by Maxey, Phil
Joel nodded, and left, walking swiftly up the stairs and trying each door until he found another set of stairs, which he jogged up. At the top, he pushed open the rickety door, and walked into a shadow-infested space with a triangular shaped room. A number of boxes and chests lay covered in dust and webs. He quickly searched until he found the metal tool box, flipping its lid, then unlatched the only window and leaned out, looking up at the ten-foot high mast. Even his former self that could bench press two-seventy would have had a problem with the weight of the antenna, but he knew with his increased strength it wouldn’t be a problem.
He looked at what tools would be needed, grabbed them from the box, and stepped out onto the ledge. From this height he was able to see most of the rest of the town, including the school and even Bill’s place further down the valley. He set about loosening the bolts and brackets that held the mast in place.
After a short while he was holding the mast in both hands and lowering it down to the ledge. He glanced back out across the valley and noticed something different. Balancing the mast against the roof, he strained his eyes into the distance. A number of dark streaks were visible on the desert floor, seemingly veering in the same direction. He kept watching, and then noticed another darkened patch of ground, this one coming in from the north. From the distance he was, they looked static, but he was sure they weren’t there when he started taking the mast down some twenty minutes earlier. He then realized all of the lines in the desert were moving towards one point. Bill’s.
He quickly moved inside and ran down the attic stairs, then down the first floor stairs to the foyer. The boxes were gone, and the room was empty of people. He glanced through a gap in the boards on the windows, and the street outside was empty apart from his own car, and Claire’s truck.
“Anyone still here?”
“I am!” shouted Claire from the kitchen.
He quickly moved through the diner and into the kitchen. A noise came from the cold room.
“In here, Joel,” said Claire.
He walked past the kitchen appliances and into the icy air of the five-by-five space with silver walls and metal shelves. Claire was at the far end, trying to reach something behind a large container.
“We need to contact Bill.”
“Can you give me a hand with this, I dropped my car keys down the back of this thing and I can’t reach them.”
Joel moved quickly across the room and leaned down. He had to strain a little, but his fingertips just got enough purchase to lift them into his palm. “We need to contact—”
He heard the blast before he felt his shirt become sticky and hot. He looked down at his jacket. Blood was already starting to pour from small holes in it. As he turned around, a thunderous boom heralded the closing of the door, locking him inside.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marina sat at the desk in the basement, looking at frozen-in-time screenshots from websites which were heralding the end of the world.
“End of times?” said one, while another on a more positive note talked about what scientists around the world were trying to do, to stop the strange epidemic that was turning people cannibalistic.
In the news photos, buildings were on fire, and vamps roamed the streets. Cities seemed to be the worst hit, or rather wherever there was the highest concentration of people.
Behind her, Jess was playing another of the board games with Evan, while Bill was somewhere else, no doubt his head in a dusty volume, researching ancient civilizations.
She pushed her arms up high and stretched, wondering if she should get another cup of coffee, when the monitor in front of her wobbled. She reached forward and grabbed the top corner of it, steadying it, then clicked on the mouse again.
She scrolled down pages of more saved news websites, wondering what the same locations in the images looked like now. Her mind flicked back to a month earlier when she had left her sister’s. Janet had pleaded with her to stay, but things were out of control in Denver. She hadn’t heard from Russell in weeks, due to the lines of communication being down, so she packed up the car when it seemed the streets were empty, and headed back home to LA. She thought about the early days on the road and shuddered. She didn’t start out with any weapons. She had always been against them, despite Russell’s insistence of having one in the house, but more than once she and Jess had a close call, so when she almost ran over the body of some dead police officers, she took what she could from the corpses.
As memories piled through her mind, she vaguely picked up her daughter’s frustration of not being able to keep her warrior figure upright on the game board.
Her monitor wobbled again, this time its base shifting an inch to the right.
“Agh! I can’t get any of them to stand up now!” said Jess.
The boards and beams that made up the old walls started to creak all around her, and as Marina turned her head expecting to see Bill come down the stairs, the different events started to coalesce in her mind, forming one focused idea.
Get out.
As she went to stand, the ground below her feet fell away, while the air filled with an explosion of noise, rocks, and her daughter’s screams.
Swinging around, she lunged forward as the contents of the basement started to collapse into an abyss.
Evan and Jess desperately tried to scramble clear, but the rugs, sofa, tables, bookshelves, and everything else crushed together and, like an ocean liner that had just slipped beneath the waves, started to drag both of them into the ground.
Evan was the closest to Marina, and she flung her hand out to him. “Grab hold of Jessica! And me!” she shouted, as the sounds of cracking and snapping overlapped with crashing noises as what was once above ground fell into the gaping hole.
“I can’t reach her!” shouted Evan as Jess slipped lower, her hands trying to grab hold of the bottom of the sofa Evan was balancing on.
Marina looked at the scene in front of her, her mind trying to find a solution which didn’t involve her diving to grab her daughter, and then all of them, including Evan, disappearing into the hole.
