“What does - “, I started.
“Look,” she interrupted, turning toward me finally, “I know who you are. Not only are you very recognizable, but I worked at the hospital, and yours was not exactly a low-profile case. I know you were in 13, and I’m not sure how you missed your bus or, even more questionable, how you got across campus, into a janitor’s suit, and into my building.
“But you did. So here we are, doctor and patient. Patients, excuse me. Truth be told, yeah, I’m a little concerned about traveling with you, but I have limited choices, and I read your file. Actually, was a student of your case when it came out. I was in med school then, and it was certainly,” she paused, head tilting to one side as if choosing her words carefully, “an interesting scenario.”
Okay, so she was being honest. I could give it a shot.
“So why aren’t you scared of me? I killed my wife you know? At least that’s what they tell me. I don’t remember doing it, I can’t even imagine doing it. But I can’t tell you I didn’t do it, because I can’t remember a goddamned thing about that evening. Apparently the evidence was against me and a jury of my peers gave me a one-way ticket to the loony bin. So what gives? Why the bravery? I could do you in the same way, and not even remember it in the morning.”
I backed up, realizing I had moved toward her in my frustration. My voice trembled, as I struggled to keep my sudden, inexplicable anger in check.
She looked at me, blinking once, shifting her gaze over my shoulder. She put the remote on the counter and leaned against a rack of DVDs casually.
“You see, that’s where I’m not totally convinced.” She crossed her arms and made eye contact with me.
“Not convinced?”
“Not totally convinced,” she qualified quickly, “Don’t get me wrong; for the moment I’m just gonna go ahead and continue to assume you’re not right up there-self-protection you understand-but I have some doubts. I read the reports. All of them. Several times. Police report, psych evals, coroner’s report, even the prosecutor’s case and the defense response.” Her tone changed, skepticism creeping in.
“There was something that didn’t make sense about the police report and the coroner’s report. Led me to suspect that there was something amiss. They didn’t quite click. It was the timing.”
“The timing? What the hell does…”
Suddenly, from above us, Earl’s nasal voice, shrill with fear, shot over the intercom. “Wake the fuck up! They’re almost through the fence!”
Chapter 9
We raced back to the futons, finding Fred awake, looking worried, clutching his pan to his chest. We quickly gathered our weapons and jackets and bolted to the barrier.
I moved a chair close to the barricade and peered over the top. A huge group of teenagers in football uniforms had come from nowhere, their sudden arrival adding critical mass to the already sizable number of creatures pressed against the fence. The steel posts supporting the metal curtain remained standing, but were steadily succumbing to the external force, their structure weakened enough to compromise. The fence bowed inward from the pressure of the massed bodies, the chain link pregnant with their weight.
“We have about five minutes before those things are at this barricade.” I turned and jumped down.
“Won’t this hold them?” Kate asked, looking unbelieving at the formidable pile of sundry house wares and garden products we had piled in their path. “At least for a little while?”
I shook my head. “If that fence is any indication, this thing will be a road bump. There’s just too many, all moving in the same direction. We need to grab Earl and figure out if there’s a way out of here, maybe through the back. Hopefully those things are clustered at the fence because that’s where they saw us come in. If so, the back might be clear.”
We headed toward the manager’s office, and he met us at the entrance to the hallway, walking quickly, face somber.
“You see them out there?” he asked, looking over my shoulder and back to me. “That group of pimple-faced meat-eaters came outta no where.”
“Yeah, they’re itching for breakfast and almost through. We’re on kind of a schedule here.”
He rolled his eyes. “No shit? I was gonna throw in a movie, maybe make some popcorn.” He glanced at Kate with a self-congratulatory smirk. Was he looking for a laugh? Trying to impress her? Seriously?
What a jackass.
She ignored his attempt at humor. “Is there a back way out of here? I saw earlier that you’ve got a back door and a loading dock. You got cameras on those?”
He nodded, pursing his lips and squinting doubtfully.
“The back door opens into an alley, with a ten foot cement wall directly in front of it-it’s a bottleneck. There are about ten or twenty of them milling around back there. It’s no good.”
