Barely Alive (17 page)

“
A hive mentality.” Dr. Duncan pursed his lips together.

I turned to the clock. A plan formed. “Get your stuff. We’re getting out of here. And we have to get out in three minutes.”

Dr. Duncan shoved the microscope into its case and added the papers, notes, and slides Connie had him make. “Come on, love.” He grabbed his wife’s arm and motioned for Heather to follow.

She looked at me, her expression dim in the bright lights. I wanted to hug her and tell it was okay, but we didn’t have time. We had to make a break for it into the open with humans hunting zombies and zombies hunting humans.

Each of us had something to lose and someone that mattered in the group.

James followed me, pulling up the tail.

Dr. Duncan poked his head out the door and checked for hostiles. He pushed forward. Out the broken door and down the stairs. We traveled as quiet as possible. Less than a minute.

I grabbed James’s arm, anxiety in my tight squeeze. “Run. As fast as you can south. Try to get to the Tropicana Station casino. Go in a straight line, so we can find you. I’ll get you in a little bit.” I pushed him out the door, certain our time was down to seconds. “Run, damn it, and don’t stop.”

Across the field Heather and I had used to escape the parking lot, he sprinted like in track. He’d always been faster than me. Add the strength our disease gave us and he had fire on his heels. The distance to the meat warehouse was about the same as the distance to Tropicana – a straight line from the doorway we huddled in to the other side of the dirt lot. The cafeteria was further from the lot than the science buildings. It had to work.

“
We have the Nova, Heather. It’ll hold all of us, but we have to hurry. I don’t know how many are out there.” I hadn’t stopped watching James. He cleared the gap in the fence and disappeared between the cars.

Heather nodded, brevity paled her face. No one fully dragged their attention from James as he suddenly bobbed between cars further in the distance.

I leaned to the Duncans, and whispered, “Do you see the Nova? The old one? I have the keys. We can use it, but we have to run. Fast. Connie and I can take out anything that attacks, but we have to be smart.” I handed the keys to Heather. “Get inside – in the back and wait for us on the floor.”

Connie watched me, waited for me to say go. But I couldn’t. I was so damn worried. Fear froze me. What if I wasn’t making the right choices?

They were out there. I scanned the landscape, in niches and crannies in doorways, behind creosote bushes, under benches, in stairwells, all the cars. There were so many places the monsters could be waiting and who knows how many were controlled by Dominic. And what if James hadn’t made it? Either because Dominic was back in his head or because he’d been attacked by others like us?

My stomach hurt. Could I still get ulcers?

“
Go.” Connie slapped her husband on the back. He broke into a run, his arms filled with science gear which slowed him down. Heather flew by, the keys clutched in her hand, silent. She didn’t wait for him. If she did, she’d be wasting valuable time at the car when they’d both be sitting as bait while she tried to unlock the door.

“
Thanks.” I muttered. Connie nodded. We broke into a lope and still gained on our humans. Nothing came after us.

I looked left, right, over my shoulder, in front of us, everywhere, for a threat.

Heather reached the gap in the fence. She pounded through and got to the door. The morning light glinted off the keys in her hand. Dr. Duncan squeezed through the fence, his steps slowing the further he went. Connie ducked through, close to her husband.

The door creaked. Heather swung it open, slid inside, reached across and unlocked the passenger sides of the front and back and then unlocked the back door behind the driver’s seat. She stayed in the front seat. Stubborn girl.

Duncan and his wife jumped in back.

I looked behind me, but nothing followed. I slipped through the hole and reached the car. In seconds I was inside. “Lock the doors.” I turned the key in the ignition and the engine’s roar hugged me with a tiny bit of security. The last person I needed was James.

Slamming the tranny into reverse, I drove backwards, and then shifted into drive. We left a storm of dust roaring behind us. The dirty cloud lingered in the stagnant air. At the edge of the parking lot, I looked both ways on Tropicana. Not a car in sight.

But a crumpled body with brown hair lay on the sidewalk feet from the exit.

James.

I looked behind us. And there they were. A pack of twenty-or-so men and women, some with lurching steps and others with grace matching mine emerged from the cars halfway into the lot.

Connie followed my gaze, and then met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’ll get him.” She darted out the door before her husband or I could stop her. She reached James in a split second. The group moved toward us, the groans and snarls calling for us through the open door.

With little apparent effort, Connie flung James to her shoulder and trudged back. Each of her encumbered steps equal to ten of the group’s. She moved. They moved.

My breathing had reached a gasping level.
Come on
. Two feet from the car she dove into the backseat without unloading James, cracking his head on the doorway. I didn’t care. Maybe Dominic could feel that, too.

The first of the mob reached the bumper and grasped at the car. One with glazed eyes chomped on the pokey part of the tail light.

Connie slammed the door shut.

I crashed my foot on the gas pedal. The old car’s engine responded like it’d been watching the whole thing, felt the cold fingers of the undead reaching for it. We leapt forward, tires squealing, rocks spraying behind us. We’d made it to Tropicana, away from the group, but how far would James make it?

Dr. Duncan helped Connie readjust my brother. I focused on the road. We needed to get out of town, but I didn’t know where to go. Or what to do.

Heather cuddled up to my side and placed her hand on my chest. “Your heart is going crazy.” She whispered only to me. The drive wouldn’t be so bad, if she’d stay there. “I didn’t think your hearts beat.” She turned to Dr. Duncan. “That has to be a plus, right? That they still have functioning anatomy?”

He nodded, lost in the possibilities.

Connie lifted James’s eyelids. “Where are we going, Paul?”

Dominic’s deep crazy voice came from James’s mouth. “You’re going to turn around and bring that little bitch to me. Now, Paul. Or I’m going to kill your brother.”

