You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 (7 page)

A man ran into the front of Adam’s GTO.

“Hey, shithead, you’re gonna dent my ride.”

The man lifted his head off the car’s hood and looked at them through the window. He screamed and clawed at the metal until he finally pulled himself onto the hood.

“There is something very wrong here,” Brad said softly.

Adam jammed the shifter into reverse and stomped the accelerator. The GTO lurched backward, and the man slid off the hood and onto the ground.

“We are out,” Adam said, and dropped the shifter to first and sped past the fallen man.

“Bro, don’t go this way. Bang a left up here.”

Adam spun the car across the median and changed direction back toward home.

The car went wide and jumped onto the sidewalk. He got control and stopped the GTO inches from a girl running on the sidewalk. He beeped the horn.

The blonde girl turned around and flipped him off.

Adam smiled and waved. When she recognized them, she waved back and ran to the passenger’s door.

Oh, well, my karma sucked anyway

Her first day as a certified nurse’s assistant at St. Pete Hospital and everyone calls in sick. It figured she didn’t already have enough stress over the new job. Now she had no back up, and the doctors and nurses were screaming orders at her. Ashley wanted to remind them that she was not a nurse; she was trained to take blood pressure, not perform emergency room procedures. She doubted they cared; people were flowing through the front doors in unmanageable numbers. Some of the patients were so weak with flu they could not stand on their own. Others came in with injuries that looked like animal attacks and still others were comatose. She did the best she could, applying bandages and helping with tourniquets. When several nurses dropped from sickness or exhaustion, she began dispensing injections and applying sutures on the orders of the doctors. She figured when it was all over, someone would fire her for practicing medicine without a license.

All she had wanted was to earn enough money for school and do something where she could help, where she could make a difference.

Something better than serving food to angry lunchtime guests at Panera.

She wondered if her mother would be disappointed if she quit. Just grabbed her backpack and walked out the front door. She knew that was just her fear talking. She really didn’t mind helping, and she didn’t mind the yelling; she just didn’t want to screw up and kill someone.

A man in exam room 1 howled. Ashley dropped the tray of medicine at the sound. It was a long, painful, animal noise. A doctor backed out of the room, holding his face and screaming. There was a black liquid all over him and tendrils of smoke rose from the doctor’s skin. He ran blindly into Ashley, and they both fell to the floor. She was pinned beneath him. She could see the doctor’s skin come off in angry red and black sheets. She screamed too, and pushed him off her. A spot of the black liquid landed on her neck; it burned, and she wiped it off. The howling man crashed out of the room and spotted her. He growled and ran at her with his arms out. Ashley ran too.

The waiting room was violent chaos as people attacked each other. She almost tripped over the fallen security guard who held his bleeding neck. She crouched down to help him, her pursuer forgotten for the moment. He shook his head; his voice was broken and garbled.

“Just run,” he told her.

She ran into the nearest hallway, but it turned out to be a dead end. She turned around and several people were in the doorway. Their eyes were blue and cloudy, and their jaws hung down in hungry yawns. They ran toward her, and she had nowhere to go. Both doors at her end of the hall were locked. She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and figured she could take out at least one of her attackers.

“Oh well,” she said aloud, “my karma sucked anyway.”

Chapter 5

Howdy Neighbor

I
t’s a creepy day in the neighborhood

Thorn’s home at Falcon Oak was five miles from the hospital. The chaos and confusion was mounting, but it had not yet broken to the point of meltdown. The traffic was no heavier in the eastbound lane of Daniels than on any other day, and the three made the trip in silence.

Economic hardship in Florida was severe. Nearly a third of the homes in the state were vacant. Falcon Oak had fared no better. The development’s two hundred fifty single-family houses were arranged on four separate loops that from the air gave the impression of a four-leaf clover. Sixty of these homes were vacant, some for sale, and others just abandoned. Another thirty or so had seasonal residents who were back up north or in Europe during the summer months. Thorn thought that the vacancies might work in their favor.

His house demonstrated the same financial reserve as his Jeep. The two-story corner lot was no mini-mansion with a Gulf view. There was no long stone driveway lined with palms. Inside he had no great dining hall for entertaining. It was just an average, middle-class Florida home in a development that didn’t even boast a golf course. It was the type of home a couple bought when they wanted to have children and wanted those children to have neighbors.

