Black Friday (2 page)

Robby rounded the hedge and moved farther away from the building, keeping it sight. He followed the hedge to the left, in the same general direction as the stolen Volvo. He didn’t like moving in the moonlight—he would have preferred dodging over to the tree line again, but he wanted to see how far the retaining wall extended. If he could find a spot to clear the wall, maybe he could get the Volvo out of the rest stop without crossing the lightning-infested highway.

Staying at the rest stop for the night no longer seemed like an option. Robby knew that fear was driving his decision, but that was another thing he’d learned from his father. Dad always managed to stay positive, but he also trusted his gut. The hedge didn’t grow as tall or thick over near edge of the woods. Robby saw the lower parking lot through the scraggly branches. He pushed through and got a look at the drop. Even at the farthest edge, near the fence that held back the woods, the retaining wall still dropped a good couple of feet—too far a drop for Robby to attempt with the Volvo.

Here, in the darkest corner of the dog-walking area, the fence looked ragged. Branches grew through the fence in spots, and in others, the chain-link had pulled away from the metal posts. In the direction of the Volvo, a big, jagged-edged hole had been torn in the fence. The interlinked bands of metal were bent and broken, like something had hit the back of the fence with enough force to burst through.
 

It wasn’t the most direct route, and it took him away from the shadows of the trees, but Robby decided to backtrack up through the lawn to give the hole in the fence a wide berth.

Robby hadn’t moved a dozen steps when he heard the voice.

He stopped, feet frozen mid-stride.

He stared at the hole in the fence. It had only been one word, so he couldn’t pin down exactly where it had come from, but he suspected the hole. The voice had come from the hole, if indeed he’d heard a voice at all. The longer he stood, one foot planted, the other outstretched and just touching the frosty grass, the more he doubted that he’d heard anything at all.

“Help,” the voice repeated. It was a high-pitched voice, perhaps a man’s falsetto, just above a whisper, but it sounded as loud as a gunshot in the too-still night.

The image of a roach motel popped back into Robby’s head. Not just the building, but the whole rest stop could be a big glue-trap designed only to lure you in and then trap you until you died of madness and dehydration.
 

Robby ran.

Behind him, he heard the tinkling rattle of the chain link as something pushed through the hole to give chase.

The vector of his panic-sprint was leading him towards the parking lot, but not towards the Volvo. His stolen car was parked pretty close to the fence. As Robby ran, a dark shadow kept pace with him at the edge of the fence. Robby bolted to his right, away from the fence and towards the front of the rest stop building.

He heard the footfalls of the thing behind him pound across the frosty grass as Robby sprinted over the curb and across the parking lot. The line of corpses he’d hoped to avoid stretched out on the sidewalk in front of the building. When he’d entered the building earlier, at dusk to use the bathroom, the corpses out front and in the lobby had lit his head with fear. Now, they seemed like the least scary option.

Robby sprinted up onto the sidewalk and leapt over a pair of exploded-eye dead to find the doors of the rest stop building. He tugged the door open, ran across the tile floor, rounded to the back of the information desk, and crouched behind it. He knelt next to an old, uniformed man, who had fallen face down on his hand and then rolled onto his side. His thumb was jammed up into his own empty eye socket. Robby could just pick out these details from the moonlight that filtered in through the glass front of the lobby. He peeked around the edge of the desk to see the door.

The door slipped shut on its spring, and a split-second later swung inwards again. The shadowy shape of a man slipped through the gap and pulled the door shut. The man wore a long coat that swung like a cape when he turned his back on Robby. The silence of the lobby was broken by a set of jingling keys and the sound of a deadbolt thunking into place. The man put his back to the door and stood still. His head turned as his eyes scanned the lobby.

“Is somebody in here?” The man’s voice sounded high and unsteady, as if he was the frightened one.

Robby slowly pulled back around the corner of the desk. He held his breath and listened.

“I thought I was the only one who survived,” the man continued, “but then I thought I saw someone come in here? Please tell me I’m not all alone.”

