36 Hours (37 page)

The radio! I took it out and pressed the red button: “Hannah? Ashlie? Where are you guys?”

Nothing.

“The red button, guys. Press the red button!”

Static, then frantic voices: “We’re in the closet! In the back…” Static. I shook the radio. “I’m losing you!”

“… Les… not… didn’t kill…”

I gripped the radio and ran into the lobby. Only a spot of blood lay on the floor where Les had been. I stepped around the overturned chair and stared at the puddle of whisking blood. No… I knelt down, glanced behind me, and picked up a shard of glass. It was slippery in my hands from the rain. The radio raised to my lips: “Where are you? Tell me.”

“…Les… He’s going to kill… Oh my gosh…” Ashlie’s voice.

“Ashlie! Tell me where you are! I’m coming!”

Anthony Barnhart

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“Closet… in the… God…”

“
Where’s the closet?
”

“Back… Storage… Hall…”

I ran down the hallway, saw a room marked
Storage
. I kicked the door open and jumped inside. It was empty. I yelled, “Hannah! Ash!” Silence. I pulled the radio to my lips.

The radio spat: “He’s gone! He just left!”

A shriek filled my ears and I was thrown forward; the glass blade twisted in my hand and drove up across my palm, splitting a gash. Blood seeped onto the floor as I thrust my hands forward to avoid breaking my head on the floor. I sagged forward on the carpet, Les’ blood dripping down all over me. The dagger was still in his eye; it hadn’t pierced his brain, just stunned him. I threw him off against the wall and stood; the glass stuck in my hand. I yanked it out with a sickening sound.

Les turned at the wall, snarling. His other eye, sunken and shriveled, reflected my own mortified face.

I raised the glass before me. “Don’t, man. Don’t come near me.”

He didn’t understand. It wasn’t Les anymore.

He just stared at me.

“Les. Listen to me. Don’t do anything stupid. It’s me, Austin.” My voice shook.

Les cocked his head to the side. Blood fell to the floor.

“Les. Leave us alone. We need your help.” Bordering on insanity. He seemed to relax at the sound of my own voice. “Do you remember your name? Do you remember who you are? Do you remember Chad and Drake and Southwest? Do you remember Hannah? Do you remember Ashlie, your girlfriend? Do you remember me? Your best friend?” Nothing. But he didn’t attack. He just…

wavered. “Your name is Les. Les, your brother is Chad, we’ve been trying to-“

Hannah: “Austin!”

Les turned his head, screamed at Hannah in the doorway. I kicked him in the chest, knocking him down. He grabbed at my legs, reached forward with his mouth.

Ashlie yelped, “Les! Biting! He’s biting!”

I knocked his head back with my hand and with the other drove the blade into his other eye. He sagged down. I stomped on his face, drilling glass and knife Anthony Barnhart

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deeper into his brain, until the tips poked and jabbed from the back of his skull. I stepped back, breathing deep.

Mesmerized, Ashlie wondered, “You were talking to him?”

I shook my head. “No. I wasn’t talking to Les. Les is gone.”

Hannah said, “We didn’t get any food. Once you guys left…”

“All right. Ashlie, look through this storage room for emergency supplies. Hannah, help her. Again, shout if anything happens.”

I went into the lobby, where I’d seen a pop and food machine. I broke the glass of the pop machine with a vicious kick, and started grabbing pretzels, cookies, candy bars, chips, holding them tight. Hannah and Ash returned with a bundle of blankets. I told them to set one of the blankets down and we dumped the wrapped food into it, until we had completely cleared the machine. Hannah wrapped the bundle tight and held it.

“Mr. Shelley is waiting.”

We ran outside. Going around the edge of the building, we all stopped and just stared – the Arlington Mall area glowed in the night, a smoldering inferno of flame. The fires reached into the sky, curling and breaking over each other, coughing columns of inky black smoke. Several figures huddled against the fence at the end of the roadway, on Austin Turnpike, by the storage shacks. One by one they let out ghoulish howls and climbed over the fence, dropping. They began to run towards us.

“Crap,” I muttered.

Ashlie shouted. “He’s leaving!”

