Eaters (34 page)

A few minutes later, they pulled up to a pump at a station on a side street and Cheryl asked, “Do you think any of them made it back there?”

“Not likely. Somebody might have holed up in the bathroom for awhile, but once a building has been breached like that, it’s pretty much over.”

She knew he was right and felt terrible for everyone in the store, but the sharpest pang in her heart was for Matthew. He was just a kid and would have had his whole life ahead of him.

Aidan tried the pump, using a credit card from his pocket, and then one found lying on the ground, but couldn’t get it to work. He kicked the machine then walked over to the next one.

Cheryl glanced around at the ghost town, keeping one eye on the meandering forms she saw in a field nearby, forms that were clearly not loping towards them slowly to offer a friendly welcome. “Where is everyone? Where are all the people who aren’t sick? Except for the store, we’ve hardly seen anyone. There must be more survivors somewhere.”

“They’re probably cowering in their basements, too afraid to come out. It’s doubtful anyone comes out at night like the fools that we are. It’s just too dangerous.”

She agreed and thought that the way healthy people seemed to have vanished was depressing, but if they could just make it through another night, find someplace safer than the woods where they’d camped last night, maybe tomorrow’s sun would hold more promise. The hopeful thought surprised her, because it had been her own voice in her head, not Mark’s.
Are you still here?

Of course,
he answered
. Where else would I go?

She smiled, feeling a flash of warmth inside at the deep timbre of his voice. As Aidan stomped and cursed and tried the last pump, she wondered again if he heard his dead girlfriend’s voice in his head. She didn’t think so. He seemed too alone in his misery.

When he came back, obviously frustrated, she put a hand on his cheek and said, “Hey, you okay?”

He shook her off and got back on the motorcycle. “I think we can make it to Georgetown.”

“Then what?” she asked as she joined him.

“They’ll be more gas stations there.”

“And?”

“If there’s no gas? We’ll have to find a place to crash for the night and try to siphon some in the morning.”

Something bothered her. They’d filled up in Golden and shouldn’t be anywhere near empty yet. She’d noticed a light trickle of some fluid underneath the motorcycle but wasn’t sure that it was gas and didn’t dare mention it to him. It was his motorcycle; he’d chew her head off for insinuating that something was wrong with it that he didn’t know about.

They rode in silence towards the next town. Aidan deftly maneuvered around obstacles in the road: wandering Eaters, abandoned cars, and a rockslide that peppered the road with boulders as large as beach balls.

A short time later, they landed in Georgetown with the moon hanging over them like a crooked smile, seeing all from its perch in the sky, and telling them nothing about its dark secrets.

They tried four gas stations, under the peril of attack each time from a lone Eater or two wandering nearby. There was no power, and nothing worked. Aidan broke into an automotive shop and took a section of hose and a gas can. They used it to take gas from a truck on the lot, being careful to avoid stepping in the blood splatters on the ground next to it.

“I’m so tired,” she said as he screwed the cap back onto his tank. “Maybe we could find a place to sleep?”

Aidan glanced across the street towards a bank and a shoe store. “I don’t think we should stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Just a hunch or whatever, but we haven’t seen many wandering infected here, and it seems like they’re starting to flock more. One finds food, and the others nearby join the group. That either means that there aren’t many here at all, or there’s a large number that might surprise us when we’re sound asleep.”

Despite her fatigue, she agreed that his theory might hold weight. So they drove on to Silverthorne.

Once they reached that town, the Alpine Chalet seemed to beckon them with its flickering red neon sign and its letter board that said,
Skiers Welcome!
Unfortunately, from the looks of the empty parking lot, it didn’t seem to have any live occupants on this particular day of the year. A number of Eaters mulled about in random patterns, but they were slow-moving and not too fierce-looking, so they decided to check in.

Aidan kicked in the door to room 127.

The room was like a small efficiency apartment, a ski bum’s dream with a small kitchen, and a sitting area in addition to two full-sized beds. After a quick perusal of the room and bathroom, Cheryl didn’t find any bodies or blood, and that made her exhausted mind very happy. What more could you ask for in lodging these days? If they picked up a bed bug or two, it would be the least of their concerns.

After backing the motorcycle inside so it was facing the front door, Aidan found a warm beer in the unplugged mini refrigerator. He popped the top as he reclined on a bed. “They can put it on my tab.”

Cheryl peeked through the curtains. There was a small entourage near the door now, but they weren’t trying to get in. “How long do you think we’ll be safe in here?”

“Hard to say.”

There weren’t many bullets left in the rifle. She looked around the room for something else to use as a weapon, and her eyes went immediately to the heavy lamp on the nightstand. Not only did lamps never run out of bullets, they’d saved her butt more than once.

There was another door on the left side of the room in front of the bathroom. She guessed that it connected to an adjacent room. It didn’t look as sturdy as the front door, and that bothered her. “I’m going to see what’s next door.”

She took the gun, turned the lock, and opened the door slowly. After fumbling for a second, she found a light switch on the wall and gasped when she saw two eyes looking back at her from across the room.

They weren’t live eyes, she realized. They were dead, glassy, sunken eyes in a human head that sat on top of the television set. Part of the top of the scalp was blown away, and a purplish tongue draped out over the chin. The neck looked like it had been severed with a sharp blade. It was as if someone had cut it off of the body, fearing that, like a vampire, it might come back to life without that added precaution. The lake of blood on the floor around it added an extra element of discomfort to the ugly vignette, but she was surprised that it didn’t terrify her. She’d seen so many horrors at this point that it seemed as benign as a wax dummy in a museum—
as long as it didn’t open its eyes or try to speak to her.

