The Remaining: Fractured (22 page)

He went through the door in a cloud of splinters, sprawled out in the middle of a narrow hallway. White tiles with little black accents, worn smooth by passing feet. His body hurt blindingly for a flash, mainly in his chest and shoulders, but it almost immediately abated to a dull ache. He scrambled to his feet, took a glance behind him and found Deuce slipping through the door.

To either side of him were waist-high platforms where antique furniture and other useless trash was displayed in ornamental fashion for window shoppers. Lee dove for a wooden chair. It felt creaky and ancient in his hands, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He kicked the door shut and jammed the back of the old chair under the loose doorknob.

He turned. Found himself in nearly complete darkness.

Outside, there was a horrid sound building to a roar. The sound of hundreds of infected, screeching, barking, yapping at each other. There were human shouts amid the noise, the shouts of Shumate and James and the Quiet Man, and the rapid
pop-pop-pop
of gunshots.

Lee shuffled his feet down the hall, his right hand gripping the rifle and pulling it into his shoulder, the left extended out in front of him like a blind man. His vision adjusted slowly, and from the spears of light coming in through cracks in the boarded windows, Lee could just make out the interior of the shop.

It smelled of cedar chests and pine furniture and old fabric passed down through generations. Musty old clutter in dark towers to his left and right, strangely shaped and ominous in the dark. He realized he was breathing rapidly with his mouth open. He closed it. The bile in his mouth had dried to a sickening paste. He spat, tried to clear his arid throat.

Find a safe place. That’s what you need to do. Find a safe place.

Behind him the front door of the shop banged loudly, as though an irate customer was demanding entry. He swiveled, pointing the rifle at the door. He could hear the commotion outside, but the bang was not repeated and it did not seem that anything was pressing to get in. Perhaps Shumate and his crew had distracted the horde long enough for Lee to get away.

Lee prayed to God for that to be the case.

Because God knows that chair ain’t gonna last.

He forced himself to turn around again, face the dark. He kept moving forward, not sure what he was looking for. A door perhaps. One that led to a basement. Or better yet, an upper level. He tried to think if the building was two-story, tried to recall what it had looked like when he’d run towards it, but he’d been focused on the door. Architectural details had escaped him.

“Come on, Deuce,” Lee said, for no more reason than to put a voice into the darkness. He could hear the clicking of the dog’s claws on the tile floor beside him. The dog whined and growled intermittently, not wanting to go further into the shop, but not wanting to go back the way they came either.

Lee found the cashier’s counter, stepped behind it into an even darker room. Tested the walls. Found a door. He stood at the door for a moment, trying to listen, but the noise from outside was too loud for him to hear if anything was moving beyond the door. Finally he took a step back, raised his rifle, and knocked.

He waited.

No response.

He tested the doorknob, found it unlocked. He opened the door.

A narrow set of stairs, barely distinguishable in the dark.

Behind him, something collided with the front door of the shop, rattling it on its hinges. The chair pinning the door shifted and creaked against the tiles. Lee snapped his head around, saw a flash of daylight come through a crack in the door, a dark shadow of something pressing into that small space as though it might squeeze itself through. The door shook violently and the antique shop was filled with a screech as loud as if it were inside with Lee.

“Upstairs!” Lee shoved Deuce up ahead of him with his foot. The dog scrabbled up the stairs, Lee following quickly through the door and closing it behind him just as the front door exploded. The antique chair flew to pieces, the door clattering back off its stopper as two spidery figures tumbled inside.

Lee latched the door. Locked it. Breathing hard again.

He turned and flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time. His legs felt like spring coils for the first few steps and then suddenly they were made of lead as he passed the halfway point, as though he had just sucked up the last little bit of energy left in his muscles. Lee had experienced hitting “the wall” before—the point at which your body simply stopped obeying any commands for speed or strength. He knew the feeling and he feared his body giving out more than anything. The other times he’d experienced it had been long and drawn out times of 100% effort. But with his current physical state, it seemed to be hitting him quicker than ever before.

