He decided to head right past a set of bathrooms and pay phones. This brought him to a reception area with several entrances. One led toward the front lawn, which was thankfully empty. The glass windows were broken here too, and a soft breeze scattered the leftover junk food wrappers and paper into the corners. The other door was locked. It led out down a path along the back, which faced one of the covered parking lots. He’d have to try and find a set of keys if they were going to stay here. They would need an escape route.
Beyond the reception desk he found an office area. Darkened computers and printers rested on desks, covered in dust and bird droppings. Obviously the animals had decided to make this building their home. He found two dead birds in a corner, along with empty water bottles and an open bag of chips. He picked out one of the chips and snapped it with his fingers. Still fresh.
When he looked up, he saw a handprint on the table. The dust was smudged and disturbed. It looked recent.
Michael knew he wasn’t a professional tracker by any means, but he was positive about one thing. Someone had been here recently. Opened bags of chips grew stale and soft within a day if not closed back up.
But who? Could it have been someone from the museum? It seemed unlikely. There was a lot of discarded litter. He couldn’t imagine that someone had eaten that much in less than a day.
Either way, they were gone now. Michael had left his weapon buried in the chest of the last Bagger he’d killed. They’d have to find something to arm themselves with if they were going to stay here. Michael looked around the office quickly but the most he could find was a roll of tape and a heavy hole puncher. Better than nothing. He put both items in his hoodie pocket.
For the next half hour Michael went through every desk, looking for a set of keys that would open the back door. Eventually he found them after prying open a filing cabinet with a letter opener. He plucked out a ring with dozens of keys attached. It took several tries, but on the tenth key, the back door lock clicked and fresh air hit his face.
He pulled out the tape and wrapped it around the metal so he’d be able to identify it easier in case they had to get out in a hurry.
When he went back to the reception area, there were people walking across the front lawn. Quickly he ducked behind the desk, his heart hammering in his chest. Pulling out the dust-covered office chair, he crawled under, pulling the chair back in so he was partially covered. His hand closed around the hole punch, and the whole concept seemed ridiculous. What had he been thinking? It was the most useless weapon of all time. He discarded it on the floor, realizing the letter opener would have been a better choice. Too late now.
He waited, and soon enough, he heard shoes treading on broken glass as the people approached the window.
He couldn’t tell if they were Baggers or not. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look. But he couldn’t take the chance. Pressing his back against the wooden desk, he tried to will himself invisible. If they walked through the doors, it wouldn’t take long to find him.
It wouldn’t take long to find Ryder, either.
Sitting ducks.
Time stopped. Michael’s ears strained as he waited for the sound of the front door scraping on the cement as they opened it.
Nothing happened.
The air burned in his lungs. He’d been completely unaware he was holding his breath. He exhaled as quietly as possible. Knees screamed in pain from sitting scrunched up and still.
The door scraped. The two strangers entered the building.
They didn’t speak. Feet crunched on more glass and one of them put something down on the table right above his head. Michael covered his mouth with his hand to try and silence his breathing.
He couldn’t see much from his hiding spot behind his chair, so he only caught a glimpse of their legs as they moved past the desk and into the office area. As soon as their shoes disappeared, Michael shoved the chair aside and crawled out. He moved as silently as possible, jumping over the desk and racing down the hall, back toward the auditorium. He didn’t dare look back to see if he’d been noticed.
Ryder was still in the same spot.
“Come on,” Michael said. “We’ve got to get out of here now. They’re here.”
Ryder didn’t move.
Michael grabbed his arm. “Now!”
“Leave me. I’ll only slow you down.”
Michael wasn’t about to show any pity. Not for this guy. He yanked Ryder to his feet, forcing the injured guy to put his arm around Michael’s shoulders.
But where to go?
“Come on,” Michael said. “I’ve got keys. There has to be somewhere we can hide.”
Ryder dragging, they moved slowly out into the hallway. Turning left, Michael led the way along the narrow corridor. He immediately rejected hiding in the bathroom. If they locked the doors, the Baggers would instantly know someone was hiding there. They needed to find a storage place, a locked door that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
The next set of doors on the left were big and heavy. He fumbled with the keys while Ryder kept watch, then unlocked it on the third try. He didn’t even bother to search the area first. Instead, he shoved Ryder unceremoniously through the opening and quickly closed the door behind them, locking them in. Once inside, he reached around in the dark until he pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket.
They were inside a large kitchen.
He quickly scanned the room but it was empty. There was another set of doors and he checked them out. They led outside to a loading bay. Excellent! Always good to have another exit.
They waited. No one came and banged on the door. No footsteps echoed down the hall. Michael was positive that they’d managed to get inside without the Baggers noticing.
They were safe for the time being. There was no way the Baggers could break down those doors, so unless there were other keys lying around, they should be okay. Ryder slouched against the wall while Michael looked around for weapons again. There wasn’t much to work with, not even a knife or two. Most of the cupboards were locked and he didn’t seem to have keys that worked on them. He didn’t want to risk the noise of trying to break them open.
Some kitchen.
