A sound came from behind them.
Taylor instinctively dropped the sack, listening to the heavy thud and sloshing of water as the contents hit the floor. In a flash, he was squatting down, grabbing for one of the spray bottles.
Carl had twisted around, unsheathed the machete and had it raised above his head. He had nearly screamed. When he saw what had made the noise he was thankful he hadn’t.
“Take me with you,” the girl said. “If you’re leaving, please take me with you.”
One of her hands was up, shading her eyes from the beams of the flashlights. She had something in her other hand and she held it out to them. Taylor shined his flashlight on it. Keys. “That’s your car out back?”
The girl nodded. She wasn’t crying now, but looked as though she had been recently.
“What are you doing here?” Carl asked.
“This is my father’s store. I go to the university and came home to visit for the weekend. I got here and everyone had, well, you know…everyone had changed. This is the only place I could think to go.”
“How long have you been here?”
“What time is it now?”
Taylor looked at his watch. “Nine-thirty.”
“Almost seven hours.” She pointed to a ladder leaning against the wall. “I used that to climb into the ceiling. There’s nothing up there but rafters and that insulation that looks like cotton candy. It’s dusty and smells weird. I listened to the two of you talking and realized you couldn’t be those…things.”
“You forgot to lock the back door,” Taylor said. “That’s how we got in. You’re lucky we’re the only ones that found our way in.”
“I was in a hurry.”
“But you remembered to lock your car doors?”
She showed him the black fob that dangled from her car keys. “You use one of these things for a while, it becomes a habit.”
“So you come back to town, and all you find is a bunch of crazies,” Taylor said. “What about your father? Where’s he?”
The girl cast her eyes to the floor.
Dumb question, Taylor thought.
She shrugged. “I thought he’d be here, but he wasn’t. Do you think anyone is still normal?”
“I’m normal,” Taylor said.
“Some days,” Carl said.
“My brother is normal, and you look like you’re normal. I imagine some people made it out of here. Either that or they’re holed up in their houses doing the same thing we are. Laying low so they don’t draw the attention of those crazy fucks.”
“Maybe they’re gone by now,” the girl said.
Carl shook his head. “We just saw them run by a few minutes ago. They run a lot. Doesn’t seem like they ever get tired, either.”
Carl thought the girl was attractive. Skinnier than he liked, but even through her blue jeans and tight sweater he could tell that she had an athletic build. He wondered if she had ever been on the track team. Strong shoulders, he thought. Probably a swimmer.
Staring at the girl and seeing how vulnerable she looked standing there in front of them, and noticing that she had obviously been crying, made him think of Angie. Alone somewhere - hopefully, locked up in the house - in a town that was mostly a carbon copy of this one. He was disappointed in himself for spending so little time thinking of her safety. Almost like he had forgotten about her. He justified this by telling himself it was natural to put pain and worry from your mind in order to continue functioning; that Angie had been there in his brain all along, but that he had set those emotions aside temporarily while they searched for a safe place.
And he felt guilty for finding this girl attractive.
Taylor’s right. Why the hell haven’t you proposed yet? Because you figured you could take your own sweet time. Now look.
Taylor said, “I wouldn’t feel right leaving you here, but are you sure about going with us? I can’t guarantee it’s going to be any better. We’re just trying to get home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Coldwater. It’s about a hundred miles from here. About the same size as this.”
“Maybe this is only happening here,” she said hopefully.
“From what the radio said, it’s happening everywhere.”
The girl pondered the situation for a moment, eyes going to the ladder and following it up to the panel in the ceiling. “I can’t stay up there forever. So I guess I really don’t have a choice.”
Carl considered how he would explain returning home with another girl. It was a shame what a selfish thing the human condition could be at times. Find Angie first. Worry about explaining things afterwards.
Taylor took the keys from her and said, “My name’s Taylor. This is my brother, Carl.”
“Tina,” the girl said.
“Well, Tina, that’s about all I’ve got in the way of formal introductions. If you don’t mind, we’re in kind of a hurry to ditch this place. What do you say? Road trip anybody?”
Tina nodded. A smile briefly lit her face. Taylor could see himself ending up with a girl like this. Name a girl you couldn’t see yourself ending up with.
