23 Hours (3 page)

I grabbed two canteens off a rack along with a couple packs of peanut butter crackers. With the two extra applesauce and pudding cups from Ned, the crackers and some water would keep the boy’s stomach happy.

Candice continued to eye me suspiciously from behind the glass top counter until I set the goods down in front of her and pulled out a handful of silverware. At that point her eyes lit up just like Ned’s at the sight of that spleen.

“And I need these filled,” I said, pushing the canteens towards her.

Even with the outrageous cost of water, I knew I was overpaying, but in a few hours that wouldn’t matter at all; none of it would do me any good once that bullet was in my head.

She returned quickly, either anxious for the silverware, or to make sure I didn’t change my mind.

“Anything else I can get you?” She asked sweet as can be, licking her cracked lips and even showing a little extra cleavage. If I was thirty years older I probably still wouldn’t have taken her up on it, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to turn down her gracious offer before an air horn started screaming out from the roof.

“Damn,” I growled as I grabbed the supplies and the boy before running for the nearest exit. The siren meant that a group of infested were attacking. There really was nothing to fear while inside the Town, the old factory was built to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast. The problem was that once the sirens started, they’d lock every door into or out of the building and wouldn’t open them until they were sure the entire group was either gone or dead. At times the attacks were known to last days but even if it only lasted a couple hours, it’d be too late for us.

The boy said nothing as we ran through the main aisle towards the large garage door at the west side of the building. My adrenaline and my hope surged as I saw the sun through the opening, just before the door slammed down in front of us.

I moved to the small door to the left of the large one, but it too was already barricaded.

“You’ve got to let me out,” I said to the two guys guarding it.

“You got a death wish?” the uglier one asked. “Get out of here.”

I could see their resolve waver when I pulled out another handful of silverware, but they quickly regained their composure.

“I suggest you leave now before we confiscate that,” not-quite-so-ugly said as he pointed a sawed off shotgun at me.

For a moment I thought about taking them both on, but I had to think about the boy. No matter how fast or strong I was feeling, I couldn't be sure I could keep him safe. One errant shotgun blast and that’d be the end of him. That left only one option.

I backed away from ugly and uglier and waited until I rounded the corner before breaking into a run. As underhanded as he was, I knew Ned would have some off-the-record way in and out of the building.

With the lockdown in place I expected Ned’s to get real busy real fast, but thankfully it was still relatively empty when I rushed back inside. He hesitated as I bellied up to the end of the crusty bar and motioned for him to join me.

“Ya’ haven’t left yet?” He asked with a nervous glance at my arm.

“Got stopped at the back door,” I replied. “I need an alternate route.”

He shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”

“Come on man. You got to have a way.”

I could see the wheels start to spin within the old man’s head but I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

“Let me see what I can work out,” he said heading towards the back room, only this time he stopped just short and picked up a handset hanging on the wall. There was no telephone service anywhere anymore, so it had to be an internal system only. And there was no way for me to know exactly who he was talking to, but I was pretty sure is was Big Mike and the apprehensive looks he kept tossing my way let me know it wasn’t the phone call I wanted him to make.

Chapter 4

“Damn,” I muttered as I began to slowly back away. Just as I reached the door, just as I thought I would be free, he looked up once again.

“He’s running!” Ned yelled before slamming the receiver down. I couldn’t wait any longer, so even with the boy clinging to my back I took off in a full out run. The aisle ways still weren’t too crowded so they offered no means of disappearing. The first chance I got I ducked into a side corridor, hoping to jog my memory about where to find an old maintenance room. One of the working girls had taken me to it about a year ago for some off-the-books fun but I was half tanked at the time so the details were a bit fuzzy.

I heard the pounding of Ned’s footsteps coming up the hall behind me but I didn’t figure his fat ass would be able to catch me so I didn’t bother looking back. A couple minutes and a few wrong turns later I found the room I’d been looking for. I was about to scream out my thanks to that girl, not that I hadn’t done that before, but the footsteps were still right behind me and growing louder. From the sound of it a few more people had joined Ned and I knew they weren’t just wanting to drink whisky and play poker.

