I believed that with everything in me.
“Harrison?” Page’s voice was quiet and so scared my heart stopped in my chest.
“They’ll be fine, Pagey,” Harrison promised. I noticed he completely changed for her. Gone was the rebellious youth that wanted to be part of the fight. He was the big brother his little sister needed. I admired that kind of maturity in someone so young. “They’re always fine. Vaughan, Nelson and Hendrix would never leave you. They’ll be right back.”
She digested that for a moment before asking, “What about Reagan and Haley?”
I watched her chin tremble in the low light of the lantern and then two tears snuck out the corners of her eyes. I immediately wanted to reassure her, but King beat me to it.
“Pagers, do you really think Nelson will let something happen to Haley? Or Hendrix let something happen to Reagan? Have more faith in your brothers.”
I snorted a laugh before I could stop myself. He sounded so indignant.
Page giggled with me. And I felt a little bit of the tension ebb away from the room.
We fell quiet after that and stayed that way for a while. I almost wished I had something like cards to pass the time with. Instead we just stared at each other or the table, or the dim light.
We were all on edge, but the boys especially. And every time there was a lull in gunfire- which wasn’t often- that tension thickened into practically unbearable.
Eventually, Page put her head down on her arms and at least appeared to drift back to sleep.
“You could do that to,” I whispered to Miller but he just shook his head.
Vaughan had given him a gun after he learned to use it and it was placed on the table in front of him. He stared down at it with intent eyes. I knew he wouldn’t disobey Vaughan, but the temptation to go check on everyone was insanely strong.
Even I felt it.
I just wanted to grab Miller’s gun and run outside real quick.
“Maybe someone should go check on them?” I suggested when I couldn’t bare not knowing anymore.
“Nope,” Harrison answered quickly. I shot King a help-me expression that Harrison caught, so he explained. “They expect us to stay here. If one of us were to go out looking for them, they could easily shoot us because they’re not expecting us. Or we might not make it that far, as in we get intercepted by a Feeder. Anything could happen and if we needed help nobody would know it. You could easily get lost and we would have no idea how to find you or where you went or even what happened to you. You could just as easily shoot one of them since you don’t know where they are either. It’s a terrible idea. You need to stay here.”
I gave King another pleading glance. Even in the dim light I could see his skin heat with a blush, but he shook his head firmly, “Harrison’s right. Sorry, Tyler.”
I let out an exasperated sigh and sunk down in my chair. Miller snickered and I crossed my arms just to be defiant.
“You must really be pissed, if you’re slouching,” he quipped.
I rolled my eyes, “Oh, knock it off. I slouch all the time. I’m a perpetual sloucher.”
“You are in fact, not a sloucher. You never slouch. You always have perfect posture from that stick being stuck so far up your ass-“
“You did not come up with that on your own!” I pointed an accusing finger at Miller and sucked in a sharp breath. The little brat.
“Yes, I did,” he defended quickly- too quickly.
Now it was his turn for his face to heat to an embarrassed red-tomato color. “You did not come up with that by yourself. Spill it, kid.”
“I make fun of your posture all the time!”
Ok, that much was true. But he was only twelve! His insults ranged from butthead to butt-munch. And while they all seemed to revolve around the same body part, he had never used the word “ass” in front of me before. My mama had beat that into him- in the normal, acceptable southern way. This was an entirely different context than how I would say that same phrase about my daddy.
Gentlemen didn’t curse in front of women. And they certainly didn’t curse in front of their sister or mother. Well, I didn’t really care what he said in front of our mama now, but he knew better with me.
“Miller Dale, I want the truth right now.”
“Tyler, you’re terrifying,” Harrison laughed at Miller’s expense. “It’s so hot.”
“Harrison, I will filet you. You cannot handle the caliber of woman I am, so back off now or I will make you back off.”
He groaned suggestively. “If I say no, will you keep talking to me like that?”
I dropped my face into my palms. What a little pervert.
“Harrison, shut the hell up!” King defended my honor at least.
“Thank you, King,” I smiled at him- the red color of his face brightened.
“Miller?”
And that was all I needed to finish with. His face fell and his shoulders drooped. He was seconds away from spilling his guts. “Hendrix asked me about your posture. That’s all.”
“Hendrix asked you about my posture and what did you say?” I pressed. There was so much more to this story.
“And I told them that our mom was crazy about it, always on your case. That she used to compete in pageants and that she was Miss Arkansas once upon a time.” I gestured for him to continue when he tried to stop. “So then he asked if you used to do pageants too. And when I said yes, the comment was made that you must have done well because of the giant stick up your ask.” I was viciously delighted with how shamed he was while he relayed his story.
“Hendrix said that?” I narrowed my eyes. I knew Hendrix didn’t say that about me. That boy barely spared me two minutes of his day and that was if we happened to be standing or sitting directly next to each other by chance of fate.
“No, not Hendrix,” Miller groaned.
“Was it King? King did you say that?” I whipped my head around to face King. He just shook his head frantically and opened his mouth but no words came out. I knew it wasn’t King anyway. I swiveled around to Harrison who was leaning against the door. “Was it you Harrison?”
