by Lukens, Mark
Kate walked back to the house, to the back porch, and then she went inside.
CHAPTER 12
Kate
“We need to leave pretty soon,” Petra said as they ate their scrambled eggs with corned beef hash and slices of bread. It was the last of their bread.
Max had boiled a little of the rainwater on the charcoal grill on the back porch to use for washing the dishes and washing their faces and hands. The smell of the charcoal seemed so strong as they cooked, an invisible wave reaching out from their temporary home, attracting any rippers within a mile radius. But they still hadn’t heard a single screech or call from the rippers so far this morning.
“It’s going to get cold, and we’re going to freeze to death in here during the winter,” Petra went on, staring at Max.
“I know,” he said.
“We’ll find a better place down south,” Petra said. “Maybe an island where the rippers can’t get to us.”
Kate wondered if the rippers could swim. If rippers used to know how to swim before they were rippers, could they still swim now? Was it like a muscle-memory thing, just like walking, running, and eating seemed to be for them? Would they really be any safer on an island than in the mountains? Would they really be safe anywhere? She remembered seeing the thousands and thousands of rippers in the city when she had stayed the night on the roof with Ted. She was sure there were still hordes of rippers like that, waves of them leaving the cities as they ran out of food and water. When they had escaped the trailer park a few days ago, they’d seen a small horde of rippers, but she was sure there were much bigger hordes than that. She could imagine thousands of hungry rippers swimming to their island like a school of fish, surrounding it. And was Florida really such a good idea? It was the third most populated state in America—there would be a lot of rippers there.
They had talked about many of the rippers dying off during the winter. Kate had gone into professor mode yesterday when she had lectured on how the cold might kill many of them off. Or starvation or dehydration. The easy food was quickly running out. Then the rippers would have no other choice but to hunt, or even turn on each other.
“They’ll breed,” Petra had suggested.
Yes, that was possible. But how many rippers would die during childbirth? Would the rippers care for their young like wild animals did? To Kate, the rippers seemed like the primitive species of humans she had studied, something before the homo sapiens, or even before the homo erectus, a missing link between modern humans and the primates we had evolved from millions of years ago. Now she was actually seeing what she had studied for so many years, an ancient species, the sudden devolution of humans, the prehistoric here now.
“Disease will dwindle their numbers,” Kate had said. “Even things we take for granted like salmonella and influenza, botulism and pneumonia. They will have accidents, break bones and injure themselves, get infections. If we wait through the winter, even a few years of winters, then their numbers should dwindle significantly.”
“If so many are going to freeze to death,” Max said, “then wouldn’t it make more sense to go north instead of south?”
“Yes,” Petra said. “Maybe. But maybe both of you are right. Maybe we go south for a few years and wait it out, let nature do its thing and kill off most of the rippers. Then we travel north again, somewhere way up there where almost all of the rippers will be dead.”
“But the rippers might not die off quickly enough in Florida,” Kate said. “The winters won’t be cold enough to kill them. Yes, diseases will get some of them, a lot of them, and hunger, but they might thrive better in places like Florida and the south.”
Petra seemed crushed that her idea was shot down.
“And the rippers may begin migrating south.”
“You think they’re that smart?” Petra asked.
“No. Not smart, more like instinctual. I think a lot of what they do is instinctual.” She thought of how humans had survived in their early years. Even though humans had evolved from apes, they didn’t have the natural strength and agility apes had. And humans didn’t have sharp claws and teeth like some animals did. Humans had been a fairly delicate species, but like many mammals, they lived in social groups and mated to survive. But it was a wonder that primitive humans had survived as long as they had. It seemed like they had found a way to survive. Life was tenacious, and Kate wondered if these rippers would find ways to survive hunger and the cold weather, even hibernating somehow through the freezing winter. It wasn’t that preposterous of an idea; humans weren’t that different genetically than bears, and bears hibernated. Somehow Early Man had survived winters, survived long-term hunger, survived diseases, survived predators. Maybe they could do it again. Maybe the rippers were doing it right now.
“Yeah, maybe we go north and wait out the rippers,” Petra said. “But how do we survive with no fires? No heat? Fires and smoke would bring the rippers. How would we stay warm? How would we cook food? Boil water?”
“Maybe we find a more remote place up north or around here,” Kate suggested. “Meet somewhere in the middle. Travel a little farther south, maybe southern Alabama or northern Florida, in the panhandle, somewhere where there’s adequate rainfall but where the winters aren’t too harsh, somewhere remote enough and far enough away from the cities so that there will be less rippers. Find a large building to hole up inside. Maybe even a place underground.”
Petra nodded—she seemed to like the idea.
Even Max seemed to be thinking Kate’s suggestion over.
“Then we should do it,” Petra said. “Make plans to go there. We just need to get out of here. I feel like we’ve pushed our luck enough here.”
Kate didn’t answer Petra. She glanced at Max, who was silent, and then she looked at Brooke, who only seemed to be half-listening to them, drawing again in her sketch book, Tiger curled up beside her.
“Come on,” Petra said. “We need to go. We can’t stay here much longer. We need to at least make some plans. We can’t wait a few more weeks until we’re too low on food. Right now we’ve got food, drinks, ammo for our guns, medicine. All we need is some more gas for the truck.”
