The Survivor Chronicles (Book 2): The Divide (13 page)
They could simply be in shock
, she thought, but she knew there was nothing simple about this. Though most of them bore the normal abuse that many people had sustained today, there were others… Well there were others that were sporting some kind of strange rash that spread across their face, slid down their necks, and disappeared beneath whatever clothing they had left.
She'd had her fair share of poison ivy as a kid. She knew what the plant looked like, but that hadn't stopped her from plunging into it more than a few times in order to retrieve a lost ball, or to escape being the 'it' person in tag. A week or two of itching was well worth winning in her opinion. Looking at these people now she was reminded of the poison ivy rash in its beginning phase, and in that hideous blister phase she sometimes got when she contracted a worse case of it.
Most of the people just had the rash, but there were a few that had blisters forming at the ends of their noses, across their cheeks, and on their hands. She supposed it could have been caused by being burned, or perhaps even the steam, but she didn't think so. She just didn't understand it though,
how did they all get poison ivy now
?
Even as she thought that, she already knew the answer. This wasn't poison ivy. This was something else, something more. Whatever that rash was it was also what was wrong with these people. It was what was mindlessly driving them onward.
She was so busy trying to puzzle out the implications of that rash that she didn't notice that the same young man that had tried the other door was now standing before her. Riley's hand tightened around the gun, she held her breath as the man stopped and turned to face her.
He saw her, she was certain of it. She was convinced this man was somehow able to see through the door. He knew that she was there; he knew that she was watching him, and he was waiting to break in and tear her throat out with his bare hands. Something she became unreasonably certain that he could do.
There were sores on his face also; the tip of his nose was nothing but a nasty looking, vivid red abscess. Nausea twisted through her stomach as all of her attention became focused on that raw sore. She swallowed heavily as she stared into the brown eyes staring back at her.
But these eyes weren't mindless, not like the other ones walking past her. These eyes most certainly weren't all there, but there was something almost sinister slithering behind the surface of them. Something that she knew would destroy her if it was given the chance.
He didn't look like the type of guy that would have killed her yesterday. In fact, he seemed like any other young man that was either a college student, or had skipped college to hop into the workforce. She was certain that yesterday he'd been an average Joe that had enjoyed his life, as there was something almost kind about his features. Or at least what she could make out of his features beneath the rash and blisters.
Whatever had happened to him though, whatever had caused this strange reaction in him seemed to have obliterated Joe Shmoe, and left behind a mindless killing machine. Joe Shmoe's eyes burned into hers as he grasped hold of the knob. Riley's breath hissed out of her as the knob began to rattle and the man leaned closer to the door.
Carl
Franklin, Mass.
Riley was shaking as she pressed closer to the door. It wasn't a trembling that was induced by the strain being placed on her legs from standing on her tiptoe's, but a deep rooted, bone shaking fear that he thought he might actually be able to hear.
He couldn't tear his eyes from the knob as it shook back and forth. Stepping forward, he rested his hand on Riley's shoulder to draw her attention. Her eyes were hauntingly vibrant against her bloodless complexion; in the dazzling flashes her face appeared almost spectral. Carl was briefly arrested by the strange illusion, one in which Riley was still here, but no longer was.
He had to release her shoulder, close his eyes, and shake his head in order to clear his mind of the haunting image. They had to get out of here before he lost his mind, but he was beginning to believe there wasn't anywhere saner to be. Though she was still unnaturally pale, she didn't look like a ghost anymore when he focused on her again.
He pulled her back from the door as the knob began to rattle more forcefully. He nodded to John and gestured him toward the middle set of doors. John stared silently back at him before glancing at the door and then back at him. He gave a brief nod and hurried to the middle door. Carl pulled Riley further back as the door began to jerk against the frame.
The cheap locks weren't going to hold out for long. He released Riley and grabbed the rickety looking chair in the corner. He propped it under the knob and turned away from the door as John hesitatingly opened the second middle door and stuck his head into the other room. "Does he know we're here?" he hissed to Riley.
She shook her head and for the first time he noticed how red her eyes were. He realized she'd been crying in the shower, although now she seemed to be in control. "He can't possibly, but… but I think he did," she stammered.
Carl glanced nervously back as the noise at the door increased. "There's something wrong with his face." The palm of Riley's hand circled around her face as she spoke. "It's wrong Carl, and not burn, crazy steam wrong, but just
wrong
."
She was talking so quietly that he was half lip reading her words, but he was still able to get the gist. They were up a creek and they didn't have a paddle. But they
did
have guns and they were better than a damn paddle as far as Carl was concerned right now. He nodded to her as he pulled her further away from the door. Loud crashes began to reverberate against the door as the guy started kicking it.
John gave them two thumbs up as he nodded to the other room. Al opened the bathroom door and pulled Rochelle out. John rapidly gestured for her to move, trying to hurry her as she glanced nervously at the shaking front door. Carl's hand twitched around his gun, he was half tempted to just start shooting through the door at the guy. But there was still a possibility, no matter how remote, that the crazy out there wasn't certain they were in here and the same with the other strange people roaming around the walkway. Firing bullets out the door would officially end all doubt.
The bottom of the door gave way with a resounding bang. Carl looked back as the flimsy door bent inward. John wrapped his hand around Rochelle's mouth and pulled her against his chest as she released a small squeak. Her eyes were as big as an owl's as she blinked rapidly over top of John's hand.
Riley looked as if she were about to scream, and then her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed as fury darkened her features. "Hurry Riley," he urged as he nudged her toward the middle doors.
He thought she might argue with him, but though she still looked about ready to start firing the gun through the door, she allowed him to push her toward the other room. He grabbed the supplies off the bureau and thrust them at Lee before grabbing the bag of medical supplies and flashlight still sitting by the sink.
