Existence Page 11

  Pulling back, she winced as Noah’s hand grazed her left shoulder. The pain traveled quickly down her arm, sharp and throbbing. She turned to look, was petrified of what she’d find. To her surprise the area looked clean and well-dressed. Her peach colored t-shirt had been cut away above the shoulder and the wound wrapped several times over in tan gauze.

  As Noah climbed onto the bed and sat with his back against the headboard, she turned to Chuck. “Thank you.”

  “No big deal, a few of the apartments on this floor were empty. Three doors down they had what we needed. The rest of it’s in the kitchen.”

  Natalie leaned back in her chair, looked toward the window. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  “Oh?”

  “I shouldn’t have said what I said before, I’m sorry, I just—”

  Chuck shook his head. “Don’t apologize, there’s no need.” He turned to Noah and then back to Natalie. “And plus, I had help. Couldn’t have fixed you up without my new best friend.”

  Noah looked like he wanted to giggle, but then turned his eyes away as if he’d begun to remember that they were only part of a larger group.

  Natalie picked up on her son’s change of demeanor. She quickly leaned toward the bed and looked at her shoulder, wanted to turn the conversation before he asked the questions she was sure were coming. “Noah, you helped with this?”

  The nine-year-old boy quickly looked up at his mother and nodded. He furrowed his brow and bit at his lower lip, obviously holding something back.

  “Okay,” she said, “let me guess, Chuck was the one who cut the strips of tape and he had you wrap my arm?”

  Noah shook his head, dropped off the bed, and started toward her. “No, it was the other way around. I cut the tape and he wrapped the bandage around your arm.” Noah stopped in front of her. “But you were awake, you saw me cut the tape.”

  Natalie reached for his arm with her right hand. She took a few seconds to stand and then paused before starting across the room. “I guess I am kinda hungry.” She wasn’t. But there were more important things, and sitting in that chair wasn’t going to help anyone. “What is there to eat?”

  She sat at the window for nearly two hours, her head finally clearing, and her strength returning, as she finished an orange, an over-ripened banana, and a cool glass of water. It was all she could stomach at the moment and now, with Chuck at her side, looked out over the street leading away from the building.

  A few dozen Feeders—maybe more—roamed the long city block. They moved without reason from one side of the road to the other, heads forward, eyes locked on nothing in particular, and now grouped in two and threes.

  “I’m feeling a lot better, I think we should go.” Natalie leaned into the window, didn’t want to downplay her injury, and assumed he’d counter if she did. “My arm’s still a little numb, but I can make it work.”

  As Noah stood next to his mother’s chair also looking out the window, Chuck motioned to a spot on the opposite side of the street. “That’s where we’ll need to go, stay low along the sidewalk and use the cars for cover.” He looked back at Natalie. “You think you might be able to carry a pack, I found one that’s got a waist cinch? It’ll take the pressure off your shoulder.”

  “What, I mean why?”

  “We don’t know how long it’ll be before we find somewhere else to stay. We’ll need food, water—as much as we can carry—not to mention clean dressings for your shoulder. Four packs is almost not enough.”

  She didn’t need even a second to think about it. “Four?”

  “I’ll carry two.”

  “Okay sure, I’m …” Natalie quickly stood from her chair, but now looked back toward the bed, then across the floor, and finally into the adjoining room. “My phone, I thought—”

  Chuck could see where she was headed, stopped her before she went too far. “It’s in the other room, but it’s not going to help. Hasn’t had a signal since last night.”

  She turned and looked at the ceiling fan at the center of the room. “Power’s off as well?”

  “Everything’s dead on this side of town, the other buildings too.”

  Chuck moved to the front room, asked that Natalie and Noah follow. They stood in the kitchen quickly running through his plan for the street and then shoved what they could into the four packs. He once again handed her the nine millimeter and looked back across the room. “This next part is probably going to piss you off.”

