough to let go. He brings the hand down and blinks hard. Perhaps it’s the relative rest his body has received, sitting here in this seat, or perhaps it’s just being reunited with his daughter, but either way, he feels a gratitude to … to whatever small benevolent force seems to be on their side, letting them escape the awful fate of the bulk of humanity.
“So let’s say we get the tranquilizers and build up some blood supplies …” Michael says. “And Bonnie gets everything in order with the anticoagulant, and we can reliably weaponize ourselves. What about after that? Are we gonna—”
At that moment, another vehicle, a large late-model BMW, comes careening out onto Lemay from Pitkin, a residential street to their left. Joel curses loudly, stamping on the brakes. The BMW swerves, missing them by inches. Michael can see the sweaty red face of a middle-aged man, for a split second, and then the car rights itself just as two scrambling bodies come surging out of the neighborhood in pursuit. But as the BMW roars south, wildly twisting around the wrecks that dot the street, the bodies immediately sense the four survivors in the Toyota and come leaping toward them instead.
“Jesus Christ, man,” Joel whispers, and Michael can hear a helplessness there that doesn’t exactly fill him with optimism.
He jerks the car forward as two of the bodies hit the side panels, almost in unison. Michael is staring right into the wide, dry, dead eyes of a woman who might as well have been the BMW driver’s wife—a hideous mockery of a suburban housewife. She gasps at him, her jaw poking at the window, and then she’s gone, receding into the background.
“Just keep moving,” Rachel says, obviously shaken.
“Ri—” Joel starts, then pauses, reacting to something ahead of them. “Hey, hey! That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
“What?”
He nods his head forward.
About three hundred yards ahead, crooked against the curb next to the flower shop, is a bright yellow Hummer.
“Oh brother,” says Michael. “Seriously?”
“Fuckin’ A—sorry kid.”
Danny doesn’t seem fazed by the language.
Michael lets out a humorless laugh. “And environmentalism was rendered pointless in the blink of an eye.”
“Goddamn liberals.” Joel’s laugh is more vocal. “Okay, I’m gonna stop quick right next to it, and Rachel, you’re gonna jump out and check that thing for keys, see if it starts up. Got it?”
Rachel releases a whiny sigh. “You sure we need that?”
“Yes. I am sure.”
“Wait a second,” Michael interrupts, “I should do that, I can jump out and get it started.”
“No you can’t, man, not yet.” Joel scans the area and hones in on the Hummer, then checks the rearview mirror. “We’re clear. No shame in it, Mike. You’re still recovering. Just be ready to climb in.”
“I can do it, Dad.”
Michael flashes back four years to when he tried to teach Rachel how to handle a stick shift in his old beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit, that clunker he hung on to just for her, knowing it would be her first car, and believing that it was essential to teach a first-time driver how to handle a manual transmission. Her heart had never been in it, though. She’d never really wanted to learn it, and had sold that car to save up for a dreamed-of newer VW that never happened. Michael feels a deep twinge of something like loss when he realizes that here, right now, is when that stick-shift lesson would have paid off.
“Here we go.”
The Toyota lurches to a stop next to the Hummer, whose door is barely clicked shut. Rachel jumps fluidly from her side and leaps up onto the huge vehicle’s sideboards, pulling at the heavy door. It swings open and she slides in. She quickly gives a thumbs up, and the ignition turns. She knows enough to start up a manual transmission and idle in in neutral. The battery is a little sleepy, but the engine fires.
“Okay, out,” Joel calls.
The three remaining doors fling open, and the survivors make a run for it. Danny is inside the Hummer before Michael can barely edge past the Toyota’s rear bumper, and even Joel is already climbing in to replace Rachel at the wheel.
Michael’s heart is at his throat, his pulse rushing at his ears. His eyes twitch in all directions, anticipating any attack. The area is wide open, and he feels like the largest, most lumbering target in all of Fort Collins.
But no bodies rush him. The ones behind them, in the distance, have veered off into a neighborhood.
Rachel rolls down the window on the rear passenger side. “Take the front, Dad.”
He pulls himself up into shotgun and lets out a grunt as the door slams.
The Hummer rumbles forward confidently, like a tank. Under his headache, Michael rolls his eyes but even he recognizes the vehicle’s value in the current situation.
“Little over half a tank of gas,” Joel says, scanning the dash.
“Good, that should give us a few miles anyway.” Michael can’t help it. “Okay, I’m done.”
“This is a nice car,” Danny says, smiling.
