The King of Clayfield - 01 (36 page)

I had been one of the lucky ones. I hadn't prepared. In fact, I had been oblivious
 
to all of it. I was
 
even lucky to have met the woman in the mask. Even she had been lucky. Her brother had been the smart one. I like to think that since that first day I'd been smart. Maybe I wouldn't get culled out of the gene pool.

Sara had argued that God chose who lived and died,
 
but she had no explanation for God's particular decisions. I could tell that she had been wrestling with her faith the past
 
couple of days, and Jen wasn't helping with that.

I still couldn't get over the absurdity and randomness of all of it. I'd always believed in God, but
 
none of this fit with what I believed. Maybe all those fire
 
and brimstone preachers were right, and God was
 
punishing us all by
 
letting
 
Hell loose
 
on the Earth. Most
 
of the world got off easy; with their minds gone, they didn't even know what was happening anymore.
 
It was the survivors that were getting the harshest punishment.

Or maybe it was a mixture of the two. Maybe God was purging the world of the weak, and those
 
of us
 
that were left were being tried to see if we were worthy.

If this was God's doing,
 
he sure picked a fine time
 
to do it.
 
We didn't know how to take care of ourselves anymore. Our parents hadn't seen the need to teach us how to do something as basic as feed ourselves.
 
I wondered how many survivors
 
would be able to start a fire when the
 
world ran out of lighters and matches. I wondered how many
 
would make it through next winter
 
or the winter
 
after that when
 
canned
 
goods would be harder to find.

I wondered if I would be tried and
 
deemed worthy.

When I got to the car,
 
I
 
found the doors locked. I took that to be a good sign. If the driver had succumbed to the disease and left the vehicle, they wouldn't have had the presence of mind to lock it. So there was a good chance that
 
it would have some fuel and a good battery.

I hit the window with the .22, but it didn't break. I didn't have time to
 
beat on it, so I stepped back, and shot it twice. It was weak enough
 
after that. I hit it with the gun, and it
 
shattered.

I brushed some of the glass out of the seat, and climbed inside. No keys, so I would have to hotwire it. I had no idea how to
 
do that
 
except from what I'd seen in movies. I opened the glove
 
compartment hoping to find something to pry the casing away from the steering column. There was nothing in there but papers. I pushed the button to pop the trunk and got out to look.
 
It was clean--just a spare tire.

"Shit."

This was taking too long. Jen was bleeding. I didn't know what I was doing, and our luck was running out.

I took off down the road again. The intersection with Bragusberg Road was just a
 
little farther. There were houses and vehicles on that road.

My vision was blurring.

Stop crying, dammit!

I cut across the corner onto Bragusberg Road. A little boy came out of nowhere and chased me. He was probably around nine years old. He was muddy and only wearing one shoe. He couldn't catch me, but it was still unnerving knowing he was back there. I also realized that once I stopped I would have to deal with him. I didn't want to have to do that.

I could still hear gunshots coming from around city hall and the court square. The siren on one of the fire engines came on, too.

I had to run past three houses before I found a vehicle
 
in the driveway--a Dodge Caravan. The doors were locked and no keys, so I went straight to the house.

I didn't bother knocking. I tried the knob, but it was locked. I ran around back. It was locked, too, but it was a glass door. I shot it then kicked it in. I was in a dining room. I could see the front door in the living room and keys hanging on hooks by the door. I went straight for them.

The house was occupied by a whole family of infected. Man, woman, and three kids came screaming down the hallway from the bedrooms. They scared the shit out of me. I emptied the .22 on the woman, but she kept coming. I pulled the .38. It fired this time, and I hit her in the chest. She fell back into the hall, slowing the progress of the others, giving me time to get to the keys.

I turned the lock on the deadbolt as the man entered the living room, walking over his wife. I fired, but I just winged him. I fired again and hit him in the face.

I was empty. All I could do now was run.

I busted out the front door, onto the porch and over the railing to the front lawn. The little boy was waiting for me, and the three kids from inside were on their way out.

The kid came at me. I was still holding the .38. When he got close enough, I grabbed him around the throat, careful to avoid his teeth, and hammered the weapon against his forehead as hard as I could. He went limp. The other kids were coming down the steps, snarling.

I pushed the button on the keypad to unlock the door, and the side door of the van slid open. Not what I was after, but it would do. I dove in the van and slid the door shut before they could reach me.

My hands were shaking again, but I knew I needed to reload before I encountered any more. I pulled the box of .22 rounds from my pocket, but I realized I had dropped the revolver--probably inside.

"Screw it," I said, and climbed in the captain's chair. Ignoring the little monsters outside, I cranked the van and sped away to help Jen.

I pulled up next to the spot where I told Sara and Brenda to go hide Jen.
 
