Dead Stop (31 page)

She stared at
him wide-eyed.

“Harley, you
can’t be thinking of going out there.”

“I’m sort of out
of choices,” he shrugged. “So, do you know where they are?”

“Yes, they’re on
the back wall near the corner on the left as you go out the door. But what are
you going to do? Go out there and start going through keys till you find the
right one? I don’t think those evil bastards are going to stand around and let
you do that.”

“No, you’re
right,” he conceded, “I won’t have time for that. My only chance will be to
sneak down there real fast, clip the wire on the meter collar, and pull the
electric meter out. That’ll cut the power to everything, but if Doc’s right
then we can’t stay here anyway.”

“Harley, this is
loco.
You can’t go out there! You’ll get killed and that won’t help us.
Besides, even if you do make it, then what? Can you really make a climb like
that? Can you? That’s a hell of a long way, and it’s raining.” She reached over
and gently tapped the bandages on his forearm. “I know you’re tough, Harley,
but those have to hurt.”

“They won’t be
an issue,” he replied.

She studied him
for a second, understanding what he said wasn’t braggadocio, but just a simple
assertion. At the same time, she understood this had been “Plan B” for a
reason. Harley had his doubts, even if he wasn’t voicing them.

“Fine, but even
if they don’t bother you…and even if you do make the climb…then what? None of
the rest of us could make it, or would have any other way of getting out there
to join you.”

“That’s the easy
part,” he grinned. “I’ll just pull the truck over by the store, and everybody
can use a table or something to climb over to the top of the trailer from the
roof. Then I’ll take a nice leisurely cruise down to the rest area a couple of
miles down the road and ya’ll can get off there. Everybody gets wet, but nobody
else gets eaten. What do you think?”

Marisa stared
across the dim table at Harley as she turned this new scenario over in her
mind.

 The
simplicity of the solution stunned her.

And it
was
a solution. It would work…it would actually work. After all the blood, death,
terror, and tears over the past nine hours, the whole lot of them could be
saved by something as simple as hopping onto the back of a parked truck from
the roof.

Assuming Harley
could reach that truck…

She fought down
the surge of excitement and refocused on the problem of the power cable. She
didn’t really share Harley’s confidence in this plan. Hell, she didn’t even
share his pretended confidence in this plan. The idea of any one of them
stepping back outside filled her with dread.

“I don’t know,”
Marisa muttered as she struggled between the hope of them riding off to safety
on the roof of the truck…and the mental image of Harley being caught and torn
to pieces at the breaker boxes out back. “I don’t like this. There has to be
another way.”

“Well if there
is,” Harley sighed as he scooted his way back out of the booth and stood up,
“you’re gonna have to come up with it in the next ten minutes. We’re running
out of time, and I need to get moving.”

“Where to?”
Marisa stood up to follow him.

“First the
roof,” he answered as they started for the door. “I’ll need to get a count and
position on every zombie out back of the truck stop. When I go out there, I
don’t feel like running into any nasty surprises.”

“I’m right
behind you.”

Harley stopped a
second and looked at her.

“You know it’s
going to be wet out there, right?”

“No kidding.”
She folded her arms and lifted an eyebrow at him. “I hear it gets like that
when it rains.”

He looked up at
the ceiling with a grin and shook his head.

“Well, yeah,”
Harley chuckled. “If you put it that way. But I always thought Stacey was the
comedian of you two.”

“She is,” Marisa
replied without missing a beat. “I’m the smart one who listens to weather
reports and brings her raincoat and umbrella.”

That brought a
bark of laughter and the man held up his hands in mock surrender.

“Okay, you win,”
he conceded good-naturedly. “I just thought you might prefer to try and think
of other options down here where it’s dry while I’m up top scouting things out
in the storm. It’s not like there’s any zombies on the roof, you know.”

“We’ll see,” she
indicated the direction of the kitchen door with the bat. “But I’m not taking
any chances, ‘partner.’
Bien?
”

“Good enough,
partner. Let’s go get wet.”

The two turned
towards the end of the counter that marked the path to the kitchen door, but
they barely made it two steps.

The loud bang of
the restaurant door being slammed open sounded behind them. It was done with
enough force to rattle the glass in the rest of the room.

They whirled to
see Deke fly into the diner, his eyes wide with fear…

…and that was
when disaster struck.

###

Stormbreak –
Deke

Turning his
attention forward again, Deke moved in what he hoped was catlike silence down
the aisle. He sized up the situation in front of him as he went. Several wasted
silhouettes had returned to their stations outside the windows, but with the
lights out they really didn’t concern him. Besides, he was going to be
squatting on the floor below their level of sight.

But it also
meant he was going to be operating below the level of what little light came in
through the windows. And the visibility was poor enough as it was.

The youngster
crouched as he reached the end of the aisle and moved slowly forward towards
the dark mounds of rubble. Water sloshed around his boots, as he carefully made
his way into the puddle. He moved in a three point stance, one hand on the
floor for extra balance. Moving like this made his shoulder hurt, so he slipped
his injured arm back into the sling. He wasn’t going to need two hands to do
this job anyway.

As expected, he
could see almost nothing.

He felt his way
around in the mess, trying to find anything that might feel like a purse. It
wasn’t easy because the puddle was full of objects. A few he could make out by
feel…lighters, cigarette packs, cans of snuff. Others were more mysterious. And
everything was soaked. He fumbled through the debris, trying to put mental
pictures to everything he handled.

He kept finding
long, plastic wrapped objects that confused him. They seemed out of place in an
area mainly featuring tobacco products. After the fifth or sixth one, he
stopped and tried to imagine what they could be. If they weren’t cigarettes or
snuff, they had to be something that had been on display on top of the counter.
The problem was, the counter displays changed regularly.

