Sam gasped. The white monsters had gotten to within only a dozen yards of where he and his mother now stood. Close enough for him to see blood on their mouths.
“Sam!” his mother called. It sounded more like a scream than a name. Four years ago she’d have simply yanked him away by the arm, but now he was much too large for that. He was as big as some of the adults in the camp.
Now it was his turn to lead. He leapt forward, gripped his mother by the arm and ran. She resisted slightly at first, but complied quickly. As he dashed away, he formulated his plan, a plan that required knowledge of the building and a lot of luck. It also relied on his hunch about these new creatures being correct. If not, they were all dead.
They ran, the sound of the creatures’ long, black claws clicking against the cheap school linoleum like a psychotic typewriter. The monsters grunted and whined as they pursued their prey. Sam ignored them, focusing instead on the room doors as they passed them. Chloe’s room had a picture of a daisy taped to the outside. He shined the flashlight on the doors as he passed, scanning for the right one. The thick, oak doors streamed by until Chloe’s daisy came into view, lit dimly by the flashlight in the darkness.
“Here!” he cried. “Stop!”
Sam released his mother’s arm and reached into his front pocket, retrieving his camera. He hit the power button and watched as the little LED on the top of the camera blinked amber.
Cloaked in darkness, the creatures quickly approached, their presence detectable only by the sinister Morse code of black talons clicking on cheap tile flooring.
“Come on…come on…”
Seconds passed. Then the light turned green and Sam hit the shutter button. Instantly the flash lit up the hallway and the creatures in pursuit recoiled like demons doused with holy water. Placing their clawed, massive hands to their eyes, they screamed in a range so high Sam thought his ears might bleed.
He pounded on the door. “Chloe!” he bellowed. “Open the door!”
Precious seconds ticked by. “Sammy!” his mother cried. “What are you doing?”
Then the door opened and Chloe peered out.
“Get your bag! We gotta go!” Sam cried. “Right now!”
Chloe disappeared back into the room.
Sam held the camera up and faced the clicking darkness. The amber light on the device blinked…then turned green. He snapped another picture, dousing the small group of the creatures with a bath of bright, white light. They recoiled again and Sam had the surreal impression of vampires exposed to sunlight.
Then Chloe was back at the door, pack in hand. “What’s going on, Sam?”
“Just follow me,” he said, and she did.
The three of them sprinted toward a stairwell leading up to the school’s second floor. Sam’s hunch about the monsters’ sensitivity to light had been right; now he just needed to get them all back to their room.
They left the screaming monsters behind and barged through the heavy stairwell doors, Denise in the lead, followed by Chloe and then Sam. Using the thin beam of the flashlight, they ascended the stairs as quickly as they dared. A misstep could lead to a broken ankle—and that would be a death sentence.
At the top of the stairs Denise exited through another metal door, allowing Chloe and Sam through before closing it firmly behind them. They stood for a moment in another darkened hallway, catching their breath while animalistic shrieks echoed up through the stairwell.
“We need to get back to the room,” Denise said between breaths.
“There’s another set of stairs that leads back down to the first floor,” Sam replied. “Just down from our room, Mom.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve used them before.”
Denise looked at her son and then to Chloe. A look of realization passed over her face. “I see.”
“I couldn’t leave without her, Mom,” Sam said. “I just—”
“I understand, baby. It’s okay. We need to figure out what to do next.”
“Can somebody tell me what’s happening?” Chloe asked. “What were those things downstairs?”
“We don’t know yet. But some of the others are dead. Maybe all of them,” Denise said.
Chloe paused, her lips a thin line. She nodded. “Okay then. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Sam, Denise and Chloe made their way slowly and carefully across the second floor of the school, dodging piles of debris and trash strewn haphazardly throughout the floor. Sam led the way, taking them through two defunct classrooms, some with skeletons still piled into corners, stacked like cordwood by people who were likely just as dead by now.
Below, the strange creatures shrieked and growled, the horrific clacking of their long talons echoing throughout the halls. Outside, a flash of lightning arced, flooding the upper floor with bright, white light. A chorus of screams erupted from below, melding with the crash of thunder.