The refrigerator smelled moldy. It was empty except for some expired coffee creamers. The freezer had only a few ice cube trays filled with foul-looking water.
“This sucks,” he finally said. “We’re safe but there’s nothing here. We can’t stay. We won’t last more than a day or two without supplies.” He tried twisting the water tap. It remained dry. “We don’t even have water.”
Ryder nodded.
“Maybe later I can try slipping out and looking for something,” Michael said. “The student housing has to have a vending machine or two.”
“If it did, we probably raided it,” Ryder said. “Most of the food on campus was brought over to the museum.”
“You couldn’t have gotten all of it.”
“My people were pretty thorough.”
“Then I guess we get to sit back and starve,” Michael said. “Because you’re not going anywhere with that ankle and I can’t exactly leave you behind.”
“I would.”
“Would what?”
“Leave you behind.”
Michael leaned against the fridge and sank down to the floor. “That’s the difference between you and me,” he said with a sigh. “You let people die. You leave them behind. I actually try to do something about it.”
“You really have no clue,” Ryder said.
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.”
And they did. There was nothing else to do but sit on the cold tiled floor in silence.
* * *
He’d been sleeping. Dreaming about something, but the picture slipped away from his brain the second he heard the key turning in the lock.
Michael was up off the floor in a heartbeat. He fumbled around, searching for the flashlight, which had slipped out of his hands while he slept. How could he have fallen asl
eep? He should have spent more time searching for weapons, tearing the kitchen apart piece by piece until he found something. Why on earth had he discarded that hole punch? He moved around in the dark until he found the countertop. Crouching down, he blindly groped the cupboards beneath, trying to find something useful. His hands wrapped around a small blender. Not exactly a weapon of choice, but it would have to do.
In the blackness he heard metal jiggle in the lock again and then stop. A slight pause. A rattle as someone searched for another key. There was a second set of master keys and this person had found it.
“Get behind the door,” Ryder whispered. “Get the upper hand.”
“We don’t know how many there are,” Michael whispered back. But he felt his way around in the darkness until he found the door. Stepping behind it, he waited with his hand blender held high, feeling absolutely ridiculous. Good thing the lights were out, because Ryder would probably burst into laughter if he could see him.
The person on the other side tried another key. This time Michael heard the lock click. His whole body tensed.
The door opened cautiously. Someone took a step into the room. Michael waited. He couldn’t strike until the person or people came in a few feet farther.
A hand fumbled with a flashlight.
Brightness filled the room, forcing Michael to blink several times in pain. He blindly jumped forward, ready to bring the blender hurling down, but paused in midflight.
A blond-haired guy froze, his hand still attached to the door handle.
“Holy crap!” the stranger said. “Don’t! I’m cool. I’m cool!” He covered his head and dropped to the floor. The flashlight rolled into a corner where it continued to give off light.
Michael kept the blender raised, but he couldn’t get past the visual of stopping to mix this guy up a smoothie. All he needed to do was arm Ryder with a cutting board or food processor and they’d be in business.
“Don’t hurt me,” the guy said. He’d completely covered his hair with his hands. “I’m cool.”
“You already said that,” Michael said. But he lowered the blender and hid it behind his back.
From the corner, Ryder was watching Michael with a look of amusement on his face. Before he could help himself, a wave of hysterical laughter burst out of Michael’s chest.
“Don’t just stand there,” Ryder said. “Get inside and close the damn door behind you.”
“Yeah,” Michael said through the giggles. “What were you, born in a barn? Don’t let the heat get out.”
CLEMENTINE
This was one of those nights that would end without Clementine getting any sleep. Nothing new there. She was getting really good at functioning in a sleep-deprived state. As long as she didn’t wake up by the side of a road again, like she had once in the early days, she could deal with it.
They’d returned home last night to discover that one of the university girls was running a high fever and the Tylenol Larisa had been dumping down her throat didn’t appear to be working.
The girl’s name was Emma. A good chunk of her arm had been torn off. The skin around the gash was hot to the touch and there were red streaks crawling up to her shoulder and down toward her elbow. Larisa had explained that this was a major sign of infection, along with her 103 degree temperature. Her friend Janelle wasn’t doing well either. She’d taken a knife to the stomach and had started vomiting blood about an hour ago. Although Clementine was no expert, she was pretty positive there was internal bleeding. Without proper medical care, they both might not make it.
“I don’t know what to do,” Larisa said. She was busy hopping around on her good foot, ignoring Joy’s attempts to get her to sit down and take a break. “I’m not trained enough to deal with this. I was only in my first year of nursing school. We haven’t learned anything yet.”
“Joy’s right,” Aries said. “You need to take a breather. You’re bleeding through your bandages. Let us take over.”
Larisa finally agreed to sit down, and Nathan helped her to the living room, where he attempted to change her bandages under her direction. Joy tried to help out but retreated to her bedroom after growing pale and muttering something about the sight of so much blood.
The main-floor bedroom had become a hospital ward. It had been empty until now. Everyone was doing their best to help out, except Colin, of course. Even Claude, the sour-faced guy who’d shoved Michael, was trying to pitch in. Colin of course had to be difficult. The only appearance he’d put in so far was to pass them all on his way to the kitchen to find a warm bottle of Gatorade.
