Desolation (21 page)

“
Fuck,
” Jerri whispered between her teeth, squeezing her eyes
shut. She knew the man was telling Andrew to make her step out of her
hiding spot.

Andrew shook his head, face pale.
“I don’t understand,” he stammered.
Jerri squeezed her eyes shut and bit her bottom lip.

The man with the gun groaned in frustration and pressed the
barrel against Andrew’s head, cocking the hammer back with his thumb.
“La chica! La chica!” the man shouted. He pointed at Andrew’s
FEMA uniform. “Policia estupido!
La chica
!”

 

“The girl? She has nothing to do with this. Just let her go and
take me,” Andrew pleaded. “Let her go and–”

 

“Cállate! Ladrón!” the man shouted, face red. His finger started
to tighten around the–

 

“Alto! Alto!” Jerri screamed as she stepped out from behind the
aisle holding Jacob in her arms. “No somos ladrones!”

 

Andrew spun towards Jerri.

 

“He thinks we’re robbers,” Jerri said to Andrew.

 

“Hablas español?” the man asked Jerri, pointing his gun towards
her.

“Un poco,” Jerri said, rocking the baby. “Por favor. No estamos
aquí para robarte.” She turned towards Andrew. “I told him that we didn’t
come here to steal from him.”

The man saw the covered baby and he hesitantly lowered his
pistol a little as he tried to see the baby’s face. He kept the pistol aimed
towards Andrew.

Jerri stepped towards the man, smiling.
The man quickly aimed his pistol at her.
Andrew started to rush towards the man–
The man turned his pistol towards Andrew.
Andrew froze in his tracks.

“I’m going to tell him that we just want a little food and shelter,”
Jerri explained to Andrew. “I’ll tell him that we want to stay just one
night.”

Andrew nodded reluctantly.

 

The man brandishing the pistol stared at both of them with fear
in his eyes, gun trembling in his hands.

 

“Sólo queremos que nos des alimentos y refugio,” Jerri told the
man, voice pleading. “Por favor, señor. Sólo una noche.”

 

The man with the gun started to shake his head repeatedly.
“No! No! Mi familia! No puedes quedarte aquí!” the man
shouted. “Esta es mi tienda!”

 

Andrew looked over at Jerri, eyes frantic.

 

“He said no… He said that his family is here and that this is his
store,” she explained, face sunken.

 

“Tienen un bebé...” a woman said from the corner of the room in
a mousey voice. “Tienen un bebé, mi amor.”

Jerri and Andrew quickly turned towards the voice and saw an
attractive woman. Behind her, four small frightened children hid behind
her legs, peeking around at the strangers. Three were girls and one was a
boy.

“Quédate ahí atrás! Mantente alejado de ellos!” the man shouted
towards the woman, his wife.

“She’s talking about Jacob,” Jerri said, surprised by group in the
corner. “She wants to help us, Andrew. The man told her to stay away
from us.”

“Son monstruos, mami?” one of the girls asked.
The woman looked down at the little girl and shook her head.
“Son peores. Son extraños,” the woman said.
Jerri frowned, horrified.
Andrew looked over at Jerri, lost.

“One of the little girls just asked if we are monsters…” Jerri said,
frowning. “The woman said that we’re worse than monsters.”

“
Worse
?” Andrew asked in confusion, arms still above his head.
Jerri nodded.
“We’re strangers,” she said.
Andrew started to walk towards the woman.

“Look, we’re not here to hurt anybody, please! Just listen!”
Andrew begged. The woman and the children started screaming. “Stop!
Just–”

The man struck the back of Andrew’s head with the pistol, hard.
Andrew stumbled forward and fell down onto his hands and
knees, bleeding out of the back of his head.

 

The woman and the children screamed again.

 

“No lo mates! Por favor!” Jerri begged, stepping towards the
man.

“Fuera! Fuera de mi tienda y deja a mi familia en paz!” the man
shouted at Jerri. He grabbed the semiconscious Andrew by his collar and
dragged him out the door through the storeroom in the back of the store.

Jerri ran after the man with Jacob, frantic.

 

“El bebé! El bebé!” the man’s wife shouted. “Los monstruos se
apoderaran de ella y el bebé! Por favor!”

