Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (26 page)

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     Eric ached with the familiar trappings of exhaustion. His body burned like after a good workout, and because he hadn’t had his pre-pop (as he called it) since hitting the gym three days ago, he felt it in every cell. He needed water. They’d spent the whole day after the uneventful night in the office of the construction company hitting one small store after another, focusing on groceries and baby supplies. The stress of breaking into the darkened, deserted buildings had been draining in and of itself. They’d never known if there would be corrupted inside that would attack, or if they were compromising the security of people using the stores for their own fallbacks.

     But there had been nothing and no one. Eric had felt more and more unsettled with every break-in. By the end of it, he was desperate for someone else to be in one of the stores, even a corrupted. He wanted to feel like they weren’t wholly alone in the universe, but every empty store, stock still full and corridors free of human traffic brought the feeling up in sharp spikes.

     The sun gifting its last blooms of light across the sky caught Eric’s attention. He thought Armani had lost track of time and it made him nervous. As the sun began to set, Eric was almost fully convinced that his group of ten was comprised of the last remaining people in the world.

     “Pull in here,” Armani said quietly, and Eric heard the nervousness in his voice. It wasn’t obvious. The words were delivered in the same calm, silky tone that delivered all of his thoughts, questions, and orders. Eric had already learned to read Armani since joining his group, so he could hear the indefinable indicator that gave away his tension.

     “We can ditch the van,” Eric suggested even as he obeyed and steered the vehicle in question into a gas station and pulled up to a pump. 

     Eric felt guilty for them being at the gas station. He’d been driving the van all day and hadn’t noticed the gas gauge slipping toward E until after the last stop. Getting back to the office building that they’d established as their temporary homestead would be impossible unless it was filled.

     “We can load the haul in the bus,” he continued as he shifted into park. Armani stared out at the quickly-darkening parking lot and shook his head.

     “We need the van,” Armani responded quietly. “Let’s just do it fast. Tell the others to top off their tanks. I’ll go start up the pumps.”

     Because Armani’s words sounded final, Eric unclasped his seatbelt, opened his door, and stepped out. Better to get it done quickly than arguing over the prudence of the fill up with Armani.

     David, driving the little black car with his wife in the front seat and baby Alec safely secured in back, pulled up to the pump beside the one Eric was parked at. He glanced around at the parking lot, seeing the shadows as they burst into being from every unlighted crook and cranny. Nighttime was coming fast, but he knew the importance of keeping all of the vehicles as well as Armani did.

     “We all need to stay topped off, anyway,” David said as he stepped out. He shivered in the cool air. “Just wish like hell we’d stopped earlier.”

     With the sun leaving for the day, the cold became heavier on the air. The bus took the pump on the far outside and Molly hopped out of the driver’s seat immediately after throwing it into park. She hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt. Kirby, Gwen, Brooke, and Ivy stayed on the bus to wait.

     “This thing has terrible gas mileage,” Molly complained as she gestured at the large grey vehicle.

     “Good thing we stopped then, I guess,” Eric responded as he anxiously watched Armani approach the store.

     “It’ll be full dark soon.” Molly rubbed her hands together to warm them and looked at the sky. The pinks and yellows were becoming bruised by the darkness seeping out from the far horizon. Although she appeared peppy and cool as she hopped lightly up and down with her hands now shoved into her pockets, her distress at the thought was obvious for the others to pick up on.

     “We’ll fill up, then be gone,” David assured her. “No problems.”

     “Right,” Eric scoffed as he saw Armani reach the doors to the store. He said no more, and David didn’t attempt to reiterate his statement.

     Armani pulled the
enter
door toward him and heard the friendly jingling of the bells. The happy tinkling sounded like the roar of an avalanche in the mostly-quiet twilight. He grabbed the wind chime from where it hung on the handlebar of the inner door and tore it off more violently than was needed.

     The interior of the store was dark, and it worried him that the door was open. Having the lights off had indicated to him that the clerk had closed down and locked up before abandoning their post as the Onset occurred. With the door being unlocked and the lights being off, a much more sinister feeling had overtaken the entire building.

     Armani listened hard, hoping to identify potential trouble before he saw it simply by the sounds of the place, but he heard nothing out of the ordinary. The humming of the cooler and the whirring of the soft drink machine were the only things he could hear, and they were commonplace. He heard no clandestine shuffling, no ominous creaks or thuds. For all appearances, the store was utterly deserted.

     Taking a deep breath, Armani passed the threshold. They didn’t need any other supplies, so he didn’t divert his course to the snacks, drinks, or general merchandise. He went to the cash register. He was familiar with the area and he knew that without cashier approval or the running of a credit card, the pumps wouldn’t activate.

