The Darkest Days (Death & Decay Book 0.5) (5 page)

Before Wyatt and Stephen could rush to his aid,
the handle slipped from Andrew’s grip and Trevor flung the door
open. In an instant, Trevor sprung from the holding cell and
latched onto Andrew. The two tumbled to the ground in a tangled
mess as Trevor buried his face in Andrew’s neck.

More shrieks echoed down the halls, and a man
burst through the door to the processing room. The man’s left arm
was a ragged mess where his wrist should have been. He let out
another harsh scream and charged straight for Wyatt.

Wyatt fired and the man collapsed into a
motionless heap. “Get that door closed now!” More of the deranged
were dashing down the hall towards the holding cells. A few of the
people who were trying to take shelter darted forward to the
door.

Another shot sounded behind him. Wyatt whirled
around as Stephen pulled Trevor’s inanimate form off of Andrew.
Stephen leaned in as he tried to find any hopeful sign in Andrew’s
all too lifeless form.

“No!” Wyatt jumped forward and seized the collar
of Stephen’s uniform.

“No! No! He needs our help! He’s dying!” Stephen
fought back as Wyatt dragged him away from their fallen friend.

“No, Stephen, he’s dead!” Wyatt hauled Stephen
up and looked him square in the eyes. “He’s dead and in a few
seconds he’ll wake up again but he won’t be the same person. Do you
understand?”

After a moment, Stephen nodded, his eyes still
locked on the red pool that had spread beneath Andrew. “Good, there
are people who need us.” Wyatt looked around at the terrified
faces, barely a dozen of them. “Get them in the sally port. We’ll
figure out what to do after that.”

“We can’t hold them!” The shout ripped them from
their conversation. The door to the processing center wasn’t
closed. Three people futilely pushed against the arms and legs
caught between the door and the frame.

All at once, the door exploded inward and a
cascade of bodies fell through. The room became overwhelmed with
sound. People screamed as the snarling mass began to pick itself
up. At the head of the seething crowd, Lieutenant Jamie Carter
pulled himself free of the entangled limbs.

“Get in the sally port! Get to the door!”

The monsters pulled themselves up and
immediately set upon the survivors who were huddled together.
Screams resounded through the confined room in an ear-splitting
chorus.

Wyatt opened fire as more of the deranged
flooded in through the door, which was now propped open by a pile
bodies. With each shot he fired, three more creatures took its
place, and he took a small step back.

“Wyatt, all clear! Double time!” Stephen’s voice
rose over the clamor.

After a few final shots, Wyatt spun on his heel
and sprinted for the door. The deranged howled at his back. Stephen
held the door open, ready to slam it closed the instant Wyatt
crossed the threshold. At the last second, Wyatt threw himself
inside and slid like a baseball player trying to reach home
base.

Relief flooded through him as the door clicked
shut. A fraction of a second later, a thud resonated through the
door. It was followed closely by a dozen more until the sounds
blended together in a rhythmic banging.

Slowly, Wyatt rolled onto his back. The floor
was nothing more than dirty concrete, but the coolness of it felt
good against his sweat-covered skin.

After a few moments, Wyatt opened his eyes. What
greeted him was empty space. Alarmed, Wyatt pulled himself up in
one quick motion, causing the few nearby survivors to step back
fearfully.

“Where is everyone?” He looked around wildly, as
if perhaps this was a cruel game of hide-and-seek.

“This is everyone.” Stephen’s gaze fell to the
floor. “None of the others made it.”

One by one, Wyatt looked over the remaining
survivors. Five faces looked back at him. Of the dozens that had
entered the station, only a total of six remained. Wyatt staggered
against the SWAT car parked in the sally port.

Six.

Day 2
1:06 pm

For a long time, everyone just sat and stared at
each other. No one could believe they were all that was left.
Perhaps others had taken sanctuary in other rooms of the station,
but they might as well be half a world away.

“We can’t just sit here forever. We have to do
something!” The conversation had been circling along the same lines
for hours.

