“On three we go, you ready?”
She wasn’t. But the alternative, dying on this mountain, wasn’t currently on her to-do list and she wasn’t willing to make time for anything else. Trying to wiggle her toes, the pins and needles had moved from her forefoot up into her ankle and although she knew it wasn’t a good sign, both feet had already gone numb.
“I’m good, I’ll try to keep up.” Peeking her head above the snowpack, Cora felt for the ridge of his shoulder and the pair stood in unison. She stayed close to his right arm as Griffin stepped heavily through the knee deep snow, both unwilling to focus on the threat at their backs.
The sounds of the forest had died down in the last five minutes, and although Griffin promised her he’d get her to the highway, Cora wasn’t counting on it. They’d both watched as those hunting them weaved in and out of the frosted juniper, multiple times coming within feet of their miniature snow cave. Holding her breath became a ritual.
Glancing right as he kept moving, Griffin lowered his head and spoke quietly. “There’s one behind those trees. She knows we’re here, but can’t get to us until we break the treeline ahead.”
Her breath rose from her mouth and crystalized as it lifted into the sky. “So, we’re good, we’ll make it to the road?”
Increasing his pace, Griffin moved out ahead and guided Cora left as he drifted right. “Yes, just keep moving toward the road. Once you reach the highway, point yourself downhill and keep going. I’ll catch up.”
Past the next clearing and not quite twenty-five yards from where the landscape bled into the roadway, something reflected what little sunlight fled the driving storm. Squinting, Cora was able to make out the color blue and a large swatch of chrome. Another ten paces and she realized what she was looking at. “Griffin.”
He’d reached the treeline and had begun tearing free a branch nearly the size of a hockey stick when her voice reached him. Without turning, Griffin waved her off and moved to a tree more comparable in size to his own body.
Catching his breath, Griffin leaned into the narrow trail, checking the progress of their pursuer. As he brought the four foot limb overhead, his left shoulder hesitated. Bringing it back and to the side relieved the pressure from the decade-old injury as he counted down. “Five… four…”
Again Cora shouted his name, however, as she moved out away from the clearing, her voice was mostly lost to the trees. Continuing on, she began the descent and had disappeared from sight completely by the time Griffin finished counting down.
“Three… two… one…” Planting his trailing foot against the aging pine, Griffin twisted right and began to swing on the lonely Feeder. In the fraction of a second before making contact, the silence that befell the frozen utopia was extinguished.
Through the trees, across the expansive glade, and echoing from one valley to the next, a distant horn begged for attention. Following through, but with his focus being pulled away, Griffin struck the former prison guard just below the waist, snapping the branch in two.
Releasing the stick as his momentum carried him out onto the trail, Griffin continued forward and skidded face-first into the snow. Scurrying to his feet, he lunged for the broken branch and as his aggressor lay flailing on her back, he moved in. Dropping his knee onto her chest, he drove the larger of the two pieces into her right eye.
Back through the trees, he followed Cora’s trail and the belligerent wailing, until he finally reached the edge of the glade. His lungs burned and his legs felt like two overcooked strands of linguini. Attempting to pinpoint the origin, he watched as thirty yards downslope, Cora stepped out of the forest and into the roadway.
Ten seconds behind her, Griffin navigated the rocky descent, focused entirely on staying upright and the placement of each labored step. He quickly traversed the rocky terrain and moved away from the trees. Reaching the asphalt, and stomping free the solidified ice and mud, he was again able to see the worn leather covering his frozen feet.
Following the hollowed footprints out across the four lane road, he spied Cora standing twenty feet from the source of the grating broadcast. The deep blue, late model pickup truck gathered snow along its roofline as it sat motionless, near the opposite side of the road. With no visible damage, it rested easily with its front bumper kissing the end post of the Walter Hamilton Bridge.
He stepped quickly through the slush and standing at Cora’s side, shouted over the horn. “You see it hit?”
“No, it was sitting here before I walked out. But the horn… that just started.”
Nodding, Griffin started for the driver’s door as Cora followed. With his open palm against the window, he stepped back and wiped away the building frost. “Cora, get back.” Stepping behind the cab, Griffin pulled his weapon and motioned for her to join him.
“What’s wrong?”
“The driver’s dead,” Griffin said.
