Hissers (28 page)

Amanita snapped her fingers. “The hardware store, next to Jefferson Liquors on Adams street. They’ve got to have rope.”

“Okay,” Nicole said. “Then we split up. Connor and I hit the plane, you get the rope.”

“We’ll meet at the fort,” Connor said, “before the hour is done.”

“I kind of feel like a Jedi,” Seth said.

“Don’t forget all the Jedi were killed.”

“Yeah, in
Revenge of the Sith
, but I don’t count that movie…it sucked.”

“We are so dead.” Amanita took out her cigarettes. There was one left. She said fuck it and lit it up inside.

Sunday, 9:40am

They stood outside the school, shaking hands like combatants off to war. Nobody actually said the word goodbye, but Amanita and Nicole hugged and Connor and Seth bumped fists. Now was not the time to go soft.

Another mortar fell into the woods east of the park and made the ground tremble.

“I hope they keep their aim where it is,” Nicole said.

It was agreed that taking the SUV now would be a bad idea. There were no cars on the street still moving besides possible military Jeeps, and they’d heard what happened to those guys. Any roving cars in the open would alert the town’s undead, who were currently—eerily—nowhere to be seen.

But they
were
out there, waiting and hungry. They all knew it. The screams from the dying marines still echoed in their heads. The four friends could feel the weight of the undead’s numbers even if they couldn’t see them.

They were hiding, ensconced, geared up for an ambush.

Connor readjusted the bandages on his leg. The blood had seeped through and his ankle was severely swollen. Nicole thought infection had definitely set in and was currently eating away at his cells, but that was something to worry about after they got away.

The wind carried subtle hints of smoke and decay, most likely from the plane and numerous car accidents, but also the fresh summer aromas of dandelions and dewy grass. On any other day the latter scents would make it a marvelous morning to be living in Castor. But not today. Maybe not ever again.

A dog barked from the yard of a nearby house, low and guttural. Could have been a warning bark, the kind to ward off an intruder. Could just be that the poor mutt was hungry and wanted someone to fill its bowl.

It’ll die in the bombings,
thought Nicole.
They’ll all die. All the dogs, all the cats, all the people in hiding who had no idea what was coming.
She could try and stop it when they got across the river, but she had little hope of convincing the authorities to hold off. And so, like the way they’d left the general in the park to die, she once again faced her own culpability in other people’s deaths, and cursed herself for her lack of a soul.

She didn’t deserve this, nobody deserved this.

Seth and Amanita broke away from the group and began jogging toward the running track, intent to cut across it and into the back yards of the adjacent street, which would spill them out one block from Adams.

Connor leaned in and kissed her. The first move he’d made on his own since this mess began.

“Thanks,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

“I mean it. Especially for understanding my…” She looked down at her thighs. “Fucked up issues.”

“Don’t sweat it. We’ll talk later. Besides, that’s not fucked up. That can be mended. What’s fucked up is that we have forty-five minutes to get to the plane crash, look for something we have no description of, and then scale up and down the sheer rock cliffs of a ravine without any rock-climbing experience…all without getting eaten alive or blown to bits.”

“No problem, we just let Aunt Sally guide us.”

“Huh?”

“Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, the basis for solving any variable equation. Certain parts of a problem must be solved before others. Parentheses, exponents, multiplication—”

“Right, I remember, from Pre-algebra.”

“We just go in the proper order, which in this case if fairly linear. Right now Aunt Sally is on the plane.”

“Well, I hope she has a bazooka, because we’re gonna need one to get out of this whole mess by 10:30.”

“After you.” They took off running, staying behind trees and bushes and fences and whatever else concealed them.

Sunday, 9:44am

And now we’re back to the running,
thought Seth.
I hate this part. Always have, always will. Running is as much fun as getting smashed in the nuts with the claw end of a hammer. Racing around in the car was pretty messed up, but at least we had wheels. This? This sucks.

Ahead of him, Amanita hopped over some railroad ties that had been erected as a barrier separating the field from a strip of dirt that ran along the back side of some fences. Beyond the fences were the backyards of the houses on Felton Street.

He hopped the railroad ties, caught up with Amanita. He had to stop to catch his breath. “Hold up. I’m fat. I can’t run unless there’s a Twinkie at the end of the race.”

“What?”

“Nothing. A funny joke. Something the soccer team used to say about me.”

“We can’t stay here. We’re exposed. We can get over that fence there to that house.”

“I know. I see it.” He sucked in a big breath. “Okay. I’m good, let’s go.”

They jogged to the small chain-link fence and looked into the yard beyond. An above ground pool, a ten speed bike, a barbecue grill, lawn chairs, flower pots. Pretty nice place, he thought.

They both got over the fence without too much trouble.

The familiar dog bark kicked up once again, a few yards away, across Felton Street.

“Maybe it sees someone nearby,” Amanita said. “Maybe we should go a different way?”

“I don’t know another way from here. All we have to do is get across the street and cut through those yards onto Adams.”

They ducked down as they walked, scanning the windows of the house before them. Seth expected a bloodied visage to appear at any second and roar at him. It would be followed by a wave of undead spilling out from a mid-morning tea party to feast on his intestines.

Thankfully no faces appeared.

Amanita reached the gate to the driveway, reached up for the latch and began to push it open.

Seth grabbed her hand. “Hang on, Leeroy Jenkins.”

“Leeroy who?”

“Do you even own a computer?”

“Yes. I mean, my dad does. Did.”

