The Darkest Place: A Surviving the Dead Novel (15 page)

Tyrel nodded. “Yep. That was us.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Friend of ours knows a guy owns a cabin up here. Had a key. Figured it would be a good place to hole up for a while.”

“What’s the guy’s name owns the cabin?”

“Dale Forester.”

Morton seemed to relax a bit. “I know Dale. Good fella. What’s his friend’s name?”

“Joe Hicks.”

“You don’t say. Dale mentioned him a few times.” Morton stepped closer to get a better look at me. “Say, you Joe Hicks’ son? I seem to recognize you.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “We come down about once a year or so, go fishing.”

“I’ve seen the two of you around before. Don’t believe we’ve met.”

Now that I thought about it, Morton did look vaguely familiar. “I think I might have seen you at the bait shop a time or two,” I said.

“I remember that. Your father around?”

“Farther north up the lake,” Tyrel said. “He’ll be back sometime this afternoon.

“Where are you two headed?”

“Recon. Getting ready to round up supplies.” Tyrel said it casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I was worried Morton might take umbrage, but he surprised me by simply nodding.

“Figured. Was thinking about doing the same thing myself.”

“You’re more than welcome to come with us.”

Morton shook his head. “I’m just fine on my own. If we happen to show up at the same place, should I expect trouble?”

There was no challenge in his voice, but I could feel the tension in Tyrel as he replied. “We’re open to negotiation, no need to fight over things. With all these houses, seems there’ll be plenty to go around.”

“Agreed,” Morton said. “Guess I’ll be seeing you.”

Tyrel nodded once. “Take care. Come see us sometime.”

“I might do that.”

We spent most of the rest of the day searching what remained of the peninsula south of us. By four in the afternoon, we had almost given up on finding anyone else alive. As we were just about to leave the last neighborhood on our part of the map, I spotted a curtain moving in an upstairs window of a house on a flat portion of the lakefront. We had tried the house before—there was a BMW sedan in the front yard—but no one answered. I pointed it out to Tyrel.

“Think we ought to try that one again?”

“Probably best to. Pull on up.”

I parked the truck in the driveway and got out. Tyrel motioned me to stay put and approached the front door. He knocked several times, calling out that we had seen someone in there and just wanted to talk. Several minutes passed with no response.

“Listen,” he said, irritation in his voice. “If we meant you any harm, we could have busted down the door by now. Can you just come talk to us for a minute, please?”

More time passed. Finally, Tyrel threw up his hands. “Fuck it. Can’t say we didn’t try.”

As he was walking back to the truck, I heard the latch click on the front door and a squeak as someone pulled it open a few inches.

“Hello?”

The voice was soft, definitely female. Tyrel turned around slowly, hands upraised in a non-threatening gesture. “Hi there,” he said. “Name’s Tyrel. The kid over there is Caleb. We’re new around here.”

The door opened a little further, and I saw a slender, unmistakably feminine silhouette in the doorway. It was too dark inside the house to make out any of her features. “I’m Lola,” she said. “Lola Torrance.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lola Torrance,” Tyrel said, putting his hands down.

Lola stepped out the rest of the way. She was petite, maybe five foot two, brown hair, glasses, early thirties, not especially pretty, but not unattractive either. She kept one hand out of sight behind the door. It probably says something about my upbringing that I could tell by the angle of her arm and the set of her shoulder she was holding a gun.

“You said you wanted to talk. So talk.”

By Tyrel’s body language, he also knew she was armed. Honestly, I couldn’t say I blamed her. I would have done the same thing.

“We got in yesterday,” Tyrel said. “We’re planning to gather supplies from the empty houses in the neighborhood. Figured we’d offer you a chance to come along, take what you need.”

Silence stretched for several seconds. “That’s stealing,” Lola said.

“No ma’am, it’s harvesting. Things back east are pretty bad. Houston’s gone. I doubt anyone is coming back here any time soon. No sense in letting perfectly good supplies go to waste. Seeing as you were here first, we figured you got a right to your share, but you should start gathering it pretty soon. No telling who might come through here looking for food.”

Lola hesitated. I had a feeling none of what Tyrel said had occurred to her.

