**Warning: Graphic Violence and Foul Language**
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
“Get your ass up here, Lidda! Hurry!”
Three more clingers were headed our way, groaning in
excitement as they gained on their next meal.
She turned and began climbing up the wall. My heart was
pounding in my ears as she climbed as fast as she could. The clingers were hot
on her heals the whole time, and just as she neared the top, one of them
grabbed her ankle. She yelped in pain as it clamped its fingers tightly around
her leg, pulling her foot towards its mouth. I climbed down beside Lidda and
kicked at the creature’s wrists, feeling the bones snap beneath my heel. I kept
kicking, but the others were gaining. I had to climb lower, which went against
all my instincts. I clung to the wall, and as I got closer, bony gray fingers
grasped for me from below. I strained my fingers holding onto the wall, and
used my other hand to hack at the arms of the clinger that had Lidda. One, two,
three, four… five whacks it took to separate the monster from its own hands. It
fell to the wet floor with a groan and a splash. The others didn’t even look
down, they just kept climbing. I pulled myself back up to the top of the wall
and helped Lidda get the clinging fingers to let go of her leg.
Shaking the amputated hands free of her, Lidda climbed
through the hole. I followed her. The other side was promising. There was light
up ahead, making the tunnel much brighter than the rest of the sewer had been,
and I could see a way up. I hoped it led out, and I was rewarded with a clear
path to the surface. Both of us let out a sigh of relief and collapsed on the
ground when we reached the open air on street level.
We were in a closed off alleyway surrounded by buildings and
a pileup of busted cars that had been moved from the main road. I wondered
briefly what could have caused the street to cave in here, and when I looked
back down into the tunnel, I could see the remnants of an explosion. There was
what looked like pieces of a vehicle down there along with lots of other things
that were so mangled I couldn’t figure out what they were.
Taking stock of the street we were on, the explosion had
been enough to cave in one of the walls of the building across from us. There
were still blackened marks on the exterior bricks where the blast had reached
up to the second floor. I was suddenly glad the violence had slowed down so
much since the beginning. Things were still bad, but I remembered the panic that
had ravaged the streets. Even our quaint home in suburbia had been effected,
just not as bad. That was where we were headed now, towards the suburbs, and
Jefferson. If he wasn’t the one that was after us, maybe he would help us
against Coyote.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I said out loud.
“What?” Lidda raised one eyebrow and crinkled her chin,
looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
“It’s some old saying. I dunno. I guess I thought out loud,”
I reached over and turned off her flashlight, then I did mine.
“Whatever,” she shrugged, “You sure you haven’t hit your head
at any point since we left the apartment? You’ve been doing some pretty crazy
stuff.”
“I’m just trying to get us out of this alive, Lidda. I
promise, I haven’t lost my mind. At least… no more so than before,” I nudged
her with my elbow, ”Hey, Lids, you mind pouring some alcohol on this bite?”
“Sure,” she said, digging in my bag for a large Band-Aid and
some alcohol, “She got you good, Tess.”
“Yeah, I know. Ouch!” I exclaimed as she poured alcohol over
the open wound.
“Sorry,” she said, meaning it as she gently stuck the Band-Aid
to my shoulder.
“You all finished with me? We kinda need to keep moving,” I
said.
“Boo. Party pooper.”
“Yeah, ’cause we’re having so much fun here…” I gestured
around as I helped her up.
“I was totally thinking about playing loud music and hooking
up with some hot guys here. This is a way fun party spot,” she replied
sarcastically.
“Now I think you might have hit your head.”
“Shut up,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Let’s go,” I laughed, smiling as I led her towards the
broken building.
It was slow going around the huge hole in the street, but we
made it across with ease and entered the building. The sun was high overhead,
providing us with much needed light through the broken windows. Dust motes
floated in the air around us as we entered the hallway of what used to be an
apartment building. There were probably still some people living in the rooms
upstairs, so we stepped lightly across the old carpet and debris. Lots of
people had lost their minds since the world went bad, and you never knew if
someone was your friend or the kind of person who would kill you for a can of
food. They usually turned out to be the latter.
