The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (22 page)

Gingerly, she slipped over the side of the roof and hung over the edge. The coarse shingles scraped her fingers, but she inched off as far as she could before letting go. She bent her knees to absorb the impact. As soon as she hit the ground, she bent and recovered her shotgun. She paused and strained her ears.

No guttural howls or charging crazies greeted her.

She steered far from the streetlights as she snuck toward the Weavers’ two-story home. She ducked behind a hydrangea. Its flowers had long since bloomed and withered away, but the branches spanned wide and dense enough to provide cover.

A crash of glass sounded from within the home. Kara knew patience and caution were virtues when it came to hunting, but that wouldn’t save Sadie or the family of four’s lives tonight. She sprinted across the front yard. Wind rushed past her as she barreled forward. She jumped and dove through the gaping hole in the window the crazies had made during their assault on the home.

Broken glass cut into her arm as she rolled across the Weavers’ carpeted floor. She ignored the pain and came to a stop on her knees. With the stock of the shotgun pressed to her shoulder, she played its barrel across the dark room. Nothing but the spindly shapes of chairs and a long dining room table stood in her way.

A mix of shuffling and scraping sounded from deeper in the house. Staying light on her feet, she hurried to the kitchen, where a cabinet lay askew. Moonlight filtered in through the windows and glimmered on shattered glasses and plates strewn across the hardwood floor.

More scraping and shuffling, along with growls, echoed up a set of stairs leading to the basement. Kara ran down them.

Without any windows and only the light filtering from upstairs to guide her path, she could hardly make out the shapes around her. She prayed it was just as hard for the crazies to see as it was for her.

The guttural grunts and scratching grew louder as she inched forward.

A muffled scream came from her left. It sounded as though it had come from a child—Leah or Zack.

She paused near a thick column. Heavy breathing and the scratch of nails against wood caught her attention. She swiveled toward the source of the noise. Darkness bathed the basement, and she squinted, desperate to see what lay before her. Then she heard the tearing of wood.
A door being taken apart
.

An unbridled scream filled the air.

“No!” She recognized Joe’s deep baritone.

Her finger shook near the trigger, but she couldn’t risk firing. Not now. Not with children somewhere beyond her line of sight.

More tearing and crashing and a beam of orange light burst from the darkness.

Candles burned from beyond a broken door. The glow illuminated the rabid faces of three crazies tearing at the wooden door. They’d burst through part of it and now ripped away the rest of the wood.

Screams came from beyond the door where Joe and his family cowered in a corner, just visible through the widening hole.

“Hey, assholes!” Kara yelled.

The crazies ignored her as they shoved each other, desperate to get at their cornered prey. One, a fit woman in a T-shirt and yoga pants, began to push through.

Kara dashed beside the attackers and let loose a shotgun blast. The female crazy’s chest blew apart in a burst of blood, flesh, and bone. Kara ignored the ringing in her ears and fired again and again at the other two crazies. Their bodies twisted with the spray of buckshot. Kara pumped and fired her last shot into the mutilated crazies.

All three lay still on the floor. Murky pools of blood formed underneath their bodies, appearing as innocuous as shadows in the dim lighting. But the darkness could not mask the stinging, ferrous odor of the liquid.

Kara kicked aside the bodies and peered into the room. Candlelight flickered over the shocked faces of the Weavers. Nina, her hair cropped short and blue eyes wide with fear, stood behind Joe. Leah held a teddy bear and cowered behind her mother. Zack peeked out from behind Nina’s protective arms. Joe cocked a baseball bat over his shoulder, ready to swing for his family’s lives. He wore a Baltimore Orioles shirt but didn’t appear near as athletic as his favorite baseball team. His eyes were searching Kara wildly, and sweat matted down his thinning hair.

His family was safe and accounted for, but where was Sadie?

“Kara!” The twelve-year-old, who shared the same auburn locks as Kara, rushed out of the destroyed door and threw her arms around her sister. She sobbed into Kara’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Kara said, letting the gun fall to her side and wrapping an arm around Sadie. Her voice still sounded foggy through her damaged hearing. She glanced around the office. The Weavers had nothing to protect themselves besides Joe’s bat and Leah’s teddy bear. “We can go back to my house. We’ve got guns enough for everybody.”