Clementine placed her hand on Emma’s forehead. Boiling hot. Not an understatement. She could probably cook an egg on her skull. Maybe fry up some hash browns to go with it. She turned to Aries, who was pouring bottled water onto a washcloth. It was a real shame they didn’t have any ice. Weren’t you supposed to dunk people in the shower if they got too hot? She tried to remember if she knew anything else but came up blank. She’d never been much of a caregiver. That was more Mom’s field. Then again, it wasn’t like anyone she knew ever got that sick.
Dear Heath, do you remember the time you tried jumping the curb on your bike and your foot got tangled up in the chain? You hit the pavement really hard and there was dirt and gravel stuck in the palms of your hand. Your knee was bleeding and your jeans were sliced to bits. I remember how brave you were, you didn’t even cry once, even when the doctor stitched your palm back up. You walked funny for several weeks while we waited for the scab to fall off. I wish I’d paid attention now to all those times we gave Mom and Dad heart attacks by jumping off the rafters in the barn or skateboarding in the town park. I’m a lousy nurse. Can’t even figure out what to do over a fever. What’s the old saying? Feed a cold, starve a fever? Or is it the other way around? Either way, breaking out the Doritos isn’t going to help in this situation.
“I don’t know what to do,” she muttered.
“Me neither,” Aries said, and she placed the cloth against the girl’s forehead. Clementine waited to hear if the water would sizzle under all that heat.
The girl just moaned but didn’t open her eyes.
“We need to find help,” Aries said. “It’s fantastic that we have Larisa, but she’s right, one year of nursing school isn’t enough. Brandi was here yesterday. She said they’d run into someone who had a doctor in their group. She was going to go check it out. Maybe we should send someone over there to see.”
“I’ll go,” Raj said from the door. He’d been standing around with his hands stuffed into his pockets. His dark face was quite pale, even with all the shadows in the room.
“We’ll both go,” Clementine said. “Brandi’s place is well hidden. And they’d probably shoot you on sight. They’re not kind to strangers.”
“Fair enough,” Raj said. “Let’s go do this, babes. I can’t stand here feeling so helpless.”
Clementine looked at Aries. “Will you be okay?”
Aries nodded. “I’ve got Nathan and Joy. They can give me a hand until you get back. We’ll survive.”
She glanced down at the girl one last time before standing. “Okay,” she said to Raj. “Let’s go get some weapons from the garage.”
* * *
The sun was a faint glimmer in the eastern sky when they started out. The clouds were trying to push it back down. The morning was cold and drizzling. It seemed so strange to be in the middle of December without snow. Clementine would much rather put up with the white stuff, even if it did make it harder to cover their tracks.
Dear Heath, no white Christmas for me. Remember how we always knew the holidays were around the corner because Dad used to hum that song all the time? I swear, it was the only Christmas carol he knew. He drove Mom completely crazy last year. I thought for sure she was going to toss him in the barn for the night.
The rain was worse. It made her depressed when the clouds took over the sun for days on end. She was always cold, too. Not the kind of cold she could fight by slipping
on an extra pair of socks or a sweater. No, this was something different. This got into her bones and no amount of extra clothing could chase it away.
Clementine had the transistor radio tucked away in the bottom of her backpack. She’d worked out a deal with Nathan to check in every half hour or so. Not using the radios was what got them into this whole situation in the first place.
How she wished she could turn on the radio and hear Michael’s voice right about now. Just to know he was okay and still alive.
Brandi’s safe house was located just off Granville Street. It wasn’t far, if they cut through the backyards, they could get there in about ten minutes.
“WARNING. WARNING. THE CITY IS CLOSED. NO ONE IS ALLOWED IN OR OUT.”
They ducked around an old two-story house to avoid the white van patrolling the street.
“Every time I hear that message, I don’t know whether to cringe or laugh hysterically,” Raj muttered as they crawled underneath a back porch.
“I know what you mean,” Clementine said as she ducked to avoid a web with a juicy brown spider in the middle of it. “We better be careful. The Baggers are close.”
They managed to reach Brandi’s block without any major run-ins. The white van headed off in the direction of downtown and the warning message grew progressively weaker as the minutes dragged on.
“This is weird,” Clementine said. They’d reached the beginning of the block. She could see the white-and-green-trimmed house a few doors down. She’d been here twice before. Brandi’s team of survivors were efficient. There were always two or three guards hiding out on the street. Normally there was one positioned right where they were standing, hiding in a makeshift barricade that wasn’t noticeable from the street. Brandi herself often sat there for hours on end.
The area was empty. The only sign of recent life were a couple of empty cans and a half-eaten package of trail mix.
“We’d better be careful,” Raj said. Rain dripped from his curly hair and he breathed warm air into his hands.
She nodded. Her own hair was stuck to her scalp. In another world she could have been sporting a bright red umbrella, maybe even with polka dots. Instead her blond locks felt like icicles against her ears. Jumping up and down a few times, she tried to bring some feeling back into her toes.