The Last Days of October (18 page)

Amber didn’t answer.
 
She blinked irregularly and took great gasps
of breath through her mouth.
 
Her nose
gushed blood.

“Honey, you’ve got to
answer me, okay?
 
Did you get bitten?”

Amber hesitated, then
shook her head.
 
She drew a hand to the
bloody mess that constituted the lower part of her face and winced again when
the hand touched it.

“Fuck,” she muttered
weakly.

Heather collapsed beside
her and wrapped her in a fierce bear hug.
 
She rocked on her buttocks in the middle of Litchfield Avenue and sent a
prayer of thanks rocketing into the heavens.

Justin walked up beside
them both but didn’t sit down.
 
Heather
looked up to see him studying the dog’s carcass, now only blackened bones and
shreds of crisped tissue that bore no resemblance to any living thing.
 
His boot had crushed its ribcage.

“Nice shot on goal,”
Heather said.

He frowned at the carcass,
not responding.
 
Heather watched him cock
his head, rub his eyes.
 
He turned to
face her.
 
“That thing was hungry.”

“I know,” Heather
said.
 
“I saw it.”

“We need to get the hell
out of Dodge.”

Heather sat back now and
supported herself on her palms.
 
The
street was dirty and gritty beneath her palms.
 
Cold and hard.
 
Like the reality
that she couldn’t keep everybody—anybody—safe in this new world.
 
Anyone who invested her continued existence
with Heather Palmer would lose her shirt.
 
Heather knew this.
 

If we leave, he’ll follow us.

Another thought, on the
heels of that one:

All he wants is
you.
 

The adrenaline leaving her
system now, she felt as if she had to vomit.
 
She coughed and shook her head weakly.
 
“We can’t run,” she said.
 
“It’s
too dangerous.”

“Then we need to hook up
with other survivors, like,
now
.
 
Me and her have been playing frigging Frisbee
when we need to be patrolling for people who might be able to help us get
through this.”

Would he allow her to move
to another place?
 
As long as she didn’t
leave Deep Creek?
 
Maybe.

And maybe not.

A breeze rolling down
Litchfield wound around the trees and rattled the lonely wind chimes dangling
from some vanished neighbor’s porch.
 
The
chill poked at the gaps in her clothing with the fingers of a mature autumn.

“What time is it?”
 
Heather asked.

“I don’t know,” Justin
said.
 
“I left my watch inside.
 
One o’clock?
 
Two o’clock?”

“We’ll ride by the
schools,” Heather said.
 
“But if there’s
no one there, we’re coming straight home.”

21.

Deep Creek High
sat at the end of an access road that snaked into the woods on the edge of
town.
 
It was a newer complex, with the
forest still smarting from having so many of its members hacked away and this
giant of concrete and brick plopped down in their place.
 
As the Durango motored through the trees,
Heather felt her stomach tightening.

There’s not going to be anyone there,
said a voice in the back of her head.

Probably not,
she thought.
 
But she had to try.

What if there’s no one?
 
What if you truly are it, at least in this
town?
 
Are you going to make them stay
here forever?
 
Or do you risk their lives
taking them on the run?

“Car,” Amber said.

Heather
braked.
 
Ahead, two driverless Deep Creek
Police Department cruisers sat nose-to-nose.
 
They blocked the road in both directions, the trunk and bumper of each
blocking what little space existed between the road and trees.
 
If they wanted to continue, they’d have to do
it on foot.

“How far is it
from here?” she asked.

“Not far,” Justin
said.
 
His voice was taut with hope and
excitement.
 
And, Heather thought, just a
little bit of fear.
 
“One more turn
beyond this and you’re there.”

Heather put the
Durango in park but left the engine running.
 
The red light on the dashboard indicating that long-ignored emissions
problem—whatever the hell it was—flickered but didn’t go out.
 
“I’d prefer not to,” Heather said, “in case
we need to get out of here fast.
 
But I
don’t see any alternative.”

“These cars are
here for a reason,” Justin said.

“It’s because this
is where everyone went,” Amber breathed excitedly.
 
Her face glowed.
 
“Everybody came up here and they put the cop
cars here to block the road.
 
You know,
for security.
 
This is it!
 
We should have come here yesterday instead of
screwing around at Wal-Mart!”

Heather stared at
the police cars.
 
Their placement was
deliberate, that much was obvious.
 
