“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Kyle said, smiling. “It’s a good idea.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Lane said.
“Actually, you did just ask me,” Kyle said.
It made sense, and Lane had considered the same thing himself, but there was a problem. “We won’t be able to carry as many supplies.”
“We can carry enough,” Kyle said. “We make another run at the outdoor store up the road, get a few more huge backpacks, load ’em all up, and ride off to Olympia. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. But I think we should wait until dark and ride up there by moonlight. We can get more night-vision devices when we pick up the backpacks.”
Lane nodded. “I’ll send some of you up there on a supply run. And I’ll send Roland with you so you’ll have protection in case you’re attacked.”
Lane still wasn’t sure what to do with all these people once they got to an island. That Parker character would have to be dealt with, of course, and maybe the big black guy too. The others were on probation. Kyle might turn out okay. He wasn’t stupid and he seemed okay with following orders. Frank wasn’t outstanding material, but he probably wouldn’t cause trouble. Probably.
But something was up with Annie, and Lane wouldn’t know what to do with her until he knew exactly what it was. Why did he know her face? And why did she give him the creeps? He didn’t get the feeling he knew her from the distant past. He felt like he’d seen her somewhere in the past couple of days. But he’d hardly seen anyone the past couple of days. How was that possible?
“Annie,” he said. “You and Kyle are on bicycle duty. Go out and find one for everyone. Bobby will go with you for protection.”
“You want us to go now?” she said.
“Yes, now.”
“Isn’t someone taking the truck to the outdoor store?”
“You don’t need the truck. Go on foot, find three bicycles, ride them back, then go out and find more. You’ll be fine. Bobby will be with you. You’re less likely to get attacked if you don’t take the truck anyway because you won’t make as much noise. There are rows of houses behind the store. You probably don’t need to go more than two or three blocks to find bikes.”
“But—”
“Girl. You do what I tell you.”
She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed.
She didn’t look dangerous. She looked like a scared college student. But some knowing part of his mind could not stop flashing a
red alert
whenever he saw her face. He studied her hard but could not figure out why he couldn’t remember.
* * *
Annie knew the real reason Lane sent Bobby with her and Kyle to scavenge for bicycles. Bobby wasn’t their bodyguard. He was Lane’s bodyguard. Lane didn’t want Kyle and Annie scavenging for weapons instead of for bicycles.
Bobby unholstered his pistol with one hand and picked up two crowbars with the other.
“Let me see one of those,” Kyle said and reached out his hand.
Bobby jerked away. “You can have one of these when I tell you.”
This wasn’t going to work, Annie thought. They didn’t need to like each other, but they did need to work together out there, especially if they were attacked. She approached Bobby slowly and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Hey!” Bobby said and shrugged her away. “Keep back.”
This was going to be worse than she thought.
“Let’s try to be civilized,” Kyle said. “We aren’t your enemy. Our enemies are outside. We all need weapons if we’re going out there.”
“You can have one when I say you can have one,” Bobby said.
“You keep your pistol,” Kyle said.
“You’re goddamn right I’m keeping my pistol,” Bobby said, his upper lip curling.
Annie wanted to argue but decided against it. Bobby would eventually settle down, especially if she and Kyle didn’t spook him by invading his space. She decided to be as nice as she could, to pretend she and Bobby were friends. If she acted like his friend long enough, it might become less of a lie after a while.
“After you,” Bobby said and gestured for Kyle to go out ahead. Bobby was not going to turn his back on anybody.
Kyle unlocked the front door and peered out. “Looks clear,” he said and stepped out. Annie looked over at Bobby. He motioned her out with his eyes.
She stepped outside and was overwhelmed with the putrid stench of rotting trash. The odor was faintly detectable inside the store, but outside she could taste it.
She looked out at a generic suburban street that could have been just about anywhere in the country—with strip malls, big-box stores, and fast-food joints—but absolutely everything was ruined. Windows were either broken or all boarded up. Pieces of glass crunched underfoot. No cars on the street. Trash blew in the wind. What looked like a used-car lot had exploded, its charred remains looking like the architectural equivalent of bones littering the parking lot.
