Aftermath (21 page)

CHAPTER 12: HOUSE TO HOUSE

The
rain was coming in gales now
.

The three figures moved through the slurry of gray, one after the other, bodies hunched against the rain, eyes darting from side to side. The splashing rain gave the effect of a low fog hugging the ground, but the humps of the dead bodies still rose out of that gray cloud like scattered islands in a misty sea.

Lee took point. His torso was like a turret: everywhere his eyes went, his rifle followed. He scanned down streets and into open windows and doors. A few short steps behind him, Miller kept an eye on their flanks, and a few steps behind Miller, Harper took rear-guard, constantly twisting and checking the road behind them to make sure no one was tailing them.

Lee was grateful that the rain was beating down the stench of putrefaction that still rose from the bodies like the dense smell of a cold dumpster. But the rain also coated the entire area in a wash of white noise, forcing him to scan more with his eyes since his ears would never pick up the sound of running feet over the rush of the driving rain.

They moved along Church Street, one road down from Woodall
Lane
where the barricades had been erected. One block over, Lee could see
where the troops guarding those barricades had gone once their barricades had been breached
. It was a residential street, and most of t
h
e houses were boarded up. But several were open, burned out husks, with broken windows and bullet-riddled walls. The
troops
, and probably
a few
die-hard deputies, had used the houses to mount a defense. Each burned-out house cover
ed
an intersection. Bodies choked the lawns and cross-streets. Most of them were whole, some of them were in pieces. The bodies that were torn apart wore shreds of ACU camouflage.
The rain washed away some of the blood and gave the flesh a blanched look.

In several places, Lee could see bite marks.

Miller stared at a body as they passed. “Are they...eating them?”

Lee felt the contents of his stomach press up into his throat. “I don’t know.” He thought about every survivor he’d met and their lean, drawn features. Everyone was starving. It was only logical that the infected were starving too. If they had been reduced to their basest instincts, what instinct was more basic than the urge to feed
?

They continued on until Church Street ended at Fifth Street.

The group stopped at the intersection and looked around. To their right, a big single-story house with a large front porch and a white picket fence.
The gutter spouts bubbled and spewed white rain water.
A body lay face down at the base of the fence, a splatter of blood marring the white paint
and beginning to run down the fence slats in pink trails.

“
There,” Miller pointed.

It appeared that Church Street doglegged and continued on about a block down. Lee could read the sign from where they stood. They made the decision to continue on Church Street because they felt it was the most logical place to find the biggest church in town.
As they moved down the street, t
he signs of house-to-house fighting continued
.
T
he destruction, the burned out building
s
, the bullet riddled and partially consumed corpses. This street named after a place of worship had turned into a hellish nightmare.

As they neared the intersection of Fourth Street, Lee saw the top of a
tall
church steeple poking up above the trees. “That’s gotta be it.”

The group was moving faster now, the idea of getting off the streets spurring them on. The First Baptist Church was not on Church Street at all, but took up a large portion of Fourth Street. Hurriedly, they turned the corner onto Fourth Street
.

They
stopped suddenly
, arms spread out like burglars caught in the act
.

Lee was the first to react, grabbing Miller by the collar and yanking him to the side of the street where a large pickup truck had jumped the curb
and
struck a fire-hydrant. The two of them scrambled to hide behind the pickup truck, but Harper
didn’t move
. He stood in the middle of the street, staring at the front of the First Baptist Church
where a crowd milled about, an innumerable mass of dark, featureless shapes behind the curtains of rain
.

“
Harper!” Lee hissed through gritted teeth. “Get the fuck over here!”

Harper looked at Lee, his eyes wide
, blinking away the rain dribbling into them
.

The next thing Lee heard was a high-pitched howl.

Lee stuck his head around the car and felt his stomach drop.

A block away, one of the infected was
racing
straight towards them. It grunted and growled
as it ran, its breathing so heavy and ragged that Lee could hear it from where he crouched. A thick rope of black saliva hung out of its mouth, trembling like the tail of a half-eaten snake
. It was moving fast and Lee knew he didn’t have time
to outrun it
.

He raised his rifle and put two in the thing’s chest.

It stumbled then fell.
Hitting
the ground, it skidded to a stop, then raised its head and began crawling towards them. Lee didn’t waste any more ammunition on it—the creature would never reach them.

But the two shots he had fired had gained him all the attention he could handle. The horde of infected that swarmed the front of the church all snapped their heads in his direction
and momentarily froze, like a bird dog pointing out game
. The howl that suddenly
erupted
from
them
was loud and hot and hungry.
All in an instant, the entire mass of bodies was churning towards them.

“
Gotta move!” was all Lee could shout.

Miller was already on his feet, firing wildly at them.

Lee broke left, heading
for the church. He braved a glance behind him and saw both of his companions on his heels. He jumped the sidewalk and almost lost his footing as he came down in a slick patch of wet grass. He was running blindly, but quickly found a destination—another white picket fence cordoned off a yard and ran adjacent to the side of the church, creating a narrow alleyway that Lee thought might force the horde into a bottleneck and give the three men a fighting chance.

