Haven (29 page)

Harrison had spent his time at nights not only guarding the grounds but devising specific plans to get us from Point A to Point B without being detected. This, I was certain, was one of his plans. And if that were the case, he did this with the intent of getting us to safety. And if that were true, it meant he had a way out.

I was duly impressed when he took us down the entire north side, where classrooms were linked to one another by paneled walls and connecting side doors. Unfortunately, the main doors into each room were ajar. We’d left them this way in the spirit of a thorough search during our nightly rounds, and it required us to slow our pace, duck and skirt along the far end of the rooms, and keep our attention on the Infected that intermittently passed by in the hallways. We kept our footsteps light and Beverly, thankfully, managed to keep her gasps to herself whenever an Infected appeared outside the doors. When we came to the last classroom, I was familiar with it. It had been my homeroom as a freshman and still had the banner “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I’m Possible. – Audrey Hepburn.”

Thank you, Audrey, for that much-needed reminder.

It was also the room directly outside the main entrance. This was good, I realized, because Old Boy was just down the steps. If we could get to him safely, we’d be home free. Harrison, however, had a different idea. A better one.

He motioned for us to stay huddled in the corner as he made a brave trek to the classroom door. Without looking out, he silently closed it and returned to us. Once crouched, he gestured to the rifle in my hands and I deduced he wanted to take a look at it. I showed him the round in the chamber and handed the rifle to him wondering what he could possible want with it, and then he demonstrated it to me with a dizzying array of maneuvers. Moving with such efficiency it left me stunned, he checked the chamber again, released the magazine, checked the rounds, reinserted the magazine and rechecked the chamber a final time all within seconds of receiving it in his hands.

Now I was in awe.

“Where did you learn…?”

“We had some free time on the ranch,” he replied, nonchalantly, while raising the rifle to check the sights. He seemed completely unaware of my fascination with him. But when he didn’t hand the rifle back to me, I got an inkling of what he intended to do and that enamor turned to panic.

“You’re not going to shoot them, are you? Harrison, there are too many. We don’t have enough ammo.”

“I know, Kennedy. I won’t be shooting them. I’ll be shooting
through
them.”

My eyebrows crossed in confusion. “Okay…What’s your plan?”

“Old Boy’s keys,” he said and I got the feeling he was being intentionally vague. “Do you still have them?”

I nodded, pulled them from my pocket, and handed them to him, remaining curiously speculative. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled before warning us, “Don’t move or make a sound.”

And then his thumb came down on the alarm button.

Beverly’s eyes snapped open and she began to stand but the rest of us held her down until she realized she had no choice but to stay in place. Her muscles flexed in preparation to flee again as the commotion outside the door grew steadily louder, but she remained in place.

There was no screaming like you’d expect in a mob. There were no roars or slamming of fists against inanimate objects. Only the heavy pounding of footsteps against the tile filled the hallway outside, and then the slam of bodies against the glass as they met the roadblock between them and Old Boy. A few seconds later, the distinct sound of shattering glass followed and the commotion quieted, drifting away down the steps.

Still, when Harrison spoke, he did it in a whisper. “I’ll be right back.”

My hand came down on his arm. “Wait, where are you…?”

When his jaw tightened, I understood why he’d been intentionally unclear about his plan. He knew I wasn’t going to like it. “I’m going to clear us a path, Kennedy.”

“Not alone, you’re not.”

As if he hadn’t heard me, he added, “And you’re going to stay here.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No,” I said more emphatically. “I’m not.”

Doc, Mei and Beverly, who had been watching this exchange with mild frustration, had finally heard enough.

“Stop,” Doc muttered. “You’re wasting time. Just go.”

“Before they hear us and we become their feast,” Beverly hissed.

Mei took a more even approach. “Kennedy can shoot, Harrison can stand as lookout.”

We exchanged a wary appraisal before both coming to the same conclusion: That would work. I was a good shot and Harrison had a heightened sense of his surroundings.

Nonetheless, Harrison reluctantly released the gun to me and did something I hadn’t expected at all. He leaned forward and kissed me, long and hard, before pulling back. “I love you,” he declared. “Let’s get through this.”

I love you.

My mind struggled to grasp what he’d done…It was an impossibility, it seemed so I wondered if I’d misheard him. But, no, he’d finally said it. He’d admitted it. He’d broken through that ice and reached out to me.

Exhilarated now, it gave me that last surge of adrenaline I’d need to face the swarm of Infected outside the door. I was still fighting off a tickle of excitement as Harrison moved on from his declaration and began his instructions.

“You’ll find five propane tanks behind Old Boy’s bumper,” he explained. “The instant they are in your sight, hit one of them. That detonation will cause a chain reaction with the others, so the second you pull that trigger dart back inside the classroom.”

“Propane tanks?” I asked, confused.

Doc, who was crouched next to Harrison, blinked and then a sly smile spread across his face. “From our space heaters, we use along the sidelines.”

Harrison nodded. “I dropped them over the fence the night Kennedy left for that rifle. I was, actually, heading out myself for a firearm when Old Boy’s alarm went off. Kennedy,” he said giving me a look of admiration, “beat me to it.”

I could also see the respect rising in Doc’s expression, but it was aimed at Harrison. Still, I’m wasn’t sure if Doc fully grasped the entirety of what Harrison had done or planned, and why he’d deserved the admiration Doc was showing. On the other hand, it was immediately clear to me. Harrison’s plan used our resources wisely, summoning the Infected into one area to eliminate them while simultaneously opening an escape for us.