Peering closer, I noticed she looked exhausted. Not just road weary and sleepy like my group, but the kind of tired where your cheeks hollow out and your clothes hang loose from your bones. She obviously had not been sleeping or eating very much for a long time. As she stood watching us, her eyes clouded over with warring thoughts, apprehension written plainly on her face. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.

“I’m going to step outside,” she said. “Just so you know, I’m armed.”

“I know,” Tyrel said.

This gave her a moment’s pause. Gingerly, she stepped out on the porch, a massive .44 magnum revolver in her hand. I almost laughed—that much gun would have broken her wrist if she had tried to shoot it.

“Do either of you have any medical training?” she asked.

Tyrel and I exchanged a glance. “We both have extensive first responder training, ma’am. Is someone injured inside?”

She nodded, her shoulders beginning to shake. When she spoke, her voice came out in a tremulous whisper. “My husband, there’s something wrong with him. He’s … not right.”

Tyrel stepped slowly closer. “Ma’am, we’d be glad to help, but I’m going to have to ask you to put the gun down first, okay?”

She looked at him with eyes like a hunted thing. Her hand slowly came up, offering Tyrel the gun. He plucked it gently from her grip, unloaded it, stuffed the cartridges in his pocket, and held a hand toward the house.

“Lead the way, please.”

We followed her inside.

The house must have been nice, once.

Tasteful decorations on the walls and over the fireplace, Monet and Rembrandt prints, plush expensive-looking furniture, rich cherry and rosewood coffee table and bookshelves, hardwood floors, gorgeously intricate rugs in burgundy and black, and a collection of vases that probably cost more than both the Humvees back at the cabin. People who lived on the lake were not known for being impoverished.

The house had an empty, lost feeling about it. Our feet scraped and echoed a little too loudly on the floor, the rustle of our clothes grating and garish as we entered the foyer. Empty wine bottles occupied nearly every tabletop, the redolent scent of sour grapes heavy in the air. Dust covered everything, even Lola’s clothes. It looked like she had not changed them in a while. Despite the lush décor, I felt like a sane person walking into a rundown asylum.

“Perry, my husband, he’s in the basement,” Lola said. “I can’t … I can’t go back there.”

“Why not?” Tyrel asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

She shook her head, arms crossed tightly under her chest. “I don’t know. He went to Houston last week, said he was going to find his parents and bring them back here.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“No. He came back alone. Said he couldn’t get to them, there was too much rioting. There was a bandage on his arm, bleeding through. I tried to get him to change it, but he acted funny about it. Wouldn’t let me touch it.”

“Anything else wrong with him?” Tyrel asked.

“He was upset about his parents, but otherwise, he seemed fine. Then a few hours later, he started feeling sick.”

“What were his symptoms?”

“Fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, runny nose, coughing. Like he all of a sudden came down with a bad case of the flu. Started shaking really bad and talking funny, kind of delirious. I wanted to drive him to the hospital, but he said that was a bad idea. Said the hospitals were overrun with those
things
.”

As Lola talked, a low sinking feeling began to weigh in my stomach. I remembered the newscasts and the emergency bulletins about the infected, and what to do if someone was bitten by one of them. Tyrel and I looked at each other, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“Ma’am,” Tyrel said. “did your husband happen to mention how he got the wound on his arm?”

“No. I asked him, but he told me not to worry about it. Said it was nothing.”

“Mrs. Torrance-”

“Lola,” she interrupted. “Please, just call me Lola. Not ma’am or Mrs. Torrance. It makes me feel like an old woman.”

Tyrel held up a hand in apology. “All right then, Lola. Can you tell me how your husband ended up in the basement?”

Her bottom lip began to tremble. “He sealed himself down there, said he had to do it before it was too late. Went out back and got some old boards and a hammer and nails from the tool shed. I heard him hammering, putting planks over the door. He told me where to find his gun.”

At that point, she put her hands over her face, slumped to the floor, and began wailing like a child with a skinned knee. Tyrel hesitated a moment, then knelt beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. For a while, he whispered gently to her, trying to calm her down. Pity and more than a little embarrassment drove me from the room.

In the kitchen, a few steps past the doorway, I heard a sound that had not been audible from the living room. It was coming from a door on the opposite side of the kitchen next to what I assumed was the entrance to the garage. I stepped closer, straining my ears.

