The Survivor Chronicles (Book 3): The Forsaken (5 page)

He practically fell on his face as the door gave way beneath him and he plummeted outside. Someone grabbed hold of the back of his shirt, causing him to gag as the collar tightened against his neck and briefly cut off his air supply. John yanked him back to his feet as Xander spun and slammed the door shut.

"Get me the dumpster!" Xander gasped. His face was florid as he pressed his back against the door and braced his legs on the ground.

A loud bang echoed from behind Xander as the sick people inside the store crashed into the door. John released him and lurched awkwardly for the dumpster. "Help me," John grunted to the three strangers standing near him as Riley threw herself against the door with Xander.

One of the men bolted away from them and ran toward the woods bordering the back of the store. Carl cursed as the resounding thudding against the back door began to grow. The girl moved to help John as Carl got behind him and started pushing the dumpster. Carl's nose wrinkled at the ripe smell of the garbage, but the dumpster started to groan as its wheels began to turn. The other man joined Xander and Riley as a strange howling erupted from inside the store.

John's eyes widened as he shot Carl a look. "Almost sounds like werewolves."

"Screw you," Carl returned breathlessly as Xander, Riley, and the man got out of the way in time for them to wedge the dumpster against the door.

Carl wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm as he surveyed the area around them. From the sounds of it, he thought all of the ones that had been inside were beating against the door, but he wasn't about to fall for that. Going back for the car was out of the question, he knew that. The woods behind the store offered some protection but he couldn't shake the feeling that the woods belonged to
those
people now.

"This way," the girl said and started running toward the right.

Carl glanced at the others but there was little choice right now as the howling at the back door had ceased. "Hurry," the man encouraged.

Carl didn't have to be told twice as he broke into a brisk run behind them. His lungs began to burn before they made it to the end of the supermarket and he was laboring to breathe in the stale air. He was beginning to rethink his thoughts on not quitting smoking as they sprinted across the back of the stores bordering the grocery store.

They grabbed at the doors of the other buildings as they ran, but none of the doors gave way to their grasp. Carl chanced a look over his shoulder, he didn't see anything pursuing them but that didn't mean anything. He fell back as Xander and Riley began to lag. Though Xander wasn't complaining, he was beginning to sweat excessively and his limp had become more pronounced by the time they got to the end of the street.

The businesses fell away and homes started to replace them. Xander wasn't going to make it much farther if they didn't find somewhere to hide soon. The man ran up the back steps of one of the houses and twisted the handle. The door opened with a groan of hinges that almost made Carl balk against the idea of going in there. A glimpse over his shoulder changed his mind as John now had Xander's arm wrapped around his shoulders and was helping him forward. Carl hurried up the porch steps and into the house. There was no time to search it thoroughly as John assisted Xander into the house. Carl closed and locked the door and nodded to Riley. "Help me with the table."

They turned the small rectangular kitchen table onto its side and pinned it against the door. "The front door," she whispered.

He nodded and hurried out of the room with Riley close on his heels. She studied the stairwell down to the basement of the split level ranch as he threw the locks on the front door and pushed the curtain aside. The street remained clear but he had no doubt that they were out there, somewhere. He looked up as John and Xander stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

John moved away from the door and walked toward him as Riley hurried to Xander's side. She took hold of Xander's arm and helped him away from the door to the couch. The man and girl appeared in the doorway. The girl nervously rang her hands before her as she repeatedly glanced behind her.

"What do we do now?" John asked.

"We get ready," Carl answered.

"Ready for what?"

"For when they find us."

Al,

Al placed his hand on Bobby's shoulder and gently shook the snoring boy. Brown eyes blinked up at him, there was a flash of confusion and then Bobby started upright. Al placed his hand over his own lips in a gesture to silence him as Bobby's gaze darted around the hall. Bobby's eyebrows drew together as he looked at him and then at Josh, who Al had woken first. Bobby's shoulders slumped; he heaved a sigh as he focused on Al again.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Al nodded toward the room where Mary Ellen and Rochelle had slept. "I'll show you."

Al heard the subtle groan Bobby released as he shoved himself to his feet. Al stepped into the doorway of the bedroom and spotted Mary Ellen kneeling beside Rochelle on the bed. The young girl was sitting on the bed; her coffee colored hair a tumbled mess around her shoulders as she stared at them from red rimmed eyes.

Mary Ellen looked to them and climbed quickly to her feet. She gestured toward the window and Al walked over to meet her at it. Ever so slowly, Al moved a corner of the curtain aside to peer out. His breath caught in his chest, a small tremor shook his hand as the horde of people spilled out of the woods, across the street, and into the yard. He hadn't seen so many people since the stadium and he hadn't ever wanted to see so many in one place again.

