The Rain (17 page)

            I run out into the hall behind him and look ahead. There’s a dead man on the floor, but he’s not dead—he’s crawling toward us. And then someone runs into the room from the rain outside. The man is haggard and soaking wet. But he’s alive with evil, unarmed, and charging to kill us both. Dusty raises his rifle and I plug my ears. The shot fires and I watch the face eater fly back, a line of blood flying up from his chest. Then Dusty turns his rifle down on the floor and fires at the crawling body. It finally stops moving. Your pistol’s on the rack. You think you can still shoot it with your arm? he asks. I don’t have time to answer because I hear Dusty’s dad shouting from behind us. He’s coming up from the infirmary. Dusty! he yells. But Dusty’s concentrating on the tarp door. He’s moved out into the center of the room so I can get past him to the gun rack. He’s pointing out into the night shaded expanse of barren mountain. I jump over the two bodies and grab the same pistol I used before. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it feels like my arm is throbbing with pain again. It’s all in your head, I tell myself. And I raise the pistol next to Dusty, ready to fire if anything appears out there in the darkness. Finally Dusty says, without turning to look, Yea Dad?

            “They’re hitting from both sides,” his dad replies, rushing into the room with his own rifle in his hands. “They were testing us before. This one’s going to be big—really big.” Dusty’s dad just looks at Dusty, nods, looks at me and does the same, and then he runs back the way he came. No! hollers Dusty. What is it? I ask. Marvolo! shouts Dusty and I understand. But Dusty’s already run out into the rain without his plastic suit, chasing Marvolo, but Voley is nowhere in sight. I run out after them.

 Part 4

Chapter 10

I chase out after Dusty, who’s chasing after Marvolo. The rain is hitting harder. The darkness makes it hard to see anything on the slopes. Marvolo isn’t coming back at Dusty’s command. And there are at least two more face eaters out there—I can see their shapes rising over the ridge that we came down on the way back from the barge. Their black bodies are running at us, just enough darker than the clouds to be seen. Then they dip into a valley and I can’t see them anymore. Shit, I shout as I slip on a bank of mud. My butt slides down about six feet, and I dig my left hand, pistol and all, into the mud to slow myself down. I’m not wearing my plastic suit either. Exposure and my stitches ripping open cross my mind. It’s cold and I’m soaked and my arm is hurting again. I stumble to my feet and lift the gun up to see if mud’s jammed in the barrel—it looks clear but I can’t really tell in the dark. I wipe it off on my sweatpants. Then I look toward the face eaters—they’re still charging, about fifty feet away now. I shout out for Dusty. He doesn’t reply. He’s gone.

       Dusty! I try again. Then I take my eyes off the face eaters long enough to spin around and look over the brown mud hills at the glowing blue tarp. He’s nowhere in sight. Neither is Marvolo. I start to panic. Chasing Voley and he left me alone with the monsters. I look back at them and point my pistol. It’s useless, I’ll never hit when it’s this dark. I know it. But I try anyway. I line up the gun in my sight and aim for the one on the left. I pull the trigger until the noise and flash erupt. The blast throws my hand up and I almost drop the pistol. The maniac doesn’t slow down one bit. But it’s much worse than missing—I realize as they turn they hadn’t even seen me before, they were going for the tent flap. I blew my cover. They’ve turned course, and both of them are converging in a line straight for me.

            I debate whether to race them back into Dusty’s tent and run down the hallway, or head to my left over the bank and try to find Dusty on the hills. One more slip and I’m dead. My body freezes like it won’t do either, and it wants me to stay still so that I die tonight—so that they eat me alive. For a moment, the idea of them biting my skin paints onto my brain before I can stop it—it’s too visual and painful and real—I see parts of me in their stomachs, digesting, before I’m even dead—tearing into me by strips—or something worse. The horrible nightmare pushes my legs down and toward the tent, but a nearby rifle blast stops me before I get inside.

            Dusty! I call again. It has to be him. Even though he still doesn’t respond to my cry, I run toward the gunfire instead of back inside. Maybe it’s better to stay outside since I know that there are probably face eaters inside the tarp too, rushing through the halls like they did last time, coming from every side like Dusty’s dad warned us they would. The thought that I’ve got to get to Russell flashes into my head—just make it to him, and I’ll be safe. I jog carefully with my gun arm cocked at my waist, ready to shoot at the first thing I see over the ridge. My feet climb quickly over the sliding terrain and I mount the bank. On my left is the fire-lighted blue city of tarp. Ahead and to my right is the murky abyss of mud desert. No one is out there. I hear the panting gasps of the frenzied cannibals charging at my back. They must be so close now but I can’t bring myself to look back. Just keep moving. Can’t waste a second.

