The King of Clayfield - 01 (22 page)

"Sonnuvva...."

I went to the end of the truck and got the man's attention so he would drag himself away from that spot
 
and I could get in. He took his sweet time.

"Come on!" I yelled.
 

He hissed at me.

Then I heard the roar of an engine. I turned and looked south.
 
A block away on Water Street, a white
 
car shot by headed east.
 
I couldn't
 
see who was driving.

Impatiently, I waved my arms
 
at
 
the one-legged
 
man to pick up the pace.

Then, two blocks away, one of the police
 
cruisers came down Walnut with the blue lights flashing. When it got to 6th Street, the driver slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched as the tail of the car fished around, then squealed again as they stomped the accelerator and headed up 6th Street. When they got to me they hit the brakes again.

It was Jen. I
 
went over to the car.

"I heard gunshots. What's going on?" I said.

"We had a little trouble, but it's okay now," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "Where is Mr. Somerville?"

"He's with that girl," she said. "What is that on you? Is that blood? Are you hurt?"

"No, I--"

"Oh shit!" she yelled, and brought the rifle up and fired.

I turned and the one-legged man was now on his face at the rear of the truck. He twitched a little, and Jen shot him again.

"Are you okay? She asked again.

"Yeah, I'm--"

"Did you get them out? Were they up there?"

I shook my head, "There's no one up there."

"But we saw someone--"

"No," I said. "She was
 
sick. I shot her."

"Oh," she said. She looked sad for a moment, and I knew it was sympathy
 
for
 
me for
 
what I had done, and not for the person
 
I'd shot.

"Are you okay?" she said.

"You keep asking that," I said.
 

The white car pulled up coming from the north. They
 
had circled around.
 

Somerville got out. There was
 
blood splattered on his right pant leg, but it wasn't his.

Then the
 
driver got out. She
 
looked like she was in her
 
late teens to
 
early twenties. She was plump but in all the
 
right places.
 
Her reddish blonde hair was
 
cut short. She was wearing a
 
red and black
 
Clayfield
 
High School letter jacket. There was a smudge of something on her cheek and a
 
two-foot length
 
of rebar
 
in her hand. Unlike the rest of us, she wasn't wearing a mask.
 
She was very cute.

"Everything alright?" Mr. Somerville asked me.

I nodded, still
 
staring at the newcomer.

"This is
 
Sara," Somerville said.

"Hey," I said.

She raised her hand timidly.

"Nice to meet you, Sara," Jen said politely.

"Hey," I said again.

Jen turned to me and under her breath said, "Don't get all googly-eyed; she's just a baby."

I ignore that.

"Have
 
you been up there yet?" Somerville asked, looking up to the
 
second floor of the building.

"Yeah," I said. "They were infected."

"Oh," he said, "that's too bad. I had hoped there were more of us."

"Looks like there are," I said, nodding to Sara.

"Yeah," he said, "Sara told me she's been
 
hiding
 
over at the First Christian Church. She really saved my
 
butt back there."

"Are there more over at the church?" Jen asked.

"No," Sara said. "Just me."

"How long have you been there?" Jen asked. "Have you been eating?”

"Since Friday morning," she said. "They had food in the fellowship hall--mostly crackers and ketchup."

"What happened?" I said. "Why were you honking and shooting?"

"I set off the siren," Somerville said. "Then
 
we pulled down the street in the other car
 
to watch.
 
For some reason, the ones from the church came in from behind us instead of in front of us. Before we knew it, they were all over the car--"

"I honked so you could get them off us," Jen interrupted.
 
"Then she came. They left us for her really fast. It didn't take long for her to be covered, too. Mr. Somerville got out to help her and he got cornered.... Anyway, it didn't go exactly as planned, but it went."

Somerville nodded, "It went. Well, that's two buildings down and one to go. Let's check on that
 
other house while they're distracted with the siren. The more of us there are, the better chance we have."

CHAPTER 22

Mr. Somerville drove his truck, I rode with Jen in the police car, and Sara followed behind us in her vehicle. It wasn't that far to the blue house, and other than
 
a couple of
 
stragglers, we had clear streets.

I got to thinking that it might be possible to get something to make a loud enough sound to attract a whole town's worth of infected people
 
to one spot. We might have to try some experiments in coming days to see how long they
 
are fixated on the sounds and how long they would stay. Maybe it would take more than just sound to keep them there. The crowd behind the courthouse had been there at least a couple of days, and sound had been enough to keep them around.
 
