You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 (9 page)

He pointed to a new group of infected on the lawn across the street. “See those?”

“Yes.”

“The man and the two boys used to live there before …” He trailed off.

“Maybe they were just inside,” Susan suggested.

“No, I don’t think so. They just showed up today.”

“Do you think they have some kind of intelligence?” Susan asked.

“I’m not sure, but it definitely seems like some primitive homing beacon. Like when a cat finds its way home after being dropped off a hundred miles away.”

Susan didn’t respond at first, and then she asked, “Does that information help us?”

“It might, but I need to think about the implications.”

The infected’s nocturnal behavioral changes fascinated Thorn. He watched at dusk as their awkward movements slowed, and then they almost seemed to sleep. The infected swayed slightly and looked up into the night sky until the sun again rose, and they became animated. Thorn theorized that the behavior might be left over from their former human circadian clocks or might be a method in which to conserve energy. Their food supply had been depleted, if one discounted the three meals locked away in his house. He wondered how long the infected would remain out on the lawns before hunger forced them to seek out a new food source.

One night, as he observed them do their sky staring, he was surprised when suddenly all their heads looked down at the ground in unison. Certain something was about to occur, he called Susan over to the window.

The infected fell to their knees at the same time. Their hands began to claw at the grass, pulling up large chunks of sod. Their movements were slow at first, but then gained speed as they furiously dug into the earth. In a few minutes, each had dug a large hole in the ground. Thorn and Susan watched the infected crawl into their holes and then pull the dirt over them. In a matter of five minutes, all of them were gone. All that remained were large mounds of dirt across the lawns.

“Oh my God,” Susan whispered.

“I think they’re hibernating,” Thorn said.

“In this heat? How can they be cold?”

Thorn shook his head.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a way to conserve energy now that their food is gone.”

“That’s just creepy,” Susan said.

“I’ll say, but maybe …” He didn’t finish his thought.

“You think we might be able to make a run for it, don’t you?” Susan asked.

“Maybe,” he answered. “We’re almost out of food and water. We can’t stay much longer.”

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t

The virus had not caused Rosa’s strange behavior. She had suffered a psychological break from the stress. When she finally awoke from her trauma-induced sleep, she was groggy but appeared to have regained her senses. In the days that followed, it became evident that she had not completely returned to her former self. She seemed inappropriately relaxed and carefree. She seemed unaware or unwilling to accept what had happened to the world. She joked about “playing house” with Susan and Russ and talked about her husband and son, which was at times, an almost incomprehensible dialogue. Several times, Susan or Russ caught her trying to remove the plywood from the front door or searching for the keys to the Jeep.

“Rosa, what are you doing?” Susan asked the first time she found her friend attempting to leave.

“I really need to get to Miami,” Rosa answered. “Michael will be so worried.”

Susan took her friend by the arm and led her back upstairs. Rosa didn’t fight but remained silent for several hours after each event.

Thorn worried that without vigilance, Rosa might succeed at opening a door. He suggested binding her, but Susan refused, and she promised to guard over her friend.

Each morning, the infected rose from their subterranean beds, and each evening, they returned to their holes. Thorn noted that they never dug a new hole. Regardless of where the infected wandered to during the day, at night they always returned to the same mound. During the first week, however, he noticed something that seemed odd. He couldn’t be certain if it was just a trick of light or his tired imagination, so he went to his closet and found his digital camera. It ran on AA batteries, and he was grateful that they contained a full charge. He sat the camera on the windowsill, marked off the spot, and then used the night setting to take a picture of the lawns. Each night, he took another picture of the exact scene. After he had taken several night shots, he reviewed the pictures in sequence on the camera’s little LCD screen. The results were frightening. They needed to leave.

Do not go gentle into that good night

“I still don’t understand why we aren’t taking the Jeep,” Susan said as they packed their backpacks.

“They seem to sleep at night,” Thorn answered. “But on the night they killed the Baylors, it was the noise or maybe the light that reanimated them.”

“But we’ll be inside when we start the Jeep,” Susan said.

“I know, but I’ll need to lift the garage door by hand. That will make noise, and I don’t want to risk waking them.”

“You think that is riskier than trying to walk out of here?” Susan asked. It wasn’t sarcasm; she was just trying to understand his decision.

“I don’t know, but we have to assume the roads are blocked with traffic accidents. We could get to the end of the street and find it impassable. Then we’d be trapped in the Jeep. Remember the bus?”

She did and she nodded, but her fear was evident as she looked around the dining room.

“Maybe we should just stay a while longer. We still have some supplies left,” she offered.

Thorn looked into her eyes. He wanted to hold her and tell her everything would be fine. Although these were probably their final days, if not their final moments, he held back for reasons he refused to face. He took her hand.