Especially ones that looked and moved like these people did. He could instantly tell the difference between the mindless wanderers, or The Lost Souls as he was beginning to think of them, and the angrier more rabid individuals. The Lost Souls weren't focused on anything, if there was a tree before them they walked into it and often remained there until someone or something else knocked them away. The ones that didn't get caught up on something walked aimlessly around, sometimes in circles, and they were usually staring at their own feet. More often than not The Lost Souls picked at their own skin and hair. His stomach turned at the sight of their tortured and brutalized flesh.

There was nothing left to them, there simply couldn't be. No human, no matter how sick, would pick off their skin to the bone if there was any reasonable thought left within their brains.

The angrier ones, though they left The Lost Souls alone for the most part, also weren't above pushing them out of their way, knocking them to the ground or stepping on them when they fell.

All of the faces of the sick ones bore some sort of rot, perhaps it was leprosy; perhaps it was simply their bodies deteriorating from whatever illness was ravaging them. Bodies he was certain couldn't hold up for much longer, but then he'd also been certain that a tsunami would never hit Rhode Island.

Life was funny about certainty; he knew it liked to prove people wrong. It most certainly had proven him wrong more times than he could count.

Though the horde had chased most of the coyotes off, he spotted a coyote at the edge of the woods dragging one of The Lost Souls into the shadows. Though their legs were still limply kicking on the ground, the person did little to try and fight the animal off.
"Shit,"
was the only coherent thought he could form as he watched the disturbing display.

Bobby's breath hissed out beside him as even more people filtered from the woods. More of them fell upon the remains of the coyote, tearing into it as if it were a leg from a Thanksgiving turkey.

"The creepy bastards remind me of birds," Bobby muttered. "Like they're flocking or something."

"Lost Souls," Al murmured. "They've been forgotten. They don't know where to go anymore."

"Yeah well I don't know where to go either and I really don't want to know where
they're
going. Not even a little bit," Bobby said.

"Nowhere good," Rochelle whispered.

"Get away from the window," Mary Ellen told her as she gently nudged Rochelle back.

More people spilled out of the woods and flowed unerringly around the houses, truck, and Cadillac. Thankfully they paid little attention to the vehicle loaded down with all of their supplies. Apparently normal food was not what they craved anymore as more of them fell upon the downed coyote. Meat, all they seemed to crave was meat or flesh, or perhaps it was even blood they scented and that drove them onward, who really knew?

He was more than a little curious as to where they were going, what was drawing them onward, but he wasn't about to step foot out there in order to find out. There had to be some food source out there that only they knew about, or could sense. Food and killing seemed to be all they cared about as the ones surrounding the coyote rose and began to move onward. Though he fought against looking, his gaze was inescapably drawn to the bones littering the front yard across from them. If he hadn't known any better he would have thought the skeleton had been there for years it was so picked clean. All that remained was the blood that streaked the scattered pile of bones and lawn around them.

"Now that's just plain wrong," Josh said and shook his head. The young Asian boy's once spiked black hair now hung around his face. His almond shaped black eyes were puffy from lack of slack. "They're worse than vultures."

"Birds," Bobby said again and shook his head. He stepped away from the window. "I've seen enough, let me know if they head this way so I can start shooting."

There was no way they would be able to fend off this many people, but he would still put up one hell of a fight. His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun, he wasn't going to allow them to take him alive. He would take as many of them as he could out with him, but he wasn't going to be alive when they tore into him.

"I think we should all get away from the window," Mary Ellen suggested and turned away from the window. She'd pulled her brown hair into a ponytail that emphasized the beauty of her broad cheekbones and the freckles that speckled her face. Her deep brown eyes were troubled as she focused on him. "Peter can watch from downstairs but the less of us that are gathered around the window the better off we are."

"Who is watching the back of the house?" Rochelle asked.

"I'll go," Al volunteered.

He wanted a few minutes alone to gather his thoughts and try to formulate some kind of a plan anyway. Turning away from the others, he made his way to the master bedroom at the back of the house. There was a single bathrobe still laid out on the bed, seemingly waiting for its owner after a shower. Stopping beside the bed he was briefly caught up in the memory of Nellie humming as she stepped out of a shower and put her robe on. He could see her smile as she knotted the belt before her and dried her hair. He was so entangled in the memory that he briefly lost touch with reality and was transported to a different time and place. She was so real that he could almost touch her as her scent engulfed him.

A small bang shattered the memory and lurched him back into the present. He held his breath as he strained to hear anything else. The bang echoed again from somewhere outside. Shaking away the lingering memory he removed his hand from the cotton robe, he didn't even remember touching it in the first place. Striding over to the window, he pulled the curtain back and peered out, but he couldn't see the source of the bang as it sounded again from somewhere in the woods behind the house. There was a horde of people back there too, though not in the droves that they'd been in the front yard.