  Natalie reached for her son, pulled him into her left side, and watched as Chuck moved to the large window at the far side. He reached into a cardboard box, withdrew a fifty-foot length of polypropylene rope, and began tying it to the leg of the table.

  “Okay.”

  She narrowed her eyes and looked from Chuck, to the length of rope, and then back. “Please tell me you’re not going to ask that my son and I climb out that window?”

  Chuck ignored her question. He instead held his right index finger over his mouth. “Give me a minute.” He then slowly opened the window, detached a white sheet that hung from the lower half, pulled it inside, and laid it next to the dining room table. “We should probably take this as well.”

  Noah tugged away from Natalie and ran to the table. He turned the sheet over, spread it open, and turned to smile at her. “I helped make it.”

  Owen.

  Her husband’s name, in red letters, four feet high, spelled out across the white sheet. She knew what it was and given the fact that Chuck was now folding it and forcing it into his pack, what it represented. “Do you think there’s a chance they saw it?”

  She knew the answer.

  Chuck turned away, once again checked the rope before laying it along the window ledge and glancing at Noah. His voice came out slow and tentative. “I don’t know, maybe. There was something out there last night, back near the intersection, but before I could get a good look, whoever or whatever it was had disappeared behind that red and white delivery truck.”

  Natalie moved across the room, her voice increasing with each step. “What did you see? What was it? Was it my husband, my—”

  The hall just outside the door erupted. Shuffling feet, hands on the door, scratching, pounding. Low guttural moans and heavy breath sounds.

  Noah hurried to his mother’s side and looked to Chuck. “They’re back.”

  Chuck slipped his pack over his shoulder, then helped Noah into his, and Natalie with her waist and shoulder straps. “They’re in the stairs and the lobby as well, more than we want to face. We should go, and the sooner the better.”

  Natalie shook her head, peered down at her shoulder. “I’m not so sure I’ve got the strength for all of that.”

  Chuck leaned out the window, looked down to the street below. “I’ll go first, then Noah. It’s only about a ten-foot drop. I’ll catch you if I have to.” He gripped the rope, began feeding it toward the sidewalk below. “We really don’t have the time to debate this.”

  She hesitated for a brief moment, stared at the door as the sounds in the hall intensified, but then quickly turned back, grabbed her phone from the counter, and slipped it into her pocket.

  Returning to the window, Natalie winced as she bent at the waist. She kissed Noah on top of his head and forced an unenthusiastic smile. “It’ll be alright. We’re going to find Dad and Ava, I promise.”

  Natalie leaned into the wall at the left side of the window, peered down at the street below, her hands now shaking as she looked up at Chuck. “Okay,” she said, “stay low, get to the other sidewalk, and use the cars for cover, got it.”

  23

  Descending the exterior of the brick building proved to be less of a challenge than navigating the crowded streets below. Natalie took her son’s hand the moment she touched down on the sidewalk and quickly drew the nine millimeter. She stayed close to Chuck, sprinting away from the horde, her heart rate spiked as much from fear as from exhaustion.

  Ahead, Chuck pointed to the delivery truck. He wiped at h
is forehead and scanned the street from left to right. As they moved to within twenty yards of the corner, he waved Natalie over and started to slow his pace.

  “Let’s get to the red SUV up there and I’ll check the next block. If they get too close, hop up onto the roof and wait, but don’t fire on them if you don’t have to.”

  She’d heard his words, but her attention was somewhere else. She looked quickly to her left shoulder, the pain now just short of cataclysmic. Blood ran from under the bandage, drawing a thin red line down her shirt from her upper arm to her elbow. She took a slow breath in through her nose, squeezed her son’s hand and nodded. “Okay.”

  Chuck waited for her to start off toward the SUV and then, continuing to watch, moved quickly to the red and white delivery truck. He held the shotgun to his shoulder, roving the intersection and the street ahead.

  “Mom?” Noah stood with his back to the hood of the red SUV, his eyes darting out into the street.

