36 Hours (30 page)

My hand wrapped around a glass shard. She bent over, mouth gaping for me. I drilled the shard upwards, into her neck. A gurgling shriek blasted spittle of fetal blood all over my face and throat. It burned like cold embers. My other hand balled into a fist and struck her across the face; she reeled back, and I kicked out my leg, throwing her fumbling into a chair, collapsing onto the floor. Anthony Barnhart

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She writhed her head back and forth, blood spraying in wavering arcs, dancing all over the walls, ceiling, floor and furniture, staining the pictures of her smiling face with a beaming family: shattered memories. I swaggered to my feet. Lightning flashed, and the shadows of the infected at the door sprinkled all over the fireplace. I found myself much closer to the fireplace as the woman lurched up, grabbed me, and hurled me against it. The brick thudded loud and I slid to the ground, aching like a twisted ocean liner. The woman barreled for me; my hand groped at the wall, found something cold and sharp; my fingers entwined, and it came around; she lunged; the fire poker drove upwards, jutting into the soft flesh of her chin. She gave a grunt and fell, her head landing in the coals of the fireplace; the end of the fire poker protruded from broken skull fragments, a mess of blood and brain tissue.

“Oh my gosh…” I get to my feet and ran out of the room, the keys jingling in my pocket. The infected were almost through; they saw me and hollered. A crashing, shattering sound, followed by crunching wood; they had broken into the kitchen! I swung around the stairwell banister and took the steps two at a time; the infected broke through the front door, falling over each other. They were congested like flies out on the porch, and gushed inside, famished and intent on the food. The stairs seemed to never end; finally I hit the landing and reached the doorway. I slammed on the door: “Hannah! Ash! Les! Open the door
now!
”

The door wrenched open; I fell inside; Hannah shut it quick.

“Lock it! Lock it you dumb-“

She slid the lock down. It bent inwards.

“Outside!” I yell, getting to my feet.

Les was already there. The window creaked open, rain lashing inside. Lightning flickered, and his stocky silhouette with the hunting rifle in his hands met my eyes. He stepped out onto the roof, turned, helped Ash threw: “It’s slippery, watch it!” Hannah gaped at the doorway; I grabbed her hand and spun her around. “Go! GO!” I held the gun at the ready, against the wall, watching the door. Hannah got through. I backed up against the window. The door splintered, bulged, burst apart. A man and a younger woman came through, covered in rain-slicked blood. Two shots cried out from the guns, piercing their chests. They kept coming.
The heads! Shoot them in the head!
I raised the sight and fired off to more shots; the back of their heads burst apart and they fell to the floor. More flooded.

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“Austin!” Les yelled. “Come on!” He and Ash stood at the window, guns pointed out the sides, shooting, covering me as I crawled through. The rain was cold and unbearable. The roofing tiles were slick and loose. Deadly. As soon as I escaped, Les threw the window back and latched it with an outside latch, an old component on Quaker farmhouses. The infected shattered the window, but couldn’t get past the bars.

“Now what?” Hannah panted. “We’re going to get hit by lightning.”

Lightning flashed behind Dorothy Lane; the infected were still surrounding it, and dull lights were burning inside. No more infected stood at the fence; the ground beneath us was clear. They were all going inside. Les started to move for the front, Ash behind him, then Hannah, and me pulling rear. I almost fell, thought about laughing on it, decided not to. Knock on wood. Les cried out, fell. Ash reached down to help him, but she fell too. Les rol ed over, groping at the tiles. He rolled down the roof and fell off the ledge, careening to the earth. Ashlie hollered. Hannah tried to run over, but slipped; I made it. Les was pulling himself up in the grass; he looked OK. He waved a hand, calling silently,
Come on!
No. No, too-
The keys!
I pulled them from my pocket. Les nodded, beckoning me. The truck was just around the other side of the-Infected came around the side of the building, whooping; Les shot off his gun; I fired off mine. The shots sang out all over Clearcreek, through desolate homes and abandoned streets, the last pitfalls of a dying race. Infected fell to their feet; I jumped from the roof, felt the wind and rain, and landed hard on the balls of my feet; lightning pain streaked up through me. Ashlie and Hannah dangled for a moment, then joined us. We ran around the side of the house, guns at the ready. Infected from Dorothy Lane had reached the fence at the gunshots, and were beginning to discover what climbing means. The truck came into view, but two or three infected lurked around it. Les popped five or six rounds and they dropped; he ripped open the door and hopped inside. Hannah opened the passenger door.

