Haven (5 page)

None of us had a response to that.

“Where is everybody?” she asked, noticing we were the only ones present.

“Beats us,” Beverly yawned, and checked the time on her cell phone, again.

I filled Mei in on what had happened so far and watched as her face grew steadily more alarmed. When I was done, she marched to Beverly and asked to use her phone.

“No one’s answering,” she informed Mei.

There was terseness in Mei’s tone when she asked for it again. “May I
please
use your phone?”

Beverly exhaled loudly, gave Mei a piercing look, punched in her code, and then handed it to her, reluctantly.

Mei rushed to dial a number as we watched. It dawned on me then that I hadn’t called a single person and neither had Harrison.

Keeping my voice low, I asked Doc, “Did you try to call anyone?”

“Huh?” He glanced up. “Yeah. Same thing. No one’s picking up.”

Maybe Harrison thought it would be futile? If no one else was having any luck, then why should he try? That felt flimsy, and I knew instinctively that there was another reason he wasn’t grabbing for the phone. I knew why I hadn’t. There wasn’t anyone I could call. Everyone was dead.

When Mei was unsuccessful, she retried the number, and retried it again after it failed.

Finally, she gave in, muttering to herself, “They’re not answering.”

Beverly sighed. “Like I said…”

As if she didn’t hear her, Mei diverted her attention back to her phone, doing something other than dialing.

“What are-”

“I’m adding an app.”

“You’re what?” Beverly asked, alarm actually entering her voice for the first time. But then she settled back and smirked. “You don’t have the password.”

“I didn’t need it,” Mei said, and then she forgot Beverly altogether as her eyes widened and her shoulders rose with nervous tension.

We waited, hesitantly, as she resolved whatever it was she was doing with the phone. When she handed it back, Beverly’s face shifted into the same foreboding expression as Mei’s.

Doc stared at Mei uncertainly. “What kind of an app did you download?”

“The local news.” Her voice was jittery.

Mei knew before the rest of us had, or were willing to find out, that we weren’t the only ones in trouble. “We need to get to our families,” she said, coming across as rigidly determined as I usually am. “If they aren’t here, which they don’t seem to be, they’ll be at home waiting for us.”

“Mei is Chinese,” Beverly mentioned with sarcasm thick in her voice.”They live for family.”

“I want to know what’s happening with my parents, too,” Doc agreed, glancing between us anxiously. “I mean, they could be…” He stopped himself and corrected the line of thought he’d been following. “We can’t…not know!”

“Mine’s coming for me,” Beverly proudly reminded us.

Harrison looked pointedly at her but his tone was sympathetically prompting. “You sure about that?”

Her eyes flickered to the clock hanging on the wall, which showed that she’d been waiting for over an hour now, and in this kind of emergency that was a very long time. Her smug expression fell as she briefly questioned her own statement. She quickly regained her usual frown, but remained quiet.

“What about you?” Mei prompted. “What’s your name?”

“Harrison.”

“Do you want to check on your family, Harrison?”

It was immediately clear to me why she was urging him. Mei was petite, no bigger than five feet and couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. She was also smart, and having read the news reports, she knew she wouldn’t last five minutes outside without Doc and Harrison.

A lengthy pause followed and I knew then why Harrison hadn’t made any phone calls earlier. He was in the same situation as me. There was no one to call.

His eyes were downcast. “I live with my aunt, but…” He shook his head and was about to say something more, something revealing when Mei cut him off.

Apparently, his partial response was good enough for her because she launched into preparations. Eventually, she concluded that the most efficient route would be to check Doc’s house, then Mei’s, and finally Harrison’s aunt’s apartment before circling back to the school, if needed. I, of course, was left out of the equation.

Leaving Beverly to stare after us, we started for the main entrance, when Harrison came to a stop and turned toward me.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re not coming with us.”

I couldn’t tell if the last part was a command or a question. “Yes, I am.”

His voice lowered and he looked directly at me. “Kennedy, there’s no reason for you-”

“There is,” I said, taking the few steps to my locker and reaching in for the gun.

He paused before asking, “How would you feel about-”

“No,” I replied. “I’m not giving you my gun.”

“I thought it was the guard’s?” he countered, although we both saw through that frayed argument.

“You can stop worrying about me, Harrison. I can take care of myself.”

He stared back, and it was clear he didn’t want me along. But, slowly, unwillingly, he nodded and I could see his thoughts cross his face. He was wondering if he could handle whatever was out there while defending me. I was flattered, but it was completely unnecessary.

After Harrison conceded, we didn’t say another word until reaching the doors, though I noticed that he fell back to keep a better eye on me.

If only he knew…

As we stared out across the parking lot, processing what we were seeing, Mei muttered, “It looks…”

“Like a war zone,” Doc finished her sentence.

And it did. The personal possessions remained in place, but all of the attackers, about a hundred of them, were moving, ambling around aimlessly or knocking themselves repeatedly into the fences in a futile effort to get through them. They wouldn’t have been so disconcerting, if it weren’t for the blood stains smeared on their faces, across their shirts, and down their pants. The victims’ bodies looked like they’d somehow widened, but that wasn’t the case. It was that their insides were piled up alongside the edges of their waists, as if someone had been digging inside them.

Mei made a gurgling sound and, from the corner of my eye, I saw her clutch her stomach as she spun around and vomited her breakfast. The rest of us stepped back, while Beverly groaned in disgust from down the hall.

“Some of the cars are still running,” Doc said optimistically, trying to divert his attention from Mei.

“But they’re clogging the exit,” Harrison pointed out. “We’ll need something to get through the parking lot fence, and my motorcycle won’t do it.”