We spun around to see the Cessna Caravan rolling down the runway, an array of lights, roaring engine, propellers slicing through the air. Hannah screamed for him to stop. I gripped the blankets I was carrying tight in my hands and sprinted across the muddy field, over the hard cement of the first and second runways. Shelley was taxiing, turning for take-off. The infected hadn’t seen us – they’d seen Shelley’s plane. Hannah and Ash ran behind me, much slower, but daring not to drop their payloads. Numbing caution overrode all of us. The Cessna began to pick up speed as it pivoted at the beginning of the emergency runway.

I ran onto the runway, dropped my stuff, raised my hands, shook them back and forth, screaming. The Cessna roared towards me. Hannah and Ash were yelling, too. A chorus of frantic voices, crying out, our Hope vanishing. The Cessna’s engines roared in my ears.
If he didn’t stop, he’s going to run into me,
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and I’ll be killed by the propellers – and the girls will be alone
. Yet I didn’t move, just waved my hands and hollered.

The Caravan pitched forward. Smoke screeched from the wheels as the brakes shuddered.

The infected were halfway across the field, sprinting. The Caravan was rolling at twenty miles an hour. I thrust myself against the fuselage and grabbed the door, ripped it open. Hannah and Ash were right behind me. I lifted myself into the cool interior; Shelley yelled, “Get in! Get in!” from the cockpit. I fell over the floor, twisted amongst the chairs, and reached out, taking Ashlie’s hand, pulling her inside. Shelley: “I can’t stop her!

If we stop, we die! We die!” Hannah couldn’t get to the door.

“Hannah! God! Hannah!”

She grabbed at the frame and held on. I grabbed her torn arm. She howled in pain, but I didn’t care.

Shelley yelled, “I have to go! I have to go!”

Ashlie was sitting on the floor, staring.

I tugged upwards, pulling with every muscle. Shelley put the plane to fullspeed. There was a grinding as the propellers slashed through the infected. Blood and body parts drenched the view screen. Shelley: “I can’t see! I can’t see!” The wheels left the ground; Hannah’s feet dangled; she looked up at me with tears in her eyes. Underneath the plane, the infected swarmed in a circle as we grew higher and higher. They vanished in the darkness. I gave Hannah a final tug and we sprawled inside the fuselage.

All of us felt like we were getting sucked out through the door; the wind was unbearable. I gripped my seat. Hannah yelled; Ashlie slid over the floor, lifted her legs, braced herself against the doorframe from falling out. Shelley: “The door, Austin! The door!”

I leaned over Hannah and slammed the door shut. Everything in the cabin quieted. The engine mumbled.

Shelley drenched the view screen with wiper fluid, and the blood dissipated. The rain buffeted the plane.

Hannah was breathing hard. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

I embraced Ashlie, holding her even tighter than before. The plane climbed higher into the sky.

Anthony Barnhart

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2:00 a.m.

Memories

An empty shell

Shelley’s Story

Ashlie crawled into a seat; Hannah just lay on the floor, trying to catch her breath. I shimmied up to the front, teetering back and forth, and slid into the copilot’s seat. Shelley told me not to touch anything. I peered out the window. Through the rain I could see numerous fires, outlining roads and buildings, neighborhoods. The flames illuminated wrecks and burning forests. It was unbelievable. In every direction were fires, glowing like white-on-black in the night. It was so quiet, except for the engine, and I looked on as if I were flying over a war zone.

We flew over the Arlington Mall, and I could see that it was caving in, crumbling, under numerous fiery outbreaks. Chad, Drake and I used to sit outside the side doors, drinking pop and swinging our legs, watching people going in and out, wondering about their stories, wondering what kind of tale their lives were telling. We flew over that same spot; once serene, now it was blackened, charred, overhung by smoke and flames. My heart threw up – there were people down there, and the only way I could see them was because their bodies were on fire, running around, between the cars. I imagined them screaming and burning and writhing, hearing the distant plane’s engines. How many infected were down there that I couldn’t see because of the darkness?

Sometimes the warm glows of a fire illuminated flickering shadows of moving figures. The infection had cleaned that area out.

I turned my head. Shelley said, “Hard to think this could’ve happened.”

I glared at him. “Why the heck did you just up and leave?”

He bit back, “You ran off and disappeared! You were gone for about fifteen minutes!” It hadn’t seem that long. “I thought something had happened, and I wasn’t going to wait any longer. I sat there in the hangar forever, but you never showed up. I thought the worse.”