Thorn depressed the button on the electric garage door opener. The thoughts of the days to come snapped in his mind like photos. He turned the Jeep in a small arc in front of his drive and then backed it into the garage. Susan pressed the remote’s button, and the door swung down again. As the door closed, Thorn looked at his garbage cans that sat at the end of the driveway. He wondered if things as small as refuse removal were forever gone from this world.

“What now?” Susan’s voice pulled him back from his daze.

“Now,” he said, “we lock this place down, and hope we feel foolish for it later.”

“Maybe it’s not as bad as we think. I mean, it was just a few people at the hospital, right?” Rosa said as she climbed from the Jeep.

Thorn didn’t answer her but instead began to secure the garage door with the hurricane rods.

“What can we do to help?” Susan asked as she looked around the neatly organized garage.

“The downstairs windows have electric hurricane shutters. I want to get them closed before the electric goes out. Just press the button on the sill and hold it until you hear the shutter click. Rosa, I want you to find the thermostat near the staircase. Turn it down to its lowest setting.”

“What? We’ll freeze.”

“Trust me, the electricity won’t be on for long, and it’s going to get real hot and stuffy real fast.”

Thorn didn’t know if the hurricane poles would prevent someone—or something, his mind whispered—from breaking through the door. He figured the noise would at least provide them with a little warning. When he finished, he went into the house and found Susan in the living room.

“Okay, that’s the last one,” Susan said as he entered. “Except for the back slider; I couldn’t find the button.”

“That one is manual. I’ll get it.”

Thorn considered the usefulness of the shutters. He didn’t know if the infected maintained any intelligence. He could not be sure that the shutters wouldn’t just be the equivalent of hanging a big sign that read, WE’RE IN HERE! The unsettling truth was that he was operating with very little information. It was more gut survival instincts that drove him than any knowledge of what would save them. The shutters would be difficult to tear free, so at least they provided a measure of security. Like the garage door, if an attack came, he would know from which direction.

He stepped out onto the lanai. The afternoon was warm and humid. He took a long look at his pool. The little waterfall gurgled with clear blue water. The daze returned, but he threw it off and worked the folding shutter free from its enclosure. He stepped inside and pulled it closed. The inside of the house was dark, except for the small pool of light cast by the table lamp and the strip of light beneath the front door.

“What do we do about the front door?” Susan asked.

Thorn considered the large double door, happy that he had not opted for the glass panels.

“I’ll board it up later, but I have to do something first. There’s a case of bottled water in the garage and canned goods on the shelves. Can you and Rosa grab everything out there that we might need?”

“Come on, Rosa, the doctor’s still giving orders.”

They all tried to laugh, but it had a plastic empty sound, and it died quickly.

“And, Susan”—he paused—“grab anything that can be used for a weapon.”

Her smile faded and she nodded.

The women stacked water, batteries, two flashlights, and other items on the dining room table.

“A handsome man with such a nice big house, it seems he needs a woman to make it a home.” Rosa winked at Susan.

“Rosa, please,” Susan said in a hushed voice. “The poor guy lost his wife.”

“Yes, I know, but that was almost two years ago.”

“And it’s hardly the time to be worried about dating,” Susan continued.

“Pah, nonsense. This will pass,” Rosa said and waved her hand through the air.

Susan looked at Rosa with a mixture of concern and disbelief.

“Rosa, they bombed downtown not an hour ago.”

Rosa ignored her and said, “If I wasn’t such a good friend, I’d stop playing house with you two and be on my way to Miami.”

Susan had been so occupied with the shutters and supplies that she hadn’t taken a close look at her friend. Now that she did, she saw the pallid tone and the dark circles under Rosa’s distant stare.

“Rosa, I’m sure Michael and Miguel are just fine. There’s no reason to think anything has happened in Miami.”

“Oh, I’m sure they are fine, and so are we. Dr. Thorn just needed an excuse to get you to his house.” She made a sick little sound that was supposed to be a laugh. “He could have just asked you for a date.”

Rosa began to sway slightly, and more color ran out of her face.

“Rosa, maybe you should rest.”

“No, no, I am fine,” Rosa said. Then her legs went out from under her, and she fell, unconscious.

Susan sat next to her friend, who now lay covered with a blanket on the sofa. Whether Rosa was sleeping or unconscious was difficult to tell, but her breathing was slow and steady and she looked peaceful.