I flicked my gaze between James’s face in the rearview mirror and the road. My foot felt heavy. Nothing was making me turn that car around. It wasn’t just my brother versus Heather. I had Dr. Duncan and his wife to think about.

Another block down. Two.

James gurgled, his eyes rolled back in his head. His mouth twisted.

“
James!” I screamed, and reached behind the seat for him, clutching at his shirt with tingling fingers. The thread count abraded my overly sensitive fingertips, but I didn’t care. The car careened wildly on the road. I struggled to gain back control, while keeping my brother in my hand.

I drove across Boulder, not slowing for the red light. Hell, the streets were empty. The car bounced over ruts.

James sat up and coughed. His color shifted from gray to the natural pale creamy peach standard to the newbies of the disease. He shook his head and looked around the car. “What happened?”

I slowed, but didn’t stop.

I couldn’t face him, but the rest did. My shock let me speak at least. “Are you okay? Is Dominic still in your head?”

James put a hand to his forehead. He looked into his lap. “No. Nothing’s in there.”

Relief allowed me to laugh and arch my eyebrows. “Finally, back to normal then.” Facing the steering wheel, I released his shirt and took a deep breath. It
was
distance that affected Dominic’s hold, but how far was indeterminate. I wasn’t willing to experiment with James just to figure out how close I could cut it.

Everyone’s reassurances quieted and we puttered down the empty street surrounded by abandoned buildings. The engine’s throaty pulse echoed off the shell-like buildings.

“
Where are we going, Paul? What are we going to do? You seem to be the leader of this odd bunch.” Dr. Duncan set the microscope on the floor at his feet and leaned back into his seat. He seemed at ease with three zombies inches from him, packed into the back bench seat of an American Classic.

And why was I the leader?
“I’m probably not the best choice for leader, guys.” I slowed the car to a stop. We were far enough away from Dominic that James seemed capable of participating in the conversation.

James slapped his hand on the back of the front bench seat. “Bull crap. You have leadership coming out of your hair for crying out loud.” He addressed the other three, acting like I wasn’t even there. “He was football team captain, track captain, leader of the science club and some other ridiculous stuff. And my friends wanted to date him like mad.” The last part he
had
to add for Heather’s sake.

I rolled my eyes. True, his friends had wanted to date me – not all of them girls. “That was high school, James. Not real life. Who cares about all that? I didn’t even finish my senior year.”

But Heather, Dr. Duncan, and Connie looked at me with new respect. Truth? I was very uncomfortable.

Connie tapped my shoulder. “I don’t care who leads us, but we need to get going. We’re being watched.”

I whipped my head around to find hungry eyes – not the
Dirty Dancing
ones my mom loved so much – but the kind I recognized in myself staring at us from between a music store and a pawn shop. Four pairs.

Without moving my face, I shifted into drive. In seconds we put distance between our humans and the feral mouths waiting in the alley. No matter which way we faced, danger wanted a piece of us.

The desert would soon stop us, if we continued to drive without any destination. We needed a plan. “I think we need to get out of Las Vegas. This place is overrun and won’t get better.”

“
But we need to figure this out. How can we do that from anywhere else?” Dr. Duncan fingered the top button near his throat. His jerky movements were distracting. “My lab is here.”

I reached up and adjusted the mirror. Heather shifted in the seat when I lifted my arm from around her shoulders. Lust. Damn it.

“
Your lab isn’t safe.” Connie answered her husband. “You don’t need the city. We have Heather’s immunity and you have three infected people right here. And wherever we go, we’ll have lots of humans to test on.” She looked out the window, melancholy drawing her lips down. “The only question is where can we go where we’ll be safe?”

“
And we can eat.” James added, a hungry glint in his eye.

Hell, I was thinking it, too.

“
My grandma has a house in Sandpoint, Idaho. She’s there right now. We could go up that way. She’s not supposed to come back to Vegas for another few weeks.” Heather, slammed into the situation by being kidnapped, hadn’t done anything but try to help solve the problem. And she was warm. I liked her warmth.

James poked me in the shoulder.
Again
. The jabs were getting annoying. “Hey, Mom’s in Seattle. Maybe she can fly or drive or something and get over there. I think it’s like six or seven hours. She could meet us maybe.”

“
Why isn’t she at home?” I hadn’t been gone more than a month or so, but it felt like forever. And as much as I hated to admit it… I missed my mom. I loved her. She was my mom. She’d fought the hardest to keep James and me. She hadn’t wanted us for the child support – she’d offered to reject it, if she could get full custody of us in the negotiations with my dad. Sad to say, that’d been the tipping point for him to concede. He got off without paying a dime, a new wife, and without the hassle of the kids.

But the thought that she might not be home dealing with the infection running rampant made giddiness bubble in my emptying stomach. I’d focused so much on James and Heather and the situation at hand, I’d avoided thinking of how I was going to help my mom. If she’d even take my help. She probably hated me.

James met my gaze in the mirror. He gave a small shake to his head. “Don’t think like that, Bro.” And he knew. He knew my doubts and insecurities. He was my brother. He knew I did all that activity stuff, leadership stuff because I needed to boost my confidence. Not because I was good at it.

I glanced at each person, bolstered by their ability to make me feel bigger than myself. The type of self-esteem booster I’d sought from Dominic and his group. My Nova-traveling group had delivered in a matter of seconds what Dominic had failed to hand over after weeks filled with promises.

I braked and flipped an illegal u-turn in the middle of the street. “Let’s go to Idaho.” We’d have to contact Mom on our way north.

Chapter 15

Idaho. The state of the spuds. I didn’t want a damn potato. I wanted a cow with a side of pig. My mouth watered. “Ugh. Idaho is so… blech.”