Outbreak: A Survival Thriller (7 page)

I can’t stand the silence and
wish she would keep talking. But Melanie wants an answer. She’s even pouting.

“There was this one girl,” I say.
“Nancy Kim.”

“Ninja Nancy?” she says in utter
shock.

I’m even more appalled.

“She was Korean,” I say. “Ninjas
are Chinese. I can’t believe you of all people would call her that.”

“
Everyone
called her that. Did you live under a rock or something?
Nancy used to climb all over the buildings. She almost got suspended one time
for scaling the atrium. You mean to tell me you two dated and you never knew
about this?”

Of course I knew about Nancy’s
weird climbing addiction. It was the reason I broke up with her after only
three weeks of “officially” dating. She spent every weekend out with her
climbing buddies scaling granite cliff sides, something my fear of heights
never allowed me to do. We had zero chemistry.

“We didn’t go out very long,” I
say.

“You know she kicked a boy in the
nuts once?”

A long howl takes us by surprise.
It sounds human—though whether it’s a man, woman, or child, I can’t tell.
It’s coming from inside the outlet mall we happen to be passing by, the one I
considered making shelter in the evening before.

“Hide over here,” I say, pulling
her to a Dumpster.

We crouch behind it and wait.

The high-pitched howling begins
again. It’s the sound of a person in pain. I take out the Glock and snick the
safety to OFF. Melanie already has an arrow nocked against her bow.

“Sounds like a fox or a wounded
dog,” she says.

“You think?” I can’t get the
image of a wounded old lady out of my head. “I thought it sounded more like a
person.”

“Definitely not infected,” she
says.

“Definitely not.”

We both know infected don’t howl.
They don’t scream, either. They huff and hiss and growl, but that’s about it.
I’m still not sure why that is.

We listen for a third howl. The
first two were definitely coming from inside the building in front of us, which
stands about a dozen feet away from the tree line. But all we hear now is wind
tussling the tree leaves.

It comes a third time—long
and pitiful.

Above us, in a window without
glass, an old man suddenly appears. He’s shirtless, his hair and beard long,
scraggly, and gray-yellow from malnourishment. He’s definitely infected—I
can tell by the red-veined eyes, the unnaturally pale skin—but he’s in
the early stages, probably not too far gone to speak.
Like my
mother when we first locked her in the bedroom.

At this stage, an infected person
is still considered to be a viable meal for other, more infected individuals.
This old man should have been eaten a long time ago.

“What is he doing?” Melanie says.

I watch as the old man sticks his
head and his bony white shoulders through the window. He looks around until he
sees us, then his eyes go wide. I can’t tell if he’s afraid or relieved to see
a non-infected person.

He speaks to us, and when he
does, his voice sounds like the howl from before.

“You kids need to
runnn
...
Runnnnn
away.”

I want to stand beneath the
window and talk to the man, find out what happened, how he has managed to
survive this long. But before I can do anything, the man reaches back, grabs
something, and sticks it out the window. It’s a canvas bag attached to a rope.
Small, about the size of a human head.
He lowers it with
jerking movements.

“He’s giving it to us,” I say.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll grab it.”

I drop my pack and crouch-walk
over to the building to receive the canvas bag. It’s light, airy, filled with
what at first feels like twigs, or maybe hay.

I don’t have much time to
identify it. The old man releases a moan and slips through the window. He falls
toward me. I drop the bag and extend my arms. It’s only a two-story drop, but the
man is old. I forget he’s infected as I catch him and fall back, cushioning his
fall with my entire body.

“Kip,” Melanie says, running to
me.

She does the considerate thing
and rolls him off of me before he can touch my face or neck. I scramble back and
stare at him, at the long sores covering his back, the bruises everywhere. He’s
shivering now and howling like before.

Melanie grabs the canvas bag and
steps away.

I look at the old man. “What
about—”

“He’s infected,” she says. “Nothing
we can do. Let’s go.”

“But—”

“Kip, let’s go!”

