The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (10 page)

"Where are your parents?"

"Home."

It was a lie; they were in Las Vegas for the
week and had left him with his grandparents but he wasn't about to
tell this guy that. "I've got to go."

John had walked out of the store, but he
didn't even know which direction his grandparents had driven away
in. They'd spent the day antique shopping; it had been great fun
for his grandmother. He and his grandfather had spent more time
sitting on benches and holding his grandmother's purse. When they'd
pulled into the gas station, his grandparents had been bickering.
His grandfather had had enough shopping. John wisely chose not to
voice his agreement, but he'd really hoped his grandpa would win
the argument. He was exhausted, antiques were about as exciting as
day old mud to him, and he
really
hated sitting there with a purse in his lap. His grandparents had
been much more fun when they'd only stopped by his parent's home
for the day, gave him presents, and tossed the football around with
him for a little while before leaving.

Standing there, he would have given anything
for a purse and a bench if it meant sitting close to someone he
knew and that loved him again. He'd been near tears, and completely
disgusted with himself, as he'd walked to the edge of the parking
lot. He was tough, the toughest of his friends at least. He was
always the most daring, the one that could withstand the most pain
when they held their fingers over a flame. He was the one who
didn't get scared at ghost stories. He prided himself over that
fact and held it over all of his friend's heads. They'd all be
laughing if they saw him now and he swore that if his grandparents
would just come back to get him he would never act superior to his
friends again.

Staring helplessly back and forth down both
directions of the road, he tried to decide which way his
grandparents had gone but it was an overwhelming decision to make.
It felt as if the asphalt had melted and reformed around his feet
as they refused to take one more step. If he went the wrong way he
may never be found again.

Kneeling in the parking lot now with Xander
and Donald, his feet felt the exact same way they had back then. He
actually had to look to make sure that they weren't stuck to the
parking lot. The only difference between now and then was back then
his grandparent's black Lincoln had materialized over the horizon
before he'd had to make a choice. They had both jumped out to
shower him with hugs and kisses as they apologized profusely for
having forgotten him. Afterward they had heaped candy and ice cream
on him, taken him to the park, the zoo, and allowed him to stay up
until midnight to watch horror movies. He'd decided he liked his
grandparents even more when they
were
there for more than one day at a time.

His time at the gas station had been a
running joke between the three of them over the following years.
His parents had always been puzzled about their quips with each
other, but they'd never understood them. His grandfather had died
of a heart attack when John was sixteen and his grandmother had
followed a year later from breast cancer, but until their deaths
they'd been one of his biggest sources of support.

There would be no Lincoln coming for him
now, no one to heap ice cream and kisses upon him. There was only
the three of them, sitting there, staring at each other as they all
tried to breathe shallowly and strained to hear if one of the sick
people was approaching them. His hands were beginning to ache from
their death grip on the gun he held at the ready before his
face.

He had no idea what they were going to do,
where they were going to go. Sitting here seemed like a death
sentence. Moving seemed even more of one. They couldn't get back
into the truck without having the interior light turn on. He tilted
his head back to search but he couldn't see anything other than the
vehicles around them.

A hundred swears and curses ran through his
mind as he fought the impulse to kick something. He couldn't even
be sure that the others in the floral store would be safe if
something were to happen to the three of them. They could have
revealed they'd come from the floral shop when they'd moved the
vehicles over here. But there had been no other choice. They would
have been screwed if they'd left the vehicles in the parking lot
but now they were screwed anyway.

They'd been in trouble from the second that
mob of sick people had shown up on the bridge. There hadn't been
enough time for them to get somewhere safe before night had
descended. Maybe they'd been living on borrowed time ever since the
beginning, maybe the sand in their hourglass had finally run out.
It was taking everything he had to stay in place and not run
screaming into the night.

The shattering of glass on his right caused
him to jump. It was followed by something that sounded like hyena
laughter or some other maniacal creature. He'd rather deal with ten
billion clowns driving around in freaky little clown cars than
anymore of these things, he decided.

Xander shifted forward and reached to the
makeshift knife holder at his side. He slid his knife free and
placed his hands on the asphalt as he crept toward the front of the
truck again. John would have preferred to use his gun but he knew
it would be a
really
bad idea right
now so he pulled out his own knife. He wasn't sure what to think
about himself with a gun and knife. He supposed he should feel like
a bad ass but really, he felt more like an eight-year-old boy
playing war with his friends.

Unfortunately, this was not a game.

Xander kept his back against the truck as
John stopped beside him. Something broke in the distance, the
distinct sound of feet hitting a metal roof followed. John leaned
back to try and see over the truck again but it was useless. More
feet hit metal, John got the distinct impression that the sick
people were jumping from roof to roof on the vehicles, hunting
them.

The look on Xander and Donald's faces made
him realize they were thinking the same thing. Trapped between
these two vehicles it was impossible to see any threat coming at
them. "We have to move," Donald said so discreetly that John barely
heard him.

The last thing he felt like doing was moving
out of the shadows of the truck, but staying here was no longer an
option. John held his breath as Xander poked his head around the
corner. He gave them a brief nod before scurrying out from their
hiding place. John stayed close behind him; he kept his hand on the
cool metal bumper as he stayed low in front of the car.

He glanced over his shoulder but he still
couldn't see whatever it was that was making the noise. Another set
of footsteps running across a metal roof sounded in the distance.
He'd rather hear fingers on a chalkboard than those damn footprints
one more time! His jaw started to ache from the force with which he
clenched it. His nostrils flared as he finally slid around the side
of the car. He wasn't fooled into thinking it offered them any kind
of protection but he did draw an easier breath.