At the end of the hallway was an exit sign. We were far
enough now from where we had started that I thought the streets would be safe,
so I followed it around and found a door that led out to an empty parking
garage. It was dark, so we were quick but quiet heading towards the light of
the exit gate. The gate was down. There was a door to the right and a tire iron
on the ground. A large dry blood stain spread out around the spot where the
tire iron lay. I guessed whoever had last held it had been too slow. There were
scrapes all around the door where the person had struggled frantically to get
it open.
“Um, Tess,” Lidda whispered as she tapped my shoulder.
“I know. I’ll be fast. Just keep a lookout,” I said as I
began to work on the door.
Lidda put her back to me and pulled out her knife as I tried
to wedge the door open.
Things were quiet except for the scraping sound of my tool
against the metal door, and then Lidda frantically tapped against my arm with
her open palm.
I turned to see what she was pointing at. It was hard to
make anything out deeper in the parking garage, but there was definitely some
movement. The one thing to our advantage was that clingers were
light-sensitive, and we were so close to the gate, but I wasn’t sure it was a
clinger. It could have been one of the
apartment residents. I feared they wouldn’t be friendly if they were.
Something was dragging against the ground with a loud
scraping sound. A sure sign it wasn’t a clinger. Clinger’s didn’t pick up
anything they couldn’t eat.
“Hey, little girlies,” came the raspy voice of an older
woman, “are you all lost?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Lidda snapped at the still invisible
figure.
“Aw, they look sweet, Maw. Can I keep ‘em?” came a male
voice with a deep southern drawl.
I kept working on the door, really fighting with it now. The
dragging sound was getting louder, which meant that whoever carried it was much
closer than they had been.
“Hurry, Tess!” Lidda whispered almost as loud as she would
have spoken.
I started beating at the handle with the tire iron. The old
woman and her son were visible in the light now, and there was something
terribly wrong with the man. His head hung wrong on his shoulders and he lugged
a lead pipe behind him. He looked sickly and weak, but I didn’t want to test
his strength. I kept beating at the handle, lifting and dropping the tire iron
as quickly as I could swing my arms around. I didn’t want to have to kill an
old woman, no matter how psychotic she might be. Her short white hair and wrinkled
face reminded me too much of my grandma.
Finally the handle broke off and I shoved the iron through
the opening. This forced the opposite handle to fall off outside and light
poured in through the hole. I stuck my fingers inside and messed with it, managing
to get the door open in time to yank Lidda away from the outstretched fingers
of the man. He was slow, and so was the old woman, but I didn’t chance it. I
slammed the door in his face and put my back against it, using my feet for
leverage.
“Lidda! I need something to wedge against the door! Hurry!”
She scrambled and came back with a chair that was missing
the seat cushion. There was no handle to wedge it up under anymore, so I grabbed
the broken piece of the handle off the ground and wedged it through the hole at
an angle. It would have to do. Lidda rammed the chair up under the piece of
handle, and I stood up in hopes that it would hold. It didn’t. The man burst
out into the street, knocking the chair out of the way. Grandma was right behind
him. The bitch even had a walker. I couldn’t believe it. She looked like she
hadn’t been going without food. Both of them had grease and blood stains on
their shirts, and a horrible thought crossed my mind. These fuckers were going
to try and eat us.
Not wanting Lidda to freak out, I kept the realization to
myself and kept running. This day had really sucked so far. I was ready for it
to end.
“I was saving this for a rainy day, but it looks like I’m
going to have to use it now,” I muttered, not pausing as I pulled my backpack
off my shoulders.
“What is it?” Lidda asked through breaths.
I removed a Glock 33 from my backpack.
“Holy shit!” she said, “I didn’t know you had that!”
“I told you, I was saving it.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yep,” I said, and I stopped in the middle of the street,
keeping the gun hidden as I turned to face our attackers. They weren’t behind
us anymore. I nervously slid my backpack back onto my shoulders as I scanned
the street for the odd pair.