Doc exhaled, disappointed, and we glanced at him. “My dad dropped me off today. Truck would have made it, but it’s in the shop.” He gently placed a hand on Mei’s shoulder. “How about you? Do you have a car?”

She was still bent over, recovering, so she only managed a weak shake of her head.

I cringed. Everything in me wanted to keep my mouth shut, but there was no other way. We needed a vehicle that could tear through the chain link fence and I was the only one who had it.

Taking a deep breath and fighting back my resistance to the idea, I said, “We can use Old Boy.”

“Old Boy?” Harrison asked, curiously.

I dug the keys out of my pocket and held them up. “My dad’s car. The blue Mustang in the back corner.”

Harrison surveyed the parking lot and I knew he’d located it when he whistled in admiration. When Doc found it, he did the same, muttering, “Nice…”

“How…?” Mei’s weak voice interrupted the festivities. She had finally improved, standing upright again and keeping her sharply acidic breath to the side. “How are we going to get to it?”

There was really only one way I could foresee, which I knew Harrison realized too as both our heads fell to the gun in my hand. Intuitively, I dropped the magazine, checked the number of rounds, and reinserted it before lifting my head again.

“Wow, you know how to use that thing?” Doc asked.

Before I could say anything in response, Harrison interjected, “She’s an expert marksman.”

While his comment could have come across as mocking, it didn’t. He was making a sincere point, which prompted Doc to stare at me in awe. And I had the feeling that I was about to impress him further. Unfortunately. I’d really prefer to stroll out the door, across the parking lot, and slip into Old Boy without fear of someone biting me. In fact, it was surreal to realize that I’d done that very same thing yesterday, and that it felt so long ago. Now, we’d be running for our lives.

“We ready?” Doc asked, although it seemed like he was directing his question to Mei.

We all nodded, and as Doc’s hand came down on the door handle, Harrison turned to look at me. He knew that once we stepped through the steel gate, there would be no turning back, and he wanted to give me one last chance to back out.

Slowly, I shook my head, he frowned, and we followed Doc and Mei out the door.

“I’ll clear the way,” I said, going ahead of Doc and holding my gun at the ready.

Harrison grimaced and kept his eyes on me the entire way to the front.

I stopped at the guard, whose gun I held, and looked down at him. His insides, which were now outside, were hardening across the warm pavement. Doing my best to ignore it, I stooped down, picked up the second magazine of ammunition, and dropped it in my pocket. I had the uneasy feeling we’d need it.

Opening the steel gate wasn’t complicated. The issue was redirecting the attention of the ones who’d be trying to get at us once we did, one of whom was standing directly where the gate slid to the side and opened into the parking lot. He was an older man with silver hair and a gut, not a faculty member. Maybe a parent…maybe someone with no affiliation and who’d just happened to wander here. Half his leg was chewed off, but he was still standing, clinging to the bars that separated us. His eyes were locked on us and his mouth quivered like he felt some sort of rush at seeing us.

“How do we get him out of there?” Doc whispered.

Mei shrugged as I took a second to evaluate our options. But Harrison knew exactly what to do.

Stepping up beside me, he kept his voice low and instructed, “When I open the gate…run.”

Carefully, watching for any sign the man might catch on to what he was doing, Harrison inserted the key into the gate and turned it, sliding aside the automatic locking mechanism that was keeping us safe.

Then two things happened at once. First, the gate squeaked and the heads of all those standing in the parking lot snapped up in search of the source. Second, the man lunged for Harrison.

It felt like my stomach jumped up into my throat as I watched it happen. Shoot, my instinct screamed, but Harrison was blocking any access to him. As he grabbed the man, Doc and Mei did as commanded, sprinting for Old Boy. I waited, unable to leave Harrison alone in the struggle. He was working on gripping the man’s erratic arms, when he had to shift to the side as the man’s teeth came dangerously close and grazed his ear. I took aim, but Harrison’s head came into sight. I had to step aside to look for a better angle. Then Harrison completely surprised me by picking up the man and shoving him into the air, through the curved spear at the top of the steel gate. The man’s arms and legs flailed until his snarl softened and he became entirely motionless.

Harrison stood there, registering what had just happened, and I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn’t have that option when he seemed to come to that conclusion on his own. Spinning around, he grabbed me by the arm and sent me into a run.

By that point, everyone with blood on them was either charging in our direction or toward Doc and Mei, who were now only a few feet from Old Boy. Suddenly, I wished that I’d given them the keys.

“Kennedy?” Harrison called out, and I followed his line of sight, knowing instantly what his intentions were. Staring back at the mass of bodies running for us, he was telling me to shoot.

I raised the gun, settled the front sight on the closest one, just as my dad had taught me, and pulled the trigger twice. Two shots landed in the chest. Yet, the man kept running at us.

“The head!” Harrison urged. “Aim for the head!”

I did, and the man’s head snapped back just before the rest of his body followed. Without waiting for his legs to collapse entirely, I moved on to the next closest one. And as they fell, we made our way to the car. I unloaded the weapon until I saw the slide back and, mid-pace, I dropped the magazine and loaded the other one. It was the last of the ammo, so it needed to get us to the car, at the least. It did, thankfully, and when we reached Old Boy, I tossed the keys to Harrison so I could continue shooting in a ring around us.

Once we were all safely inside, Harrison inserted and turned the key. Without pausing, he chuckled to himself and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “All right,” he said. “I agree. You can handle yourself.”

I might have smiled if we were simply on a run for Slurpees, and I wish we had been. The bodies bearing down on us were sobering reminders that we weren’t. Their groans and grunts were muffled now, but that didn’t make them any less terrifying.