Family Reunion "J" (11 page)

“I don’t know Auddy,” Danny replied. “But whatever they are, they’re not friendly. I think we’re safe in here. I don’t think they can get to us.”

Danny turned off the lantern they had brought up from Winnie’s place. “No sense in advertising our location.”

“I don’t think it matters. I think they can smell us.” Auddy spoke in a hushed voice.

They stood there watching for a long time, not talking, holding on to each other. Auddy broke the silence. “Do you think it’s like this everywhere?”

“Hopefully not, but it’s impossible to know. We have no way to communicate with anyone. Maybe tomorrow we should go out and look around. Winnie and I only went as far as the maintenance shed.”

“Are you kidding? We can’t go out there with these things running around,” Auddy protested.

“I don’t think they come out during the day. The only time I’ve seen them is at night.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t know. We can’t just sit here waiting to be rescued. We’ll need supplies. We don’t have much food, even with what Winnie had set aside; we’ll be out in a few days.”

Auddy sighed, then beckoned toward the bedroom. “Come on, let’s go lie down and try to get some rest.”

“No, you go ahead. I’m going to stay up and keep watch.”

Auddy kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I love you, Danny.”

“I love you too Auddy.”

Danny dozed off and on all night. The creatures continued to assault the building with their annoying, and thankfully unsuccessful, attempts to get at them. He’d slip into a fitful dream, then
bang
—another one would run into the side of the condo. Each time he drifted off into sleep he would dream of Mr. Dietrich. They would be talking and Dietrich would turn toward Danny. His face would change into that of a balding, grayish-looking thing, which would unhinge its lower jaw as it lunged at Danny.

Danny came to with a start, having faced Dietrich for the tenth time that night. It was still dark out, but Danny thought he could detect just a hint of the coming day. He stood and went over to look at the horde.

As he watched, he noticed that the smaller packs seemed to move continually, but one of the creatures stood in one place about a hundred yards from the condo. He only noticed because it seemed the packs would run out to him, dance about him excitedly, then run off again to resume their hunt.

That must be the alpha.
As Danny thought this, the individual he’d been watching leaned its head back and let out a long shriek, perhaps the most dreadful-sounding Danny had yet heard. The other creatures responded immediately by breaking off whatever they were doing and, as if of a single mind, ran toward the west. It didn’t take long until they had all disappeared, their shrieks growing more distant.

An hour later, dawn broke fully and Auddy came out from their bedroom. “How’d you sleep?” Danny asked.

“Not very well. With that racket outside, who could?”

Danny went over and lightly tapped on Winnie’s door, which immediately opened. Winnie shuffled through the door, her hair nicely done up, her lipstick applied, looking well rested.

“Good morning you two,” she said. “What’s on the agenda for this morning?” Danny smiled at her. “Well, Winnie, if you can stay here, I think Auddy and I will go out and check the surrounding area. See if we can find out what’s going on. How does that sound?”

She gave him a perturbed look. “That’s what I thought. You took down those stairs so I can’t go out with you. You think I’m a burden, don’t you?”

“No Winnie, I took down those stairs so that we wouldn’t be killed in our sleep. It had nothing to do with how I feel about you. As a matter of fact, I think you are great. If not for you we wouldn’t have made it through to this point.”

His little speech seemed to have the desired effect. She wasn’t wrong, though; Danny did see the wisdom of her not being out there in the midst of the chaos. She was sharp, in good mental health, but the fact was, she was slow. Danny figured slow might just get you killed out there.

Over a breakfast of cheese and crackers with warm water, Auddy and Danny talked about where they should go and what items they needed most. They decided that the best thing to do first was to go back to the maintenance shed and retrieve one of the trucks the groundskeepers used. This would give them a better chance to haul things. The BMW was just not the right tool for the job. Auddy wanted to go to the gun shop that her dad went to when he was in town. She thought that if anyone had survived the last couple of days, it was likely to be Charlie, who owned the place, and his son Doug. Danny was not that happy about this decision. Doug and Auddy had dated for a short time before Danny appeared in her life.

“Really, Dan? You’re going to go all jealous on me in our current situation? You know Doug and I are just friends. He and I went out because I didn’t know anyone around here. We never even so much as held hands.”

“I just know that he still has the hots for you is all. I mean, look at you, how could he not?” That earned him a kiss, but she was still intent on going by to see if they were still around.

They packed a small bag full of shotgun shells, ammo for the pistols, water bottles, and some PB&J’s for the excursion. Then they said their goodbyes to Winnie with the promise to return well before sunset.

Jay woke up. It was still dark outside. Had she heard something? The night was thick with silence. She retrieved her pistol, quietly got off the bed, and felt her way to the bedroom door. She stopped and listened again. Still not hearing anything, she opened the door and peered into the kitchen. A beam of light moved across the back of the house; she froze. Then she heard the back stairs creak as someone scaled them.

“I’m telling you they have a bunch of food in here.” A woman’s voice, one that she recognized. It was Mark’s neighbor.

“Shhhh,” someone else responded.

She ducked down and crawled out of the bedroom, hidden from view of the back door by the computer desk that occupied part of the kitchen. She heard someone trying to force the back door.
No time to be subtle here Jay.
She went from her knees to a squat by pulling her legs up underneath her. She sprang up and saw the figures on the other side of the door’s window. They were so busy trying to break in that neither of them noticed her standing five feet from them. She shot the man, which knocked the woman back down the stairs as he fell into her.

