Sometimes We Ran (Book 3): Rescue (26 page)

“Oh, no. Oh God, no,” Lyle said. As we watched from the floor, other zombies from the bank joined Miss Jeanie at the glass door. Lyle stood, and grabbed me by the jacket. There was a strange, wild look in his eye. “We have to get in there. They could still be alive.” He pulled me close. “You can do it. You can shoot your way in, and we could save the rest. Please, John!”

“They're gone, Lyle. It's over,” I said.

He pushed me into the door, sending the Red-Eyes into a frenzy on the other side of the glass. “No. You promised to help! We've got to get them out.”

Something inside me broke. Lyle still didn't get it. I shoved him off me, and into the center of the vestibule. “They're gone! Dead...just like everybody else in this damn town. Get it through your head. It's over.” My voice reverberated off the walls, and was amplified by the small space. I took Lyle by the shoulders and shook him. “Your people are gone. We're not going in there. There is nobody to rescue.” I released him, and he sank to the floor again.

Claire walked up with the discarded backpack in her hands. “Marianne. It belonged to someone named Marianne.”

Lyle looked up from his stupor. “Not Marianne. Please, not her.” He ran his hands along the girl's backpack, then put his head down again in sorrow.

We now had zombies on both sides of us. I stood there, out of options, my mind racing. Any attempt to escape would make us permanent residents of this town. The growls and cries of the undead began to rise in pitch, as the hunger drove them insane.

Claire looked around at our situation. “It's over. All over.”

“No medicine, either. Nobody to bring anything back for our sick people,” I said, leaning against the wall. My thoughts turned to poor Cora, the young girl coughing her life out in the infirmary. The burning of children's corpses was one of the more distasteful parts of the zombie apocalypse for the survivors left behind. Lyle had a strange look on his face, and he couldn't look me in the eye. A horrible thought crossed my mind.

“You never had any medicine, did you Lyle?” I asked.

He looked down at the gray tiled floor of the ATM vestibule. “No. I thought it was the only way I could get you out here to help me. No one does anything for free these days. You know that. I needed a way to get you to help me.”

Claire threw the backpack into one of the corners. She bent down, and got in Lyle's face. “You lied to us! We risked our lives, and John nearly got killed, and you lied to our faces.”

She stood up, and turned her wrath on me. “Do you see what's going on here? We're never getting out, and we're never going home. I am never going to see Ryan and Alex again. You are never going to see Karen again, either.” Claire's voice broke as emotion overwhelmed her. “How do you propose we get out of this, John? Tell me.”

The Red-Eyes were stacked against both glass windows. More zombies had come from inside the bank to join Miss Jeanie. The terrible muffled moaning increased as the undead clawed to get inside the ATM vestibule. The doors and glass walls were holding, but I didn't know how long we had before anything got to us. I turned and found a seat on the floor under one of the wooden shelves where people used to fill out deposit slips and do there banking in happier times. It was a place to rest and think. Putting my weary, throbbing head back against the wall, I closed my tired eyes

“I'm going to sit and think for a while. Maybe we all could just sit and think,” I said, to the room. Neither of my travel companions bothered to answer me.

“C
ould you use some company? Getting kind of cold and lonely over on the other wall.”

I picked my head up, and looked into Claire's smiling face. “Yeah...okay,” I said, moving over to give her some room. It had been a few hours since she had spoken to me. 

She sat down with a heavy sigh, and put her head against the wall. “Got to say. Not one of our better trips outside.”

I managed a small laugh. “No. Not very smooth, I guess. Saw you talking to Lyle before. Did you get anything out of him?”

“No,” said Claire with a tinge of sadness in her voice. “He's pretty out of it.” She stretched out her legs, and flexed her injured ankle. “I guess losing everything does that to a person.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Claire put her head on my shoulder. “You remember the time you and I had to hide out in that candy store?”

“Yeah. That was so long ago. I remember the rain. We were both drenched. The Red-Eyes surrounded the place, and you found that stale fudge with the green fuzz on it in the back.”

Claire laughed softly. “It wasn't so bad with the green stuff cut off. We pigged out.”