“The lightning blinds them,” Sam said. “That’s why the camera flash worked. It disoriented them.”
After navigating through two classrooms, they found themselves on the other side of the school now, opposite where the attacks had occurred. Sam and his mother’s room awaited them below on the first floor. If they hurried, they had a fighting chance of making it in and out before the unknown predators took over the school completely.
Another door greeted them at the top of the steps. Sam pulled it open and let his mother and Chloe pass. They stepped slowly and carefully down the steps, in total darkness save for the tiny beam of Sam’s flashlight.
At the bottom they met another solid door. Denise pushed it open and the rusty hinges screamed, slicing through the silence like sharp knife. They were now on the other side of the school, with a set of classrooms separating them from the pale creatures. A quick glance up and down the hallway revealed no immediate threats.
“Sam, you got that camera of yours ready?” Denise asked.
“Yes, Mom.” He held the digital camera in his right hand, his finger poised on the shutter button like a trigger.
“Good. Chloe, you still have your pistol?”
Chloe shook her head. “Jonathan took it away when I got here. He said I was too young for a gun.”
Denise sighed. “Figures.” She paused for a moment, but went on. “We’ll just have to make do then. When we get to the bottom of these steps we go straight to the room. No bright ideas,” she said, glancing toward Sam. “We grab our packs and go out the window. In and out, got it?”
Sam and Chloe both agreed.
“Now!” Denise whispered, stepping into the darkened corridor. Sam followed, lighting the way as best he could, Chloe in tow. They hurried through the darkness, pulses pounding. Sam hadn’t been this afraid in a while, not since before they found Jonathan and the school, back when he and his mom were still on the road. With every step he could imagine one of those white nightmares appearing in the flashlight’s anemic beam, long talons tearing into his stomach, his guts running out like a bloody waterfall.
They made it to the room in less than a minute, encountering no predators along the way. The still-burning candle cast a pallid glow through the open door of their room and onto the hallway floor like a homing beacon. A dozen steps later they found themselves back inside their room. Sam glanced around, realizing keenly how much he’d miss this place.
“Be quick,” Denise said when they arrived in the room.
Sam nodded. He retrieved the backpack from the foot of the neatly-made bed while Chloe went to the window and lifted it open. Rain rushed in, riding on the heavy winds of the storm, pooling on the tile floor just inside the room.
Sam walked to the window, pack in hand and turned back toward his mother just as another lightning flash streaked across the sky. The glow from the flash lit the room, including the hallway just outside the door, revealing a hunched, pale figure creeping up behind his mother.
“Mom!” he screamed.
The flash blinded the creature as Denise turned. Recovering quickly, the creature pounced. Denise got off one random shot before striking the floor hard, the monster on top of her. Sam dropped his pack and began to run toward his mother. Quickly, Chloe reached out a hand and gripped him by the arm, pulling him back. Denise screamed one last time before the creature sank its sharp teeth into her throat and violently shook its head, leaving behind a cavernous hole in her throat. It lifted its head, bloody flesh dangling from the thing’s mouth as Denise’s body jerked. Blood quickly pooled beneath her as her eyes rolled back in her head.
Sam stood, horrified and unable to move. The creature slurped down the bloody chunk of Denise’s throat before opening its mouth wide in a terrifying scream. Eyeing more prey in the room, it hunkered down on its haunches, ready to attack.
Sam could only stand there, mouth agape, unable to move. Chloe tore the camera from Sam’s grasp and fired the flash toward the creature. Bright, white light filled the room, forcing the predator to shield its red eyes from the blinding glare. The creature shook its massive head, slamming itself into the wall, unable to see its prey and shrieking in frustration.
With their attacker stunned, Chloe yanked hard on Sam’s arm, shoving the upper half of his body through the open window. Another push and he fell through, tumbling the short distance to the muddy ground below.
Another set of glowing red eyes appeared behind the blinded creature. Chloe raised the camera again and pressed the shutter button.
Nothing happened.
“Shit!” she screamed. The flashing amber light taunted her from the top of the camera.