Turning to the sign at the side of the road, Cora said, “Let’s go for help. It looks like the next town—Summer Mill—is only two miles up the road. My feet are already numb, so there’s that.”
“We’re definitely going to Summer Mill, but we’re not walking. I’m done with this freakin’ weather. We’re taking this truck and driving out of this hellhole. Right now. We need to get you to the hospital, and get your side looked at.”
“What about the driver?”
“He’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Look,” Griffin said. He again cleared the glass and motioned for Cora to come in close.
The driver, a balding forty-something male, was slumped forward, his forehead resting hard on the steering wheel—the apparent cause of the torturous horn assaulting their eardrums. Blood ran from his mouth, and his eyes were pinned in the open position. There were obvious signs of attack, as his throat and most of his neck were torn away, exposing the sinewy fibers securing his skull to his clavicle.
Bent at the waist, Cora peered through the driver’s window and came to the same conclusion, although looking past the driver, she held her hand over her mouth and slowly backed away. “You’re right, he is dead. But you missed something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s not alone in there.”
Allowing the plastic bin to drift into the hall, Ethan ran to the mountain of overturned tables. As he rushed past the first few, he could see David. The glass case near the wall reflected the image of his best friend, now raising the gun to his own head. Beyond that, a growing horde pushed into the small space alongside the vacant checkout lines.
As David’s index finger slid down and met the trigger, Ethan rushed in behind the end of the slanted table. Gripping the left corner, he shouted. “David, no!” Without waiting for an answer, he lifted his end of the table up over his head, and started pushing toward the wall, the resistance much greater than he expected.
With the gritty sound of a joint being dislodged and the resistance falling quickly away, Ethan struggled to stay on his feet as David cried out, dropped the weapon, and grabbed at his right ankle.
The length of the table now vertical, and with it leaned into the refrigerated case, Ethan looked down on his friend. Positioned up against the wall, in the tightly spaced pocket created by a trio of upturned tables, David writhed in agony. “My foot, you idiot. What the hell was that?”
Ethan didn’t answer. His friend was about to take his own life. Anything short of that was progress.
David’s right foot was bent at an unfortunate angle and still attached to the table’s vertical bracing, however he was now hidden on three sides by the makeshift barrier. And with little chance of the horde getting to him, Ethan stepped back, secured the upturned table, and withdrew his weapon.
Leaning in, Ethan bent down and looked through the one-inch void between the two tables. “I’m going for Carly, and taking these guys with me. I don’t care what you have to do. Get free from that table and be ready to go in five. I’ll carry you out myself if I have to. And I shouldn’t have to say this, but that weapon is for them, not us.”
Pushing away, Ethan stared at the crowd as he backpedaled. Finding an errant chair, he lifted it overhead and tossed it at them. “Let’s go boys, come get it.”
As the horde turned their attention away from the tables surrounding his friend, Ethan sprinted to the hall at the opposite end of the room. Passing the bin, he moved into darkened corridor and started with the first office.
Locked door.
Coming to the second office, Ethan took a deep breath and turned the handle. The door slid open, but only a few inches. Lowering his shoulder, Ethan pushed against the obstruction and whispered into the blacked out office. “Carly?”
Nothing.
With both hands on the handle, Ethan leaned in and forced the door another eight inches. Glancing into the office, two lifeless bodies lay back to back. A brilliant white lab coat, painted in swatches of burgundy, was draped over the woman lying facedown. Her torso resting flush against the backside of the door prevented Ethan from entering.
Turning to door number three, time had run out. The horde from the cafeteria had entered the hall and two of the more agile Feeders had broken away from the pack. Ethan estimated he had five seconds to make a decision.
Gripping the handle of another locked door, he reached for his weapon, ready to fight his way back to his friend. He came here to find Carly, but not at the cost of David’s life, or his own. If he lost the battle here in this place, where people came to heal, so would his best friend, and the woman somewhere in this desolate hospital.
David could perhaps hold out until another group of curious Feeders picked up his scent, and then maybe another five or ten minutes beyond that. But Ethan’s timeline was a polar opposite. If he were to have a chance at living, any at all, the time was now.