“It was just the shock of everything,” Susan said.

Thorn watched them from the center of the room.

“Did she have any signs of flu this week? The sniffles, congestion, any aches, or pains?”

“She is not sick, Russ, just in shock. She doesn’t even have a fever. Her skin is cool and dry.”

“The virus presents as hyperthermia, Susan.”

Thorn opened the chamber of the .357 he held and began to feed it gold-jacketed bullets.

Susan stood and put herself between Thorn and Rosa.

“You don’t know that she’s sick,” she said, her voice a mixture of anger and fear.

“We have to be careful, Susan.”

He slid in the last bullet, spun the chamber, and snapped it closed. When he looked up, Susan’s eyes stared at him, angry and defiant. His confusion became amusement as he looked again at the gun and realized that for all Susan knew, he was a guy who went around punching chubby, old pediatricians.

He laughed and then offered her the gun grip first. She faltered for a moment and looked from the gun to Thorn.

He laughed again.

“Did you think I was suggesting we should shoot Rosa right there on the sofa?”

Susan blushed and looked down. When her eyes met his again, he would have sworn there was a subtle shift in their deep color.

She laughed and took the gun. “I’m sorry, I-I just thought.”

“It’s okay, really. It’s been a tough day. But seriously, we need to watch her closely. If it’s shock, fine, but if she is sick, we can’t afford to be trapped in here and unprepared.”

Susan looked at her friend and tried to recall if Rosa had been coming down with a cold. She couldn’t remember.

“Okay, I need to go out for a minute,” Thorn said.

“What? You can’t go out there. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I know, but I have to at least warn some of my neighbors.”

“Then I’ll come with you.”

“We can’t leave Rosa alone. Plus I can move quicker on my own.”

Susan considered it, knew he was right, but still didn’t like the idea. What if he didn’t return?

“I will come back,” he assured her as if reading her thoughts.

“Why can’t you just call them?”

“I don’t actually know many of my neighbors, and I don’t have their numbers.”

It was true. There were several life cycles to these developments. In the first wave, everyone tried to create that neighborhood community they had left back home or one that maybe was just some fond wish for earlier days. At first, there were barbecues, nightly walks, holiday block parties, and beer shared in the backyards and driveways. Then, in time, life moved on. Divorces, upgrades to better neighborhoods, the death of a child, the death of a spouse, lost dreams, and new opportunities. In wave two, the new folks were welcomed but with less enthusiasm and with fewer parties. By wave three, the moving trucks came and went with no fanfare. People nodded more than they waved, and they might know the family next door but not the one next door to them. Thorn had been here through all three waves, and now he painfully missed those former days.

Susan insisted he take the gun, but he refused.

“I won’t need it.”

“You might.”

“I won’t and I’ll be quick.”

“Then at least take the baseball bat.” She handed him the wooden bat she had found in the garage.

He slipped out the front door and waited to hear it lock as he had instructed.

The dead bolt clicked.

It’s a neighborly day in this deadly wood

Thorn walked to his neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. Jerry was a sheriff’s deputy and probably in a heap of shit right now. Thorn didn’t know if Jerry’s wife or kids were home, but after five minutes without a response, he assumed they were gone. The next house stood empty, a sun-bleached For Sale sign posted on the slightly overgrown lawn. At the next two houses, he got no response. He had given up hope when Carrie May opened the door of the fifth house. Carrie, like him, was a “first waver.” She was dressed in a robe, her nose was red, and her eyes were watery.

“Hi, Dr. Thorn. Are you here to make a house call?”

“Sort of. Is Bill home?”

“No, he’s at work. Something I can help you with?”

“Have you seen the news or listened to the radio?”

“No, I’ve been sleeping most of the day. Can’t shake this flu. I am freezing, and I know it’s at least a hundred degrees outside.”

“I don’t want to alarm you, but I want you to lock up the house and stay inside no matter what.”

Carrie looked at him. “What’s going on, Dr. Thorn?”

“I’m not sure, Carrie, but it’s bad. Really bad. Lock up the house and watch the news. I’ll check in on you later.”

Thorn felt terrible. The plan was to bring people back to his house. Carrie was in the last stages of the virus. In less than an hour, she would be dangerous. He could do nothing for her.