The
 
place where we
 
found the generator had a few around, but they had left after they'd killed the people there.
 
Perhaps
 
they had been distracted by something else and moved away for a while.
 
If it was more than just sound, then....

"When we're done at the blue house, maybe we should go back to the court
 
square and check that building again," I said to Jen.

"Why?"

"I didn't really search it. I saw the woman on the second floor--that was all. I didn't really have time to search the whole building."

"You think someone
 
else is in there?"
 
she asked.

"I don't know.
 
From what we've seen, it doesn't make sense that the crowd would be hanging out down there
 
because of
 
one of their own was making a little noise."

She took a left onto Bragusberg Road.

"Did you leave the car cranked--the one with the siren?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Mr. Somerville did it. Why?"

"I was thinking that when the battery died, so would the siren. Leaving it running would extend it some."

She looked over at me.

"You've got that stuff all over you," she said.

"I know. I need a shower."

"Amen to that," she said. "So, what are we going to do about the others?"
 

"What do you mean?"

"Are we all going to camp out at Blaine's? Do you think we should all go back to Brian's house?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, I haven't had time to think about it. Mr. Somerville obviously hasn't been out of his house much, if at all, since this all started, and Sara doesn't seem to have a home. I guess we should at least offer..."

"I don't know," Jen said, parking in front of the blue house. "Councilman Somerville seems to have good intentions, but maybe it would be nice to just be free to live for a while without having to mess with government. I mean, there are only five of us that we know of.
 
If it does come, I don't want to be in charge of anything. I just want to be left alone."

Mr. Somerville knocked on my window.
 
I opened my door.

"You two coming?" he asked.

I nodded, and we got out.

I looked behind us, and Sara was standing in front of her car holding
 
the rebar.

"I told her
 
to wait out here," Somerville said.

I nodded again and smiled at Sara. She smiled back, but only with her mouth.

Before we even got to the porch, we could hear the generator running. It was up on
 
a second floor balcony on the side of the house.

Somerville knocked.
 

"Hello! This is
 
Nicholas Somerville."

Nothing.

He knocked again.
 
Then—

"Go away!
 
I'm armed!"
 
said a woman's voice.

"We don't want any trouble," Somerville said. "We're just checking on you. We've lured the sick people
 
down the road. Now would be a good time to come out."

"Go away! I can see your guns!

"They're just
 
for personal protection, ma'am," Somerville said. "We don't want to hurt you; we're here to help. I represent the mayor's office."

"Don't need help. Go away!"

"Ma'am, they could be back any minute. It's best if you--"

She fired through the front window. Somerville flattened himself against the wall beside the door. I dropped down in front of the porch and Jen got behind
 
a tree in the yard. I looked to the street, and Sara was crouched behind the car.

"There's no need in this ma'am!" Somerville said. "We're just--"

She fired again.

"Okay!" he said. "Stop shooting! We'll leave."

Silence from inside.

Somerville put his hands over his head, but he didn't drop his shotgun.

"We're going ma'am," he said. "We won't bother you anymore. If you ever do need help just--"

"I don't need your help!"

Somerville motioned us back to the cars.

As we walked back, Somerville said in a low voice, "We'll pull down the block and come back on foot--go in through the back of the house."

"What for?" Jen said.

"She can't stay," he said. "They'll be back."

"That's her decision," Jen said.

"There are not enough healthy people around for us to allow idiots to make their own decisions," he said. "It's for her own good."

Jen stopped at the car and faced Somerville.

"I left a friend this morning, because he made the same decision," she said. "His damn basement was full of them things. If I left him, then I'm leaving her. If she wants to stay, let her. We can come back and check on her in a few days. Maybe she'll change her mind."

"It's a bad decision," Somerville said.

"Yeah," she said.

"Let's head back to the court square," I said. "I want to check out that building again."

Somerville looked back at the blue house then got in his truck.

Jen and I
 
led the way back to the square.

I was relieved to see the one-legged man in the exact spot and position in which we'd left him. We pulled around the building and went in through the now
 
unlocked
 
front door.

It was a large room with a black and white tile floor. There was a counter in the back of the room and a couple of display cases against one wall, but otherwise the place was empty. The entrance to the stairs was in the back.

"Let's split into two groups," Somerville said. "Sara and I will go look in the antique store, and you two search this side. The building has three floors that we know of, but we'll
 
check for a basement and roof access. If there are survivors in here, we need to find them."