Thump-scraaaape. Thump-scraaaape.

“Hello?” I said, voice pitched low. When I spoke, the noise stopped abruptly.

“Hello? Mr. Torrance?” A little louder this time.

A low moan came from behind the door, making the hair on my neck stand on end. It reminded me of a sound my father once made in his sleep in the grip of a nightmare. I had been very young then, but the plaintive, agonized, un-self-conscious raggedness of it never left me.

My instincts told me to back away, but instead, I raised a hand and knocked gently. “Mr. Torrance, can you hear me?”

There was a moment of silence, then a tremendous
THUMP
that rattled the door on its hinges and sent shockwaves along the kitchen wall. Dishes rattled in a cupboard somewhere to my right. I stepped quickly back in surprise, my right heel catching the corner of a chair leg. I tried to catch my balance but wasn’t fast enough and sat down hard on the ceramic tile floor. At some point, my right hand drew my pistol and leveled it at the door, but I don’t remember consciously doing so. A second or two after the
THUMP
, I heard the same wailing sound as before, but louder now, anguished, enraged, and unmistakably predatory. The noise continued in ululating waves, punctuated by continued crashes against the door.
THUMP … THUMP … THUMP …

Footsteps sounded to my right. I looked over to see Tyrel standing in the doorway, rifle leveled, finger not yet on the trigger. “The fuck was that?”

I kept my aim steady on the basement door as I stood up. “I’m guessing it’s Mr. Torrance.”

Tyrel approached slowly, eyes wide, but not in fear. His gaze was swift and calculating, absorbing and processing information for split-second decisions. His gait was even and steady, hands firm on his carbine, the barrel steady as a rock as he walked. I had a strange moment of pity for the people he had faced in combat, or at least their families. I doubted the combatants themselves were still among the living.

Lola followed close behind him, one hand on his broad back to steady herself, cheeks streaked with tears, the skin of her face pale and sickly looking. I did not think it was a good idea for her to be in the kitchen with us, but then again, it was her house.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

Tyrel took a couple of deep breaths, watching the door. The thumping was loud, but the door seemed to be withstanding it. He lowered his carbine and stood up straight.

“Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Lola, is there another entrance to the basement?”

“There’s a storm access on the other side of the house, but we keep it locked.”

“Do you have a key?”

She walked over to a decorative set of key hooks on the wall beside the back door and came back with two keys on an aluminum ring. She held them out to Tyrel, then stopped and pulled her hand close to her chest. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Take a look at your husband and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”

“Do you think you can?” The desperate hope in her voice made my chest tighten.

“I don’t know,” Tyrel said. “But I can try.” He held out a hand for the keys. Lola hesitated before handing them over.

“You might want to stay in the house until this is over, Lola.”

She nodded and shuffled back to the living room. When she was gone, Tyrel turned to me and jerked his head toward the back door. “Come on.”

The backyard was spacious, boasting a large brick patio, top-of-the-line grill, outdoor fireplace, wooden terrace strung with party lights, and a pool and a hot tub to my left. Both had a thin layer of algae across the surface along with several weeks’ worth of leaves and enough ashes to color the water gray. The lawn had been left untended and un-watered, the longish grass brown and yellow interspersed with a few surviving islands of green. There was a sprinkler system, but it looked like no one had turned it on in a while. Without water, the lawn had dried and withered in the baking Texas sun. The dying lawn led down to a narrow strip of sandy beach as wide as the property, with the carefully crafted lines of something manmade. Soft waves lapped lazily at the rocks along the edge of the shore.

“Over there,” Tyrel said.

I looked where he pointed and saw slanted wooden shutters butting up against the exposed portion of the house’s foundation. It looked like a tornado shelter only smaller, barely enough for one person to fit through.

“Too narrow for stairs,” I said. “Must have a ladder.”

“Probably right.” Tyrel walked over and inserted the key in the padlock holding the shutters closed. A quick twist, and he set the lock aside.

“You ready?” he asked.

I took position beside him and aimed my pistol down at the center of the entrance. “Ready.”

He tossed the shutters open and stepped back, hand going to his pistol. I peered down, but couldn’t see more than a few feet. The entrance led straight down, lined on two sides with painted white cinder blocks. I reasoned we must have been standing at the corner of the basement. There was a ladder leading down, but I could only see the top four or five rungs.