Joel tosses Michael a smirk, then takes the immediate right onto Prospect, heading west toward the Wildlife office. Between here and there lies about a mile of residential streets leading into quiet neighborhoods. But now every street appears poised to let loose with scurrying bodies. All eyes are on alert, watching for movement—and they soon find that most of the streets appear deserted. Danny even spots a few bodies still wrapped painfully around the bases of evergreens, as if they simply haven’t awoken to the “scent” of nearby survivors. That, in fact, becomes the working theory: that the bodies are only becoming active and aggressive when they sense that they have an opportunity, nearby, to take out a surviving human being.
The most haunting image reveals itself as they pass a church just west of Robertson, where a group of the things is swarming beyond a small parking lot, at the b
uilding’s curved front entrance.
“There’s people in there.” Rachel’s voice is hard and sad. “Survivors. Or there were.”
“Can we go get ’em?” Danny asks.
Joel brings the Hummer to a stop, considering. He glances over at Michael.
“I think the boy’s got a point. Let’s see what this bastard can do.”
He lurches the heavy vehicle toward the parking lot, and as if they’ve passed over a kind of psychic barrier, all the turned-over heads of the scurrying bodies swivel to face them.
“Wait!” Rachel says, understanding dawning.
“I wanna see what those things are capable of, too,” Joel adds.
“Joel …” she says warily.
“Don’t worry.”
As he enters the parking lot, Joel mashes down on the horn, jolting everyone in the car. The blatting sound is surprisingly weak for a suburban tank, but it does its job of causing a stir. All of the bodies in front of the church position themselves as if to pounce, their limbs jittering. Michael’s breath has stopped in his throat.
“You’re gonna attract a thousand of those things!” Rachel cries.
“What are you doing?” Michael calls loudly, grabbing for his oh-shit handle.
“Watch the doors, see if you can spot anyone in there. I’m gonna try to attract a bunch of these assholes, lure ’em away from the entrance.”
Joel rips through the parking lot, which is empty of vehicles, and the bodies follow the Hummer diligently. Michael avoids meeting their snapping gazes, instead focusing on the windows of the church. At first glance, he sees nothing but dim emptiness beyond them, and then Danny shouts, “There!”
“Where?” Rachel says.
“Next to the—to the right of the front doors.”
That window is already fading behind them, but yes, there is a face there, in shadow, and hands pressed to the glass.
“He’s right,” Rachel says. “One person.”
“Okay, I’ll head back around, maybe we can grab him. Or her.”
Just as Joel blats the horn again, a small crab-like body, a female, scurries from the sidewalk off Ellis, directly in front of them. Joel makes a token effort to swerve, but immediately the body—a bright yellow tattered nightgown trailing at its naked limbs—goes under the Hummer’s huge tires, and Michael can’t help but look away, back at Rachel, in time to see her curl up into a ball on her seat, slapping her hands to her ears, shutting her eyes.
They all feel a hideous bump and lurch as the body is crushed beneath them.
“That was a little girl!” Danny shouts.
“That was no little girl,” Joel responds, revving it at the top end of second gear and bouncing onto Ellis. A quick, arcing turn gets them back onto Prospect, where Joel brings the vehicle to a shuddering stop.
“Oh God, that’s terrible,” Rachel squeals. “Joel, we can save these people, you can’t just crush them like bugs!”
“The hell I can’t!”
One of the bodies broadsides the Hummer, making the heavy vehicle jerk on its treads. There’s a shrieking gasp outside.
And then the rest of the bodies are on them. And coordinated. Three or four of the bodies position themselves against the Hummer to provide the next wave leverage to jump higher. Two inverted male heads hit the left windows simultaneously—hard—the one next to Michael cracking into two long lightning-shaped fractures.
“Jesus—!” Joel shouts.
He floors the gas, and the Hummer leaps forward. Two bodies go under the tires, and this time Rachel moans in frustration, twisting to peer through the bleary rear window. The two bodies are squashed like giant bugs, trying furiously to manipulate their broken limbs.
Joel rumbles back into the church parking lot and pulls up close to the door, honking his horn. All eyes go to the window next to the church’s front door. There, peering out miserably, is a face that both Rachel and Joel react to with identical gasps.
Chapter 16
“I don’t believe it,” Rachel says.
“Believe it,” Joel manages, wrestling the steering wheel and coming to a heavy stop directly adjacent to the front doors. “It’s him.”
“Him who?” Michael says.
“A grade-A asshole,” Joel says. “Rachel, open the door quick. We’ve got ten seconds.”
“His name is Scott. Caused all sorts of problems at the hospital. He was an administrator there.” Rachel pushes the door open. “What if he doesn’t want to come with us?”
“Then that’s his problem.”
The Hummer’s occupants stare at the face behind the glass. Scott’s red hair is matted, and he appears gaunt, troubled. He looks desperate.
Joel waves him forward impatiently.
“Get your ass in here if you want to live!”
Michael turns to judge the distance of the bodies scrambling toward the vehicle. Thirty feet … twenty-five.