     Belatedly thinking to himself that he could’ve just swiped his card through all three machines, Armani nonetheless approached the register and approved all of the flashing lights with the pressing of three buttons. He’d worked at a station like this as a second job last year when bills had gotten tight, before he’d landed the new job that had nullified most of their financial worries, even with three boys and a daughter on the way.

     The memories hit him like a bullet to the chest, and he did whatever he could to derail the train of thought before it went any further and rendered him incapacitated. He took a bag from the dispenser and began stuffing packs and packs of cigarettes into it, then took another and repeated the process until both were crammed with Marlboros, Basics, and Camels; reds, menthols, lights, and ultra lights. Currency, he thought to himself. Cigarettes would be useful for trade if money never made a comeback as currency in the Americas. After whatever was happening desisted, if it ever did, maybe things would never go back to the way they were.

     Even without using them as a bartering tool, cigarettes suppressed the appetite, Armani reasoned. On that same topic, he grabbed packs of pills: energy supplements, appetite suppressants, and stay awake helpers. He put the whole stock into another bag, keeping tabs on the group members as he did.

     Each of them pumped gas, with Gwen and Kirby standing watch. He needed to get back out there, and he started that way. Coming from behind the counter, he kicked something that sounded like plastic and it skittered across the floor. Following it, Armani knelt down and scooped it up, feeling a familiar weight and shape. It was a video camera. He took it and left the store.

     “Almost full up,” Eric reported as Armani approached. He gave the bags and the video camera a questioning look, but didn’t ask about what Armani had taken from the store.

     “Get it done so we can get going,” Armani ordered in his perpetually quiet voice. He put the recently commandeered bags into the back of the van.

     Eric heard a sound as he topped off the van and shook the excess gas off the nozzle. He didn’t want to get anxious over nothing. Well,
more
anxious, he supposed, because every nerve ending vibrated with worried energy.

     “Did you hear that?” Armani asked, confirming Eric’s fears.

     Eric didn’t need to say anything; Armani saw it in the other man’s face. “Get inside the vehicles, now!” Armani commanded loudly, so that everyone from David to Kirby, who stood at the far end of the parking lot, could hear.

     Responding to Armani’s order at once, Kirby jogged back to the bus. Molly was already back in the driver’s seat. She locked the doors after Kirby made it safely inside and started it up.

     David twisted the cap back on the black car’s gas tank, slammed the tiny door, and ran around to the driver’s side. Kim, in the passenger seat, opened her door and called out to Eric, “What’s happening?”

     Before Eric could tell her to close the door, two things happened: the first of a horde of fully corrupted sprinted into the parking lot and baby Alec started screaming, high-pitched and terribly loud.

     The fully corrupted veered its pace toward the screaming baby and got into Kim’s door before she was able to get it closed. When she tried to kick the corrupted man out, he grabbed her leg and savaged it with his teeth even through her thick pants. Blood soaked the fabric and she shrieked in pain.

     More were coming, Armani knew. He could hear them pounding on the pavement. The one attacking Kim had been faster than the others by a fair amount, but the rest would be there shortly.

     “Get moving,” he said to Eric, but the other man jumped out of the van, not even wasting breath for words on Armani’s command. Kim was his sister, and he wasn’t leaving her to deal with the beast alone.

     Eric approached the corrupted man from behind and took him around the waist. He pulled, his bicep muscles bulging like they did when he bench pressed. With some difficulty, he hauled the man away from his sister.

     Turning in Eric’s arms like a bolt of lightning, the corrupted man focused on the new target. Eric couldn’t hold him still; couldn’t get out of range as the man darted his face forward and fixed his teeth on Eric’s neck. Eric screamed as teeth tore into flesh. He tried in vain to jerk away from the corrupted man he had locked in a deadly embrace.

     Having left the church bus to help, Kirby decided it was too risky to try to shoot the man attacking Eric. Instead, he lifted the metal pike he’d taken as a weapon from the garage of the office building. He sent up a hasty prayer regarding his aim and shoved it as hard as he could toward the corrupted man’s head.

     The pike met the nearly impassable resistance of the man’s skull, but Eric saw what Kirby intended. With a roar driven more by fury this time than pain, he shoved the man back until Kirby hit the resistance of one of the pillars that made up the canopy that covered the gas pumps. With Kirby supported by concrete and Eric pushing, the pike drove into the base of the corrupted man’s skull. He went limp in Eric’s arms and Eric let him drop.

     The group of corrupted Eric’s assailant had been leading were upon them now. Eric knew he couldn’t get back to the van. They were closer to the bus, so they bolted to it and got inside. Armani was in the driver’s seat of the van, David in the driver’s seat of the car. Kim’s door was closed and locked and she looked on in panic as Eric and Kirby made it to safety.