The man’s voice continued to quaver, but Robby thought he could hear a smile behind the man’s words. The man’s shoes made no sounds as he moved, but Robby knew he was moving because of the sound of his legs against the long jacket. They made a slow whooshing sound, followed by a low rustle as the folds re-gathered. The man was moving to the left of the lobby, over to the big doors that led to the men’s and women’s rooms.
 

On the right side, the lobby opened to the entrance of the gift shop, a counter for a coffee shop, and a room for vending machines. The tall ceiling of the lobby reflected and dispersed the sounds of the man’s movement, making it hard for Robby to pin them down. He waited for the man’s shape to appear on his left, past the end of the information desk, over near the entrance to the men’s room. When the man did appear, Robby saw his outstretched foot first, reaching to step over a corpse on the floor.

Robby shrank lower in his crouch and got ready to bolt if the man turned his way.

“My name is Lyle,” the man said. And then, after a pause, he asked, “Are you in here?”

Lyle put his hand on the door to the men’s room and then waited. He spun and surveyed the room. At one point, Robby thought that Lyle was looking right at him, but he kept spinning and returned his attention to the door. Lyle pushed it open and then stepped inside the bathroom.

As soon as the door swung shut behind Lyle, Robby was up. He shuffled over to the front door, tiptoeing around the dead bodies scattered on the floor, just to be sure that it was locked. He pushed on the door and it clunked against the deadbolt. When he heard the noise of the men’s room door opening again, Robby collapsed to the floor, right next to the corpse of a tall woman, and held himself still.
 

Lyle’s footsteps were brief, just long enough to move from the men’s room to the lady’s. Robby squeezed his eyes shut and hoped Lyle didn't notice the extra body laying on the floor. Robby didn’t hear another sound—not another question, nor the door to the women’s room opening. Robby waited with his eyes shut. The urge to open his eyes was nearly overpowering. Robby focused on keeping his breathing shallow and slow so he wouldn’t make any extra noise or movement. He pictured the man, Lyle, crossing the room on tiptoes, silently approaching to grab on to Robby’s ankle. Finally, the creak of the women’s room door came, and he heard footsteps. He pictured Lyle sliding through the door and letting it shut behind him. Robby was about to bolt from his spot to run for the back of the building when a paralyzing thought occurred to him—what if Lyle had only pretended to go into the women’s room? What if Lyle was still standing over by the door, just waiting for Robby to sit up?

Robby slowly raised one eyelid and turned his head.

The women’s room door was closed and Lyle was nowhere in sight. Under the crack in the door, Robby could see the light from a flashlight panning around inside the women’s room. Robby pressed himself up to his knees and then hurried across the lobby to the entrance to the gift shop. He’d been in there before—around dusk—when he’d first arrived at the rest stop. Robby had raided the store for sweatshirts to use as blankets. This time he ducked down behind a rack filled with paperback books, afraid that he didn’t have time to reach the far end of the lobby before the man emerged from the women’s room.
 

Robby was right. As soon as he’d ducked down, the women’s room door swung open. Between the shelves of books, Robby saw Lyle shut off his flashlight and walk over to the glass wall at the front of the building. Lyle seemed to be looking at the floor. Perhaps he’d noticed that there was suddenly a missing body, but it was difficult for Robby to make out much about the man from across the dim lobby.

He saw the flash, though. Lyle saw it too. It was the brightest of the lightning streaks that Robby had seen. It lit up the highway and reflected off the cars parked in the spaces nearest the entrance. And this lightning streak was followed closely by two more. All three flashed by in the space of seconds and the third flash carried crackling sound that seemed to erupt inside Robby’s own head, like a tiny firecracker in his mouth.
 

The crackle felt unpleasant. Robby blinked his eyes hard and felt his ears pop. Across the lobby, Lyle gripped his head in his hands and shook his head twice. Just as his head started to feel normal again, another flash of lightning brought a fresh cascade of pops and Robby clenched his teeth to endure the odd pain.