“Filled our bellies,” I said. The memory washed over me like an ocean wave. That had been a long night.

“How did we get out of that one?” Claire said.

“The rain got worse, and turned into hail. It drove the zombies back into hiding. We made a break for it out the back door,” I said

“Oh, yeah...across the field with the black mud,” Claire said. “I remember running over all the bodies buried in that mud. Still have dreams about it, sometimes.”

“Stepping over skulls,” I said. “Are you saying that time was similar to this situation?”

“Maybe. We won't be able to use the back door,” Claire said.

“The cold may drive the zombies away from the bank. Maybe we can make a run for the bus,” I said. It was, at least, a little hope.

Claire took hold of my hand. “Do you think they miss us back home?” Claire was full of questions.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Maybe they're looking for us right now.”

Claire was silent for a while, like she was thinking. Then she said, “That guy at the Fort. The one I hit with my bat. I killed him, didn't I?”

A chill ran through my tired body. “I don't know...”

She sat up. “Don't lie to me.”

Claire was my good friend. We had been through hell together, and came out the other side. I couldn't bring myself to her anything but the full truth. “It didn't look good.”

Claire looked down, and shook her head. “I knew it. Been thinking about it since we left the Fort.” Disgusted with herself, she continued, “I'm starting to agree with you. What you said before. It's getting too easy to kill.” She began to cry softly, tears running down her cheeks. “We will never be forgiven for what we've done.”

I looked into Claire's deep, blue eyes. The hard years after the zombie apocalypse had dulled them slightly, but they still sparkled with life. The toll of struggle was no doubt written on our faces. There was nothing I would have rather done at this moment than get her home. Get her home to her son. I wanted to get us both back home so we could live again, and try to forget about the bad world outside. She had never killed anyone with her bat before, just the undead. I always dealt with the living  with my gun.

“Don't pay any attention to what I say,” I said. “I don't know what I'm talking about.”

Claire returned her head to my shoulder and put her arms around me. We often sat like this in the past when we were on the road together. I put my arm around her to try and comfort her, to comfort both of us. “We've both had a really lousy trip, I guess.” I kissed the top of Claire's head. Even with all the running around and dealing with zombies, her hair still managed to smell like fresh strawberries.

We sat like that for an hour or two, silent. Outside, the dead danced, and shuffled around on the sidewalk of the old town. The moaning and growling was picking up again. To drown them out, I tried to concentrate on my breathing, trick myself into closing my eyes to rest. It was difficult over the noise, but I managed to relax a little. I didn't notice when Claire stood up.

My eyes popped open. “What is it?”

Claire walked around, kicking the discarded papers around. Pointing at the floor, she said, “Blood trail. Didn't notice it at first with all the paper in here.” She walked along, following the trail from the bank to the lobby door. “A few drips of blood in a trail all the way to the door.” Claire stood, and looked across the street.

Knees and back creaking, I stood up and joined Claire at the window. “What are you getting at?”

“Do you think Lyle's people could have made it across the street?” Claire asked. “This blood could have come from an injury. They might have carried them through the lobby The door was unlocked, as well. Nobody was left behind to lock it.” She turned, and pointed to several buildings across the zombie-infested road.

Looking through the dead trudging up the street, I saw a long, brick building, painted white. A faded sign near the front door revealed it was a drugstore. The side facing the bank had a few dark windows and a single front door. Pallets of construction supplies were scattered on the sidewalk and parking areas near the door. Like the rest of the town, it was under repair. A chain-link fence surrounded the building with a gate in front of the door. Claire might be right. If Lyle's people made it across, the old drugstore was not a bad place to hide.

“How's the ankle, Claire?” I said. “How do you feel about a jog across the street?”

“I think I can handle it,” Claire said. She gestured towards Lyle, still silently sitting on the floor. “What about him?”

Taking a seat beside Lyle, I said, “You with us?”

He didn't answer, only continued to look at the ground. “I don't know if you heard us or not, but Claire thinks your friends might have made it out of here and across the street. We were going to take a walk, and check it out. You with us, Lyle?”

