The Remaining

by D. J. Molles

  He tried to pull his arms in front of him to brace his fall, but the weight of his backpack held them back. He felt his face slam concrete and tasted blood and grit, and he wasn’t sure where it was coming from. He was only glad he hadn’t blacked out.

  He staggered to his feet, feeling like it took him ages to accomplish this simple task, and saw Angela and the kids, already sprinting through the entrance to Timber Creek. Dirt and concrete chunks exploded around him and Lee realized that he was still being shot at.

  He sprinted for the complex’s entrance, holding the backpack with one hand and digging in the pockets with the other. Rifle and pistol fire continued to track him as he ran, chewing up the ground and pinging off the metal gate. The only thought in his mind cycled in a tight loop: Get the GPS! Get the GPS! Get the GPS!

  “Lee!”

  The scream broke his attention. He looked up and saw that Angela and the kids were now running back toward him. He felt his fingers touch the GPS and grabbed it in an iron grip and simultaneously realized why Angela and the kids were running back toward him.

  Drawn by the loud noises, three infected were sprinting straight for them.

  Lee didn’t have time to plan and didn’t have much in the way of weapons, so he simply acted on the first thing that popped into his head. He pulled the GPS out of his backpack and shoved it into his cargo pocket as he charged straight at the approaching infected. Previously fixated on Angela and the two children, the infected shifted their attention to Lee.

  The first attacker caught Lee’s backpack in the face as Lee swung it like a flail. The hit knocked the infected off its feet, but it grabbed the backpack on the way down and Lee let him have it. As the next infected approached, Lee took two big sprinting steps and jumped, slamming both feet into the creature’s chest. The two of them tumbled to the ground, a few feet apart. As Lee tried to get to his feet, he saw Angela and the kids taking advantage of his distraction and flanking around, heading back into the condo complex.

  The third infected reached Lee before he could react and threw him back to the ground. The thing was fat and blood was pouring from its mouth. Lee was on his back looking up at it as it screeched at him. He thrust up with one hand, catching the thing around its flabby neck, his only concern to keep it from biting at him. With his other hand he reached down to his boot and yanked out a small thrust dagger he kept there—the only weapon Lee had left.

  The fat infected swung wildly at him, grabbing a fistful of Lee’s face and sinking in its dirty fingernails. Lee screamed in rage and pain and slammed the thrust dagger into the infected’s temple, causing it to instantly go limp.

  Lee shoved the dead body off of him. Both of the other infected were now on their feet again. Lee yanked at his dagger, still embedded in the side of the fat infected’s skull, but it would not budge. Lee left it and started running in the last direction he’d seen Angela and the kids headed. Breath came to him in ragged gasps, his legs felt numb as they flew across the concrete, and Lee could sense the instability in his sprint and feared his legs might give out before he made it to safety.

  He glanced behind him and saw several armed gunmen pouring through the front gate, rifles and pistols flashing, but the noise just sounded like muted thumps to Lee. One of the remaining infected’s heads split open and it tumbled to the ground. The other froze in place, unsure whether to pursue Lee or attack the gunmen.

  Lee faced back around and found himself running straight for the door of a ground floor condo. He didn’t think about it, though in the back of his mind he knew it wasn’t the best decision to go into a confined space when he was being pursued. He hit the door with his shoulder and it shattered open. Lee felt a spiking pain through his right arm as he stumbled into the condo and immediately regretted his decision.

  The room he found himself in was completely black. The windows must have been boarded up by a conscientious condo owner, and the light that pushed through the open door only lit up a small square of the room.

  But he couldn’t go back.

  Blindly, he kept moving straight ahead, feeling in front of him with his arms. He found a long, narrow hallway, passed a few bedroom doors, felt his boots step on something soft halfway down the hall, but didn’t stop to try and see what it was. He made it to a door at the end of the hall and fumbled for the doorknob.

  Behind him, he heard shouts at the front door.

