Occasionally, one of them would dart toward the door of a random business or office building, hoping to find someone, anyone, hiding out inside. Someone unwilling to abandon their family-owned business, and decided to stay behind, hidden. Maybe someone had been spared while the rest of the city was ravaged.
“Looks like we might be too late,” Alayna said, her voice distant.
“We can’t give up,” Clay replied.
“But if we could just rest for the night, we could get up tomorrow, maybe go back to the gas station for more supplies—”
“Wait,” Clay interrupted her.
“I just don’t think you’re seeing reason. Maybe it’s the nanites. Maybe it’s your wife, your daughter—”
“Wait, I said,” Clay growled. His eyes were on something in the distance. Blood pounded against his eardrums, nearly drowning out Alayna’s protests. He saw a flash, some movement—it almost felt like he was staring into a concentration of ants, all of them moving in a strange, organic way, as they tried clamber in.
“Shit. It’s them,” he said.
He ducked behind a building, holding his rifle high. “It’s the crazed.”
“Where?” Lane whispered, peering off into the distance. “I can’t see anything.”
“By that hotel. About ten blocks up.”
“How can you see that far?” Alayna was incredulous.
“Nanites, of course,” Lane answered. “What else?”
They waited for several moments, hearing only their labored breathing. Clay peeked around the corner at the modest hotel, with its four or five stories and large windows, each of which had been covered with curtains. Squinting, he saw that the crazed were trying to get into the hotel, meaning that . . .
“There must be people inside,” he said. “Survivors like us.”
“How many of them are there?” Lane asked.
“Several dozen, at least,” Clay said.
“Shit. We haven’t had that many since just after we left Carterville,” Alayna said. “And back then, we were more than just three people.”
“Back then, we didn’t have the neutralizer,” he corrected. “And I don’t think we really have a choice.” He leaned close to Alayna, looking almost menacing himself—like one of the crazed had taken over his body for a split second—and he whispered harshly, “My daughter might be in there. Let’s not forget why we’re out here.”
Alayna nodded, her movements almost imperceptible, and then took a dramatic step back, her skin almost green.
Time was running out.
Chapter 32
As they approached the hotel, Alayna and Lane were quiet, seeing what Clay had described to them in full detail now: the crazed, clambering over one another, tearing at the door.
“You think there’re people inside?” Alayna asked. “The ones they shipped down from Helen? It’s certainly big enough. It must have been used for—I mean. It would have been logical to house them up here.”
“Keep them all in one place. For safety,” Clay agreed. “We would have done the same, if we’d kept them all in Carterville.”
“How the hell are we going to get in?” Alayna asked, ducking behind a corner, and peering toward the horde. “They haven’t noticed us yet, which I guess is good. But it’s only a matter of time.”
Lane looked stunned. She hadn’t faced the crazed like this . . . ever. Adjusting the neutralizer, her eyes darted from Clay to Alayna, clearly showing what little confidence she had in herself.
“With the neutralizer, we won’t need to fight them the way we did before,” Clay said, taking it from Lane’s quivering hands.
Lane nodded, pressing her lips together and swiping her hair behind her ears. It was greasy, a shiny black in the growing darkness. “Shit. Okay. So, you’re going to just go up to them and . . . obliterate the fuckers?”
“I suppose so.” Clay turned his eyes to the hotel. He no longer knew what fear felt like. “Wait here.”
He stepped out of their shadowy hiding spot and charged ahead, pointing the neutralizer at the crazed, squeezing the trigger rapidly. As he got closer, he began to swing it from side to side, as if fanning the invisible death rays across the swarm. Then, one by one, the crazed began to fall. First, dropping to their knees, then face planting on the pavement. They died without gunfire or blood spatter. In a way, he felt he was honoring the memory of their previous existence—ensuring they didn’t end as gore plastered across the hotel windows.
But after a dozen or so shots, a red light started blinking. As he was nearly upon the diminishing mob, he looked down at the device, confused, his mouth agape.
