36 Hours (8 page)

“So why go anywhere at all? It’s just like walking into a death-trap.”

“Because we’ll starve here.”

“Out there, Les, we’ll be murdered. Which sounds worse?”

“I’m not going to starve to death.”

Hannah murmured, “What about your family?”

Mom. Dad. Ashlie. Even the dog Goldie. My stomach flipped. I wanted to believe they were alive. They were all inside. Yes. They probably locked themselves in. My dad is very clever, very cautious. He would’ve fixed Anthony Barnhart

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everything up so they would be safe, and also so they could let in refugees.

“How many more people do you think are hiding out like this?”

“A lot,” Les said. “Has to be. We can’t be the only ones.”

“It happened so suddenly…”

“People holed up in business buildings, subways, houses. We’re not alone.”

Not alone. What a lie. “Yeah.”

Hannah got up and went to the window. Her hair gracefully flowed behind her. So beautiful.

“This is so unreal,” Les said.

She stared out the window, and her face fell even deeper. She didn’t say anything. Les ran over to her window, and I peered between the bars of the other one. The bars were very thick, and wrought-iron, too. I was suddenly very happy Jack had been so paranoid all his life. Maybe he saw this coming? Down the street my own eyes saw something. Dozens of the infected coming down the road, walking through lawns, over the sidewalk, on the pavement, milling around a smoking car crash, a Volvo and Buick left in the debris.

“Everyone get
down
,” I snarled.

Les and Hannah ducked away from the window and slid against the wall, sitting down. I didn’t move.

Les snapped, “Hypocrite. Get away from the window.”

“They can’t see me.”

Les snapped, “If you can see them, they can see you. Austin!”

The infected drew closer. Something ran over and over in my mind:
Funeral
march.
It looked like a procession of mourners, hunched over in despair, trudging one last time to echo a farewell good-bye to a lost loved on. Except the opposite was true. They weren’t out to mourn the dead, but to kill the living. And that’s when one snapped its head around and stared right at me, those fiery, sunken eyes ablaze with blood-thirst. My heart shimmied into my throat and I fell away from the window, crashing over a green trunk and falling to the ground with a large
thump
. The walls and floor vibrated. Hannah’s eyes widened. Les growled, “Austin. Stop messing around.”

I crawled over beside the bed.

“No. Get against the wall. Crouch down. If they look in, they’ll see you.”

“The windows are high up-“

Hannah now, voice watery: “Austin, stop screwing around!”

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I muttered something under my breath and crawled over to the wall, scrunching up, holding my legs to my chest. Heart thundered. Sweat dripped down my face, tracing dark lines. I stared at Les and Hannah side-by-side, and imagined them holding hands. Him leaning over, and kissing her lips; her eyes fluttering, she returning the kiss, passionately, and my heart turned sour, and my mind switched over. Anger. Jealousy. The vision remained stark in my mind, and it worried me. Don’t know why. Les already had a girlfriend, and Hannah had never shown interest in him. But the very
idea
that they could be together made my insides churn spoiled butter. Romances forged under the heat of battle, right?

Silence.

The wind rustling against the windows. The tick of a grandfather clock downstairs.

Glared at Les, mouthed,
Are they gone?

He raised his hands and shrugged.

Legs numb.
I’m going to check.

He shook his head.
No.

It’ll be fine.

No.

What did he know? I was the one who opened his eyes to what was happening, anyways. I moved against the wall, the muscles in my legs burning from being positioned so awkwardly for so long. The numbness faded, and a tense burning warmed my limbs. I stood against the wall, the window next to my right shoulder. Deep breath. I swung around and gazed out the glass, barred window. The street was empty. The car crash continued to smolder. The sun rose over the roofs of the house down the drive. A smile creased my lips. We had-I leapt back, heart screaming wildly, as a bloodied face jerked up by the window. The sunken eyes glared at me, the pupils widening with lust. Torn flesh hung in ribbons from the cheek and jawbones, dried blood caking the side of the face. The mouth opened, revealing the stained teeth, and the infected threw his head against the window, leaving cracks and a red smear. Hannah and Les jumped. They’d seen me fall back and knew something was up. A hand rose next to the window and hurled against the glass. It shattered and blew between the bars. The hand wrapped around one of the bars; I bashed it with my Anthony Barnhart

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knuckles, and the infected howled, ripping back his arm; and his body fell away, landing with a
crash
in the overgrown weeds below. I stared at the blood-smeared window.