     With Armani in the lead, the group pulled out of the gas station and drove down the road one after the other. Armani, shaken after the encounter, didn’t know if he’d be able to make it back to what they’d established as their temporary stronghold without passing out from the stress. Finding even more reserves of calmness and strength, he somehow managed to continue driving, alone with his thoughts. He needed to talk to the group. They needed to get walkie talkies for car communications, he noted to himself. As soon as he thought they were clear of the immediate danger, he would stop the caravan and they would talk.

     Until then, they drove on.

Chapter Twenty

     In the Walker home as night approached with the speed of a runaway freight train, the mood was tense and quarrelsome. Sam and Laura fought with Melissa. The small girl had locked herself in their bedroom, refusing to leave the family home.

    
She’s held up so well until now
, Laura thought sadly. It had only been a matter of time before what had happened broke her. The thought of leaving the only home she’d ever known had been enough to do it.

     Sam stood outside the door, trying to talk Melissa down in soothing, paternal tones. So far, Melissa had not responded to anything he said.

     “Come on, sweet girl,” Sam murmured through the door. He sat in the doorframe, speaking near the door handle. Trevor sat beside him, holding his hand as he had ever since the episode with the neighbors. Sam knew Melissa was sitting on the other side of the door listening, so he continued. “We have to go. We’ll come back.”

     “You promise?” Melissa asked in a thick voice through the door. Sam heard the tears in it, and he hesitated before responding.

     “I can’t promise that, baby doll,” he admitted reluctantly. Though he wanted to say anything to get them on the road, he couldn’t lie to her, not now when everything was going to absolute shit. The last thing his kids should have to question was the truth of their parents’ words.

     “Then I’m not going!” Melissa hollered. Sam winced as he heard something break in the room. Melissa so rarely gave into temper, but when she did, the fits she threw were monumental.

     “Mel,” Sam said, keeping his voice calm in an effort to calm his daughter. “I’d like to promise you, but I can’t. I don’t want to lie to you. We might not ever come back here. But we have to keep you safe. It isn’t safe here anymore.”

     “Why not?” Melissa asked stubbornly.

     Sam didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to tell the girl that her grandfather, whom she loved dearly, had become something dangerous and feral, something that would tear her heart out and eat it with little prompting. That same creature knew where they were, knew how to get to the house. If Austin’s mother was any evidence for the point, the corrupted retained at least that portion of their mind. He didn’t want to tell her any of that, so he kept it simple.

     “The bad things know we’re here, and we can’t keep them out,” he said plainly. “We need to go somewhere they don’t know.”

     “I don’t want to go,” Melissa sobbed from behind the door.

     “I know, baby doll. I don’t want to, either.”

     Sam trailed off and looked at his wife, seeking help from her. He didn’t know what else to do, but they had to go.
     “Mel, open the door,” Laura ordered as she came to stand near it. Sam and Trevor got to their feet, haltingly as they had to accommodate for their clasped hands.

     “No,” Melissa refused, but her resolve was less evident with her mother. Melissa knew it was Laura who was the force to be reckoned with between her parents.

     “You open it or we’re coming in and dragging you out,” Laura declared matter-of-factly as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. Beside her house key was the key to the bedroom, which she always kept on her in the event of the children getting locked in her room. They weren’t allowed in there, but that was no reason not to be prepared for the eventuality.

     Melissa was silent, so Laura slid the key into the lock and turned it. The girl was holding onto the doorknob with both hands, and Laura was exasperated, amused, and heartbroken all at once. It was a fruitless effort on the part of the girl and Laura wasn’t at all deterred by her efforts, despite how it made her feel.

     Pushing the door open, Laura made sure not to hurt her daughter, but she forced her way into the room regardless.

     Melissa tried to run away, but there was nowhere to go. Laura took her daughter in for a hug and held her tightly. She was reminded strongly of the girl in her infancy, when she refused to nap because she didn’t want to miss a thing. It had taken rocking, holding her pressed tight against Laura’s chest while she bawled until sleep was undeniable. Melissa had had a stubborn streak since she was a baby, and Laura had handled it then as she did now. She took control and did what was best for the girl, even when she fought against it with all the strength in her little body.

     “We have to go, Mel,” Laura whispered against her daughter’s hair as she nodded to Sam. Her husband tightened his grip on Trevor’s hand and followed after Laura as she carried Melissa toward the door. Austin and Amy were still in the vehicles. The Walkers had gone into the house to gather up some personal items they hadn’t wanted to abandon but hadn’t taken with them on their trips out so far.

     “I’m sorry, baby.”

     Melissa didn’t respond and Laura realized that her daughter was asleep. Her heart hurt even more for the girl. She took the duffel bag that held all of the personal belongings they had collected and then led her husband and son out of their front door, perhaps for the last time. She locked the door with her free hand, having slung the duffel bag over that same shoulder.

     “We’ll be back,” Sam assured her as he squeezed her forearm with the hand that wasn’t holding Trevor’s.

