Wolf Running (20 page)

A flash of memory came to Nowen: Mrs. Roberts, asking similar questions, and her own, evidently inefficient, answers. She took no chances this time, and only shrugged.

They were slowing, and Nowen turned back to the window. After a moment Zoe rejoined her. The convoy had come to a halt surrounded by vehicles, both military and civilian. After a few moments they heard the slam of the truck door, and then Matt came walking by, holding a length of plastic hose in one hand and a couple of large gas cans in the other. He began to work his way through the field of cars, checking the gas caps.

Zoe turned away from the window. She slid down the wall to the floor, where she crossed her arms over her knees and dropped her head. “Oh, God, we’re never getting away from these people,” the young woman said, and started to cry.

Damn. What do I say? What-
a sound caught Nowen’s attention, something that registered at the very edge of her hearing.
What was that?
“Shhh!” she said.

Zoe raised her tear-wet face. “Huh?”

“Shut up!” Nowen hissed. She ignored the angry look Zoe shot her and pressed her ear up to the window. It was still open a crack, and she held her breath and strained to listen. She heard it again, and her heart began to hammer in her chest.

The sound of Revs, roaring and shrieking, fingernails on chalkboards.

“Oh, holy hell.” Nowen whispered.

“What? What’s wrong?” Zoe said.

“Zoe, open this window further for me, then start banging on the door!”

“What’s going on?”

“Just do it!” Nowen snapped at the other woman.

“All right! Christ, just because you’ve finally snapped...” Zoe shot the window back and moved to the door, mumbling to herself. While she knocked out a staccato rhythm on the door Nowen shoved her head through the window and searched for the location of the roaring. In the few seconds she had spent directing Zoe the noise had grown louder. As best as she could determine it was coming from the far side of the center from their location.

Matt was wrestling with the gas cap of a small compact car, about twenty feet away. He threw an irritated look at the camper as Zoe’s knocking came to him.

“Get back in the truck and get us out of here!” Nowen screamed.

“What the hell are you babbling about?” Matt said, at the same time that Zoe gasped.

“Zoe, what is it?” Nowen pulled her head back in the window to see the door of the camper swinging open. Zoe grinned at her. “Those idiots forgot to chain it up!”

Nowen lunged for the door, shoving Zoe aside as she did. Matt had noticed the door opening, and as Nowen reached the breach he had already started over to the camper.

“You’ve got to get us out of here! Now!” she shouted at him.

“Nowen, what’s going on?” Zoe said, and grabbed her shoulder.

“What the hell are you talking about? Don’t you hear it?”

In the momentary silence that followed the roaring of the approaching horde spilled through the air like a gathering storm. Matt and Zoe both looked at Nowen with the same befuddled look.

“You don’t know what that is? Fast Revs, and it sounds like a lot of them!”

“What?” Matt said, standing below the opened door.

“Fast Revs! Or dead-heads, or whatever you want to call them!” The confused look didn’t leave their faces. “Wait-you’ve never seen them?”

“Yeah, of course! On the news stories back when things were going to hell. But never in Tie Siding.” Zoe asked, and now fear was coloring her voice.

“I last saw them in Exeter, months ago, and I was hoping that they had died off over the winter-”

“Oh, fuck me!” Matt screamed.

Nowen and Zoe looked out the door. Coming around the front of the center was a mass of undead. Slower Revs made up the majority, a couple of hundred of them at least, and they were following a mercury-quick group of twenty or so shrieking, roaring creatures. The fast Revs flowed around the metal barriers and the rest of the throng plowed through them, sending the barriers flying. The noise of the undead, growls and moans mixing with shrieks and roars, rose ever upward in an ear-splitting cacophony.

Nowen thought she heard someone, Tuck maybe, shouting something, but the words were swallowed by the cries of the Revs. Matt jumped into the camper, sprawling across the floor. Zoe drew the door closed behind him. “Zoe! The window!” Nowen screamed above the dim. The young woman shoved past her and slammed the open window shut, just before the first wave hit them.

The Revs slammed into the camper. The small vehicle rocked on its wheels before the right side began to rise off the ground. The sound of more bodies impacting against the camper echoed and re-echoed through the interior until Nowen thought she would go insane from the aural overload.

The camper continued its ascent into the air until, inevitably, the force of the rushing Revs tipped it over on its side. Zoe’s screams rang out as she slid along the floor to end up wedged beneath the small fold-out table. Matt followed her path. Nowen struggled to keep her balance against the pull of gravity, but with her hands bound behind her she was at a disadvantage. The camper fell further onto its side and she tumbled along the floor, slamming hard into Matt.

With a jagged screech of metal on metal the camper jolted to a stop, a few feet from flat on its side. Nowen looked up from her awkward position to see Revs crawling past the window. One Rev in stained camouflage saw her and started to gnaw at the glass separating them. His grey-black tongue protruded from his mouth, smearing saliva across the window.

Chapter Eighteen

Now

Zoe was still screaming. Nowen levered herself up on her knees and looked around. Something had stopped them from tipping over completely. There was no indication of what might be happening with the rest of the group; the clamor of the Revs made it hard to think, much less hear anything from outside. The door had swung open a bit, revealing the concrete parking lot and nothing else.

She realized she was kneeling on Matt, and that he wasn’t moving. Looking down, she saw why; his slide across the floor had ended with him in an awkward angle against a cabinet door. His head was twisted at an angle so severe that his chin was almost resting on the back of his left shoulder. One earpiece of his ubiquitous sunglasses was jammed in his right eye.

