Phoenix (17 page)

"I hope that doesn’t cause a problem getting
out of here," Brad said. He made a point of not phrasing it as a
question.

Adams opened the door.

It was pandemonium.

What had been muffled noise before was now
crystal clear. Students running past one another, their arms loaded
with personal belongings. The two of them stood in the doorway and
were stunned by what they were seeing. Here and there someone would
step out of their room and be knocked over by a stampeding group of
three or four, hauling ass to nowhere it seemed. Brad noticed that
some who were being knocked down looked just like people from the
group they passed in the stairwell.

"We need to find her and get the hell out,
now," Brad said.

"Agreed."

Brad hesitated, then asked, "Is she on the
right?"

"No."

"Left, then. Let’s go."

They weaved in and out, trying not to run
into anyone, and trying to avoid those who looked sick. The closer
they got to Izzy, the more sick people they encountered. Brad even
saw one guy who wasn’t moving, just standing there, mouth agape,
drooling, the whites of his eyes almost completely brown. Brad
turned his head and watched the guy reach out and try to grab other
people as they rushed by.

Adams stopped and Brad ran into him.

"Sorry." Brad looked back. The guy he was
watching was gone.

"We’re here." Adams started to knock on the
door.

Brad grabbed his wrist. "How do you
know?"

"I know because you’ve been slacking on your
fucking job and I had to ask myself."

"Oh…sorry. Carry on, then."

Kids ran past, clothes were dropped, someone
shrieked down the way they’d come.

Adams knocked.

Brad heard someone yell, "Go! Just go!"

"Screw this." Brad grabbed the doorknob and
gave it a twist. The door swung open and Izzy stood there with a
baseball bat.

"Holy shit you scared me!" she shouted.

Adams reached in and grabbed her arm. "Time
to go."

"My stuff!"

"No time." He jerked her out of her room and
pulled her back toward the stairwell.

Brad followed behind, trapping her between
him and Adams. He’d never met her in person. His only dealings with
her had been during meetings. Everyone looks small on Skype, but in
this case it wasn’t much different than the real-life version. He
knew she was in her early-twenties, but the top of her head only
came to his chest. Five foot tops. If the situation had been
different, he would’ve been oo’ing and ah’ing over her
cuteness.

"Brad! Heads up!" Adams yelled.

Brad turned just in time to see the guy he’d
been watching earlier come out of nowhere and reach for his hair.
Brad ducked, curled an arm around Izzy’s waist, and spun around
until they were in front of Adams.

"Just keep going!" Adams ordered, pushing him
and Izzy on faster.

Brad grabbed her hand and started to run. He
didn’t worry much about hurting her as he jerked this way and that,
dodging everyone in his path. Some of the students running around
were scared to death; some were definitely sick and trying to grab
everyone else. He hadn’t seen anyone biting yet. Finally reaching
the stairs, he pulled her close, checked for Adams, who was right
on their ass, and kicked the door open.

Why
the
hell
is
my
radar
shorting
out
so
bad
? Every time Brad blinked, his entire radar screen jerked
and the lines went squiggly. Sometimes blips would show up and
sometimes they wouldn’t.

"It started, didn’t it?" Izzy asked.

Adams’ shoes squeaked against the tile.
"Yes!"

They sounded like a herd tromping down the
stairs.

"Shit!" Brad squealed and lashed out with a
foot, catching a woman younger than Izzy just under the chin. She
was definitely sick, maybe dead, and was lying on the second-floor
landing. She had just tried to bite Brad’s toe. This confirmed
there was something messing with his danger radar.

Izzy started to protest but Adams urged her
on faster. "It’s getting worse. Pick up the pace."

"Trying!" Brad yelled back.

The group they’d passed earlier was nowhere
to be seen. Brad was sure they’d be huddled against the first-floor
door. He stopped before opening it and checked the other two.
"Ready?"

Izzy’s face was flushed but she nodded.

Adams had her by the shoulders and whispered,
"No."

There was a scream from the other side of the
door. They all jumped back.

"What wa—" Izzy began, but Adams covered her
mouth with his hand.