I yelled, “Ashlie! In shotgun! Go!”

“Aus-“

“Ash! Come on!”

She pushed Hannah out of the way and got in.

“Hannah! Up here!” I climbed into the bed; she did, too, just as infected came from inside the house. I leaned against the cab and fired blindly into the masses Anthony Barnhart

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as they poured like sardines through the farm’s front door. I don’t think I really hit anything. Hannah fell to the bed of the truck, gun skidding from her hands. I dropped down next to her, refusing to fall out. That was a death sentence, writing on your tombstone. She looked at me with wild and confused eyes. Lightning burnt across us; my own wild, rage-filled eyes cackled and I made a maniacal laugh, for no reason. She eyed me but didn’t smile. The truck shot up spits of mud, bouncing all over. The high-beams flickered over the fence at highway 741, the infected’s eyes glaring white, frozen in time. The truck ramped a patch of dirt, kicked downwards; the fence tore and burst apart; the truck fishtailed through a ditch of mud, ramped up onto the road, leaving several disembodied creatures strewn in the wake. More from Dorothy Lane and around the 741 area came for us. I peeped my head out, saw the fires from car wrecks, blending gloomily with the rain. The truck engine gurgled. We were turning 180 degrees; Les hit the gas and I bent forward, buckling over. Now Hannah laughed, mocking. Les weaved through jumbled messes of cars and trucks, strewn bodies and infected running amuck. The truck lit through another fence; the barbed wire reached down into the bed of the truck as it twisted with impact; barbs tore Hannah’s shirt and ripped deep lines into her skin. She let out a yelp and covered the wound with her hand. The truck bounced and she rolled over, gritting her teeth. I wanted to help her so bad but I didn’t dare flinch.

We bounced as Les drove the truck up a curb; the side of the truck grinded against burning Escalade, showering sparks all over us. They burnt; I rolled over, rolled right into Hannah. Her warm breath touched my neck; I pushed myself away. We passed underneath the refueling pumps at the gas stations; I nodded my head forward, looking out, to see them – them, them,
those
creatures
– on our tail, and gaining. Then I heard Ashlie rapping on the window, pointing. How long she’d been rapping, I don’t know. I never asked. I pulled up my gun and started shooting; Les drove the truck down the entrance to the gas station. Hannah fingered her own rifle; a shadow to my right; I swung the gun around and blasted point-blank; the infected’s face blew apart; the bullet ricocheted outside the scalp and burst into a gas container; it erupted into a ball of flames, warming my face. I wanted to cheer.

The explosion lit off another container, and another, a line of dominoes engulfing trees and Wright-Brothers airport fence and cars, all in a haze of scorching fire and sweltering smoke. All of this happened in a split second. The Anthony Barnhart

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truck was pulling onto the road when the explosions swallowed up the gas refueling pumps; in a blast that seemed to rival Hiroshima, the earth ruptured, splintering; fire pushed upwards, scorching the infected, sending limbs hurling through the night. Trees bent backwards at the blast; fiery heat touched the side of my face, burning like acid; Hannah, on the bottom of the bed, felt nothing, except for the shockwave getting underneath the truck tires. I felt gravity sink away as the truck was pushed into the air, twisting and turning; the world turned into a fray of a million colors, shaded in a blue shadow. The truck somersaulted; I saw the bed, with Hannah sucked to it, dwindling away, and suddenly the earth took me up, and I rolled over wet grass and felt the rain on my face and my lower back groaning.

I raised my sun-scorched eyebrows to see the truck smash into the earth, rolling, then slam into an overturned tree. The heat from the explosion died down, leaving only the smell of burnt flesh and burning gasoline. I looked over my shoulder to see the infected spinning around, screaming, lit ablaze. The infected at Dorothy Lane stopped, just watching, not noticing me; some of the others on a hilltop, next to an artificial pond bordering what was left of Settler’s Walk, gawked at the raging inferno.

