by Jeff Olah
“That’s not what I meant.” Cora looked down at the jacket he’d given her. “I can’t take this and watch you freeze to death. Because, if you think you’ll make it all that way with what you’re wearing, you’re—”
Holding up his index finger, Griffin smiled. “Give me a second.” He turned and strode off across the lightly dusted road. Just as he rounded the front of the bus and disappeared inside, it lunged forward and down, taking the SUV with it.
As the rear end of the bus moved by her, Cora felt the heat generated by the dying flames on her face and hands. She turned and ran toward where both vehicles left the side of the road, slowing as she reached the edge. “Griffin?”
The bus stayed connected to the SUV as the two slid down the short slope and quickly into a massive boulder just before the edge of the forest. What few windows were left intact from the initial collision, exploded on impact, sending tiny slivers of glass out into the air that were indistinguishable from the shards of snow falling to earth.
As her view of the area came clear, she focused on the front end. From where she stood, it appeared that the bus had pulled the SUV in and closed off the hole Griffin had entered multiple times.
Cora stepped quickly through the trail of shrapnel left behind, and called for him once more. “Griffin?” She turned the corner near the front and confirmed her suspicions. Both the drivers and passenger doors were torn off and the front end of the SUV had plugged the hole in the front of the bus. “Damn it.”
Attempting to see over the top of the smaller vehicle and into the bus, Cora leaned on the hood and pushed herself up. Nothing—no Griffin and no movement of any kind. The massive grave was dark, save for the few spot fires toward the back. There was also no sign of Trish.
Sliding back down and moving around the opposite side of the SUV, Cora tripped as she stepped on a rock that slid out from under her. She ended up on her backside, both arms covered to the wrist in upturned earth and wet snow.
Pushing back to her knees, his throttled voice found her before she turned to see the two bodies fighting to get to Griffin. He had them at arm’s length with the larger man’s knee in his throat. His mouth moved, but no sound pushed through.
Only having seen him for a few brief moments as she boarded the bus and then again on her way out, Cora thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. The bus driver was dead. How he was battling with a slightly younger, albeit much larger man, wasn’t just curious, it was impossible.
“Griffin, are you alright?”
Both men turned their attention away from Griffin and faced her. Their eyes glassed over in a shade not all that different than the snow plastered in patches along their blood-soaked faces. The bus driver pushed off Griffin’s legs and limped toward her as the other also started to stand.
Furrowing her brow, Cora looked back at Griffin as he found his voice. She began to speak, but not before he cut her off.
“Cora… RUN!”
16
The signal at Third Street had cycled through two greens before Ethan turned away from the scene playing out in the parking lot of the Red Moose. His left arm slung over the door handle, and nudging David with the other, he said, “Billy Ralston, what do we do about him?”
Since noticing their vehicle sitting alone in the street, the man covered in blood had turned back to his victim. He clawed furiously at the motionless body below and came away with handful after handful of shredded flesh. Impulsively, he continued shoveling his reward quickly into his mouth, only pausing briefly to turn and survey the area.
Again, Ethan turned to his friend. “DAVID, LET’S GO. THIS IS SERIOUS.”
His head buried in his phone, David scrolled through one message in particular as he continued to get notifications every few seconds. He read through while only briefly looking back at the parking lot and up to Ethan. “Yeah, I know.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “What’s the plan?”
His thumbs rattling off a response to the multiple texts he was receiving, David spoke but did not look up. “Not sure just yet. Whatever is happening with Ralston is nothing compared to what’s going on back in town.”
“Where?”
Glancing away from his phone for a moment, David looked out the passenger window and into the side mirror, before quickly returning to his texts. “According to Carly it’s going on everywhere.”
“What… what do you mean? We haven’t seen anything, or for that matter anyone, in the last five minutes?”
“Check your mirrors.”
Dense black smoke sat somewhere in the distance. Below that, pulsing flames that stretched for what looked like two city blocks. “Looks like Saul’s place or maybe out as far as Travers field.”
“No, Carly says it’s Saint Mark’s. She’s hearing that there are people inside and she can’t get ahold of anyone at the firehouse. I guess the landlines keep going in and out. The boys are either already there or on another call.”
Shaking his head, Ethan said, “This doesn’t make any sense. How is this thing spreading so fast? This is the first we’ve heard about any of this.”
David smiled. “That’s true, but when was the last time you watched the news, or actually read a newspaper?”
With his attention pulled back out into the street, Ethan didn’t respond.
“Ethan, I think we need to maybe put off today’s run—”
His focus shifting between the street, the parking lot, and his mirrors, Ethan removed his seatbelt and sat forward, resting his forearms on the steering wheel. He looked past David, out the opposite window, and then again back into the street. “Hey, uh… where’d Ralston go?”
