“The water will stop them. Take it!”
Taylor handed Carl a spray bottle partially filled with water. “If they try to come close, spray them with it.”
“Because they have rabies, right? They’re scared of water because of rabies. That’s what you said,” Carl said. He wielded the plastic spray bottle in both hands, pointing it at the mob in front of him as though he was getting ready to fire a gun.
“I said it was like rabies.”
Taylor also had a spray bottle. He squeezed the long trigger, sending a misty cloud of water at the thriving crowd of people. The mob would move back to avoid the cloud and then surge forward again after it had dissipated. The water in the bottles wouldn’t last forever. In fact, it wouldn’t last much longer at all. He stood with his back against Carl’s, suppressing the urge to scream. Something as simple as water. Something so simple yet, at this moment, in dangerously short supply.
Carl said, “They’re trying to surround us.”
“No shit. Keep spraying them.”
And then what, he wondered. What advice would he have after the water was gone and the bottles were empty? His mind ran frantic, unable to form a single cohesive thought because they all collided together into useless randomness. They needed to find a way out. He needed to save Carl. And he needed to save himself.
Beyond the mob, Taylor could see more of them coming out from between the buildings. It was like watching pests crawl out of cracks in a wall; like watching insects swarm. The wind picked up, and when he squeezed the trigger, the mist that spread from the nozzle was blown back into his face. Thank God we ran out of gas in a small town, he thought. It could have been so much worse. Carl had informed him on numerous occasions that he was the only remaining optimist left in the world, and although Taylor usually denied this, he supposed that anyone who could point out the bright side of things with a mob of crazies coming towards them had earned that title.
The crowd was all spittle and gnashing teeth. The sound was like fifty people munching on Captain Crunch with their mouths open.
Carl said, “I can’t keep this up much longer, bro. Water’s almost gone.” Carl’s voice was the high-pitched whine of a small child in hysterics.
Taylor pulled his arm back just before one of the things in the mob was able to grab it. He sprayed a cloud of mist and took a step back.
“Level with me,” Carl said. “We’re not going to make it out of this one are we? We’ve been through some real shit together, you and me, but this takes the cake. Remember when you rolled the Bronco when you were sixteen? I used to think that was some crazy shit. Not anymore.” Carl was almost shouting.
“I don’t know, but I can tell you we’re not going to die standing here.” He removed one of his hands from the bottle and pointed to their right. “You see that building? The brownstone that’s kind of kitty-corner to us?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“On my say, we’re going to make a run for it. I want you to head for that building. You don’t stop and you don’t look back.” The crowd had moved closer again and Taylor spritzed them with the water and they backed off a few feet. “Around it actually. I don’t see anything useful here, but maybe we’ll find something over there. If we have to, we’ll try to hole up in one of the buildings. You okay to run?”
“Remember who was on the track team?”
“You never let me forget it.”
“The question is, can you keep up?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.”
Together, they started to shift to the right so that there was a cleaner opening in the mob in the direction they wanted to go. Taylor glanced at the brick building and tried to judge the distance. Had to be nearly a hundred yards; about a football field’s length away. Carl was fast enough. He believed that without a doubt. But he had close to forty pounds and four years on his younger brother, and he had never been on the track team. He had been on the football team one year in junior high and that had satisfied his interest in sports.
“We gonna do this anytime soon?”
Carl didn’t see it, but Taylor nodded. “I’ll count to three. On three, squeeze off a few sprays and then make a break for it.”
The mob was closing in. Taylor felt a greedy hand grab the sleeve of his shirt. He sprayed the thing – Taylor figured it had to be a businessman judging by the suit and tie - and the man let go, clutching his face and screaming. You’d think it was acid in these things instead of water.
“One other thing,” Taylor said.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t wait for me. You got that? I don’t care if you leave me in the dust, but don’t you dare slow down. Or the last thing that’s going to happen before these things get us will be me kicking your ass.”