Taylor handed one of the full spray bottles to Tina before folding the drop cloth and swinging it over his shoulder.
“What’s this for?” Tina asked.
Carl said, “He thinks they have rabies. That’s why they’re acting crazy.”
“Something like rabies. That’s what the radio said. That a strange disease is spreading rapidly and that the symptoms are similar to rabies. So this virus or whatever it is might be related to that. A symptom of rabies is hydrophobia. They have difficulty swallowing, and have a strong aversion to water.” He looked at Carl. “Make fun all you want, these things already saved our asses once.”
“I happen to know quite a bit about rabies,” Tina said. When Taylor raised his eyebrows in surprise, she elaborated. “I’m studying to be a veterinarian. I’m a sophomore right now, so I’ve got a ways to go, but it’s some interesting stuff. I guess I never put it together. It makes sense. Large quantities of saliva. No wonder they drool the way they do.”
“How’s your car doing for gas?”
“I think I’ve got half a tank.”
Taylor opened the back door a crack and froze. Tina’s Escort was less than three feet in front of them, but beyond that stood the mob of crazies. They stood there still and silent as though they were in a kind of mass trance. He scanned their faces.
What are they doing?
“Shut the door!” Carl yelled.
The mob rushed forward. Carl nudged Taylor aside and pulled the door shut, holding the handle with both hands. “Lock it for God’s sake!”
Taylor stood there looking at him until he remembered that he had the keys. He looked at them and handed them to Tina. “I don’t know which one it is.”
Tina sifted through the keys, her hands shaking so violently that Taylor was certain she was going to drop them.
The door shuddered. The pounding of many hands on metal. Carl was yanking back on the handle, one leg up with his foot braced against the wall.
“Hurry! I can’t hold this thing forever!”
Tina fumbled with the lock, aiming for the keyhole and missing on her first two tries. On the third, she managed to insert the key and twisted it. “Got it!”
Carl removed his weight from the door slowly, making sure it would hold on its own. “Will it hold?”
“I don’t know. It is for now.”
“What do we do?”
“They don’t seem to be very smart,” Tina said. “They must lose something during the change. That might work in our favor.”
Taylor said, “How long before they give up and find their way around front and smash in the glass? Those windows aren’t going to keep them out.”
“You heard her,” Carl said. “They’re not very smart.”
“They found us in here didn’t they? They may be dumb, but they obviously don’t quit.”
“What if we boarded up the windows?”
“They’re huge. It would take forever. And the minute we started hammering nails in they’d hear it and come running.”
The pounding continued. The sound of it was almost deafening; flesh on metal.
“I saw one of those things catch a squirrel. When I first got back into town. Mr. Sullivan was standing on the sidewalk, just staring at this tree. At least that’s what I thought he was staring at. When I got closer, I saw that there was a squirrel next to the tree. And then he pounced. It happened so fast. He caught it and had this squirrel in his hands, squeezing and twisting it like he was trying to wring out a wet sponge. Then he tore its head off. I screamed. My window was down and he heard me scream and looked right at me. He yelled back at me and all this spit flew out of his mouth. I slammed on the gas and got out of there. They’re all like that now. The entire town.”
“I think whatever’s happening goes beyond this town.”
“I hope not.”
“Does your dad sell lumber?” Carl asked.
“Maybe. A little, I think. Most of it he keeps at the warehouse.”
“We could use the lumber up front,” Carl said. “We’ve got everything we need to board them up.”
“It’ll make too much noise. That’s a guaranteed way to bring those things around to the front.”
“They could figure out to do that anyway.”
“What do you want me to do? I said leave them for now. We need to think about this.”
Taylor wheeled the chair from the office into the back room. He sat down in it.
“That’s your answer? To sit down?” Carl said.
Taylor nodded.
“I think he’s right,” Tina said. “Trying to board the windows would only bring them around to the front.” She sat down on the linoleum, positioned so she could still see down one of the aisles to the front of the store.
Carl followed suit. “I can’t believe this is your answer. That we’re just going to sit here. Especially while we have to listen to that.” He motioned at the metal door and then covered his ears with the palms of his hands for a moment.