Max sighed, looking away for a moment.
“She’s right,” Kate said. As much as Kate hated to admit it, she’d grown as comfortable here as Max had. But this place was no fortress.
“I still think we need to go back down to that old lady’s house before we leave,” Petra continued. “Stock up on some more supplies. See if she’s got some gas. Maybe a siphoning hose. Make a list of the things we need and get them from her. She’s got more than enough for one person.”
“No,” Kate said, surprised by the strength and conviction in her voice. “We’ve got enough food and drinks for at least a month, maybe two months if we conserve wisely. I think we should just leave Lisey alone.”
“She’s right about that,” Max said. “It will be too dangerous to get more stuff from Lisey. She’ll see us coming this time. She’s got a lot of rifles in her house. She might even be expecting us to do just that, waiting at a window to pick us off as we come up to her house.”
Petra didn’t argue.
“One more day,” Max said. “We’ll go into town, try to find some gas and gas cans. Get a few of them at least.”
Max had already siphoned the gas out of Kate’s dad’s pickup truck, but he seemed to want to go into town and find more gas to top off the SUV’s tank and to fill the two cans they’d found in the garage.
“We can find gas on the way,” Petra said.
They were quiet for a moment while Max thought it over.
“Okay,” Max said. “Okay. We should start packing everything up. We could leave either this afternoon or early tomorrow morning. I don’t want to drive at night. Tomorrow morning would probably be better. We could get the truck packed up today, though.”
Petra smiled, about to agree with Max’s plan. But before she could get the words out, a booming noise sounded from right outside
the house.
CHAPTER 13
Kate
Kate raced to the front windows of the house. Max and Petra were at the other window. They both had their pistols in their hands. Brooke was on her feet, the cat had been startled awake by the noise outside.
“What was that?” Brooke asked, getting closer to Kate, only a few steps away from her.
“Get back,” Kate whispered at her.
Kate looked back out the window, on her tippy toes so she could see above the plywood Max had screwed in front of the glass. Beyond the front yard, out in the middle of the street, Lisey stood with her shotgun in her hands. It had begun to rain, just a cold drizzle, but Lisey didn’t seem to notice or care. Her gray hair was matted down from the rain, her clothes wet and sticking to her skinny body. And even from the window, Kate could see the madness in the woman’s eyes.
“Katie!” Lisey called out. “I know you and your heathen friends are in there!”
“Shit,” Petra muttered. “We should’ve killed that woman when we had the chance. Put her out of her misery.”
“I’ve burned my house,” Lisey screamed. “It’s on fire right now. I set fire to the Bennetts’ home too.”
Kate remembered smelling the faint smell of smoke earlier when she’d gotten the eggs from the chicken coop.
“They’ll be here soon!” Lisey yelled. “The rippers will smell the smoke. They’ll see it in the air! And then they’ll come for you! I can hear them coming right now!”
“Shit, she burned all that food,” Petra said. “I told you we should’ve taken more.”
“We need to get packed right now,” Max said.
Kate kept watching out the window. Lisey pointed her shotgun up at the air and pulled the trigger. It was the booming noise they’d heard before. The shotgun blast seemed to echo through the valley, shaking the old bones of her parents’ home.
“Can you hear them?” Lisey asked with an insane smile.
Kate could—she could hear the rippers now, at least she thought she’d heard a screech in the distance. And then another.
“Rippers,” Brooke whispered. She was almost right behind Kate now.
Max darted to the dining room, collecting the cardboard boxes. He had backed their SUV right up to the side of the home last night, away from the view of the street and closer to her dad’s old pickup truck, but the path was clear to the street—they could drive across the front yard and right out onto Appleton Road where Lisey waited with the shotgun, then they could drive to Creekbend Drive.
“I’m waiting right here for the rippers!” Lisey yelled. “I’m going to let them take me. I’ll be with Bud again. I’ll be with your family again. I’ll tell them about you, Katie. You can take that to the bank. I’m gonna let them know all about you and your friends in there.”
“I could shoot her right now,” Petra told Max. “Right from the front porch.”
“No,” Max said. “Only if she attacks. We’re not animals. We’re not like her.”
A ripper called out. They sounded so much closer now.
“We need to get going,” Max said again with a cardboard box in his hands. “Now.”
Kate tore her eyes away from the front window as Lisey fired off another blast into the air.
“I’ve got a lot of shells,” Lisey screamed from outside. “I’m gonna bring all of them rippers right to you!”
Brooke’s eyes were as big as dinner plates. Kate hurried into the dining room and grabbed the small cardboard box with a lid Max had found for Tiger. Brooke had helped him decorate the box with holes in the lid and a small towel in the bottom for Tiger to lie on. It had become his bed for the last few days, so he was used to the box now.
Kate took the box to Brooke. “Get Tiger in his bed and put the lid on. Hold the lid down tight, but don’t try to carry the box, okay? Someone else will carry him.”
Brooke nodded. It didn’t take her long to get Tiger into the box—he was spooked by the shotgun blasts from outside and seemed more than willing to hide in his bed. Brooke held the lid in place while Kate used a few pieces of duct tape to hold the lid down.