Some of the
 
crowd on East Broadway was heading back into town to investigate the fire truck siren.
 
We got Jen into the van.
 
She
 
was being stubborn at first, trying
 
to walk on her own, but she quickly swallowed her pride and let us carry her.

"Where?" I said.

"What about the others? What about Hunter?" Brenda said.

"Hunter is gone," I said. "I'm sorry. I have to get Jen to your doctor.
 
I'll let you out if you want, but I have to go."

"No," she said, softly. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Behind Grace County High School," Brenda said. "There's a maintenance building back there with a
 
fence around it."

I looked at her in the mirror. She reminded me of my mom. She was younger than my mom, but there was something about
 
her...

"How many are in your group?" I asked.

"Sixteen."

"Wow. Really?"

"There were four of us from the high school. I
 
worked in the cafeteria there. Hunter
 
and
 
Jamal were students. Wanda Green taught
 
drama. Then there
 
was a group of six that came over from the hospital. Doctor
 
Barr was in that group and so was Nathan Camp. Then there's--"

"What about
 
Nicholas Somerville?" Jen asked.

"The name sounds familiar, but he's not with us," Brenda replied.

"If Mr. Somerville didn't set off the tornado siren, then who did?" Sara
 
said.

"That was Nathan's doing," Brenda said. "He's a firefighter. We noticed a few days ago that someone had
 
set off a police siren, and we saw how
 
the sick came in and stayed with it, so--"

"That was us," Jen said. "We did that. Whose brilliant idea was it to set them on fire?"

"I know it didn't seem like a smart thing to do," she said, "but we know
 
fire keeps them from coming back, and
 
we thought we had it under control. Nathan assured us that the batteries on the siren would last. We really didn't expect to be out there that long, but they
 
just kept coming in. I guess
 
from out in the county."

"Fire keeps them from coming back?" I said.

"Well," she said, "burning them up...you know. You can kill them if you shoot them in the head, but they'd have to be disposed of anyway, and burning is the best way to make sure. We've shot them in the head and they came back, and we've shot them in the head and they didn't. I guess you've got to do it just right."

I drove past the spot where Mr. Somerville had wrecked his truck. We were coming up on the hospital.

"What about Hank?" I said. "Do you know anyone named Hank?"

"No."

"Does anyone in your group drive a Porsche?" Jen asked.

"No," she said. "We know there are others around, but we don't know who they are. Except now we know some of them are you."

We passed the entrance to the hospital then crossed over the four-lane highway. The next road took us to the high school.

"You'll need to go around the school," she said. "It isn't with the main building."

I drove past the football stadium then the high school. I could see the building she was talking about. There
 
was
 
a small parking area in the front with enough spaces for three cars.

There was already
 
an ambulance
 
parked in the spot nearest the front door. On the right side of the building was a big garage door which accessed a bay for school busses. There were five busses off to the right a short distance away from the building. Between the busses and the building was a diesel pump like you would see at a gas station. The building, the front lot,
 
and the pump were
 
all
 
surrounded by a tall chain link fence.

There was an elderly man on the other side of the gate armed with a shotgun.

"That's Ed," Brenda said. "Let me get out, so he can see me. Otherwise, he might shoot."

I stopped the van well
 
away from Ed and his shotgun
 
and opened the side door. Brenda got out and went up to the gate. She said something to him. He looked at us, nodded, and opened the gate. Brenda went into the building while I parked the van.

When I ran around the van to get Jen out, Ed had already closed the gate and was approaching. Another man came out the front door. He wasn't wearing a coat.

"Let me help you," the man said. "I'm Travis Barr.”

He looked like he was a little older than me, but not much. His dark hair was gray at the temples.
 
He was clean-shaven, which was something we hadn't seen much of lately. He was slim and muscular. His physique wasn't like that derived from hard physical labor, but more refined and sculpted,
 
like time spent in a gym.

He helped me lift Jen out of the van. Jen yelped in pain.

"Sorry," he said. "We'll get you fixed up. I'm a doctor."

"What kind?" Jen said.

"The real kind," he smiled.

"Do you know how
 
to remove bullets?" Jen said.

"I've never done it before, but I've seen it done on TV many times."

Jen's brow furrowed.

"It'll be okay," he said,
 
still grinning. "If I can't figure it
 
out, I'll get Ed in to take a look."

He looked over at me.

"We're going to put her on the desk in the office," he
 
said. "Brenda and Connie are getting it ready for us."

Sara held the door for us
 
as we went inside.

It was warm in the building, and there was electricity. We carried Jen into the office. There was a sheet and pillow on the long desk. The computer and papers from the desk were stacked in the floor in the corner. A pudgy, young
 
Asian woman in the room left as we came in. I presumed that was Connie. She soon returned with a cardboard box full of medical supplies.