“Wait a minute.” Tina hopped up and disappeared into the office. They could hear her shifting things around, and when she returned she was holding an old-fashioned kerosene lantern. “Believe it or not, this thing actually works. It belonged to my grandparents. It’s kind of an antique, but my dad liked to use it whenever the power went out.”
She pulled a lighter from her front pocket and lit the wick of the lantern. She adjusted the metal dial on the side of the lantern and watched the flame lengthen. The room was filled with a flickering orange glow. Carl turned off his flashlight and rested it upright next to the wall. He laid the machete across his lap, gazing at the blade.
Taylor said, “Right now I’d prefer them banging on the door rather than tearing up the only working car we’ve seen since getting stranded in this town. He held Tina’s keys in his hand, sorting through them until he found one with the Ford logo on it. “You said you’ve got half a tank?”
“Close to it, I think.”
“That’s enough to get us where we’re going. There are a few small towns like this scattered along the way once we hit the Nebraska border. Some of them have gas stations. If one of them looks safe, we can stop off and fill up. That’s if it looks safe. Otherwise we keep going. I’m not taking any chances.”
Carl looked up at him inquisitively. “Imagine that. You not taking any chances? That’s a first.”
Taylor waved a dismissive hand at his brother and then turned his attention to Tina. “What he really means is that I’ve learned more than one lesson the hard way.”
“Do the two of you bicker like this all of the time?” Tina asked.
“Situations like this bring out the best in us,” Carl said. “I’m just giving him shit and he knows it.”
“I read this book not too long ago,” Taylor said. “It was about survival. Like who lived and who died in bad situations, but mostly about why certain people were more likely to survive than others.”
Carl glanced at Tina, cocking his thumb toward his brother. “He reads a lot. A real bookworm.”
“Anyway, a lot of the book spent its time dealing with the ingredients of survival. How you could take the same situation and the same circumstances, and one man might die while another might come out of it. Some of the prerequisites were obvious. You know, staying calm, being a leader, setting goals, stuff like that. The part that caught my attention was the one that said having a sense of humor can be a tool for survival.”
“That’s not surprising,” Tina said. “A lot of people use humor as a coping mechanism.”
“So,” Carl said, “is this the part where we go around the room taking turns telling knock-knock jokes?”
Taylor looked at Carl sternly and then continued. “Say what you want, but you’re doing it right now without knowing it. We’ve both been doing it since we’ve been stuck in this mess.”
“Okay. Maybe. But what’s your point?”
Taylor shrugged and stared at the kerosene lamp. The flickering orange flame performed its own kind of hypnotism, lending a certain degree of peacefulness to the situation. “Sharing knowledge? I don’t know. I’m not sure I was trying to make a point. Talking to talk I guess.”
“I think it’s cool,” Tina said. “I like learning stuff like that. It seems like I have my nose crammed in school books all the time lately. It’s nice to hear something different.”
Taylor smiled at her.
Carl said, “He’s a closet geek. You wouldn’t know it because he plays Mr. Cool Guy most of the time, but when you get to know him you find out he’s a big nerd. He even used to collect comic books. Go on, tell her about the stuffed animals.”
“Shut up.”
“C’mon, tell her.”
“Stuffed animals?”
“Fine. I’ll tell her. So Taylor had this collection of stuffed animals. Different kinds of cats. Leopards, tigers, lions, panthers. You name it, and he probably had a stuffed animal to go with it.”
“I was a little kid,” Taylor said. “What kid doesn’t have stuffed animals when they’re that age?”
“When he used to go to sleep at night he’d line them up around himself in the bed. Build a fortress of stuffed animals to keep the monsters out. He still believes in monsters.”
“I don’t believe in them,” Taylor said. “I acknowledge that they could exist.” He turned to face Tina and smiled uneasily. “It’s kind of a superstition of mine. I used to figure if I admitted to believing in them that they would leave me alone. It’s silly, but I was afraid of the dark for a long time. An overactive imagination or something. So part of the ritual when I was a kid was to line up my stuffed animals around me on the bed. That and I’d put the thought out there to any monsters that I believed that they were out there. It sounds stupid now, but it worked back then.”
“I think it’s kind of cute,” Tina said. She patted him on the arm. “I had a bunch of stuffed animals, too. Dolphins mostly.”
“I haven’t even gotten to the really fucked up part yet,” Carl said.
