You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 (8 page)

The next occupied house was on the opposite corner lot from his own. A fit, older woman of about sixty-five answered his knock.

“Hello, ma’am, my name is Russell Thorn.”

“Yes, I know who you are, Doctor. How can I help you?” Her overt suspiciousness made him uneasy.

“Are you home alone?”

“What do you want, sir?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, but have you watched or listened to the news?”

“Yes, I am well aware of the riots.”

“Ma’am”—he thought hard to recall the name on the mailbox—“Mrs. Genson, please listen to me, these are not just riots. People are getting sick and—”

“Well, do not worry about me, Doctor. I was a school nurse for over forty-five years, and I can take care of myself.”

“Mrs. Genson, I’m certain you can, but this sickness is a little more than—”

“Thank you for stopping by, Doctor, but I am letting the conditioned air out and need to close the door now.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She closed the door and left him standing on her walkway.

Thorn turned and walked back to the street. Maybe he should have brought Susan; maybe she could have convinced the old woman to hear them out.

When he heard the loud rumble, his first thought was that Mrs. Genson had returned to her front door to scream at him. Then he saw the giant yellow bus come around the far corner. It was moving too fast and crossed onto a lawn. It lurched dangerously to its side, and the tires tore deep wells into the grass. The engine roared as it righted itself and then shot back onto the tarmac. It regained speed but the angle was all wrong if the driver wished to stay on the road. A mailbox and pole disappeared beneath its silver grill as the bus sped across first one lawn and then another. There was a terrible grinding noise as the bus rubbed against a large palm tree. The front tires reached the next small patch of cement driveway; the abrupt contact caused the wheels to twist back toward the street. It appeared the bus would make a complete hundred-eighty–degree spin and return in the direction it had come, but instead the force and weight dragged it over on its side, like a large yellow beast. Glass exploded from the windows, and the engine made a high-pitched whine and then popped with a large
clunk
that silenced it for good.

Thorn stood, stunned by the sight of the large beached vehicle. For a moment, the neighborhood was silent, except for the light ticking sound of the bus’s blown engine.

“Oh my God,” said Mrs. Genson from behind him. She had apparently watched from the window and seen the bus make its grand but short-lived entrance. “Those children will need help.”

She brushed past Thorn in short, confident strides. Thorn took a step after her, and then the emergency hatch on the bus slapped open. Two boys, maybe fourteen, fought to be the first through the hatch’s small exit. Thorn took another step forward. One of the boys had bested the other, and he wiggled free from the hatch and got to his feet in a strange awkward movement. The boy’s eyes settled on Mrs. Genson, who had covered more than half the distance to the wreckage. The second boy was almost free of the bus. Thorn saw others pulling themselves through broken windows. Two dozen blue-hazed eyes looked hungrily at the old woman.

“Mrs. Genson, get back here,” Thorn yelled and started after her.

“Now you children just take a seat; you may be injured. I am a nurse, and I want you to sit quietly until the medics arrive.”

“Mrs. Genson,” Thorn yelled again. Some of the blue eyes turned to him, but they seemed to consider Mrs. Genson the better target, and their attention returned to her.

The two boys broke into a vulgar gallop with outstretched arms. She put out her own arms as if she meant to catch them in a hug. Thorn found his legs and took off in a sprint. He needed to reach her before the infected did. He knew that it was impossible; she was much closer to the bus than he was to her, but still he ran with all he could draw from his legs.

Mrs. Genson had a moment to consider the teeth that gnashed at her shoulder. Then she screamed louder than Thorn would have considered possible for her old lungs. Thorn swung the baseball bat in a wild arc as he passed Mrs. Genson. The ravenous thing at her neck drove her to the ground, but it was not Thorn’s target. He needed some space in order to help her. His target was the second infected kid. The bat made solid contact with the kid’s face. It did not fall back so much as the face stopped, and the rest of the body continued forward. Its feet ran out of legs and began their own arc into the air. The thing came down with a sickening thump as its body and head crashed into the pavement. The other infected from the bus broke into a frenzy of gurgled growls and screams as they struggled to get free of the small windows.

Thorn turned his back to them, intent on helping Mrs. Genson. It was too late. The boy-thing had found her throat and taken most of it down to the spine. Thorn raised the bat; he planned to crush its skull more out of some primitive disgust than to help the dead woman. A strong hand settled around his ankle and tried to pull him from his feet. Thorn kicked at the downed thing with the broken face. It screamed at him but let him go. Thorn backed away as other infected climbed free of their yellow prison. He considered the bat and then the dozen adolescent creatures that looked at him with hungry intent.

For the third time that day, Thorn ran for his life.

