Survival (11 page)

His hope was to reach the checkpoint before dusk.

As he threw the bags in the car, Noah glanced at the radio. When they got on the road, he’d check for the broadcast again. Even if it was no longer transmitting, he was positive of what he’d heard. The man’s words had been unmistakable.

Nothing was going to stop Noah from leaving.

Having loaded up the vehicle, he returned to the back door, ready to escort his companions across the lawn. Caddy and Theresa waited for him, their eyes filled with apprehension.

“Come on, Ms. Stevens,” he said, holding out his hand.

The woman took it while Caddy shut the door. Noah led her across the small walkway and into the yard. When she reached the grass, the woman glanced into the sky, soaking in the rays of the sun. Noah figured it’d been days since she’d been outdoors. With the constant threat of the infected, he assumed Caddy had kept her in the house.

The three of them headed for the vehicle. Noah kept watch over the yard, expecting a swarm of infected to overtake them, but the property was quiet.

When they reached the car, the three of them took one last look at the property. The rear wall was daubed with blood and gore, the grass stained crimson. Despite its present ugliness, Noah was certain the building contained a host of fond memories for its two occupants, and he was sorry to see it go.

“Are you ready?” he asked the two of them.

The women nodded.

He opened the rear passenger door and ushered Theresa inside. She glanced through the front windshield at the house’s detached garage.

“We should really repaint this thing someday,” she said, pointing to the weathered walls.

“That’d be nice,” Noah said.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and opened the driver’s side door. Caddy had already taken the front passenger seat. He slipped inside and closed the door, then started the engine. The doors locked automatically.

Before switching the car into reverse, he flipped on the radio.

He was greeted by static.

There was nothing resembling a voice. Had the broadcast been turned off? Had it moved to another station?

Noah fiddled with the knobs. With each rotation of the dial, he encountered only more of the same noise. He flicked the radio from AM to FM and back again, but there was nothing to find. He could feel Caddy’s eyes on him.

He knew he hadn’t been hearing things. The broadcast had been there.

“I know what I heard,” he muttered. “It was here…”

He continued maneuvering the dial, shaking his head. Although neither of his companions had questioned him, he felt the need to justify his plan, to assure them their efforts wouldn’t be in vain. Either way, the decision had been made to leave.

Caddy patted his leg.

“We should probably get going,” she said. “Sooner or later those things are going to show up. I didn’t come this far to be somebody’s lunch.”

He looked over at her and smiled. In the backseat, Theresa was still watching the sky, her eyes glued to the roving clouds and the sun.

Noah removed his hand from the radio and put his hand on the shifter. The car hummed as it switched into reverse. He put his arm over the seat, backing down the driveway.

He’d only gotten halfway down the driveway when he heard the gunshot.

The crack echoed through the neighborhood, shattering the silence. Almost instantaneously, the rear windshield spiderwebbed, sending shards of glass into the vehicle.

Theresa’s head bobbed forward, blood spraying from an exit wound in her forehead.

Caddy screamed.

Noah’s hand raced for the shifter.

He couldn’t help himself, even though he knew the woman in the backseat was dead.

“G
ood shot, William,” Charles said, nodding at the boy next to him.

The boy’s hands were shaking; his eyes were wide and glazed. He squinted as he peered over the sight of the rifle. The tan vehicle roared back up the driveway, tires screeching. Another gunshot rocked the room from Charles’ left. He looked over at the adjacent window to find Gary grinning.

“Got the tires! They’re not going anywhere!”

Gary gripped his rifle and continued to fire.

The three of them—Charles, Gary, and William—were holed up in a two-story house across the street. After following the young man’s car back to the neighborhood, they’d parked the F150 in the woods and entered through a back window. For the past few minutes, they’d been keeping an eye on the house, waiting for its occupants to emerge.

Charles had been right in his assumption. The kid in the vehicle hadn’t been alone. There were others with him.

From now on, Charles would listen to his gut. And right now it was telling him these people needed to be smoked out and killed. The town was already overrun; the last thing they needed were more survivors to contend with.

Besides, they had a score to settle with the young man. They needed to pay him back for what he’d done to Ronnie and Jose.

Chester was theirs. If the son of a bitch thought he could hide out here, he was sorely mistaken.

The young man fled the car; with him was a young woman of about the same age. Charles wasn’t sure if they’d just met or if they were related, but he made a mental note to find out before he killed them.

A rifle shot cracked again from across the room. The bullet pinged off the vehicle. Charles looked over at his companion.

“Hold your fire, Gary. Let’s take them alive. William wants the young man for himself.” He patted the boy on the shoulder. “Right, William?”

The boy nodded.

Charles had had his doubts about William, but he was already starting to prove himself. With the boy’s father gone, Charles knew he’d have to take him under his wing. He’d never had a son of his own. All his relatives had died or disowned him.

The only person he’d ever been able to count on was himself. But now that the world was dead, he needed a few good men on his side.

“Keep watching the exits,” Charles told his companions.

The man and woman had disappeared into the backyard. By the looks of it, they’d escaped back into the house. But that didn’t matter. Charles was a patient man. The world had already ended, after all. He had plenty of time to spare.

Gary and William leaned back from the windows and hunkered down against the wall. He smiled at them.

They’d wait until nightfall, and then they’d take the survivors down together.

N
oah slammed the kitchen door and replaced the wooden table that had barricaded it. His heart beat like a trip-hammer. His rifle lay on the floor. He’d barely managed to grab it before exiting the vehicle.