He watched them for a moment before letting the curtain slide back into place. He wasn't going to do any good up here if they did decide to come at the house anyway. Moving out of the room, he crept down the stairs and found everyone gathered within the living room. He was about to ask if there was anything new outside when gunshots reverberated through the air.

Al instinctively ducked as more shots rang out and shouts rang out all around him. "What the..."

Al didn't hear the rest of Peter's words as he turned and hurried back up the stairs to the window. He nudged the curtain aside but though he saw scattered corpses at the end of the street he couldn't see the source of the shots.
Those things didn't use guns too, did they?

That made absolutely no sense though; they had some intelligence, unfortunately that much had become obvious, but this whole time they'd been using themselves as weapons and not guns. No, it hadn't been the sick ones that had been firing the guns but then... who?

More shots erupted, he leaned closer to the window and strained to see further down the road but the houses obstructed his view. A few more bodies toppled over in the street, but even more were drawn forward by the gunfire. They were pulled in like the tide during a full moon as they rolled relentlessly forth, some of them even falling over each other in their rush to get to a house he couldn't see.

"What's going on?"

He turned toward Mary Ellen and shook his head. "I don't know."

A sound, one that made something inside of him quiver and long to cry, filled the air. His heart lurched as it went out to whatever was making that sound and yet he knew that the noise was coming from a human. Not one of the sick humans either, he felt the sick ones were beyond the pain and distress that was encompassed within the cry echoing through the air.

He stepped away from the window and inhaled a shaky breath as he tried to block out the sound but failed to do so. They were sitting ducks if they stayed in this house and yet they couldn't leave either. His gaze slid back to the truck and then around the street again. Even if they could make it through all of those people to the truck, he didn't know where the others were and they couldn't just take everything and leave them in this town.

The haunting wail abruptly cut off but he found the ensuing silence even worse than the sound had been. Mary Ellen's chest heaved as her eyes met his. Another sound rent the air, but this one was easily recognizable as a tortured scream. Taking a deep breath, Al turned back to the window and pulled the curtain aside again. There were more bodies in the street, but most of them remained standing as they moved persistently toward the house that he couldn't see.

"What do we do?" Mary Ellen breathed.

He observed the street as he took a step back. He didn't think it was going to get any clearer than it was right now as all of the people were making their way toward the end of the road. He didn't know what had drawn them to that house in the first place. They had been in this house for a day now and he'd never suspected that there were other people on the street with them.

If they left this house now they could probably make it to the truck and the Cadillac, but then what? They drive aimlessly through the town in search of the others? That was if they could even get away from these sick humans. The sick ones were fast, not faster than a vehicle when it got going, but that was the problem, they couldn't get the vehicles to any kind of real speed. The potholes and debris littering the road made that nearly impossible.

His mind spun; in seventy two years he didn't think he'd ever been rendered completely speechless but he didn't know what to say or do.

They could take the vehicles and escape the town. Everything in him screamed against doing that. They couldn't just abandon their friends, they couldn't abandon the people that had saved his life and had been there for him. He'd had his faults over the years. It was rare, but he could have a temper, his patience was known to fray, he wasn't pious, but he had pride in the fact that he considered himself a decent and honorable man. A man that wouldn't abandon his friends in order to save himself.

Taking those vehicles would shatter all of the beliefs he'd ever had about himself. It would be the cowardly way to go and he was far too old to go out as a coward. The others weren't old though. Rochelle and Josh were just children, they'd barely had a chance to live and though it was complete crap out there now, that didn't mean the world would stay that way forever. Man had come through some horrible things before, maybe not
this
bad, but they had persevered in times when the odds hadn't been in their favor.

In order to persevere during those times he was certain that those men had done many things they hadn't wanted to do, and had been ashamed of. They'd done them though in order to ensure that the species survived, and for the species to carry on the young had to live. Riley, Carl, John, and Xander were tough, they were smart and gritty; they were fighters that wouldn't give up. He was determined to believe they were still alive out there, but they had to stay alive
here
too. There was a good chance the others wouldn't even be able to make it back to this street.

He was going to hate himself for the words he was about to say, he would spend the rest of his days with them hanging over his head, but said them he did, "We have to go."

Mary Ellen rang her hands before her as her eyes flitted toward the window. "The others?" she breathed.

"We'll leave them a note and we'll see if we can find them, but to stay here... we just can't," he managed to get out.

He moved away from the window and walked by her before he could change his mind. It felt as if he was walking through quicksand, his legs moved but they did so reluctantly as he climbed down the steps and into the living room. It felt as if he was someone else, as if he was outside of himself as he continued to speak the words that would condemn him for the rest of his life.

"We have to go, while they're distracted. We have to get out of this house," he stated.