After Dark (23 page)

I turned away. Did I really think I was going to get out of this? Maybe Hal had been right: it would have been better just to stay holed up in the bunker listening to old records.

“Go! Go! Go!” Miles cried, and the tires finally dug in. The car shot forward, and we tore out of the driveway. Johnny galloped along beside us, but I tried not to look; I didn't want to see him anymore, not like that.

“Hold tight,” Elizabeth said, making a hard right onto Elm Street. She shifted gears, braked, shifted again, and all of a sudden we were speeding away.

Monday, 3:55 a.m.

We were hurtling down Elm Street, whipping around corners and practically catching air when we drove over the small rises in the road. It was still drizzling, so the visibility wasn't great, and the road was slick from the rain. None of it slowed Elizabeth down, though. I buckled up my seat belt and heard Miles doing the same behind me.

“I thought you were toast,” I said, looking back at Miles.

“I thought you were, too.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Your sister,” Miles said. “One minute they were on top of me, the next she was dragging me across the cellar and then throwing me out the doors at the back.”

“She's not infected! I knew she'd make it. That means Mom's probably still okay, too!” I said. “Where did she go?”

“I don't know,” Miles said. “She just disappeared. I didn't stick around to investigate.”

“Well, thanks for saving my neck, Miles,” I said. “I figured you would've made a run for it instead of sticking around.”

“I would have, but I …” He hesitated. “I got turned around in the woods. By the time I made it back to Elm Street, the Porsche was gone. So, I backtracked to the inn and found it parked in the driveway.”

“I bet it was Lilith,” I said. “But why didn't you drive away?”

“Your brother and Dutton were patrolling the outside of the inn, and I couldn't get to the car. I slipped into Jake's truck and was waiting for a chance to make a break for the car, but they never left. That's bad, by the way,” he added. “They're still capable of planning after sundown. It doesn't bode well.”

“Well, what
does
bode well for us is that we can finally get out of this place. We can get help. Where are we headed?” I asked Elizabeth.

“We'll take Rolling River Road,” Elizabeth said, “to Maple and try for the bridge. It'll only take fifteen minutes to get to Hillsboro once we're on the highway.”

“As long as there are no roadblocks,” Miles said. “The way they were rounding us up yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to cordon off the town.”

Before I could respond, Elizabeth made a hard left onto Rolling River Road. “Hold on!”

Just then, a leg fell over the side of the car.

I screamed, Miles screamed, Elizabeth screamed — and then Johnny's face appeared in the windshield. He looked at us, upside down, for about two seconds, and then his face and leg disappeared again.

“Was that J-Johnny?” Miles stammered.

“Yeah,” I groaned, then suddenly Johnny's face was next to me, at the passenger-side window.

I screamed again. So did Miles. Elizabeth leaned away from me, and the car swerved across the street. We hit the opposite shoulder and fishtailed. She pulled the wheel hard, too hard, back to the other side of the road. The car shot across the road and hit the gravel shoulder. Then Johnny was gone, and for a moment, it looked like we might have lost him. Elizabeth finally managed to get the car back under control, but then his face reappeared in the window beside me. He had the same wooden expression as before, like he couldn't care less about careening down the road on the roof of the car. He leaned even farther over the window. I saw his hand flash by and an instant later the window imploded. Tiny bits of glass rained down on me, and wind blasted in. Johnny leaned in and tried to bite me on the shoulder. I threw myself to the driver's side, away from him, crashing into Elizabeth's arms. The car jerked to the left and we swerved again. Elizabeth tried to straighten us up, but this time she couldn't. The car fishtailed wildly across the wet pavement, and for an instant, I recognized that we were back at The Bend. I even spotted the place where I'd jumped off the cliff. That was about when we hit the guardrail.

We plowed through it like a hot knife through butter, hardly even slowing down. Then we were in the air.