“The fuck?” he wailed, shaking the neutralizer. He continued to squeeze the trigger—again and again—still knocking the crazed down, but at a much slower rate.
“Hey! Clay!” Lane cried, using her hands as a megaphone.
Clay whipped around. Why on Earth was she calling him now? Was she oblivious to the racket she was making?
“You need to let it recharge longer between each use!” she yelled.
Clay was filled with sudden anxiety. Why the fuck hadn’t she told him that to begin with? Jesus. He’d wanted to give her more credit, but it was becoming more difficult with each passing moment.
Frustration brimming, Clay began to mash the trigger more ferociously, not caring what Lane said. He watched as the crazed continued to fall, a heap of the dead near the steps of the hotel. Some of the crazed had become aware of his presence and had turned their growling heads toward him, their eyes flashing with hunger.
“Hey,” they seemed to say to one another, almost gossiping. “Let’s just eat him, instead!”
It was as if they’d just decided on a different restaurant and given up on their current reservation. The pack began to advance toward Clay, making his stomach clench. The device worked exactly three more times, destroying two men in matching blue sweaters and an older, haggard-looking woman, with straggly blonde hair.
And then, the neutralizer stopped. No lights, no hum. Just a useless piece of technological junk in his hand.
“FUCK!” he yelled, whipping it across his shoulders and reaching for his gun. He began to fire at their heads, but he couldn’t shoot fast enough. Dozens of them were still scrambling toward him; having completely abandoned their attack on the hotel. Clay could almost feel their gnawing, browning teeth on his arms, could almost sense what it would be like to transition, fully, into a monster.
He was almost there, anyway.
Suddenly, he heard the roar of gunfire echoing in from behind him. He saw Alayna’s slim silhouette approaching, her gun drawn. She charged at the swarm, blasting away, disembodying the crazed nearly as fast as her running legs could stretch. She looked athletic, like a tiger barreling toward her prey.
Clay continued to shoot as well, causing various shades of blood to paint the side of the hotel. Lane huddled somewhere behind them, unarmed and out of sight.
After a small eternity, Clay and Alayna came together near the center of their handiwork, dead crazed at their feet. They still clung to their guns, hands numb from firing. Neither spoke for several moments. Men and women were stretched over one another, becoming human again in death.
“Son of a bitch. I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Alayna gasped, slinging her gun over her shoulder.
“I thought the neutralizer would make this easier,” Clay said.
“That recharging bullshit?” Alayna said, chortling slightly. “Yeah. I didn’t expect that.”
“Can’t blame her, I guess. She didn’t know how rough it would be out here.”
Alayna didn’t reply. They heard Lane trotting up behind them, panting, clearly appalled at the blood and murder before her.
“Jesus,” she gasped raggedly. “This is a nightmare.”
The words were so understated that Clay had to force himself not to laugh. But death had become almost comical, now that he’d grown so accustomed to it. He supposed you could get used to anyt
hing. Even the apocalypse.
Chapter 33
Alayna stepped forward with a burst of renewed energy, planting a boot squarely mid-pane of the entry door panel. Clay whistled, impressed, as the glass shattered, revealing the maroon-colored carpet of the hotel lobby and a winding staircase beyond. It was a once-gorgeous place—a destination for those coming to Dearing, and had probably been built over a hundred years before.
“Let’s go inside, shall we?” Alayna said, walking away from the pile of corpses. “I don’t want to stick around for one of them to wake up again. Or for the smell to attract their friends.” She stepped through the now ventilated entrance.
As Clay reached the door, he found Alayna standing frozen just inside the lobby. He slipped his rifle from his shoulder. He held it at the ready as stepped across the threshold. Once inside, he scanned the immediate area, taking in the surroundings.
“The survivors were here, all right,” Alayna said, her voice a stark contrast to the solitude of the abandoned hotel. “But I don’t think they’re here anymore.”