The sofa dropped another foot taking Jess with it, and she screamed.
Despite the obvious outcome, Marina let go of the bookshelf she was clinging to and went to dive forward to claim her child when she felt a presence at her side, and a rope fell into the hole.
“Grab the rope, Jess!” shouted Bill from the bottom of the stairs.
Jess looked up at her mother, her knuckles white with how tight she was clinging to the sofa, which was now almost completely swallowed by the dark pit.
“Come on, baby, grab the rope with your other hand, you can let go, please! Do it for me!”
Evan grabbed the rope and swung it closer to Jess. “Come on, Jess, you can do it!”
As she reached out and grabbed it, a scuffling and scraping sound came from the newly formed vertical tunnel.
Bill looked at Marina. “They’re coming, we have to get out of here!”
She jumped across the edge of the hole to where Bill was, and with him, started pulling on the rope. Lamps, books, and other items fell as the anger of what was in the hole increased in volume.
Evan grabbed the top of the sofa and pulled himself up and out, then quickly lent his effort to the desperate attempts to rescue Jess.
“Almost there, Jess, just hold on!” shouted Marina between grunts as she strained every fiber of muscle to help her daughter escape.
Evan looked down, his eyes opening wide as to what he saw climbing up the walls of the tunnel. Shadows which clawed and crept, moved ever closer to Jessica. He redoubled his efforts and with one huge haul, yanked Jess out and onto what was left of the basement floor.
Marina swept her up and immediately charged up the stairs, while Evan leaned across and plucked a laptop off one of the desks, as well as some small black boxes and wires.
“Come on!” shouted Bill.
They all ran onto the stairs, Evan slamming the door behind him, then ran up
them. When he got to the top Bill pushed keys into his hand. “Get the truck started!” Evan nodded and ran outside to where Marina and Jess were standing, both looking nervously at the ground.
Splintering and crashing noises came from the basement, and the very house around them seemed to sway on its supports.
Jess clung to her mother, as the ground shuddered. “We have to go!” shouted Marina to whoever would listen.
The sound of an engine starting came from the side of the house, and she and Jess ran in that direction, then stopped when a new-looking four door pickup, its back covered with a large tarpaulin, pulled up in front of them.
“Get in!” shouted Evan.
Marina ran to the rear door, opened it, and Jess jumped in first, then herself. She looked back at the house. “What’s he doing in there?”
“It’s okay, we planned for this day.”
An almighty crash came from the rear of the property and the house visibly sunk into the ground on one side.
“Shit!” Evan unbuckled his belt and went to get out, when Bill ran out the front door and down the wooden steps, suitcases in both hands, and more bags under his arms.
The windows of the old property shattered, sending glass falling to the ground. Evan leaned over and pushed the passenger’s door open and Bill climbed in. Evan slammed down on the gas pedal and they quickly moved along a small track, and onto the main road.
As they drove away, towards the school, Bill looked back at his home of forty years collapsing into a plume of dust.
*****
Jim placed his hand on the window frame of one of the ground floor classrooms of the school. It felt solid.
Should hold.
The sound of a vehicle pulling up came from outside. He ran past the students’ tables and seats, into the hallway, and then towards the main entrance. When he saw Claire coming through the doors, he noticed her face was redder than usual.
He looked behind her. “Where’s Joel?”
“He’s still taking the mast down, he said he won’t be too long.”
Reg appeared behind Jim. “I’ll help you get your supplies inside,” he said to Claire as she put a suitcase down on the smooth floor.
Kelly then appeared, running down the nearby stairs, but stopped on seeing Jim was there with her grandmother. She approached Claire slowly. “Everything go okay?”
“Yup,” said Claire. She looked back at her truck parked outside. “Got the rest of our things, we should get them inside.”
Kelly nodded, keeping her head down as she walked past the former sheriff.
Jim couldn’t help but feel there was something not being said, but he couldn’t understand what. He walked through the double doors and out to Claire’s vehicle, when the sound of another engine, this one roaring, came from the nearby road and a smart-looking pickup appeared, skidding to a stop just behind Claire’s.
Bill immediately got out, as Evan seemed to be taking a moment in the driver’s seat.
“They got the house, Jim,” said Bill as he dropped a suitcase onto the concrete slabs.
“What do you mean they got the house?” said Jim, stepping closer to his old friend.
“Tunneled right underneath it, we only just managed to get out. Lucky we think ahead.”
Marina and Jess got out of the rear of the pickup. “Where’s Joel?” said Marina.
“Still at the hotel, getting a radio mast to give us better communication,” said Jim.
She nodded and looked at the ground, then looked back at Bill. “Do you want that stuff—” She gestured towards the back of the pickup. “— Inside?”
“Yes.”
Evan already had the tarpaulin pulled back, and Marina and her daughter carried what they could and headed for the entrance. Reg and Kelly continued ferrying things from Claire’s pickup.