As we hovered above the black water of the Rolling River, I heard Miles say “This is bad” in a ludicrously casual voice. Then we started our dive. The last thing I saw, before we hit the river, was the headlights lighting up the water. They penetrated the darkness until I thought I could see the very bottom.

Then, of course, we crash-landed. Johnny torpedoed off the roof and disappeared into the river. The car started to sink.

“Roll down your window, Elizabeth,” Miles said calmly, as ice-cold water gushed into my window. “Roll it down before the electrical system fails.”

She did, and water started gushing into her window, too.

“Make sure you unbuckle,” Miles said, not quite as calmly as before. The frigid water was up to my waist now and pouring in fast. “Then take a deep breath and get out.”

I unlocked my seat belt as the car tilted forward and started a nosedive. I took one last gasp of air before we were submerged. The car kept sinking for two or three more seconds before the front end hit the bottom. Then the headlights flickered out, and it got dark. My lungs were already screaming when I reached out for Elizabeth's arm, but I couldn't find her. I reached into the back, but Miles must have already evacuated, too. I pulled myself out of the car and kicked and clawed my way to the surface.

I burst out of the water, gasping and coughing.

“Elizabeth!” I yelled when I'd caught my breath. “Miles!”

The current of the river was stronger than I remembered, and it was quickly carrying me away from where the car had gone under.

“Elizabeth!”

“Over here!” she cried, and I spotted her orange jumpsuit downriver. She was standing waist-deep in the water near the riverbank.

She clambered out and into the trees while I swam over. I straggled onto the shore and followed her into the woods.

“Are you all right?” I asked. She was soaked and shivering.

“I think so,” she said. The rain had picked up again; the sound of it slapping against the leaves of the trees was deafening. “What happened to Miles?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“And Johnny?”

“I saw him go into the water. I don't know after that.”

“Now what?” she asked, her teeth chattering.

“We should keep moving. Maybe try to get out of town on foot.”

“I've got to get some dry clothes first or I'll freeze.”

“I know they've got plenty of T-shirts at Romero's.”

“No, I was thinking we'd head for the church. Reverend Takahashi collects used clothes for people in Haiti, and he's famous for leaving the doors unlocked. We could sneak in, get out of these stupid uniforms and then try to walk to the highway.”

“It doesn't feel right taking clothes for people in Haiti, but if we get out of this alive, I'll donate a whole box of new stuff — heck, I'll send them ten boxes of new stuff. The faster we get out of here the better. Miles was right — if they don't have roadblocks set up now, they will for sure by the morning. I'm sorry I made us go back to the inn, Winehurst. We should've played it safe and just hightailed it out of town. Miles and Jimmy would still be …”

“We all agreed to do it,” she said, teeth chattering. “And it was the right thing, Charlie. Plus, Miles might be all right. He might be close by. Maybe we should wait for him?”

“Johnny might be close by, too,” I said. “I think if Miles was here, he'd order us to keep moving.”

“There's a walking trail — it's just through the trees,” she said, pointing behind us. “And there's a bridge that will take us back to the road.”

“Ladies first,” I said, and we bumbled our way through the trees and onto a narrow walking path. I kept looking back as we walked, to check if we were being followed, but I didn't see anything or anyone.

“It's not far,” Elizabeth said.

About a minute later, we came to a wooden bridge.

“I want to rip the feet off of these things,” Elizabeth said, as we started toward the bridge. “It's like walking on a couple of slimy sponges.”

“I guess the bomb shelter clothing designers didn't think people would be swimming in them much. That's just poor planning in my opinion.”

Elizabeth stopped when we stepped onto the bridge and glanced up and down the river. “Do you see anything, Charlie?”

“I can barely see to the other side of the bridge, Winehurst,” I said.

Just then I distinctly heard the cracking of branches. Someone was coming through the woods, and they weren't far away.

“Is it Miles?” Elizabeth asked, grabbing my arm. If she'd grabbed my arm like that yesterday, I would have been on cloud nine. Now I would have given anything for Johnny to be back to normal and stealing her away from me.