Everything was quiet and still. The setting just didn’t seem real, as if this whole thing were some kind of elaborate put-on. And where on earth were these
things
everyone kept talking about? The only one she’d seen—and an alleged one at that—was the man Frank hit with his truck not twenty minutes after Hughes had fired his shotgun at her.
“I think I remember seeing a bike shop not far from here,” Kyle said. “Down that way, I think.”
He pointed toward the east, or the direction Annie assumed was east. She had a decent sense of direction, but she still wasn’t entirely sure which town she was in or where it was in relation to everywhere else.
“So let’s head that way then,” she said. “Better to get bikes from a store than from people’s garages. It’s quieter and won’t take as long.”
“Bobby?” Kyle said.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
“We should walk down the middle of the street,” Kyle said. “We’ll be a little more visible, but we’ll be farther away from the buildings. In case some of those things come out running at us.”
“Those … things, as you call them … could be in these buildings?” Annie said. Most of the windows and doors were boarded up.
“They could be anywhere,” Kyle said.
“Enough talking,” Bobby said.
So they walked “east” and said nothing. Just down the street a ways on their left was the blown-up car lot. On their right was an ex–Burger King. Up ahead were more strip malls and big-box stores, including a Target. There might still be items worth scrounging in there, she thought, except the windows were smashed in.
They walked for a good twenty minutes saying nothing and hearing nothing, and part of Annie found the whole business exhilarating. Who would ever expect to
see
something like this? American cities and suburbs had always looked and felt permanent. On some level she knew they weren’t, of course—everything falls apart eventually—but it never occurred to her that they could slide into decay so rapidly. She certainly never expected to see everything disintegrate at once.
She felt a few drops of rain on her face, but only a few. The Northwest’s weather was bizarre. Some days it rained so lightly she could be outside for hours and not really get wet, while rainstorms in South Carolina could drench her to the skin faster than if she stood with her clothes on in the shower.
Harder rains were coming, however, if it really was early November like the others were saying. The dry summer season was over and November’s rains were the worst. Soon the rain would fall without stopping for days.
Life was about to become a lot more complicated. She loved the smell of fall, the earthy fragrance of mulch and dead leaves and coldness and rain, but that was absent now and replaced by the retch-inducing slum reek she’d once encountered on a trip abroad to India. Maybe the late-autumn rains would wash the stink off this town. She doubted the stench of rotting trash and—what else, dead bodies?—could last through the season.
Nature was coming back fast and hard. How long before she saw bears in the streets? And how long before moss, grass, and even trees start growing on top of the pavement?
“So what did you do?” Annie said to Kyle as they walked. “Before all this.”
“Huh?” Kyle said. He heard her, but he hadn’t actually heard her. His mind was somewhere else.
“I asked what your job was,” she said. “Before all this.”
Kyle shook himself back to his immediate surroundings.
“I worked in high tech. Programming computers. The job paid well, but it never really defined me. At least I didn’t define myself by my job.”
“So what defined you?” she said.
Kyle ignored her and stopped in the middle of a four-way intersection. The wind kicked up and Annie heard the darkened traffic signals creaking as they swung on their cable under the dishrag sky.
“What?” Bobby said.
Kyle said nothing for a moment. He just stood there with his hands on his hips and looked to the left and the right. “I think,” he said, “that I saw the bike store down there.” He pointed toward the right. Toward the south? The suburban business district continued in that direction just as it did straight ahead, but there was less debris on the streets to the right.
“So let’s go then,” Bobby said.
“Right,” Kyle said.
So they headed right, toward what Annie thought was south. They walked in silence for a few minutes, passing a boarded-up bank, a gas station with the windows smashed in, a car that had accordioned into an electrical pole, an ambulance turned onto its side, and an apparent massacre site next to an Arby’s fast-food joint with bones and torn clothing and bloodstains smeared on the pavement.
Then the street exploded 100 feet in front of them. The pavement ruptured and a geyser of water erupted into the air as loud as a car bomb.
Annie turned away and covered her face with her arms.
“Shit!” Bobby said.