“And the loading dock?”
Shaking his head, he replied, “Might work if the dock door wasn’t jammed. There’s even a truck parked in there from a late delivery a few nights back. But the automated gate mechanism went haywire after the truck made its drop. Wouldn’t come up on automation. On manual, we could get it up part way, but not high enough to get the truck out.”
“Jesus. So you’re telling me we either sit tight here and wait for our new friends, head into the back alley dead end and try to scale a cement wall, or try to get your truck out of the dock with a screwy gate? Not a lot of options here. What about the roof?”
This wasn’t turning out at all as I had hoped.
“No go there, either. Roof access is through the garden center.” He grinned. “But you’re welcome to try it.”
“You first.”
“Oh, real witty,” he said, “they teach you that in janitor school?”
“Look guys,” Kate interrupted, looking between us, the urgency in her voice matching the concern on her face, “I hate to bust up this cerebral debate, but we don’t have a lot of time here. We need to pick a route and go with it. From where I’m standing, it’s looking like truck and expressway or bust.”
She looked to both of us.
I nodded.
“Good,” she said, looking to Earl. “We need some supplies. Sleeping bags, that kind of stuff. Where to?”
“Camping supplies, in sporting goods. That’s where I got this,” patting his ax. “Canned goods back the way you came. Water too. I’ll meet you at the dock door, past the fitting rooms in the back.”
I grabbed Fred, nodded at Kate, and started toward the sporting goods section. Fred followed behind, straggling, but keeping up. Grabbing a large hiking backpack, a hunting knife, a hatchet and an ax, I sprinted back to the food. I threw cans, five or six liters of spring water, some cereal bars, and a couple boxes of wheat crackers into the bag. I cinched it shut and threw it over my shoulder heading back through electronics, pausing as I passed a display case of handheld radios. I grabbed a package of two-ways, and made my way back toward Fred. He waited for me anxiously in sporting goods and we went together to the fitting rooms, reaching the door to the dock as Kate rounded the corner by lady’s lingerie, toting a similar backpack, having also switched out her shovel but choosing instead a softball bat to supplement the pistol she had in her pocket.
“Earl?” I asked, looking around.
“Behind me,” she was breathless. “They’re through the fence, and they’re at the barricade.”
Earl raced through the baby clothes section, tubby paunch exploding into the aisle beside her at a breathless jog.
“Move! They’re in!” His exclamation was punctuated by the sound of tumbling furniture from the garden center.
I bolted for the dock door, slamming my hands into the bar across the exit door and throwing it open. Massive shelves stocked high with all manner of items surrounded a paved, three-sided indentation, deeper on our side, and inclining gently upward to a large metal gate. Parked in that bunker was our redemption; our vehicular messiah masquerading as a delivery truck. Its back door was open and it was partly unloaded. Twenty or so large cardboard boxes sat lonely and unopened against the cab wall.
Earl ran past me, breathing heavily, making for the driver’s seat. Kate went for the passenger side, opening the door and tossing her bag in.
“Where’s the manual crank for the door?” I asked through the cabin to Earl, who was grabbing the keys from the center console.
“Right side, top of the ladder,” he said looking up through the windshield to a mechanical box at the top of a ladder attached to the cinder block wall. “You have to pop out the crank and pull up the gate manually, but there was a jam the other night that kept it from going up all the way. Mechanic said he’d get to it but…” He shrugged. “I don’t know if he did or not.”
Great. Well, time to act like a hero. That’s what I do, right?
Well, usually, I wasn’t on the verge of wetting myself. But other than that, sure.
“I’ll take the crank, you guys load in. If I get it open wide enough, I’ll jump on the top of the truck and we leave, pronto. If I don’t - ”
“You’ll get it-just make sure you don’t miss the truck on your way down.” Kate said sarcastically. She looked at me gratefully, but with a twinge of something else in her eyes. She took my gear from me and ushered Fred into the truck as the engine started, turning over with a satisfying roar.