I follow her away from the old
man. He’ll attract every infected in a mile radius with the noise he’s making.
Already I can hear them shuffling toward the back of the outlet mall from the
parking lot in front.

“Jesus,” I say without breath. “Jesus
Christ.”

“Shh
..
.”

Behind us, the infected make
choking, ripping, and gagging noises as they tear the old man apart. I look
back only once to see a group of them hunched in a circle around him, biting
and tearing and slurping. It reminds me of the guy who had been tossed out of
the Jeep earlier.

I resolve to get back home as
soon as possible, and never to leave my house again.

We hide next to a broken-down ATM
machine behind a bank, one of those outdoor ones with the overhanging roof to
protect customers from rain as they make their transactions. A different bank
from the one I stopped at the day before, though I don’t see any signs with a
name for this one.

“Let’s see what’s inside,” Melanie
says, passing me the canvas bag.

“What? You don’t want to do it?”

She shakes her head. “He gave it
to you.”

“He gave it to both of us.”

I open the bag anyway and look
inside.

“Holy crap,” I say. “You’ve gotta
be kidding.”

“What is it?” She cranes her neck
to peer inside.

We’re both stunned, and a little
confused, at the discovery. It’s not twigs or hay, which is how it had felt
earlier, but fireworks. Specifically, fire
crackers
,
the ones that are strung together and sound like a machine gun when they go off.

But why would anyone have
fireworks in a place where a single gunshot is enough to attract a horde of
flesh-eating maniacs? Anyone dumb enough to set off even a handful of these
things would be instantly surrounded.

“What do you think they’re for?” Melanie
says.

“I don’t know. I guess we can’t
ask the old man anymore, can we?”

She frowns. “You know, you could
say thank you. He was infected. If he had touched you—”

“I know,” I say. “I know. Thank
you. But we need to hurry. We have to get to that bicycle shop before dark.”

“I agree. But promise me one
thing, Kip.”

“I’m listening.”

“We’re in this together. So let’s
make decisions together. Going after that old man was risky, and I don’t plan
on dying because you want to be a hero.”

“I wasn’t trying to be a hero.”

“Okay, so you were curious about
the bag. What if it had been a trap? Like a grenade or something?”

“Who would lower a live grenade?
You’d call every infected person in the county with a stunt like that.”

“I’m just saying!”

“Hey.” I place a hand on her arm.
“I promise. We’ll decide things together from now on.”

She gives me a hard
look—still a wall between us—and follows it with a nod. I wave her
in the direction of the bike shop.

“Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

She grabs my pack and yanks me
around to face her.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

“Nothing.” She gives me a somber
look. “It’s just that—you’re a good man, Kip. Your dad must be proud.”

“He
is
proud,” I say, “but he won’t be for much longer if I don’t help
him.”

She nods to show she understands.
I stuff the firecrackers into my pack and head toward our destination.

Though the bicycle shop has
obviously been ransacked, the front door is closed.

That’s my first indication that
something is off. In most ransacked buildings, the front door is wide open,
either because the looter left it that way, confident that he had scavenged
everything of value, or because the infected have barged their way inside.
Normally, with the doors closed, I wouldn’t be able to tell if the place has
already been hit, but it’s pretty obvious here considering how badly the
windows have been smashed, and all the useless debris littering the parking lot
that could only have come from inside. Among the debris are bicycle helmets in
bright colors for young girls, little round reflectors, cycling shorts, and a
brass bell.

But no chains.
Those are hopefully still inside.

“Why do you think the doors are
closed?” Melanie says.

I smile. “We’re on the same
wavelength. I was wondering the same thing.”

“Yeah, right,” she says.

“I
was
.”

“Okay. Then what’s your theory?”

I lift my eyebrows as if to say,
Isn’t
it obvious?

“Someone’s inside,” I tell her,
taking out my gun and checking it. “But not raiders, since I don’t see a
getaway vehicle. And it’s not a looter since obviously the place has already
been cleaned out. My guess is someone is hiding out in there. Maybe the
person’s wounded.”