This is not the time to be weak
, he attempted to berate himself into pushing past the wall. But everyone who had ever hit it knew that it wasn’t something you could push past.

He took the last few steps, one foot in front of the other, one hand hobbling him up like a tri-pod. Below them in the antique shop, wood cracked, shelves were toppled, glass broke. There was more barking and growling now. It sounded like a half-dozen of them were tearing the place apart.

How’d they find me? Did they sniff me out?

Will they smell their way to me upstairs?

His mind painted a vivid picture of them pouring through the door to the upstairs area, and him unable to run, unable to fight. Just backing himself into a corner and using every last round he had before he set to slashing away with his knife, a hopeless gesture as the soiled and putrid bodies kept piling atop him, pinning his arms and legs down as they went to work on his belly.

I don’t wanna die like this.

“You’re not gonna die,” Lee said through clenched teeth. “Buck up, motherfucker.”

He stood up at the top of the stairs, twitching with the slam of each heartbeat as he looked quickly left and right. A wide open space, packed in the corners with some boxes and old furniture. A small window to the front of the building—one that Lee assumed looked over the street—shed light into the attic storage area.

Keep moving. Gotta keep moving.

He traced the perimeter of the upstairs room. The clattering ruckus continued down below, as though the infected were vandals intent on destroying everything. Lee tried to pinpoint the noise, see how close they were getting, if they were sniffing him out, or if they were simply tearing the place apart looking for something to eat—it was impossible to determine the motivations of someone gone insane. But it seemed like it was getting louder.

“Find a way out. Find a way out.”

A ladder, bolted to the wall, moving into a recess in the ceiling. Lee felt unraveled as he looked at it, relief letting loose some of that bowstring tension. He could escape onto the roof, find a way down from there…

A whine turned his attention around.

Glinting eyes and perked ears. Attention shifting between Lee and the stairwell.

Shit…

Lee swore, moving quickly to the ladder and looking up. It was a roof-access point, probably for utilities. He looked at the dog, knew without having to think about it that he wasn’t going to leave the dog behind.
Stupid! Stupid! Don’t risk your life for a fucking dog!
But blame it on delirium or fever or some sort of mental break that fissured up from the dark parts of his soul, so long under such enormous pressures…He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t look at Deuce and not see Tango, and no matter how much reason or logic it defied, he couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t leave the damn dog behind.

“C’mere you stupid mutt,” Lee growled. He stood over the dog, realized he was not going to carry his rifle and the dog at the same time. He slung into the rifle, draping it over his back and scrambled up the ladder, unlatching the roof access and shoving it open. Daylight blazed down on him. Cold water dribbled in onto his face, down his collar, into his mouth. It tasted like dirt and mold.

Below him, Deuce began barking.

“Shut up!” Lee hissed, but it was no use. Something rattled the door at the bottom of the stairs, and Deuce backed himself up against the ladder, his tail tucked, going into defense mode. Lee slid down the ladder, almost landed on the dog. He felt his entire body shaking, not from fever or cold this time, but it seemed every muscle in his body quivered under his own weight.

I don’t know if I can carry the fucking dog.

You can carry the dog.

He bent down, put an arm around the dog’s chest and heaved up. Deuce squirmed a bit, but Lee held him tight. “Relax, dumbass. I’m doin’ this for you.” The dog was lighter than he remembered Tango being. Smaller. He could feel the dog’s bones, his ribs and his hips, digging into his side as he held him under one arm, already breathing hard from the effort.

You’re too weak.

No, I’m gonna make it.

The door at the bottom of the stairs banged loudly. Something trying to get in.

How the fuck do they know?

With his free hand, he grabbed the rung of the ladder and began climbing, having to keep his body in tight to the ladder as he climbed so that he could fit the bulk of his body and Deuce’s through the hole in the ceiling. As they moved into the narrow space, Deuce began to buck violently against him, trying to break free.

“Keep it together, buddy,” Lee groaned, trying to keep his grip on the dog and on the railing, his arms shaking, feeling weak and used up.

A shattering boom. Stampeding footsteps.

