Kyle sized Tim up. He wasn’t afraid. He just didn’t see the point in fighting for no reason.
“I’m not
afraid
.” He sounded anything but convincing to even himself, but the truth was that he really wasn’t afraid. “It’s just stupid.”
“You’re afraid,” Tim said in a mock little-kid voice. “Kyle’s
afwaid
.” Tim laughed and sauntered off, no doubt feeling terrific about himself. And he never bothered Kyle again.
That, Kyle decided, was how you handled a bully. Don’t let him rile you up. Don’t fight if it’s not strictly necessary. The thirteen-year-old version of Parker, Kyle was certain, would have fought Tim. Both would have been hurt and suspended. What, exactly, would have been accomplished?
Kyle wondered what had happened to Tim. Did he grow up to become a well-adjusted adult? Or did he beat his wife and kids? What if he went to jail? What if Tim was in jail right now, protected from those things by steel bars but starving to death because he couldn’t escape to find food?
Two years later another kid picked a fight with Kyle for no reason, only this time the result was quite different.
It was Kyle’s sophomore year in high school. The kid’s name was Brady. He wasn’t anything special, not at all the kind of kid you’d think was a bully if you only got a quick look at him. But for whatever reason, he wanted to get scrappy with Kyle.
It all came to a head when the two boys found themselves in shop class together. Brady made one taunt too many, and though Kyle could no longer remember what Brady said, he wouldn’t forget what happened next. Brady was hectoring Kyle from the next work table, and Kyle stood up from his bench with a wrench in his hand and took two steps forward.
Brady looked terrified, as if Kyle were gearing up to break open his skull.
The shop teacher, Mr. Horton, heard the commotion and saw what was happening. “Break it up right now or you’re both suspended!”
The only reason Kyle stood up with a wrench in his hand is because the wrench was already in his hand when he stood up. He wasn’t going to
do
anything with it.
Brady never bothered Kyle again. The following year, junior year in high school for both of them, the two even became sort of friends. Brady had mellowed, and they found themselves in the hallway talking about computer stuff once in a while. Brady, Kyle figured, might have turned out okay, at least until the world ended.
So maybe, Kyle thought, if he stood up for himself a little, he and Lane could become friends after Kyle whisked him safely away.
* * *
Lane sat on the floor and leaned against the boarded-up door while Roland slept at his feet. He held his pistol in his right hand and a flashlight in the other. Anyone who approached in the dark would be shot.
Things were no good now that Bobby was gone. No, they were not good at all. Something different had to happen and fast. He’d have a man-to-man talk with Hughes. He’d offer Hughes a job as one of his wingmen, possibly even outranking Roland.
And he’d need to get rid of Parker. Tomorrow.
He heard two sounds. Roland’s deep breathing. And Annie as she thrashed about in her sleep.
* * *
Annie dreamed that she had been bitten. She dreamed that she went into some kind of coma. And she dreamed that she came out of that coma in some kind of rage.
She chased people and screamed her throat out while chasing them. She chased them out of a camp and into a forest.
She caught someone who looked like a teenager and sank her teeth into his back. Her prey screamed, but it was too late for her prey. She’d gotten it and now it was hers. She straddled it and placed her hands on its shoulders and shoved its head into the ground and onto some rocks. The pathetic thing whimpered. Then she leaned forward and bit into its neck while it writhed and wriggled and screamed.
Others joined in. Predators like her. Hungry hungry predators. Predators who hated the weak who were responsible for their hunger. Predators that ripped the flesh from the prey she’d caught with their teeth.
She woke screaming.
* * *
Lane leaned forward when he heard Annie screaming and placed his finger inside the trigger guard.
* * *
Kyle snapped out of his half-asleep state when he heard somebody screaming. It sounded like Annie.
* * *
Hughes twitched awake and jumped to his feet when he heard a girl screaming. Were they under attack? Shit, where was his shotgun?
* * *
Parker woke to the sound of somebody screaming. The hell’s going on
now
?