“Off the street,” Kyle said. “Now.” Annie felt him gently push her toward the overturned ambulance across the street from the Arby’s. “Before it happens again.”
“The fuck
is
that?” Bobby said. He bolted toward the ambulance ahead of Annie and Kyle as though he had completely forgotten he was supposed to be in charge and keeping an eye on them from behind.
“It was bound to happen eventually,” Kyle said.
Annie, panting and her heart racing, ducked behind the ambulance. She had no idea what on earth was going on, but it sounded like Godzilla was breaking through the street from underground.
“
What
was bound to happen eventually?” Bobby said. He really did seem to forget they were supposed to be enemies.
“Water pressure,” Kyle said. “It’s been building up in the pipes for months because hardly anyone is releasing it from the tap.”
Of course, Annie thought. That explained why the water had burst so forcefully out of the sink.
“The pipes couldn’t keep taking the pressure forever,” Kyle said, “so now they’re exploding. It’s probably happening all over the world. We’re going lose the water back at the store.”
Annie felt the pavement thrumming under her feet.
“Oh shit,” Bobby said. “This is not good.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said.
Annie knew exactly what they were thinking. They were not just worried about losing tap water.
“Bobby,” Kyle said. “Give me one of those crowbars.”
Bobby stepped back, remembering now that they were adversaries. Then he stopped. “Fuck.”
“They’re coming,” Kyle said. “We can’t stay here. And you need to give us those crowbars.”
Annie heard something new. It was hard to hear over the roar of the water, but it was coming from behind the Arby’s building. It sounded like pounding on pavement.
“It’s them,” Kyle said.
“Fuck,” Bobby said and pointed his pistol toward the Arby’s.
The sound grew louder. Annie stepped behind Bobby since he was the one with the gun.
“Bobby,” Kyle said. “Give me one of those crowbars.”
“Me too,” Annie said. She could hear the sound clearly now. It was definitely feet running on pavement. Running hard. She was nearing panic and felt like her heart might explode.
“I got this,” Bobby said between breaths. He was damn near hyperventilating and he couldn’t hold his gun steady.
“No you don’t,” Kyle said and reached toward him.
“Stay back!” Bobby said and pointed his gun at Kyle for a moment before pointing it back toward the Arby’s.
The sounds of running grew louder.
And then Annie saw them.
A dozen ragged people sprinting right toward her. Their clothes and faces and hair were drenched in blood and mud and gore, their faces snarling in vicious expressions of hatred and rage. They ran straight at Annie and Kyle and Bobby, and they ran as though they would never get tired.
And when they laid eyes on Annie and Kyle and Bobby, they screamed. Every one of them belted out war cries loud enough to burst their own vocal cords.
Bobby gasped and fired his handgun—
pop pop pop
—into the oncoming pack. He gripped the two crowbars in his left hand while firing again with his right.
Now Annie understood why everyone else called them
those
things
. They looked like people, but they sure as hell weren’t acting like people.
One of them fell, but Bobby fired wildly and missed most of his shots.
Annie couldn’t believe how
fast
they were. She expected them to be slow. Weren’t they supposed to be sick? How could sick people run like that?
“Bobby!” Kyle yelled. He came up behind Bobby and wrested the crowbars from his left hand. Bobby released them, but too late. Those things were nearly upon them.
Annie took one of the crowbars from Kyle. Bobby dropped three more of those screaming things before his gun dry-clicked.
“Shit!” Bobby said. And the pack was upon him.
Kyle smashed one in the side of the head while another threw itself at Bobby and bit hard into his forearm. Bobby screamed and fell on his back, the thing still latched by its teeth onto his arm. Kyle smashed it in the head. Then smashed another. The now-dead one that bit Bobby slumped to the ground while Bobby rolled away from it.
One of them, a man, ran right at Annie. She swung her crowbar as hard as she could and shattered its arm. It fell to the ground, made a sound between a grunt and a roar, and looked at her with hatred. Its eyes seemed intelligent. Full of hate, but intelligent. No, it wasn’t intelligence she was seeing. It was
focus
. Then it stood up and lunged for her. She swung again and clipped it in the shoulder. It staggered.