“Promises,” Carl said and smiled. For a moment, he felt that familiar burst of adrenaline. The same feeling as when they had rolled the Bronco all those years ago; the same feeling he had had countless times when they were on one of their escapades. They were older, and those times were few and far between now, but this was one of them. For the first time in ten minutes, Carl thought they might just stand a chance. Not a great one, maybe not even a good one, but any chance was better than no chance. His father had once said, You never know until you try. This had been in response to Carl asking if he should try out for the wrestling team. Armed with his father’s simplistic wisdom, he had tried out and went all the way to State. In his mind, he could see his father’s face, and he judged the distance between where they now stood and the five story brownstone that appeared so very far away, and he imagined his father saying, “You never know until you try, Carl.”
Chance was chance, hope was hope.
“Just do what I say this one time,” Taylor said. “Okay?”
“All right. I’ll wave at you when they’re eating your ass.”
They were shoulder-to-shoulder, forming a right angle with their bodies, each of them misting the crowd that seemed to grow larger and larger by the second.
Taylor shouted, “One!”
Carl glanced at the remaining water in his bottle. Enough for five or six more squirts. Maybe more, maybe less.
“Two!”
Let this fucking work, Taylor thought.
“Three!”
Taylor squeezed the trigger on his bottle a final time and then turned and ran. Carl was slower off the mark, pausing to chuck his bottle at one of the things in the crowd and watching it glance off its head before hightailing it out of there. But after he started to run, he had passed his brother within several seconds.
“Move your fat ass,” he said as he shot past Taylor.
By the halfway point, Taylor was chugging air. That had always been one of his problems with running: he had never learned how to breathe right. He was okay for a few minutes, and then everything went to shit when he started gulping air. Despite the lack of oxygen, he kept going, pumping his legs, setting his sights on his brother’s back and making that his goal. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the crowd following them. Easily over a hundred of them. They were fast and untiring and he could feel their eyes boring into him as they came.
Taylor picked up his pace, closing the gap. Carl looked back at him. Don’t slow down, he thought. Especially not for me.
Carl reached the brownstone and kept going until he had rounded the corner. He slowed to a rapid walk, searching for something – anything - they could use. Where were all the cars? Had someone went to the trouble of hiding them all? He couldn’t recall seeing a single vehicle since they had walked into town.
Taylor came around the corner and almost plowed into him. “Why are you walking?”
“You said run to the brownstone and turn the corner. That’s what I did. You didn’t say what to do after that,” Carl said. “Not a fucking car in sight.”
Taylor scanned the streets in disbelief. Carl was right. Not a car or truck or motorcycle in sight. Right about then he would have been happy to have found a bicycle. A pink bicycle with tassels coming out of the handgrips and a white basket that sat in front of the handlebars. It wouldn’t have mattered; even that would have been faster than running on foot.
“Don’t waste your time,” Carl said. “You’re not going to find anything. I already told you, there’s nothing.”
Taylor jogged along the back of the brownstone. There were two doors on the ass end of the building. Both of them locked.
The first of the mob reached the brownstone, and Taylor said, “Follow me,” and began to run again. This time, they ran side-by-side, Carl asking him where exactly they were going.
“I’m not sure. We’re going to keep checking buildings until we find one that’s unlocked. Short of finding a car with keys in it and gas in the tank, I’d say that’s our only option.”
They took turns checking doors. At first, they followed the same street, but then started veering down alleys and zigzagging as they went in hopes of losing the mob that continued to follow them. Taylor guessed they had put around seventy-five yards between themselves and their pursuers.
Taylor gasped for air. His lungs burned and he couldn’t catch a full breath. His legs were numb. The pain was in his calves and the large muscles above his knees. The sun had been eaten by a string of thick clouds, but the air was humid and sweat trickled down into his eyes. He slowed to tug on the handle of a door without success.
“Locked,” he said, shouting to Carl, who was across the street trying the door of another building.
“This one too!”
How many movies had he watched where someone was being chased by a pack of zombies or an axe-wielding maniac? And, invariably, when he would watch them he would wonder how they could possibly get tired of running. He had always believed that if he was running for his life that he could run as long and fast as was necessary to keep his ass out of the fryer. But he was running for his life now, for what was probably less than ten full minutes, and the prospect of slowing down had crossed his mind a dozen times. Maybe it was a combination of the heat and being out of shape, and that as a kid he’d had asthma.
“Found one!”
Taylor crossed the street to his brother. Carl was holding open a metal door. Written on the inside of the door were the words: THIS DOOR TO REMAIN UNLOCKED DURING BUSINESS HOURS.