Chapter 6

Sweet Darkness

G
ood neighbors make good fences

Susan stood on the walkway with the .357 pointed in Thorn’s direction. For a moment, it appeared she meant to shoot him and then the gun boomed and he felt something hot pass by his ear. Behind him came a loud screech followed by an equally loud thud. Thorn picked up speed, crossed the drive, and made it to the door. Susan already inside, grabbed the handle and pulled it shut behind him. She locked the door and then turned to face him.

“Told you it was a bad idea,” she said.

Thorn bent over as he struggled to catch his breath. He looked up at her.

“Please tell me that wasn’t the first time you fired a gun.”

“I didn’t miss, did I?” she responded.

The pounding on the front door cut off his retort.

“Come on,” he said. “Help me get some plywood.”

They carried two large pieces of plywood from the garage and set them in front of the double doors. Thorn nailed the plywood to the doors and the frame. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it would make pulling the doors open difficult. The infected continued their rage-filled screams as they pounded with their fists and bodies.

“Will that keep them out?” Susan asked as she watched the doors shake in their frame.

“I don’t know,” Thorn answered. “But let’s take Rosa upstairs.”

Thorn knew that the second floor meant no escape if the infected broke in, but leaving the house wasn’t an option anyway, so he figured it was their best choice if this was to be their last stand.

In his second-floor office, they watched from the window as the neighborhood became a hot summer death. The noise from the bus crash, Susan’s gunshot, and the screaming infected drew the people from their homes to inspect the chaos. The infected fell on them. They saw several neighbors return home, and the infected attacked most as they exited their vehicles. Some made it inside their houses. A few of the attacks resulted in immediate death, but most turned a few minutes after being bitten or sprayed, and these people rose up to join the horde. Throats ripped, innards hanging out, arms missing; Thorn noted that whatever fueled the virus also fueled a physical animation that should have been impossible.

“Are they zombies?” Susan asked as they watched.

“No,” Thorn answered. “Not like in the movies. They aren’t dead. They’re something else.”

Later he saw his neighbor, Carrie, among the infected.

Susan and Thorn left the window and sat, silently consumed by their own thoughts. Susan went to check on Rosa, but the nurse still slept.

A little after nightfall, the noise from outside stopped. Thorn looked through several of his windows, but beyond the single streetlight, the neighborhood was dark, and he couldn’t detect any movement.

“Do you think they’re gone?” Susan asked.

“I’m not sure, but I want to have a look.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “You can’t go outside.”

“Susan, there isn’t any choice. We can’t stay here forever.”

“So wait until morning when we can see from the windows,” she countered.

Thorn shook his head and said, “No, something has changed out there, and I need to see what it is.”

Susan looked away, but even in the darkness, he could see her fearful expression.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised. “And I’ll be quick.”

Thorn went out through the back sliding glass door. He didn’t want to risk removing the plywood from the front doors. If the infected still waited on his doorstep, he might not be able to replace the boards in time. He slid the glass door open and placed his hand on the accordion-style shutter. He paused for a moment and tried to listen for any sounds behind the plastic barricade. He could hear the soft bubbling of his pool’s waterfall but nothing more. He slid the barricade aside and stepped outside. He had insisted that Susan remain upstairs during his absence. He slid the door shut behind him, but left the shutter open in case he needed to make a speedy return.

The screened lanai was dark, and the only sounds came from the pool and the soft hum of the air conditioner units. Thorn crept toward the screen door on the far side of the enclosure. He stepped out into his backyard and softly closed the door behind him. He felt exposed, and his heart rate increased. He considered abandoning his investigation and just returning to the house. They didn’t have more than a few weeks of food, though, and the tap water could no longer be considered safe to drink. The case of bottled water wouldn’t last long, so eventually they would have to leave. He needed to determine exactly how they could accomplish that. He kept close to the screened lanai and then followed the side of the house to the front yard.

When he reached the house’s front corner, he crouched down. The infected were still scattered along his neighbors’ lawns, and a few stood motionless in the street. They were different now. All of the violent and awkward movements had stopped, and they looked to be almost sleeping.

Two houses over, he spotted a man and a woman crouched down in the driveway, hiding behind their car. He knew the couple only in passing and couldn’t recall their first names, but he knew their last name was Baylor. The streetlight cast them in an amber glow. Mr. Baylor moved in a duck walk around the car, and then Mrs. Baylor followed him. Thorn watched as the man turned a small plastic device over in his hand. He knew what would happen a moment before Mr. Baylor pressed the button. Thorn started to call out a warning.