David fired off another text and looked up. Nodding toward the parking lot across the street, he said, “Better question, where’s Lamar?”
Both men were now gone. The only thing remaining from the vicious attack was a speckled trail of bloody mucus, which led out into the street and disappeared behind the vacant building nearest the driver’s side.
Setting his phone aside as it again beckoned for his attention, David also removed his seatbelt and sat forward as Ethan pulled slowly out into the intersection. “This can’t be happening; nothing about this make sense. Even Carly is scared and you know nothing freaks her out.”
Both men craning their heads to the left, Ethan pulled even with the edge of the abandoned building and stopped. They spotted a red trail that ran up onto the sidewalk and disappeared into the reassessed frontage of what was once a vintage clothing shop.
“They’re gone, and I really don’t see the point in trying to find—”
David shook his head. “No, we’re not making this run today. I’ll take full responsibility. I can’t tell you what all of this is or what it means, but I do know the people of this town are going to need us here today. We have to do what we can to make sure that everyone is safe from whatever this is.”
“Do we? Do we really have an obligation to the same people that—”
“Let’s just allow the past to stay in the past, at least for today. Let’s make sure everyone is safe and then tomorrow you can go back to feeling however you want about the residents of Summer Mill. But I’ll bet you may just have a change of heart.”
“You sure you want to deal with my sister? You gonna be the one to call her later?”
“Emma loves me,” David said. “I’ll bet she even gives me a raise.”
“A raise? I thought you knew my sister?”
“If she finds out I actually convinced you to do something to help someone other than yourself, she may just nominate me for a Nobel Prize, and I may just win.”
“I swear, I don’t know why I put up with your crap.”
“Because,” David said, “who else you gonna find to drag your sorry ass to work every day and then help you find your way home every night. You need me more than you need that weapon on your hip.”
Still looking out the window to the left, although unable to find where the two disappeared into t
he building, Ethan removed his foot from the brake. “Okay, I’ll let you take the fall for this. And you’re buying the first round later—”
A flash of red and then they were rocketed sideways, Ethan slamming headfirst into the roof and then falling violently back into his seat. David was forced against the door at his right, and as the armored truck moved up onto two wheels, he bit down hard into the meaty part of his tongue.
The jarring impact tore free the passenger side quarter-panel on the armored truck as the massive vehicle they’d collided with came into view. Engine two, one of only three emergency vehicles to service Summer Mill, rolled to a stop not more than thirty feet away.
Ethan cut the engine and paused as Engineer Stratton opened the driver’s door and stepped out into the street. He and David also exited their truck and began to make their way over to the damaged fire engine.
Ethan was familiar with every single man who wore a Summer Mill Fire Department uniform and his least favorite was the man he’d just cut off. Engineer Thomas Stratton, or Tommy to most anyone else, walked faster toward Ethan and David with each step. He swung his arms and pointed as the men drew near.
“Ethan Runner, I should take your head off. You have to be the dumbest—”
From out of the shadows afforded by the former antique shop came the men who’d disappeared moments earlier. The first and smaller of the two, tackled Tommy Stratton without warning and shoved him back-first onto the asphalt.
As Tommy struggled to get free, the second and much more massive of the two men came in on top. Tommy’s arms became a blur, moving side to side as he attempted to stave off their advances. He called out for help as the captain and firefighter moved in quickly on both sides, each grasping for one of the two attackers.
David started into a dead sprint heading toward the chaos as Ethan came in from behind. They both arrived as the men in blue fought to free their colleague from the bottom of the pile. The eldest of the city employees, Captain Faust, pulled at the larger of the two attackers. And upon losing his grip, the father of five stumbled backward and tripped over the curb.
Sliding into his spot, David reached out for the same attacker, although he was jerked from behind by Ethan. And as the two crazed men continued their assault, he turned to Ethan and threw up his hands. “What the hell are you doing?”
Pointing at the attack taking place three feet from where they stood, Ethan said, “What are YOU doing? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Ethan, damn it, we need to help.”
“It’s too late,” Ethan said, pointing toward the pile of bloodied bodies. “Tommy’s gone.”
Stepping to the right, David turned away as the smaller of the two attackers pressed his hand into his victim’s eye sockets and pulled free a majority of his face and nose. Tossing aside his trophy, the crazed individual lunged forward and took a massive bite out of Tommy’s throat.
Frozen in place, David hadn’t noticed that the firefighter had also moved away and circled in from behind. He was caught off guard as the younger man grabbed his weapon from his hip and pushed him to the side.