When they were inside, Carl pulled the door closed behind them. “I can’t lock it without a key.”
“Let’s hope they didn’t see us slip in here,” Taylor said.
“Let’s hope they can’t smell us.”
“Why would they be able to smell us?”
“Just something that crossed my mind.”
Past the back room there was another open door; this one of a flimsy wooden material, and beyond that they could see light pouring in through the plate glass windows at the front of the store. Rows and rows of clothing filled the store.
Taylor scanned the racks and said, “This is all women’s clothing.”
“Great,” Carl said. “Of all the stores in town we run into the most useless one possible. “Should have known. Just like a woman to forget to lock the back door.” They shared a smile over that one. Carl rapped on the door lightly with his knuckles. “It’s not going to be safe with this unlocked.”
“You’re right. I don’t think they saw us come in here, but they might figure it out given enough time. We don’t know how intelligent they are.”
Taylor inspected the backroom. The fusebox was on the wall to the left of the door. There was a cramped inset bathroom, flanked on one side by a gas furnace and a water heater on the other. A telephone terminal was located next to the fuse box. A dozen or so insulated telephone wires snaked their way up and disappeared into the suspended ceiling. He grabbed one of them and yanked it from the network terminal, wound the wire around his hand once and then gave it a hard pull. He kept tugging at the cord until there was a few feet of slack. Taylor looked it over and said, “Should be plenty long.”
He tied one end to the handle of the metal exit door and then ran it to the knob of the bathroom door. He pulled it taut and tied it around the knob. “It’s not much,” he said, “but better than nothing.”
“My brother, MacGyver.”
“Shut the fuck up, smartass.”
“What? It was a compliment.”
Taylor pushed on the metal door. It gave a quarter of an inch and then the telephone wire prevented it from opening any farther.
Carl had already wandered out into the store. He held a summer dress in front of him and said, “What do ya think? My color?”
“Get serious. And stay away from the window. I don’t want to chance those things walking by and seeing you.”
Carl tossed the dress over the rack. “Just trying to lighten the mood. Maybe this is how I deal with tense situations. Ever think of that? Tell me you don’t do the same thing?”
Taylor ignored him. He searched the store for anything useful. The clothing racks were positioned so that four racks ran from back to front, and five from side-to-side. A large wire shelf at the front of the store displayed a variety of purses.
I hate to admit it, but he’s right, Taylor thought. This is about the most useless place we could have stumbled into.
But for the moment they were safe; told himself that that had to count for something.
He walked behind the sales counter and bent down to rummage through the shelves behind it. There were two drawers on the right side of the counter. One contained a pricing gun, a roll of packing tape, and a pad of blank invoices. The other drawer was locked.
Carl said, “Get down!”
Taylor glanced up in time to see his brother hiding behind one of the clothing racks at the front of the store, and ducked down as he heard the sound of a hundred thunderous feet passing by on the sidewalk outside. He peeked his head above the top of the counter and watched the mob pass.
Once they had passed, Carl sneaked around the rack and up to the window, watching as they headed south along the street. “You think they’re still looking for us?”
“Probably.”
“Persistent bastards. You think this is an isolated occurrence? Like maybe we just stumbled into the wrong town?”
Taylor pulled on the drawer handle. “Come over here a sec. And, no, I don’t think it’s an isolated occurrence. You know better than that. You heard the same thing as I did on the radio.”
Carl moved around the counter to stand behind his brother. “All the radio said was there was an outbreak of some kind and that everyone should seek shelter.”
“And the radio also said to maintain a safe distance from the infected. Lucky for us, they’re pretty easy to spot.” He pointed to the drawer and then tugged on the handle again. “See? Locked. If there’s something worth locking up, it could be useful. So help me get this open.”
Carl bent down, wedging his fingers into the small space between the drawer and the counter, pulling on it as Taylor pulled on the handle.
“It’s no good. We need something to pry it open with.”
“We don’t know if it was a national broadcast on the radio. Could have been local.”
“I don’t think it was local.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Gut instinct,” Taylor said.
Carl rolled his eyes. “Was it ‘gut instinct’ that told you to slam the brakes on thick gravel when you were driving the Ford, too?”
“You can’t let me live that down can you?”