He chuckled, “No, it was not me.”
“It was Nelson then?” My attention turned back to Miller and I dared him with my fierce gaze to try to hold back the truth.
“It wasn’t Nelson either,” he mumbled and then threw his hands up quickly. “Please, please, please go easy on him! He was just trying to be funny! I probably wants to have kids one day. Do not destroy his manhood Tyler, I’m begging you. There’s no way he would keep us around after that-“
“Relax!” I almost shouted just to get him to stop. “Vaughan and I made a lot of progress tonight. We’re good friends by now. He’ll think this is hilarious when I tell him about it. We’ll laugh for days about it.”
“I’ll laugh for days about it,” Harrison confirmed with so much smugness I almost laughed at him.
“And for the record,” I held up my pointer finger to accentuate my point, “I do not have a stick up my ass!”
This made all the boys dissolve into laughter and encouraged me to go back to slouching. I didn’t do it often, but desperate measures and all.
The laughter died out and then we were back to silence. More, grueling, painful, never ending silence.
I stood up from the chair and paced for a few minutes. I could hardly stand this. The gun fire was still going on, although it had become significantly more sporadic.
It was hard to say whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I walked over to Miller and put a hand on his shoulder. I stared down at his gun and then looked at the metal door Harrison was guarding.
My palms started itching and my chest ached with nerves. I tapped my fingers against Miller’s shoulder and then stared at the door for another minute.
I picked up Miller’s gun and held it in my open hand, testing the weight, getting a feel for it. I moved the gun into position in my hand and then let out a weary sigh.
/> “What are you thinking, Tyler?” Miller asked suspiciously.
And then I decided. “I’m just going out there real quick.” I shot each boy my best smile and held back my giggles when they all snapped to attention. “I’ll be right back,” I promised.
“You’re not going out there,” Harrison said coolly. “We stay in here. That is the plan.”
“No, I know that,” I tried to keep my voice light. “I didn’t mean all the way out there. I just meant…. I’m just going to go peek through the front door, see if I can see anything.” Harrison didn’t immediately argue, so I took that as a good sign. I took a step towards him. “I just want to make sure they’re alright. I can’t stand not knowing!”
His resolve wavered and I hit him with my biggest, most guilt-inducing puppy-dog eyes. “Please, Harrison. I’ll be so fast. I promise!”
He shook his head at first but his own curiosity won out in the end. “Alright, Tyler. But I’ll go with you and hold the in between door open. Then I can make sure you’re alright too. Ok?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Ok!”
“King, come stand here. Close it behind us, but be ready to open it, alright?”
King immediately obeyed Harrison. “Alright. But be fast, Harrison, or Vaughan will kick your ass.”
“We’re just checking the street. We’re not in any danger. Right, Tyler?”
“Right,” I agreed brightly. “Mind if I borrow?” I waved Miller’s gun at him and he shook his head.
Harrison opened the door and we both paused in the doorway to make sure there wasn’t anything lurking in the halls. I flicked off the safety to the handgun and mentally prepared myself to kill if I had to.
I didn’t really think it would help. Chances were I was going to clam up as soon as the opportunity hit. In a fight or flight test I was painfully flight.
When we were satisfied that there was nothing in the hall, Harrison led me over to the second door. The little bit of light from the camping lantern made all the difference in this pitch black hallway and soon enough Harrison had his hand on the handle and gestured for King to close the door. When he had and the lock turned, Harrison pushed open the heavy metal door between the employee back and the customer front.
There was nothing in the front of the store either. That we could see anyway. There were aisles with racks still standing, but Zombies weren’t known for their ability to keep silent. If it wasn’t their deep moaning, it was their rasping breathing.
And then of course, that god-awful smell.
Harrison stayed at the back door while I walked carefully toward the front. I tried my hardest to be as silent and still as Vaughan, but I was pretty sure that was a superhuman skill because me feet squeaked against the tile, my toes would bump into all kinds of leftover debris and my breathing seemed to scream in the darkness.
The moon was still bright overhead- thankfully- so when I reached the front door, I could easily make out the street in front of me. It was empty for the most part. The bodies of dead Feeders littered the pavement in varying degrees of death, decay and lifelessness.
The good news was that there were no bodies of people I knew also lying in the streets. But that meant either they had moved on to clean up another place, or the Feeders had captured them, dragged their unconscious bodies back to their underground caves and were now feasting on their flesh.
I shivered at that image and scanned the street again.
A light blinked in the distance, to my right. I shook my head and focused on the same spot, but it was gone. Further to the right now, it flashed again and my breathing immediately picked up. It seemed familiar, the way it bounced along and then disappeared, but I couldn’t place it. I racked my memory as I watched it bound along for a few steps at waist level and then disappear.
The light was soft yellow and created a track of light like a flashlight, but it wasn’t a flashlight. It was suddenly driving me crazy. I knew this light, or a light like it. I knew it well, and the answer was on the tip of my tongue but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out.