The front door gave way with a clattering bang as Carl was stepping into the other room. He threw the medical supplies across the room and scrambled to get at the first of the middle doors. He froze halfway back into the room they had just vacated as the man burst into the room. Except it wasn't a man, this was something else entirely, something more and yet something so much less.
Carl's eyes widened, he almost released his gun as he took a startled step back. Riley had said there was something wrong with his face, but he thought that may very well have been the understatement of the year. Had she said that his face was rotting off, Carl may not have been as staggered as he was. Even then he didn't think he would have been truly prepared for the spectacle of the young man across from him. Especially not when the man focused on him and let out a scream that would have made a banshee proud. Carl forgot all about the first door as he jumped back and slammed the second door shut on the man running across the room at him.
"Holy…"
"Bureau, bureau, bureau!" Carl shouted over John as he fumbled for the locks on the door. It nearly knocked him over as the man slammed into it with the full force of his might. Carl somehow managed to stop himself from falling over from the blow as John flung himself at the door.
Carl's fingers fumbled with the locks as Lee and Riley rushed across the room with the bureau between them. Carl managed to get the flimsy lock into place as the man threw himself at the door again. He met John's wild, disbelieving eyes as the bureau was slammed against the door and Riley and Lee flipped it up so that it was on its end and pressed flat against the door. The two of them collapsed against it and inhaled heaping gulps of air as the man continued to pound against it.
"What the
fuck
was that? Rabies!?" John shouted.
"Yeah because that's what happens when you get rabies," Carl retorted. "Your
face
falls off."
"Well how am I supposed to know? How do
you
even know?"
Carl didn't get a chance to answer as the man on the other side began to howl. There would be no way to stay hidden from the others now. "Keep your weight against the bureau!" Carl commanded.
He fled across the room, pulled back the curtain, and moved a corner of the mattress aside. Disbelief filtered through him as he peered outside. The mindless horde continued to move obliviously past the window while the man continued to beat at the door like a howler monkey on crack. "What the…" there were too many curses slamming into his head for him to grasp a hold of any of them. Yet none of them seemed appropriate enough for this situation. They had a crazed loon in the next room, yelling loud enough to wake the dead, and yet these strange oddities continued on as if they didn't even hear him.
This afternoon if someone had told him that he would have preferred to deal with lava, earthquakes, and tsunamis than anything else in the entire world, he would have laughed in their face. Now he'd take a burnt corpse grabbing for him any day over this insanity. "How bad is it?" Al demanded.
He turned back to Al and shook his head; he didn't know how to form the words right now. He wasn't even entirely sure there were words to describe what was going on around them. "Carl! How bad!?" John yelled over the increasing noise from the guy on the other side of the door.
"They're not even paying attention," Carl finally managed to get out.
"What?" Riley croaked.
Carl just shook his head and threw his hands up. "They're still just walking by; they're not even looking this way."
They stared at him as if
his
face was starting to blister or rot off too. A loud cracking noise shot all of their heads around as the door between the rooms began to splinter. Lee, Riley, and John were knocked forward as the bureau began to shake and bounce beneath the incessant pummeling of the man. The three of them tried to shove back against the bureau as Rochelle let out a small squeak and hopped back.
"What is this guy on!?" John demanded as the bureau was knocked a few inches into them again.
"Let him in," Carl told him.
"Have you lost your
mind
!?"
"You're not going to be able to keep him out all night and I don't think he's going away any time soon. Let him in and get as far out of the way as possible."
The three of them exchanged a look as the bureau pushed them forward a couple of inches again. "Count of three," Lee muttered.
Carl's body recalled the training he'd received in the academy as he shifted into a shooter's stance and grasped the gun with both hands. He didn't think they were zombie's, was fairly convinced they were still alive, but he'd heard the horror stories about people on PCP and he wasn't taking any chances with this crazy ass.
"Three," Riley said.
She was the only one that made a clean get away as she leapt clear of the door. The bureau was pushed in a good five feet as the door burst open. John's foot got caught up on the leg of the bureau; he did a face plant that made even Carl wince as Lee toppled over top of him. They were a tangled mess of arms and legs as the man burst into the room and raced right at Carl.
Aim for the chest, the chest is the biggest target
, Carl reminded himself. The man was almost to him when Carl pulled the trigger. The others threw their hands over their ears to block the deafening noise in the small room, but Carl relentlessly pulled the trigger. The man jerked back, his arms flailed, and though the bullets slammed into his upper chest he continued to come at Carl until one of the bullets pierced his heart and sent him reeling backward.
John and Lee frantically tried to disentangle themselves as the man fell to the ground only feet away from them. John shoved at Lee as Lee finally managed to get his legs out from underneath him. He quickly rolled away from the man that was still gurgling and trying to rise up. John froze as the man turned toward him and his hand flopped down mere centimeters from the tip of his nose. John's eyes crossed, he went completely still as he stared at the hand until the man finally went still.
Carl jumped forward and grabbed hold of John's arm. He pulled John out from under the battered furniture and dragged him away from the lifeless corpse of the rotted looking young man. Carl had fired five shots into him, all of them in the chest, and yet he still expected the guy to rise up and come back at him.
"Are you ok?" Carl demanded though he didn't know if he was shouting as he could barely hear anymore.
"Huh?" John asked. Carl shook his head, but it did little to ease the ringing in his ears. John pointed at the man's head and leaned closer to him. "Shoot him in the head."
"What?" Carl demanded.
"They always come back to life, shoot him in the head."
It really couldn't hurt anything, and Carl was thinking right along those same lines anyway. "No wait," Lee interjected when Carl pointed the gun at the guy's head.