“A guy has a near death experience, he tends to remember it.”
“I was sixteen. Twelve years ago.”
Carl helped him search for something to pry the drawer open with. After several minutes of searching, he said, “Just forget it. There isn’t anything here to get that open with.”
“Wait a minute.” Taylor opened the top drawer and took out the packaging tape dispenser. It was the kind with a metal lip with jagged teeth below where the tape sat. “This might work,” he said. “Not from the top, but if I can get the cutter wedged into the side.”
He motioned for Carl to pull on the handle of the drawer, creating a quarter inch space which was wide enough to slide the tape cutter into. Taylor held the dispenser by the handle and pushed forward, using the corner of the counter as resistance. He heard the wood start to splinter. “Thank God for cheap wood.” Taylor pushed forward harder, using both hands now, and the metal flap that prevented the drawer from opening gave way.
“See. You really are like MacGyver.”
Taylor sifted through the contents of the open drawer. “No gun,” he said.
“We don’t need a gun. A fire hose would do the trick.”
Taylor picked up a leather deposit bag, unzipped it, and then placed it on top of the counter. Carl picked it up and counted the cash that was inside. “Almost a thousand dollars here,” he said.
“And every bit of it completely useless.”
There were other odds-and-ends in the drawer, but none, Taylor thought, were useful enough to warrant keeping under lock and key. “Why the fuck did they bother locking this thing? All of this stuff is crap.”
Carl said, “Crap to us.” He held up the leather deposit bag. “But on a normal day, I’d say a thousand bucks is worth keeping in a safe place.”
“That’s what banks are for.”
“Maybe the owner didn’t believe in banks.”
At the bottom of the drawer, below a pile of documents, Taylor found a zippered black case. Upon opening it, he discovered it was a toolset. “Basic,” he said. “About as basic as you can get. A flathead and a Phillips. Pliers. Zip ties? Somebody must have added those. Not much.”
Carl held up the bag of money. “What do you wanna do with this?”
“Put it back. It’s not ours.”
Carl zipped the bag shut and tossed it into the drawer. “Doubt anyone’s going to miss it.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but we’re not thieves. It’s the principle of the thing. It’d be a different story if you could hurt those things by throwing five dollar bills at them. Then I might take the money.”
“What now?”
Taylor shrugged and slid the drawer shut. “For now, I guess we stay put. We know they’re still out there. I’m not willing to try outrunning them again. If anything, we wait until it gets dark and try to sneak out of town.”
“On foot?”
“We’ll find a car or a truck or something.”
“Doesn’t seem to be an overabundance of them in town if you didn’t notice,” Carl said.
“I can’t figure that out. It’s a small town. How many people do you figure live here?”
“I remember seeing the population on the sign when we coasted in on fumes. I know it wasn’t more than fifteen hundred or close to that.”
“About the same as Coldwater. So think about home. If this was home, and we were walking around town the way we have been here, would we have seen any cars by now?”
“Well, if we were walking around downtown, I’d have to say yes because of the car dealership.”
“What if you were walking down Main Street around…” Taylor checked his watch. “A little after five-thirty. How many cars would you see?”
“I know what you’re driving at. Not many. Nothing is open on Sunday’s except the gas station on the highway, and that isn’t downtown. Still seems odd.”
“It seems odd now because you’re noticing it for the first time. Now that we’re actively looking for something to drive the hell out of here, it’s painfully noticeable. A few of the lucky ones probably got out while the going was good. Only the crazies left. How many of those have we seen? A hundred or so. Tops. It’s not so out of the ordinary. I bet if we can get to the residential part of town, we’d find what we’re looking for. But I’m not willing to risk it until it gets dark. Those things out there want to tear us apart, but they’re still human. At least to the extent that I don’t think they can see in the dark.”
“You really thought that through. The whole missing car problem I mean.”
“When I was younger, you remember how I liked to take walks?”
“I remember that you liked to go for midnight strolls. It freaked me out a little actually. Who does that? Takes walks in the middle of the night?”
“Best time to do it. Nobody else around. A small town is dead at those hours. I used to pretend I was the only person left on Earth.”
“How the fuck did you get so weird?”
Taylor ignored the question and started to search around the store. “Help me see if there’s anything else we can use. It’s close to six. Should be dark enough out by nine.”
