Deathly Contagious (54 page)

“This way,” he pointed in the direction our cars weren’t facing. “Takes us away from the city. If anyone is alive, they’re best chances are in the country somewhere.”

Fueled with excitement, we hurriedly got back into the cars. Hayden drove fast, so fast I almost didn’t see it. We had traveled ten of fifteen miles from the dead raccoon when I yelled, “Stop!”

Hayden stomped on the brakes. “What is it?”

“Symbols,” I told him and swallowed hard. “I think I saw those blue squiggly lines on the houses back there.”

Hayden relayed the message to Ivan, put the truck in reverse, and turned into a subdivision off the road we were on. Sure enough, the first house was marked with blue lines.

Cautiously, we got out. Fully armed, we crept around the house. It was desolate, with no signs of the living or the dead. The front door was unlocked. The floorboards creaked under my weight. Holding a crossbow out in front of me, I took a precarious step forward.

Dust settled on the dark oak banister of the stairwell. My eyes flicked all around and, seeing nothing, I took another step in. All my senses were on high alert and my heart raced. I took a deep breath and took another step.

I shook my head and risked a look behind me. “I don’t see anything,” I told the guys. Then I noticed the muddy prints on the floor. “Someone has been here,” I whispered. The mud was dry, my first signal that the prints were old. Second, it wasn’t muddy outside. These tracks were left long ago.

“What do the blue lines mean?” Ivan asked.

“Water,” Hayden told him. “Or at least that’s what Riss and I think.” He led the way inside to the kitchen and turned on the water.

“Holy shit,” Brock swore. “You’re right.”

Hayden leaned over the sink. “The water has that rotten egg smell,” he told me. “So it’s been a few days at the least. But someone has been here and somehow turned the power on.”

“Generator?” Wade asked.

I shook my head. “You’d hear it.”

“What else?” Rider eagerly asked. “You said there were more symbols.”

“Yea,” Hayden said and shut the water off. “A red X and a black square with a triangle; like a house.”

“Any ideas what those mean?” Wade asked.

“No,” Hayden and I said at the same time. “We might be able to figure them out,” Hayden suggested. After turning the faucet on once more, Hayden went out the back door and looked at the back of the house for clues.

Not finding any, we moved onto the next house. This one had a red X on the door, which was also unlocked.  We cautiously shuffled our way into the house, which smelled like dirty litter boxes. Ivan turned on the sink. The pipes bubbled and spit out disgusting water. He quickly shut it off.

“So red X’s mean bad water?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Brock said.

 Curiosity got the best of me and I opened the pantry. With the exception of cans of cat food, it had been wiped clean. I opened another cabinet, one that most likely had held pots and pans. It too was empty. Maybe the X meant the place had been raided?

With Ivan and Wade keeping watch, Hayden and I went upstairs while Brock and Rider looked around the rest of the house. The bathroom had been stripped of supplies and the covers were off the beds. I sat on the mattress in the master bedroom.

The room had been nicely decorated in light blues and browns. The mattress was made out of that comfortable memory foam stuff that absorbed your weight. The dresser across from me was covered in picture frames holding images of smiling children and cats. Glass figurines took up the space between the frames. But something was off.

I stood up and to inspect it. An empty space in the center of the dresser was out of place. I peered behind the dresser and saw the cable hook up. Someone took the TV. On that notion, I quickly walked to the closet. It was big and organized in such a fashion even Raeya would approve. A jewelry box lay toppled on the ground.

I knelt next to it, barely able to see in the dim light. I picked it up and shook it; it was empty.

“Find something?” Hayden asked.

“I’m not sure.” I stood and put the empty jewelry box on the bed. “Why steal jewelry? How is that going to help you survive?”

“We took jewelry,” he reminded me. “Just because we could, remember?”

“Yea. Maybe that’s all it was.”

“Probably.” We went into the other rooms and found them in a similar state. The blankets and TVs were gone and even computers were taken off desks. No closer to figuring out the meaning of the X, we left and went into the next X marked house.

Like the previous house, it had been ransacked.

“It looks like it was burglarized,” Rider said, stepping over a dresser drawer that was strewn on the floor.  

“It does,” I agreed. Again in the master bedroom, Hayden and I discovered the lack of jewels in the jewelry box. An empty wallet lay on the floor, with only credit cards and an ID inside.