He looked up at me with his eyes still half closed, like he was waking from a long nap. “It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing does. You're right. They're gone. I left them here, and they died.”

“Maybe. But I'd like to get out of here, and I would hate to leave without checking across the street. Maybe they made it, and we could all get out of here together,” I said.

Lyle still didn't look convinced. “Go out there? With those things running around. They'll jump us.”

I leaned my head against the wall. “Since this whole mess started, I've learned there are times you run the other way, and there are times you hide. And then are times you run right at them and hope for the best.” I stood up, and offered my hand to Lyle to help him to his feet.

Lyle took my hand, and stood up. “I'm sorry I lied to you.”

“You were doing what you thought you had to do for your friends. Pretty common these days. Let's just get the hell out of here in one piece,” I said.

I went back to the window to check on the status of the dead outside. The real hunter-killers were back in hiding. What was left on the street were the mangled and the crushed. The ones missing arms, legs, and eyes crawling on the street. The dead were all moving in one direction. I watched in the window as they crossed in front of the ATM lobby, from left to right. Something was drawing them. Craning my neck and getting close to the glass revealed that the big zombie I wounded had stumbled into the middle of the road. His undead companions were feeding on his remains.

The Red-Eyes were temporarily distracted. A window to escape had opened.

Gathering up Claire and Lyle, I told them what we were going to try and do to get out of this mess. “We have a chance. Pretty small, but if we hurry, we might just get out of here.” I shot a quick glance at the window for a zombie check. “We're going to have to separate. Lyle, you're going to get the bus. Get around that barricade and pull it up to the front door of the building across the street.”

Lyle looked uncertain. “What if I don't make it?”

If the bus didn't pull up outside the building, Claire and I were probably doomed. “You'll make it. I won't lie. It's not going to be easy. The Red-Eyes may surround you, or try to block the bus. Just don't let anything with the wrong color eyes on board, and ride through. Try not to damage the bus too much. And I can't stress this enough - you have to stay there. You can't leave.”

“Right,” Lyle said. “You can count on me.”

“Good.” I turned to Claire, who had a death grip on her bat. “Claire, you and I will run across the street. You'll pick the lock, and we'll get inside.” I checked the window again. The flow of dead up the street was unchanged. “Hopefully without half of the undead locals coming in with us. If Lyle's people are inside, we get out to the bus as fast as possible.” Claire just nodded. Her rough hands made noise on the bat as she changed her grip.

We took our positions by the door. Lyle first, Claire in the middle, and me bringing up the rear. Before opening the door, I put a full magazine in my gun, and offered some last minute advice to Lyle. “Shoot only if you have to. Save your ammunition. Just get to the bus. Claire and I will give you a head start.”

Lyle stared out at the street with great intensity. “I understand.” His voice was shaky and uncertain, but I think he was focused.

“Go when you're ready,” I said.

Lyle reached up and unlocked the door. He pushed it aside, and took off down the sidewalk towards the bus. Claire and I were next.

“Straight line, right to the gate,” I said to Claire. She nodded, and got her bat ready. We both focused on the gate across the street. The dead continued to cross in front of us.

I waited for a gap. After a few seconds, an opening showed up. “Go!” I tapped Claire on the shoulder.

Bad ankle or not, Claire exploded out of the bank. She left the sidewalk, and was already in the street. I followed close behind. The stench of death and the cold air hit me in the face like a punch. I caught the sound of two shots down the street. Lyle was fighting for his life.

I hope he wins.

We hit the center of the street where the dead were walking. In an instant, it felt like a thousand dead hands and snapping jaws were coming at us from all directions. Claire used her small size to shoot though gaps, avoiding the grabbing hands of the zombies, pausing only to bash the skull of one that wouldn't move. The sound of aluminum bouncing off skulls and legs echoed off the walls.

A skeletal woman in a tattered black dress reached for me as I ran past. Ducking away from her outstretched hands, I fired my weapon at her face. The bullet tore through her head, and she fell at my feet in a pile of bones and cloth. Another zombie took her place and tried to take hold of my arm. I fired twice. One bullet tore through his shoulder, and the other hit him in the eye. He dropped onto the street at my feet as I ran past.