            I crest the hill and look in the direction where I think the gunshot came from, expecting to see Dusty and Marvolo. Instead it’s a face eater. He’s stumbling toward a door flap along the tarp tunnel, a rifle in his arms. He’s beaten up by the rain and the cold. Worn to shreds. He can barely move. But he’s still pressing on like the rest of them. A dead energy that never stops. Maybe the drug.

            I pick up the pace and run at his back while he doesn’t know I’m there. I only slow for half a second to pull the trigger when I’m a few feet away, too close to miss. He never even knows what hit him. He doesn’t even groan as the bullet strikes. He just flops over on his stomach, his body burying a little into the mud. I want to check behind me so bad but I can’t because they’re too close—they’re feet beat the ground, rhythm for the rain, and I wonder why they haven’t fired their guns. They must not have any, a wild stroke of luck. But they’ll have knives.

            The tarp flap blows out into the night, revealing a slit of yellow fire-light inside. I race toward it like it can save me. Just to be inside again. I call out for Dusty, and then for Russell. No one answers. I keep expecting another gunshot from somewhere to steer me toward people, but nothing sounds. I reach the tent flap and bolt inside without hesitation. I hear the flap swish again a moment later as the face eaters run through it after me.

Two loud bangs glaze my vision to white and my hearing to a high siren. I think I’m dead, that I’ve been shot. But I’m not hit. The shots hit the face eaters that followed me inside, I see as I turn around half-blinded. There’s my savior—it’s the woman, Dusty’s dad’s girlfriend. Go! That way! she yells. And she’s pointing with her rifle toward the farthest hall that leads to one of the supply rooms. I want to go the other way, back to the split so I can get to the infirmary and find Russell. But with how she yells at me to move, it doesn’t sound like an option. She steps to the two face eaters on the floor and fires another bullet into one of them that’s still wiggling. Then she kicks the other one sharply. Now! she yells angrily after she’s done, noticing I’m still there. Where’s Russell? I say, backing up toward the hall as I ask. But she’s done talking to me, she’s fixed back on the outside, the great brown. She has more face eaters in her sights. The rifle blasts again, and then again. She kneels to reload and I turn and run, a mad dash down the hallway. I don’t know where I’m going or who I’m going to find. I notice the throb in my arm now that face eaters aren’t bearing down on my back. I clench the pistol tightly in my left hand. The room opens up before me at the end of the hallway.

            “Tanner!” comes Russell’s voice. It’s a miracle. He’s somewhere to my left, but I can’t see him at first because there’s a stack of crates. I turn toward him and sprint, crashing into the boxes in my excitement. I turn over on the ground and try to hoist myself up, but I can’t. Russell wasn’t calling me over to him, he was warning me that something else was in the room. I look right up into the face of death. Its mouth opens, dry, ready to push down into me. The eyes are wide, the same look I’ve seen a hundred times, wet glass desperation. He drops down on top of me, his knees hitting my leg, pinning me. I holler with pain. And then his arms go to mine, pressing me against the ground. His left arm pushes against mine right at my stitches. Searing pain lights my body, traveling away from the arm and into my back and legs. Then the blur of a boot sweeps across my vision—it’s Russell’s. He kicks all his weight into its gut. Gun! he yells, and he just takes it from me. He points and fires. Again my ears ring. Through the hissing I hear the labored breaths of the face eater finally stop, and Russell’s hand drops and grabs me and lifts me up. Come on, we have to hide. Up. He tugs me with the strength of his old self, like he’s completely recovered. We go through another hallway that opens into a room. I look around at the new destruction. There are more bodies but it’s all a blur and he’s pulling me so fast that I can’t tell if they’re all face eater corpses or if some of them are tarpers. Dusty! I say, jerking back for a moment, wanting to get a look at the room and see if he’s dead. But Russell won’t allow it. He’s got the strength again, the life force is back, and he’s dragging me on whether I want to or not.