     “No, we won’t.”

     The pseudo-psychic ability that seemed to come and go made Laura’s words a grim prophecy that she fully believed. They would not be returning to this place, their home. Some of them, she knew, would never find a home again.

     “Let’s go,” she said in a dejected whisper. “It feels almost like it was never really home at all. It was just waiting to not be ours again.”

     Sam wanted to tell her not to talk that way, not in front of Trevor, but he couldn’t bring himself to object to her description. Already the house felt like it belonged to someone else or, more aptly, belonged to the darkness that had overtaken the world. So he remained silent.

     Laura and Sam loaded their children and belongings in the vehicles. Austin sat in the black truck, brooding and miserable. He stared out the window, as though he couldn’t bear to show his tear-stained face to Sam and Trevor as they entered the cab.

     “We’re going to find someplace safer than this,” Sam told him in a gentle, quiet voice as he buckled his safety belt. Austin didn’t respond in any way. “I know somewhere, somewhere not many people know about. Actually, besides us, I don’t think there’s anyone I could name who does. I don’t want what’s in Trevor to find out where it is, so I’m not telling anyone where we’re going. Especially if we can’t get through, it we’re deterred somehow… I guess just know that there’s hope, okay? We’re going to get through this, and you’ll get through it by sticking with us.”

     “There’s no hope left,” Austin said thickly. “It died with the last day.”

     The brittle words spoken in the tone of a moody seer brought a tickle of goose bumps to Sam’s arms, but he ignored them and Austin’s moroseness. The fact that the kid had talked was a positive step forward in Sam’s mind, no matter that what he said hadn’t been that positive.

     “It’s a long drive,” Sam continued as Laura, Amy, and Melissa in the Aveo pulled out first. Sam followed and said to Austin, “We can learn a lot about each other in that time. What do you say? Tell me some things about yourself, Austin. What are your hobbies? What are some things you like?”

     Austin gave a deep sigh and finally looked at Sam, who kept his eyes on the road. He could see enough out of his peripheral vision to recognize the bleakness in Austin’s face, the coldness in his eyes. The teen had the look of an old man who had seen death in the flesh and had come to terms with the cloaked reaper. The look made Sam feel guilty, angry, uncertain, and determined all at once. It confused him that Austin, a new acquaintance, could elicit powerful emotions from him at levels he thought were reserved for his children. As it had before, the fact disconcerted him.

     “I don’t want to talk to you, Sam,” Austin said quietly.

     “Just don’t want to talk or you specifically don’t want to talk to me?”

     Austin turned back to the window; didn’t answer.

     “I asked you a question,” Sam said pointedly.

     “And I’m not one of your kids so I don’t have to answer,” Austin retorted, but it was as close to disrespect as the teen allowed himself. “You tried to kill my mom, Sam. Your wife succeeded. What do you think?”

     That was a sore point for the both of them, the fact that Laura had dealt the killing blow to Austin’s mom. Deciding they had nothing but time to work out their issues on the long drive, Sam said in his most sympathetic voice, “Austin, it was her or you. I know that’s no consolation to you and you wanted to hope that somehow she could be cured, but from where we stood there was no other choice.”

     “I
don’t
want to talk about it,” Austin reiterated, balling himself against the side of the truck door as though he was trying to merge himself with the vehicle.

     Sam tried a different tactic. “What was her name?” he asked.

     For a long time, Sam thought Austin wouldn’t answer. Then, he heard the teen mumble, “Tabitha. Tabby.”

     “Not much of a great comparison, but I had a cat named Tabby when I was growing up,” Sam offered, trying to form any kind of fragile connection to the teen that he could. He knew it wasn’t his best attempt.

     “Yippee for you,” Austin muttered.

     “I’m trying, kid,” Sam said.

     “Don’t,” Austin responded simply. Sam continued anyway.

     “Dad’s name?”

     “Henry.”

     “Now that’s a good, solid name. Were you closer to your dad or your mom?”

     “Mom.”

     Sam had been fairly certain of that answer before he even asked the question. His mother’s death had shaken the kid down to the deepest part of him.

     “Besides the nursing, what did you two do together?”

     “This isn’t going to help, Sam,” Austin said, and his tone had a pleading quality that made Sam’s heart hurt. “Please stop talking about them.”

     “I don’t want you to lock away everything you feel for them,” Sam explained, trying to sound compassionate. “I need you, Austin. I have people to take care of and you’ve already proven yourself helpful. If something happens to me, I have to entrust them to you. I need you here for that. I need you.”

      “So you want me to get over my mom’s death in the span of one car ride?” Austin snapped, sitting up straight so quickly Sam thought the belt should’ve snapped against the force of the movement. Though he’d thought the boy wasn’t listening, Trevor huddled closer to his father at Austin’s sudden movement.