Carl walked past a rack of winter coats. One of them had an imitation fur collar and he ran his fingers through it. “It’s going to be cold out by that time, too. Middle of October, it could start snowing any minute.”
“So take one of those jackets.”
“It’s made for a chick. I’d rather freeze.”
The fitting rooms were at the rear of the store. There was another counter sitting a few feet in front of two doors. Taylor searched the shelves built into the back of the counter. He found tape measures, pins, hangers, scissors, a coffee mug that held a mixture of pens and pencils, and a half-full bottle of Arrowhead drinking water. “What’s that?” He pushed some of the other items out of his way and closed his hand around a metal object. “It’s a box cutter.” He slid the lever up so that the blade protruded. It looked sharp enough. He retracted the blade and shoved the box cutter into his pocket. “Could come in handy.”
“Mine’s better,” Carl said and pulled his knife out. He flipped open the blade.
“Put that thing away.”
“That’s what all the girls say to you isn’t it?”
“Don’t make me beat the shit out of you.”
Carl waved a hand and laughed, but he folded the blade of the knife back into the handle and put it into his pocket. “Has anyone told you you’ve got an overactive imagination?”
Taylor walked to the front of the store, staying close to the racks in case he had the sudden need to hide. When he reached the plate glass windows at the front of the store, he scanned the street outside. “Sun’s starting to go under.”
Stores lined the opposite side of the street. One of them was a barber shop with an old-fashioned red, white and blue pole next to the door. A tanning salon stood next to it. Farther down the street, Taylor saw a store with Dave’s Hardware written on the marquee. Why couldn’t we have ended up in that one?
“I’m hungry.”
“I think I saw a bag of rice cakes in the backroom.”
“Fuck that. I want real food.”
“Well, we’ll just saunter across the street and find us the local steakhouse then. Sound good?”
“Be like that if you want,” Carl said, “but sooner or later we’re going to have to figure that out. What if this doesn’t blow over? What if we’re stuck here? We’re going to need to eat sometime.”
“There’ll be food once we get back home. There’s enough game meat in the basement freezer to last us over a month.”
“Assuming we make it home.”
“What are you talking about? Once it’s dark enough out there, we’re out of here. We’ll find a car and then we head home. We can hit your place first. Aren’t you worried about Angie?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I’m worried about her.”
“She’s a smart girl. Just not smart enough to dump your ass. How long have you two been going out now? Six years?”
“Seven.”
“And you haven’t put a ring on her finger. Jesus.”
“Like you’ve got room to talk. You get engaged to every hooker you meet on the street. What’s it been?” Carl pretended to count the number of times on his fingers. “At least four that I know of. They’re not all marriage material you know. Oh, that’s right, you must already know that because they all left you.”
“Keep talking,” Taylor said.
Carl held his hands up in front of him. “Hey, you started it. You had to start doggin’ on Angie.”
“I wasn’t dogging on Angie. I was dogging on you. I’d take her in a heartbeat. You’re lucky to have a girl like that. Seven years, man. She’s done her time. Take it from me, there aren’t many around like her.”
“Let’s drop it. Okay?”
“Suit yourself.”
Carl looked up and down the street. All was quiet. “Maybe they left.”
“I doubt it. Chances are they’re still around here somewhere. Probably waiting for us to do something stupid.”
“You think those things are that smart?”
“They used to be normal people. So, yeah, they could be. Either way, I’m not going to chance it.”
“What kind of moron screwed up so bad for something like this to happen?”
“I wish we had a TV. Or even a radio. That might help us figure out what’s going on.”
Carl was still staring down the street when he said, “What are you talking about?”
“Just thinking out loud I guess.”
“What about Mom and Dad? You think they’re okay?”
“I don’t know, and I’m going to try not to think about that until we’re out of this mess. We need to keep our heads clear. It’s going to be hard to do, but that’s what has to happen so we don’t fuck up and get ourselves killed.”
“There was that bottle of water behind the counter,” Carl said. “I’ll fill that up with water from the sink before we leave.”
Taylor nodded and moved away from the window. “Good thinking.”
I want to get inside that hardware store before we leave, he thought. Pick up a few things. A Just-In-Case measure if nothing else. I’d donate a kidney for a gun and ammo store right about now.