He couldn’t see anything. That bastard Lane had locked him up in the cooler.
Parker heard scrambling next to him. Kyle shouted and banged on the metal door with the flat of his hand. “Annie!”
Annie seemed like a sweet kid, but good grief. What a head case. And Kyle was falling for her like the putz he was. Why couldn’t he see that she was trouble?
Annie stopped screaming as abruptly as she had started. Parker heard Carol’s faint voice from the other side of the door, though he couldn’t quite make out what she said.
“Girl just had a bad dream,” Hughes said. “Shit. And I was deep asleep too. Won’t be again for at least another hour after all that.”
“Annie, are you okay?” Kyle said through the door.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just had a—really bad dream. Sorry everybody.”
Parker tried to get back to sleep, but instead he thought about jabbing his thumbs in Lane’s eye sockets.
* * *
Annie had the dream again, only this time she was in a city. A hungry hungry predator in a city. A city empty of food. Empty of prey. Her prey that was her food. Her cattle run wild.
She found a house. Sound inside. Light inside. Sound and light meant prey and food and more food. One of her prey opened the door. Her prey stepped outside. Her food stepped outside. She screamed, alerting the others, and ran and pounced and bit it and chewed.
Warm blood in her mouth, on her chin, on her chest.
Yelling inside the house. Those things, her food, were yelling at her from inside the house. She looked up, snarled, and saw the face of one of those things.
She knew that face.
Lane.
This time when Annie woke she could not be consoled.
* * *
Roland stood watch at the gate, but Lane still couldn’t sleep when it was his turn. Not after that girl woke up screaming again. The other woman, Carol, eventually calmed her down, but Annie’s screams must have been heard from ten blocks away in every direction.
The boarded-up door wasn’t really a gate, but Lane thought of it as one anyway. It functioned as a gate—a gate to his castle and everyone else’s prison.
A breach from either direction would mean death and destruction.
When he saw the faint light of dawn breaking, when just the tiniest hint of blue washed over the store and onto the beverage rack in the back, he knew he was in trouble. He could not be effective without any sleep. One more night like this and he would be finished. He needed Bobby, but Bobby was gone.
Something different needed to happen, and it needed to happen today. He had to flip Hughes and kill Parker. And if that didn’t work, he would have to kill everybody but Roland and Kyle.
Roland was loyal. Kyle knew how to sail. And Kyle will do what he’s told.
* * *
Nobody said a word about Annie’s nightmares in the morning. Thank goodness for small mercies, she thought, because she did not want to talk about it, not even with Kyle.
She was eating a breakfast of blueberry granola bars and Rice Krispies sans milk when she saw Lane stride over to the walk-in cooler where he had locked up the men. He pounded on the door and then opened it.
Parker was the first to emerge. “Everybody sleep all right?” he said sarcastically when he came out.
Nobody replied.
She cleaned up her breakfast area and slipped past the men and into the women’s room. A shower would be nice. She’d crawl over a pile of corpses for fresh clothes from a warm dryer, but a cold scrub-down in front of the sink would have to do.
She opened the tap. Hardly any water came out. The system had finally broken.
Everything was broken. Apparently including her mind.
Her hands shook as she looked around for something to stop up the sink with, but there was nothing. Only a thin trickle of water came out of the faucet.
She took off her shirt and rubbed meager amounts of cold water under her arms. This was it, she thought. The last time she’d get to bathe with water out of a pipe. Bottled water had to be conserved for drinking. At least there were plenty of deodorant sticks in the hygiene aisle.
More cold water went onto her stomach, her breasts, her forearms, her neck, and her shoulders. With her fingertips she felt that scab again on her back. She’d noticed it yesterday but hadn’t paid it much mind. She’d been far more interested in scrubbing the blood and gore out of her hair. But now that she was more or less clean and intact, the scab was more noticeable. And more irritating.
She turned halfway around and craned her neck as far as it would go so she could see her back in the mirror.