From my vest, I produced a tactical light, pressed the switch, and shined the light downward. Other than dust motes and a few dead bugs, I didn’t see anything. All was quiet for a few moments.

Then the shuffling began.

“You hear that?” I asked Tyrel.

“Yeah. I think he’s coming our way.”

We waited, feet braced, weapons aimed. The shuffling increased in volume until the top of a man’s head came into view. He was tall, about my height, dark hair, a bald spot beginning to form in the back. He did not walk with the smooth rolling stride of a healthy, able-bodied person. It was not the carefully coordinated series of controlled falls that normally comprise human locomotion. His feet dragged, as if he had to keep them in contact with the floor or he would fall over. His head bobbed back in forth in jerky, unsteady movements, arms stiff at his sides, hands clasping and unclasping.

“Mr. Torrance?” I said.

His head snapped up, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Tyrel whispered.

His face was gray. Not pale like he hadn’t had enough sun, or the light pallor of someone who is very ill, but a different color entirely. It was the gray of hurricane clouds over the Gulf of Mexico, the color of the ashes that settled on my car the day my family and I fled our home, the leaden pewter shade of oil refinery smoke arcing toward the sky. I had never seen that particular tone on a human being before, but I knew instantly what it meant. It was as though some dim, forgotten part of me remembered that color, the same as it knew to fear the night and find comfort in the brightness of the sun. If not for Tyrel standing next to me that day, I might well have turned and fled. As it was, I shifted my aim, finger tight over the trigger.

“Tyrel, wh-”

Whatever I was going to say died on my lips when the thing that was once Perry Torrance let out a shrieking, hungry wail. It was loud enough I felt it rattling in my chest. The dead man’s voice went ragged as he cried out, the vocal cords in his neck rupturing from the force of the scream. No living person could ever have made a sound like that unless they were in the grip of indescribable agony. It was primal, animal, but at the same time, all too human.

Fear coursed up my spine and made my bowels clench. The urge to shoot the thing squarely between the eyes was almost overwhelming, a physical force that made my face burn and my hands tremble. I watched in horror as the man-thing slammed against the wall hard enough to dislodge a tooth. It showed no sign of pain as it scraped and clawed at the wall, desperately trying to reach us. Tyrel reached out and laid a steadying hand on my shoulder.

“Easy now, son.” His calm voice cut through the panic like balm on a fresh burn. The heat in my face cooled, followed by a loosening of the tension in my arms. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shakily. The thing in the basement—I couldn’t think of it as a person—continued to howl and scratch futilely at the wall.

“I didn’t really believe it until now,” Tyrel said.

“What?”

He pointed. “
That
, is not a living person. No fucking way.”

“You think he’s dead? Like, really dead?”

“Look at him, Caleb. You ever seen anything like that?”

I shook my head. “No. But he’s up and moving, Tyrel. He couldn’t do that if he were really dead.”

The former SEAL holstered his pistol. “I know a way we can find out.”

*****

Two lessons I learned that day:

Lesson the first: The infected are terrifyingly strong.

Lesson the second: Subduing one without breaking every bone in its body is damned near impossible.

But we managed it, sort of. The first thing we did was search the Torrance’s garage until we found an old canvas duffel bag, a tennis ball, some duct tape, and a couple of bungee cords.

We duct taped a couple of trimmed saplings to the duffel bag and used it to cover Perry Torrance’s head, figuring it would make it harder for him to fight us. But after forcing him backward from the ladder and descending so we were on the same level with him, he seemed to have no trouble locating us despite the fact he couldn’t see us.

Next, we hit him with a classic schoolyard tackle, me hitting high and Tyrel hitting low. We managed to get him down, but the strength of the thing was enormous.

For a long time afterward, I thought the Reanimation Bacteriophage did something to human muscle to make it superhumanly strong. Later, I learned it did not. It simply eliminated the pain response, making it possible for ghouls to use a hundred percent of their strength at all times, something no living human could have done in absentia of psychotropic drugs. The human body is far stronger than people think it is, we just never realize that full potential because doing so damages tissues and muscle fibers, which causes pain, which causes us to back off. The undead do not have that problem.