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“Sloane, break the window,” Cary says.
It takes two tries to break the window with the crowbar. The first time it recoils and only cracks the glass. Second time’s the charm. It shatters. I try to clear away as much of the broken pane as I can but Cary tells me to stop, stop it we have to go. Except the window is too small to fit through with our book bags on. We toss them out ahead of us and then we squeeze through slowly. I go first, after the last book bag. The glass cuts into my arms and I think of that woman twisting her way through our picture window. The picture window. How can it be safe at home if the picture window is broken?
Rain spatters against my face. I land on the ground. There are no dead here, but I don’t know what’s beyond that fence. Harrison is next out the window and then Cary. As soon as he’s clear, an ominous rumble sounds overhead. The sky opens up and drenches us.
We have to crawl down the hill so we won’t be seen. We drag ourselves across muddy, dead-spring grass. It’s a full-on storm and the only thing I’m grateful for is the smell of earth this close to my face. I dig my hands into the grit. I like how it feels.
Even amid all this, I like the way it feels.
I don’t know how long it’s been since we left the school. It’s light out now. It can’t be that long but maybe it has been. Time has a way of shifting fu
We finally get to the edge of the fence and press our backs against it. We can’t stay here long. Sooner or later, the dead will drift from the car—the alarm has stopped—and stumble their way down here. And the fence—it’s not the kind you can jump.
I press my face against it, like I could hear through the wood, through the rain. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I hate to gamble like this.
We crawl along. Trace is in the back. Cary is in the front. I’m behind Cary, Rhys is behind me, Harrison is behind Rhys. Lily will freak when she sees me like this, covered in mud, alive. I wonder if she’ll cry, if she’ll believe I’m there, if she’ll press her hands against my face to prove it. I bet even then she still won’t believe it.
Cary stops and I’m so caught up in thoughts of my sister, I run into him. We’ve reached the end of the fence. He holds his hand up. Wait. And then he crawls forward, forward, peers around cautiously. After a minute, he moves even farther around for a better look and then he jerks back, pressing himself against the fence.
“There’s a group coming up the other side,” he says. “They’re going to make their way around in a minute. We have to move or they’ll see us. We’ll get to one of those houses and lay low until the rain lets up. Ready?”
We get to our feet and curve around the fence. The sight at the opposite end of it is sickening. A group of infected converging, turning their heads searchingly. The ones who reach the fence first paw against the wood. They seem to know we’re around but not where. Cary gestures us forward and we are quiet but we are not invisible and I wish we were invisible. The houses across the street are invitations. Their doors are open, open mouths.
We need to run.
We just need to run for it.
We don’t. We tiptoe across that road, the rain silencing our footsteps. We go to the first house we see and hurry up the steps.
The door is locked.
Cary looks around and then jumps over the side of the porch and we follow him between two houses. I know what he’s thinking. Maybe there’s a back door, maybe there’s a back door. Maybe it’s open. Harrison sticks close to Cary. I’m next to Rhys. Trace hangs back.
We’ve almost cleared the house when the rain turns into glass. I feel it in my hair and against my face. Broken window. An infected has jumped from a window of the house beside us. It lands neatly between us and a scream rises in my throat but dies on my lips. Rhys pulls me back and we stumble into Trace. It’s a man. A dead man. Not long dead, I don’t think. His skin is gray, tinged purple, and his eyes see everything and nothing. There are gashes on his hand. His neck is wide open. He rasps air at us, momentarily confused to be surrounded by so many living. He turns slowly, his steps stilted.
He faces Cary.
Chooses Cary.
Cary charges into the dead man and they both go flying into the ground. I raise my crowbar over my head to bring it down on the man before the first bite can happen when I realize it’s not Cary. It’s Harrison.
Harrison jumped in front of Cary.
I slam the crowbar into the man’s shoulder. It doesn’t stop him. The man grips Harrison’s shoulders, pulls him down, and bites into the first piece of flesh his mouth can find—Harrison’s cheek. I could fool myself into thinking it’s a kiss, but then the skin separates from Harrison’s face and it’s just red, a river of red dragging down his face, hanging flesh, and the dead man pulls at it with his teeth, a
Harrison screams and I’m terrible because the first thing I think is he’s going to draw attention, not that he’s doomed, that he’s going to die one way or the other. Rhys raises his bat. Blood spatters, brains everywhere. Like that, it’s over. I look behind us. Nothing else has come.
Yet.
Rhys kicks the dead man off Harrison and Harrison lays on the ground making fish-out-of-water noises, twitching, shocked. We surround him. His mouth moves, open, closed, open, aggravating his wound, making the bleeding worse. He’s trying to say something but nothing is coming out. Cary bows his head as close as he can get it to Harrison’s mouth. Harrison’s eyes go wild and then he finally finds his voice.
“There,” he says.
Cary looks up at us. His face is wet. I don’t know if it’s just the rain.
“Get in the house,” he tells us.
“But—”
“Get in the house!”
We crawl in through the broken window, leaving Harrison and Cary outside. I fall onto a cold kitchen floor and crawl across it, past an island, before getting to my feet. The house has an open layout, a kitchen that bleeds into a living room that opens down a hall. Stairs. I don’t see any dead but I see bloodstains everywhere. The TV screen-down on the floor. An overturned table with missing legs. Ripped couch.
I clutch the crowbar and step forward cautiously as Rhys and Trace fall in behind me. Rhys runs to the front door to make sure it’s locked. Trace makes his way upstairs. I make my way to the other side of the house, into what looks like an office. Empty. The windows are all shuttered. I meet Rhys in the hall. Trace pads halfway down the stairs.
“Is it clear?” Rhys asks him.
Trace nods and goes back upstairs and I realize he hasn’t said a word since we left. I move to follow him—I don’t know why—but Rhys grabs my arm and holds me back.
A clattering noise sounds from the kitchen. We go to it and find Cary on the floor, on his hands and knees. The baseball bat rolls in front of him. He has two book bags.
No Harrison.
“Don’t say anything,” he says.
He stays like that for a long moment, trying to gather the will to get to his feet. It isn’t until Rhys makes his way to the window that Cary manages to stand.
“Don’t look out there,” Cary says. “I’ll cover it.”
My stomach turns. I watch Cary struggle to move the fridge in front of the window. Rhys and I offer to help but Cary refuses to let us. I wonder what he’s thinking, if he’s thinking of how it was supposed to be Harrison when we were first outside. How Harrison was so worried about doing nothing with his life but in the end, he gave it to Cary. Harrison, dead. I’m filled with pity for him but I can’t say I’m entirely sad. I move to the wrecked couch and shrug off my book bag. I sit down. I’m immediately aware of how cold and wet I am, how sore. I close my eyes and listen to the rain.