The Survivor Chronicles (Book 2): The Divide (9 page)

Lee nodded to them before slipping inside. Carl hurried Al toward the sink and mirror across the way and turned the cold water on. It spit for a little bit before some murky water shot out and then finally ran clear. "I'm not so sure you should stick your hand under that," Carl said.

"I think it was just the pipes clearing out," Al told him. Even still, he stared at the water and kept his hand clear of it.

Carl took a deep breath and thrust his fingers under the spray. Black ran off of them, but he didn't pull his hand back. "It's cold and we have ointment. It's your decision though."

Al took a deep breath and slid his hand under the water. His teeth clenched, a hiss escaped him at the same time a shiver of pleasure shimmered down his back. He didn't know if he hated it or enjoyed it more, as he thought he heard the water sizzle against his burnt skin. Carl released his arm and pat his shoulder before turning away.

Riley took his place. "I'm fine," he assured her as her eyes ran over him. He felt like an idiot though. "I should have been more careful."

"None of us are prepared for this; all of us would have grabbed that knob. You were just the first one to get there. We have to start being more alert, more prepared, but it's so easy…"

Her voice trailed off as her eyes slid away. "It's so easy to fall into the way we've always known and done things. It will get us all killed if we don't start to change."

"It will," she agreed.

Carl appeared on his other side and dropped a bag on the counter. He began to pull supplies out and laid them on the counter. "Are you supposed to bandage a burn?" Riley asked.

"Loosely, it will be fine," Carl assured her.

"Are you sure?"

"I worked with things that had very hot mufflers, and one accident prone kid, I know a few things about burns."

"I only burned my hand twice," John protested from his position by the door.

Carl didn't respond to him as Al pulled his hand from beneath the water. Carl and Riley took turns washing their hands, the sink was filthy and dark when they were done, but their hands were still stained. Riley's nose wrinkled but she didn't say anything as she dried her hands on the worn, once white towels.

Riley held his arm as Carl carefully applied the ointment and loosely bandaged it. The thing hurt like hell but even still he refused the pain medication Riley offered him. "It will make me hazy and lethargic, two things none of us can afford to be right now."

"You can't stay in pain, and we'll keep you covered," she protested.

"I can't take the chance of something happening and not being prepared." He used his good hand to enfold hers over the pills she held. "I'll be fine."

She looked about to protest further but John suddenly stepped away from the door, held his finger to his lips, and gradually closed it. Al and Riley exchanged a look as Carl dropped his brutalized hat on the old bureau, grabbed his gun from the top of it and hurried to the door. "What is it?" Carl demanded in a low voice.

"People," John whispered.

Al forgot all about his throbbing hand as he exchanged a look with Riley and walked over to the window. Carl grabbed hold of Rochelle's hand and pulled it away from the curtains as John pressed his eye against the peep hole. "I think they're going by," he muttered.

"How is anyone driving in that rain?" Carl asked.

"They're not driving."

Carl did a double take. "They're
walking
?"

"Well they're not flying," John retorted.

Carl glowered at him before walking to the edge of the picture window and pulling the curtain back a hairsbreadth. Al grabbed hold of the curtain and kneeling down peered out a small sliver at the bottom. Riley bent beside him and pressed her head to his. Thanks to the overhang most of the water had been kept from the glass, but even so some had splashed onto it, and if the smudges and dirt were any indication it hadn't been cleaned in months, possibly years. It was hard to see anything through it, but eventually he focused on what had caught John's attention.

Riley's hand curled around his shoulder as through the dirt and rain she spotted the group of twenty or so people plodding down the road. Though the people in the group had their heads bent, they gave no indication that they were even aware of the rain as they trudged stalwartly on through the black puddles and streams that flowed down the asphalt.

They didn't look at the hotel, didn't even glance at the vehicles, but simply continued down the road. "What are they doing?" Rochelle inquired.

"Shh," John admonished.

A cold chill began to work its way down Al's spine as the people moved out of sight. "That can't be all the people from the town," Carl said.

"No, definitely not," Riley confirmed as she released his shoulder and sat on the bed.

"Why didn't they even look over here?" John demanded.

"We didn't plan to come here before the rain started. I can almost feel the bedbugs in this place," Carl reminded him as he released the curtain and Riley rose off the bed. "Just so it's on record, and I am making myself clear, I hate this town. Hate it."

"I second that," Lee said as he walked over and sat on the other full bed.

"Creepy ass people." Rochelle sat next to Al and squeezed his good hand.

Carl placed his gun down on the worn looking, rickety nightstand and nodded toward the door. "Open that back up, we'll have a better angle with it open."

Al rubbed absently at his bandaged hand as John cracked the door open. The scent of rain filled the room, but it was laced with more than the odor he was familiar with. He didn't believe it was nuclear fallout, or at least he didn't
want
to believe it, but there was something almost dirty about it.

John slid back into the room and closed the door again. "There's more coming." Al looked up as Carl grabbed his gun from the nightstand. "A lot more."

CHAPTER 7

John

Franklin, Mass.

His hold on the gun was getting slippery, and it had nothing to do with the water still dripping off of him and onto the worn commercial carpet. There was a puddle forming beneath him, a dark stain that he didn't notice over the hush that had descended on the room. If it hadn't been for the powerful beat of the rain, he knew he would have heard a pin drop, even on the carpet.

He didn't know people could be so still, he hadn't known that
he
could be so still as he kept his eye pressed to the hole in the door. His hands, resting against the door, were helping him to keep his balance on his tiptoes, but he didn't feel any strain in his calves, and his feet didn't ache from the pressure he was putting on them.

No, he didn't notice anything over the crowd moving steadily forward, seemingly oblivious to the rain as they trudged onward in an endless wave.
Zombies, zombies, zombies
, the word was an endless chant in his head that caused his stomach to twist and a lump to form in his throat.