Robby wasn’t even looking when it happened. A loud slap brought Robby’s attention back to the center of the lobby and to Lyle. His eye caught movement, but it wasn’t from Lyle. Directly between Lyle and Robby, one of the dead—a woman—sat up, bent at the waist. Another blue flash from the highway lit up the side of her face and Robby saw the gore of her eyes dripping down her face like bloody tears. If she’d still had eyes in her head, she would have been looking right at Robby.
 

Lyle put out his hand and took a tentative step towards the woman. She was still a half-dozen paces from him, but Lyle shuffled forward as if drawn to her. The woman didn’t sit still for long. With the next lightning flash, she turned to her right and began to crawl towards the glass front of the building. Robby sucked in a hitching breath and sat back on his heels.
 

The lightning flashes from the highway came faster and looked brighter as the woman crawled towards the glass. She wore a puffy down jacket that was either yellow or white. Robby couldn’t tell in the dim light. The jacket had slipped off the woman’s shoulders and held her arms back as she tried to crawl. She crawled over the other corpses, pressing her knee down right into the face of a dead boy, and not noticing as her weight ground into his nose and pushed his head to the side. Moving very slowly, not even keeping up with the crawling woman, Lyle followed behind, still reaching forward as if to grab the woman by the back of her coat.
 

Robby couldn’t take his eyes off the miraculous moving corpse, until the next one sat up. A different corpse—one that the woman had just kicked in the side—flopped over onto his chest and pushed himself up with shaky arms. Robby watched as the corpse’s hands slipped out from underneath him twice and then he managed a sloppy pushup to bring himself to his knees. Lyle hadn’t seen the new moving corpse yet—his attention was still drawn to the woman.

Trying to make sense of the scene and thinking he should run, Robby attempted to push himself up to a low hunch. His numb, traitorous legs gave in and Robby spilled backwards to the floor. His back plowed into a postcard rack and it squealed backwards across the tiles and tipped a bunch of cards out, leaving them to flutter down to the floor of the gift store.

Robby reached back to steady the rack before it could fall, and he spotted Lyle’s response to the noise. The man quickly dropped his interest in the woman-corpse and took a couple of steps in the direction of the gift shop and Robby. That’s when Lyle saw the man-corpse. The dead man wore long hair and an untucked flannel shirt over tight jeans. Lyle stood back and watched the man-corpse drag himself in the same direction as the woman. The man-corpse was slower. It looked like his legs weren’t working correctly.

When Lyle got distracted watching the corpses, Robby moved. He crawled on hands and feet and moved away from the rack of postcards. Lyle stood within an arm’s length of the man-corpse, and stared down at it. Robby ducked behind a big display of novelty license plates. He stole a glance towards the side of the gift shop and found another exit. The double-doors were propped open, and led to the food court. Robby crawled towards the doors.

Before he left the gift shop, Robby stood up enough to see over the checkout counter towards the main lobby. Lyle had disappeared and a third corpse was making its way towards the glass front of the building. Robby scanned the dark food court and broke for the line of trash cans a dozen steps from his position. The only light came from the moon filtering through the clouds and leaking in through the skylights.
 

The food court featured three fast food counters surrounding a small set of tables. On the right, Robby saw the signs for Chinese and burgers, and ahead he saw a pizza joint. Only a few corpses littered the floor, but based on density, they’d favored the burgers. Robby ducked from table to table and made his way towards the back exit. There, through another glass wall, Robby could see the gas pumps which sat across a smaller parking lot.
 

Robby paused at the last table and looked in each direction. He found no sign of Lyle.

Another flash of lightning burst down the highway and exploded inside Robby’s head. It drove him from his crouch, down to his knees. Robby ran for the exit, trying to land each foot as softly as possible. He hit the door mid-stride, moving quick. It banged and rattled in its metal frame, but didn’t budge. These doors had been locked, just like the front doors.