At the far side of the lobby was an auditorium and what appeared to be the dining room. Each was filled with countless mattresses and cots, with single sheets and sad-looking, lumpy pillows. Food waste, in the form of wrappers and old chip bags, littered the interior. Holding his breath, Clay tried to listen into the depths of the hotel—hoping to get a sense of whether there were people upstairs. But he heard nothing.
Alayna and Lane joined him, leaning heavily against the staircase rail. Blood was beginning to trail down Alayna’s left cheek, a departing gift from the crazed.
“So they were here?” she asked hoarsely. “Do you think they left in a hurry?”
“It would seem so. Everything seems to be in a rush these days.” He entered the auditorium, walking between the rows of cots. Would he recognize Maia’s bunk if he saw it? Would she leave anything behind—anything he would know?
It had been so long since he’d seen her, since he’d held her. A depressing thought suddenly overwhelmed him: would he even know her face if he saw it?
“We should search the entire property. Don’t you think?” Alayna said from the doorway. “I don’t think we should assume anything from this one empty room. They certainly could have used the rest of the hotel.”
“Sure,” Clay said, nodding slowly. “But I think we should stick together. For all we know, one of the crazed might have gotten in. They could be hiding anywhere.” His glanced at Lane, as an image—perhaps a premonition—appeared in his mind. Popping into a room, unaccustomed to the fighting and blood of this post-apocalyptic world, she’d find a crazed latched on her neck in no time. She’d fall to her knees immediately, her crimson blood becoming a horrific accent on the white walls.
Jesus. No. After all they’d been through, he couldn’t allow it to happen. Not like that. He had to protect them.
“Up the stairs, then?” Alayna asked, pulling him from his reverie. She gripped the staircase railing and bounded up the steps. “This place gives me the creeps. The sooner we know what happened here, the sooner we can move on.”
Clay and Lane joined her on the second floor landing, looking up and down the hallway. The carpet was old-fashioned, patterned, as if it had been styled for the turn of the 19th century. Clay imagined that Maia would have been fascinated with it, probably even thinking that when all this was over, she’d want her bedroom changed. She’d always liked odd, old-fashioned things, things that reeked of a time past, a time she hadn’t known. She’d poured through old movies as a younger girl, things like Casablanca and An American in Paris.
Clay had teased her at the time, for not liking “normal things.” But he’d actually loved this about her, telling Alayna often that his daughter was “going somewhere, someday.” That she would find more out of life than he had, as a simple man with a basic job in a quiet town.
He wanted more for her.
Alayna opened the first room. “Nothing in here. Although it does appear that they were sleeping up here, too. Looks lived-in. More food wrappers left behind.”
“Anything to eat?” Lane asked.
“Just packaging, mostly.”
Clay peeked in. The blankets were stripped to the base of the bed, showing that whomever had slept there hadn’t liked to tidy up. Or maybe they’d left in a hurry.
“It must have been horrible, to come all the way here and think you were safe,” Lane said.
Clay frowned, moving on and checking other rooms on the floor. Each was similar, with sheets stripped to the ground, as if they’d left in a hurry—flinging themselves from bed.
“Third floor, then,” Alayna sounded less and less hopeful. “We aren’t going to give up till the whole place is checked.” She put a hand on Clay’s back, showing a bit of compassion—despite feeling so disgruntled toward him earlier. “We have to keep fighting for this. And we will, Clay. For your daughter. And for Megan.”
Lane nodded behind her, her jaw clenched tight. “No giving up.”
“Worst case, we found shelter for the night,” Clay said, taking to the steps. “A silver lining, if nothing else.”
But his heart was growing heavy. His fists clenched, nails digging deeper into his skin, nearly drawing blood, vengeance in his eyes.
Chapter 34
The third floor offered nothing. Just more empty rooms, more comforters tossed back, with trash in the wastebaskets and empty water bottles tossed into corners. For a time, the people who’d stayed there, the people who had found safety there, had at least had food, water, and shelter.