“Les wasn’t dead.”

He said nothing, except, “I didn’t know. You took the radio.”

My face blushed in humiliation. “Sorry.”

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“Did you think I meant to take off without you? No way. And I couldn’t just stop the plane. The infected would be all over us, and we wouldn’t be able to turn around and taxi, wouldn’t be able to take-off.”

“Okay, okay. Look. We’re all okay.” I handed him the radio. “No excuses?”

He pushed it into his pocket. “You have a deal.”

I got up and moved towards the back of the plane. Hannah had pulled herself into a seat and was dazedly looking out one of the windows. “All the fire,” she said. “Everything’s burning.”

I sat down next to Ashlie. She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Are we going to be okay?”

I kissed her forehead. “I think so. He seems like he knows what he’s doing. We’re going where it’s safe. We’ll get food, medical attention, some peaceful sleep, finally.”

“Do you think it’s almost over?”

“Yes. I think so.” I have no idea.

I said, without lead-in, “When Les attacked me, I threw him into the wall. Then I started talking to him. And he didn’t attack. He just looked at me. He softened up.” Hannah and Ash were both looking at me. I continued, “Why? I can’t stop forgetting that. Why didn’t he attack me? I think I know. My voice was familiar. He recognized my voice. It comforted him. He felt… recognition. Part of Les was in there.”

“Are you saying Les tried to rape me?” Hannah coughed.

“What? No. No! What I’m saying is that maybe, just maybe, these guys have some memories, have a slight knowledge of who they are. How are we to know that they don’t remember their pasts? How are we to know they don’t remember
us
?”

“Why would he try to kill us?” Ash countered.

“Maybe the microbe makes them crazy. So you know who you are, you just can’t do anything about the lust. Did you ever read the book series
Animorphs?

I don’t think it was really that good, but in the book, these aliens invaded you, took over your brain, and controlled your body. You knew who you were, except you had no control. The aliens – they were called eerks – controlled you. So you were left inside your conscience, screaming and crying and yelling for help, but acting like everyone else. I know these guys don’t act like ‘everybody else,’ but the point is the same: what if they are trapped inside their bodies, controlled by the microbe?”

Anthony Barnhart

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No one said anything. I just fumed over the idea. “It’s like they have memories…”

“Then you killed your best friend,” Hannah snapped. “And you killed your sister’s boyfriend. And you killed your own father.”

My eyes glazed. “Don’t talk like that.”

“If what you’re saying is true, then you
did
kill them all. Killed them in cold blood.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. They have the memories, but-“

“If they have memories,” Hannah growled, “then they’re really there. And you took their lives.”

“They’re dead before they rejuvenate! You’ve seen it!”

“Then you killed your dad, Austin!”

“No.”

“Your dad tried to kill Ashlie!”

“
My dad didn’t try to kill her!
”

Shelley roared, “Guys! Enough! Shut up! No one killed anyone! These things aren’t people! They are animals! I covered myself in one of my friends’ blood, Hannah! But it wasn’t her! I covered myself in an
animal’s
blood, so the animal’s wouldn’t sniff me out and kill me. So
what
if they have memories?

Really? So what? Just because you have memories doesn’t mean they’re your own. My grandfather was a navigator for a bomber during the second world war. He used to tell me stories all the time, before he died. I remember them like I was there. But I wasn’t. So what if you are familiar to Les, Austin? So what? It isn’t Les! It’s like recognizing an actor in some movie you can’t remember the name to. These are animals. Your best friend died long before I first saw him at the YMCA. Your father died long before… long before any of that happened. They’re safe somewhere. Wherever it is, they’re not here. Consider them blessed, okay?”

Hannah just looked out the window. Ashlie pulled away from me and leaned back, closing her eyes.

Hannah whispered, “Do you think Rachel is okay?”

I had forgotten. Hannah’s best friend – Rachel Graham. They had met each other before Junior High, and rose in friendship all through high school. She and I had been friends once, but things were cut short. She sang for our church, and she was dating one of my best friends – how was
he
doing, I wondered? Him, too, I had forgotten. Her boyfriend Tyler was going into youth ministry in Anthony Barnhart