Hissers (19 page)

“I’m officer Whitaker, or Natalie, but when the shield is on—” she tapped the badge on her chest, “-it’s officer Whitaker. Now here’s the plan. I want you all to pile into that car you drove up in, the SUV, and drive quickly and quietly back to your houses. When you get there, I want you to hide in a basement, hide in an attic, hide under the sink, I don’t care, just hide, until I return with help or the fucking army shows up. Hopefully I can have this place swarming with sharpshooters in the next hour or two.”

“But this place has lights,” Connor said. “You want us to go back to places that have no power.”

“This place is also a police station, Connor, and there’s sensitive stuff in here, confidential stuff, not to mention weapons that, no, you can’t have, and yes I’m looking at you, Seth. I can’t leave you alone in this place. I went over this with your friends.”

“I can’t go home,” Connor said. “My parents are dead. I’m never going back there again.”

“I’m sorry, Connor, I have no words to make you feel better. And I’m sure it stings that I’m making you go but my hands are tied. I can’t turn the station over to kids.”

Amanita leaned back in her chair. “I said we were fourteen. And besides, what about the men in the jail cell?”

Officer Whitaker pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. “Honestly, I don’t care. They screwed up. Drunks, troublemakers, and two guys who tried to have their way with an eleven-year-old in Wallington. Caught ‘em speeding near the high school. Chief was waiting to reveal that one to local news tomorrow. At least it’s something print-worthy for Castor. The arrest I mean, not the… Look, as far as I’m concerned they can all burn in hell. I realize that makes me sound like a bitch, but you work this job everyday and see how much sympathy you have for idiots who make these choices in life. Chances are they’ll be fine and dandy anyway, locked up tightly behind those bars. Probably the safest people in town. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“So that’s it,” Nicole said. “We’re on our own again?”

“Sorry, kid. Like I said, they didn’t train us for this. I have my own problems now. And I still have no idea where Ross is. That’s my ex. Grew a mustache after we broke up. I hate it, think he did it just to piss me off. God, I can’t stand him.”

Sunday, 12:00am

When the police station was locked up, and Officer Whitaker had driven away in her cruiser, everybody piled back into the SUV. The vehicle was smeared with tacky blood and chunks of meat no one wanted to look at. The windshield had a lightning bolt crack stabbing straight down the middle.

Nicole let Connor take the wheel again while Seth and Amanita sat in the back. She still couldn’t get over the fact that Connor had shown up, just like he said he would. It almost made her feel pathetic to know he’d lost both his parents and was still willing to fight. Part of her was ready to give up. Part of her was happy the officer had told her to go home, since that’s where she wanted to be. Mom would be so disappointed if she just left.

She was getting upset and realized she was pinching her leg like she always did when stress set in. The sharp pain felt good, necessary, providing a moment of reprieve from her thoughts, a way to focus on something else.
Name all the Metalloids on the Periodic Table: Boron, Arsenic, Polonium, silicon, Germanium, Tellurium… You’re missing one. Think harder. Got it: Antimony.

She felt a little calmer, but not much. Instead she began to feel lost, hollow, defeated, a familiar twisted knot of a mood that was like an old friend. The same sense of inadequacy and worthlessness she’d woken up to the morning her mom told her Dad had left. Just got out of bed in the middle of the night, started the car, and never looked back.

She’d been five, and the depression had soon turned to anger, but back to depression again at some point. “We don’t need him.” Mom’s battle cry for the next several years. Do your work, get into a good college, make
me
proud. Fuck that bastard.

There were times when she hated her father for leaving, times such as the Father/Daughter dances at the grade school when she had to ask Uncle Clive to take her. The man didn’t want to be there and she didn’t want him there either. It didn’t really feel like family.

Other times, she wondered if her father might not be living a better life without them. A mansion in Florida, two Ferraris in the garage, a young model wife that never yelled. Could she blame him? Mom got angry so easily. God knew she would be pissed if Nicole didn’t go home and organize a search party for her.

She felt the skin under her jeans break, an old cut opening up. With this new searing pain, she finally relaxed.

Connor turned the radio on and listened for updates but the DJ was still reporting that, despite the knowledge of a crash, no one had any firm details.

“I don’t understand why we haven’t seen helicopters,” Seth said. “Every time there’s a crash somewhere it’s on the news in minutes. They always have aerial footage. Anybody else find that strange?”

“The whole night is strange, Super Mario.” Amanita took out her pack of cigarettes and looked inside. “And I don’t think it’s a great idea to sit here like morons. What do we think of officer Witless’s idea?”

“I think it’s dumb,” Connor said. “And I have no intention of going back to those streets.”

“But what about our parents?” Seth asked.

There it is,
Nicole thought.
Someone else wants to go back as well.
But she held back from commenting. Things felt too confusing at the moment. Maybe right now Connor was what she needed. She looked over at him, wondered what it would be like to put her lips on his, just stay there for a while.

Connor started up the SUV and backed out of the police station parking lot. “I’ll take you somewhere close if you want to go, Seth. It’s up to you. But I think it’s suicide. And I know this sounds mean but I saw the group of freaks surrounding your house…and if you’re parents were in the area then—”

“Don’t say it! You don’t know! They could still be hiding somewhere!”

Connor sighed. “Let’s face reality here. These things attacked without warning and whatever they’re spreading it’s lightning fast. No one was prepared. We’ve been lucky to get away so far but it won’t last forever. It certainly won’t last on dark streets with roving mobs of undead.”

“Well, what do you propose?” Seth was looking out the side window, perhaps to hide fresh tears. Nicole could see him in her rear view mirror but chose not to watch him. It was obvious he, like the rest of them, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“The cop said you were on Farmers near the bridge?” Connor posed the question to anyone.