“You just can’t leave it alone can you?”
“Don’t be a poor sport, bro. You were the one who was just saying humor is a survival mechanism. So I’m being humorous. Besides, she wants to know. Don’t you?”
“I’m hanging off the edge of my seat.”
“Right. So ask him where those stuffed animals are now?”
“Where?”
“In our parent’s attic. My mom has brought up selling them at the garage sale every year, but Taylor refuses to get rid of them. They’re all up in the attic in this big black garbage bag.”
“I’m sentimental,” Taylor said. “Thought I could pass them on to my kids some day. Assuming I ever have kids.”
Tina smiled at him. He wondered if she was just being polite. She looked so beautiful yet vulnerable sitting there on the floor.
Another hour passed. Conversation was sporadic, and after a while they grew tired of raising their voices over the pounding on the door. For brief periods, the pounding would change tempo, alternating between loud and fast to soft and slow. Were they taking turns out there?
Without proper treatment, rabies was almost always fatal. If he remembered right, there was only one case of a person surviving the disease without treatment, and even that had been a long and drawn out affair. How long could those things outside last? If the radio had it right and the disease was related to rabies, shouldn’t they start to keel over? At some point, he hoped. And he hoped it was soon.
He was tired and hungry.
“If either of you want to sleep,” he said, “now would be the time to do it. I can keep watch for a little while. We can rotate if you guys want. Take shifts.”
Tina said, “I don’t think I could sleep with all this commotion. Every time I close my eyes I see Mr. Sullivan and that squirrel.” Despite this, several minutes later she leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Whether she managed to find sleep or not, Taylor couldn’t tell, but she seemed momentarily at peace with the situation.
Carl yawned. The machete still rested across his lap and he tapped his fingers against the blade, his fingernails making faint clicking sounds against the cheap metal.
“That goes for you, too. If you want, get some sleep. You can fight it for a while, but you’ve got to do it some time. Might as well be now. If I feel myself start to drift off I’ll wake you up.”
“I’m hungrier than I am tired. We haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. That was how long ago? Sixteen hours now?”
“Something like that.”
“We could still sneak out the front.”
“And what good would that do? The only car we’ve seen so far is behind that door. At least for the time being we’re relatively safe in here. As long as their attention is back there instead of up front. If we go out there?” Taylor shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?”
Carl stared at him wearily. The light from the kerosene lamp cast moving shadows across his face. “Who would have thought, huh? You see TV shows about stuff like this, but who knew it would actually happen? When you think about it, it’s some crazy shit.” He yawned again, this time covering his mouth with his fist. “I could understand an asteroid or another terrorist attack. But this? This isn’t your ordinary crisis. This is a cluster fuck. I keep thinking about Angie and Mom and Dad, but I’m trying to put it out of my mind for now. It could drive you nuts thinking about it like that.”
Taylor rubbed the palm of his hands along the legs of his jeans. He could envision the scene outside the door; could see the car only a few feet away, the keys in hand, and thought about how close they had gotten.
Carl went on. “Where’s the Army or the Air Force when you need them? Some guys with a little bit of firepower could turn those things to mince meat in no time.”
“Maybe they are, but I don’t think a backwoods place like this ranks very high on their list. If it’s going on everywhere then the big cities are probably getting their attention first. Get some sleep. I’m not going to be able to keep my eyes open indefinitely. At least do it for my sake.”
Carl moved the machete from his lap and put it down on the floor next to him. He lay down on the floor, bringing his knees up and using one of his arms as a pillow. He pulled his cap down, staring at the illuminated swathe of linoleum at the front of the store. He closed his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, his voice a breathy whisper. “It’s like falling asleep in the middle of a war.”
Taylor struggled to keep his eyes open. He took turns watching his brother and then Tina, and then turned his attention to the windows at the front of the store. He rubbed his eyes. He unfolded a corner of the canvas drop cloth and removed one of the water bottles. Sprayed some water onto his hand and rubbed his eyes. It helped. Not much, but it was better than nothing.
Quietly, he stood and stretched. He walked to the front of the store, coming close enough to the glass to be able to look up at the sky and see the moon and the stars. Wispy clouds were scattered sparsely throughout the sky as if they had been added there as an afterthought.