  Natalie let go of his hand, stepped around him, and looked back toward the building. Even from her vantage and under the best of circumstances, the sheet that hung from the window the night before would have been nearly impossible to read.

  She noted a pair of Feeders who had broken off from the main group and were now less than ten seconds away. Sliding between her son and the street, she knelt beside him and looked into his eyes. “I need you to climb up on the roof.”

  “But Mom, what about—”

  “Sweetheart,” she put her mouth close to his ear. “They’re coming, we have to get up there.”

  “No,” he said, “what about …” His words trailed off as he pointed over the hood at a second group. Eight, maybe ten Feeders coming in from the intersection. They were moving more quickly than the first group, but were farther away, at least thirty feet.

  Natalie cursed under her breath and turned to look back over her shoulder. Chuck had momentarily disappeared behind the long row of abandoned vehicles lining the sidewalk, but as he rocketed from the right side of the delivery truck, he had already lined up his first shot. “GET BACK, GET BACK!”

  Chuck had gained the attention of the bigger crowd coming in from the right. He ran awkwardly with the weapon tucked into his shoulder, although he had yet to fire. His eyes were wide and moving between the hood of the SUV and the two groups of Feeders.

  Again, he shouted, “GO, GET BACK TO THE WALL!”

  “Mom, come on.” Noah tugged at her hand, pulled her back toward the sidewalk.

  Natalie was—for the moment—frozen. Not that the thought of being torn apart by the hands and mouths of the approaching crowd didn’t terrify her, but that wasn’t the reason. She simply didn’t see the logic in Chuck’s apparent plan. He was now running toward both crowds with not nearly enough firepower for even half. He was also waving her and her son in the opposite direction. Either he was in the process of sacrificing himself or there was something she was missing.

  As Chuck came to within ten feet of the larger crowd, he slowed considerably, planted his left foot and cut hard to the right. He tracked the two at the front of the group—a woman in a blue blazer and a short man wearing a Lakers jersey—and dropped the barrel thirty degrees.

  Firing a single, thunderous blast, he took out the legs of not only the short man and woman in the blue blazer, but also two others that were close behind. They fell one over the other, those at the rear colliding with the second group now turning toward the red SUV.

  Noah was now up on the sidewalk and using both hands to pull his mother away from the street. She took two uncertain steps back, looked from Chuck to the sidewalk, only half in the moment.

  “Mom, come on.”

  Noah’s voice just barely making it through the one’s screaming in her head, Natalie slowly began to turn. She flinched as Chuck fired a second shot into the crowd and stumbled back into her son.

  Chuck had turned and started to run. He pointed toward the intersection and shouted above the horde now gathering at the center of the street. “GO NATALIE, GET OUT OF THERE!”

  It came rushing in all at once. Her son, her daughter, her husband. The magnitude of her current predicament and what she needed to do. Natalie dropped Noah’s hand—they’d move faster on their own—and turned to run.

  She stayed close to the building and watched as Chuck lowered the shotgun, also turned away from the horde, and ran in a straight line back toward the intersection. They’d meet somewhere past the delivery truck, although beyond that she wasn’t sure what they’d encounter.

  Another twenty yards and looking over her right shoulder, her stomach dropped, the pressure in her temple returning as the vehicle they’d left behind nearly two days before came into view. The charcoal grey Hummer H1, the massive SUV her husband had promised would bring their family together, sat in the center of the road, destroyed almost beyond recognition.

  Every window from front to back had been blown out. The rear passenger side door hung at an odd angle to the rest of the vehicle and every tire had been slashed. And although she knew the beasts now roaming the streets were not entirely responsible, Natalie increased her pace.

  To her left, Noah had started to slow. The nine-year-old could normally outrun her two to one and didn’t appear fatigued, but there was something drawing his attention. He looked into the street, to where Chuck had laid out the more than ten Feeders, his eyes wide with fear and his mouth now open.

  “NOOO!”

