Haven (30 page)

“I…,” Beverly said and paused to swallow. Whatever she wanted to say was a strain, making her clamp her mouth closed again.

“We need to keep moving,” Harrison warned. He was waiting for us a car length ahead, scanning the area. “The explosion will draw others.”

In a burst of words, Beverly admitted what was bothering her. “I don’t want to leave my dad.”

And there it was…the first indication to the others who didn’t truly know her that Beverly actually had a heart. It was hidden under layers…and layers…of narcissism, but it was there. It took a lot for Beverly to show her sensitive side, not only because it’s hard to find something so small but also because it exposed her vulnerability. Her bitterness was her cloak and she’d finally opened it to the rest of them.

“Wow, you mean there’s actually a human being in there?” Doc muttered.

She scowled at him but never budged, so he never saw it.

“Beverly,” I said, “we need to keep moving.”

“He deserves a proper burial,” she argued.

“All of these people deserve a proper burial,” Doc asserted as his hand swept across the parking lot.

In an effort to get her walking again, away from the open space we were standing in, I agreed, “He will get a proper burial. I promise.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“Then go back,” Doc said, a little too loudly.

“And do what? Rot away on the roof?”

When she raised her voice, I cringed and instantly began searching for movement in the distance.

“Beverly, if you don’t start walking, I’m going to slap you again.”

“A-again?” She gasped. “You go right ahead and try.”

Having already started toward Harrison, I quickly stopped, but I didn’t turn around. Seeing her would have incited an angry response that I didn’t want to have erupt now. She must have sensed this, because amazingly, she conceded.

“Okay,” she stated quietly, almost meekly. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

I twisted my head to the right, preparing to reply, but whatever remark I had planned was instantly erased. Something flashed in the corner of my eye, resembling a sparkle on the surface of the lake. But there were no lakes nearby.

“Guys…,” I whispered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harrison’s head spin in the direction I was looking.

As I lifted the rifle and took aim, Beverly’s exclamation trailed off, “Oh my gosh…”

And then, he appeared from behind the hedge, his watch flickering at me once more as he came entirely into the sun. I set my front sight on him.

Through the scope, I clearly saw the man’s half-torn face. One of his eyeballs was gauged and drooping, which didn’t disturb me as much as his good eye, because it was turned and looking directly at me.

I exhaled, intending to make my two hundred yard shot count, when Harrison stopped me.

“Kennedy,” he said through gritted teeth. “He’s not alone.”

~ 12 ~

T
HE HEDGE ALONG THE ROAD THAT
had kept us from seeing each other had gaps, not too wide but enough to identify movement directly on the other side. And when I saw that Harrison was correct, that there were others,
lots
of others coming, my breath threatened to seize in my chest. Their movement could be detected all the way back to the start of the hedge that didn’t end until it met up with the businesses that were next to our school: the hedge was the length of an entire football field.

The warning Beverly had demanded we listen to a few minutes earlier ran through my head, sharp, distinct, and without pity. We were without resources or a secure location. And worse, we were exposed…

Doc was the first to call out any instruction and he did so while following his own order. “Duck down!”

“Too late,” I said, my voice cracking as if my throat didn’t want to accept those words. “We need to run!”

Doc shot back up and returned to his more traditional shout. “Go! Go! Go!”

And we did, fast, weaving through the cars to the chain link fence on the parking lot’s perimeter. The vehicles in our path turned our route into an obstacle course, forcing us to hurdle several bumpers. I did this with ease and could easily have kept up with Harrison if it hadn’t been for Beverly.

She didn’t exercise, other than the random phys ed class she couldn’t get out of. Starvation was her fitness routine, which weakened her further. So when it came to leaping or sliding across bumpers or hoods, she needed help. Harrison caught on to this after we came across the first car. From that point, he literally yanked Beverly over to the other side.

Again there were no screams from the Infected, no adrenaline-fueled shouts. There was only the stampede of feet hitting the pavement. Their lust for us seemed to be summed up entirely in their rush to get to us, leaving no excess energy for gratuitous shows of emotion. They came at us with a vengeance unlike anything I’d ever seen, completely oblivious to their limbs smacking into side view mirrors and their hips catching on open doors.

We were given just one respite. They had to crawl over the cluster of cars to get to us, too.

They chased us across the street parallel to our school and into a residential subdivision, giving us a clear view of their size in number. There were over a hundred…Women, teenagers, men, far too many of them to stop with a single rifle before they got to us. Several broke free from the swarm, the faster ones, the ones who reminded me of Mike Myrtle. Those were the ones steadily gaining ground with their relentless pace.

Harrison led us down streets empty of the Infected and by the fourth one, I realized he was doing two things at once: using his senses to help us avoid the other Infected who we might run into and redirecting us toward the business center of our small township.

As he turned a corner he glimpsed over his shoulder to determine how we were holding up and to assess the mob’s distance from us. I already knew the answer to both. Beverly was falling behind and struggling to draw enough air to keep her lungs going. Mei, whose small, frail frame wasn’t designed to run long distances, was beginning to slow too. Doc was trying to help Mei, gripping her hand and pulling her along, but it wasn’t doing enough good. Terror was etched across their faces. These were bad signs because the Infected, those who had broken free from the rest, were less than a hundred yards away now.

When we reached the end of the subdivision and crossed through a park, Harrison slowed us to a stop and let the rest of us catch our breath.