“Never mind. I’m just saying we can’t run out there like this. The street’s too open.”

“Then what’s your suggestion?”

“I dunno. In Halo I’d throw a plasma grenade or something. See if it got anybody to move. Wait for their red dot to pop up on my radar.”

She titled her head and went tight lipped.

“Okay, sorry. I know, you hate games. Tell you what, we get out of this, I’ll teach you to play. You’ll dig it. You get to kill lots of stupid boys online.”

Her lips loosened. “Well, maybe I’ll give it a shot for the sake of hurting men, but for now, there’s no way out without opening the gate.”

“Fine. Just do it slowly.”

She undid the latch and pushed the gate. It screeched a record scratch across the cement driveway, loud enough to get the dog across the street barking again.

“Son of a bitch!” Amanita whispered emphatically.

Seth felt a rush of adrenaline surge through him. “Well, it’s open now. Let’s go.”

They hugged the side of the house and snuck down to the front bushes.

Seth peered out around them, scanned the street.

Empty but for two cars abandoned in the middle, both of their windshields broken. Chips of vehicular glass glinted like gemstones around the tires, twinkling in the morning sun. Almost looked like a head-on collision, but there was no way to be sure.

He shifted his gaze to the houses across the street. Some front doors were wide open, what looked like clothing was scattered on one front lawn. The now all-too-familiar undead graffiti—bloody hand prints—branded front doors and picture windows.

He took a tentative step out into the open, looked up and down the street but saw no one moving. No undead, no military, no survivors. Only the dog’s lonely barking serenade let him know civilization once existed here.

“Okay, run to the cars and stay down. Then we’ll jet to the house across the street, go around it and cut through the backyard. Sound good?”

“No, a grilled chicken salad sounds good, but it sounds familiar so I’m not gonna complain.”

“Hardy har. Okay, on three. Ready?”

Amanita flexed on the balls of her feet, ready to take off.

“One. Two. Three!”

Together they sped out past the front yard, hunched down as low as they could go and still run. Their feet slapped the pavement of the road, too loud for comfort. Seth spun in a three-sixty, tried to get a panoramic view of their surroundings. Still alone.

They were at the cars in two seconds flat, squatting down beside the dented sides of the vehicles. Seth was huffing and puffing again. Amanita leaned up and looked through the driver’s side window, then sat back down. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Me either.”

“Shit, I gotta stop smoking. I can’t breathe.”

“Join the club.”

The damn dog was still barking.

“So far so good,” Amanita said. “Ready to go again?”

“Yeah. On Three. One. Two—”

The dog yelped in pain.

Sunday, 9:51am

If he hadn’t already known the way to the crash site, Connor was confident he could follow the smell of fire and be there in minutes. As it was, he and Nicole raced out toward the main road, staying low, gunning for the strips of local businesses lining the sides. Their plan was to get into the alley behind them, take that all the way down toward the public park and then haul ass to the plane.

Connor kept the gun in his hand as they went, his index finger pointed straight out along the barrel to avoid accidentally pulling the trigger—like he’d seen in so many movies. He’d checked the clip just seconds ago. Thirteen bullets.

Do I save two for us,
he wondered.

The main road was dead. Not a car moved. Not a person ambled. The stores were all closed, the absence of ambient noise was unsettling.

Gone were the rushes of car engines and rolling tires on blacktop. Gone were the buzzing tones of cheap neon signs outside of diners. Gone were strident footfalls of joggers and the laughter of children riding bicycles. The traffic light at the far corner was off, swaying ever so gently in the light breeze, a grim reminder of a society that once had laws.

They reached the sidewalk and turned right, toward Hanson’s Rx, one of the remaining private pharmacies in town and a local institution. Connor used to spend his allowance there when he was younger, in the dollar toy aisle. Knock off Transformers, Lord of the Rings toys that had defects. To a collector it was garbage, to a kid it was treasure. He wanted to slink in now and grab handfuls Tylenol and Advil to help the pain in his leg, but knew they could not afford to get sidetracked.

The road ahead stretched out for a good mile. Nothing but silence and a handful of cars parked sideways across the lanes. There should be police handing out tickets to crazy drivers like that.

The small parking lot of the drug store was empty, a Styrofoam cup rolling lonesome across the white parking lines.

“Back here,” he said, reaching the edge of the building and turning down toward the alley in back. They tiptoed by the giant blue dumpster set in a small fenced in square. A small mouse darted away into a drain pipe on the adjacent building, a coin-operated laundry.

It would be so easy for someone to bottleneck us in here,
he thought.
Hissers at both ends, running toward us. We’d have nowhere to go. Only thirteen bullets to shoot. We’d be dead in seconds.

They stepped over an oily puddle into the alley, the backs of the buildings on one side, a drainage ditch and small incline on the other. At the top of the incline was another chain link fence protecting the far edge of the school’s fields and any other private properties.

“You still want to do this?” he asked. He already knew what her answer was going to be but a man could hope, couldn’t he.

They moved deftly for a few more yards, passing rusted back doors with EMPLOYEES ONLY stenciled on them.

“Here’s the thing, Connor,” Nicole said. “When my dad left, my mom started going to church. She didn’t want to go but one of her friends from work convinced her to go, you know. Some God-fearing woman who swore the Almighty would save us or bring my dad back or whatever. My mom was pretty devastated at the time so she went. I mean, we both were, devastated that is, but I was younger so I don’t think I even understood what was happening.”