As he hit the mouth of the alley, he saw
a window into the church,
just
big enough for a man to get through
and immediately changed his plan
.
Without thinking it through, h
e lunged for the window, holding his rifle in front of him. In the moment as he
hung suspended in the air,
he imagine
d
the glass not breaking.
Vividly, he saw himself bouncing off the window like a bad slapstick joke, unable to get to his feet before the infected reached him and began to tear him apart, tooth and nail.

His last thought before hitting the window was,
bad idea.

But t
he glass offered almost no resistance.
It was like jumping through a waterfall, but the water was sharp as razors and sliced at his arms as he landed and rolled to a stop a few feet into a linoleum-floored hallway. He looked back to the window and saw the other two men frantically push their way through and land in a heap on the inside.

A dark hand shot through the window after them, a shard of glass catching and splitting the skin all the way up the forearm, revealing pink flesh beneath the brown skin. The infected showed no evidence of registering that pain in his ruined cerebrum, but kept reaching through that window at Harper, gnashing jagged yellow teeth, its matted dreadlocks flailing.

Harper started to stagger to his feet.

Lee brought his rifle up and shouted, “GET DOWN!”

And Harper got down.

Lee fired once and the right side of its jaw disappeared in a spray of bone fragments and flesh. Another bullet punched a hole through its neck, slicing arteries and severing the spinal column. As the thing collapsed onto the window frame, Lee scrambled to his feet, the rubber soles of his wet boots squeaking erratically on the linoleum floor.

“
Get up!” He waved the other men towards him, though they did not need any further encouragement. They shuffled on hands and knees through the broken glass, their rifles clattering along on the floor with them until they finally could lurch to their feet and start running again.

Lee moved out of their way as they ran passed him, then opened up his stance and squared himself to the window. Hungry faces filled the open space, screaming at him in desperate frustration, all of them trying to climb through at once. He shouted over his shoulder, “You gotta find a way through the church!”

Then Lee lowered his cheek to his rifle and began sending rounds down range. The dreadlocked infected was ripped out of the window sill as others tried to worm their way in, and Lee kept shooting, feeling that same trapped-animal feeling he’d felt in the Petersons’ house, that dreadful feeling of
no way out
. But he kept firing, and the bodies kept falling, and behind him he could hear Harper and Miller kicking their way through a door.

The last kick was final and reverberating.

Lee found himself backpedalling down the hall, anticipating an open door.

“
It’s open!” Miller’s voice had raised an octave in stress.

Lee turned his back on the window and sprinted for a pair of double doors as Harper and Miller disappeared inside. All along the walls, children’s artwork hung in bright crayon colors that blended together as Lee hauled past them. Signs on the doors to either side announced: Ms. Crouch’s Class; Mr. Beaker’s Class, and so on.

This part of the church was a school.

Lee turned the corner into the double doors. The room they opened into was a spacious lunchroom with rows of tables and chairs and a kitchen area behind a long counter. He saw the backs of Harper and Miller, heading for a door marked EXIT.

Lee spun and dropped to his knee, snatching a fragmentation grenade from a pouch on his vest. He removed the safety clip and slid the grenade into position, sandwiched between the two double doors. He made sure the lever of the grenade was held tight in place by the weight of the door and then braced the little steel ball with one hand while he gingerly plucked the pin with his other.

Harper was eager to get out. “It’s clear around back!”

Lee leaned away from the little explosive and spread his palms towards it, as though willing it to stay in place. When it appeared secure, he stood. From down the hall he heard the screech of infected and the tumble of feet scratching through broken glass. A fresh wave of urgency crashed over him—if the infected set his booby-trap off before he got out of the lunch room, the least injury he could hope for was perforated ear drums and probably a shrapnel wound.

Harper and Miller didn’t quite understand what he’d done to the door, but he started throwing his arms, making a
get-the-fuck-out-of-here
gesture, and they understood that, turning and launching themselves through the exit. Lee was behind them, slamming the exit door and jamming it in the open position.

From inside, Lee heard the double doors slam open.

The words came out like hot, uncontrollable vomit: “Go! Go! Go!”

But they were already running, across a covered walkway towards the main church building. As the fuse on the grenade cooked down, Lee glanced to his right, toward the road and saw a few stragglers from the main mass of the horde. These less speedy ones had taken notice of their escape and were now hobbling after them.

He looked back towards the open door to the lunchroom. After that moment he would never be able to recall the sound of the grenade detonating, or the feel of the concussion in his chest. What he did remember, always poignantly, was the sight of a lunchroom chair rocketing out of that open door in a plume of white dust and smacking him in the face.

The next few moments were foggy.

His vision went from bursts of colorful sparklers and fireworks, to a grainy whiteout, like overexposed film. He could hear gunshots very clearly, and Miller screaming at him to get up. He tried to tell Miller that he was okay but all that came out was an unintelligible groan. He rolled onto his side, feeling the warm, gritty cement against his head. He spit and watched red streamers splatter the pavement and a little white object skitter across the ground.

My tooth?

More gunshots.

More of Miller yelling at him.

Lee got up on his hands and knees and stuck his tongue out, watching bloody saliva dribble out. Unable to speak clearly, he exclaimed, “Mah fuckin’ toof!”