“Don’t say it.”
“Why not?”
He saw the look in her eyes. The same look he had seen before in people who had given up. Most of the time they were from mortally wounded soldiers and civilians. There had been a girl in the Sudan, with a bullet hole in her chest…
Keo got up and crouched in front of her. He took her hands in his. “What about us?”
She looked back at him. “What about us?”
“You promised to give me a chance. I expect you to keep your word.”
This time she managed a whole smile. “It’s too bad you didn’t come to town before all of this. I would have shown you a really good time.”
“Missed it by that much, huh?”
“Just a bit.”
He opened his mouth to say something when he stopped.
“What?” she said, seeing his reaction. “No clever responses?”
He put his forefinger to his lips.
Shhh.
Then he got up and crossed the room to one of the windows, making as little noise as possible.
“What is it?” Gillian said behind him.
He slid back the metal plate over the peephole and looked out.
He saw only pitch-black darkness.
“Keo,” Gillian said, walking over to him. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” Keo said.
“But why—”
A pair of darting black eyes appeared in the rectangular slot, their unnatural shape eerily highlighted by the LED light from inside the house. Keo took a step back at the same time Gillian gasped loudly behind him.
He reached for his submachine gun—not to use it, but just to make sure it was there.
It saw them and grabbed the burglar bars and began rattling them against the window frame. Jagged white and yellow and brown teeth snarled, and pruned black skin gleamed under what little moonlight there was outside.
Keo saw a flicker of movement, then two—no, three—
five
more of the creatures emerged out of the darkness. They converged on the window, fighting with one another to grab at the bars and began pulling on them.
The rattling grew louder and louder as more of them got a grip.
One of the shriveled things shoved its hand through two of the vertical struts and smashed the glass pane behind it. It kept pushing its fist through the broken glass until its knuckles landed harmlessly against the wooden plate. Realizing it couldn’t get through, the creature pulled its arm back, slicing its flesh and leaving behind dripping black blood on the shards and windowsill.
“Keo, close it,” Gillian said behind him.
Keo obeyed, closing the peephole. He hadn’t finished sliding the metal plate into place when the same rattling noise and the crash of broken glass echoed from the other window. That was followed by something hitting the door, except the door was impossibly thick with the reinforcements, and the noise only came through as dull
thump-thump-thump
sounds that, somehow, still managed to be unnerving.
Just as Keo and Gillian were focused on the door and windows, there was more pounding from behind them, more rattling and smashing glass, this time from the back door at the end of the right side hallway and from all four bedrooms.
Rachel burst out of her room with the girls. Christine ran out front, Rachel pushing Lotte’s wheelchair. They looked terrified, Lotte clutching her wheelchair’s armrests, the knuckles already ghostly white.
“The window,” Rachel said, out of breath. “They’re trying to get in through the window inside our room.”
“They won’t be able to get through,” Keo said.
“Are you sure?”
God, I hope I’m right,
Keo thought, but said with as much conviction as he could muster, “Yes, I’m certain of it.”
Norris and Levy came out of the left side hallway with their weapons.
“Jesus Christ, what’s happening out here?” Norris said.
“They know we’re here,” Gillian said. Her eyes snapped from the door to the windows and back again.
“Who?” Levy said, confused.
“Them,”
Keo said.
The noises were getting worse, increasing in intensity and volume. They seemed to be coming from every part of the house now, from the front to the back to the sides. The rattling of burglar bars, the breaking of glass, the
thoom! thoom!
of flesh hitting the doors on both ends of the house.
The ferocity of the attacks from all around drove them to each other. Before they realized it, they were all standing within an invisible five-feet box in front of the fireplace. Then Rachel sat down on the couch with her daughter, while Gillian went to be near the frightened Lotte, putting a comforting hand on the young girl’s arm. Lotte managed to grin back her appreciation.
Gavin was oblivious to what was happening. Keo looked down just to make sure he was still breathing, that his wound hadn’t taken him yet. The thick roll of gauze around his shoulder had turned almost entirely red since Gillian put it on less than an hour ago.
Won’t be long now…
“The lights,” Norris said. “It’s too bright in here.”
Keo rushed over to the LED lamp on the kitchen counter and twisted the knob to its lowest setting, while Levy crouched next to the one in the living room and did the same thing. The room slowly darkened, though there was still just enough light to see with.
He was halfway back to the others when he heard loud banging from in front of him—past the living room and from the left side hallway.
Earl.
Or what used to be Earl. Or maybe it wasn’t just Earl. Maybe Bowe had already died and turned, too. Was that why the pounding sounded much louder from Gavin’s room? Or was it because it was
inside
the house? Not that it mattered. As hard as he was banging on the door, Earl wasn’t getting out of there.
Gillian held out her hand to him and Keo took it. He stood next to her and they listened to the attack in front of them, behind them, and from the sides. Norris was facing the left side hallway while clutching his M4. Levy had sat down on the other sofa and was staring at the floor. Keo thought there was probably a fifty-fifty chance Levy was actually aware that he was still in the living room with them at the moment.
The banging continued.
They didn’t stop. They didn’t seem capable of stopping. It wasn’t as if they were making progress. He could tell they hadn’t gotten any further than when they started. The bars over the windows remained in place despite the continued rattling, all the efforts to pull them free. Every pointless smashing of flesh against unyielding wood produced the same dull
thud.
The reinforcements are holding. Thank you, Earl.
Gillian’s hand tightened in his, and Keo looked over and gave her a smile that said,
“We’ll be fine.”
She returned a halfhearted smile, one that said she didn’t believe him for a single second.
He didn’t blame her. It was hard to be optimistic when it sounded like every undead thing in the world was outside the house at this very moment, trying to get in. How many were out there now? He had only seen a dozen with his own eyes, but it was obvious there were more out there.