The sound of crunching glass, then the breaking of a window. A creaking door.

Hannah shuddered. “They’re… inside…”

My feet took me over to the other window, and I looked out. Infected swarmed the driveway, around my Jeep. The crowd was dwindling.
They were
coming into the house
. My mind flickered with a horrible image—the door breaking apart and them rushing in, tearing us to shreds as we screamed, with no help to come, just another tally in the growing enormity of the infected ghouls. The world flashed back to the present.

“We’ve got to get the
heck
out of here,” Les exclaimed, leaping to his feet, enraged with me.

“Why’d you have to look out the window!” Hannah wailed. Her voice meant nothing to me now, not with my heart hammering in my chest. “They’re going to-“

“
Listen
.”

Footsteps. Up the stairwell.

Les said, “They know we’re here.”

I ran into the bathroom, feet clattering over the tile floor. I threw open the latch on the barbed window, and pulled the glass pane away. My hands gripped the bars. The backyard was empty. The infected gushed out in the front, and maybe the sides. We’d have to somehow escape out the back. Maybe over the fence. Remembered the infected in the yard behind us. Then I thought of two instead of about thirty, and my heart did grinding twists. I’d take the two. We were three. We’d outnumber them.

“Les!” I screamed. “Les!”

He ran in. “They’re banging on the door to the hallway!”

“How do you get these bars out of the way?” I asked from the bathroom window.

“Are you insane? It’s a twenty-foot drop to the ground, and it’s concrete. We’d die. Or break our legs.”

“Just tell me.”

He ran in and grabbed two, pulling in a certain direction. The bars popped loose. Clattered on the floor.

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I could hear the violent banging outside. Hannah crying. Thinking of her brother: was he out there?

“They’re going to get in here.”

“Where do you expect to go?”

“Does the bathroom door lock?”

“No.”

“Get Hannah in here.” He ran out and I looked around the room. Everything bolted down.

Hannah came in with Les.

“Les. Grab Jack’s chair. We need to hold this door close.”

“A chair won’t hold it. Not for long.”

“Long enough.”

He rolled his eyes and vanished.

Bang. Bang. Bang

He returned, dragging the chair. It got caught in the door. “It’s stuck!”

“Pull it in!” I eyed the window.

“Austin! It’s stuck! It won’t come in!”

“Then pull it out and shut the door.”

Scuffing feet as Les tried. “You don’t understand. It’s
stuck
.”

I leaned out. The deck below was clear. “Sure we can’t make the jump?”

“Chad tried when he was ten. And he half-floated down with a blanket like a parachute. Broke a leg.”

“Just get the chair out.”

“Les-“

“Get the chair out! Hannah! Help him!”

She cowered in the corner by the shower and toilet, sobbing. Shaking her head.

“Hannah!
Help him!”

“No… No… Please…”

I rushed forward, grabbed her violently by the arm and flung her across the bathroom. Her feet slid over the tile and she slammed into a cabinet. My eyes flickered with insane anger. “
Help him or we leave you!”

She looked at me with fear—those eyes had never read me with such genuine fear—but I didn’t care. She got to work. I tried to figure out what to do. With Hannah’s help, the chair popped lose, and folded over in the room. They Anthony Barnhart

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positioned it against the door, then Les crawled through and shut it tight. He leaned against it to hold it taught.

“Austin…”

“Hey. Can we get onto the roof?”

“The roof?” He paused. “Yes. If you reach good enough.”

“You’re the most elastic of us all.”

Bang. Bang. Bang came the echoes from the other side of the hallway door.

“You go first,” I finished.

He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

I stepped aside.

Bang. Bang. Bang

He crawled through the window, curled around, grabbed the roof gutter, and pulled himself up. His legs disappeared. He made it. “Come on!” he yelled at us.

I looked over to Hannah. She was at the door. “Your turn,” I said. She evilly glared at me and ran past, to the window. I took her position. She easily made it through, and Les helped her up.

Bang. Bang. Crash!