The firefighter stepped to the two men taking apart his friend, raised the weapon, and put one round into the back of each of their heads. He then walked calmly back to David, turned the weapon on its side, and handed it back. “They don’t die—they just keep coming and they kill everything in their path, unless you take out the head.”
17
Irritated now more than worried, Emma sat at the kitchen table and visualized what she could not see. The streets leading home were much less of a monumental catastrophe than she remembered from the plane. A few minor collisions near the airport and more foot traffic than usual were the only things to catch her eye. Although for over half the trip, she had stayed glued to her phone.
The two men who delivered her to the front door and were now stationed inside the black Cadillac Escalade in front of her home hadn’t spoken a word to one another or her for the entire twenty-five-minute trip. And that was just fine with her. She responded to each of Goodwin’s messages and before reaching her neighborhood, tried again to contact her brother. Two unanswered calls to his cell, and one to the remote office in Summer Mill, had her massaging her temples as they turned onto her street.
Pulling to a stop along the curb, less than thirty feet from her front door, the driver remained with the SUV as the passenger exited with Emma. Gun in hand, he carried the larger of her two bags and stayed within five paces, glancing left and right as if they were already under attack. He waited for her to open the door, entered first, and made a quick sweep through the interior.
Going back out the way he came, the neatly dressed thirty-something gentleman nodded as he moved back past her and spoke for the first and only time. “Mr. Goodwin will send you my number, text if you need something, and no matter what, do not leave your home or unlock your door for anyone but me.”
Not waiting for a response, he slid in through the passenger door and disappeared behind the blacked out windows.
. . .
Forty minutes had passed since walking through her front door, and her phone rang once again.
Unknown.
She glared at the screen and counted the rings. As Emma let the call go to voicemail, she looked away and caught the first few drops of rain as they dotted the bay window on the other side of the archway leading into the living room. Another sixty seconds and without the mystery caller leaving a message, she stood and walked back to her study.
Seated at her desk, she moved the mouse forward and woke the computer. As the screen came to life, the same error message taunted her for the fourth time since she arrived home. Problem establishing secure connection, upload failed.
Attempting to clear the message, she was unable to control her mouse as a dialogue box opened in the upper right corner of the monitor. Emma, we’ve remoted to your machine. I cannot wait another minute for those files. We’ll take it from here.
“Goodwin.”
Waiting for additional instruction, Emma began to type, although as she suspected he had control over her peripherals as well. Sliding the keyboard away and leaning back in her chair, an alert quickly pulled her back as the sound of another message rang through the external speakers. “I’ve disabled your access for the moment. Once the data is retrieved, we’ll get you back online. – MG”
“Disabled my access, is he kidding?”
Back to the kitchen and her phone, Emma pulled up Marcus Goodwin’s office number and with her right index finger, hovered above the call button. “There’s a first time for everything. I guess if he gave me the number, he would expect that I may someday use it.”
Changing her mind and setting the phone down, she walked into the living room, checked the time, and grabbed the television remote. Powering on, the first images to fill the forty-seven-inch screen caught her off guard. As of eight-fifteen, only three of the local news stations remained on the air.
The first channel she flipped by flashed images of soldiers attacking one another near the entrance to a military base. The area looked somewhat familiar, although with the amount of travel she’d logged over the last year, and the number of security checkpoints she’d run through, pinpointing the exact location would be impossible.
Settling on coverage of the events happening less than an hour away, her mouth dropped open as her mind tried to make sense of what was taking place at Sunny Acres. Along the greenbelt in front of the plush senior center, she witnessed a group of reporters tripping over one another as they attempted to pull away from a half dozen crazed senior citizens. As the over-seventy crowd pushed out into the parking area, they finally overtook the well-coiffed reporters.
The video feed skipped repeatedly just before the camera was dropped and three of the seniors fell onto the male reporter. As the group of four bodies skidded across the blacktop, it appeared as though the elderly residents were not just attacking the reporter, but actually trying to devour
him.
The first disturbed senior lunged forward and bit into the reporter just below his jawline. And in pulling back, the woman with failing panty hose came away with what looked like a mouthful of the reporter’s throat. As the station went to commercial, it appeared as though the others piling in from behind also had the same objective.
“What is this?”
Powering off the television, Emma tossed the remote back onto the couch and decided the call would be worth whatever penance Goodwin had in store. Through the archway and back into the kitchen, her phone rang before she even reached the table. Assuming it was the man who signed her checks, she was ready. “Okay, here we go.”
Before depressing the answer button, she noticed the Unknown Caller again attempting to make contact. She quickly ignored the call and before losing her nerve, dialed Marcus Goodwin’s office number.