Sighting his first target, Ethan let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger. The disfigured corpse twisted violently to the left, smashed into the wall, and dropped face-first to the carpet. Lining up his second target, he took two steps forward and felt a rush of cool air against the right side of his face. Grabbed by the upper arm, he was pulled onto his heels and then backward off his feet.
Bracing for impact, Ethan released his grip on the nine millimeter. Crashing to the cheap commercial grade flooring, he slid through a doorway and into another body. Clawing to get to his feet, he was held back by two sets of hands, one atop his shoulders and the other around his waist.
Kicking through the confusion, a clammy, bloodstained hand dropped over his mouth as he was pulled backward, into the pitch black office.
With the door slammed shut, Ethan struggled against the forces holding him captive. His right arm throbbed, and as he tried to pull free, his shoulder discharged a wave of agony up through his neck and into the base of his skull.
Flat on his back, the intense pain played havoc with his vision, and as the hands released him, a soft desk lamp was powered on. “Ethan.”
The smooth, pleasant voice belonged to her. His best friend’s fiancée sat on her knees just two feet away. Her face was familiar, but now also different. Her shoulder length blond hair, matted and dirty, clung to her face in thick swatches. Her baby blue scrubs, bloodstained and torn, hung from her thin frame like an old dish towel. She forced a smile, her teeth barely visible, but Ethan knew better. “Carly.”
“Ethan, where’s David, where is he?”
“He’s out there.”
“Don’t you tell me,” she said, tears already forming near the corners of her eyes. “Don’t you even try to—”
“No Carly; he’s okay. His ankle is a bit busted up, but he’ll be fine. I’m getting you out of here.” Moving his gaze from Carly to the boy seated in the desk chair, Ethan continued. “Who the hell are you?”
Unfazed, the kid with a close-clipped buzz cut sat forward and smiled. “My name is Benjamin Westbrook, but you can call me Ben.” The perfect smile, the high cheekbones, the build of a college athlete, this kid looked like he should be in Hollywood, and not cleaning trash cans at Summer Mill Memorial.
“What are you, like sixteen?”
“Twenty-three, but why does that matter to you?”
Ethan stood, took two steps forward, and punched Ben in the face, knocking the boy backward and out of the chair. “Ben, the next time you put your hands on me, you’d better be prepared to own it. You’re old enough to know that you never put your hands on someone firing a weapon.”
Moving to Ben, Carly looked up at Ethan and shook her head. “Really Ethan, he was just trying to help.”
“Help?” Ethan said, as he moved in close. “He may have just killed us all. That weapon, the one that was going to get us out of the building, is now out there in the hall. And unless you’re ready to open the door and go at those things bare-handed, I’d say he just screwed us.”
Helping Ben to his feet, Carly handed Ethan a map of the building. “Where’s David? Tell me exactly where you left him.”
Unfolding the map, Ethan pointed to the spot where David sat encircled by the barricade of tables. “He’s here. I have him blocked off by a few overturned tables. If we can create a distraction, just for a few minutes, I can pull him free and we can all get out through the back door.” Looking up at Ben, he said, “I just need some help.”
“I’m fast,” Ben said. “Like really fast. I can lure them away from the cafeteria, then you and Carly can get to David and meet me in the back hall.”
Ethan looked to Carly. She nodded, grabbed the red backpack from the desk, and slung it over her left shoulder. “He really is fast, it may just work.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “No rehearsals. David needs us now. I’ll open the door, you make a break for the other side of the kitchen and we’ll go for David. Meet you on the other side, you good?”
Ben smiled, his left eye beginning to swell. “Let’s do it.”
Ethan gripped the door handle, and turned to the kid. “Hey, no hard feelings?”
Rolling his neck from left to right, Ben ignored Ethan’s olive branch. He instead turned to Carly and wrapped her in his lengthy arms. “We’re getting out of here, all of us.” His focus back on the door, Ben stood ready for Ethan to make his move.
Ethan stepped back, opened the door, and moved out into the hall. Coming to the first threat, he shifted his weight to his trailing leg and kicked the first Feeder backward and into the wall. Continuing forward and reaching for his weapon, he grabbed a handful of nothing as Ben swept in from the right, snatched the weapon, and continued running.
As Ben sprinted toward the end of the hall, catching the attention of the horde, Ethan grabbed Carly’s hand. “When we get out of here, I’m probably going to kill that kid.”