I take a
deep breath and look at Alek and then Emily. “Okay.” I nod slowly, my brain working overtime as I think about all the things I need to do. “This isn’t going to be easy, you know.”
“It is. Mikey was right when he said that he still had friends here. He does,
and they’re helping too.” Alek steps forward warily.
I hold out my hand
, forcing a smile as I try to play nice.
He smiles back and
takes my olive branch. “Great to finally meet you. Emily’s talked a lot about you.” He pulls a gun from his belt and releases the safety. “We really need to go right now, though.”
I can
’t help but be impressed: fire power—exactly what we need. I look to Emily, who only has a knife like me—granted, hers is bigger than mine, though. She sees my worried expression and shrugs.
“We shouldn
’t need any weapons. Everything should already be in motion for us. Distraction, remember?”
I want to ask more questions, but they usher
me to the doorway, Alek peeking outside and then motioning for us to follow his lead. I grip my knife and we move into the hallway outside what has essentially been my prison. My strength still isn’t what it was before our capture, but it’s better than what it’s been in recent days.
The hallway is bright and cheery, not what I was expecting at all. Paintings cover the walls, and brown wooden
paneling. A smell from long ago fills my nostrils, but I try to put it to the back of my mind for now. A sound in the distance grabs my attention, like a foghorn sounding loud and clear. Emily turns around and smiles.
“That
’s Mikey,” she whispers with a grin.
I nod, shrug, and roll my eyes. I hate being out of the loop.
As we come to the end of the hallway, a wide set of stairs opens up and I realize what the smell is: books. Lots of them. I reach over and tap Emily on the shoulder.
“Are we in a library?” I whisper.
She nods and mouths something I don’t get, and I mouth back a
what
? Emily huffs and starts to whisper to me urgently. I still have no clue what the kid is fucking talking about. A simple yes or no, even a nod or a shake of the head would suffice. Instead I seem to be getting a running rendition of a musical the way her arms are flying all over the place. I raise an eyebrow.
“I
have no idea what you’re saying,” I huff, possibly a little louder than I intended.
We’re in a life and death situation here, mouth, keep it the fuck down!
Alek
turns around with a frown and hushes us both. Boy’s got attitude. I like it. We creep down the stairs in single file as quietly as we can. Lucky for us, the steps are old stone and not wooden creaky ones like in most horror movies.
There
’s literally no one around, and I get a deeper sense of unease when I see a large wooden door as we make it to the landing. I tap Emily on the shoulder and point to it. She nods and I frown further. They can’t be serious that we’re going to walk right out the front door.
My heart is
pummeling my chest from the inside out; the constant rush in my ears nearly makes me miss two voices coming toward us. Alek gestures to a small door and Emily and I quickly slip inside. I keep my ear to the door, listening to the voices getting closer.
“What you doing here, man? Fallon said he wanted everyone covering the breach.”
“I’m on guard duty,” Alek replies. “You remember the chick upstairs? Fallon doesn’t want to take any chances.”
Take any chances? I wonder what he
’s talking about.
They must
not believe him because a couple of seconds later there’s a scuffle and grunting and a shot rings out. Emily’s hand covers her mouth as another one sounds loudly, and when the door opens back up we both flinch, yet it’s only Alek standing there, thankfully, with a fresh spray of blood across his uniform.
“Help me get them inside,” h
e says grimly.
I grip the hands of one of the men while Alek grabs th
e ankles and we shuffle the body inside. The man’s hands are still warm in mine, and it freaks me out, but I shrug it off and grab the second set of hands, walk backwards and drop the body next to the first one. He twitches, blood oozing from a gash in his chest, but he makes no sound.
I turn and together we back out of the room. I look
at Alek in a strange new light; I’m in shock that he managed to take them both out without getting hurt himself. I guess I didn’t realize up until now that I had been doubting him—his ability to get us out of here unharmed. I look down at my hands, the warm feeling of the other guard’s hands in mine sending chills down my spine. I step out of the room and shut the door behind me with a new sense of confidence. We keep our eyes peeled and our ears on high alert as we continue through the winding corridors. Bookshelves down here have been stripped bare of their books, walls are free of their paintings, but the dusty echo of them remains on the pale walls. Wooden paneling has been ripped away, carpets pulled up—it’s bizarre. I wonder why here is so different from the rest of the place. Here it’s barren, yet upstairs it felt almost regal.
A set of doors is in front of us, light shining from underneath, and my heart skips a beat. We
’re so close, and it’s been so easy that it doesn’t seem right. I chance a look behind us, checking that we aren’t being followed, but there’s nothing and no one. Damn Mikey and his clever plan—whatever it may be.
Alek stops in front of the door, his hand resting on the handle. He looks back to us, determination
etched across his face, and I’m guessing this is the decider, the part where this plan will either succeed or fail. I swallow loudly and grip my knife tighter as he twists and pushes the door open. Sunlight glares in at us, but I don’t get a second to adjust as we’re running straight out the door and blindly trying to follow Alek.
The air
is cool on my face and smells fresh, clean; even in my panicked state, the chill in the air makes me aware that winter is on its way. We run cautiously, keeping as close to the side of the building as possible, not speaking a word. A courtyard area opens up to us, and Alek looks across it and then back to Emily and me.
“We
need to get to the other side. Once we hit that small group of trees, we need to go left and follow it all the way around. The gate out of here is there. That’s where Mikey is waiting for us.” His eyes flit to me.