“Joel,” he warns.
But Scott is now scurrying out the door, leaving it wide open and racing to the car. He’s hobbled, favoring one leg, and he appears slightly hunched over. Rachel has scooted into the middle, next to Danny, and her face scrunches with distaste as the man hauls himself inside and heaves the door shut.
The Hummer roars forward, gasping bodies tumbling in its wake.
Scott’s face is pale and sweaty, and Michael can already smell his sour breath.
No one has said anything.
Michael breaks the silence.
“Were you in there all alone?”
Scott raises his head, looks at him miserably, doesn’t answer.
Joel bounces down onto Prospect again and heads west, shifting into third. He casts one glance through the rear-view mirror, then returns his eyes to the road.
“We’re not going to the hospital?” Scott finally says.
“Are you all right?” Rachel asks.
“Oh, peachy.”
“What do you need?”
“What I need, frankly, is at the hospital.”
“Well,” says Joel, “we’re not going there.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but things have changed in the past couple hours.” Joel swerves around a Jeep that is crumpled against the median. “Hospital is overrun.”
Scott is silent.
Michael can sense that he wants to say something else, but the tension in the air is tamping it down. Rachel is still sneering at Scott, but she asks, “What is it you need?”
“Forget it.” He clutches his stomach.
“I think a detox is what you need.”
“Oh, for fu—” Scott stops himself, possibly for Danny’s benefit, and just stares out the window. “I just need pain meds. Did it ever occur to you that some people might be SOL because of preexisting conditions? Pharmacies are kind of a free-for-all now, that’s just the way it is.”
“Hey, you want to watch the tone, pal?” Michael says.
“Who the hell are you?”
“That’s my dad,” Rachel replies, hard.
Joel slows down and maneuvers the large vehicle through another collection of stray cars, inching through one collision and simply shoving the smaller vehicles aside.
Michael watches the desolate streets to the left and right. A few of them aren’t so empty anymore. North on Whedbee, he catches a glimpse of a young man sprinting across the street, from one home to another, three bodies scurrying after him, their heads stretching toward him, one woman’s hair whipping at the ground. Michael points, urgently, and Joel is in the act of making the turn when the young man disappears in the opposite direction, between houses, racing into some kind of shadowed greenbelt. Just like that, he’s gone from view, and the animated bodies disappear in his wake.
Joel pauses, glances back at Rachel. She continues to watch the street. Joel continues on.
“We can’t save everyone.”
“But—” Rachel starts, then deflates.
There is a long moment of guilty sile
nce. Danny is glancing around, searching their faces expectantly. Finally, he looks away, back outside.
“I’m glad you stopped for me,” he says.
The kid has a quality about him that is quite endearing: an innocence that can’t be torn away, even by the end of everything he’s known all his life.
As they pass Peterson, Rachel notices a body on the asphalt that is clearly the corpse of a former survivor. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Wait, wait, slow down, look.”
The Hummer rumbles to a slower pace, and Rachel looks past Danny, out his window, at the body. It’s a dark-haired woman, heavyset, unfortunately face-up. Her features are hollowed out, bleached, desolate, as if every ounce of life has been sucked away from her. Michael takes one look and has to turn away.
“What happened to her?” he says.
“Those things,” Joel says. “Those bodies happened to her.”
“How?”
“That’s what they do, isn’t it?” Rachel breathes. “Even from the start. Whatever it is that’s inside them, it’s a weapon. Or at least, they can use it as a weapon. It’s what happened to a lot of people we saw coming in to the hospital that first day. It happened to my hand,” she says, lifting her palm to show the skin there: off-color, pale … subtly damaged. “And this was just a little bit. That—” She pauses, settling back. “—that’s what happens when they really want to hurt you.”
“That light inside them?” Michael says, his eyes still on the destroyed body.
“It’s more than just light.”
At that moment, a large body slams into the passenger side of the Hummer, rocking it on its wheels.
“Fuck!” Scott screeches through gritted teeth. “Why did I get in here?”
When Michael jerks his head around to see what has collided with them, he finds a round face glaring up at him, its mulch-crusted mouth a jowly oval of rage beneath the sap-smeared chin. It’s the body of a gigantic man in a tattered flannel shirt. As Joel punches the Hummer forward, the huge body recedes into the distance, still lumbering toward them.
Michael settles back into his seat, bringing one hand up to clutch at his forehead. During moments of relative calm, the ever-present ache reminds him that it’s still there, waiting to be dealt with. Behind closed eyes, images clank and clatter, his too-recent memories of this day already splintering and scattering. It takes him a full minute to recall the circumstances that led him from the hospital to home to here, and when he opens his eyes again, the awesome sight of the burning foothills at least brings back the awful, solid truth of the immediate present.
Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood Page 15