She screamed in shock and alarm when she saw that the wound was a perfectly shaped human-sized bite mark.
Those dreams she had weren’t nightmares.
They were memories.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kyle slapped the bathroom door. “Annie!” he said, his heart racing. “What’s going on in there?”
She was crying hysterically from down near the floor.
“Hell’s her problem?” Roland said from his post in the front.
“She’s had a rough couple of weeks,” Kyle said and slapped the door again. He tried the knob, but it wouldn’t turn.
“The rest of us have been on vacation?” Roland said.
Kyle ignored him. “Annie!” Parker and Hughes joined him at the door.
“We need to calm her down,” Parker said. “Dangerous making this kind of racket in here.”
“Would you please,” Kyle said, “worry about someone other than yourself for a change? Annie!”
“I’m worried about everyone here, Kyle. If enough of those things outside hear us, everybody could die, including your girlfriend.”
Annie quieted down.
“Annie,” Kyle said. “Can you open the door? Let me help you.”
After a moment’s pause she said, “I’m okay.” She did not sound okay. “I’m sorry, just give me a minute.”
“I’ll be right out here,” Kyle said.
Jesus, what was wrong with that girl? He had feelings for her, he could not deny that, but if he’d met her a few months earlier, before it all went sideways, he’d be spooked off her. He’d dismiss her as damaged and high-maintenance. But he couldn’t dismiss her like that. Not now.
Everybody was cracking. Lane and Roland were damn near psychotic, though they might have been fine even recently. Parker was borderline. Carol was a human-shaped basket case. Frank wasn’t bright enough to freak out in any way that was interesting. Hughes seemed to keep it together okay, but Kyle was sure that was just a facade.
And what about Kyle himself? How was he doing,
really
?
The bathroom door opened. Annie emerged with her cheeks puffy and her eyes bloodshot and wild. Kyle wanted to hug her.
“My memories came back,” she said.
* * *
She remembered it all, including what happened right after she had coffee with her sister in downtown Olympia. She had gotten back in her car, turned on the radio, and driven toward Seattle. NPR said a bizarre outbreak of some rabies-like virus at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport was wrecking havoc in Russia and spreading at an alarming rate in Europe and Asia. There was even a possible outbreak in Seattle, but that could not yet be confirmed.
That was why her memory had ended with meeting her sister. It was the last normal thing she did before the world changed.
She remembered hunkering down in her apartment until fear and dread and chaos and death swept her neighborhood. She remembered running in terror down the streets and all but crashing into her friend Blake from college. Blake who she suspected had a thing for her. Blake who owned a motorcycle. Blake who gave her a ride.
They rode the interstate toward Olympia. They both wanted out of Seattle, and Annie had to get to her sister. She and Blake could stay with Jenny if it was safer. But Olympia wasn’t safer. It swarmed with the infected, so they rode onward toward Oregon. Portland would almost certainly be just as dangerous, but they planned to turn first and head inland, east, toward Mount Rainier National Park, where nobody but park rangers lived.
She and Blake didn’t make it. The interstate was so jam-packed with cars from the mass exodus that they couldn’t even ride on the shoulder. They had to ride on the grass next to the interstate, and even that was crowded with cars in some places. People were milling about everywhere on the sides of the freeway, some walking north, some walking south, and some heading down side roads and even into the trees.
They took a side road to a back road to a dirt road to a track to an empty cabin in a dark forest that looked and felt prehistoric. She and Blake went inside and found a pantry full of food. Out back they found gas cans for a generator and some prechopped wood for the fireplace.
They went inside, drew the curtains, locked the doors, made no sound.
A hushed stillness settled over the world.
Annie and Blake lived there for weeks, subsisting on dry goods in the pantry but not daring to start a fire or use the generator.
Nobody ever came up the road.
The food ran out, as they knew it would, but they waited before looking for more. Waited four days until hunger compelled them to get back on Blake’s motorcycle and ride to the nearest town—some exurb outside Olympia that might have unlooted food in a store if they were lucky.