“Cállate!” the man shouted at his wife who was still in the other
room. He hurled Andrew out of the back door into the alleyway and then
pointed the gun at Jerri, barrel shaking. “Fuera! Get
out
! GO!”

Jerri cautiously walked towards the door, nodding, holding Jacob
protectively.

 

The man’s wife ran into the room holding two cans of baby
formula and a bottle still wrapped in its original packaging.

 

“No lo hagas!” the man shouted.

 

The woman ignored him and tucked the items into Jerri’s arms,
into Jacob’s shawl.

“Para el bebé,” the woman said with a half-smile.
“Gracias,” Jerri said.
“Puta estupido!” the man said, spitting onto the ground.

“De nada,” the woman said to Jerri while keeping her eyes
narrowed on her husband.

 

Jerri walked past the man to the door, careful not to turn her
back towards him as she inched past his gun’s barrel.

“
Fuera
!
Go
!” the man shouted as he took her knife and threw it on
the ground. Before she could protest, he pushed Jerri out the door
towards Andrew.

Jerri stumbled out into the alleyway and the door slammed shut
behind her. She stood next to Andrew who was still on his hands and
knees, trying to compose his spinning head. She heard the man and the
woman arguing inside the store.

“That fucking bastard…” Andrew said, spitting blood onto the
pavement. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

 

He tried to stand but collapsed back onto his hands and knees,
looking like a weaponless clown that nobody would take seriously.

Jerri ignored his empty threat and shoved the two cans of
formula in her front pockets and the empty baby bottle in her back
pocket. She looked down the alleyway with concern, trying to figure out
what to do next.

32

A
ndrew walked down the deserted street pressing a hand against
his wounded scalp. Blood trickled out from between his fingers and
matted down his hair.

Jerri followed behind him, cradling Jacob’s freezing little body
against hers, protecting his fragile frame from the cool air. The sun had
almost fully sunk into the west and darkness was starting to swallow the
powerless city. Everything looked more menacing in the dark; alleyways
were impenetrable, the abandoned buildings loomed into the air like
jagged mausoleums, and navigating the dark city streets was next to
impossible.

A few of the buildings they passed had lanterns flickering inside
of them and their front doors barricaded. They made sure to give the
occupied dwellings a wide breadth.

As they walked, they felt eyes on them.

“Andrew,” Jerri said, looking over her shoulder. She thought she
heard a noise. Her stomach continued to growl and she felt weak and
parched.

“What?” he grumbled in reply. He took off his FEMA uniform
shirt and wrapped it around his hand. He pressed the shirt against his
bleeding wound and held it in place, grimacing in pain. He was wearing a
thin t-shirt underneath his uniform shirt, covered in sweat.

“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” she said as she looked over
at him, embarrassed about her behavior. It was amazing how different and
normal he looked without his uniform shirt. Truth be told, he really
wasn’t a bad looking guy. “I didn’t mean to go off on you.”

Andrew shook his head and kept walking.

 

“I’m sorry for grabbing your hand,” he said. “I was just worried
when you ran off like that.”

 

“Believe it or not I can actually take care of myself from time to
time,” she said with a slight smile.

 

Andrew chuckled.

“Apparently you can speak Spanish too,” he said as he tried to
fight off another dizzy spell; he was starving. “Any other secrets I don’t
know about you?”

“Lots,” she mused playfully. “What about you? What secrets are
you keeping behind those inquisitive blue eyes?”

Andrew turned towards her, grinning.
“I speak Italian,” he said.
She laughed.

He was elated that her icy wall seemed to be melting again. She
was beautiful and a smile looked good on her. Perhaps Chris didn’t ruin
everything. All attraction takes is time and energy; Andrew had all of the
time in the world. Now if he could just patch her sanity…

He lost his smile.

 

“Jerri… behind you,” he said as he reached for a pistol that
wasn’t there anymore thanks to the altercation in the grocery store.
Jerri spun around and her expression sunk.

Shamblers started to emerge out of the seemingly empty
buildings and emerge out from alleyways as darkness consumed the city.
They shuffled towards Jerri and Andrew, moaning, barely able to use their
decrepit legs. Their dried, sun baked skin was pulled tight against their
gaunt bodies. Unable to burrow into the concrete streets in order to avoid
the sun’s harsh waves, the infected learned to use other means of hiding
to slow their inevitable demise.