Silly undead things. You’re wasting your time. So why don’t you just stop, goddammit.
But they didn’t, because they didn’t seem capable of ever tiring out. He remembered the night at the police station. How long had they kept banging on the back room’s steel door? Hours and hours.
He looked down at his watch. It was past midnight. At this rate, the bloodsuckers would keep at it for at least three, maybe four more hours. That was assuming they stuck to their pattern—
Silence.
Just like that, they stopped.
The last
thud
reverberated against the door before it slowly faded into obscurity. The noises from the windows in front and behind them had also stopped. Earl, too, had ceased his attacks against the locked bedroom door.
They exchanged a look. Even Levy lifted his head up.
“It’s a trick,” Norris whispered.
“No,” Keo said. He hadn’t bothered to whisper. The creatures already knew they were inside, so there was no point in being quiet. “I don’t think it’s a trick. I think they know.”
“Know what?”
“That they can’t get in.”
Norris looked back at the left side hallway. “He’s stopped, too. Earl.”
“Stay here,” Keo said, and moved toward one of the windows.
“Your funeral,” Norris said.
Keo reached the window and put his hand on the metal slide, but he didn’t pull it back right away. He looked back at them, saw every face—with the exception of Gavin—staring back at him. Rachel and Christine were holding hands and Lotte was clinging to Gillian’s.
He turned back to the window and opened the peephole. He expected a surprise, like in the movies when you thought the killer was gone and he pops back up to give the audience a nice little jolt. Keo was prepared for it.
But there was nothing out there.
Even the clearing actually looked brighter than the last time he looked out. He could spot their vehicles again, sitting undisturbed under the soft glow of moonlight. The only movements he could detect were from the trees beyond the yard, moving against a soft wind.
Although he couldn’t see them with the naked eye, Keo swore he could
feel
them inside the surrounding woods, watching him back. Of course, it could just be his imagination cranked up to the nth degree.
“What’s the verdict, kid?” Norris asked anxiously behind him.
Keo didn’t answer right away.
“Kid?”
“They’re gone,” Keo finally said. “Or, at least, I can’t see them outside.”
“Maybe they’re hiding in the woods.”
“Maybe. I can’t see them if they are.”
But I can feel them. Maybe.
“I think they’re just gone.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gillian said. “Why would they just leave?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” Keo said. He covered the peephole and looked back at them. “They don’t need to take the house tonight. They can try again tomorrow night. And the night after that. All they need is to wait for us to make a mistake. They’re always going to be out there because it’s always going to be night, day after day after day. If it’s not the same ones that are out there now, it’ll be a hundred new ones. A thousand.”
No one said a word. He could see them absorbing his words. He couldn’t tell if they believed him or if they thought he was ranting. He wasn’t, but he had never been especially good at rallying the troops.
Time to learn some new skills, pal. It’s a brave new world.
“That’s our task moving forward,” Keo continued. “That’s what we’re going to have to do from now on if we want to survive. We’re going to have to promise each other that we’ll never make a mistake, because the first time we do, it will cost us all our lives.”
He looked over at the left side hallway, at the blood-covered door of Gavin’s room.
“Now, let’s talk about how we’re going to get rid of what’s in there…”
Under the warm
morning sunlight, they found the bare footprints of hundreds of the creatures spread across the clearing, much of it piled on top of one another near the windows and doors. For some reason, the bloodsuckers hadn’t bothered with the shack in the back. That was a good sign. The generator was a luxury that probably wasn’t going to last forever, but Keo certainly wanted to keep it around for as long as possible. The girls, no doubt, would agree.
Keo walked the grounds with Levy, looking for signs that the creatures had left someone behind, the way they had with the mobile home. Levy was frazzled, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep. They had all drunk instant coffee an hour ago, but that apparently hadn’t had much effect on Levy.
“One,” Levy said after they had been walking in silence for a while.
“One?” Keo said.
“One of those things. It took out Earl, Gavin, and Bowe. Jesus.
One.”
Keo noticed Levy was walking faster, and Keo had to increase his pace to keep up.
“How many did you see last night?” Levy asked. “Hundreds?”
“I couldn’t see all of them, but that sounds about right.”
“Jesus. Hundreds, when just one took out three of us. Earl was tough and he was really smart. He was the only reason we survived that first night. If they can take Earl, what chance do any of us have?”
“What happened to Earl was a mistake. The same for Bowe and Gavin.”
“You told us, but we didn’t listen.”
“I wouldn’t have believed me, either, in your shoes.”
“If we’d only believed you.” He shook his head. “Then Bowe and Gavin would still be here. Maybe even Earl…”
Keo didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if all of that was true, but if Levy needed to believe it, then why not let him?
“What you said last night,” Levy continued. “You think that’s possible? You think we can keep going as long as we don’t make any mistakes?”
“We just have to look out for one another. Keep each other alert and careful, make sure everyone’s doing their jobs.”
They circled the house a second time, making sure the doors were intact and the burglar bars hadn’t loosened during the night. The creatures might have spent hours assaulting the windows, but they hadn’t done much to pry the gates from the walls. They had, though, broken all the glass.
“We’ll install mesh screens to keep out the bugs in the daytime,” Keo said. “No point in putting glass windows back in if they’re just going to break them again tomorrow night.”
They ended up at the back of the house, where Keo stopped and looked over at the river.
“How deep is the water?” he asked Levy.
“It gets deeper the farther south you go, but around here it’s about eight to ten feet. You could swim across if you needed to. Or drown, if you can’t swim.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“The same thing that’s on this side. A lot of woods. Why?”
“No reason,” Keo said. “I just wanted to get a better lay of the land.”
“There are enough woods around here that you could spend months walking around it until you saw everything there is to see.”