After checking out the rest of the room, she went back to tell Aidan. She found him in the bathroom, and he didn’t seem to hear her as he washed his hands. The water ran pink as fresh blood oozed from his wound.

“It looks infected.”

“Nah,” he grumbled.

She hadn’t noticed the dark circles under his eyes until now. He looked weary and wobbled for a moment, looking like he might pass out.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I just need to rest.”

“We’d better fix you up first.” She tore a piece of sheet from one of the beds to use as a bandage and played nurse.

“Are you worried about me?” he asked as she knotted a loop of cloth. “Do you want me to sleep in the other room?”

“No. Just wake me if you start thinking that my arm looks tasty.”

A few minutes later, he was snoring on the other bed. She didn’t sleep alone, though. Her bedmates were the gun and the unplugged lamp. She laid there in the dark, listening to the moans and gurgles outside, worrying that it was going to be harder to get out of the motel in the morning than it had been to check in.

* * *

Hours later, she woke from a dream about Mark and was angry with herself for not finding a more creative subject to dwell on.
Just shut up about Mark. He’s gone. Get over it.
She told her brain this but didn’t think her heart was listening.

A soft bluish-light filled the room, and there was a scratching sound coming from the far side of the door that connected to the other room. She looked over at Aidan and saw him lying there with his eyes wide open.

“We should get going,” he said quietly, turning towards her.

“Do you hear that?”

“Yeah. It’ll probably take them some time to scratch through that door, though. It’d be nice to take a shower before we hit the road.”

A shower sounded blissful. She hadn’t had one since braving one at Scary Barry’s house. By the smell of Aidan’s funk, it had been longer than that for him. She let him go first and got up to look out the window.

The crowd outside had apparently dispersed to look for an easier meal, because the parking lot was empty. That would have made her feel better if it wasn’t for the creepy scratching on the inside door. It sounded like it came from the fingers of just one hand, but she could imagine the rotting face pressed up against the wood, and a dozen others behind it, silently waiting for their chance to help break through. The head on the television set was probably nothing but a skull now; they’d probably gnawed on it for breakfast.

After that thought, she was surprised that her stomach gurgled, reminding her that there was no food in the motel room. Hunger pains stabbed her from the inside. Anything would do—a brown banana, stale popcorn, a petrified egg. Was the feeling even a fraction of what the Eaters felt? Though they were clinically dead, they had to feel something, if nothing but that insatiable lust for flesh and garbage.

When Aidan came out of the bathroom, wearing a towel around his waist and rubbing his hair with another, she looked away, but not before noticing the tattoo of an eagle with widespread wings and the penned word,
Freedom
, across his left pectoral. It made her uncomfortable to realize that she was ogling his half naked body as Death was literally knocking on their door. With her arms folded, and her eyes averted, she suggested that they could find a convenience store and break in if it was locked. He agreed after mumbling something about ham and eggs, and fucking Eaters.

After they were both cleaned up (at least underneath their old blood-stained clothes) and ready to go, Cheryl took another peek out the window. She expected to see the same empty parking lot, but instead it was like looking through a kaleidoscope—an ever-changing pattern of gray, red, black, and purple. She jumped backwards, landing on the edge of the bed.

The window frame was filled with a collage of faces mashed up against the glass, blocking out most of the light from the rising sun. They were piled up on top of each other with their opaque eyeballs squished flat and their snakelike black tongues licking at the glass.

They seemed to see her with their dead eyes and it whipped them into an even greater frenzy. Loud thumps rattled the front door, and a second later, the thumps began on the connecting door as well.

Aidan seemed unfazed as he held out the keys to his bike.

“Seriously?”

“You handled her pretty well before.”

She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t done it alone. She had been silently channeling Mark, even if she hadn’t heard his voice. She’d pictured him perched on her shoulder with white wings, giving her pointers. But she didn’t tell Aidan that. He probably didn’t want to be burdened with tales about her dead fiancé any more than she wanted to hear about his dead girlfriend. “Why? What are you going to do?”

He picked up the white square ceramic lamp base by its narrow top. “I’m going to whack us a way out of here.”

She looked away from the riot outside and exhaled the content of her lungs. Getting out of here would be tricky, even if they still had all their guns. If she’d thought they’d pushed their luck in the past...

She made a mental note to tell Aidan that she wasn’t sleeping in any buildings again. She’d take her chances in the great outdoors where there weren’t walls to bar her escape. The problem with sheltering in buildings was that they were only temporary fortresses with an unknown window of safety. So far, none that she’d been in had been impenetrable. So putting four walls around you seemed like walking into a trap. If they were mice hiding in a cardboard box, sooner or later, the toothy cats would find a way in.

Aidan put his helmet on then pulled back the covers on one of the beds and pulled off the sheet. “Tie this around you. Cover as much of your body as you can.”

It seemed like a useless idea, but she figured that if it prevented even one pair of teeth from puncturing their skin, it might be worth it. After she tied a knot underneath her chin, turning the sheet into a cape and put her helmet on, she had another idea. She picked up a quilt from the closest bed. “Throw this over the first bunch. It’ll give you a second’s head start.”

“No, I’m not letting go of this.” He held the lamp over one shoulder like a baseball bat. There was fire in his eyes as his adrenaline began to boil up to a maximum level, psyching himself up for the brutality to come.

Cheryl got on the motorcycle, feeling extremely uneasy. If this plan didn’t work, and the room filled with Eaters, that would be it.
Game over.