Yeah, I’ll try not to do that. Smart-ass shrink, I thought, grabbing the bottom rung and hoisting myself up. As I climbed, I vaguely wondered what she really thought about me. She was pretty hot. Probably has all sorts of theories about me, though. ‘Schizophrenic glory hounding egomaniac’ came to my mind. And I was being nice to myself.
From behind us, the sound of a heavy weight against the door and the crashing of bodies slamming into a heavy door. Earl revved the engine as Kate rolled up her window.
I climbed quickly, reaching the top as the store entrance door opened, followed by a flood of creatures. The fat woman from last night must have fallen behind, as a young woman dressed as a fry cook had assumed the lead. Her empty glare fixed on me after scanning the room, her left arm looking as if it had been gnawed at by her companions and was of little value, her right arm raised to me in a gesture of greeting. Or a beckoning. A longing for me.
And not in the good way.
I shook my head, and focused on the crank. It came free of its housing easily enough, and I started to turn, going faster as it moved, my arm burning quickly from the strain. Light crept into the dock from below the metal door, and several creatures from the store tumbled clumsily into the recession housing the truck. More followed, electing simply to crash over the lip than to maneuver to the stairwell. Most got right up, shambling toward the cab. Others were buried beneath the press from behind. They poured into the dock, an endless procession of former humans.
Keep cranking, McKnight. No time to waste, here.
Unless you’re imagining this, you crazy bastard, said the sarcastic voice from the back of my skull. You could crawl back down the ladder and see if you wake up when your fry cook friend takes a chunk out of your thigh. If you don’t wake up, congratulations! You’re sane!
I cranked faster.
The one-armed fry cook had reached the bottom of the ladder, and the vibrations as she pawed against the metal rungs shook my feet and legs. The door moved quickly, past the hood, past the windshield, to the top of the truck.
And then jammed.
Shit.
There was enough space to get the truck out, but if I was riding coach on the top of the thing, I might be in for a tight squeeze. I bore down on the thin metal strip with all my weight. The handle moved grudgingly several more inches, and then stopped.
The creatures had reached the cab of the truck and were pounding against the doors and the windows. More streamed constantly from the store, falling into the pit like lemmings from a cliff, filling the dock with their moaning, tumbling forms-a comical sight at another place, in another time.
Giving the crank one more try, and hoping I had enough space, I leaped from the ladder through the ten feet of intervening air, landing on the center of the roof, but sliding toward the back. The incline of the ramp turned the burnished steel top of the truck into an oiled playground slide. As my feet reached the back end, I caught the ridge of steel rivets in the center of the roof with my fingertips. Quickly, I banged my fist against the steel cover twice.
The truck shot forward, and I briefly lifted my head, eyes locked on the half-open door. I flattened my head against the cold metal, fingertips straining to hold their ground.
The bottom edge of the door was a breath of air against my neck, then my back, and finally my hamstrings. Early morning sunlight touched my face as the truck turned to the left, accelerating past and over creatures in the alley, and into the parking lot, toward the road we had abandoned yesterday. Our car sat crumpled against the bright red and white Dairy Queen sign, and the police cruiser was an empty vestige of last night’s nightmare, door askew, window broken. Streaks of red matter trailed out of the open door onto the pavement, and around the front of the car.
I experienced a sudden feeling of karmic satisfaction about the sadistic trooper’s demise until a sudden bump and burst of acceleration sent me slipping again, off the truck, hands grasping in vain for purchase on the slick surface. I fell toward the pavement, grasping air.
Chapter 10
In a last grab for a hold on the roof, I found the lip where the roof ended and the door housing began. I jerked to a halt, my legs flailing behind the truck and then falling down and in to the open doorway. I let go of the roof and fell clumsily, my momentum sending me sprawling onto the floor of the cargo area, landing hard on my side but miraculously avoiding major injury. The truck powered on, followed by whatever creatures we passed and whose attention followed our progress, but whose legs, thankfully, could not follow suit.
I fleetingly glimpsed the bus that must have delivered the football team to us. A green and white monstrosity, it was wrapped around a trio of oak trees behind the linen store. Several bodies lay squirming beneath the overturned vehicle, but their futile efforts were wasted under several tons of steel. Many were missing limbs and all were covered in blood and gore.