“You think they’ve got a sporting goods store in town? Some place that sells guns? That’s what we could really use.”
That Carl had spoken aloud what Taylor had been thinking only a moment before didn’t come as a surprise. Coincidences like that were commonplace between them. What surprised Taylor was that they still shared moments like that despite the fact that they had always been on such divergent paths. Carl had always been the stand-up kid; the one destined to follow in their father’s footsteps. As a kid, he had been their father’s second shadow.
And what were you? The black sheep? Not even. Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself. Like you were abused or something.
Taylor sat down behind the checkout counter, watching the daylight slowly fade away. He could hear the sound of water running through the pipes and realized it was Carl filling the bottle with water.
When Carl returned from filling the bottle, he held it up and said, “Hard to believe that this is as good as a loaded .45.”
“I’m not sure that it is.”
“What aren’t you sure about? It hurts them doesn’t it?”
Taylor answered without taking his eyes from the window. “I’m not sure that it hurts them. I think it’s more like they’re afraid of it. The radio said whatever’s going on might be related to rabies. How they know that this soon beats me, but if it’s related to rabies, then it fits that those things would hate water. People with rabies develop an aversion to water. But it’s worse than that. Like just the thought of water drives them apeshit. If I remember right, it’s called hydrophobia.”
Carl tilted his head in bemusement. “And you know this because?”
“I read a book about it. Well, the entire book wasn’t about rabies, but there was a chapter on it. I don’t remember who wrote it. Some doctor, I think. Anyway, it was about all these different kinds of bites and stings. Poisonous animals and stuff. Rabies was covered in it. I only remember it because it was interesting. Until I read that, I didn’t know rabies was such a crazy disease.” Taylor pointed to the water bottle in Carl’s hand. “Can you imagine a disease that causes you to be deathly afraid of something as harmless as that?”
“I saw it in action an hour ago,” Carl said. “And let me tell you, I was scared shitless. Had I known that this wouldn’t actually hurt them, it would have been a lot worse.”
“Don’t take what I’m saying as gospel truth. I’m only making an educated guess based on what the guy on the radio said. I could be totally wrong. Or the guy on the radio could be wrong. If somebody offered me a choice between that bottle of water and a loaded .45 and said I had to go back out there, I’d pick the loaded .45 every time.”
Carl glanced at the bottle of Arrowhead in disappointment. “It’s better than nothing.”
“Yeah, it’s better than nothing.” He looked at his watch and then nodded toward the window. “Another hour-and-a-half and it should be dark enough. We’ll go out the same way we came in. I think we should head across the street and see if we can find a way into that hardware store too.”
“Why not just find a car and leave? I don’t think a shopping spree is such a good idea.”
“We’re going to do it just in case.”
“What? And we’re going to fill a shopping cart and then push it down the street until we find a car to unload it in?”
“No. We won’t use a cart. Only what we can carry without getting bogged down. A cart would make too much noise.”
“No shit, Sherlock. It’s still a shitty idea. I’m telling you, if we stop anywhere it should be a gun shop.”
“Remember where we are. Chances are a town this small doesn’t have a gun shop. You have to compare it to our town. Do we have a gun shop? No. So most likely they don’t have one here, either. Around here, a hardware store is the next best thing.”
Carl mulled this over. He walked up to one of the plate glass windows, looking down the street at Dave’s Hardware. “It’s not that far. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a look and see what we find.”
“We need to look at this like we’re in it for the long haul. It’s not a matter of getting home and everything’s back to normal. At least I don’t see how things could get turned around that fast. The plan is to get home, get our loved ones all together, and then make a kind of self-sustaining fortress out of your place or my place or Mom and Dad’s house. Fix it up so it’s strong enough to keep those things out. Maybe then we can wait till this all blows over.”
“Has anybody told you you’ve seen too many movies?”
“Yeah, and it’s lucky for you that I have,” Taylor said. “Turns out they’re kind of like survival guides for when the shit really breaks loose.”
Carl rolled his eyes. “See. That’s what I mean. Too many freakin’ movies.”