“Why on Earth did they leave such a good situation?” Alayna asked. “And it’s pretty clear that the crazed didn’t get in. I mean. There’d be evidence of that. We’d see the blood. Possibly body parts riddled with bullet holes.”
Clay nodded his head in agreement. They hadn’t found a single sign of struggle, nothing to indicate that people had died in the hotel.
“It’s confusing,” Clay said. “Maybe they were taken up to Earlton after all, or maybe someplace else?”
“So, just another dead end,” Lane whispered.
“For every dead end we find, we’ll always find another trail,” Alayna said, her eyes hopeful as she looked up at Clay. “We have one more floor to check, and then we can rest. Regroup. Okay?”
“Agreed,” Clay said as he began to climb to the fourth floor.
The top floor was more of the same, until they reached the end of the hallway furthest from the staircase. There, the door was covered over with dark paneling and screwed to the wall, almost hiding the fact that there was a door there at all.
Clay ran his hand across the wood, feeling the rough edges against his skin. “What the hell are they hiding behind here?” he asked.
“I don’t know if we should go in,” Lane said. “I mean, if everyone bugged out because of whatever’s behind that door . . . I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
But Clay had already begun to rip the paneling from the wall with his now superhuman strength. With three quick jerks, the panel broke free and clattered to the floor. He shoved it aside with his foot before gripping the now exposed doorknob. Exhaling sharply, he twisted the handle and flung the door open.
His jaw dropped.
The room was laid out much like the others: with a four-poster bed, a large wardrobe, and piles of debris and other foodstuff along the walls. But lying on the filthy mattress, was a teenage boy—around fifteen or sixteen—tied to the bedposts. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. He was extremely thin, bones poking from his t-shirt, his arms stretched above his head. A putrid, urine scent met Clay’s nose—the boy had soiled himself. Darkness stained his crotch area and the sheets, which had also been sweated through.
“Jesus Christ,” Alayna whispered. She brought her hand to her mouth, almost unable to proceed.
Clay stepped in, concern on his face. Snot and mucus ran in thick trails from his nose to his mouth, and his eyes were closed. He w
as either sleeping, unconscious, or dead. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, nearly to his nostrils.
In that moment, Clay understood: this boy was a monster, a crazed. He’d been locked away because of his altered state. Perhaps he’d been someone’s beloved son. Maybe he’d been a good brother, a kind friend. Clay swung his rifle around, pointing it at the boy’s temple.
He needed to put him out of his misery. Now, and without prejudice. Standing there, as the seconds ticked away, he remembered all the people he’d seen go wild in the weeks since the outbreak. He should have shot them immediately as well, so as not to infect the others. He should have ended this the very day the outbreak had begun inside of his own jail cell. If only he’d listened to the colonel.
He could have saved the world with a single shot.
Aiming at the boy—the crazed monster—Clay took a deep breath, ready to fire.
“Wait!” Lane cried out, shoving past Alayna. Suddenly, she wasn’t the meek woman she’d been downstairs. She put herself between the barrel of the gun and the rail-thin boy. “Wait. I think we should check and make sure he’s actually infected.”
“Can’t you see it?” Clay asked, reacquiring his target. He didn’t realize he was panicking. His eyes were manic, wild. “I need to put it down, now. It needs to leave this world.”
“No,” Lane insisted. “Not. Until. We. Check. Him.”
Suddenly, the boy’s eyes flickered open. Clay raised his rifle. The boy blinked once, then twice, revealing bloodshot, human, eyes.
“Help,” the boy rasped through cracked lips. “Please. Help me.”
Clay’s heart nearly skipped a beat, and he lowered his rifle. He blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Was he imagining it?
Lane hurried to the boy. Clay slung his rifle over his shoulder and leaned heavily against the bedpost. The boy’s panic was muted by his appalling condition, and his words were almost dreamy.
“What happened to you?” Alayna asked him, not daring to touch him. She stood a foot away, her eyes wide.
“I—I don’t—” he stuttered. “I—I—can’t—”
Detour: Book Two of the Humanity's Edge Trilogy Page 12
