The Tide (Tide Series Book 1) (30 page)

Kara ran upstairs. The odor of decay and death had grown more intense. She pinched her nose as she dug through the linen closet in the hall and found a clean, khaki-colored sheet. With the sheet tucked under her arm, she scoured Sadie’s room for her acrylic paints. Her sister’s desk was pressed into one corner. Framed photographs lined its shelves.

Kara dropped the folded sheet and walked to the desk. She picked up a photograph of herself, Sadie, and their mother. The three of them stood, arms around each other’s shoulders, in front of a massive building with impressive ivory pillars. They’d taken the picture when the three of them had visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. It had been a long day of staring at folk art and portraits and sculptures. Most of the artwork had long since vanished from Kara’s memory.

The most vivid recollection from the outing was the meal they had shared in a nearby Chinatown restaurant. She and her mother had finally convinced Sadie to try unagi sushi. The face Sadie had made when she tried the freshwater eel was enough to send them snickering and laughing. Every time Kara or Bethany mimicked Sadie’s expression afterward, they’d broken out in laughter again.

And now Kara feared her mother would never laugh again. Her knees trembled, and she bent over the desk. She pressed her palms to her eyes and took deep breaths. Now was not the time to be overcome by grief. She could cry later, but if she fell into the abyss of sorrow opening before her now, she would be risking her life and the lives of the others.

With the back of her hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes. She found Sadie’s acrylic paints in one of the desk drawers and heaped the supplies onto the sheet. She took everything back down the stairs and into the living room.

“Everything okay?” Sadie asked.

Kara nodded and got to work. In a matter of minutes, she’d painted a blocky HELP on the sheet. They decided, in order to be visible both to anyone passing on the street and those in the sky, the best place for the makeshift sign was the roof above the garage.

“I’ll secure it,” Kara said. She dashed into the garage without giving them a chance to protest. It took a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but she found a small toolbox along with a plastic box of nails.

After gathering up the sheet and tools, she started up the stairs. Maggie opened her eyes, grunted, and started to stand. Nina kept the dog down. Zack and Leah knelt by Maggie, petting her.

“Take care of her for me,” Kara said to the children. They nodded, seeming content to have a job.

“Need help?” Joe asked.

The man’s six-foot and two-hundred-some-pound frame certainly wouldn’t fit out the master suite bathroom window. “Not sure you’ll be able to.” But he had a point. Between the wind gusting about and the need for a lookout, she did need someone. “Sadie, can you come with me?”

Sadie’s face went a shade paler, but she nodded and followed Kara upstairs.

Kara unlocked the window. A cool breeze filtered in as she opened it, along with the unmistakable smell of a crisp autumn day. Despite everything awaiting her outside, she found herself welcoming the opportunity for fresh air. The house had become cramped and stagnant. Without power, no fans circulated the air, and the corpses of the crazies only worsened the malodorous environment.

“Do you think Mom’s going to be okay?” Sadie asked. “She stopped hitting the door. Maybe’s she’s better.”

Kara figured her mother had grown bored or thrown herself at the door until she’d exhausted herself. Or maybe the biological changes caused by whatever she’d caught from the crazy outdoors had made her forgetful and simple-minded.

She couldn’t bear to voice any of those possibilities. “Maybe,” she said. “But we still have to be careful. If Mom’s okay, we’ll probably hear her call our names through the door.” Kara gripped the bottom of the window frame. “But we can’t just open the door if we aren’t sure. If she’s still sick, we’d be risking Zack and Leah’s lives, and Joe and Nina, too.”

Her bottom lip trembling, Sadie nodded and let out a long breath. “I wish Dad were here.”

“Me, too.” Kara hoisted herself up and through the window. She lay low on the roof. The sun beat down on her, warming her skin even as a cold wind sent goose pimples along her flesh. She inched across the roof, her hands scraping on the shingles.

A couple of crazies meandered around the cul-de-sac. Almost a dozen more wandered between the neighboring yards. They seemed to be lethargic, yet she’d seen how they reacted when they had been whipped into a feeding frenzy. She didn’t intend to underestimate them now.

“Hand me the toolbox and sheet,” Kara said, keeping her voice low and fighting to restrain the panic threatening to overtake her.