The street outside was vacant. If not for the incessant pounding, the place could have been a ghost down; each building a tombstone whose contents told the story of their owners. So easy, he thought. He wrapped his hand around the door handle. The keys were in his other hand, and he considered how easy it would be to unlock the door and make a run for it. In fact, he entertained the idea of doing just that. Wake the others and they could make a break for it. Forget the car. They were bound to find another one sooner or later.
Taylor turned on his flashlight and started down one of the aisles, more thorough in his inspection of the store’s merchandise.
His mind wandered. The pounding became nothing more than white noise, like the sound of a television or radio playing in the middle of the night.
Don’t get too comfortable, he thought. Shit starts to go bad the minute you forget it stinks.
In stressful situations, the mind narrows and focuses in like the zoom feature on a camera. The brain crops away superfluous information, zeroing in on a single situation at the expense of the surrounding environment. Depending on various factors, this compressed view of things can be useful or detrimental. An ability, when applied to an endgame scenario, can be the difference between death and survival. Taylor figured the odds were around fifty-fifty. Presently, he liked to think their chances were better than that. Put the three of their heads together and find a solution to the problem. That was a drastic simplification of a complex problem, but there was some relief when he contemplated it in those terms. You had to be resourceful. Maybe Carl hadn’t been too far off; maybe you had to be like MacGyver.
He was standing three feet from the store windows, staring out at the town, when he heard footsteps behind him.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Not really. I tried, but it’s a lost cause. I keep thinking about my dad. Whether he’s okay or not,” Tina said.
“What does your gut tell you?”
She stood next to him. Taylor thought she was a good five or six inches shorter than he was. Her eyes shiny in the dim light, and he wondered again if she would start to cry. He didn’t like to see a woman cry; had what his mother had called rescuer-syndrome, which meant he was attracted to women that were in some kind of trouble and felt the need to save them. That was, according to his mother, why all of his relationships failed. What he needed to do, she said, was to find a woman that was strong enough to stand on her own. A girl that had her shit together (his mother hadn’t used the word shit, but that’s what she had been getting at).
“He isn’t dumb. I think he could have seen what was happening and left town, but he was one of those people that always had to lend a helping hand. If he was all right, he would have found a way to call me. Make sure I was safe. He does that all the time. Checks up on me. He still calls me his little princess.”
“Well, I’m sure you are.”
“Right. He’s the stereotypical overprotective father. In high school, I was the girl with the nine o’ clock curfew.”
“Maybe he couldn’t call you. Does the store have a phone?”
She led him to the front checkout. There was a phone situated next to the cash register. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. “No dial-tone.” She held it out so that Taylor could listen for himself.
“Some of this just doesn’t make sense,” Taylor said. “Those things aren’t that smart. They may have been geniuses in life, but whatever has happened to them has turned them into cavemen.”
“So?”
He held the phone up as if that explained everything. “So how come the phones don’t work? Those things have been pounding on the back door for how long now? If they had any brains left in them, they would have figured out to come around front and break the glass. That means they aren’t responsible for the phone lines being down.”
Tina reached into her back pocket and took out her cell phone. Taylor snatched it from her. “How come you didn’t say you had a cell phone?” He started dialing.
“Because it doesn’t work. Not in town. No reception. That’s why most people don’t have cell phones here. They can’t get a signal.”
Taylor looked at the signal indicator and saw that there were no bars. He dialed his parent’s number anyway and pushed SEND. He waited. Nothing happened.
“See? Told you. You can’t get service here in town. Take the interstate for ten minutes in either direction and you can get a signal. But that doesn’t help us very much at the moment.”
“Okay. It’s a small town. Lots of places like this don’t get cell phone coverage. No mystery there. I don’t see how the land lines could be down, though. Something tells me that if we stopped in any of the towns around here and picked up a phone we’d have the same problem.”
“You can’t know that.”
That scared her, Taylor thought. Don’t make it any worse for her than it already is.
“You’re right. I was thinking out loud. It’s just a theory.” He lifted the handset of the phone again and held it firmly to his ear, holding his breath as he listened, hoping to hear even the faintest of sounds; the familiar buzz of the dial-tone. Nothing. “Seems too coincidental to me.”
