Extinct (43 page)

Brad fell away and regarded Buster. The man’s face looked wrecked. His hair was singed, his nose jutted off to the right, one eye was swelling shut, and his jaw hung to the side like a shutter on a haunted house. Brad kept a cold eye on the man as he brought his feet to his hands and started working on the knot at his ankles. He couldn’t reach the knot holding his wrists together, but figured he could reach the one on Christine’s wrists.

When he finished with his feet he kicked away the rope and backed slowly towards Christine. He was unwilling to look away from Buster.

Somewhere to his left the torch lit a cardboard box and yellow flames started to grow.

“What are you doing?” Christine shrieked when Brad’s hands touched hers.

“I’m untying you so you can untie me,” Brad said. The work was difficult with his bound hands, but Brad worked fast. When he’d finished with her hands he held out his own, but Christine turned her attention to freeing her own feet.

Brad ran back to Buster. The man’s breathing slowed. Brad kept a respectful distance but reached forward and stole the gun and knife from the man. He shoved the gun in his pocket, but turned the knife around in his hands and used it to slit the rope around his wrists.
 

Behind him, Christine threw off the last of her ropes and ran for the door.
 

“Glen!” she yelled.

“Shut up!” Brad said. “Keep quiet.”

She threw open the door and disappeared to the hall.

Bright red blood stained the blade from where Brad nicked his own arm. He stood over Buster and considered driving the knife into Buster’s chest. Instead, he walked to the burning boxes and kicked the stack away from the other boxes. He found the torch and turned the dial to extinguish the flame.

Brad drew the gun, took one last look at Buster, and moved to the door.

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Brad held the gun out in front of him as he stalked down the hallway. The walls, made of cinderblocks, seemed to absorb what little light came through the window at the end of the long hall. He wished he’d taken the lantern from the cardboard-box room, but it was too late now. When he followed Christine out into the hall, Brad closed the door and snapped shut the padlock hanging from the hasp. As far as he knew, Buster owned the only key and he was locked inside.
 

Brad stopped when he heard the scream. It sounded like Christine. Behind him was Buster’s door and the tiny window, mounted high up. Ahead, Brad saw one door on the left and two on the right. He knew the one on the left—at least he thought he did—he thought it was the room where he’d woken up. The scream sounded like it came from one of the doors on the right. Brad brought down each foot with extreme care, trying to make no sound at all as he moved forward.

Sobs followed the scream. The noise came from the second door on the right. Brad pushed the door open with the barrel of the gun. Inside the door a flashlight lay on the floor. It illuminated a grizzly scene. Christine squatted next to a bloody mess. She hugged herself tight, leaving bloody handprints on her tank top and naked shoulders.
 

When she heard Brad approach, she turned. Her face, twisted in grief, was streaked with tears and smeared with blood.
 

“Look what he did to Glen,” she said.

Brad nodded.
 

“Are there any more of them?” Brad asked.

“Of who?” she said. Her voice sounded strained and close to panic.

“Of these guys,” Brad said. “Your captors—any more of them?”

“I don’t know," Christine said. She wiped her face with the back her hand. “I don’t think so.”
 

Brad assumed that the blood smeared on her shoulder and face was from the mutilated body of Glen, but he remembered her severed finger. Brad picked up the flashlight and swung it around the room.
 

“Wait here,” he said.

Brad did a quick search of the building. He didn’t find any other people and couldn’t hear any noise from the room where he’d locked Buster. He wondered if the fire had eaten all the oxygen from the room.
 

In the room where’d he woken up, Brad found some clothes, a couple of jackets, and a crate full of weapons. After donning his coat, he slung a shotgun bag over his shoulder and added an extra box of shells. Back in the hall, the final door led down another hallway to a door which exited to an alley.
 

Brad found his way back to Christine.

“Here, put this on,” he said, throwing her a jacket. “And then wrap this around your bad hand.” He tossed her a cotton shirt.

She moved like a zombie and stared at Glen’s corpse more than she paid attention to what she was doing. She bunched the cloth lightly around her stump, not putting any real pressure on the wound. In the light from Brad’s lamp, the oozing blood on her hand was black and shiny.

“Let’s go,” Brad said. “Faster, or I’m going to leave you here in the dark.”

She looked up at Brad with anger and sorrow in her eyes.

“Why are you upset? They were holding you prisoner,” Brad said, pointing a finger at Glen’s body. “Fine. Forget it.”

Brad swung his light away from Christine and turned for the door. He turned the corner before she ran after him.

“He
died
for me," Christine said. “Glen never wanted to keep me tied up, it was Buster’s idea, and Buster was stronger.”

“Fine,” Brad said. He kept walking, walking down the hall to the exit. “Keep quiet, I don’t want to get jumped again.”

Brad pulled the door open, peering through the crack to the outside world before he made his way to the alley. The bricks were bathed in the mellow glow of what passed for daylight in their forever cloudy world. He headed towards the street. Footprints headed both directions were etched in the thin layer of snow underfoot.

Christine looked up and down the deserted alley before she spoke again. "They didn’t even really have a problem until you showed up. Everything would have been fine.”

Brad shoved the flashlight into the inside pocket of his jacket. He ignored Christine’s statement. At the mouth of the alley, Brad paused and leaned his head out to the sidewalk. He wasn’t familiar with the street. Christine moved in close behind him.

“Which way is Congress Street? Do you know?” Brad asked.

Christine pointed to the right.
 