“Kennedy?” he said, watching me gasp for air. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

I knew what he was inferring. Could I shoot straight while trying to refill my lungs and while my heart was pumping madly to keep up? The answer was no.

I handed him the rifle, he brought it to his shoulder and took aim. When he began firing, ten shots in all, I looked up from where I was doubled over to catch my breath and found the Infected dropping, one by one, each by a single shot. They were a hundred yards out, moving chaotically, and still he’d managed to hit them in the head. With a mixture of wonder and bewilderment, I came to the understanding that Harrison was a better shot than me. So, when he handed the rifle back to me, I tried to refuse.

“Keep it,” he insisted. “I don’t want you without protection.”

“That’s a nice gesture, but you’re overlooking an important fact,” I said, rising again to my full height.

“What’s that?”

Evidently he hadn’t realized it yet. “
You’re
our protection.”

He blinked in astonishment, and I knew that the icy façade he’d built to keep others from getting too close was still there. It was broken, letting in some light of truth, but nevertheless, it remained. So my acknowledgement of him being our safeguard went against every perception he had of himself.

“Take it,” he urged as I passed by him. “I have…other means…of defense.”

“What
other
means?” Beverly demanded. She was still doubled over struggling to breath, but her eyes were on Harrison and they were leery.

He didn’t answer her or turn away from me even though I was likely the only person present who knew what he meant. He was referring to his abilities of smell, vision, hearing, and strength. But I had also witnessed him heal rapidly both times he’d defended me against the Infected, and he didn’t show signs of contamination either time.

His arm continued to extend the rifle to me, waiting patiently for me to take it. “We don’t have time to argue,” he stated, knowing his reminder of the slower ones who were still coming would provoke me. While we may have lost them, he could easily be just as correct, so I took the rifle.

His dark, blue eyes rested on me a second longer, observing me. “Thank you.”

I swallowed, because that was the only reaction I could summon after seeing what was clearly visible in his eyes. He was saying, “I care for you, don’t fight me when there’s no need.”

Without another word, he turned and began trekking toward the high-rise business district again, his shoulders set squarely with resolve. I watched him as we walked, simultaneously feeling fortunate and in awe of his presence.

We got to the fence bordering the park and began ducking through a hole Harrison had led us to when Beverly, whose breathing had leveled, made a statement that was probably lingering in everyone’s minds.

“I don’t feel comfortable being out here.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Harrison replied without warning, startling the rest of them enough to snap their attention to him.

“Where?” Doc asked.

“Ezekiel Labs,” I said and dipped through the hole to find Harrison standing on the other side with a surprised expression. I lifted an eyebrow at him to show he wasn’t the only one who could rationalize others’ behaviors. His response was a lighthearted chuckle, eliciting a smile from me.

“Okay,” Beverly replied. From her tone I deduced she didn’t appreciate being left out of the decision making. “Why Ezekiel Labs?”

“Marion Kremil is there.”

“Marion…” she reiterated before drawing in a sharp breath. “The woman on the recording…from the portable radio? Right, all right, that makes sense.”

Doc laughed through his nose as evidence that her opinion on the matter wasn’t as important as Beverly might think. “So glad you agree.”

She scowled, but didn’t offer any reply.

“Ezekiel Labs?” Mei muttered. “That’s appropriate.”

“It is?” Doc replied. “Why?”

He hadn’t been much for studying, even before the outbreak, so it didn’t seem to shock Mei that he didn’t understand the reference.

“Ezekiel is a book in the Bible,” she explained, stepping over a tree root breaking through the ground. “It prophecies the end of Jerusalem.”

When an uncomfortable silence had settled over us, Harrison’s unique way of inspiring hope, effortlessly lifted it. “Doesn’t it also promise a new beginning?”

Mei smiled at him and her tone was lighter when she replied. “Yes, it does.”

Of course, Beverly, with her unrelenting negativity felt compelled to comment back.

“Well,” she muttered, “We definitely got that…”

It was both depressing and timely, because we were standing on the opposite side of the fence by then looking up at what lay before us. The highway was ten lanes across and jammed with vehicles on both sides. Bodies hung from broken windows and slumped out of doors while broken trails of brown ran between the cars.

Beverly made a retching sound and I realized this was the first time she’d seen or understood the impact of what had taken place. “What…what happened here?”

Harrison rounded a Toyota truck with gardening equipment in the back and a logo on the door promoting Mikey’s Mowing. “They were caught in rush hour traffic,” he said plainly, leaving her to deduce the rest on her own.

I saw it on her face when she did. The wakeup call hit her hard. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared, and the general appearance of panic in her was enough to tell me what was going through her mind. While she’d been painting her nails and getting a tan, and living a semi-comfortable existence within the confines of the school, others had been fighting for their lives. Now it was us out in the open facing the same evils they had. A new life had begun, a new beginning, and it wouldn’t be as posh as our previous ones, not even close.

“Beverly,” I said, passing her. “You need to keep moving. You don’t want to be left behind.”

Her body sprang into action, fear now spurring her forward, and I doubted that she’d hold us up again.

We reached the concrete median and hurdled it. We then helped Beverly over and continued on through the fence on the opposite side of the highway. Beyond, stood a cluster of high-rises, some twenty stories tall, still smoldering and with a good number of broken windows. Unfortunately, we were headed right for these buildings and we would need to successfully navigate the side streets surrounding them first. There, smaller, older buildings made of brick taunted us with dark shadows and an unnatural quietness. Only bird calls, the whistling breeze, and the occasional scuff of our feet broke the silence.