I could feel my blood start to boil, but I couldn’t really blame Ned. He knew I’d been infected and he knew what that meant in the next couple hours. He was only doing what was best for the Town and for himself. I might have even done the same thing if I was in his position. Still, if they were going to find me, I hoped he’d be the first one through the door so I could at least punch him in the face before the others got to me.

There were no working lights in the maintenance room but that wouldn’t guarantee I’d stay hidden so I felt around the room until I found an old water heater to hide behind. The rest of the floor was solid concrete but as we made our way around the heater I noticed it made a hollow metallic sound and I couldn’t help but grin. As quietly as possible I slid the kid from my back and started groping at the floor hoping to find a handle. It didn’t take long before I was able to lift the heavy plate covering the crawl space below us but then I had to pause.

I hate, I mean HATE cramped spaces. Like can’t breath, hyperventilate, go berserker, hate them. But at that point it wasn’t about me, it was about the kid. Well, maybe it was a little about me too; I wasn’t quite ready to die, so fighting every last instinct, I slid myself into the hole before grabbing the kid, crouching down and closing the cover once again.

It was black. Pitch black. Thankfully I still had one of those glow sticks in my bag. It was one of the cheap piece of shit ones from China that didn’t last nearly long enough, but I wouldn’t need it very long in that tunnel so I bent the thing in half, flooding the cramped space with an eerie green light.

The kid followed right behind me as I started to crawl as fast as possible from that place. The kid had heart, I’ll tell you that; even with his bum leg, he kept up without a single complaint. The small space, the dark and the spider webs would have been enough to terrify most kids, but not him.

I could hear the muffled voices of Ned’s posse as they reached the maintenance room. I didn’t stop and I didn’t look back, but since I didn’t hear the cover open or close and I didn’t hear any screaming echoing through the tunnel, I could only assume that they didn’t find our way out and must have moved on.

That was all well and good and I even felt a little relieved but my reprieve from them did nothing to help my claustrophobia. We couldn’t have made it more than twenty feet before the walls started closing in, my heart started racing and my throat constricted.

I stopped; I had to. The sweat poured from my forehead as I closed my eyes for a minute, swallowing hard several times. I could sense the kid right behind me, and I really didn’t want to traumatize him by completely freaking out but that’s exactly what my body wanted to do; pounding my fists against the wall felt like the only option.

Taking a glance behind me I saw his perfectly calm eyes staring back at me through the green haze and the thought popped into my head “If he can do this, so can I”. Turning back around I pushed myself to place one hand in front of the other, dragging myself forward. Then, just as I could tell we were starting to make progress again, the glow stick started to dim even quicker. I spazzed just a little bit, flailing my hands and feet slightly before gritting my teeth and starting to crawl even faster. Tight spaces were bad enough; tight dark spaces were down right Hell.

Even in the dying light of the glow stick I could just make out the gap between the metal door and the concrete tunnel walls only ten feet in front of me. I threw the hatch open before I even had a chance to think about anyone being there. Thankfully as the metal door clanked against the concrete floor, we were the only ones around to hear it.

As we climbed out of that godforsaken hole, there was just enough light streaming through a crack in the door to see we were in a storage closet. Peering through the crack in the door, I could see it was right by the fleet of military vehicles. There was a young, pale faced kid with red hair guarding the large garage door but otherwise the room was vacant. I stood there for a minute fighting the urge to rush out there. I knew I could take out Opie there. Shoot I could’ve nailed him with one of my knives from where I stood but if there were others waiting in the shadows or behind the trucks I would have just signed our death certificate, so I waited.

“I got it. I won’t let anyone leave,” Opie said into a phone hanging on the wall, his voice echoing throughout the garage. “And you’re sure they’re focusing on the south entrance?...Yeah, yeah but if they start hitting here...okay, just hurry; it’s just me here and a lot can happen in five minutes.”