“We just have to wait for help. It will be here
soon enough.” The person who spoke was one of the civilians who had
escaped into the sally port with them, Jerry. He was a tall man
with an average build. His neatly combed hair had become
disheveled. He wore a short-sleeved pale-blue, button-up shirt and
nice but inexpensive loafers. Jerry was lanky, as if he had never
quite filled out his skin right. A smattering of delicate red
flecks marred his meticulous appearance.

None of them looked very presentable. They all
bore some mark of their struggle. Blood. Not their own but they all
bore the color. Dirt. The station had been clean but in the
fighting they had collected enough of it. Sweat. From fighting and
fear. Tears. For the lost. From the fear and uncertainty.

“How long are we supposed to wait?” Stephen
paced back and forth.

For now, Wyatt was content to let the others
hash out their opinions without him. His own thoughts were more
than he could handle without responding to the thoughts of others.
As he watched, Stephen moved back and forth along the same
invisible line.

What made them so special? While he was grateful
to have survived the last twenty-four hours, he couldn’t understand
how the two of them had been the only survivors of their
department.

Survivors.

The word had crossed his mind a number of times
when he thought of the huddled masses of people who had filled the
station hall. Until a few moments ago, it hadn’t occurred to him
that the word also applied to him.

Survivors.

Of what? What had actually happened? Those
people. The others. Were they mentally ill? It couldn’t be. Mental
illness wasn’t contagious. Was it drugs? PCP? That was impossible.
They couldn’t all have taken drugs or been unknowingly dosed. Could
it be a virus?

How had they been so lucky to survive?

All the people they had lost. Their faces
paraded through his mind like a macabre slideshow. Ali. Thomas.
Jamie. Trevor. Andrew. Those were just the ones he had seen. Other
officers had made it back to the station but had not made it inside
last night.

What about all of the civilians? At least a
hundred, probably more, had gravitated to the station in search of
help. Of those, only forty-seven had made it inside as the deranged
had descended upon the crowd. Of those forty-seven, only four still
stood.

What about Sarah and Ben? Jerry had graciously
loaned Wyatt his cell phone. After three rings, the house phone had
gone to voicemail. He had tried Sarah’s cell phone, her parents,
his parents, and the neighbors a few houses down the street. No
answer.

“…at least a few days. Someone will come.” Jerry
snapped back. This wasn’t the first time tempers had begun to boil
over in the conversation. The group of six was evenly divided over
their situation.

“What makes you think that everyone else isn’t
in the same boat? Maybe the world is like the rest of us and just
trying to keep themselves alive!” A woman, Miranda, huddled with
her fifteen-year-old daughter against the wall. Miranda’s long
paprika-colored hair had been hastily pulled away from her fair,
oval-shaped face into a ponytail. Though the woman was not fat, she
would not be considered thin either. “We can’t wait for help that
will never come.”

“Help is coming! It has to be!”

“Even if help is coming,” Stephen growled,
“there are one and a half million people in St. Louis and St.
Charles County that are either crazy or need saving. That doesn’t
even include any of the surrounding counties that might be
affected. It may take them a while to get to everyone. What are we
supposed to do in the meantime for food or water?”

This time the group was silent. That was the
only thing they could agree on. The sally port was dishearteningly
bereft of supplies.

Wyatt turned his head to the side as something
caught his attention.

“We need to—”

“Shut up.” The short harsh words left Stephen
speechless. Again, Wyatt could hear the quiet sound through the
silence.

“Is your radio on?” Stephen simply nodded. “Give
it here.”

Wyatt snatched the radio from him and turned the
volume up.

“…Olivia Bennett. Is anyone out there?” For a
moment he stared at the radio. He didn’t know who this person was,
but someone else was alive outside their enclosed world.

“Olivia, this is Officer Wyatt Ward of the
Cottleville Police Department.” After a moment, no response came to
his call. Panic began to rise with the thought that perhaps it had
taken him too long to respond.

“Hello, Olivia? Are you still there?”

“I’m here! I…I wasn’t sure anyone would
respond.” He could hear relief that mirrored his own in the woman’s
voice. The rest of the group knelt down and crowded close around
him and the radio.