Joe’s muscles relaxed. Lowering the bat, he stepped forward. He nudged the remnants of the door open, an unnecessary gesture. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Nina said, one hand on each of her children’s shoulders. “Thank you.”

Kara nodded. “No, thank you for keeping Sadie safe.”

“We couldn’t let her go home,” Nina said. “Not when your mom was gone and the reports on the radio...”

“No, we didn’t want her to be alone,” Joe finished for his wife. He rubbed his fingers over his ears, evidently as deafened by the close-quarter volley of gunfire as Kara.

Kara motioned for them to follow her. For a moment, she considered leaving them and coming back with the guns. But they didn’t have much time. The gun blasts wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the crazies she’d seen around her cul-de-sac and those traveling along the main street. She couldn’t leave the family here defenseless, especially not with their house already broken into.

Nina ushered Leah and Zack from their hiding place, and Kara led the family up the stairs. They reached the first floor. The crunch of glass caught her attention, and she spun to her left. One of the crazies climbed through the window. It locked eyes with Kara and charged.

She shouldered the shotgun, but her finger clicked the trigger uselessly. She’d forgotten to reload it.

The crazy, a larger man in a T-shirt and sweatpants, let out a gurgling cry. Kara spun the shotgun in her hands and held the barrel. Like a batter ready to swing, she brought it back over her shoulder.

With a final growl, the man leapt. Kara let loose. The stock of the shotgun connected with the man’s jaw. His neck twisted with a sickening snap. Legs locking, the man fell forward and crashed into the wall. He struggled to stand, but Kara bashed him again, and he dropped flat on the floor.

“Come on!” Kara called to Sadie and the Weavers. They followed her forward to the entrance hall.

Kara peeked out the small half-circle window in the top of the front door. Several people started toward the house. Others began to follow, caught in the fervor pulsing through the crowd of crazies.

Nina pointed toward the broken window in the connected dining room. “There’s another!”

A woman crawled through. The glass shards hanging in the window like jagged teeth tore into her arm. Blood trickled from her wounds, but her focus never wavered from her prey.

Joe threw himself between the woman and his family. He swung his metal bat once, then twice. The woman’s skull cracked, but still her teeth chattered. Another swing and her body went limp, her legs still dangling outside.

Another man, a half-crown of hair gracing his tanned scalp, squeezed between the dead woman and the window. He clawed at the glass, breaking it into more shards.

Kara dug out a couple shells from her pocket as Joe let loose with the bat.

As the crazed man’s growling and scratching ceased, another tried to push himself through the window. Sadie cried out as Leah and Zack screamed. Something else pounded and slammed against the door. Joe flipped the dining table on its side and pressed it against the two dead crazies stuck in the window. He slid a china cabinet behind it for reinforcement.

“Out the back!” Kara said. She led them to the kitchen and gestured for them to freeze. Joe crept to the sliding glass door leading to their back porch.

A couple of shapes wandered near the Weavers’ vegetable garden. They were about a dozen yards away, but Kara wasn’t sure she, Sadie, and the Weavers could make it past without being spotted.

They’d been lucky to take down three of the crazies in the brief melee. But out in the open, if one swing of Joe’s bat or a shot from her gun missed, that would be the end for them. And if she was forced to fire her weapon, she’d attract the attention of more.

“We need a distraction,” Joe said, sizing up the situation immediately.

Kara nodded. Then she remembered the candles downstairs.

“You’ve got matches? A lighter or something?” Kara asked Joe.

Joe dug into this pocket and withdrew a plastic Bic lighter. “Right here.”

Zack whimpered as more scratching and growls sounded outside their home. Leah squeezed her teddy bear tighter.

Kara wondered if she was crazy for what she was about to suggest, but she couldn’t think of a better option now. “Do you have any high-proof alcohol?”

Joe’s eyes lit up with understanding. Careful to avoid the glass and broken dishware on the kitchen floor, he retrieved a bottle of vodka from a cabinet above the stove. He pulled a washcloth from a drawer near the sink then poured enough vodka on the cloth to saturate it. “Think this will work?”