Max stacked their boxes and bags by the back door, and Kate added Tiger and his temporary home to their stash.
“I told you we should’ve left a few days ago,” Petra said.
“Okay,” Max said.
“I told you the rippers would get here eventually.”
“Yes, you’re right. Is that what you want to hear?”
Kate folded up a few blankets and stuffed some bedsheets down into two pillowcases. Their stack of boxes and bags was getting large. She wasn’t sure all of it was going to fit into the back of the SUV.
“We need to go with what we have,” Max said.
Another blast from Lisey’s shotgun outside.
More calls and roars from the rippers. It sounded like there were so many of them—a tidal wave of them coming. Panic surged in Kate. They needed to leave now, but she couldn’t help feeling like she was forgetting something.
Max was out the back door and onto the back porch. He had a cardboard box under one arm and his gun in his hand. He raced outside to unlock the back hatch of their SUV.
Let’s start stacking the boxes and bags by the screen door,” Kate said.
Petra nodded. Brooke grabbed the box Tiger was in even though Kate had told her to let someone else carry the cat—but Tiger was her number one priority right now.
Max was back at the screen door with his gun tucked down into the waistband of his pants, his hoodie wet, his gray hair glistening with the droplets of rain, his eyes so wide and bulging, his mouth open, breathing hard.
What are we doing? Kate thought. We’re wasting time loading up this food and drinks, wasting those precious seconds while the rippers close in on us.
And then a horrible thought came to her: What if Lisey had done something to their truck? She could have flattened the tires or blasted a hole in the radiator. But thankfully, Lisey’s mind wasn’t all there anymore, and she might not be thinking straight.
But Lisey would see them now when they ran to the truck.
“Let’s go,” Max said. “Just grab what you can. We gotta go.”
They were all out the back door, rushing to the back of the SUV.
“Trying to get away before the rippers get here?” Lisey yelled as she ran across the front yard, her shotgun aimed right at the front of the truck.
Max’s eyes widened as he shoved his box into the back of the SUV and pulled his pistol out.
“I’ll cover you,” Petra yelled. She was right beside Max in a flash. “Move!”
Lisey lowered her shotgun just a little. She was only thirty feet away now. But she didn’t shoot, like she knew she didn’t have the range. Or like she was waiting for something.
She smiled.
The rippers were here.
CHAPTER 14
Max
Max felt numb. He’d never been one to freeze up when it came to danger, and even as rough as his childhood had been, he’d faced more danger in the last two weeks than he had in his entire life. But for just a second he froze when he saw Lisey with the shotgun aimed at them, and when he heard the rippers coming. For a second he didn’t feel like himself, like none of this was real, like he was trapped in one of those nightmares he’d been having so frequently. He wanted to act, to move, to think, but he just couldn’t.
But then he glanced at Petra, and then at Kate, and then at Brooke who stood near the back corner of the SUV. Brooke’s eyes were wide with fear, but there was hope in them, a hope that he and Petra were going to do something to help her, to save her. He saw that plea in her eyes and he acted. He’d always been a fighter, and if this was the day he was going to die, then he’d go out fighting.
Petra darted right past him while he’d been focused for just a second on Kate and Brooke. She got to the front of the SUV, shooting at Lisey twice.
“Petra, wait!”
Lisey shot back, the roar of her shotgun
drowning out the sounds of the rippers for just a second.
Max grabbed the doorhandle on the rear door, opening the door wide. “Get in!” he yelled at Brooke.
Brooke jumped into the back seat. Kate closed the hatch and turned toward the back of the house, then she looked back at Max, locking eyes with him for a split second. “They’re coming around the back!”
“Get in!” Max roared at her.
Kate was around the other side of the truck. She got into the passenger side of the truck and slammed the door shut.
Time seemed to slow down for Max as he opened the driver’s door to get inside the SUV. Petra was a few feet away from the truck now, shooting at Lisey a few more times.
Max had no idea if Petra’s shots had hit Lisey or not—she was still standing and aiming the shotgun at them, that insane smile on her face and the insane light in her eyes—but it didn’t really matter because the first of the rippers were getting to her.
Max had the key in his hand without remembering when he’d taken it out of his pocket; he slipped it into the ignition, twisted. For just a second he didn’t hear anything, but then he realized that the truck had started but he couldn’t hear it over the roar and footfalls of the rippers, over their screeches, and Lisey’s wails of pain and terror. The dashboard lights were lit up.
“They’re coming,” Brooke squealed, turned around in her seat and staring out through the rear window.
Max saw the blurs and darts of movement from behind the house, he heard the pounding of their running feet, he saw them running through the fields. They seemed to be swarming in from every direction on that side of the house.
“Go, go, go,” Kate yelled.
Max shifted into drive and stomped his foot down on the gas pedal. The truck shot forward, down the side lawn, still close to the house.
Max drove to the corner of the front of the house; he veered to the right toward the gravel driveway and collections of shrubs and bushes, and skidded to a stop. He jabbed his thumb down on the button to roll his window down, yelling at Petra: “Get in!”