My dad would have been proud.

With my mission in mind, I headed for the door, opened it, and peeked around the edge for any sign of Infected. Nothing was visible but shards of glass where the main entrance had been, although the scent of blood hung in the air cautioning us that a large number of Infected had just passed through. I slipped out the door and along the narrow wall between the classroom and the main entrance doors, or what was left of them. Old Boy’s alarm was still screeching a high-pitched warning, so that’s why I saw no indication of Infecteds until I was able to look outside. Harrison, I imagined, smelled, heard, and probably felt their presence before they ever came into my view, and this was just one of the reasons he stayed so close to me on my way out. I was acutely aware of him behind me until I saw what awaited us and when I did, my breath caught in my throat. There were hundreds of them, a massive group of infected humans covered in filth and dried blood and ravenous for something fresh to eat. If one saw me… I reminded myself, as I took aim, that it would only take one to alert the rest.

The five propane tanks Harrison mentioned weren’t hard to find, but they were being blocked by the crowd, which required me to stand in the open for far too long.

My dad had trained me to keep both eyes open while shooting, a discipline that not everyone agreed with but in this instance alone it paid off. With one eye on the target, my other eye was free to catch abnormal movement. So when an infected woman down the steps and to our left flinched sharply and spun around, I saw it. Every muscle in my body flexed to move and Harrison’s hands became locked around my waist. He was already pulling me back when a clear shot to the tank opened. By then, the Infected was two steps up and others had noticed. But my finger was faster than their feet.

Let this work
, I thought.
God, please let this work.

With the click of the weapon discharging, I felt a firm yank from behind and I was launched backward, both from Harrison’s pull and from the explosion that followed. The next few seconds were a mix of Harrison’s body rolling to cover mine and the intense heat of the ignited propane fumes scorching my exposed arms.

We waited for the blast to do its job on everything in its path as the flames rolled down the hallway, blowing apart locker doors and sending them flying and colliding into one another. It was unlikely that my locker midway down survived and, interestingly, that made me sad. A few weeks ago I’d considered it to be just another locker to get me through the year. Now 143B was a landmark to me, the place where Harrison and I finally spoke to each other, the place where I’d made a new bed, my new home when everything else collapsed. It was the spot where we learned that our world had permanently changed. So much had happened there that I almost wished I could see it again, it and that faded b-word written across it. My sad, final answer to the game Words That Start With B?

Bye bye, 143B.

Seconds passed before Harrison’s body lifted off me. “Are you hurt?” he asked, gently pulling me up.

“No,” I said, already looking beyond him and through the classroom door where we’d landed.

What had once been fairly pristine rows of grey lockers were now empty, smoldering, charred hollow recesses in the wall.

“You guys okay?” Harrison asked, his voice directed behind us.

“Good to go,” Doc said and the scuffling behind me confirmed they were already on the move.

I had my rifle’s muzzle pointed at the hallway when they reached us.

“I’m going first,” Harrison instructed. “Stay behind me.”

“No problem,” Doc said wryly under his breath.

The state of the Infected outside was undetermined and the intense smell of acrid fumes, singed metal, and smoke had started to make our eyes water as we left the room in a line. Harrison, with his acute sensory abilities, didn’t swing his head back and forth in a chaotic effort to identify the nearest threats. Instead, he listened. I heard only the collapse of dangling locker doors, but I was certain he heard far more than me. I guessed most of it was silence, because he continued to lead us through the smoke and out the main entrance. There, in the clear, chilly morning air, we saw the carnage. Heaps of flesh and bones, none of them moving, thankfully. If the Infected fed off one another, this would be a good place to start.

Harrison led us through them, maneuvering around the largest mounds and down the narrowest valleys. When he stopped, I looked up and found the gate was gone. The battered fence that had defended us for the last 74 days had a gaping hole ripped through it. The bars on each side of the opening were all banged up, scorched, dented and bowing. Altogether, it told me just how successful Harrison’s plan had been.

“Your car,” Beverly muttered, “Golden Boy is gone.”

Old Boy
, I mentally corrected her. Not that it would have mattered. He
was
gone, almost entirely. Only the chassis was left, singed to a dull black finish.

Harrison was observing me, so I gave him the best smile I could and said, “Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure my dad would have approved.”

He reached out and took my forearm, giving me a tender squeeze, although his eyes said something different… “You’re stronger than you think and that’s incredibly appealing.”

I was surprised Beverly had felt my pain, my loss at something so precious to me, but she didn’t leave me with that assumption for long. “How are we going to get out of here now?”

Despite the callousness of it, it was a good question.

“We walk,” Harrison said, stepping out of the gate and around Old Boy’s smoking metal underbelly.

“Walk?” Beverly repeated, almost snarling. “Lone Ranger’s brilliant plan of escape ends here? Well, that’s just great. You do realize we are leaving a place with food and water and some security in exchange for the absolute unknown? Where we are completely exposed to God only knows how many Infected? Did you think of
that
?”

Doc sighed before declaring, “You’re free to go back, Beverly.” And under his breath he muttered, “Geez, just go back…”

“Maybe I will,” she countered, tilting her nose into the air.

We were making our way through the cars which were jammed together just as they had been on the first day of the outbreak, or else we might have tried to take one of them. Despite this, I noticed Beverly feverishly ducking her head through a few of their windows in search of keys.

A shuffling behind me made me stop and look back to find Doc running directly into Beverly. He scoffed and attempted to get around her, but she was wedged between two car bumpers. All he could do is lift his shoulders in a shrug and shake his head in frustration.