The Remaining: Refugees (24 page)

A stone clattered across the pavement at his feet and he turned to see one of the infected, now in the road less than twenty feet behind them, holding another fist-sized stone in its hand. It reared back and hurled the stone at them, catching LaRouche in the leg and causing him to stumble.

Lee reached out quickly to grab LaRouche’s arm
and steady him, the
lead infected had gained on them,
and was now
only a few yards behind them. The others were spreading out on the lawns, cutting off
their
escape, while more of them kept scrambling out from underneath the house.

Lee shoved LaRouc
he towards a randomly selected driveway. “Into that
house!”

They weren’t going to outrun this
pack. They were fast, and Lee and LaRouche were weighed down with gear. Their only hope was to bottleneck them at the front door and hope the house muffled their gunshots.

LaRouche made for the front door and Lee bolted after him, turning just in time to see the pale hand reaching out for him, its gnarled fingers contorted into claws. Lee twisted and struck out with his rifle, slamming the infected across the side of the face and causing it to stumble sideways. It was still up, but it cantered to the right and gave Lee an opening to make for the front steps of the house.

Ahead of him, LaRouche hit the door without slowing down. It shattered inwards with a spray of wood and plaster and LaRouche went sprawling into the foyer
, landing on his hands and knees
.

“Get up!” Lee shouted. “Get up!”

LaRouche turned and saw Lee topping the
front porch
stairs, and
he
rolled
quickly
out of the way. Lee dove for the front door and spun, landing hard on his left knee, his ankle twisted up underneath him and his right leg splayed out for balance. He brought his rifle up as a shape filled the doorway and fired rapidly. Bullets punched through the door frame, then found flesh, bursting through the creature’s torso in sprays of gristle and blood.

It wasn’t enough.

The thing hit Lee full on, knocking him back, its hungry arms wrapping around him, a grim parody of an embrace. Lee fell onto his back just in front of the door and tried to twist his rifle up, but it was squashed between the two bodies. Hot breath brushed the side of his face, yellow teeth clacked inches from his skin.

Reflexively, he pulled the trigger.

The muzzle was close to his head and the blast was like being punched in the face. His vision darkened and sparkled at the edges, but it must have had the same effect on his attacker and its death grip on his torso loosened just enough for Lee to contort his body and jerk the thing off balance. He rolled, pinning the scrambling creature underneath him.

“Get this fucking thing off me!” Lee screamed.

Still struggling to keep the thing on the ground, Lee could feel the front door of the house batting around at his feet. His back was exposed to the other infected that would be coming through the door, and he couldn’t tell where the fuck LaRouche had gone. Pulling his hips off the ground, he drove his weight down on the thing’s chest and kicked out blindly with his foot, shutting the door behind him and planting his boot there.

Lee stared down at the infected he had pinned. It was arching its back and writhing about underneath him, its neck stretching up towards Lee, the cords of muscle distending through its skin, the jaws working fast like a wild animal, trying desperately to catch a piece of Lee’s jugular.
He registered the sound of gunfire, but it sounded muffled, like he was wearing earplugs. The door at his feet clattered and pressed in at him.

“LaRouche!”

A boot came across his vision in a tan blur, and the infected’s head jerked to the right with a muted crunching sound. Blood spewed out across the floor in a brilliant flash, and the thing’s jaw wobbled around, unhinged. The boot came down again and again, and this time the crunch was more distinct and the body underneath him went limp.

Lee started to rise.

“Keep that door shut!” LaRouche barked, and began firing through it.

Lee could feel the impact of the rounds punching through the wood. He rolled slightly, trying to maintain pressure on the door, but something on the other side suddenly hit it hard and his knee buckled. The door slammed open, catching Lee’s foot between the wall and the door. The infected tumbled in
, and Lee could see in a flash-frozen moment that LaRouche was still firing at it, tracking it
with his rifle
as it fell on top of Lee. Instinctively, Lee curled into a ball, knowing, just
knowing
that LaRouche was going to accidentally shoot him.

He felt the weight hit him, but he didn’t feel the bullets. He opened his eyes to the wall, inches from his face and the splash of gore on it. He stared for a half second and the question circled in his mind,
did that come out of me?

Fight through it.

He heaved the body off of him.

Somewhere in the back of the house, glass shattered.

“They’re comin’ in the back!” LaRouche’s voice was dim,
like he’d gone into another room
, but when he hauled himself to his feet, LaRouche was standing right in front of him. The sergeant put a hand to Lee’s shoulder. “You okay? Did I hit you?”

Lee looked down at himself. “I don’t know.” If he’d been hit, he couldn’t see the hole, and the blood wasn’t coming out. “Post up on the front,” he said, shouldering his rifle and shaking his head to clear it of the humming noise that was settling in. Two infected lay dead in the foyer, another outside on the porch.

How many more?

LaRouche put his shoulder to the front wall and scanned out the front door at the yard.