Mr. Baylor pressed the door’s unlock button on the remote, and the horn gave a single loud beep in the quiet night. The car’s interior lights and headlamps turned on, bathing the infected in light. Twenty heads turned in unison toward the couple. Mr. Baylor swung the car’s door open and threw himself inside. The infected became fully animated and charged. Mrs. Baylor stood up, screamed, and ran back to the house. Mr. Baylor struggled to pull his legs in and close the car door, but the infected reached him quickly, and they dragged him back onto the driveway. Mr. Baylor screamed. The sound of his cracking bones filled the air as the infected tore him apart. Thorn fell back along the house, but he was too afraid to take his eyes from the front to turn and run.

He reached the screen door and saw that Mrs. Baylor had not gone inside but instead crouched at the back of her house. Thorn motioned her to come to him, but she either couldn’t see him or was too frightened to move. Then she screamed and took off in a run toward the overgrown field behind their houses. Several infected galloped around the house and pursued her. She made it to the field and ran into the tall grass. For a moment, Thorn was certain she would escape.

When the infected reached the field, they stopped and stood motionless for a moment, and then they turned and began their slow, uncoordinated walk back to the street. Mrs. Baylor continued to run through the waist-high brush, unaware that the infected no longer pursued. The tall grass began to rustle on all sides of her. Something small and dark leapt from the weeds and attached itself to her back. She screamed in pain and frantically tried to remove the creature. A second creature leapt up and grabbed hold of her arm. Several more joined it, and she fell out of sight into the brush. Her screams
continued
for a few seconds, and then she was silent. The grass rustled for a few more moments and then grew still.

Thorn had seen the creatures’ tails—infected cats.

Days followed nights

At 3:00 a.m. on the first night, the power shut down. Thorn had been surprised that it had lasted that long. They kept the windows closed to preserve the interior’s cool air, but by midmorning, the temperature inside had risen to seventy-eight degrees. By afternoon, it reached the mid eighties. As the humidity rose, it became stifling, and they opened all the second-floor windows. The air felt thick and heavy. The afternoon thundershowers came and went, but the rain provided no relief. Everything felt damp, and even the pictures and artwork on the walls rippled from the moisture. Outside, the breezeless air settled around them like a thick, fuzzy blanket. The heavy smell of the everglades pressed upon them, and it mixed with the bitter stench of burning wood and chemicals. The night provided almost no noticeable relief. They burned only one candle in the hallway because they feared that the light might attract the infected and because even the small flame seemed to add to the already unbearable heat inside of the house.

The pungent smell of the everglades and burning structures was not the only odor that crept through the open windows. The stench of death and decay filled the air. The infected continued to feed on the corpses of Thorn’s neighbors, but their capacity for ingestion seemed similar to that of their former selves. It took time for them to strip the remains down to the skeleton, and they appeared willing to share the carcasses with the vultures that patrolled the skies. In time, the rotting flesh was consumed, and all that remained was the sun-bleached skeletons that littered the lawns. The sight of the skeletons unnerved Thorn in a way that the rotting bodies had not, perhaps because all those bones spoke to just how lost their world was.

At sunrise, they drew the shades and slept. It intensified the humidity, but it kept out the hot sun and quieted the mewling sounds of the infected. At night, they opened the shades again and averted their eyes from the skeletons that appeared almost luminescent in the darkness. During those long, dark, humid nights, they talked quietly. Occasionally, they played cards or tried to read by candlelight. Mostly, Thorn found himself staring out the window. Their world had become so dark and so quiet. The infection had turned back technology’s clock a hundred years. The sounds of the living world were gone. Sounds like the hum of the refrigerator, the soft whoosh of distant traffic, and the tick of a clock: the sounds that had once been so common to his world that they had gone unnoticed. Now in their absence, they created a silence that almost felt like a sound in itself. The voice of a dead world.

A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there

Russ Thorn had been a researcher for a time. His patience made him a skilled observer. During their imprisonment in his house, he spent hours at his second-floor window observing the infected. His first discovery came at the end of the fourth day of the apocalypse.

Thorn was uncertain how many, if any, survivors remained in the neighborhood. Since the attack on the Baylors, he had not gone outside, nor had he seen any others attempt to leave. The infected remained animated during the day. Occasionally, one would approach his house and pound on the door or attempt to tear the shutters from a window. None of the attempts was successful, and it seemed that the infected did not have the intelligence to try to remove the shutters with anything other than brute force. Still, the sudden banging would startle the three survivors from their fitful sleep, and the adrenaline rush wore away at their already exhausted condition.

At first, Thorn worried that the arrival of new infected was because they were drawn to Susan, Rosa, and his presence in the house. The attempts at entry, however, grew no more frequent, and he realized that he recognized the new arrivals. They were his former neighbors, and they had not been there on the first days.

“They’re coming home,” he said quietly to Susan.

“Coming home? What do you mean?” she asked.

She looked over his shoulder out the open window. He became uncomfortably aware of the exotic smell of her hair and the soft touch of her hand.