  He pushed through the darkness and entered this last room. Again, he was met with pure, inky blackness. He shut the door behind him and locked it. Then he put his hand out to the right wall and started feeling around. There had to be a window in this room. Please, God, let there be a window.

  Lee pushed over furniture, knocked what he thought were pictures off of the walls, and tipped over a chair before finally finding a window. Without hesitation he reared back and put a boot through the glass. It shattered easily, but the plywood on the other side did not. Lee knew it was his only option. This wasn’t a prison. He could get out. It would just take some effort. He would not die, gunned down by some fucking raiders in a dark, dead back bedroom of some looted condominium. Not after all the things he had already survived.

  He kicked again at the plywood, this time feeling some slight give. He could hear shouts coming from inside the condo now. Surely they heard him crashing through the darkness and pounding at the window. He had only seconds left before they caught up with him. He kept slamming his foot into the plywood, feeling it rattle just a little more each time until finally he saw a hint of daylight creeping through the lower left-hand corner of the window.

  One more kick and the corner of the plywood came loose. For a brief flash as the plywood swung back, Lee saw grass on the other side. This time he put his hands to the plywood and pushed as hard as he could, feeling a few more nails come out of the window frame.

  There was a loud boom at the bedroom door. “He’s in here! He’s in here!” someone shouted. Lee knew the bedroom door wouldn’t last long. He pushed the plywood and saw about a foot of daylight through the jagged teeth of the nails that still poked through the plywood. Lee knew it was going to be painful, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Pain was better than death. Lee gave the plywood covering one last shove and put his head through. As soon as his hand let go of the plywood, it swung back into place and Lee felt the nails gouge into his skin. He let out a yell, less because of the immediate pain and more because he knew it was about to hurt so much more.

  With the nails already embedded in his skin, Lee thrust his shoulders through the opening, felt the sharp points rip through skin and muscle, clawing down his back. He screamed until his breath ran out and he couldn’t draw another. He planted both his hands on the sides of the outside wall and pushed with everything he had.

  The nails were caught on his belt.

  Through the blinding pain, Lee twisted, each movement he made working the nails deeper into his flesh. He grabbed the very corner of the plywood and yanked it out as hard as he possibly could. His belt came free of the snag and he fell, the plywood slamming the nails into the side of his left leg, but his downward momentum didn’t allow him to stop. The metal spikes sheared right through his flesh and Lee landed in a heap on the ground, felt the grass on his face.

  Bullets punched through the plywood covering.

  Lee didn’t think they would follow him through the window. They would go out and around, which gave him a few precious seconds to escape. He tried to haul himself to his feet but found his back in such excruciating pain that he couldn’t complete the movement. On hands and knees, he scrambled forward, trying to see where he was going.

  Pain blurred his vision and made the sun appear white-hot, and everything touched by it was blindingly bright.

  The only easy day was yesterday.

  Lee almost laughed at himself. Get the fuck up, Lee! Get off the fucking ground!

  “There he is!”

  Lee brought one leg up, the stretch of his skin spreading the deep lacerations all ove
r his body and causing another wave of intense pain. He managed to get a foot up and knelt on one knee, supporting his body with a hand on the ground. He looked behind him.

  Some guy in a black sleeveless T-shirt was running at him, holding an AR-15. “It’s him! It’s the guy!” Around the corner of the condominium complex, two more gunmen appeared. Lee knew he couldn’t outrun them. He looked around for anything he might use as a weapon. A stick, a sharp piece of glass, maybe a two-by-four if he was lucky. He knew they would kill him if he fought, but he also knew that he wasn’t going to let them win. In his current state of mind, his imminent death simply seemed… regrettable.

  Lee couldn’t find anything to use, so he focused on the first approaching gunman and decided if the man didn’t cap him by the time he got within arm’s reach, he would play the wounded captive, then he would seize the man’s head and plant his thumbs into both of his eye sockets, rip out the eyes, and, with enough force, gouge through to the brain. Then he would use the man’s rifle to take out the remaining gunmen.