“Ok, now this is strange,” Hayden said from the bathroom. He flicked his flashlight off and carried something over. “Why take necklaces but leave a first aid kit?”

I shook my head. “People are so dumb.”

“They are,” he agreed. “It makes me wonder how they are still alive.” Keeping the first aid kit for ourselves, we joined the others downstairs. The house across the street was marked with the blue lines. The front door was unlocked and it had been stripped of most things useful and everything valuable, furthering my X-means-robbed theory.  The last house on the street had a black house-like drawing on the door. And it was locked.

Not wanting to wander too far from our vehicles, we drove them to the end of the street. The road T’d, with an even number of houses on either side. We didn’t want to split up so we parked our cars in the driveway of the first house on the right.  This one was marked with the blue lines. The front door was unlocked, the water worked and was crystal clear, and the house had been emptied.

“It makes no sense,” Ivan sighed. We crossed the yard to the neighboring house. Like the other one with the black house drawn on, it was locked.

“No, it doesn’t,” Wade agreed. “I will bet you that all the black house marked doors are locked, though.”

“I think I figured it out,” Hayden began. Before he could finish the distant rumble of a motor grabbed our attention. Not wanting to be mistaken for crazies, we ducked behind the house and out of sight from the road.

Driving fast, the car quickly approached. The base was turned up, thumping an annoying echo off the walls of the house. Its sleek black paint glistened in the sun. I admired it, though it was odd to see a nicely restored classic being driven during an apocalypse. My aunt Jenny—oddly enough—had been a fan of the classics. Even with the stupid custom paint job of a skull on the front door, she would have approved of this car.

I turned around to make a catty comment and my heart skipped a beat. Brock’s face was absolutely white with terror. Wade and Rider exchanged terrified looks of disbelief.

“What?” Hayden demanded.

“T-those,” Brock began, his voice flat with shock. “Those are the guys that shot you.”

Chapter 20

“What?” I asked, terror creeping into my heart.

“The Imperial Lords,” Wade said hoarsely. “That is their car. I remember it.” He looked at Hayden with guilt in his eyes. “We thought we killed them all. I-I don’t know how the last one got away. I hit him in his calf. He would have bled out unless…”

“Unless he got help in time,” Rider finished for him. “But there weren’t others. We made sure of it!”

The terror turned into rage. I wanted to track down the guys in the Mustang and slowly beat the life out of them. I wanted to shoot them in the shoulder so they knew how it felt. Feeling suddenly very protective of Hayden, I stepped in front of him.

Hayden bit his lip, still looking at the road. He was thinking and I could tell he wasn’t sure what to do. Ivan looked just as pissed as I felt.

“Let’s kill those motherfuckers,” I said venomously.

Ivan nodded. “I’d love to,” he agreed.

Hayden shook his head. “We don’t know anything about them. They could be just as armed as we are.”

“We outnumber them!” I told him, assuming it to be true. “You can’t fit that many people in a Mustang.”

Hayden nodded and looked at the guys. “We should follow them; keep a safe distance.”

“And if we’re seen?” Rider asked.

“Open fire,” I answered for Hayden.

The guys nodded. “Sounds like a plan I can follow,” Ivan said deviously. “Mess with my boys and you’re going down.”

“The one you shot who got away,” I said to Wade. “I call dibs. I want to crush every bone in his face and cut off his balls and let him bleed to death.”

Hayden gave me a look that said he was startled by my violence.

“You have no idea what it felt like to think you were dead,” I told him. “I want them to pay for what they did. They almost killed you—almost killed me too. Do you remember the pain you were in? I’m not going to let those assholes die quickly. I want them to feel the life slipping away. I want them to bleed and I want them to hurt.”

“You’re scary when you’re angry,” Rider said after a moment of silence.

“Good,” I spat. I was angry, but not at Rider. I hoped he knew that. “We’re wasting time, let’s go.”

We rushed to the cars, which—thank God—were hidden from view by the garage. If those assholes noticed Hayden’s truck, they would have stopped for sure. I sat up front, pistol at my side. We tore down the road, slowing once we figured we more or less caught up with the Mustang. Thankfully we caught it turning onto a road lined with businesses. It was easy to track their whereabouts by the God-awful music. The base was loud enough to wake the dead.

