Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (3 page)

T
he creek
they followed was called Big Rocky Run. It was neither big, nor very rocky. And if it didn’t exactly run, it made up for that by meandering around neighborhood after neighborhood, hiding them safely from sight. The way was thick at times with brambles they had to skirt, and other times they could walk easily beneath evergreens or through fields of tall, dry grass. Jack and his parents had hiked up and down this stretch of secluded parkland countless times, so he didn’t need a trail or even a map.

He couldn’t believe how slowly they were going. He kept having to stop, turn around, and go back to make sure Pete was okay. He was never okay—usually, he was resting. Once, Jack found him following a split in the trail leading to a neighborhood of single-family homes.

“Where the hell are you going?” Jack said.

Pete turned around dazedly and said, “How did you get behind me?”

After that, Jack made sure to stick closer for fear he’d wander off again.

When they finally made it to another road—Route 28—it was a half hour past dusk and too dark to see unless they used Jack’s flashlight. Beyond the road, the creek continued through more scrub and woods. From there, it would carry clear out to Fairfax. Greg and Lisa lived considerably closer than that. A good two more hours of hiking and he’d be very close to the twins’ apartment complex.

“When are we stopping?” Pete said for perhaps the tenth time, swinging the pack to his other shoulder. He’d tried the hobo thing, but reverted back after five minutes, complaining the stick hurt too much.

Also for the tenth time, Jack said, “Just a little farther.”

“It’s freezing out here.”

Jack turned and regarded the heavily breathing boy in the meager light.

“The more you move, the warmer you get. Didn’t your family ever go hiking?”

“Are you kidding?” Pete said. “We didn’t do stuff like that. That’s how you get ticks. Ticks have Lyme disease.”

“You never did Boy Scouts?”

“
Lyme
disease, man. No way.”

In truth, Jack was laying it on a bit thick. He’d never been in the Boy Scouts either, even though he’d wanted to. He’d launched a pretty good campaign to join. But just when he thought his parents would relent and let him sign up, they went out and bought a bunch of hiking gear, instructional videos and books, and that was the end of his merit badge dreams.

“We’ll start our own Boy Scouts,” his dad had said. “You can bring as many of your friends as you want with us. By doing it yourself, you can get in more hiking, and you’ll learn more.”

Being the good and dutiful son of his
doomed-to-die
parents
, Jack had relented—but not before getting them to agree to let him attend public school. At first they’d said no. Then, a few days later, they came back and said they’d talked it over. If he wanted to try high school, it was his decision.

High school was five years off. They probably hoped he’d forget about it, but he never did. For some reason, he was fascinated with the idea of having his own hall locker.

Four years later, the Sickness happened, and high school became just another dream in a long list of stuff he’d never get to try.

One thing Jack’s homegrown Boy Scout troop hadn’t done was hike at night. Too much that could go wrong. Too hard to get help when something did. It was particularly foolish to try it
now
. But Pete’s easy life and tick-phobic parents rankled him, and he didn’t need to trace anything back to know why. Plain and simple jealousy. Not the smartest reason to stumble along in the dark and risk breaking an ankle in a world without paramedics and doctors, but there it was.

“All right, fine,” Jack said. “But we’re not staying in any houses. We’ll go up the road and find an office or something.”

“A house might have a fireplace. And blankets. Just saying.”

“And food gangs looking for smoking chimneys,” Jack said, though his will weakened at the thought of a fire.

“We’ll put it out in the morning,” Pete said. “There’s a trail to that neighborhood like ten minutes back. Remember?”

Now that they weren’t moving, the cold began to creep into Jack’s bones. The wind whipped up and carried down the empty four-lane highway, making the world seem that much colder. Jack hated the thought of walking down that wind tunnel for three miles, but he didn’t want to show indecisiveness in front of Pete.

“We need to find you a backpack,” he said, sizing the other boy up. “That has to hurt your shoulders.”

Pete grunted. “
Big
time. So we gonna go back or what?”

Jack paused in quiet reflection, as if mulling over a particularly thorny math problem. Then he nodded. “Sure. You lead the way.”

Pete breathed a sigh of relief, turned around, and headed back down into the scrub.

Jack felt a different kind of relief. A year ago, he’d read the harrowing tale of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer trapped with his men in Antarctica in the early twentieth century. Facing certain doom, if not for the man’s legendary leadership, he and his crew would have died. One of the things he did was make sure his men stayed busy, and that he never showed indecisiveness. Everything he did had a purpose, or at least he made sure it seemed that way.

As they made their way back, Jack marveled that he suddenly thought of Pete as
his men
.

* * *

“
W
hat the hell
is he doing?” Pete said.

They were lying under a truck in front of the house they’d chosen. Someone was walking down the street busting out car windows. Every time he came to a car, he’d smash a window and howl. Thankfully, he was moving away from them. Jack saw curtains move in one of the houses, but nobody came out to challenge the boy.

“No idea, and I don’t want to ask him. Come on.”

As they approached the house, his heart sank. The front windows were broken in. The house had a perfectly good chimney, too, but all the chimneys in the world were useless without windows to keep in the heat.

“Shit,” Pete said, shaking his head. “You think it was that kid?”

“Who knows?”

The windows in the next house were also smashed in. Same thing with the one after that. Meanwhile, the sound of smashing glass carried to them every minute or so. Also, a terrible stench was growing the farther they went—the smell of decaying bodies. By busting open the windows, the kid had allowed the smell of the dead to seep out into the night.

“God, it stinks,” Pete said, retching involuntarily.