A National Guard soldier wearing a tattered uniformed limped
towards Jerri, nearly close enough to grab her.

 

Jerri screamed and ran towards Andrew.

 

“Run! Just run!” Andrew shouted as he threw his bloodied
FEMA shirt at the soldier.

The soldier snatched the shirt and started to rip it apart with his
rotten teeth, sucking the blood out of the fabric greedily. Other shamblers
nearby swarmed the solider and went into a frenzy as they jostled for the
shirt. Soon there were over fifty piled on top of each other.

Hundreds more continued to emerge out of their hiding spots
and stumbled after Jerri and Andrew moving with the awkward gait and
slow speed that they were known for.

Andrew ran as fast as his malnourished legs would allow and Jerri
lagged behind.

 

Suddenly a lit flare landed behind Jerri and Andrew and bathed
the street in a flickering red glow.

Andrew, startled, froze and turned towards the flare, struggling to
catch his breath. Jerri ran up next to him, almost collapsing on the
ground.

The shambling horde gathered around the flare, swiping their
boney hands at it as they trampled each other. The red glow revealed their
sunken eye sockets and yellow rotted teeth. As the flare started to
extinguish under the trampling feet of the dead, the horde’s attention
shifted back to Andrew and Jerri.

Slowly, they started to shuffle towards their prey once again.
“Get over here!” a man shouted. “Don’t just stand there gawking
like deer in a headlight!”

 

Andrew and Jerri jumped and turned towards the voice.

The man was standing across the street on the balcony of a
mortar-damaged apartment building. Empty milk crates and boxes of
flares littered the balcony where the man stood. The bottom floor of the
apartment building had been heavily fortified and covered in plywood.

Long gray hair hung off of the man’s head and an unevenly cut
beard covered his gaunt face. His skin was pale and his eyes had dark
circles around them. His thin body was enshrouded by a black poncho.
He waved his hands above his head, holding an un-lit roadside flare in
each hand. He kicked a rope ladder over the side of the balcony and let
the end tumble down onto the pavement.

Jerri looked uneasily over at Andrew, leery of the stranger’s offer
even as the dead closed in all around them.

 

“We don’t have many other options,” Andrew said as he hurried
towards the rope ladder, limping rather than running. “Come on, Jerri!”
Jerri ran after him, clutching Jacob tightly.

 

The man on the balcony lit the flares and hurled them out into
the massive crowd.

 

The flares landed, but this time the infected didn’t pay them any
attention.

 

“Ah, shit,” the man muttered, running his fingers through his
scraggly beard. “Just hurry! They got your scent now!”

 

Andrew flung himself onto the ladder and held onto the rung
with one hand, turning towards Jerri.

Jerri shoved past two corpses who had shambled into her path,
knocking them onto the ground. She ran towards Andrew and quickly
handed Jacob off to him.

Andrew grimaced and reluctantly took the child and held him on
his shoulder with one hand and made his way up the ladder, struggling.
Jerri trudged up after him, grunting with each rung as the ladder
swayed from side to side.

The infected at the bottom of the ladder started to weakly clasp
the ladder, shaking it. They gathered at the bottom with their arms
outstretched towards the sky, reaching for their prey.

Andrew reached the balcony first and quickly handed the man the
shawl covered baby.

 

The man looked at the wrapped child with wonderment and
froze for a brief second.

 

“Help me up!” Andrew yelled, waving his hand in front of the
man’s chest. His grip was failing and his legs were turning wobbly.
The man quickly laid the child down in a milk crate and snatched
Andrew’s hand. Grunting, he pulled Andrew onto the balcony.
Andrew collapsed on his hands and knees, breathing wildly.
The man reached down and pulled Jerri onto the balcony, gently
catching her as her knees gave out.

One of the infected, a policeman whose ribcage jaunted out of
his tattered uniform shirt, started to slowly and awkwardly climb the rope
ladder, pulling himself up with his leathery hands one rung at a time.

“Oh no you don’t, you clever little fucker,” the man on the
balcony shouted, cackling. He pulled out a bowie knife from his boot and
sliced the rope ladder.

The ladder and the policeman went tumbling down into the sea
of shamblers.

The man walked over to Jerri and helped her onto her feet.
“Thank you,” she managed to say in a weak voice.