Carl heard the sound and imagined it was what Spain sounded like during the Running of the Bulls. The sound of a hundred feet running in tandem. The noise grew louder and he crouched down behind a rack of women’s power suits, peeking around a pair of slacks in time to see the mob of crazies passing by right outside the window. Even on asphalt, that many feet were like the menacing rumble of distant thunder.
Taylor had taken refuge behind the ‘returns’ counter. He was thinking that if those things saw them that the two of them were goners. Nothing to stop them but a thin piece of glass.
“I don’t believe it,” Carl said. “You think they’re still looking for us?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
Carl waited another minute, took a final glace around the corner to make certain the coast was clear, and then made his way back to Taylor.
The sky outside had taken on a gloomy quality; a thick buildup of clouds had rolled in.
Carl said, “That’s what we need. For it to rain. If those things are afraid of water, then rain should really fuck with them.”
Taylor didn’t think they were lucky enough for it to rain. It was autumn. Although the season saw its fair share of rain, he was also cognizant of the fact that eighty percent of the time those dark clouds could also be one of Mother Nature’s cruelest bluffs. He didn’t say this out loud; he wanted to keep things positive. Carl knew how to keep his head. That wasn’t an issue. But Taylor never underestimated the power of positive thinking, even if he wasn’t very good at it. “Rain wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
“I can’t believe those things stick around,” Carl said. “Just running back and forth on the street like that. I know they’re probably still looking for us, but don’t they have to move on sometime? Don’t they still have to eat? Or sleep?”
“If we had access to a radio or a TV we’d at least know if they’d figured that out yet.”
Taylor glanced at his watch. Time was creeping by slowly, and despite his pessimism, the clouds outside instilled a glimmer of hope. The rain might not hurt them, he thought. But it might keep them out of our hair for a little while.
Carl unscrewed the cap and took a drink from the bottle of Arrowhead.
“I thought you were saving that for them?” Taylor said, nodding in the direction of the window.
“I am. It’s not a big deal. It’s tap water. I’ll get a refill before we go. It tastes like shit, you know. Not even cold.”
“Can’t have everything.”
“Why do you think they were running? When they went by those things were running. Why? I don’t see the point of it. Whether they’re still looking for us or not, I don’t see the need to run. I wonder if it has something to do with whatever’s wrong with them. You’re the rabies expert. Would rabies make them run like that?”
“No idea,” Taylor said. “I don’t remember reading anything about that. And I’m nowhere close to being an expert on the subject.”
“Since there’s nobody else around, I’d say you’re the closest thing to it.”
Carl moved over to the window again. He was leery of the mob returning. His eyes were on Dave’s Hardware. It sat kitty-corner from the clothing store. “It’s really not that far. I bet I could throw a rock that far. Way less than it took to find this place.” He brought his head forward, pressing his nose against the window glass, shifting his view so that he could see down the opposite side of the street. “None of those things in sight at the moment. What if we tried going for it? I mean, what if we went right now. Make a beeline for it. Go right out the front door, full speed ahead.”
“The only problem with that is what if we get over there and the door is locked?” He walked up to the window and stood next to his brother, bringing his face close to the window without pressing up against it. “The coast is clear now, and maybe we could make it across the street fast enough, but what happens when we hit that door and it’s locked? Because you know it’s going to be. Besides the fact that no business owner with his head on straight is going to forget to lock up his own store, we’re just not that fucking lucky. How many times have you left the front door to your house unlocked?”
“Plenty of times.”
“Okay. Bad example. Say you owned a business. Wouldn’t you want to make sure the door was locked?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, there you go.”
“I didn’t mean we should get across the street, try the handle and say ‘oh well, it’s locked, guess we might as well move on.’ I meant we break the glass out of the door if we have to. Or just try the back door.”
“Breaking the glass will make enough noise to bring those things down on us. And if we break the door, there won’t be anything between us and them.”
“True.” Carl tapped his knuckles lightly against the window. “But is this really gonna stop them if they want to get in?”
“You’ve got a point, but it’ll be dark enough in another hour or so. An hour difference isn’t worth the risk.”
Carl sighed and walked back to the counter. He took another drink from the water bottle, grimacing at the taste of it. His stomach protested loudly against its lack of food.
Taylor sat down on the floor, back resting against the front of the counter. Carl sat down next to him. Together, they watched and waited.