Hissers (12 page)

“Who’s—”

Someone screamed an unholy wail of pain from down the street. The hissers on the front lawn took off running, the thudding of their feet growing distant. For a moment Amanita thought all their unwanted company might leave them in peace, but a second later the sounds of teeth tearing into the gunman’s flesh resumed. There was still a pack of wild man-eating humans on the front lawn. How long before they finished their meal and came back to the house?

She finally moved from the door and brushed past Seth. “I can’t see shit. Where’s the kitchen?”

“To your left.”

“C’mon. We need weapons. Anything. Knives, a frying pan, something. And be quiet.”

Seth suddenly rose from the couch. “Hang on. Be right back.” He took off running up the stairs.

Amanita found herself alone in the dark living room, listening to the smacking sounds of wet mastication outside. Curiosity drew her to the door again where she put an eye to the fresh bullet hole. In her limited line of sight she could see about ten or twelve flesh-eaters tearing the skin off of the man with the gun, whom she only recognized because the weapon was still in his hand.

She drew away from the hole and started to make her way to the stairs but stopped short. Something on the floor caught her eye. She bent down and lifted it up, waited a second for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was a picture of Seth with his parents. With a gasp she moved back to the door and peeked through the bullet hole again.

Oh my God, how am I going to tell him this?
Seth’s parents were on the front lawn chewing apart the gunman’s cheek.

She heard him return, looked back slowly.

“I have this.” Seth held up a katana sword. “Dad wanted me to take karate. I think he thought this would help. I don’t know how to use it but it’s sharp as shit.”

“Seth…your parents…”

“What?”

She needed to be sure before she told him. She turned and looked back through the bullet hole. Yes, it was most definitely his parents eating the man on the lawn.

They’d been turned.

Suddenly a yellow eye appeared on the other side of the hole, so close it filled her entire view. The door shook as the hisser beat on it with all of its weight.

Seth and Amanita screamed.

Saturday, 9:45

Driving a car should have been an exhilarating experience for Connor, but he felt nothing. A numbness had overtaken him. He focused on staying on the road, not hitting any parked cars, and not going too fast.

In the passenger seat Nicole took out her cell phone again and tapped the touch screen. “Still won’t connect.” She held it up to the windshield as if that might make a difference.

Connor took a right turn onto Willmington Road and remained silent. What did phones matter now anyway? His parents were dead. He’d killed his mother. Left her to die. Run her over. Who could he call now that would take it all back, turn back time? No one. That’s who. No one. So what did phone service matter?

It didn’t. Not to him.

“Connor! Look out!”

He hit the brakes, jarred from his silent stare. Ahead of them in the middle of the road, bathed in the headlights’ beams, stood a pack of crazed, half-mutated people. Everyone was drenched in blood and wrapped in torn clothing. Many were missing body parts, fatally wounded in several areas: an elderly man with his trachea exposed, a short fat woman with a hole in her belly big enough to dunk a basketball in. They should be dead. Just like the people at the plane crash. But they weren’t dead, they were in the middle of the damned road, twitching and snarling and pissed off at something.

Some of them sported more body parts than biology should have allowed: a woman with three legs, a man with a hand growing out of his neck, a small boy with fingers jutting from his forehead.

“Turn around! Turn around quickly!” Nicole reached over and pulled the manual shift into reverse. “Hurry!”

The pack of maniacs let out a collective cry and raced for the car. They ran so wild they nearly knocked each other over. Yet their determination was so intense they merely jumped over any fallen cohorts to get to the car first.

“I can’t,” Connor said. “I can’t. I don’t want to do this anymore. Why’s this happening?”

“You can do this, Connor. Just hit the gas. Please, hit the gas.” She put her hand on his thigh and squeezed it.

Something about her hand registered in his mind even as the first cadaverous lunatic leapt onto the hood, sliding up and smushing his mangled face against the windshield. Her hand was warm. It felt good, reassuring, it sent a message. He realized his inaction was going to get them both killed, and he’d seen enough people killed in the last hour. He didn’t want Nicole to die too.

The entire pack swarmed the car. In every window snarled a face full of gore, mad as hell, trying to get in at them.

Finally Connor put the pedal to the floor and the car rocketed backwards, breaking through the pack. The force of the acceleration caused the car to weave from side to side. Connor fought to keep it under control but the wheel was fighting back. It was all he could do to keep it steady. He’d seen the way his dad always looked back over the headrest when reversing and knew he should be doing that, but he was too afraid to take his eyes off the charging pack ahead of him.

“Stop! Go forward! Hurry!”

Connor hit the brake, shifted into drive, and stepped down hard on the gas. The car shot forward and rammed into the crowd, sending bodies flying to the curb.

He took a series of lefts and rights without paying attention to street names. As long as he could get them somewhere free from these people, it didn’t matter.

Five minutes later he stopped the car. He was sweating. The street was deserted. The power was off in all the houses, same as everywhere else. “I think we’re okay here,” he said.

“Where are we? Is this near Pioneer?”

Pioneer High School, where they were bound on Monday. Maybe not anymore. Who knew if they’d even make it to Monday.

“I don’t know. I think we’re near the park again, actually. Like, it should be a little ways that way.”

“Then we’re back near the crash. We have to leave. I need to get home still.”

“Yeah. I know. Hang on.” Connor opened the door and stepped outside. The now familiar sounds of distant screams and screeching car tires played their macabre melody all around. The picture window of the house in front of him had been smashed. The bushes were trampled. A bloody handprint punctuated the center of the front door. He glanced toward the horizon and could still see the faint orange glow of the plane crash. It was dimmer, but still there. The world was still going insane.