I picked myself up, somehow conscious, surprised my legs weren’t broken; a sprained ankle was to be expected. I limped through the grass, feeling the rain on my face, strikingly cold. The truck grew larger; it was overturned, the wheels facing me; they were still spinning, except the rear wheels were half-melted. Splintered tree limbs overhung the side of the cab that pointed into the sky. I went around the truck, not really wanting to; the desire to curl up into a fetal ball and wait for the sinking teeth of the infected was becoming more desirous every moment. I feared I was left alone; my only remaining family dead, Hannah dead, Les dead, all killed in the crash. I expected to see Hannah’s remains splattered all over the place – she was gone. I crawled onto the top of the truck, trying to open the door; the tree limbs pinned it down. The glass window was broken; I peered inside. By the firelight I saw Ashlie, covered with glass, bleeding in the face; a shaking hand reached for me and I took it tight, holding so hard. She was held from falling by the seatbelt. Les was crumpled against his door, head mashed against the ceiling; a line of blood coursed down his cheek from a ghoulish head wound. He was breathing, shallow and ragged, very pale. I didn’t really attention to him, because Ashlie Anthony Barnhart

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was screaming: “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,
I don’t want to die!
” So I held onto her hand, refusing to let go. I’d stay with her. No matter what. Something inside me stirred. I released. It was painful, but I used my hand to begin shoving the branches out of the way; they were too heavy. Ashlie undid her seatbelt and fell on top of Les. Les groaned. She tried to orient herself, but she was stuck. Every move she made sent pain streaking through her. She told me herself. Then she asked, “How’s Hannah?” I told her I didn’t know; I hadn’t seen her. She had to have been killed, thrown out. Yet I survived. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to think about it.

Then I heard a fiendish yell. They knew. They were coming from the fields, from the artificial pond, Dorothy Lane.

Ashlie cried, “Get me out of here!”

“I am! Calm down! Hold on!” I pushed the branches harder, got it out of the way, reached for the door – the branches swung back, smacking me off the truck. I fell into the dirt. Ash began to cry hard. A figure came up behind me; I spun around, having nothing, my gun disappeared. Hannah sagged up alongside me; her arm looked pale and limp, was bleeding bad, and a bruise covered half her face, and it was swelling even more. “They’re… coming…” Faint.

“Ashlie. Ashlie’s in the truck. Les is in the truck. They’re both hurt…”

She grabbed me, weakly. “Austin, can’t you-“ She fell against me. I fell against the truck.

Ashlie banged inside the cab. “Austin! Austin! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

The infected were so close, so close. I couldn’t get her. Hannah turned and began to walk away, down the road, away from the truck, the inferno, absentminded of the infected bearing so near. I looked at the truck, heard Ashlie, closed my eyes.
I love you. Don’t ever doubt that. I’m sorry. Hannah is here. If
she wasn’t, it’d be different…
I turned and picked Hannah up in my arms. She was so heavy. I began to walk away, then began to run. Ashlie’s screams ate me away, withering me like a flower withers under a parching desert sun.
Austin!

Austin! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!

I ran. I left her, abandoned her.

Memories. Her hugging me, refusing to let go. Calling me every day when I was gone, wanting to talk. Her crying when she thought about me going away to college. She told all her friends, “He’s the best brother in the whole wide world!” Now her screams burned through me, but I left her. I left her for dead. I Anthony Barnhart

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betrayed, back-stabbed, left her alone. Hannah in my arms, my muscles burning. The gas station aflame. Truck overturned. Les groaning. Ashlie screaming. I looked back. I don’t know why. I looked back, and I saw them. They were climbing all over the truck, silhouetted by the gas fire. I heard Ashlie’s screams dwindle to nothing as they reached into the cab. I turned away, kept running through the darkness, through the rain, feeling nothing but overwhelming sorrow and helplessness.
Where are you now, God?
I roared, ashamed at my own betrayal of my Hannah, but not as much as the overwhelming shame of leaving Ash alone. Morals, values, trash. I watched my feet to avoid tripping as I ran through the soggy field, through empty and quiet business complexes, hearing nothing but my own footfalls – the infected assaulted the truck and left us. I heard nothing except my course breathing.

But all I saw was her smiling face.

I lay Hannah down on the cold, wet pavement. I tried to open a door on one of the shiny, multi-faceted, state-of-the-art twentieth-century architecture masterpieces, but it didn’t open. It hadn’t opened before the infections started spreading. None of the workers had ever arrived to work. I picked up Hannah and carried her past a water fountain encircled with stone benches. The water didn’t gurgle; the rain clashed with the pool. I found a window and smashed it open, pushed Hannah through. I crawled through as well, into the warmth, the dryness. Wind and rain came in through the broken window. Glass shards clung to Hannah. She tried to stand.