Caddy furled and unfurled her fists, her face red and tear-stricken. In order to escape, Noah had pulled her from the car, wrenching her from the vehicle that had quickly become a death trap. She hadn’t spoken since the first gunshot.

It seemed like she was in shock.

There was no way to reverse time. Theresa was dead and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

After a few seconds of silence, Caddy erupted.

“My mother!” she shrieked. “We have to go back outside!”

Noah placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to keep her calm.

“We can’t. They’ll shoot us.”

“We can’t leave her behind!”

“She’s gone, Caddy. I’m sorry.”

Caddy’s eyes blazed and she held her hands out like claws.

“This is your fault!” she screamed. “You convinced us to leave the house! We were safe here!”

Caddy tried to push past Noah, reaching for the door, but he held up his hands to stop her. Her body collided with his. She pounded him with her fists, but Noah held his ground.

“You son of a bitch! You killed her!”

Before Noah could speak, Caddy raced away from him and up the stairs. He heard the thump of footsteps as she ascended, then the sound of a door slamming. Outside, the neighborhood had returned to silence.

He strained his ears, but there was no evidence of their attackers. If the shooters were coming in after them, they were keeping quiet.

Rather than chase after Caddy, Noah grabbed the rifle and stalked to the front of the house. He needed to assess the situation immediately. Somewhere out there, the shooters were waiting.

He reviewed the chaos of the last few minutes, trying to gain a clue as to where the shooters might be. It had sounded like the gunshots had come from across the street.

Was it the same men he’d encountered before? Had they followed him back from the truck? If so, he’d led them straight back to Caddy and Theresa. He knew he should have waited.

He was to blame for Theresa’s death.

He’d killed the woman, all for a box of dried fruit.

Noah fought the urge to vomit. He staggered to the front window, choking down his bile, and peered between the slats in the wood. The street was lifeless and empty. He saw no extraneous vehicles, no men crouching between the properties.

The gunshots had come from higher up. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain.

He shifted his gaze to the houses across the street. All of the properties were as destroyed as he remembered them, but the one across the street had the windows open. He didn’t remember
that
from before.

He peered into the house, looking for the tip of a rifle, the silhouette of a face, but the windows were dark. If the men were inside, they were either hiding or out of sight.

Or they were making their way over.

Noah wondered how long their attackers had been watching them. Had they seen the three of them getting into the car? Had they been biding their time? The thought made him feel queasy.

He needed to get to Caddy. He needed to calm her down. What if she was at one of the upstairs windows, exposed? If she did anything foolish, she’d be killed. Theresa was gone and she’d be next…

Noah clambered up the staircase, still gripping the rifle. As he traversed the stairs, a thought hit him. All their other weapons were in the car. As of now, the gun was the only thing they had to defend themselves.

They were even worse off than before.

Noah took the stairs two at a time, his legs quaking. He listened for Caddy’s location, but heard nothing. The house had fallen eerily silent. He had the sudden, disturbing thought that he was alone, and that Caddy had disappeared.

But he knew that couldn’t be the case. He’d seen her seconds earlier. She had to be here. Right?

When he reached the landing, he looked left and right. Only one of the doors was closed: the door to Caddy’s bedroom. He sprinted over and grabbed the handle. The door was locked. He pressed his ear to the wood. Though he couldn’t see inside, he could hear the faint sound of crying from within.

“Open the door!” he hissed.

The girl didn’t answer. She continued to sob.

He jiggled the handle, hoping to pop it free, but the door wouldn’t budge. He rapped on the wood, balancing his need to be quiet with his need to get inside. The last thing they needed was to give away their location to the men outside.

He needed to get her out of there.

“Caddy!” he hissed. “Open up! We need to get the hell out of here!”

Silence.

“Open the door!”

More silence.

If she didn’t open the door, he’d break it down. Time was of the essence, and theirs was rapidly running out. He took a step back, intending to kick below the doorknob, but before he could, the door opened.

Caddy stood at the threshold, her face tear-stained and defeated.

“We have to leave or we’re going to die,” Noah told her.

“I don’t care anymore.”

“We need a plan to…”

“Will this plan be as good as your last one?”

Noah gritted his teeth. The image of Theresa’s face reappeared. He envisioned the blood running from the hole in her forehead, the way her eyes had glazed as she’d slumped over in the seat. He couldn’t think about that right now.

Once he went down that road, he’d never come back.

“I’m sorry, Caddy, for all of this. But if we don’t figure out a way to leave, we’re going to be next.”

Caddy stared at him, her eyes brimming with tears. She didn’t speak.

“I didn’t know your mother that well, but I know she’d have wanted you to live.”

Caddy fell into his arms. He squeezed her tight, doing his best to console her. The world had become a horrible, awful place. Hell, it probably always had been.

But if they didn’t find a way out of the house, they’d be the next to die.

“I don’t see them,” Caddy whispered.

Caddy and Noah peered out the upstairs window, keeping their heads down. Next to them was a paring knife that Caddy had found in the back of a kitchen drawer. Other than the rifle and the knife, the two of them were weaponless.

Noah scanned the upstairs windows of the house across the street. Thus far, he’d seen nothing. He was almost positive their attackers had been there, but there was no way to know if they’d left.

They could be anywhere.

It was possible they’d fled the neighborhood, but Noah wasn’t banking on it. And there was no way he’d risk venturing outside. Not without knowing what was out there.