His heart sank when he spotted the three
empty spaces before them. A jacked up pickup truck with tires
almost as tall as him was on the other side of those three spaces.
He was so focused on the empty spaces before him that it took him a
couple of seconds to realize the thudding metal footsteps had
stopped.

The nights weren't as warm as they had been
over the past couple of weeks, not here in the mountains. However
sweat still beaded across his brow from the muggy night. Tilting
his head back, he fully expected to see someone perched on the roof
of the car, leaning over top of them. He was so certain they would
be there that he already had his knife raised in order to drive it
through the sick person when they launched at him.

Instead, he was greeted with only the stars
in the sky. John's head came back down but then his mind registered
what he'd just seen. He tilted his head back again to stare at the
velvety night above them. There they were, not the thousands upon
thousands that he was used to seeing, but there were at least a
hundred glowing stars piercing the veil of blackness that had been
enshrouding the night during these endless weeks.

He was afraid to blink, but even after he
did they were still there. They were sparkling rays of promise for
better things, and even better looking than the shiny black Lincoln
when it had appeared on the horizon coming back for him. A lump
formed in his throat, he didn't want to look away from the sky but
he did. He elbowed Xander and Donald and nodded upward when they
both looked at him. They glanced up and looked away again. He
elbowed them more forcefully this time.

"Look!" he hissed at them. "
Really
look."

They both scowled at him before turning
their attention to the sky. He felt it when they finally spotted
what he'd seen. Their bodies went rigid against him, Donald inhaled
sharply, and a small tremor went through Xander. John had to look
again too, it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen
and he couldn't get enough.

That strange chattering laughter sounded
again, it pulled his attention away from the stars. Footsteps
sounded by the building but they sounded as if they were coming
this way. "We have to keep moving," Xander said.

John nodded and braced himself to rush
across the open spaces. They moved swiftly, and as one, across the
parking lot. John looked back just as the shadows shifted and he
spotted one of those people running toward the front doors of the
store. He became so focused on watching them that he tripped over
his own foot and sprawled on the asphalt surface.

The air rushed out of his lungs but he
managed to keep hold of his weapons as he labored to catch his
breath. Xander and Donald grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him
forward. He scrambled to try and get his feet back under him but
they more or less dragged him the last three feet to the
pickup.

He collapsed against it, but there was no
protection to be found, not on this side. They never said a word,
but the three of them crawled under the pickup truck together.
Their hands and feet brushed against each other as they dug into
the pavement in order to get to the other side. They were almost
there when a loud crash sounded from somewhere close by.

They all froze as the sound gave the
impression of coming from two or three directions at once. John
twisted to try and look behind him but he couldn't see anything
beyond his own feet and Xander's. He tried to pull his feet in but
there wasn't enough room under the pickup for him to get them more
than a few inches closer. His sneakers no longer poked out the
other side but they still felt far too exposed for his liking.

A strange new dripping sound reached him. He
craned his neck to see the other way but he saw nothing there
either and Xander and Donald blocked the other two directions. He
felt like an idiot, trapped beneath the truck. "We have to get out
of here," he whispered.

Xander nodded and held up his hand with
three fingers raised. He put down one, then the other, and finally
the last one. They crawled out on the other side together. John had
just leaned against the truck when he heard that strange dripping
sound again. Drawn by a figure emerging from the shadows, he turned
his head to the left. He lifted his gun but the glint of Xander's
knife made him realize that any noise would definitely be the death
of them.

The sick person continued to come at them.
It took John a moment to realize the dripping sound was coming from
it. Blood plopped against the pavement from the three missing
fingers on its right hand. Bile rose in John's throat as the rotten
figure continued to lurch at them. Twisted at an unnatural angle,
the sick person's right foot dragged on the ground behind them.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to
tell what sex these people had once been as their features became
even more rotted and disfigured.
They have to
die
, he thought. No matter what this sickness had done
to their bodies and mind, no matter how distant they were now from
their original forms, they couldn't continue to go on like this for
a lifetime. Unless it was only their outsides that were rotting
while their insides somehow remained magically intact.

Before this he would have laughed at such an
idea, now it might be highly possible. Even still, they had to
bleed to death; he already knew
that
for a fact. They did die and when they did,
they stayed that way. So rotting insides or not, some of them were
getting slower and falling apart.

The sick human lurched at them, its mouth
hanging open as it mistakenly assumed it would be able to get
Donald. In its hurry to reach them, it tripped over its battered
foot and sprawled before them. Blood continued to trail from its
missing fingers as it clawed its way toward them. Donald leaned
forward and rested his hand on the person's head. In one violent
motion, he drove the knife through the person's ear into what was
left of its brain.

John's hand flew to his mouth; he nearly
lost the acidic contents of his stomach. He managed to swallow back
his vomit as Donald ripped the knife away from its skull. The
person's eyes rolled back in its head before it sprawled face first
on the ground.

"We'll put it in the back of the truck."
Xander crept forward to grab its legs.

John would have rather rolled through a
sewage pipe than grab hold of the dead human's arm. The sewer pipe
probably smelled better, he realized as his nose wrinkled at the
aroma coming toward them. Even still, he grabbed hold of the arm of
the hand missing the three fingers. The mushy flesh felt like
chicken skin beneath his fingers but he didn't let go of it as he
tugged the body forward. A part of him expected the skin to slide
off in his hands but thankfully it stayed in place.