So I knew he was alone and how much time I had, but I still had to think about the kid. Standing right behind me, his innocent eyes looking up, waiting for me to pick him up once again. Sure he’d seen me kill a couple of the infected, but that guy by the door wasn’t one of them and for some reason that mattered. I didn’t want the kid to see me kill one of our own.

“You wait here,” I said to the kid once again as I positioned him behind an old wooden shelf. It wouldn’t offer much in the way of protection if things went wrong but at least from there he wouldn’t be able to see me kill some kid who was just trying to do his job. I set the backpack down beside him and grabbed a couple knives and a sleeve I fashioned from an old flannel shirt and the elastic from a pair of underwear. It wasn’t pretty, but it held the knives in place against my forearm.

There was only the slightest creek as I slid the storage room door open just a little more. It still wouldn’t have been enough for me to fit through but it was more than enough room to throw a knife. With a quick glance back at the boy I realized I couldn’t wait any longer.

I slid one of the knives from my generic sheath and carefully pinch the blade between my thumb and index finger. It was rather light but thanks to way too many hours spent honing and polishing, it was perfectly balanced. Learning to throw a balanced knife is much harder than it is to learn to throw a blade or handle heavy one, but it is worth the extra effort.

The guard had hung up the phone but he hadn’t moved from his spot as I took a step back with the knife pulled back over my shoulder. It actually took me a minute to prepare myself but after a moment of concentrated breathing I took a quick step forward I let the thing rip. My follow through was perfect, I could feel it. I even started to smile, but at the last second the guard stepped forward letting the knife sink into the phone behind him with a loud crack.

“Damn!” I screamed within my head before sliding another blade from the elastic. He barely had a chance to turn and see the first knife before I let loose and the second one lodged itself into his neck. His gun crashed to the floor as he flailed around before grabbing the knife with both hands, his mouth moving, gasping for air the whole time. Both of his knees had barely touched the ground before I threw the third one, burying it into his forehead.

Sliding the door open a little more, I rushed out to collect my knives and hide the body. I said a quick prayer for the guy then went to work on the blades. It wasn’t nearly as easy to pull the knife from his skull as I thought it would be, but with enough force and a little wiggling I was able to get it. I could only hope I’d never have to do that again.

Once I had removed the knife from his throat I went to work trying to hide the body. It might have just been the adrenaline rush, but moving the guard around was a lot easier than I expected. There was an old covered troop carrier nearby so I dragged his body over and threw him in the back. It wasn’t the most original hiding place but it wasn’t as much about keeping him from being found as it was keeping the boy from seeing it.

So with the body stashed, I ran back to the closet and found the boy exactly where I’d left him. He reached up as soon as he saw me with those puppy dog eyes, so I couldn’t say no. I scooped him up before grabbing my bag and Excalibur. It would have been a lot easier having him across my back, but he was clenched so tight on my chest I just let him stay like that as we ran across the room to a small Jeep.

I hated to do it, but when we reached the vehicle I had to pull him off and set him in the passenger seat as I rushed around looking for the keys. I’d half expected them to be in the Jeep, but I was wrong. There were several sets of keys on a pegboard in the corner above the desk, but none for a Jeep; such was my luck.

Loud voices echoing from the hallway at the far end of the garage sent my heart racing. All of the keys on the board had a label but they didn’t mean anything to me. Numbers and letter designations were fine if you were familiar with military vehicle IDs, but I wasn’t. A glanced over at the closest truck trying to match up the numbers on it with any of the keys, but had no luck.

The voices got louder and I was just about to give up and prepare to fight when I saw a set of keys labeled “MK1”; I almost jumped out of my skin. Somehow I hadn’t even noticed that there was a scout car mixed into the fleet. I grabbed the keys and raced back to the Jeep, swinging the kid onto my back before taking off through the maze of trucks.