“The sky is cloudy.”
“Clouds don’t affect the phone lines.”
“But it looks like it could storm some time soon. A storm could knock out the phone lines.” She gazed at him hopefully, but she recognized the doubt in her own voice. Of all the people she had ever lied to, it was always easiest to lie to herself, but in this case even she couldn’t buy her own flimsy story.
“I doubt it. A storm could knock out the phone lines, but if there’s one coming, it’s taking its time. The lines wouldn’t go until the storm was right on top of it.”
“I hope it doesn’t storm,” she said.
“I kind of hope it does. In fact, I hope it rains cats and dogs.”
“Why?”
“Cover. We’d be harder to see in the rain. We could make a break for it.”
Tina said, “It would be harder for us to see them, too.”
“That’s true, but rain would drive those things bonkers.”
Tina jumped up onto the counter and sat down, feet dangling a few inches above the floor. “How do you think they found us here? None of us were making that much noise. Not enough for them to hear it from outside anyway.”
“I’ve been wondering about that too. I haven’t figured out an explanation for it yet.” But he had an idea. It was based on a helluva lot of assumptions, but it was also the simplest explanation. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Occam’s razor. Of two or more explanations, the one which uses the fewest suppositions is usually true. Or at least Taylor thought it went something like that.
Thing was, it wasn’t an idea he could share with Tina because it had to do with her father. It was her father’s hardware store, after all. Didn’t it stand to reason that he would have been the one to lead the others there? His exhausted brain couldn’t conjure anything more logical unless a person was to assume that they had some supernatural sense of smell or that the disease had caused them to develop telepathic abilities.
He kept his thoughts to himself. She was trying hard to keep herself together and doing a pretty good job of it, and he didn’t want to be the one to deliver the news that caused her to crack. The problem was outside the store, and that’s how he wanted to keep it.
In the distance, they heard the far away but unmistakable rumble of thunder. Taylor came close to the window, studying the sky. Dark clouds had massed to the north where there had been only wisps fifteen minutes ago. “Maybe you’re right. By the looks of those clouds, it could be a real doozie. If it doesn’t pass us by. Nine times out of ten it’s a case of all bark and no bite.”
There was silence. He guessed uncomfortable silences were normal in situations like this.
“So you’re studying to be a veterinarian?”
“For now anyway. My dad says I’m a scatterbrain. I’m interested in something for a while and then I lose interest and move onto something else. I’ve managed to stick with this, though. Partly to prove him wrong maybe.”
“Find something you like and stick with it,” Taylor said. “That’s the advice people always give anyway.”
Thunder boomed again. The clouds were thick and had formed a wall that blotted out the northern sky, swallowing the light of the moon.
Something struck the front window.
“What was that?”
The street was empty.
“Look. It’s starting to rain,” Tina said. A raindrop slid down the window glass and she tracked it with her finger.
Another drop of rain hit the window and then another, gaining momentum. “Scared the crap out of me,” Taylor said. “I thought those things had finally wizened up.”
He watched as the clouds approached, rolling in with a certain arrogance, the rain starting to come down harder now.
“What’s going on?” Carl came jogging up the aisle towards them, machete at the ready. His baseball cap was off and he was scratching the top of his head with his free hand.
“Storm’s coming,” Taylor said. “How’d you hear that over the racket back there?”
“They stopped pounding. That’s what woke me up. I could tell that it stopped back there and started up here. Thought maybe they’d figured out to break the windows.”
Taylor walked to the back to listen for himself. Carl was right. The pounding had stopped. The only sound was the patter of rain on the front windows and on the roof. The rain was heavy enough to have created narrow rivers that ran along either side of the street.
“If they stopped pounding then where did they go?” Tina asked.
Carl had his flashlight on, the beam dancing frantically across the linoleum floor.
“Careful with that,” Taylor said. “We don’t want those things to see it.”
Carl turned the flashlight off and said, “You think they’re still back there? Just standing there not doing anything?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. Not yet. We’ll give it some time. Wait it out.” He stepped close to the window, cautious this time. The rain would provide better cover than he could have hoped for.