He'd watched countless zombie movies and TV shows, wondered about the zombie apocalypse, played the video games, and had even jokingly made plans with his friends about how they would kick undead ass and pound zombies back into the grave. Secretly, he'd always thought he'd be one of the first ones to be eaten, and what a hideously awful way to go. He couldn't imagine anything worse than having other humans literally eat him to an agonizing death.

He couldn't imagine it, but he was convinced he may end up witnessing it by the time all was said and done.

The word zombies continued to scream through his head, but there was something about these people. Something so different and strange that though he would like to believe they were dead, and would actually
accept
that fact after the events of this day, he knew that he was wrong. They were not zombies. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings, but he was fairly certain they were still alive.

They didn't mindlessly shuffle about and they didn't appear to be rotting. Though some of them were burned, bloody, bruised and looked more than worse for the wear as they trudged onward. They didn't acknowledge the fact that they were getting soaked, but a few of them would lift their heads to the sky and stare at it as they blinked against the black washing over them. Though they would stand there, seeming to take in the rain like he used to on a hot summer day, they didn't seem bothered by the fact that it was black.

Curse's surged up his throat, he fought the urge to kick the door and slam his hands against it as he screamed. He remained immobile as sweat and water trickled down the back of his neck and his hold on the gun became increasingly harder to maintain.

The others moved around the one's that stopped in the middle of the road. They didn't bump into them, didn't urge them to move on, but simply flowed around them like a school of mackerel around a rock. John was tempted to pinch himself in order to see if he was awake, but he knew he was, and he couldn't bring himself to move, not even one centimeter.

He was terrified they would somehow see his movement and come charging up here to eat his brains, or his flesh, or whatever it was that
these
people craved. For though he felt that they were still alive, he knew that something wasn't right with them, something not entirely human, not anymore.

No normal human would stand out there with their heads tilted back to
that
rain, soaking it in like they were flowers in need of hydration.

A shudder tore through him. He bit his lip as he waited for the flowers to somehow have seen his movement and come charging up the drive screaming, 'feed me' at the top of their plantlike lungs. They didn't come though and John relaxed a little, but it was impossible to relax completely as he was growing increasingly convinced that whatever was wrong with these people was because of the rain. The rain that he had spent far too much time in as far as he was concerned. More than anyone else in the room, which meant he was now the guinea pig in this macabre dance of insanity.

He'd rather die in a steaming pit of lava fueled misery than become one of the mindless herd outside.

"They're going to eat us." The words, spoken by Rochelle, echoed his thoughts. Although he was growing increasingly concerned that
he
may be the one that ate them if it was the rain that was causing those people to act like this. He'd never craved a shower so badly in his life, but he was convinced that somehow the rain had already polluted the water system and that these drones would hear the shower running.

The plants with their heads tilted back began to move forward again, and he found himself extremely grateful that they hadn't opened their mouths and started drinking the water as the last ones ambled out of view. The street became silent again, but John couldn't bring himself to pull his eye away from the door. He was half convinced that those people already knew they were here and were going to appear right in front of the door.

He could already feel the scream building in his throat for when that first eyeball appeared before him. He was going to lose his mind; he was going to go absolutely crazy before this was all over. For the first time he faced the fact that he may be one of the first ones to be taken down by a group of rabies/zombie infected humans that walked mindlessly through charcoal encrusted rain, and he didn't like it one damn bit.

It was the shaking in his legs that finally made him drop back down. He pressed his forehead against the door as he inhaled a shaky breath and tried not to think about the possible toxins seeping into his system.

"What's wrong with them?" Rochelle asked.

John kept his forehead against the door as he turned his head to look at them, but no one spoke. Carl's hands fumbled for his cigarettes, he cast a look at Rochelle and shoved them back into his pocket. There was a look in his eyes that frightened John almost as much as the syphilis/mad cow shuffling humans that had been on the street. Before this day they had been friendly, today John had come to consider Carl more than just a friend but almost a brother, a rock to rely on when he'd been on the verge of losing it. Now he couldn't tell if Carl was going to start screaming or sit down on the bed and go catatonic on him.

Instead Carl turned away from the window, climbed over the bed, and snagged hold of the keys Riley had stolen from the office. "What are you doing?" Riley hissed.

"I need a freaking cigarette," Carl muttered as he filled a cup of water and hurried to the door in between the two rooms. "There has to be a master key in this mess."

He tossed some of the water on the handle and then tapped it with his hand. John remained mute as Carl went through the keys, and tossed the ones that didn't fit onto the bed. The pile in Carl's hand was growing smaller. John was beginning to think he'd have to open the front door again before Carl threw a nic fit and lost his mind, when a key finally slid in and turned the lock. Carl's shoulders slumped; he pulled the door open and tossed the rest of the water on the other door. John held his breath as Carl unlocked the door and poked his head inside the other room.

He disappeared and a few seconds later John heard the flick of a lighter and Carl's deep inhale. John turned around and leaned against the door before sliding to the floor. "What was wrong with them?" Rochelle asked again.

"I don't know," Riley answered as she dug into one of the bags and pulled out two flashlights and some batteries. "Maybe nothing, they may have just been going home."

It was a lie; they all knew it, but none of them argued with her. "Was that the whole town?" Carl asked from the other room.

"No," Lee answered. "Franklin's about twice the size of Foxboro and that wasn't even close to the population of Foxboro."

"How many of them do you think there were?" Rochelle asked.

"Couple hundred," John muttered.

"At least," Al agreed.

"How's your hand feeling?" Riley asked as she began to put batteries into the flashlights.

"Fine," Al responded. Though, if the pinch of his mouth, and the lines around his eyes were any indication, John knew that he wasn't telling the truth.