I pressed my ear against the board on the door and listened in closer. Was it Vaughan or Hendrix? I couldn’t hear anything except the distant sound of keening from Feeders a block away.
The light reappeared but a little further away. It was weaving in and out of sight and then picked up speed. If a person were carrying it, this was the difference between walking and running. They were now sprinting from one side of the street and then disappeared around the corner, out of sight.
I knew three things. The first- this light was somehow attached to a person and not one of our group. The second- I knew this light- the shape, the color, the circumference of shine in the darkness. Whatever it was, I wasn’t afraid of it. This was somehow familiar to me. And the third- that I was hell bent on finding out what it was.
Besides, I rationalized, if that was a person they could easily be in danger.
I glanced back at Harrison and shot him a cheeky grin. His face was shadowed but he took a step forward and through the dim light I could see how suspicious he looked. When I dropped my hand to the door handle he started to protest. He raised his arm in a silent gesture that screamed “stop” and I could see the words he was unable to spit out rise on his lips.
But then I was gone. I slipped quietly through the door and out into the foray of dead- Zombie-traffic, towards the light that I was suddenly becoming wary of. Thoughts were starting to surface and while they were still vague and obscure, they weren’t exactly heartwarming.
I didn’t want Harrison to follow me and risk his own life. So I shut the door, sprinted down the street and slipped around the corner of a tall building. I was in an alley with all kinds of recently dead body parts- hopefully none human.
The alley wasn’t closed so I kept moving down it, avoiding stepping in any remains. My left hand brushed against the cold stone and my right clutched Miller’s gun in my palm. I just hoped I knew what I was doing, because it was terrifying out here.
Who was I kidding? I had no idea what I was doing. But I was prompted by some internal instinct that shouted I needed to get to this light before anybody else. Was it crazy? Absolutely. But I couldn’t stop myself from investigating.
The light bounced around in the distance again- wild and sporadic with its movements. And I picked up my pace. Coming out here had been a terrible idea, but I had to find out what that light belonged to.
Suddenly there were sounds everywhere. I could hear the Feeders close by although I couldn’t tell how many there were. And I could hear my own heartbeat like drums in my ear. The night was no longer still and the wind picked up, blowing through the tall buildings with a high pitched whistle.
The gun trembled in my hands, but I kept it raised in front of me.
I wanted so desperately to shoot just once- to practice before I was forced to use it for real, but I knew the sound would only draw more attention to me. And it would waste a very valuable bullet.
At the end of the alley I was facing another road. I had just decided to cross it when suddenly bodies were everywhere.
A dark shadow fell across my path and I lifted my eyes to make out the obviously human form being chased by three Feeders. I didn’t think- I couldn’t think.
I just pulled the trigger and released the clip into the largest parts of the Zombies. Vaughan’s instructions repeated in my head like a mantra- aim for the chest first, slow them down then find the head. The head was smaller compared to the torso and easy to miss, especially when they were full on sprinting.
I forced my eyes to stay open, although it wasn’t easy. I got the Feeder closest to me first- by some great miracle. I hit him not in the chest, maybe in the throat….? And when his head shot back from the impact of my bullet I managed to place one in the side of his face. He dropped to the ground and was replaced by a second. I kept pulling the trigger, having no idea how many shots I had fired or had left. I hit this guy all over his body, never quite man
aging to get his head until he was only a food away from me. Then it was hard to miss- even with shaking hands.
The third Zombie launched himself onto the other human and they both went down. I didn’t know if he’d gotten a bite in or not, but I didn’t waste any time, I aimed the handgun and fired. My shot found purchase in the Feeder’s head and he slumped immediately, his weight deadening- literally- onto the human form on the alley floor.
The human grunted low and pained and then shoved the dead Feeder over. I pulled the trigger once more, just needing to make sure the Zombie was really dead, but the trigger just clicked with the sound of an empty clip. Shit. Well, shit because I was now out of bullets. But also, whew, because I had enough bullets to save this guy.
Hopefully- as long as he wasn’t bit.
The guy- he was clearly a man- crawled to his feet and swayed there as if he couldn’t quite find his equilibrium. His face was still shadowed by the nighttime and tall building he was leaning against. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with him, if he was injured before the Zombie, if it was the Zombie or if he was just overwhelmed by his near death experience.
My breath hitched in my chest and I felt the instant relief that I was still alive until I noticed the windup spotlight in his hands. I couldn’t make out the color exactly from the lack of light, but I didn’t need to. I knew it would be army green. I knew it was at least forty years old. And I knew the lever that wound up the light would have a black rubber pad that was chipped at and rough against the pads of your fingers.
This was a toy from my childhood. We used to use it to play hide and go seek on my parent’s farm.
Son of a bitch.
A string of curse words flew from a familiar voice and my blood turned to sludge in my veins. He stepped forward, into the light of the moon and wiped his forearm over his face. He looked at me carefully in his usual cool manner and a slow smile spread across his lips.
“Tyler,” he confirmed in a low- not very surprised- voice.
“Kane, what are you doing here?”
Chapter Four