“Come on, come on, come on!”
The LED turned green. Chloe hit the shutter button as the second creature entered the room. It recoiled at the flash, covering its eyes and uttering a shrill, ear-piercing shriek.
Wasting no time, Chloe dove through the window, doing a quick tuck and roll before striking the ground below hard. The maneuver worked only partially, as she landed on one shoulder and the back of her head in the mud. Her backpack was the only thing that kept her from breaking her neck.
Ignoring the pain from the fall, she got to her feet quickly and found Sam. He stood, transfixed, staring at the open window.
“Come on!” she yelled, gripping him by the arm.
He didn’t budge.
She slapped him across the face as hard as she could, the sound of the impact audible above the torrential rain. That seemed to snap him out of his daze. With water running in rivulets down his face, he looked at her with an expression of sadness, a defeated and lonely look that nearly broke her heart.
“Come with me,” she said, her voice taking on a soothing tone.
Sam continued to stare at the window.
She touched his cheek and turned his face, looking him in the eye. “Come.”
He nodded and followed.
They ran. Behind them, the creatures fed on the bloody remains of Denise Treiber while her only son and his only friend escaped into the malevolent and stormy night.
Ed Brady stood across from Dave Porter in the courtyard of Glenn Summerville’s former compound, a repurposed Kansas City university residence hall that had been a prison up until a month ago, until Dave and a group of prisoners liberated it, freeing nearly fifty captives.
“I guess this is it,” Ed said.
Dave nodded. “I guess so.”
“You don’t have to go after him, you know,” Trish Connor said, flanked by Ed’s sons, Zach and Jeremy.
“We all have things we have to do,” Dave said. “This is mine.”
“I just…I just don’t want to see you go,” Trish said. “I feel like I’m never going to see you again.”
Dave smiled and changed the subject. “So how many are going north?”
“Twelve,” Jasper Carter said.
“So with the group of twenty-eight going to California that leaves, what…five or six people staying behind?” Dave said.
Ed nodded.
“Everyone should be going,” Dave said. “It’s reckless staying here.”
“And they say it’s suicide to go,” Ed said. He shrugged. “They’re going to do what they want and that’ll be that.”
“I suppose. Who’s leading your truck in the convoy?”
“John,” Trish answered.
Dave chuckled. “Good for you. Could’ve been worse. You could’ve gone with Alice.”
Ed shook his head. “I asked for John. There’s something about Alice…I don’t know. John is the lesser of two evils, I guess.”
“You should be leading this thing,” Dave said. “I told them so, but you know how these fucking committees operate. They put it to a vote, but they don’t know you like I do.”
Ed grinned. “Sounds like you’re the one who should be in charge. After what you did to Glenn and his crew, you’d be a shoo-in.”
“I had help.”
“Things have come a long way since Mitchell’s warehouse, eh?” Ed said.
“I guess so,” Dave replied. “I miss that guy.”
“We all do,” Trish added. “He was one of the good ones.”
Dave nodded. “We’ve lost a few of those along the way.”
Silence passed between them before Dave broke it. “Well, I’d better check on Johnny and see how far he’s gotten with the Jeep. He’ll be pissy if he has to do all the work himself.”
Ed extended a hand. “It’s been good knowing you.”
Dave shook Ed’s hand with a tight grip. “Same here. And thanks for not shooting me back there in Mitchell’s warehouse.”
Ed laughed. “I think we both have Mitchell to thank for us not shooting each other.”
Dave turned to Trish. A tear streaked down her cheek as he reached out a hand. Instead, she pulled him in and gave him a hug.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Please.”
“I’ll be okay,” he replied.
“No, you won’t.”
“You take care of these boys,” Dave said, breaking the embrace.
Nodding, Trish quickly wiped another stray tear away.
“You guys take care of each other,” Dave said to Zach and Jeremy. They nodded in return.
Dave extended a hand to Jasper. “Glad to have met you, if only for a short while.”
“Sometimes a short while is all we have,” Jasper replied, shaking Dave’s hand. “Every extra day is a bonus.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Dave said, releasing Jasper’s grip.