Jay stepped forward, her weapon pointed at the man, the red dot squarely on center mass.
“Don’t talk, just shoot,”
Ryan said in her head. Just as she started to apply pressure to the trigger, the man suddenly scrambled face-first down the stairs. For some reason she didn’t shoot. She watched as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, then staggered into the night, the woman nowhere in sight. After a moment, she reached over and flipped on the back porch light. The man was definitely wounded; a trail of blood led from the doorway, across the porch, down the stairs, and out to the hedge beyond.
Should I follow them or just let them go? Now that they know I’m here and armed, they’ll probably give up the idea of coming back. I hope.

She heard a scream. It sounded like a man, but she was unable to tell for sure. Then a shriek followed that turned her heart cold. The shot must have alerted the crazies. She killed the porch light. Moving the trash can out of the way, she went to the backside of the computer desk and pushed. It was heavy and took all of her strength, but she was able to get it wedged up against the door. The sound of a car spinning its tires on the street below the property signaled her that at least one of the two had escaped. She looked at the clock on the microwave; it was 3:40 a.m.

Jay went and got the AR15 and sat in Ryan’s recliner with the rifle across her lap. She sat there like that until dawn broke, not sure how long that was. It seemed like hours. She heard a shriek occasionally, and even the echo of gunshots, but both seemed to be some distance away.

With the gray of first light, she went into the kitchen. The microwave’s clock was now dark.
Okay, no power.
She lit the gas stove with a match, boiled some water, and threw in a handful of coffee. Her Cherokee grandmother used to make it this way. She allowed it to steep for a few minutes, then strained it into a thermos. Her grandmother never strained it, she just threw some cold water into the pot, which settled the grounds. She smiled at the memory and sat and drank a cup before cleaning out the fridge. With the power out, she didn’t want to return home to a bunch of spoiled food. She emptied out everything from both the refrigerator and the freezer and bagged it. As she carried the bags down the hill to the burn pile, she rounded the corner of the house and came upon the body of the misbegotten burglar. There wasn’t much left. Blood and bones occupied the mangled clothes. The devastation was hard to fathom. The crazies were nothing if not thorough. She tossed the bags onto the burn pile, then went back up the hill to the house.

She had saved out four eggs and some bacon, which she cooked on the stove. There was a good pound of bacon. She fried it all and made some BLTs, sans L and T, to take with her. After finishing her breakfast, she looked around the house. She pulled a few photos out of an album to take with her, some of each of the kids and a few of her and Ryan. She loaded the bike and rearranged the Gucci bag of ammo to work with the bug-out bag. This made a good backrest once she’d strapped the AR15 to the sissy bar. She locked the house and sighed. She daydreamed of coming back to find Ryan, Mark, and Patty with their dogs waiting on the porch.

The fingerless gloves gave her good dexterity, but the early-morning ride quickly left her wishing she had brought her winter gloves. She rode with her left hand stuffed in the side pocket of her leather jacket, only pulling it out if she had to maneuver around something in the road. Normally, the trip to South Carolina took about eight hours. She had no idea how long this trip would take.

She didn’t see any of the crazies out this morning. Thinking on it, she was becoming suspicious that they might be strictly nocturnal. She kept her eyes open, scanning far ahead for any possible problems. The lack of information from any source made her hope to run across someone who might be able to enlighten her.
Be careful what you wish for,
she thought. The road began to climb as she entered the Appalachian mountain range. The highest point in the range was sixty-seven hundred feet, so at this time of year she wasn’t worried about running into any weather of consequence.

The mountains in front of her seemed to open their arms to welcome her. The air temperature dropped several degrees every time she rode into a hollow, then rose again as she climbed ever higher. The miles rolled underneath the Harley’s tires, and she felt the momentary thrill of being on the bike as it vibrated between her legs. She opened the throttle and gave the beast its head.

She rounded a long curve and the elation disappeared as the first of two tunnels she would have to negotiate came into view.

It wasn’t that she had forgotten about the East River Tunnel, it just hadn’t crossed her mind. When they went to the beach on summer vacation, the kids used to try to hold their breath the entire length of the tunnel. Ryan would sometimes slow down just to mess with them, or speed up if he was feeling charitable. The first time Auddy successfully made it all the way through, he’d been doing about eighty.

She slowed as she approached the gaping black maw of the tunnel’s mouth. The lights were not on and she could only see about a hundred feet into the mountain. She sat astride the Harley, peering into the darkness and trying to see the other end. The tunnel was more than a mile long and changed elevation. “So, no light at the end of this tunnel!” she said aloud. Then she sat there thinking.
I could go down Route 52, but it would add at least a couple of hours to the trip. Oh, quit being a pussy!
She put the bike in gear and slowly entered the man-made cave.

The beam of the Harley’s light didn’t capture any glowing eyes staring at her from the blackness.
Why don’t people’s eyes reflect light like an animal’s?
she wondered. The reverberation of the engine growled at her loudly, blocking out any other noise there might be. The temperature dropped, but she could feel the sweat run down her back under the leather jacket. She tensed when the headlight picked up a red reflection ahead. It was a vehicle in the slow lane.