“Fuck, where’d they go?” asked Lidda.
Just then, the man popped out from a side alley. I had no
idea how he’d gotten up there so fast. There must have been another way
through. I stepped between him and Lidda, still keeping the gun hidden behind
my back. I walked towards him.
“That’s right, cutie. Come this way. I’ll take care of you,”
he motioned me towards him with one hand, keeping the pipe dangling from the
other. Yeah, he looked real friendly.
I smiled sweetly and said, “You gonna keep me safe, mister?”
I even batted my eyelashes.
“Yeah, honey. I sure will,” he chuckled.
I swung the gun around in front of me, stabilizing it with
both hands. His grin vanished, and with a bang, so did the rest of his face. He
fell to the ground with a thud.
We didn’t know where Grandma was, but both of us decided it
was best to keep moving instead of waiting for her and having to waste more
bullets. A few minutes later we hear her loud mournful cries from the direction
of where we had left her son. No matter how horrible the two of them were, I
still felt guilty for taking him from her. I wondered if she’d be able to
survive without his help, and I had to stop thinking about it. They were both cannibals
after all. Jesus, that was sick. I shook my head in disgust as we wove through
debris in the streets.
Finally, I could see the buildings thinning out, marking the
outskirts of the city. The sun was much lower in the sky by the time I could
see the green of actual trees. I didn’t realize how long it had been since the
last time I saw a real plant until just then. Sure, weeds grew through the
cracks in the city, and maybe some grass had survived, but there weren’t any
more trees or bushes around. The forest was a welcome sight. It somehow gave me
comfort; as if not all things from before were gone, and that there was hope
that things could someday go back to the way they were.
We followed the main road out of town, but stuck to the
sides, where we wouldn’t be in plain view of anyone with a pair of binoculars
or a sniper rifle. We didn’t want to make ourselves easy practice shots for the
crazies, or let any of Coyote’s lackeys know which way we had gone. It was
better to play it safe until we reached the cover of the trees, so that’s what
we did, even if it made our progression slower.
By the time we reached the woods, it was twilight. The
undergrowth was thick, but out of practicality, we both wore pants. I used the
machete to clear the worst of it, and we managed to make it to a clearing with
only a few scratches to our arms.
“Well that took forever,” muttered Lidda as she picked a
string of thorns out of her jeans.
“I’ll check you for ticks later,” I teased, looking back to
see her response.
“What the fuck is a tick?”
I laughed, “A bloodsucker from before the clingers came
along.”
“What? I never heard about those.”
“You weren’t much into the outdoors before, were you?”
“Why would I be?”
“Forget about it. I was just teasing you. It’s just a little
bug, nothing to really worry about. We’ve got to keep moving.”
“You’ve said that like a million times today. Can’t we take
a break?” She whined.
I thought about it for a moment, and finally sighed a
resigned breath, “Fine, but we can’t sleep here. Look where we are, Lidda.”
She stopped picking thorns out of her pants and slowly
scanned the clearing. It was an old cemetery, from back when people actually
made an effort to treat their dead with some respect. Some of the headstones
couldn’t have been more than five years old. Their newness made me shudder.
There could still be some see-thrus hanging around the old graves.
“What is this place?” She asked.
“It’s a cemetery, Lidda. Don’t you remember cemeteries?”
“Vaguely.”
“Nice word.”
“Thanks, I’ve been reading that dictionary you gave me.”
“You’re already to ‘V’?”
“I skipped ahead.”
I chuckled.
“I brought it. I’ll look up ‘cemetery’. You spell that with
an ‘S’?”
“No, with a ‘C’.”
She read the entry and looked around the cemetery with new
fear on her face.
“Why the fuck are we still standing here, Tess?”
“I think we’re ok for now, Lidda. I just don’t want to be
here all night.”
“It gives me the creeps! Let’s go!”
“I thought you wanted a break…” I taunted.
“We can break later! Jesus, Tess. You trying to give me a
panic attack?” Her southern accent was getting thicker with each word. It
always did when she got angry.