They could have made a break for it, and he would have been tempted to suggest just that. Unlock the front door, make a mad dash for a different safe haven; search for a different car or, worst case, find a house with the door unlocked. A house would have a refrigerator, and a refrigerator was bound to contain some amount of food. He was hungry. Despite his fear, his stomach complained to him of this hunger.
The chance of finding a weapon was better. As far as population went, this town was comparable to their own, and back home most of the men in town were hunters to some degree or other. Which meant they owned at least one rifle. His father owned two gun cabinets and a gun safe. All of them were full. A rifle or two wouldn’t be enough to turn the tables, not with hundreds of those things running around out there, but it added another layer of safety.
The trick was getting to a different location without those rabid things knowing.
But now they had ceased their pounding. Listening? Waiting perhaps?
Taylor felt exhaustion hit him. It was like a forceful hand trying to hold him down. He wanted to curl up on the floor and sleep. He thought about finding a house. In addition to food and the possibility of finding a weapon, a house would have a bed. Suddenly, a bed seemed like the most important thing to him.
Responsibility. If only that word were foreign to him. He stood there, looking from his brother to Tina, realizing that sleep had a short life expectancy in a situation like this.
“Get away from the window.”
“There’s nothing out there,” Carl said.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the sky for a moment, and Carl saw them huddled at the entrance to the alley.
“Hide,” he said, barely audible. Thunder split open the sky like a hammer on metal, drowning out his voice.
“What?” Tina asked.
Carl turned away from the window, hurriedly making his way down one of the aisles. “Hide, I said. They’re out there, by the alley.” He herded them down the aisle in front of him, his hand resting on the back of Tina’s shoulder, urging her forward.
Taylor thought: Great. Now they get some common sense. And us without so much as a simple plan.
“If they’re in front, can’t we get to my car now?”
Carl said, “You bet your ass. That’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”
His hand was on the door handle when Taylor said, “Wait!” His voice was little more than a harsh whisper, but Carl recognized a command when he heard one. His hand fell away from the handle and he turned to look at his brother.
“What? We have to get to the car while we’ve got the chance.”
“Don’t you remember pulling in? The alley dead ended in the back parking lot. There’s only one way out.”
“Then we’ll plow through them,” Carl said, hand finding the handle again. “Now c’mon. Unlock it.”
“If it was only a dozen of those things out there that might work, but there are more than a hundred of them. We can’t get through that many. Not without a truck or a bus anyway.”
“He’s got a point,” Tina said. “My dad says my car has a lawnmower motor for an engine. No get-up-and-go to it.”
Carl sighed. Instinct told him he was right, that now was the time to make a break for it, but logic got in the way. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
Taylor glanced at the front of the store. It was still raining heavily, but the view outside the windows remained clear. “I wish I knew what those things were doing. It’s almost like they’re doing this on purpose. Like they know they’ve us by the balls staying where they are. We can’t go out the front or the back.”
“If they’re boxing us in, then it means they’re at least semi-intelligent,” Carl said. “That’s a bad thing.”
“It’s a hunting strategy. Animals do it. Useful but primitive,” Tina said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean those things are rocket scientists.”
“So what do we do?”
Taylor wanted to ask why the decision-making responsibilities fell on him; ask why someone else couldn’t do the thinking for them. But he had taken the reins and he couldn’t let them go that easily. It beckoned back to a time when he had known how to start things, but his weakness had been in finishing them. He had started college and dropped out. His father had gotten him a job with one of the local construction companies and he had quit showing up for work his third week into it. That had been a time in his life when ideas and plans had seemed to flow effortlessly from his mind, but his follow-thru had been sorely lacking.
Recalling that period in his life was embarrassing. The worst part about it was that those events had taken place less than three years ago.
He could feel the bulge of the keys in his pocket. He ran his hands through his hair and said, “Let’s think this through. We can’t go out the front because they would chase us down in no time flat. The back way and the car are out because we’d be sitting ducks. Bottlenecked in the alley.”
Carl had his ear against the metal of the back door, listening. It was impossible to hear anything over the rain coming down.
“What if we distract them?” Tina asked.
“Huh?”
“Distract them. Somebody could get their attention at the front while the other two slip out the back and get my car.”
Carl’s face brightened. “That’s not a half bad idea. What do you think, bro?”
Taylor mulled it over. He didn’t like it. It was dangerous.