If that was their goal, they succeeded. Hayden jerked the wheel and we flew down an alley. I imagined it going down in a drive-by fashion. The Mustang revved the engine and there was a short, rapid firing at the zombies before it sped off again.

The dumbasses managed to kill three of the seven zombies that wandered out on the streets. Four zombies weren’t a threat. We could run them over if we had too.

“Oh shit,” Rider said. “Don’t turn around,” he muttered.

Behind us, a half dozen or so crawled out of dark corners, out of broken windows, and from behind dumpsters.

“Riss, can you get them?” Hayden asked. “Where’s your bow?”

“In the bed,” I said grimly. “I can get out and—”

“No,” Hayden interrupted. “If it comes to that, we’ll run them over.”

Hearts pounding, we painfully waited until the thumping base disappeared. A zombie sniffed the air and turned towards us. I removed the knife from around my ankle and waited. My window was still rolled down. I saw Hayden’s fingers touch the window control buttons on his side. My grip tightened on the knife.

Half of her jaw was missing. The skin had rotted off her nose, leaving blackened holes were her nostrils should have been. Boney fingers grabbed the door. I pushed myself up and drove the knife into her forehead. I held onto the handle as she slumped down.

Her head hit the door, splattering blood on my lap and the interior of the truck. I used the hem of my shirt to wipe up it up. Hayden put the truck in reverse and slowly accelerated out of the alley. We wound our way through the town. Momentarily losing sight and sound of the Mustang, I felt a flicker of fear inside of me that I wouldn’t get my revenge.

Then we saw it, zooming down the road, sun glinting off the chrome bumpers.  Staying far behind, we slowed and only sped up once the Mustang turned off the road we were traveling. We continued our game of cat and mouse for another few miles. Then the Mustang hit the brakes and jerked a hard turn to the left.

“Stop,” Brock’s voice came from over the walkie.

“Why?” I answered.

“I know where that road leads,” he told us.

“Where?”

“A prison.”

My blood turned ice cold. “What?” I asked again, even though Brock had been perfectly clear.

“It’s a prison. A maximum security prison. Orissa, tell Hayden to pull over.” Having heard Brock, Hayden let off the gas. The SUV pulled up next to us. “I’ve been here before,” Brock told us. “It was a long time ago, but I didn’t forget. That road leads to the prison.”

“I believe you,” Hayden told him.

“What should we do?” Rider asked from the backseat.

“We should check it out,” Hayden said with a nod. “Brock, do you know your way around?”

Brock shook his head. “I was here six years ago on a tour with a school program. I know they added to it since then. It’s well built, strong, and easily guarded. Next to our compound, I would say it’s the safest place to live out the outbreak.”

“And?” I asked, my palms sweating. “Is there a way we can get a look at…at anything?”

“Yea, well, I think.” Brock nodded. “There is—or was—a greenhouse farm behind the prison. The guys on ‘good behavior’ sometimes cleaned it, I think. I know there was a story on the news about it right before I got shipped out. I don’t know the details,” he said apologetically.

“Can we get there on a back road? I don’t want to be seen,” Ivan said.

“I think so.” Brock looked out the window and chewed on his lip. “We have to go back to town and turn. Then we should be able to find it.”

“Or,” I said, opening the glove box. “We can find out for sure.”

“Let’s get back into town first,” Hayden suggested. “We stick out right here.”

We turned around and sped into town. With trembling hands, I spread open the map, located where we were at and traced the path around the jail.

“Be prepared for anything,” Hayden told me quietly. “If it’s bad…Riss I don’t want you there.”

“If it’s bad, it’s because we are killing them,” I told him. “Hayden, I’m getting your revenge.”

He just nodded and put his hand on my thigh for a second before turning the truck around and speeding through the town and onto the road that would take us behind the prison. My heart was hammering in my throat, my pulse bounding through my body when the greenhouses came into view.

The roof was collapsed on the closest one and another was covered in ivy. I let out a small breath of relief; they weren’t being used. I doubted the sons of bitches who shot Hayden gave a crap about the greenhouses anymore. I put the knife back in my boot, an M9 in my waistband, an M16 around my neck, and ammo in my pockets. Ideas of what kind of pain I would inflict first flashed through my brain.