“It’s bad,” Amanita said. “Real bad. But I can’t say what it’s like near the bridge itself. Could be we were at the heart of the shitstorm.”

The SUV pulled onto the main boulevard and headed east. “Well if that cop says she can make it to the bridge I say we try too. If we stay here those things will find us eventually. We already know they break into people’s houses. All in favor say, ‘aye.’”

Amanita said aye. Seth fingered the power lock button on is door for a few seconds then reluctantly said aye as well.

Nicole turned and looked out the window at the evergreens lining the road. She didn’t want to go to the bridge, she wanted to go home. She wanted to go somewhere and let Connor hold her. She wanted to go back in time. She felt like a mess.

“Sure, why not,” she finally said.

Sunday, 12:08

They took the only back road any of them knew to skirt the traffic jam and flesh feast on Farmers Road. It was riddled with pot holes and had once been a trail for tractors. The older teens in town called it the Jumping Bean, rode their pickups over it as fast as possible, seeing which was stronger: the truck’s will to throw them through the windshield or the seatbelts’ will to break their collar bones.

Either way it was supposedly fun as shit.

The access road not only had no street lights, but was completely neglected by the roadways commission, which was in charge of trimming tree tops away from power lines and low hanging branches from over sidewalks and roads. Here the trees and bushes grew wild in the summer. It was like driving through a jungle.

A general consensus was met that Connor should turn off the headlights but keep the mud lights on. The illumination this provided was about the same as striking a match in space. Only once did the faint orange lights catch the reflective orbs of a raccoon or possum.

“
Tapetum lucidum
,” Nicole said.

“What?” Connor asked.

“From the biology test just before summer. The mirror-like tissue at the back of a nocturnal animal’s eyes. It was one of the bonus questions.”

“Oh, right. I got that one wrong.” He’d only scored a 73 on the test. Science was not his strong point, not like history and health and, well, let’s face it, phys-ed class. He wondered briefly if the animals were being attacked as well, and suddenly thought of a ragged golden retriever with yellow eyes and snapping jaws chasing down victims. Old Yeller come to get his revenge.

Sunday, 12:11

The Jumping Bean let out onto Farmers Road just a few hundred feet from Jefferson Bridge. The tops of its arched trusses were visible over the small hill in front of them. The lights over the entrance to the bridge, that normally lit up the sign reading, TO JEFFERSON, were out. Abandoned cars were lined along the sides of Farmers Road.

There was no movement of any kind on the road. No people, no hissers, not even smoke or fire from the couple of overturned vehicles. There had been one hell of a party, it seemed, but they were too late to join in the festivities.

It was one time in Seth’s life he felt okay not being invited.

Connor turned left, eased the SUV onto the road. Outside Seth’s window everything felt wrong. It was all too dark, too black, too separated from reality. Even the woods around the gorge and the moon in the sky felt like a video game mod done by some amateur designer who’d goofed up the color palette. He’d been expecting either a scene of blazing fires or flashing sirens, police and firefighters ushering people out over the bridge into Jefferson. This was too quiet, too dead.

Inside the car, everyone remained silent, all eyes scanning the darkness around them.

Seth stuck his head into the front. “Turn off the radio. If those things are hiding outside we might be able to crack a window and hear them.”

“Not a bad plan,” Connor said.

The SUV crested the small hill and they all saw the entrance to the bridge. A handful of overturned cars blocked the way.

“Shit,” Nicole said.

“I think I can get around those cars,” Connor said. He steered the SUV through a small gap between a charred sedan and a pickup truck with one head light still on, its beam shooting into the gorge, just barely illuminating the distant rock wall on the other side.

Nicole’s voice rose: “Watch it, you’re gonna hit—”

Too late. The SUV scraped along the grill of the truck and snapped the rear view mirror off of the passenger door.

“Sorry,” Connor said.

What are we apologizing for,
Seth wondered.
It’s not as if any of this matters anymore. It’s not like Nicole’s mom is around to ground her.
It wasn’t like any of their parents could do anything anymore. Not punish them, not save them, not call him by his sister’s name after two Zoloft and five glasses of wine.

The SUV finally made its way onto the bridge and began the trek across. Here, smoke from several ruined cars created a fog that threw even the wan mud light beams back at them. Connor crept to the right to avoid a downed motorcycle. The proximity to the guard rail of the bridge gave Seth a brief moonlit view of the dark, dry river bed some ten stories beneath them.

They’d all learned about the Jefferson River in school. The town’s founder, Abraham Castor, saw the abundant amount of quartz in the wooded hills surrounding the valley they called home. The Jefferson River had served as his sole source of energy during the construction of the mining facilities, long since gone. Two massive water wheels, driven by the rushing rapids, gave light and other technological wonders to the budding community. Slats from the wheels were still hanging on the wall of the town armory, now a makeshift museum to Castor and his quartz empire. The slanderous story of how Castor impregnated two local squaws and had the children killed to save the sanctity of his marriage had been conveniently omitted, though it was easily found in any history book concerning the area.

Once a mighty gushing body of water, the Jefferson River had been reduced over two centuries of industry to a mere trickle of brown sludge that meandered pathetically through small boulders and weeds. Damming from logging companies and chemical spills from factories in the next state all but ensured its impending demise. The local press never failed to kibbitz about the proposed death date of the river—since journalists always rally around semantics and will fight about the color blue if given the chance—but all agreed it would not be more than five years before the riverbed was dry as a bone. At which point, someone would no doubt fill it in and put a strip mall on top of it.