Melanie gives a ponderous nod, as
if to admit she hadn’t considered this.

“That’s what I was thinking,
too,” she says.

“Yeah, right.”

She grins at me,
then
casts her eyes down at the gun.

“That’ll be too noisy,” she says.
“If it’s a survivor, we won’t need weapons.”

“Unless it’s a trap,” I say.

We agree to go in with weapons bared,
though not with the express intention of using them unless the shit really hits
the fan. Melanie offers to take the lead. I resist, but her logic makes sense.
She’s wielding a compound bow, which is a silent weapon. If someone does leap
out of the shadows to attack us, her bow will take them out without alerting the
infected.

We make our move, quietly opening
the front door, which is unlocked. Melanie and I look at each other. We’re
thinking the same thing. If the door isn’t locked or boarded up, then maybe no
one is in here after all. Nevertheless, we make our way inside with caution.

The interior is dark except where
the afternoon light spills in through the broken windows. I see scattered
magazine pages, receipts, and other trash in the bright patches. I shine my
flashlight on the walls. The bikes are all gone—no surprise there. I pass
the beam all over the floor, checking for footprints, but the dust looked
undisturbed.

“They should be around here,” I say.
“Let’s head to the back. I looked in through those windows on my way by here yesterday.
I think I saw chains.”

I press the business end of the
flashlight to my belly, in case the light gives away our position to someone
lurking in the shadows with a gun. We stick to the walls to make ourselves
harder to see. Part of me thinks we’re overdoing it a bit. The dust on the
floor shows no sign at all that someone has been here recently.

As we creep along the walls to
the back, I imagine shiny new bikes propped up in rows all over the place,
wheels hanging on the walls, and parents strolling with their children,
thinking of summer bike rides they’ll take together. It had been such an
innocent place once.
A safe place.
Tommy
Poretti
, the owner, had been one of the happiest people I’d
ever known. I remember his booming voice, his thick Boston accent, and his love
of bicycles, despite his stocky Italian frame.

Kip
Garrity
,
his voice belted out in my
memory of him.
Been watching them Sox?
Hey, tell the old Marine I said hi.

He and my father were old
friends. Tommy called my dad a Marine to piss him off. My father returned the
gesture by telling Tommy to start stocking motorcycles like a real man.

Moisture has risen in my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Melanie says.

I turn, blinking it away, glad
it’s not tears. What kind of a wimp cries about two old men trading insults in
a bike shop?

“It’s nothing.” I shake my head.

“You used to come here a lot.”

Now I nod, though I do so
grudgingly to discourage her from going deeper. I have to remind myself that Melanie
has lost just as much as I have. No reason for me to call so much attention to my
own sadness.

She sees that I’m uncomfortable
and makes her way toward the back area, where the repair guys had once been
stationed. Telling myself to get a grip, I follow her.

We search for a few moments until
Melanie speaks in an excited whisper that is still dangerously loud.

“There they are!”

She covers her mouth, looking
alarmed at her own carelessness, then points happily at the chains.

“That’s them,” I say.

She lifts a pair of chains, blows
dust off of them, and inspects them as if they were diamond necklaces.

“Perfect,” she says before
swinging off her backpack to stuff them inside. “Why do you think the looters
left them? Ooh, I wonder if there’s a can of oil around here.” She gets up and
starts looking around. “I wish there was a bike here for you, Kip. But you seem
like more of a motorcycle guy. Of course, that would be way too loud.”

I’m about to agree with her but
stop at the sound of a ragged moan. It’s coming from outside—so close
that I’m surprised there isn’t a rotting head in the window.

Melanie and I drop to our bellies
and crawl away from the patches of light on the
floor that
threaten
to expose us. From our hiding spot around a corner, I slip the
clamshell mirror out of my belt, pry it open with my thumb, and lift it to get
a view of the windows. The moans haven’t stopped. Now I hear a whole chorus of
them.