His eyes were fixed on Brad. "Don’t open
that." Blood ran from his nose and fell on Izzy’s shoulder.

"Dammit, Adams. Stop asking yourself
questions!" Brad then noticed that Adams wasn’t just staring
at
him, but
through
him and all color had drained
from his friend’s face. Adams was shaking, too.

Izzy noticed it. She reached up, pulled his
hand away from her mouth, and patted it.

"It’s okay," she whispered. "We’ll be okay."
She turned her attention back to Brad. "Open it."

"Get ready to run." Brad jerked the keys from
his pants pocket and threw the door open.

They shot out of the stairwell like horses
from the gate and ran straight for the exit. Brad didn’t know what
was going on behind them. From the sounds of it, it was ugly. A few
short feet later, they spilled from the exit and onto the sidewalk
leading to the parking lot.

"There!" Brad pointed out his car. Adams was
already herding Izzy toward it.

There was a great deal more activity outside
than there had been when they’d first arrived. People stumbled
about, having no real direction. Halfway to the car, Brad stopped.
He was surrounded by dead people. Walking corpses. Blood was
everywhere. On them, on the ground, splashed over car windows, on
door handles. Screams came to him from all directions, some close,
some far away. He still heard sirens. He watched a few of these
hallucinations come closer to him and waited to pass out.

"Brad!" Izzy screamed.

His head turned in her direction about the
same time he was tackled by Adams.

"What the hell’s wrong with you! Come on!"
Adams hauled him to his feet and dragged him to the car.

Brad brushed up against one of the corpses
while Adams was leading him. That’s when he realized they were
real.

"Oh shit." Brad jerked free and ran to his
side of the car, squeezing the unlock button on the remote. "Get
in!"

Izzy and Adams were both in and ready to go
before Brad even got his door open. Someone grabbed him from behind
and he snapped an elbow back. He heard a crunch and a body falling
onto pavement. Izzy made a sound inside the car but didn’t scream.
Brad yanked his door open and slammed it behind him. Panting, he
grabbed at his seat belt with one hand and started the car with the
other. He shifted into reverse, steered with one hand while
snapping his belt into place, and ran over something.

"Oh my God! You just hit that girl!" Izzy
yelled from the backseat.

Brad gunned the engine and ran over her with
the other set of tires.
Thump
,
thump
.

Izzy gasped and covered her mouth. Adams
remained quiet. Once the body came into view, they saw she was
dead.

"It’s okay. Izzy, hey, it’s okay," Brad said.
"She was already…dead, before I, you know."
He didn’t believe that and wasn’t entirely sure he cared. But Izzy
needed to believe it, and Adams needed to hear it, though he
probably already knew the truth.

Brad hit the brakes and they stared at the
couple for a long moment. The girl’s hair was matted with blood,
though Brad wasn’t sure how much of that had been caused by him
running her over. She was barefoot and there was blood running down
her leg. The other one looked like a man, but his face was gone. So
were his guts. A black, wet hole was all that was left of his
middle. He lay flat on his back where Brad had knocked him
down.

The
elbow
to
the
nose
must
have
driven
it
into
his
brain
.

"We need to go," Adams whispered.

"I think you’re right."

Brad pulled the gearshift into drive and sped
out of the lot. Izzy unfastened herself and turned in her seat to
watch out the back window.

"You’ll get sick doing that," Brad said over
his shoulder. Adams was next to him, rubbing his forehead. Sweat
dripped off the man and his skin was still pasty. Brad glanced back
to the road, swerved around a Prius that sat cockeyed on the yellow
line, then looked at Adams. "You okay over there?"

He groaned, "No."

"Then why were you doing it? I’m pretty sure
you just told me you couldn’t ask yourself shit because this is
what happened."

Adams glared at Brad. "Because I was trying
to keep us alive, idiot."