“Hollywood seems to think so,” Kara said. “Unless you’ve got a gallon of gasoline stashed away somewhere, we might as well try.”

“Stay here,” Joe said to his family.

He and Kara ran back to the dining room. He kicked over the china cabinet and pulled back the table over the broken window. Kara used the stock of her shotgun to push one of the dead crazies out. A couple others tried to take the dead one’s place, their arms reaching into the house, grasping and clawing.

Kara fired two shots as Joe lit the rag on his Molotov cocktail. When the two crazies fell, he threw the bottle onto the porch. It shattered, spilling flame. The resulting conflagration was nothing near as spectacular as Kara had seen in the movies, but the small blaze managed to catch on the fabric of the porch swing.

The orange glow cast ghoulish shadows over the faces of the people outside. They were drawn to the fire like moths. For good measure, Kara shot off two more rounds into the nearest crazies. Their warbling cries drew yells and howls from the others. She figured the noise and burning porch would be enough to attract the crazies still prowling the shadows in the backyard.

“Let’s hope we played our cards right,” Kara said, thumbing fresh shells into the shotgun. She fumbled one. Her fingers shook, and she wasn’t sure whether it was because of adrenaline or her nerves catching up to her.

She and Joe joined his family and Sadie in the kitchen. After seeing no others in the backyard, Kara slid the glass door back and pressed a finger to her lips. She darted onto the deck, followed by Joe. She paused at the stairs leading into the lawn. The smell of smoke drifting on a night breeze greeted her as she listened to the cries of the crazies. It still sounded as if they were all congregated near the front of the house.

When Kara inched off the deck and onto the grass, she signaled for the family to follow. They crouched and ran toward the hedges lining the yard.

Kara pushed through the foliage. From her vantage point, she saw the side of the Weavers’ house, along with the front of her own. Flickering flames cast the ghastly shadows of the crazies along the asphalt of the cul-de-sac.

None prowled around her house that she could see.

“Follow me,” she whispered. Again they dashed forward, sticking to the shadows.

One of the crazies howled in a high-pitched drone. Its voice raised above the rest, and Kara’s heart stopped. She motioned for the others to continue as she shouldered her shotgun, preparing to defend her sister and the Weavers against an oncoming horde.

But none of the crazies charged her.

A few fought between each other, scrambling to make it into the broken window of the Weavers’ home. Others scraped and pulled at the siding around the front door, desperately trying to burrow into the house. It seemed once they’d caught sight of something, they wouldn’t let up. Even the spreading tongues of flame didn’t dissuade them.

Once Sadie, Joe, Nina, and the children safely had passed into her backyard, Kara followed. A cool wind blew across her back, bringing with it the scent of burning wood and melting plastic. The family waited on the back deck, crouched among the outdoor chairs and table pots of overflowing plants. Even the crickets seemed to have gone silent in anticipation.

“I need to get in to unlock the back door,” she said. She considered going in through the broken window in the front, but she didn’t want to risk one of the crazies spotting her. The last thing they needed was to attract a stream of the violent people into her house after she’d liberated the Weavers from theirs.

“Joe, can you help me?” she said in a low voice.

He nodded.

“Follow me,” she whispered. “Everybody else, wait here for now.”

Kara crept to the side of her house with Joe and paused near the bush where she’d dropped down from the roof. She gestured, signaling she needed a lift up.

Joe knelt and clenched his hands together. He gestured for Kara to step into them. Kara put one foot into his cupped palms, and he pushed her up. She grasped the gutter with her right hand and tossed her shotgun on the shingles with her left. Her hands scraped against the rough surface, finding purchase through friction alone, and she dragged herself above her garage.

Once safely on the roof, she signaled to Joe to go around back and rejoin his family. He disappeared around the corner of the house.

Across the yards, the crazies still ran amok. Their intermittent cries and howls echoed across the asphalt. The fire that began on the Weavers’ porch now enveloped the first floor. Orange flames danced behind the shattered windows, giving the house the appearance of an oversized jack-o’-lantern.