He bent over and threw up on the street. What came up was not just his last meal, but the realization that he was suddenly alone in life. He had no family anymore, no mother or father, no home, and he had no idea why. More vomit crawled up his throat, threatening to choke him into unconsciousness. When it passed and spattered on the asphalt near his feet he sucked in a great breath and wiped the tears and snot from his face.

“Connor,” Nicole said. She was next to him now, her arm over his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

He had not even heard her approach, but was very happy she was there. He barely knew her, yet he knew he needed her somehow. Needed to protect her, needed her to keep him focused.

“I’m sorry about what happened back there. I can’t even imagine what you’re thinking right now. It makes me want to crawl up in a ball and die but I can’t. We just can’t.”

“I felt her under the car,” Connor said. “I think I

heard her bones breaking. I…”

“It wasn’t her. I know that sounds ridiculous but it wasn’t her. It was something else. Whatever these…things…are, they’re not human. These people shouldn’t even be alive. I don’t know how they are but they shouldn’t be. So you didn’t kill her, you hear me. She did what any mom would do to save you. She protected you.”

“I should have stayed. I should have at least tried to help her. I could have thrown a punch or a kick. Something.”

“You’d be dead too, and I’d be dead. Hell, even worse, we could be one of them.”

“I don’t even understand what they are. It’s like, they just change. They’re dead, then they’re up.”

“Something viral. I don’t know. It’s not our problem. We just need to get out of here.”

“The walking dead. They’re the walking dead, like in the
Bible
.” Connor finally stood up and scanned the street. “I’m not religious. Are you?”

“Not anymore, no. There was a time—”

“I know it says something in there about plagues and stuff. You think this is one?”

“No. I think that plane crashed and everyone started going batshit insane, that’s what I think. It’s something about that plane, but I’m not going back there to peek around and find out why. I don’t care. Not right now.” Nicole walked back to the passenger side of the car and got in, waited for Connor to sit behind the wheel again. “You saved us, Connor. Don’t forget that. Which means we have to use this time to get out of here and find someone to help. The police station is not far from here.”

“I know where it is. I’ll get us there but if we see more of those things we’re gonna have to take some back roads. They seem to be in packs now.”

“But we have to go to my house first. I have to know if my mom is okay. If she’s not, and I’m beginning to brace myself for this, then we’ll go to the police. But I have to go there first or I’m just going to wonder.”

Connor put the car into drive but kept his foot on the brake. The thought of someone else still having parents almost made him cry, but he swallowed his misery and waited for the feeling to pass. “Seth has this video game, Grand Theft Auto 4, and you can run people over in it. We used to just drive the cars around and smash into the humans. They go flying in the air and bounce off of things and even bleed…it was so much fun. We would sit there and laugh hysterically. But this…I’ve hit at least a dozen people in the last ten minutes, and I don’t know if I’ll ever laugh again.”

As soon as they started driving Nicole suggested they put the car radio on and search for news. Several of the stations were playing music or commercials or the latest pop tunes, what her Mother called screaming-idiot-music. Finally she found a news channel but they were talking about economic hardship and a governor in Maine who siphoned public funds to pay for a golf membership to some club. She kept flipping through stations, sighing when the topic did not involve plane crashes. Finally something caught her ear.

“…large plane crashed in Castor just a short time ago. No details yet but our reporter is on the way. We repeat we have news that a plane has crashed in the town of Castor. No word on any survivors at this time but we are trying to get all the details as fast as we can. Hang tight and hopefully we’ll have a better idea of the situation there, after this.” It cut to another commercial.

“What station is that?” Connor asked.

“I dunno. It’s 105.7 but I don’t know where that’s from?”

“I don’t know either. Try the AM stations.”

The AM stations proved to be pretty useless, full of religious talks, sports commentaries, and light music from the ‘40s and ‘50s. “Nothing. It must be too soon. They usually wait for it to hit the AP wire. That’s what my aunt says, she’s a journalist. Maybe in a few minutes we can—”

The car skidded to a stop and Connor pointed past Nicole, out the window to the street. “That’s Seth’s house down there. I know where we are.”

“Oh crap, there’s an army of those things all around it.”

Saturday, 9:52

They were barricaded in the living room, the couch pushed up against the door, the double-paned glass, installed on every house Seth had lived in after the disappearance of Joana, doing what it could to withstand the beating fists of the angry, bloodied mob. The entire house shook as the pack of crazies outside tried to punch and kick their way in.

Near the fireplace was a bin holding tools for tending a fire. Amanita yanked a poker out and held it like a bat. “What the hell do they want?!”

Seth hefted his sword. It was shaking, along with his entire body. “How the hell do I know? Obviously to eat us!”

“Go away!” Amanita shouted. The command did not deter the yellow-eyed monsters outside from trying to tear their way in. “Leave us alone. We didn’t do anything to you! Just go away!”

“They can’t hear you, and even if they could I don’t think they’d care.”

“We have to hide. If they get in they’ll rip us up in a second. Where can we hide?”

“Under my parents’ bed?”

“What? No, not there! Like a basement or an attic. Is there a crawl space in a closet or something?”

“No. And the attic is in the family room but you need a ladder.”

“What! Why—”

“It’s an old house and the family room used to be a garage and that’s where the fucking attic was. I didn’t build the damn place.”

“Fine, does the basement have a lock?”

“Don’t know. Never checked.”