“Susan, there is something I didn’t tell you,” he said.

“What?” she asked, but her expression said that she didn’t really want to know.

“The mounds.” He paused. “They’re moving closer to our house.”

The air was hot and silent. The three survivors stood on the drive, illuminated by the moon.

“Russ, maybe we should cut across the field in back,” Susan said.

“No, we’ll stay on the street. It will be safer, and we can move quicker.”

He hadn’t told either of the women about the infected cats.

“We move in a fast walk but quietly. If anything … happens, try to get back to the house. If you can’t, then don’t wait, just run to the church up the street. Are we clear?”

The women nodded.

They walked down the driveway. The road formed a circle, but to the left was the bus crash, and Thorn wanted to avoid the remains of Mrs. Genson and the sight of the dead children who certainly had been inside the bus.

Rosa walked a little too close to the edge of the road. Thorn tried to get her attention, but she was focused on the mounds that lined the lawns. Susan started toward her, but Thorn grabbed her arm and shook his head. He whispered in her ear, “Just keep walking; don’t stop for anything … including me.”

He jogged to Rosa. He touched her arm, and she spoke in a loud voice.

“I just want to see them—these bastards who killed my whole world!” she yelled.

The ground stirred. An arm shot out from the mound closest to Rosa, and she yelled at it in Spanish. Another set of arms rose from the ground, and an infected pulled itself from the earth.

“Rosa, come on,” Thorn pleaded.

He stepped back toward Susan, who had stopped in the middle of the road.

Rosa went forward and kicked the arms that greedily reached for her from the earthly grave. She got too close, and the infected caught her ankle and pulled. Rosa fell on her back and screamed. All the mounds came to life. The infected made hungry anxious noises from beneath the ground, and they began to rise. The infected held on to Rosa, and it used her to pull itself free from its hole. It dragged her closer and then bit into her leg. Thorn heard her leg bone crack. Rosa screamed in pain.

Susan was at his shoulder. He turned and looked down the street and then back at the house. More of the mounds were giving up their infected, but Thorn couldn’t decide which way to run.

It was one thing to make their way slowly past the silent mounds. Trying to outrun a horde of angry infected was not a part of the plan. Thorn looked down the street again and decided they would never make it.

“Come on.” He took Susan’s hand. “We have to go back inside.”

Susan stood motionless and watched as the infected man tore off chunks of Rosa’s thigh. A bite had severed Rosa’s femoral artery. She had passed out either from the rapid blood loss or the shock. Thorn pulled hard on Susan’s arm, and she followed him in a run back to the house.

Several mounds stirred on Thorn’s front lawn, so they ran to his short driveway. Thorn drew the .357 and shot one of the infected creatures as it came at them from the side of the house.

When had the things moved to the backyard?
he wondered.

He shot another infected as it charged at them from his front lawn.

Four bullets left
, he thought.

There was no way they would make it back inside. There was no time to reload the gun, and he only had two more bullets left to use on the infected. The last two bullets he would save for himself and Susan.

Four more infected came down his walkway and blocked access to the front door. Several more came at them from the street. Their movements were still slow, as if they had just awoken, but they were gaining speed. Thorn looked around. There was nowhere to run. He pulled Susan close, and they moved toward the street.

“What do we do?” Susan asked, her voice distant and broken.

Thorn turned and hugged her. He raised the gun to her head and looked again down the street. He could imagine music in the air. It was odd; he knew the song, but it wasn’t a favorite.

You’d think when it comes to the end that at least you’d hear a song you really like.

Then the roar of music and motors filled the air. Three black SUVs came around the far corner; their roof racks were full of lights that lit up the yards. The loud thump, thump, thump of bass pumped from inside the vehicles, and David Lee Roth screamed that the cradle would rock. Gunshots rang from the SUVs, and the infected turned their attention to the noise and then galloped at the vehicles.

Thorn turned the .357 on the four creatures that still approached him and Susan and finished them off with the remaining bullets.

ACT II

Autumn Lost

O’ what a wicked deception is youth,

That things of such pained importance

Mask the blissful happiness of those moments

That only upon the fading twilight of innocence

Does resounding truth provide for such bittersweet understanding.

For these things of angst and confusion are

But a by-product of a freedom soon lost to the toils of survival.

A time when such things could be important, for

They had yet to meet those greater tragedies ahead

And when the mirror’s reflection unveils a face lined with responsibility,

O’ those tears shed are not for unrequited love

But for the loss of that sweet place

Where all pains and happiness were still possible

And thus, faced with sad recognition

The reflection silently carries on.

For the pains of today, they care not for poetic verse

Nor the ponds of deep introspection

That which could be and that which might be are

Cast asunder—for that which must be done.