Jim looked back to Bill. “But you were almost at sea level down there.”
“I find it hard to believe too, Jim. But my old home is now just a heap of broken beams and brick, and that’s what’s just on the surface, the rest of it is probably half way to China by now.”
Jim shook his head. “Let’s get everything inside.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Joel looked at his friend and colleague, Rick Sanford. Rick’s eyes were bloodshot, and even in the gloomy hallway, his face glistened with sweat. Joel glanced at his body armor and gloves.
No rips. He’s not infected.
Joel grabbed his friend’s shoulder. “We got this. We’re not too far from the airport, then Westchester, then the harbor is right after.”
“It’s a friggin’ war zone out there, Joel! The crazies are eating people! Did you see it!”
Images of Tarin’s body, then Daniel’s flashed back into his head. The first time in fifteen minutes. A new record.
“What’s the plan?” said an overweight man in a dark blue jacket with ‘CDC’ emblazoned across the back of it. Behind him was another scientist, one which was handcuffed to a small silver suitcase. Joel didn’t know the contents, and he didn’t care, he just knew he had to get it to the coastguard military base, north of the airport, for transport on.
“We’re going to go out and find a—”
Something angry slammed into the door in front of them. It snarled, then there was a tearing sound, and all went quiet again. The Spanish-colonial-revival-style cell phone store they had run inside of when their vehicle turned over was sitting in the center of an expanse of chaos, but it was either that or face the hordes that were descending on every other living thing.
Something clattered at the other end of the long plain corridor they were in.
The first scientist jumped.
Joel pulled the magazine from his M4 assault rifle and checked how much ammo he had left.
Half gone.
Rick did the same.
“How’s it looking?”
Rick pushed the magazine back in. “I got enough.”
After the M4’s were out, they were onto their handguns.
Joel looked back to Stanton, the scientist who was not physically attached to the suitcase. “We’re going to go outside and procure a vehicle, then we are going to get the hell out of here and get to the coastguard base.”
Stanton looked at his watch. “We only got another forty minutes before they told me the ship leaves.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get there.”
Stanton nodded.
Joel looked at Rick, who nodded. They then pushed open the door to the frenzied world outside.
Joel opened his eyes to the dull gray walls of the freezer room. He went to move, but the intense burning in his back and chest persuaded him otherwise.
Any normal human would just be a corpse lying on the cold floor, surrounded by intense darkness. But Joel was able to see the walls that entombed him, and also his arms, legs, and torso laying like a discarded doll.
Each breath reverberated pain through his body, and his wheezing produced small puffs of white mist.
How long have I been here?
He had no idea, but it felt like he had just fallen to the ground. He also had no idea how much of his body was still in one piece beneath his jacket.
Time to find out what the damage is.
He held his hands in front of his face.
“Still ten digits, that’s something,” he croaked. His throat almost felt worse than his back. A thought forced its way into his mind.
Is my throat, my neck, my face still there?
He prodded at his cheeks and jaw, then slid his hands lower to his neck. Everything appeared to be where it should be. In LA, and his travels east, he had seen the vamps take the kind of damage that nothing else could get up from, and still keep coming. He hoped Claire’s aim was off, but she put him down with one shot, so he knew that probably wasn’t the case.
Ignoring the orchestra of pain playing a symphony across his body, he fumbled for the buttons on his jacket, undoing them, then pulled each flap back. He then gingerly
touched his stomach first, then moved upwards. He got to the base of his ribs, when his fingers sunk inwards.
*****
Marina looked out of the third floor window at the orange hue which filled the horizon just above the distant mountains.
Where are you, Joel?
It had been two hours since she arrived at the school, and at least that since anyone had seen the man that rescued her just a few days earlier.
Didn’t take long for this town to go like the others.
When she arrived in Bellweather she had hoped its remoteness would keep it safe. She had passed through many other small towns on her way west through Colorado, most already dead shells when she arrived, but they were not far from the highway. She had quickly realized the network of roads and tracks across the country, as well as the transport system, had spread the virus far and wide before anyone had truly realized they were all doomed, that most were already infected, and they would then go on to feed on everyone else.
A knock on the door to the classroom she was in made her jump. She turned around to face Jim.
“I keep trying to reach Joel on the radio, but there’s no response. I’m going to go back to the hotel. He should have been back by now.”
She wanted to go with him, but there was no way she was going to leave Jessica, who was asleep under the desk at the top of the room. She held up her radio. “Keep in touch.”
He nodded then left, quickly arriving at the entrance on the ground floor where Reg was waiting for him, a shotgun on his arm.
“I’ll go with you,” said Reg.
They both went to leave when someone walking in the hallway behind them made them stop.
“Where you going?” said Claire.
“Joel should have been back. We’re going to check out your hotel, see if he’s still there,” said Jim.
Claire shook her head as if she was talking to herself.
“Everything alright, Claire?” said Jim.
Claire smiled. “I’m fine. Be careful, make sure you’re back by sundown.”