“No, Lidda. You wanted a break. You’re right, we need a few
minutes rest. This just isn’t the ideal place for it. The thing is, I don’t
know that we’re going to find anything better. We’re probably going to have to
walk for a few more hours before we get to Jefferson’s.”
“That’s where we’re going? Are you fucking kidding me, Tess?”
Her shock and disappointment in me was obvious. She certainly thought I had
lost my mind now if she didn’t before.
“We don’t have any other options. I’ve got to at least try
to talk to him. He’s the only person who might be able to protect us from
Coyote, and I honestly don’t know anybody else who has that kind of firepower.
Do you?”
“But you always told me your dad was batshit crazy! Either
you’ve been lying to me all along, or you’re walking us straight into hell.”
“I wasn’t lying, Lidda. Jefferson is a real bastard, but
he’s our only chance right now. You think this is what I want to be doing?”
I put my hands on my hips indignantly. Lidda paced silently
back and forth in front of me.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the ground,” I said,
crossing my arms.
She stopped pacing to glare at me.
“Goddammit, Tess,” she said, flinging her balled fists down
by her sides, “You know I go where you go. I wouldn’t make it a minute out here
without you, but you really fucked us good this time.”
“I know, Lidda. I’m sorry. This is actually all my fault.
You’re more right than I think you meant to be,” I breathed deeply, preparing
to tell her the real depth of our problem.
She waited for me to speak.
“Coyote sent those headhunters after us because I stole
something from him a few years back.”
“Oh this just gets better and better, Tess. Just fucking
swell. You steal from Coyote and we both end up dead. Yippee.”
“Look, we’re both exhausted, and you don’t understand. This
thing I stole, is fucking important. I mean, so important that it could get us
out of all this mess.”
“What are you talking about? Is it like, worth a lot of
money or something?”
“Oh yeah, but its more than that, Lidda. It could fix
everything in the right hands.”
“Now I know for sure you’ve lost your fucking goddamned
mind.”
“No, listen. It’s medicine, medicine that can cure people.
It can make them die. Like really die, not just come back as some fucking
clinger or a see-thru. It can send you to the next plane.”
“You know I don’t believe in all that shit, Tess.”
“Well it doesn’t matter. Coyote had this stuff under lock
and key. He kept bragging about it, so I fucking took it and hid it at my
place. I thought he’d given up looking for it, but I guess not.”
“How did he find out you had it?”
“I’m guessing he’s killed everyone else it could have been.”
“He always had a thing for you, Tess,” she winked at me.
“A lot of good that does us now, Lids,” I said, pouting my
lip at her.
“Man, we are really fucked,” she shook her head at me,
smiling. At least she wasn’t still pissed.
“Thanks, Oh-stater-of-the-obvious.”
“No prob, now let’s seriously get the fuck out of here,” she
said. I nodded and we started walking up the hill between the headstones.
“We’ve got to work on our potty mouths. Jefferson might
shoot us in the face for saying, ‘fuck’,” I said as we passed a headstone with
a pretty angel on top of it.
“Then I’ll make sure it’s the first word out of my mouth
when I see him,” she said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face in the
moonlight.
“No really, Lids. I’m serious. He might shoot you in the
fucking face. Jesus! I can’t stop saying that word. We’re really fucked.”
We both laughed. It was an exaggerated sound, probably
because we were both scared shitless walking through the graveyard by the
bright moonlight. I was just happy we weren’t yelling at each other anymore or
being chased.
The wind picked up at the top of the hill, rustling my hair,
making it tickle my neck. Somewhere in the nearby trees, an owl hooted loudly.
We both froze.
“Well that was fucking creepy,” Lidda announced after a
moment.
“There you go being obvious again,” but my voice had lost
its earlier playfulness. All the hairs on my arms were standing straight up.
I looked back down into the cemetery, and noticed a lite fog
creeping amongst the headstones. Among the fog were about six sets of red eyes.
My breath rushed out in a whisper, “See-thrus.”
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