Sadie passed the toolbox and then handed the sheet through the window.

Carefully, Kara situated the toolbox and the sheet next to her as she lay on the roof. “Shotgun next.” She felt naked enough being on the roof where the crazies might spot her. “Okay, when you come out, make sure to keep a low profile. These things only seem to look straight ahead unless something attracts their attention. So don’t attract their attention, got it?”

“Of course.” Sadie said as she pulled herself up through the window.

They army-crawled across the roof and spread the sheet out between them. The shingles scraped the bare skin of her arms as Kara moved to the far side. When she judged the sheet was in a good position, she gave Sadie a thumbs-up.

The distant beat of a helicopter made her heart leap. Sadie shot Kara a wide-eyed look, and Kara nodded to signal she’d heard the chopper, too. It underlined the importance of getting their distress sign in place.

Careful not to rattle the box of nails, she selected a nail and grabbed the hammer. As she drew it up, she froze.

Maybe it was her exhaustion. Maybe she wasn’t as resourceful as she thought she was.

But she realized pounding nails into the roof was most certainly going to attract the attention of the crazies below. She searched her mind for alternatives. Tape probably wouldn’t hold the sheet in place, especially if the wind grabbed hold of it. Glue was far too impractical.

Sadie seemed to sense the dilemma but remained flat on the roof, waiting for her sister to signal their next action.

The shotgun still lay within arm’s reach if all else failed. Kara hoped she wouldn’t have to resort to using the weapon, but it at least was some reassurance. She drew her leg up and slipped off her shoe. Sadie raised an eyebrow but said nothing. A perplexed look crossed her face.

Kara placed the shoe over the nail and peeled back its tongue. Cautiously, she tried one hit with the hammer. The muffled blow seemed to work, and she slowly but surely hammered in the nail. She started to feel confident.
This might actually work.

A sudden gust ripped the sheet up from Sadie’s grip. It furled in the wind like a sail at full mast and whipped over Kara. She struggled to hold the sheet down without dropping the hammer.

But the wind prevailed and tugged the fabric away. It pulled the single nail straight out from the shingle. Kara lunged to grab the corner of the sheet, missed, and hit the box of nails. They skittered down the roof. Kara watched, her heart caught in her throat and her fingers splayed in one last desperate grab. The box rolled off the roof and fell onto the driveway. The unmistakable ping of metal dancing across concrete echoed across the cul-de-sac.

Kara’s pulse pounded in her ears as everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The nearest crazies whipped around to locate the disturbance. Their red eyes darted across the front of the house. Then one caught sight of Sadie and let out a grating bellow. Others followed the gaze of the first, and they rushed at the house.

“Get inside!” Kara yelled.

Sadie scrambled along the roof toward the window.

Her feet slipping from under her, Kara hurried after her and picked up the shotgun.

A crazy, black T-shirt hanging in rags from his torso, ran and jumped at the roof. His hands missed the gutter by about a foot. Another man with a tall, thin frame leapt onto Bethany’s Volvo parked in the driveway. With arms outstretched, he jumped at the roof above the garage. His hands caught on the shingles, and he carried himself up. Sadie was almost through the window when the man caught a foothold and ran at them.

Kara shouldered the shotgun, pumped, and fired.

The thin man’s chest exploded in a splatter of flesh and blood. His body was thrown backward and out of sight.

“Come on!” Sadie called from inside the bathroom.

Another two people bounded off the top of the Volvo and grappled with the roof, fighting for purchase. Their jagged teeth clicked together, and their eyes bulged as they shrieked in frantic rage.

Kara swung into the window feet first and slammed it shut behind her. She locked it as a woman with a shredded face crashed into the glass. Fingers with long, claw-like nails scratched against the glass. The woman’s muffled growls filled the bathroom. More howls and yells echoed outside.

Kara and Sadie sprinted from the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

“The mattress!” Kara pointed at the bed, and her sister launched into action. As Kara had done before, they built a barrier supported by the dressers along with the king-size mattress.

Joe pounded up the stairs and entered the bedroom, rifle in hand. “Are you two okay?”

Kara pulled a lock of sweat-matted hair out of her face. “We’re alive.”

With the makeshift wall in place, they scurried down the stairs.