“That kid’s a menace,” Jack said in a tight voice, nose wrinkling at the stench. “We need to get out of this area. We’ll see which way he goes, then go the other way.”

The two observed from a distance as the destructive kid worked his way to an intersection. A second later, a car appeared and stopped in front of him. Jack and Pete crouched down behind a parked car and watched.

Angry shouting carried from the car. The boy with the bat laughed a loud, fake laugh and ran. Then the car pulled away.

When Jack thought it was safe, they stood quickly and jogged up the street. A different neighborhood began farther on.

“Hey, you two,” someone said behind them.

Jack turned and saw the bat-wielding vandal standing alone on the sidewalk. In height and build, Jack pegged him at thirteen.

“Hey yourself,” he said, hand resting casually on the butt of his pistol.

“What’s in that backpack? How about that bag? Probably something to eat, right?”

Jack shrugged, then realized it wasn’t visible in the gloom. “Just some junk we found. No food.”

Pete said, “Go on, leave us alone.”

The boy issued a weird giggle. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”

Pete whispered, “The dude’s schizo. Let’s go.”

Jack nodded, and together they started walking. When they looked back, the boy was gone.

They continued into a less upscale neighborhood composed of duplex dwellings. On the bright side, it appeared the kid with the bat hadn’t progressed this far in his lonely rampage. Nothing looked smashed up. Sadly, none of the houses had chimneys. They passed through quickly and moved into a better neighborhood.

The house they eventually chose was down a long, looping stretch of single-family houses that ended in a cul-de-sac. The front door had been pried open at some point, judging from the marks around the jamb and the missing doorknob.

Pete sighed. “I bet everything good’s been taken.”

Feeling like a scavenger and not liking it, Jack said, “Come on,” and pushed inside.

Upon entering, the rank smell of putrefying flesh invaded from everywhere, causing him to cover his nose.

“Jesus!” Pete said, and backed out of the house.

A few seconds later, Jack followed him.

“I’m … not … staying in there,” Pete said between retching sounds.

Jack nodded. “I know what you mean.”

Just as he decided to cross the street and try another house, there came a brightening in the distance followed by a flash off a stop sign.

“Quick, back inside,” Jack said, prodding him.

Pete started to argue, then gasped when a car appeared.

Jack shoved in behind him and peeked out the peephole. Twenty seconds later, the street got brighter, then darker as the car passed in front of the house. There were two people in the front seat and two in the back. Light flared suddenly from the side window, blinding him briefly, and then they’d passed.

There was a window next to the door with the curtains pulled shut. Jack nudged them aside and peeked out for a better look. The backseat passengers had a couple of those million-candle flashlights used by rescue teams and police. They were sweeping the huge beams here and there, as if searching for something.

In time, they rounded the little cul-de-sac and started back. As the lights from the car passed over the house, Jack shut the curtain—then mentally swore. He held his breath, willing the car to continue up the street. It crept slowly along and stopped with its headlights angled toward the house. A long, steady car horn issued forth, causing them both to flinch. Then someone got out and came around to the front of the car.

“What’s going on?” Pete said.

“You know how to shoot?” Jack said, unslinging his dad’s rifle.

“Just in video games. My mom said I’m a pacifist.”

Before he could reply to the absurd statement, the boy outside shouted, “Who’s in there?”

The AR was loaded, but not chambered. Jack drew his pistol—finger off the trigger like his mom had shown him, barrel safely pointed ahead of him and down.

Cracking the door an inch, he yelled, “Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the boy said. “How old are you?”

Jack thought quickly. Too young and they’d probably storm the house. Too old and they wouldn’t believe him.

“Fourteen—and three quarters.”

He’d invented that last part.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the school. Didn’t you hear?”

Jack looked back at Pete and said, “You know what he’s talking about?”

The boy nodded. “They went door to door telling people. I guess they skipped your house.”

Or maybe they saw us outside with guns.

To keep the conversation going, he shouted, “What school?”

“The high school. Where you from, man?” Before Jack could reply, the boy added, “Come on out. We’re supposed to round up everyone and meet there. There’s food. We’ll drive you. Anyone’s with you, they can come too—except, no little kids. They gotta stay. That’s the rules.”

The rules.

For the second time that day, Jack said, “Who makes the rules?”

“Blaze makes the rules.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh. “There’s actually someone who calls himself
Blaze?
”

“He’s in charge. He can do what he wants. That’s also the rules. And don’t make fun of his name.”

“Sounds sort of dumb. I think I’ll stay here. Thanks anyway.”

Someone in the car asked what was going on and the boy waved him off.

To Jack, he said, “You’re that guy, aren’t you? The one at the house we burned. I recognize your voice from earlier. Man, Blaze was pissed when you snuck out.”

Then it dawned on him: Blaze was that bully with the red hair and machine gun who’d threatened to burn his house down—and had actually done so, apparently. Probably had to burn a lot of houses to live up to his invented name.

The boy outside glanced furtively back at the car, then took a few steps forward. From Jack’s vantage, he was even skinnier than Pete.

Another kid climbed stealthily out of the back window of the car and approached behind him.

In a quieter voice, the skinny kid said, “Some guy with a bat said someone came this way with a bunch of food. It was you, wasn’t it? Listen, if you stuff something for me in those bushes”—he indicated the decorative shrubs in front of the big bay window—“I’ll tell the guys you don’t have anything. Then I’ll come back later and get it. No one has to know.”

“Mitch, you’re a useless backstabber,” the kid behind him said. “Get back in the car!”

Jack witnessed a look of sheer terror cross Mitch’s face before he fled back to the car and got in.