“What?” I shrug, k
nowing perfectly well what they are getting at. My heart did a leap and my temper flared at the sound of Mikey’s name.
“Just, don
’t cause any shit with him, not until we’re away from here,” Emily says, taking the lead from Alek.
“Oh please, I
’m not stupid,” I snap.
Satisfied that I
’m not about to lose my cool, Alek continues talking. “We walk. No running whatsoever—not unless someone calls us out.” He glances back around the corner and then back to us again. “We should be fine—no one’s around, everyone’s locked inside.”
I grab Alek
’s arm as he begins to turn the corner. “Wait…what?”
“What?”
he replies.
“Why is everyone locked inside?”
Alek shifts on one foot, looking at Emily. I glance at her and see the small shrug of her shoulders. Looks like she’s out of this loop too. “We had to have a breach.”
“A breach?”
I ask.
“Yeah, it
’s the only way to lock everyone away. We need to get you out,” he says, pointing at me, “while keeping everyone else safe.”
“Why do we want to keep them safe? They de
serve everything coming to them,” I snap.
“Not everyone.” Emily shakes her head.
“There’s children here. A lot of people don’t have a clue what is going on.”
I huff in agreement. I don
’t want anyone innocent to get hurt because of me. Alek attempts to turn the corner again, but I think of something else and grab his arm. “Wait!”
“What?” Emily and Alek say in unison.
“There’s a breach?”
“Yes, can we go now?”
Alek says with irritation.
“No, wait, you mean, breached as in there are deader
s roaming around here?” I shout-whisper, checking behind me for stray deaders.
“Yes,
which is why we should really get going.” Alek emphasizes his words, and for the first time I actually notice his nervousness.
I look across at the small gathering of trees, thinking of what could be hiding in them, and then to my
stupid little knife. It seems I’ve come full circle: armed with only a crappy butter knife to save my sorry ass again.
“Damn it, fine. Let
’s go.”
We head out across the lawn at a brisk pace, keeping our weapons low and out of sight. Al
ek does the looking around for Fallon’s other guards while I keep my eyes on the prize—or the trees, anyway.
A short burst of gunfire sounds of
f to the right, but it sounds far away—or at least not in my line of sight. I flinch nonetheless: gunfire kinda does that to a girl. The low moan of deaders draws my attention away from the trees in front, and my stomach does a little flip as I see people moving over by a bench as if getting ready to take in some rays. The way they move and the breeze that’s blowing my way tells me that it’s deaders, not people, taking a load off in the sun.
What I can
’t fathom is why Fallon’s guards haven’t taken them out yet. These guys are armed to the teeth, and are more than capable of taking out one or two zombies, so why on earth the entire place is in lockdown and these body-munchers are roaming around, I can’t fathom.
We duck under the shelter of the trees, and
Alek leads us as far back as we can go before we come upon a six-foot fence. Six feet or so, maybe seven . . . Fuck, I don’t know! I glance behind me, seeing a male deader doing a weird, half-jog, dead-man-running thing toward us, growling and gargling on his own black phlegm. Alek steps around me, takes out his gun, and shoots it directly in the forehead without giving pause. The deader drops to the ground, its face getting lost among the brambles. Alek jogs back around me and keeps moving along the side of the fence.
“Let
’s go,” he says in a hushed voice. Why—considering he just fired an extremely loud gun—I have no idea, but apparently that’s acceptable and talking isn’t.
I open and close my mouth a couple of times before following after both him and Emily. I feel a little dazed by it all, and know I need to get my head screwed on right. Once again, I
’m going back out into the dead world, feeling unprepared both mentally and physically for it.
“This is it,” he says
, a little out of breath as he fishes out a small bunch of keys from his pocket.
He slips
one in the lock and pushes the door open wide, and we walk out into another wooded area. He locks the gate behind him and I turn to stare open-mouthed at him.
“That
’s it?”
“Not quite. W
e need to get as far away from here as possible before Fallon or anyone else realizes you’re gone—otherwise they’re going to come looking.” Alek offers a small smile. “Hell, once they realize where the breach came from, they’re going to come looking for us all.”
“Why has no one done this before? Got me out of here? If it
’s so damn easy.” Tears threaten to fall, but I keep them back.
“It
’s not that easy.” I turn to look as Mikey comes into view. He looks older, tired, his boyish charm erased. “This took a lot of planning, and a lot of working out who was still on my side.” He drags a hand across the back of his neck. “I got you out as quick as I could, I promise you, Nina.”
Emotions swell in my gut: h
ate, anger, sadness, happiness. They build and build, making me tremble, and the floodgates open as silent tears spill down my cheeks. In his face—deep in his eyes—I see that he’s telling the truth.
“I don
’t want to be a dick and ruin the moment or anything, but we really need to get going,” Alek interrupts.
Mikey doesn
’t say anything else, but turns on his heel and starts to walk away. We all follow without saying a word.
We hear rustling up ahead, and we all pull out the crappy weapons we have—al
l right, all right, I pull out
my
crappy weapon. Through a gap in the trees to the left, I see movement of the lurchy, shambly variety.
“Deade
rs,” I state quietly, not wanting to draw attention to us. As a group we head left, away from the deaders.
The trees open up on a
yard with a dilapidated house in it, and I stop and take a breather in the cover of the trees. The sound of breaking branches comes from behind us and I turn to see deaders shambling in on our direction—a lot of deaders, actually.
“The truck
’s over there.” Mikey points in the direction of a town in the distance.