  But as the man and his comrades approached Lee, a very strange thing happened.

  They burst into flames. The blast of heat nearly knocked Lee back onto the ground. The sound of their screaming was even enough to make Lee’s stomach turn as they stumbled around madly and collapsed on the ground in writhing heaps of flame. But over their screams, Lee heard someone call out his name, a voice he didn’t recognize.

  “Lee! Run!”

  Lee didn’t need any encouragement. The momentary reprieve from certain death boosted him enough to get to his feet and start staggering toward the nearest cover: jagged remains of a condo building, which was now just a few charred brick walls, but hopefully enough to stop a bullet and give Lee a long enough moment to assess his situation and perhaps come up with a plan to get himself out of there.

  What about Angela and Abby and Sam? Lee had to survive first before he could worry about the others. And who was it who had called to him? It had been a man’s voice. Lee made it to a waist-high brick wall and clambered over. He fell onto his back on the other side, found that too painful, and rolled onto his side. He looked around, didn’t see anyone. Who the hell had called to him? And where were Angela and the kids?

  He began processing what was happening around him. Nearby to him, he was hearing some sporadic pistol fire. It wasn’t rapid, but it was close. It was also a smaller caliber. Farther away, Lee could hear the crack of more powerful weapons, probably rifles. The two appeared to be exchanging gunfire. Lee also noted that none of the gunfire seemed to be directed at his position.

  He leaned up and peered over the top of the brick wall.

  He was looking down a wide corridor that had once been a parking lot for the condos. On either side of the long parking lot were what remained of the rectangular two-story condos. There was a single condo building between Lee’s position and the condo he’d been trapped in. He could see the window he’d snaked out of and it faced the parking lot. In the darkness of the condo, he’d become disoriented and hadn’t realized what direction he’d been facing.

  At the corner of the condominium building he’d just escaped from, four bodies were still burning, though they’d stopped rolling around. Behind them, Lee could see a group of men huddled behind a burned-out SUV, taking pot shots at another building across the parking lot and closer to Lee’s position.

  Lee followed their fire and saw the muzzle flashes coming from the ground floor of one of the condos facing the parking lot. Then Lee watched as a young man with a red bandanna covering his face leaned out of the front door of the condo and hurled a bottle with a flaming tail. The bottle arced high and landed with a splash of fire, just on top of the SUV the gunmen were using for cover. The splash of flaming liquid rained down on the gunmen taking cover there and they immediately began trying to put themselves out.

  The young man screamed something at whoever else was inside the condo and began sprinting for Lee’s position. A second later, he was followed by Angela, Abby, Sam, and a second young man, also with a bandanna covering his face, this one blue. They moved together in a mass, undisciplined and panicked. The young man with the blue bandanna held a black revolver in one hand, what looked to Lee like an old .38 or .357 police-issue revolver. He took pot shots as he ran, the rounds flying wildly downrange and impacting nowhere near his intended targets.

  Red Bandanna vaulted over the wall and pulled Sam and then Abby over. Angela and Blue Bandanna followed.

  As soon as they saw him, Sam and Abby both exclaimed in unison, “Captain! We thought you were dead!”

  “No time for reunions!” Red grabbed Lee by the arm and hauled him up to his feet. “We need to get the fuck out of here!”

  Lee craned his neck back at the burning wreckage. “How many more?”

  “We counted ten coming in,” Blue spoke up as he pushed the kids toward the back of the complex. “I think we got six or seven of ’em.”

  The group made quickly for the back of the complex. Lee observed that the entire complex appeared to be enclosed with the same wrought-iron fencing as the front was. It was about ten feet tall with spikes on top and Lee wasn’t sure whether these kids expected him to climb it or not, but in his current condition, he thought he might disappoint them.