The door to Jack’s room splintered open. Snarls. Growls. Snorts. They were in. Cowering behind the bathroom door, I heard their feet running about the room, tearing at the walls and furniture, knocking stuff down. They hadn’t grabbed the door yet. I looked at the window, ten feet away. So far. So long. From the rooftop, Les yelled at me to hurry up, the noise resounding in the bathroom. The infected in the other room, I imagine, heard the noise and ran to the door, grabbing the knob and viciously tearing with incredibly rage. I could hear the doorknob rattling, and could feel the door bulging. The window. So far.

Les: “Austin! Where the heck are you! Come
on!
”

I bolted for the window. I don’t know how I did it. My feet just carried me. It’s like when you don’t really want to do something, but know you should, or that you’ll be mad at yourself if you don’t, and without any reason or rhyme, you just end up doing it. Like you’re on auto-pilot. I think this is what happened to me. Because I don’t remember running across the bathroom floor and because I don’t remember climbing into the window, I think this must be what happened. And I don’t remember the door splintering apart as an infected busted a hole through it with his head, arms dangling out, torn and bloody, screaming Anthony Barnhart

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through those mangled, yellow teeth. I just remember them coming at me. And I kicked them. Arms grabbed my arms and pulled. But I kicked too hard, and my body twisted. Their arms came loose and I fell, flailing. The window fell away, and I could see Hannah and Les on the roof, gaping down at me as I fell. And I can remember watching them dwindle, and thinking,
I’m falling. I’m going to
hit. This is going to hurt. What a suck-filled way to end it all.
Then I thought,
Typical.
And my back smashed into the deck, pain streaking through my body like pulsating lightning; and I caught the sensation of deck boards snapping all around me, splinters flying; then darkness, cool earth. Rolling. And I found myself bleeding all over, hiding underneath the deck. I had rolled away from the hole. I didn’t know if I could move, didn’t want to try. The pain was so intense. Warmth covered my back, and I knew it was blood. Because the soggy dirt under the deck was chilly. Light came down in a shaft from where I had broken through, illuminated rolling dirt and mud, some brambles, a large spider crawling through the sheared splinters and chunks of wood. The spider was big. I didn’t care. Closed my eyes. Just wanted it all to end. Pain. Pain. Pain.

I could hear Les and Hannah’s voices, shouting down. And hurried footsteps over the deck. Right above me. The planks quaked, and dust fell down on me in currents. I kept completely still. It wasn’t that hard. I didn’t want to move at all. Light came down through the cracks, and several cracks across the deck blurred and shimmered as people walked across. The infected were looking for me. It wasn’t long at all until they found the hole. They knelt down next to it, and I could see hands sweeping down. I began to shake. The pain intensified. But I couldn’t stop. The hands swayed back and forth, pulled up. The blurred light faded, the footsteps disappeared, and the infected were gone.

But I didn’t move.

And I didn’t hear Les or Hannah’s voices.

Had they fallen? Had they been killed? Had they met a violent end? I could see them, a splinter in the mind’s eye, running around, drunken with the disease, with sunken eyes and curled lips and a vehement aura. Only wanting one thing: to kill. I saw Les, one of my best friends, turned into a monster. And Hannah’s beauty transformed to disgust, her peace-loving and gentle touch now shaking with a lust for murder. Those thoughts. Tears swelled. I sniffled. They began to Anthony Barnhart

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crawl down my face, then came down in streams, and then I was sobbing. Just like Hannah.

I remember people saying men need to be open with their emotions; I thought men who cried were just pansies. Then my youth minister—was he infected, too?—did a message on men and women; how guys were made to be warriors, and how women were emotionally sensitive. And how both men and women carried the blueprint for the same emotions God had—anger, sadness, jealousy, happiness.

He said that it was okay for men to cry. Because God cried, too. He cried on the cross when he yelled out,
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani
.
Which means,
My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I felt forsaken. Forsaken by God. And I wondered: was this the all-talked about and much-admired End? The End Times? If so, then everyone fell short of the mark of the horrors involved. And I thought it must be. God was coming back. Alpha and Omega’s Kingdom Come. This filled me with a peace. But I still cried. And the peace dissolved. I was still alone.