A large oak tree stood in the front yard.

No movement.

Lee faced the opposite direction. The
front
door opened into a spacious living room. A half-wall divided it from the kitchen. A hallway to the left, leading further into the house. Lee could see dim daylight making its way into the house from around the corner of the hallway, and just beyond, he could see that the kitchen opened into a dining area.

He could hear LaRouche’s breathing, and not much else.

The house seemed quiet, tense.

“How many were there?” Lee said quietly, taking small steps towards the hall, pieing off the corner. He could see the dining area now, an ornate wooden table with chairs, tableware and napkins still set out as though prepared to receive guests. Beyond the table was a sliding door onto a patio. The glass had been shattered.

“I think…” LaRouche started.

“Ssh!”

They held their breath.

Silence.

Then something in the dining room creaked.

Despite the cold, Lee could feel the sweat on his face, trickling down into his eyes. He swiped at it, and his fingers came away red, wit
h a small chunk of brain matter
from the infected.

The half-wall extended partially down the hall, with a wide opening directly between the kitchen and dining room. A hand was gripping the top of the half-wall, steadying something that was crouched down
on the other side
.

“Contact!” Lee grunted and fired into the wall.

Plaster and drywall exploded.

The hand disappeared down and then the beast, a tall and skinny thing that seemed to be all arms and legs, came scrabbling out of the dining room with a shriek. It launched itself through the wide open
ing at Lee and he fired wildly as he backed
up. He felt something hit the back of his legs and he fell backwards over a coffee table. He pulled his finger from the trigger just as h
is muzzle passed over LaRouche
, still standing at the front door. Lee let himself roll, feeling the floor on the top of his head, the strain as his body bore down on his neck, and then
he
came up on his hands and knees
, having performed a complete backflip
. He whipped his rifle up.

“You got it! You got it!” LaRouche waved a hand at him.

Looking down the barrel of his rifle, Lee could see the gangly form stretched out at the mouth of the hallway, only a foot or so from where he had originally been standing. Blood was shooting out of its nose onto the carpet. Its eyes blinked rapidly, then slowed, then stared half-lidded at the growing
pool
before it. Lee had caught it right
between the eyes
.

Lee pulled himself up to his feet, feeling the shakes coming over him heavily.

“Should we call them in for extract?” LaRouche said, his voice strained.

“No,” Lee shook his head. “We can still do this.”

“Did we get them all?”

“Did you notice how many there were?”

“No,” LaRouche scanned the yard again. “I didn’t count.”

“Me neither.” Lee moved to the front door. “We can’t just sit here, though.”

“You think we woke up the hordes?”

“No way to tell until it’s too late.” Lee stepped out onto the porch to get a better angle at the side of the house and the rest of the yard. Through the surrounding trees, Lee could see the sky turning bright and pink, but the sun hadn’t yet shown over the horizon. If they hadn’t stirred them with the gunfire, any hordes in the area wouldn’t emerge from their dens until the sun was out. “We’re just a couple blocks away from the urban area. I say we make for the buildings now while we still have a chance.”

LaRouche didn’t seem to like that, but he nodded anyway. “You’re the boss.”

Lee took a last glance at the three bodies jumbled
inside the house, and the one l
ying at his feet. Something bothered him.
Without another word, he took the
stairs
down into the front yard. He heard the light footsteps of LaRouche taking up the rear again.

They moved quicker now, unsure whether they’d killed the entire pack. Four was a small pack, but then again, they’d all been crammed in underneath that deck. He couldn’t see many more than four fitting under there. Maybe five. Perhaps if there were others, they’d decided that there were easier meals elsewhere.

Then it struck him what had been bothering him.

None of them were females.

***

Jerry rose early that morning.

Like everyone else in Camp Ryder, he lived in a shanty, and he slept on whatever he found to make his nights more comfortable. Lucky for him, he’d gone through the trouble of locating and hauling a twin size mattress out of a nearby house. The mattress was his pride and joy, the reason he could wake up in the morning and smile at the people of Camp Ryder, rather than scowl at them like Captain Harden and his henchmen. He also felt a measure of pride in the fact that he had carted the mattre
ss off by himself, carried it t
o and from the pickup truck, all the while scanning for infected.

Yes, infected.

Professor White preferred the term “plague victim,” but Jerry didn’t share the man’s
sympathy
for them. He’d witnessed those creatures tear plenty of people apart, and felt comfortable saying that they weren’t human. However, Professor White and Jerry agreed on one very important point: Captain Lee Harden and his sock puppet, Bus, should not be running Camp Ryder.

Jerry stood up from his twin size mattress, oblivious to the creaks and groans of the inner-springs. Half a year ago, Jerry would have been outraged to be forced to sleep on such a mattress. Then he spent two months sleeping on dirt, and
grew to appreciate
the barest of cushions between himself and the ground. Now the stained, popping mattress felt luxurious
, like the finest
bed
, wrapped in Egyptian cotton.