  They hit the fence and started running along it. All six of them were out of breath when Lee saw what they were looking for. A section of the fence had been pulled away and there was an obvious footpath cutting through the brush on the other side. The two men in bandannas didn’t bother to explain. They moved the group single file down the footpath, Lee and Red taking point.

  Lee moved the best he could, but each step sent raking pain down his back and legs. The deep lacerations covered so much of his skin that he couldn’t find a way to move that didn’t feel like it was stretching the wounds apart. Everything began to feel alternately hot, then cold. He could feel the back of his shirt and pants beginning to cling to his skin, soaked with his blood. He was pretty sure he hadn’t lost enough blood to cause him to pass out, but the pain was making him feel light-headed.

  The two young men in bandannas—both perhaps in their early twenties—didn’t appear very cautious, and Lee got the impression that they were more or less familiar with this territory and felt comfortable that it contained no threats. This made Lee feel only slightly better. It was obvious to him that the two of them weren’t well trained, and their eagerness to put ground between the gunmen and themselves might be making them move faster than was prudent.

  The footpath broke from thick brush into moderate woods and the group swung a hard right. The woods almost instantly cleared into what Lee thought was an old service road beneath some power lines. At the edge of the woods, there was a beat-up white pickup truck that Lee thought looked like it belonged in the desert with a couple Iraqi militants sitting in the back.

  As soon as the group cleared the woods, an older man stepped out of the driver’s side of the pickup with a pump shotgun in one hand. He held up a hand and they stopped moving toward the pickup. Lee got the distinct feeling that this man was in control.

  “What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

  Red let go of Lee and he and Blue approached the older man, speaking in low tones, though Lee could still hear what they were saying. As he listened, he watched some sparkling spots appear at the corners of his vision and he bent over, trying to keep blood in his brain and keep thinking clearly.

  “Milo’s guys attacked them. We couldn’t just leave them.”

  The older guy stared at Lee while he listened.

  Red hung his head a bit. “I mean… we don’t have to take them back or anything, but we just couldn’t leave them out there. You know what Milo does to women and children. And the dude’s pretty fucked up, too.”

  The old man shook his head and spoke in a harsh whisper. “This is the third time you’ve put me in this position. We can’t care for these people! We can barely take care of our own!” He stepped forward and
addressed Lee and his group. “Look, folks… my boys didn’t want to see you guys die, so they risked their lives to save you. However, unfortunately, we can’t take you back with us.”

  Lee just looked at the older man. His tongue was stiff and dry and his scalp was tingling.

  Angela tried to speak up. “But—”

  “Ma’am, we have no room for newcomers. We’re overcrowded as it is, and we certainly don’t have the supplies to take care of you. We’re barely getting by ourselves. I know it sounds harsh, but I have to think of my group first. Please understand—we would help if we could, but we can’t.”

  The older man turned back toward the pickup truck and spoke through clenched teeth. “Give them your canteens and whatever food we brought.”

  Lee cleared his throat and fought to think clearly. “How many people do you have in your group?”

  The older man stopped and turned. He eyed Lee up and down, looking unsure. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Are you the leader of the group?” Lee countered.

  The man crossed his arms. “I speak for him.”

  Lee smiled weakly. “I’m pretty sure he’ll want to meet me.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The Survivors

  The older man just laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he won’t.”

  Lee laughed along with him, not because anything was funny, but because it was the exact opposite of what the older man was expecting. “You always send your boys out to tangle with gangs of raiders with nothing but an eighties police-issue revolver and a couple of Molotov cocktails?”

  The man’s laughing tapered off and he got serious. “We have plenty of weapons. Don’t think we’re not well defended.”

  “Hmm.” Lee looked thoughtful. He continued to speak, thinking in the back of his mind that he hoped his words were making sense. “Of course you would say that to me. I’m an outsider and you don’t want to let on that ten guys with assault rifles could take over your entire operation. Don’t worry, that’s not us. But what do you have back at the base? A few shotguns? A few hunting rifles? Mix-and-match ammunition? Maybe a couple hundred rounds total?”