  Three of them. Moving again faster than the others, they slipped in between Chuck and the Hummer. In five seconds, they’d step up onto the sidewalk and eliminate any chance her and her son had of making it to the intersection.

  With her left hand out at her side, Natalie guided her son toward the wall and also slowed her run. She continued ahead three strides and spoke to him over her shoulder. “Look only at me, and cover your ears.”

  Natalie raised her weapon and waited as the first Feeder—a man wearing orange coveralls and missing a large portion of the right side of his face—stepped into her line of sight. She fired two shots. The first tore into his neck, just above his right clavicle and exploded in a fine red mist out through his back.

  The next shot, less than a second later, struck the man’s face dead center, caving in his nose and blowing out the back of his skull. Before she could look away, the man in the orange coveralls dropped to his knees and fell backward to the sidewalk in a bloodied heap.

  Natalie then pivoted to the left, cutting off any chance Noah had of witnessing what was to come. She tracked the second Feeder coming in off the street and as she lined up a shot, she noticed Chuck rounding the delivery truck and waving her forward.

  She grabbed for Noah’s hand without looking back and at first came away empty-handed. Then turning to face him, she stepped forward, stayed tucked into the brick wall, and pulled him in close.

  Noah now gripped her hand, his nails digging into her palm and his eyes on the pair of Feeders eight feet away. He tugged her in the opposite direction, but she continued on, watching the path of Chuck’s shotgun and the two infected city workers he was tracking. It was going to be close, but there really wasn’t another option.

  Within five feet, Natalie turned sideways, shoved Noah forward, and dove out of the line of fire. A fraction of a second later, Chuck unleashed hell on the two unsuspecting Feeders. Three close range blasts, and before she could get back to her feet, it was over.

  The bodies lay crisscrossed, one atop the other, missing large sections of their heads. And Chuck, now breathing hard in through his nose and out through his mouth, shoulders rounded, let the shotgun hang loose in his right hand. Dropping his chin to the left but not turning, he said, “Mrs. Mercer … You. Are. A. Badass.”

  Natalie pulled her son in close, held him tight, her heart thundering against his right arm. She didn’t feel like a badass—she felt like a mother who simply did what she needed to do to survive. And as Chuck finally turned to face her, she looked up at him, smiled nervously, an
d nodded.

  “Can we just get the hell out of here, go find my family?”

  24

  The sun had dipped behind the low cloud cover, fading more with each passing minute. The room was cool, the temperature hadn’t risen more than a few degrees in the last eight hours, and it smelled faintly of mold. How they arrived here and what it had taken from them was mostly a blur now, but every now and again, he got a flash, a snapshot of the past few days, darkened images of things his fourteen-year-old daughter should never have had to witness. The kinds of things that at the moment were almost too much for him to handle.

  Owen Mercer sat with his legs crossed and his back up against the cold drywall. He stared out through the broken window that sat along the northeast corner of the damp third-story apartment and tried to imagine a time before the world went all to hell.

  In the opposite corner, near the door, Ava sat with her knees pulled into her chest and continued to cry. She hadn’t wanted to talk much today, although over the last few hours, he could sense that something was coming. She slowly sucked in a breath, paused like she was going to speak, but then didn’t.

  Owen curled his hands into fists and bit into the side of his mouth. He couldn’t see her face, and didn’t need to. The pain was evident, and now he was starting to come to terms with the fact that he may not be able to help her.

  “Ava, are you—”

  “Dad?” Her voice shot from the corner at nearly the same time, hoarse and dry.

  He strained to see her through the fading light inside the tiny apartment. “I’m here.”

  “That man.” She sucked in through her nose. “The one in the driveway, the one who tried to get into our house …”

  “Yeah?”

  “That wasn’t … uh … that wasn’t Mr. Tompkins … was it?”

  Owen wanted to spring from the floor, run to the opposite side of the room, take her in his arms and hug her. He knew what she was doing, why she was asking, and after all that she’d seen, all that she’d been through, what she needed from his answer.