But
they bothered her.
 
She felt music played
out of tune, something wrong.
 
Were this
a true barricade, she thought, it would have been manned.
 
And if a colony of survivors waited in the
high school just around the bend…

We’d have seen them by now.
 
They’d have been sending out patrols.
 
Like us.

Her stomach roiled
with the acidic realization that whoever had sought refuge in Justin’s old high
school was probably dead.

“Let’s go!”
 
Amber exclaimed, throwing open the passenger
door.

Heather reached
out and grabbed her arm.
 
“Wait,” she
said.

Halfway out of the
truck already, Justin drew himself back inside and listened.

“We don’t know
what we’re going to find up there,” Heather said.
 
“And we don’t want a repeat of our little
shopping trip yesterday.
 
If there’s
anybody there, we’re not going inside.
 
They come out to us, in the sun.
 
The
full
sun, not the shadows
beside the building.
 
They can call to us
and wave at us all they want, but if they won’t come out in the sun, that tells
us all we need to know.
 
Right?”
 

Amber’s joyous
glow had collapsed.
 
But she nodded
again.
 
“Right,” she sighed.

Heather checked
the Ruger and adjusted it in her waistband.
 
“Okay, then,” she said.
 
“Let’s
go.”

At the point where
the road wound out of the woods, they stepped off the pavement and sought what
concealment the naked trees offered.
 
Dead leaves crunched and twigs broke beneath their feet; to Heather,
they sounded like a herd of elephants tromping through the woods.
 
With Amber and Justin shrinking behind her,
she crouched behind the trunk of a great white oak and stared at the sprawling
single-story complex across the parking lot.
 
Cars, trucks and minivans filled the lot nearly to capacity.

People had come
here.

She squinted at
the building.
 
The stars and stripes flew
atop the flagpole, the North Carolina flag hoisted just below it.
 
Beneath that, Deep Creek High School sat in
utter stillness and silence.

“Looks deserted,”
Justin said dejectedly.

“You don’t know
that,” Amber said.
 
“They could just be
hanging out inside.
 

She watched,
listened.
 
After several minutes, she
stepped out of the trees, cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “HEY!
 
IS THERE ANYBODY HERE?”

Her voice died
halfway across the parking lot.
 
She
lowered her hands and waited.
 
When her
squinting revealed no movement in the parking lot or outside the school, she
took a deep breath and stepped out of the trees.
 

“What are you
doing?”
 
Amber asked.

“Stay back.”
 

Above her, the sun
warmed her hair as her feet swished over brown, dormant grass.
 
She walked with her lips pursed, muscles
tensed.
 
She left the grass and entered
the parking lot, a position that afforded her now a look around the right side
of the building at the practice fields and the football stadium.
 
No students played ball out there now.
 
No one walked around outside, even though the
air inside the building had to be stagnant now with no ventilation.

They came here because there’s safety in
numbers.
 
They came here for safety and
security.
 
And then, one night, somebody
opened a door.

“Careful,” Justin
called out.

Heather swallowed,
and her lips trembled.
 
She stood now on
the concrete causeway that led up to the main entrance of the school.
 
Black windows stared back at her.
 
In the plate glass covering the front of the
building, she could just about see herself reflected there.
 
Unkempt, messy.
 
She looked like a soccer mom from Hell.

She walked around
the side of the building, eyes scanning the windows for any sign of
movement.
 
The afternoon sun shimmered
off the glass.
 
Amber and Justin
followed, obediently hanging back.

“Hello!
 
My name is Heather Palmer!
 
If there’s someone in there, please come
outside!”

The windows
betrayed nothing.
 
Around on the right,
the doorways leading to the practice fields remained shut.

“Is there anybody
there?
 
I won’t hurt you!
 
I come in peace!
 
Please answer me!”

She realized she
was screaming now, not yelling.
 
Screaming herself hoarse, the bubbling despair that ran constantly in the
background of her mind now threatening to lurch forward and take over.
 
She felt then like a diver who had surfaced
only to find the boat gone.
 
Abandoned
and alone in the ocean with nothing below her but the black depths and the
creatures that lived there.
 

A hand fell on her
shoulder, and she jumped.
 
Justin.

“Use the gun,” he
said.
 
“No one’s going to hear you
standing out here yelling.
 
Fire a shot.”