But that was the
clue that gave Deke the mystery object’s identity. Halloween was right around
the corner, and the store display had been featuring stuff for trick or
treaters. Things like Halloween stickers, reflective tape…

…and glow
sticks.

“Yes!” Deke
fished the next one he found out of the puddle. “Perfect!”

It took a little
effort in the dark, but he managed to tear the foil wrapper open and snap the
plastic tube. Instantly, a soft green glow illuminated the floor around him.

“Now we’re
cooking with gas,” the boy muttered as he started scanning the debris. “Now
where are you?”

“Deke?” Stacey’s
voice came from the darkness at the back of the store. “What are you doing?”

“Hunting the
purse,” he called back softly. “What color is it?”

“Umm…it’s tan, I
think. Or maybe beige.”

Deke chuckled to
himself as he searched, realizing that was the type of distinction only a girl
would make. In the past few hours he had started seeing Stacey as the human
being she was, instead of the fantasy he imagined. Yet somehow that was making
him fall for her all the harder.

“Wait a minute,”
he murmured as he spied the very edge of something in the blackness under the
rear counter. It was a pale blotch, barely visible in the light of the glow
stick.

Excitement built
as he leaned down to get a better look at the thing. It was definitely a purse
or handbag of some sort. Harley would have never noticed it when moving the
bodies, especially since he wasn’t looking for it in the first place. One of
the creatures must have kicked it under the counter when it attacked Gladys.
Deke had only spotted it because he was crouched so low to begin with.

Being
essentially one handed, Deke reached under the counter with the hand holding
the glow stick and fished the object out.

It was what he
thought it was.

“Got it!” he
yelled and stood up, holding the purse aloft in triumph.

And then
everything went to hell.

“Cool…” Stacey
began, but then her voice rose to a shriek. “DEKE! LOOK OUT! BEHIND YOU!”

As soon as she
screamed, Deke understood his mistake.

The hand holding
the purse also held the glow stick. And he was waving it right in front of the
window. Sick with realization, he pulled down his hand and turned to face the
inevitable…and in the process turned a serious mistake into a catastrophic one.

Now he was held the
glow stick in front of him, and between him and the window…fully illuminating
him for the benefit of the two horrors on the other side of the glass. There
would be no going back now. Both had already spread their talons and crouched
for the attack, their deathly black sockets fixed firmly on his face.

Reality slowed
to a series of split seconds, and Deke thought faster than he ever had in his
entire life.

It was too late
to stop the attack. If he stayed where he was they would be coming through the
glass after him. If he backed away, the result would be the same. Even if he
dropped the glowstick, the light coming in from the front gas pumps was enough
for them to keep a fix on him and attack. Which meant he was screwed. He
couldn’t hope to fight even one of these things in his current shape, and there
were two of them.

And Stacey was
somewhere behind him, trapped against a door that only opened from the other
side.

In the tiny
fraction of time he had left, it was the last realization that dictated his course
of action. He knew he was probably dead, but perhaps he could see to it she
didn’t die with him.

“Stacey! Get in
the men’s bathroom and block the door!”

Remembering the
Doc and her performance with her little flashlight, Deke slapped the end of the
glow stick against the glass and ran for the restaurant. He hadn’t really
formulated a plan, other than to get away from Stacey before the monsters
crashed through the glass upon him. It was just the first thing that came to
mind.

Yet it appeared
to be working. He could see the twin predators following the glow stick and
chasing along beside him out of the corner of his eye, Even as he looked, a
third one joined the pursuit.

Deke shot across
the entrance of the store and reached the doorway to the restaurant at a dead
run. The sound of the monsters slapping and sliding against the glass as they
pursued filled him with both hope and dread. They were taking the bait, but the
inevitable outcome had only been forestalled by a few seconds. When he turned
to run away from the glass, they would be coming through the windows after him.
In his current shape he might, or might not, be able to outrun them to the
kitchen.

But if he was
going to die, he could at least see to it that it happened with a firewall
between the monsters and Stacey.

He slammed open
the door to the restaurant, preparing to yell for the people in the kitchen to
get ready to block the door. Instead he almost stumbled to a halt at the sight
of Harley and Marisa staring at him with shock in the middle of the darkened
diner.

What the hell?
Weren’t they supposed to be on the roof or something?

Realizing his
split second of free time was up, he shouted a warning and ran towards them.

“Incoming!” he
screamed, and an instant later the crash of the window shattering sounded
behind him.

The roar of the
storm filled the diner, and along with it he heard the scrabbling of the
monsters as they poured into the breach after him.

The dead were
now inside restaurant.

Chapter
Nine: Resurgence

Resurgence –
Rachel

“Incoming!”

Rachel jerked
her head up in the process of helping Grandpa Tom unbolt a small steel table
from the adjoining grill. The aged trucker had figured out the table was just
long enough that if they pushed it against the swinging door, it would wedge
against the broken down old dishwasher and jam the door shut. She hoped he was
right because it sounded like they were about to need to put his idea into
practice.

Her heart seized
up at the unmistakable sound of one of the large windows in the restaurant
shattering. The glass had been breached, and the dead were now about to be
inside with them! Somewhere in the diner Marisa shrieked and cursed all in one
breath. She thought she made out Harley yelling something, but then another
sound jerked her attention away.

“Doc!” Stacey’s
scream floated down the hall amid the sudden pounding on the employee door.
“Let me IN! Hurry!”

Rachel stood up,
torn in confusion. What was going on? What should she do? What the hell was
Deke doing in the diner? Why was Stacey still in the store? The chaos was
coming from the diner, but if Deke was in the diner didn’t that mean Stacey was
alone in the store? With only a split second to decide, and nothing else to go
on, Rachel made her choice and dashed down the hallway towards the employee
door.