“I certainly hope so,” I croaked, “but he would be the one person in the world who would completely understand if we didn't hang around to find out.”

She nodded, and we dashed across the bridge. Once we popped out on the other side, we hustled down a winding gravel path and stopped behind a neighborhood mailbox.

“That's Maple,” she whispered, nodding down the street. “It's not far to Church Street.”

“How far?” I asked, keeping my ears peeled for anyone following us.

“Maybe five hundred yards?” she said.

I didn't like the fact that I couldn't hear anything behind us anymore. I would have absolutely hated it if I
could
hear someone coming, but not hearing anything was making me feel a whole new level of scared. On top of that, there was no good way to sneak along Maple Drive. The front yards were big and wide open, and you'd have to be blind to miss us with those orange jumpsuits.

“I think we're just going to have to run for it, Winehurst,” I said.

“I'm probably going to break my ankle thanks to these booties,” she said. Her skin was pale and she was shivering in violent bursts. “I can't wait to get into some new clothes.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, shivering, too, and scanned the street for the slightest bit of movement. But I didn't see a thing, which made me more terrified than ever. “Maybe we should try to sneak through the backyards.”

“Maybe we …” she started, and then we heard the thumps of footsteps coming across the bridge.

“On second thought, maybe we should just run,” I said.

An instant later we were sprinting down Maple, my feet skidding left and right over the slick soles of the booties. Elizabeth stumbled a couple of times and lost some ground, but we managed to cover about four hundred yards pretty quickly. I could just see the church through the darkness when I slowed and glanced over my shoulder to make sure she was all right. That's when she tripped and fell onto the road in a heap. I stopped, slipping and almost falling, too, but I managed to catch my balance. Just as I started back, I caught sight of a figure walking onto Maple, emerging from the path we'd been on. And even though he was infected now, he still had his rock-star stroll, like he had nowhere to go and nothing important to do. Johnny.

Elizabeth scrambled onto her feet. “Run, Charlie!” she screamed.

“We're getting out of here together, Winehurst,” I cried, rushing back and grabbing her hand. And with that, as if they'd just been waiting to prove me wrong, a slew of blank-faced zompires started emerging from the front doors along Maple Drive.

“Run!” Elizabeth said, squeezing my hand so tight I thought she might break a few bones.

We ran, stumbling, almost tripping, as twenty or thirty zompires came out of their houses and joined in the chase behind us. Lucky for us they seemed confused at first, like they couldn't figure out where we were, but within seconds, they started toward us with that eerie speed.

If they'd seen us any earlier, we never would have had a chance to make it to the church, but we'd already covered most of the distance, and now our terror was making us move with our own extra bit of speed. They were closing in fast, though, I could feel that without having to look. I don't know why I thought getting inside the church was going to make us safe, but it had to be better than being hunted down like a gazelle on the Serengeti.

My hopes were dashed almost immediately by another mob of about thirty zompires that marched off of Church Street, with jerky steps, and headed straight for the front of the church.

“This way!” Elizabeth cried, swerving to our right and sprinting toward the rear of the church.

“The back door,” she panted. “He leaves it open.”

A giddy panic set in, and I had to fight to keep myself from giggling as we made our mad dash for the back of the church. Zompires were right on top of us, and the new mob was already streaming around the front corner. It was pointless, I knew that, and yet we kept going. Then the back door came into view, and a foolish glimmer of hope spread through me. Maybe we could hide inside, lock ourselves in a room, wait it out? Maybe we could find a phone and call someone and they'd actually believe us and send help? Or maybe we'd find a time machine inside and travel back to three days ago? They were all ridiculous thoughts, but when Elizabeth got to the door and threw it open, I felt a gigantic wave of triumph crash over me. We bounded inside, and I slammed it shut. Elizabeth grabbed the dead bolt and twisted it into place.

“We might make it,” I said. Then the mob crashed into the door, and I heard the wood crack.

“They're coming in!” Elizabeth groaned.