“It’s nice to know someone else is still out
there.” Wyatt couldn’t hide the relief from his voice.

“What is happening? Why are people acting
so…strange?” The woman’s voice was quiet and tentative.

“You mean the sick people?”

“Is that what they are? Sick?” She didn’t seem
surprised.

“That’s what I think, but it’s not like anything
I’ve ever seen. If it’s not some kind of sickness, I don’t know
what it could be.”

“Do you know?” The woman’s voice was tentative.
“Is this happening everywhere?”

Wyatt rubbed his face. He should have expected
the question. Over the past twenty-four hours it was one that had
never been far from his mind. “I don’t know for sure. There’s
rioting going on everywhere, not just in St. Louis. I don’t think
it’s a coincidence.”

There was a long pause before Olivia responded.
“Do you think help is coming? Maybe the military.”

“We were just talking about that.” The group
exchanged furtive glances. “We don’t know.” Wyatt considered what
to say next before he continued. “I think help will come if this
isn’t too widespread.”

“We? There are others there with you?” Wyatt
could hear the excitement in her voice. “How many?”

“There are six of us. Myself, another officer,
and four others.” The despair this reminder brought was evident
across all of their faces. “It’s about five percent of our original
number.”

“I-I-I’m so sorry. To all of you.” Silence fell
over the radio. “Officer Ward, we need help. I’m trying to get my
daughter away from…all of this. But I need help. There are so many
of them.” For a brief moment the radio went silent. “I don’t think
I can do this by myself.”

“You have a child?” An invisible hand took hold
of his heart as he thought of Sarah and Ben.

“She’s eighteen months old. Her name is
Elli.”

Miranda squeezed her daughter a little closer as
Wyatt struggled for words. There was nothing they could do to help
this woman, who reminded him so much of his own wife.

“I’m sorry, Olivia.” The words were slow to
leave his lips. “I want to help you but we’re pinned down at the
station. We lost control of things quickly. If we ever had
control.” Wyatt swallowed around the lump that formed in his
throat. “Now we aren’t sure how to get ourselves out of this
mess.”

A couple of moments passed before Olivia
responded. As her voice came over the radio, he could hear the
restrained tears in her words, but there was a hard edge of resolve
behind it. “What should we do?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m on the east side of Highway Sixty-Four. I
don’t think I’m too far south of Old Highway Ninety-Four, but I’m
not exactly sure. We are trying to get to a farm out past Troy. How
am I supposed to get her all the way out there, on foot by
myself?”

“Do you have a car? The highway is probably a
mess but maybe you can use the side streets to get you there a
little faster.”

“I…I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back
in a car.” He could hear her heavily sigh even through the radio
static. “Elli and I were caught just on this side of the Boone’s
Bridge when those things just came out of nowhere. Then suddenly
they were everywhere. People were running…screaming…dying.”

After another pause, Olivia’s voice came back
strong and determined. “People were trapped in their cars by them
or trapped by other people. They couldn’t fight, couldn’t escape.
They just had to wait to die. I don’t want to get caught like that.
The roads are probably jammed up everywhere, and it’s going to get
worse throughout the night as more people realize what’s happening.
If we hit a jam, we’ll get trapped just like on the highway, only
this time there will be more of them and we’ll be by
ourselves.”

“I’m glad you made it.” The words were sincere.
He didn’t know this woman but no one deserved the death these
monsters offered. “But you aren’t quite out of the woods yet. Let
me think a minute about a plan B.” Wyatt rubbed his hands across
his face. He paused and wondered how many times he had done that in
the last day.

“Anybody have any ideas?” He looked between the
group members as he posed the question. “We can’t seem to decide
what’s best for us, but we have each other. Whatever is happening
is at least reaching across the city. This woman is scared and
alone with no one to help keep her daughter safe.” His gaze fell to
Miranda and they locked eyes for a moment. “We can’t give her any
physical help, but I think the least we can do is try to offer her
our advice and support.”

The group bent in close and the heated debate
started again. This time, however, tempers never boiled over.
Instead, with the purpose of helping another in the same desperate
situation, they came together with determination to find a suitable
solution.