"Hey, easy." Brad waved a hand and cut
another corner. The tire jumped the curb, rode the sidewalk for a
second, then dropped back to the road. "I know it’s tough. Can
really get to you after a while…"

"No, asshole. It doesn’t ‘get to you after a
while.’ You have any idea how hard it is not to ask yourself
things?
Ever
?" He poked his temples, hard. "Knowing that
each time you ask yourself something like ‘What do I want for
lunch?’ a drill bit is going to come out of nowhere and ream a
little bit of your brain out? Or what it’s like to have someone jab
the end of a helium tank in your ear and turn it on until your eyes
feel like they’re going to blow right out of your fucking skull all
because you wondered if it was going to rain?"

Izzy twisted around a little and said,
"Better pull over."

Brad didn’t hear her. "Okay, man. Seriously,
just take it easy. I understand what you’re saying, but you really
need to get a hold of yourself."

Adams started to laugh, but instead he leaned
over and puked all over the floor mat.

Izzy turned to watch out the rear window.
"Told you so."

Adams leaned back, wiped his mouth, and
smeared blood and spit down his chin. "Now I feel better." He
closed his eyes and started tapping his foot.

Brad swore and pulled onto the freeway,
except he drove on the wrong side. Traffic was still backed up
leading away from town, and if he didn’t get them all back to
Mort’s as fast as possible, he was really going to break Adams’
foot off and shove it down his throat.

* * *

It was well after dark when they made it back
to Mort’s. They hadn’t spoken a word to one another during the
trip. Not even Izzy. That struck Brad as odd, considering how
high-strung the young woman was. She’d spent her time in the
backseat fiddling with her phone. Whatever she’d read or whoever
she had talked to, or lack thereof, had pulled her down into a
stillness like nothing she’d probably ever experienced before.

Adams had even stopped tapping his foot.

Mort waited for them in the doorway. The
porch light was on and there was a multitude of moths fluttering
around it. Brad pulled in behind Laura’s car and parked. The three
sat in silence for a moment before Izzy let out a soft sigh and
eased her door open. Adams followed suit and held it for her,
closing it with a click. Brad lingered a bit longer.

If what they’d seen on campus was happening
everywhere, what would they do? Here it was quiet and had been so
for the last half of the trip. They lived in a small town by most
standards, though Mort’s house was in the suburbs, and the city
itself was home to several thousand people. What was it like
there
? Brad looked out the window, his eyes glassing
over.

How long before it spread to the quiet
neighborhood where he had grown up?

He had no answers, and he should. He was a
precog
. He should
know
what to do, what was to come.
But he didn’t. He felt more and more like, this entire time, all
they had been doing was waiting. The decisions they’d made, going
on the offensive, meeting and gathering information, all seemed
like busy work to him now. The group could have gone on with their
lives during the past year and the
exact
same thing would
have happened.

And he had killed a man. Murdered him for
apparently no reason. It hadn’t stopped anything at all.

Brad stared harder out his side window,
imagining what the neighborhood would be like in the coming days,
weeks, months. Childhood memories would be replaced by terror and
death. His hands tightened around the steering wheel, and his
breathing grew heavier.

They wasted so much time. They’d been so busy
trying to stop the end of the world, they never considered what
would happen if they actually failed and had no food and water
stored somewhere. Or a safe house, because Mort’s place would never
stand up to a large crowd of those corpses.

Mort tapped on his window.

Brad damn near jumped out of his skin. He
glanced up through the glass and their eyes met. Mort was caught
off-guard by the look in his student’s eyes, and Brad fought
desperately to regain control of himself.

He jerked the keys from the ignition. Mort
opened the door for him and Brad slid out.

"Don’t ask me how it went, okay? Not right
now."

Mort walked alongside and grunted. "Those two
are pretty shook up."

"We should all be shook up." Brad glanced
down at his friend before walking through the door. "It’s as bad as
my dreams out there."

Mort didn’t need any further explanation. He
pursed his lips and walked Brad into the house. Everyone was
gathered in the living room. Izzy sat with Laura on the couch. The
redhead was doing her best to comfort the younger one as well as
she could, but the fact that Izzy was still stone-silent disturbed
Brad. She wasn’t okay, or she had withdrawn so she could deal with
the things that’d happened so far. Adams was on the floor close to
the TV, holding an ice pack on his head, and watching news coverage
of the epidemic on the television.