She bit her lower
lip.
 
But she turned around, drew the
Ruger and fired it once into the air.
 
The report whipcracked across the grounds like a peal of thunder and
echoed off the brick walls of the building.
 
She watched and waited.

Nothing.

She turned to face
Justin and Amber.
 
“There’s nobody here,”
she said.
 
“I think there was, once.
 
But not anymore.
 
Somebody…”

All at once, both
sets of eyes widened and both jaws dropped.
 
Heather’s next thought died in her throat as she turned.
 
And saw it.

The vampire was
rail-thin, and with its mouth closed it more resembled a concentration camp
survivor than a monster.
 
Clothes hanging
on its wasted frame hinted that it had been a man once, but that day had long
since passed.
 
Now, its mottled skin
surrounded a pair of black eyes sunken into its skull and its arms protruded
like sticks from the great sail of its shirt.
 
It stared at her.
 
Paralyzed,
Heather stared back.
 

It bared its
fangs.
 
It screeched.
 

It charged.

The building’s
high roof cast a long shadow over the ribbon of sidewalk that stretched from
the building to the entrance to the practice fields.
 
Even with the sun blocked, though, the thing
began smoking the minute it hit the crisp air.
 
But like Harley the dog, it kept coming.
 
Black patches on its skin grew, its body charring in the sun.

Behind it, the
door banged open again and the school discharged a tide of its companions.
 
Skinny, starved and utterly mindless, a sea
of black eyes and skinny limbs.

“Run!” she
shouted.
 

Amber and Justin
ran.
 
She emptied her magazine in the
direction of the charging vampires and then she ran too, hair streaming in the
wind behind her.
 
Both younger people
vaulted the waist-high fence surrounding the field complex.
 
Heather tried to do the same, but she
stumbled and fell upon landing.
 
She
scrambled to her feet and followed her daughter and Justin in their mad dash
across the baseball field and onto the soccer field beyond it.
 
Justin looked back over his shoulder, slowed
and then stopped.
 
Lungs on the brink of
explosion, Heather followed suit.

“I think we’re
okay,” he panted.
 
“Look.”

Nothing chased
them anymore.
 
A few had made it as far
as the fence, but the majority hadn’t.
 
Crisped by the sun, they lay still.
 
Their bodies reminded her of old pictures of Civil War dead laying
strewn about the battlefields of Virginia and Pennsylvania.
 
She stared in shock and amazement.
 
She tried to count the dead but she couldn’t.

“Like a bunch of
lemmings,” Justin said.
 
“Right out into
the goddamned sun.”

They came at us.
 
They came at me.

Just then, a
realization struck her with a force that made her vision swim.
 
She thought she would pass out.
 
Instead, she just vomited.

Amber rested a
hand on her back and held it there until she had finished.
 
When her stomach finished convulsing, she
stood and spat on the grass.
 
She closed her
eyes and tilted her head back, feeling the warmth of the sun that shone down
upon her now like the understanding burning in her head.

“They were
starving,” Amber said.
 
“Look at them.”

“You’ll do about
anything if you get hungry enough,” Justin observed.

“Right,” Heather
said.
 
“And in this case, all these
things charged out into the sun.
 
To get
me.
”

They blinked at
her, uncomprehending.

“I’m supposed to
be
his
,” she said.
 
“But they came for me anyway.
 
He’s supposed to be the one that takes me,
but they disobeyed him.
 
But that’s not
the problem.
 
The problem is…”

“…that they didn’t
give a shit,” Justin finished for her.
 
“They didn’t give a shit about your husband, and they didn’t give a shit
about the sun.
 
They wanted to eat.”

“They broke the
rules,” Heather said.
 
“Because they’re
starving.
 
And he doesn’t control all of
them.
 
It’s only a matter of time before
they all tell him to fuck off.
 
And they
come inside to get us.”

“So what do we
do?”
 
Amber asked.

Heather
swallowed.
 
She looked at the charred
bodies and then to the sky.
 
The sun had
already begun its afternoon decline and sunk towards the tree line with a speed
she could almost see.
 
They didn’t have
enough time to make Fort Bragg this evening.
 

But if they
hurried, they could get back up into Caswell.
 
Way out in the country.
 
Where
they’d sat outside and roasted marshmallows over campfires and nothing, not so
much as a bitey squirrel, had bothered them.