“Do you hear that?” Sadie asked.

Kara paused on the bottom of the stairs and strained her ears. Between the howls and cries of the crazies, the distinct chugging of a diesel engine could be heard. “Is it the Army or something?”

The roar of the engine grew louder until it seemed as though it was directly outside the house. Kara ran to the front room, her sister in tow. Joe beat them to the door and peeked through the small window near its top. “What in God’s name...”

Sadie and Kara peered out the unbroken window, prying open the blinds. A yellow school bus had come to a stop in front of their house. Several of the crazies pounced on it, climbing on top of the hood and throwing themselves at the cracked windshield.

The female crazy that had been at the bathroom window limped across the driveway, her ankle bent at an unnatural angle. She must’ve jumped from the roof when the bus arrived, and evidently the intense agony of a broken ankle was nothing compared to the allure of fresh prey.

The emergency hatch in the bus’s roof burst open. A red-haired woman around Kara’s father’s age pushed through, wielding a pistol. She strode toward the crazies on the bus’s roof, the pistol firing all the way. Kara’s heart fluttered as she watched someone else handle a firearm against the crazies milling about. Each blast, deliberate and powerful, knocked the attackers to the ground. Blood pooled around their corpses even as the crazy with the broken ankle climbed the side of the bus.

Another man, this one no more than a few years older than Kara, came through the emergency door of the bus followed by a young woman wearing what looked to be hiking gear. The man wielded a lug wrench, and the woman held a pry bar, tools Kara was familiar with from time spent working with her dad on his classic Challenger project cars in the garage. Neither of them looked crazy, either. In fact, they seemed to be actively fighting the crazies off.

The young woman swung the pry bar at the crazy with the bent ankle and sent her sprawling across the asphalt. Several more climbed the bus, but the three people defended their turf valiantly.

None of it made sense to Kara. Why leave their vehicle and risk their lives fighting these people in the middle of a neighborhood?

One of the crazies leapt up the side of the bus. Instead of climbing to the roof, he swung out and grabbed the red-headed woman’s ankle. He jumped back from the side of the bus and dragged her with him. Her body hit the asphalt hard, and her pistol clattered away. The two younger people had no ranged weapons and were still occupied by a stream of crazies climbing toward them.

The red-headed woman tried to crawl away as the crazy coiled, preparing to pounce. She reached for her pistol, but it was too far. She wasn’t going to make it.

Without hesitation, Kara pushed Joe aside and stormed out the front door.

––––––––

M
eredith reached for the pistol, but she saw she wouldn’t retrieve it in time. She rolled instead, concrete scraping her arms.

The Skull slammed against the driveway. His talons stabbed down where she’d been a moment ago. His nose scrunched in a menacing snarl, and he twisted his neck. Growling at Meredith, he drew back for a second attack, putting himself between her and the pistol.

Meredith brought herself up to her knees and rolled to her left as the man swiped out with one malformed hand. Skeletal blades protruded from his skin at his elbows. Beneath the tatters of his T-shirt, a bony cage was forming around his chest.

Eric and Shauna still defended their position valiantly. Each connecting swing sent another Skull tumbling from the bus. But no matter how well they fought, they wouldn’t make it to her in time.

A female Skull sidled up next to the one in the tattered T-shirt. She shoved him, growling and snapping. With a gut-wrenching howl, she sprang at Meredith.

A loud shotgun blast exploded to Meredith’s right. The Skull flew sideways and slid across the concrete, leaving a trail of flesh and blood. The second Skull jerked to his left, but another shotgun blast knocked him off his feet.

“Are you okay?” a young woman’s voice called.

Meredith got to her feet and sprinted toward her gun. Her savior had deep auburn locks and striking cheekbones. She appeared to be no older than twenty, yet there was a determination, a ferocity in her green eyes that Meredith remembered seeing in only one other person.

“You’re his daughter, aren’t you?” Meredith asked, chambering a round in her pistol. The young woman shouldered her shotgun again, getting a bead on the nearest Skull, and fired. Pieces of bone flew from the Skull’s chest. But the creature’s arms and bloodshot eyes didn’t stop moving. A yell sounded from its mouth that resonated in Meredith’s chest. It was as if the buckshot hadn’t bothered the creature in the slightest.