            “Did you see him?” I ask. No. Stay with me, he says, and then he starts to run. I follow at his heels. He lets go of my arm. We run into a wide room with four aisles of metal shelves that rise up to a pointed ceiling. In the corner, he says, and he darts to the aisle at the end, the last row, secluded more than the others. It only has one way in and out. We go to the dead end and push through a couple piles of supply crates. Russell starts to stack them up in front of us as high as possible. What are we going to do? I ask. But I get the sense he’s building a wall. And he doesn’t say anything, so I try to help him by making it wider.

We stack crates and boxes until we’re out of sight except for a tiny slit to see through. A face eater would have to come down the dead end aisle and knock into our crates to know we’re in here. No noise, says Russell. He watches through the slit between the crates, waiting for something to pass through the hallway. A scuffle starts somewhere far away. We hear feet stamping, more shouting and gunfire, but I can’t see a thing. Just the back of Russell’s shirt. Then the footsteps start moving our way.

            They’re so close that I think they might be in the room with us now. But they’re not, they’re just outside the room. Russell nudges me to be on guard. But I don’t have any weapon, he’s got my gun. All I can use are my fists and my feet now. I start to look around at the crates surrounding us. They’re all sealed. I want to pry one open to find something sharp and made of metal but I know I can’t make any noise or else the thing will come at us. The footsteps move into the room. It’s a face eater. Russell sees it through the slit and signals. Then my worst nightmare happens.

            It starts as a tickle, then it becomes an itch. I shove my finger across my nose to bar any air from entering so I won’t sneeze. I stop it, no noise. But the footsteps stop anyway, like the thing heard me press my finger to my face. I look to Russell, waiting for some sign of what’s happening out there. He doesn’t move and I can’t see anything. He turns his head as the footsteps start up again. It’s walking out, leaving the room. I want to sigh in relief but Russell looks concerned. He’s locked his eyes on the aisle next to ours as if something is about to spring at us. I follow his eyes and see what it is. I want to ask, but I know better than to make a sound. I think I see what he’s staring at. Under a pile of boxes on the floor of the next aisle there is a metal plate. It looks like the tarp flooring has been cut away around it, like it’s a door leading underground. We can only see the edges because of the boxes on it. Russell turns his head back to the slit to look out, listens to make sure there are no more footsteps, then whispers to me.

            “That might be a cellar,” he says. “Can you fit through?” He wants me to climb through the shelf to get behind the boxes at the back of the next aisle. I whisper that I’ll try to squeeze through, but that I don’t have any weapon. I’m scared as shit that as soon as I get through there’ll be a face eater waiting for me. It will hear me knock over a box. And then I’m cornered, alone. Russell can’t follow me. 

            “I got you covered,” Russell reassures me. And he’s right—the shelving has enough open space that he can shoot anything before it gets to me. I tell myself that as I start to wriggle my way through the middle shelf. I stick my elbows onto the cold steel, then use my good arm to hoist my body in. My head pops through, and then it falls down to the ground. Russell guides my legs through and I’m in. I twist awkwardly on the ground and upset some of the crates, but none of them fall. Even still, it sounds like thunder to me and I look back to Russell, hoping his face doesn’t confirm what I fear. His eyes dart back and forth, from me to the hallway, and he nods because I’m okay—no one heard anything. I kneel down and start to push everything off the metal flooring but the boxes are too heavy. I tell Russell I might not be able to move them. Shove hard, he says, ignoring my desire to give up and squirm back to his side. I know I’m risking knocking the whole pile over, but I trust Russell. I dig my feet in and press my shoulder against the bottom crate, guiding the ones above with my outstretched left arm. Slowly, the stack moves. Then it stops again. It’s stuck on an edge—the metal on the floor has a raised lip, like a rim, and the boxes are stuck on its outside edge. I slip for a moment as the momentum slams to a halt, and my elbow falls down to break my fall. It touches the corner of the metal floor with a thump, and I pull back at a strange sensation. I touch my elbow where it hit the metal and look at Russell like he can read my mind. He looks back, confused, waiting for me to tell him what it is. Only I’m not sure what it is. Just that the metal was freezing cold, so much so that frost melted on my elbow, leaving it wet. Cold, I mouth to him. His lip drops for a moment, then his eyes open wide, like he’s figured something out. He doesn’t say what. Stay where you are, he tells me, then he starts to recklessly push boxes out of his way so he can escape the aisle and come around to me. Don’t, I whisper, but he’s already made up his mind.