Deuce’s paws moved spastically as he fought against Lee’s grip, the dog simultaneously moving against him and trying to claw his way up Lee’s torso towards the daylight only a few feet above their head.

Lee grit his teeth. “Come on, motherfucker!”

He slammed his back against the hole as though he were going to chimney up. He bent his torso so that his chest and stomach were a platform for the dog, and then hauled the panicked creature up onto him. With his back rigidly pressed against the wall, his legs creating counter pressure against the ladder, he let go of his grip and took hold of the dog with both hands, shoving him up towards the opening. His muscles screamed, cramped, didn’t want to cooperate.

Screeching from below. The sound of the chase.

Deuce’s front paws clutched at the roof as Lee pushed him up, his hind legs seeking purchase on Lee’s arms, his claws digging grooves into Lee’s skin.

Something pale and sinuous hit the ladder below him, sending reverberations up the rungs. Lee looked down, through the narrow gap between his arm and his torso, and he could see the dark, wild eyes staring up at him, the gaping, bloody mouth, the foul odor of it carried up and out by the suction of wind across the roof access.

The infected jumped onto the ladder and seized hold of Lee’s right ankle. Lee let out a shout of panic and slammed his foot down onto the thing’s face. The grip slackened on his ankle, but did not let go. Lee grit his teeth together and put everything he had into it. A spurt of black blood erupted from the infected’s face and splattered the white paint of the wall. It made an animal mewl and fell backward off the ladder, only to be trampled under the feet of three more infected, their wraith-like figures pushing and shoving for a grip on the ladder.

Lee pulled with his arms, pushed with his legs, climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and rolled onto the roof, his chest heaving, his stomach and intestines looping around each other in slippery knots. Deuce stood with his feet spread wide, a few paces from the roof access hatch and barked at it. The black hole in the roof growled back, as though it were the throat of some beast that Lee had just escaped from.

Lee struggled to sit up, a violent tremor working through him, something that he could not control. A dreadful feeling of weakness followed it, and he strangled and stuffed it back down. He would not be weak. He could not afford it, and would not let it poison his mind any more. Anger was his universe now. And it was a useful drug, breathing hot life into his trembling limbs, putting a fire in his cold gut, and masking all the pain and terror.

A hand clawed its way out of the roof access hatch and gripped the side. So pale that the skin seemed translucent, like the hide of some cave dwelling creature crawled out from under a rock. Lee slung the rifle from his back, sitting spread-legged just a few feet from the creature as it hoisted itself up out of the hatch. Its other arm ended abruptly in a scabbed and tattered stump just at the wrist. It reached for Lee with the hand that it no longer had and its mouth stretched open wide as though it already had a hold of Lee and was drawing him into its mouth.

Lee shot from the hip, pulled the trigger three times. The first round chipped a chunk of flesh from the infected’s bony shoulder, the second poked a hole in its throat, and the third took the right side of its face off as it toppled backward into the hole.

Lee followed it as quickly as his body could be forced to move. He couldn’t seem to stop breathing so hard, and the exhales came out in grunts and groans. He hit the roof access, kicked the hatch closed and realized that it only latched from the inside.

“Fuck…” he mumbled breathlessly.

Then something hit him from underneath. It beat violently at the hatch, nearly bouncing Lee off, and screamed at him. Lee hung onto the hatch, trying to make his body weigh enough to hold it down, but the thing underneath was incredibly strong, and it shoved up at him, nearly toppling him off the hatch.

Can’t sit here forever.

Lee got one foot up, tried to situate himself.

The hatch burst open, throwing him back a bit.

Three arms, four arms, five arms, scrabbling for purchase, all of them arching up and out of the hole like some arachnid creation cobbled together from human body parts.

Lee just pointed his rifle and shot. Blood and bone and flesh flew from limbs. A head appeared and was pulverized. On his hands and knees, Lee shoved the muzzle of the rifle into the hatch and kept firing, kept firing, until it seemed like he’d beaten the unholy creature back into its hole. Only as he felt the familiar and discomfiting sensation of the bolt locking back on an empty magazine did he come to his senses and pull his finger from the trigger.