Brad headed left and picked up his pace into a jog. The shotgun bag slapped against his back. Behind him, Christine kept up easily. They turned and headed down a slight hill, towards the highway. The sleds, loaded down with corpses, were gone. When Brad was oriented, he turned again, heading into the deeper snow. They slogged through snow halfway up to their knees before Christine spoke.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m headed north,” he said, blurting his words between breaths. “My friend stashed snowmobiles at a motor pool. I hope one is still there.”

“I can drive a snowmobile,” she said.

“Good for you,” he said.
 

Brad needed a rest—he wasn’t accustomed to jogging through snow and he’d used up most of his adrenaline. He hunched over and grabbed his knees. When the sour pain in the back of his throat abated, he asked, “Why are you following me?”

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “We have to stick together.”

“Why?”

“It’s safer,” she said.

“Not for me, it’s not,” he said. “As far as I know there’s another psycho Buster running around looking for you and some little girl who I thought was a boy. Seems like trouble might be following you.”

“That’s absurd,” she said.

“Maybe it is,” Brad said. “It’s impossible to know, I guess. Regardless, I’m headed
towards
danger. If you want safety, you’re headed the wrong direction.”

“You’re going to meet Robby and those guys," Christine said.

“Yes.”

“Robby has a plan?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming,” she said. “I knew I should have gone with you guys before, but I thought Luke knew what he was talking about. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”

Brad rose to his feet slowly and considered trying to talk her out of coming. He looked her in the eyes.

“I get the feeling you might make bad decisions and then stubbornly stick to them,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Yup. I thought so,” Brad said.

He turned away from her angry glare and resumed his trudge to the motor pool. After another half block, they found the trails of the snowmobiles and sleds and they walked on the hard-packed snow. Near the big patches of bare dirt, where the tractors had once been parked, Brad found several parked snowmobiles. He filled the tanks of two snowmobiles with gas cans leaned up next to the big garage. Then, to the back of each vehicle, he strapped extra tanks with the little bit of gas left over.
 

“You said you can drive one of these?” Brad asked.

“It’s been a while," Christine said. “And it’s going to be pretty damn cold without any goggles or decent gloves.”

“Wrap up the best you can and we’ll stop and get warmer gear,” Brad said. “Did your finger stop bleeding?”

“A while ago,” she said.
 

“Good, let’s follow these tracks to the highway and then move as fast as we can. We should be able to catch up with the others pretty quick.”

Chapter 15: Reanimated

T
ED
WAS
HALFWAY
DOWN
the big, open staircase when his hand flew up with a silent halt command. Lisa, who was following close but looking off towards the upper railing, ran into him and put her hand on the middle of his back to steady herself. Pete, over at the other side of the wide stair, continued a couple of extra steps before he noticed the rest of the group was stopped.

Both of Ted’s lights focused on a display to his left. Soon, all the beams concentrated there. The display depicted a scene out of the Maine woods. Fake branches, bushes, and rocks provided habitat for stuffed, mounted animals, or so the placards would lead one to believe. In a whisper, Ted read the signs as he moved his headlamp from sign to sign.

“Raccoon, rabbit, bobcat, red squirrel,” Ted whispered. “Where are they?”

“Back there, in the corner," Romie said, about as quiet as she ever said anything. She was a couple of steps above Ted, but she motioned with her light. Ted crouched and peered between the posts of the railing to shine his light back in the corner. A round, black, furry lump, about the size of a beanbag chair, sat near a gray boulder.

“That looks like a bear,” Pete said, keeping his voice low. “You think maybe a real bear got in here and ate all the stuffed animals?”

“I haven’t seen one mounted animal since we got here,” Ted whispered over his shoulder. “And I’m pretty sure this place used to be full of them. There used to be a big bear over in hunting and fishing, where we came in. That might be it.”

“So someone or something moved all the animals around?” asked Lisa.

Sheila positioned herself between Nate and Ted while Brynn walked down a couple more steps to get close to the railing. Robby walked around Ted and Lisa and joined Brynn. They stared at the big black lump.
 

“No," Ted said, rising out of his crouch. “The mounted bear was standing. If this is a bear, then it’s curled up like it’s hibernating.”

Robby turned and looked up to Ted.
 

“It’s breathing,” Robby said. All eyes looked at Robby for a second. Brynn nodded vigorously in agreement.
 

The rounded ball of black fur grunted and shifted.

“That
is
a bear,” whispered Nate. “Get away from there, Brynn.” Nate waited for Brynn to scramble to his side before he handed Brynn his flashlight. Nate loaded an arrow into the crossbow and pulled back the string. He held the weapon out at arm’s length and gripped Brynn to his hip with his other arm.

The rest of the group tightened into a knot. Most kept their focus on the bear, but Pete and Romie, in the back, looked upstairs in the direction they were headed. The bear grunted again and they saw its head appear from behind a big paw. With its eyes closed it snuffled at the air and then tucked its head back in.
 

“They don’t hibernate very deep,” Ted said with his voice low. The group could barely hear him over the dry shuffle of their feet over the wood floor.
 

Nate and Brynn moved quicker than the huddled group, so they led the way. When they’d moved out of sight of the bear’s exhibit, Sheila stopped with a panicked look. She fluttered a hand in front of her face and hunched her shoulders.
 

“What is it?” Lisa asked in a whisper.

“Keep moving,” Nate said over his shoulder. He and Brynn moved slowly away from the rest.

Sheila sucked in a constricted, whistling breath. Her exhale was equally labored.
 

“Take it easy,” Ted said in a low voice. “You having trouble breathing?”