But options were scarce.
“It might work,” he said. “So your car is pretty reliable? I wouldn’t want to even attempt something like what you’re talking about and then get to the car and it doesn’t start.”
“I said that it doesn’t have any get-up-and-go, but it starts and runs fine. There was only one time that it didn’t start, like six months ago, but I got the battery replaced and it hasn’t had a problem since.”
“All right. Good enough. The only reason I ask is because if this was a cheap horror flick we’d get out there and the car wouldn’t start.”
“Well, this is real life,” Tina said. “Not a horror movie.”
“Right about now, I’d say the line between the two is starting to blur. Anyway, so here’s what we do. You two stay back here. I’ll go up front.” He took Tina’s keys out of his pocket and splayed them out. “Which one is the key for the front door?”
Tina pointed to the one with a large square bow. “This one.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Taylor removed the key from the keychain and handed the rest of the keys to Carl. He went to the back of the store, carefully slid the key into the lock, and slowly turned it. “This one’s unlocked. When we’re ready, I’ll unlock the front door and do something to get their attention. When they start coming all the way out of the alley, I’ll yell for you two to go. Get to the car and get out of the alley.”
Carl cocked his head. “And what about you? What’s your escape plan?”
And that’s the kicker, Taylor thought. Exactly what is my escape plan?
He walked himself through it in his head, explaining it to them out loud. “The only way out would be through the back. Close the front door, and if there’s time, I’d lock it. Run out the back and shut that door.”
“But the alley dead-ends,” Carl said. “You’d still have to come up the alley to the street.”
“Maybe those things would have made it inside the store by then,” Tina said.
“Maybe. And maybe they would see you coming out of the alley.”
“Then I make a run for it. You two will have gotten away in the car. At the end of the alley, you’ll take a left and when you come to the first intersection, you’ll take another left. Once you get around that corner, leave the car running. Don’t even put it into park. Just keep your foot on the brake. I’ll know where to find you.”
“If there’s running involved, then maybe it should be me that plays the distraction. Between the two of us, we’ve already established that I’m the faster runner.”
“I want you driving the car. You’re faster, but I’ll be fast enough.”
Carl stared at his brother and something unspoken passed between them. A look that traded a thousand words in an instant without either one of them opening their mouth.
Finally, Carl nodded.
“It’s settled then. Let’s do this before I go chicken shit.”
Taylor started for the front of the store.
“Wait,” Carl said. “Take this.” He handed him the machete. “If they get too close you can hack the shit out of them.”
Taylor weighed the blade in his hand. It was lighter than he had thought it would be. He wondered what it would feel like hacking into their flesh.
They’re not people anymore, he thought. Not really. They’ll tear you to shreds if they get the chance. Remember that. If push comes to shove, you can’t hesitate.
Another reason he wanted them out of sight and around the corner was that he was willing to bet that Tina’s father was somewhere in the mob, salivating profusely like all the rest of them. If she spotted him…things could turn ugly quick. She might lock up and shutdown. Logic and emotion. The two often didn’t play well with one another.
“That could get us kilt,” he said quietly and almost laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. Talking to myself. So we all have this down, right? I’ll open the door, wait for my go, you guys bolt and get around the corner of the first street. Two lefts. Remember that. Then wait for me. Unless it isn’t safe. Then just keep going.”
“There are parts of this I don’t like,” Carl said.
Taylor shrugged. “I don’t like any part of it. Remember what Dad used to say? About how a person can get old before his time. How a guy had to learn two words to prevent that?”
“Fuck it,” Carl said.
“That’s right,” Taylor said. He pointed the machete at the back door. “Now get back there and be ready. When I give the go, you can’t be fucking around.”
Carl stood there staring at Taylor, looking like he had something to say. After a moment, he turned and headed to the back, Tina following behind him.
Taylor headed to the front of the store, pausing momentarily at the end of the last aisle, double-checking that they hadn’t strayed from the entrance of the alley. When he was close to the window, he could see them. No more than thirty feet away. Some of them swayed back-and-forth rhythmically, as though rocked by a powerful wind.
He removed the key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock. He glanced at the mob and turned the key. He opened the door slowly.
And then he stepped out onto the sidewalk.