Nowen spared a moment to look the body over - and then saw a glimmer of metal on his belt. “Zoe!” The fierceness of her tone cut through the other woman’s near-hysteria. “Come here, I need you!”

Zoe drew herself up to her feet and stagger-walked to where Nowen still knelt on Matt’s body. “What do you want?” she shouted over the noise of the Revs.

Nowen motioned with her head. “There, on his belt, the key ring. He might have the key to these handcuffs.”

Only now did Zoe notice Matt. Her wide eyes grew even wider as she looked at him. “Oh my god, he’s dead!”

“Not important - check the keys!”

With a trembling hand Zoe picked through the small number of keys, flinching at each thump of a Rev clambering overhead. “Here, here it is!” She unhooked the key ring and turned to Nowen. Nowen shifted awkwardly so Zoe could reach the cuffs. The metallic jangling of the cuffs falling free was music to her ears, and she drew her aching arms around to look at her hands. They were swollen and purple, and deep ridges marred her wrists where the cuffs had cut into her flesh.

“Wh-wh-what do we do now?” Zoe shouted.

Nowen shook her hands, trying to get sensation to return. “We don’t know what’s happened to the others, or if we’re even still attached to the truck. We’re safe here, I think, at least for a little bit.”

Glass shattered above them and a scythe-shaped piece as big as Nowen’s hand landed in her lap. She looked up to see the camo Rev’s skeletal arm reaching for them. The window was still mostly intact, but Nowen didn’t think the glass could support the Rev’s weight much longer.

Zoe grabbed Nowen’s shoulder, fingers sinking deep into the flesh. ‘Oh God, we’re gonna die!”

Nowen shook her loose. “Stop it! Panic isn’t going to help! Stay calm. Just stay calm, ok?” Zoe nodded weakly. Nowen turned her attention to the camper’s interior, trying to quell her own sense of panic. The wolf was awake, and didn’t like being trapped and surrounded. The animal’s fear and desire to flee was stoking her own anxiety.

Zoe interrupted her thoughts. “The sheet. It’s got blood on it, from...from Mrs. Roberts and the...um. Do you think that could distract that dead-head up there?”

Nowen looked at the wadded ball of fabric, lying next to the bed. It was still sodden with blood. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s worth a try.”

The young woman reached past Nowen and grabbed the sheet. She held a bloody corner up to the grasping hand, and it clamped around the fabric like a spider on a fly. The Rev pulled his trophy out the window. “He took it! “ Zoe said excitedly.

“Ok, maybe that’ll distract them for a minute. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“How?!”

Nowen gritted her teeth as fire-dipped needles punched through her hands. Sensation was returning with a painful vengeance, but in exchange she was getting mobility back in her hands. She flexed her fingers as she looked around the interior. Her eyes landed on the slightly-opened door. “There - out the door!”

Zoe pulled herself over to the exit, dropping on her stomach to get a better view. Slowly she slid her head up to the opening and looked out.

“Is it clear?” Nowen crawled across the slanted camper to join Zoe.

The young woman pulled her head back inside. “Yeah, it looks like it. I think we’re leaning against another car, and there’s a couple more cars around us. Maybe we can crawl under them to get away.”

Nowen gave a sharp nod. “Let’s go for it.”

Zoe went first, edging cautiously out the door on her stomach. Nowen followed, her progress made easier by the fact that her hands felt almost back to normal. She joined Zoe underneath the car nearest to them. The smell of old oil and rust rose from the pavement.

“Now what?” Zoe whispered.

Nowen looked around. The shuffling feet of Revs were everywhere, it seemed. The howls and shrieks had faded some as the Revs searched for their prey. Ahead of them she could see that three or four cars were tight against each other, giving them a short hidden path away from the camper. She nudged Zoe and pointed ahead.

They made a slow, steady progress under the cars, reaching the last one in the line and pausing to determine their next goal. They had ended in a kind of cul-de-sac of vehicles, a small grouping of rescue and military trucks. Nowen stood up in the small space and checked her surroundings. Zoe followed her lead.

The grouping of trucks offered them shelter from the eyes of the Revs but it also blocked their view. Nowen chose something that resembled an oversized SUV and climbed up a massive wheel. From this height she could see a large portion of the parking lot. The camper was a couple of hundred feet behind them. At some point during the attack Tuck’s truck had managed to get separated from the camper. She could see it driving away from them, weaving through the abandoned cars and metal barriers.
Damn. I really wanted to kill him.
A small distance away to her right side the curved wall of the center rose up into the sky. She could see a set of double doors at the bottom of the wall.

The larger mobile home was off to her left about twenty feet, the front end jammed against an overturned ambulance. Revs surrounded the RV, clawing fur purchase along the sides. As she watched the RV lurched into reverse, dragging down the shrieking undead under its wheels.

Nowen hopped off the wheel and crouched on the pavement. She pulled Zoe down next to her and leaned close to whisper in the other woman’s ear. “We’ve got to keep moving. Oliver and his group are over there,” she pointed to the left, “and I want to get away before he decides to head this way.”

“Oh, damn, why can’t Oliver just get eaten already! Wait, where’s Tuck?”

“Driving away as fast as he can. Ok, the convention center is just over here, to the right. I saw some doors - we might be able to get inside.”

“But what if there’re dead-heads in there!”

Nowen shrugged. “Worth a try.” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned and crawled under the barrier of vehicles toward the center. After a moment she heard Zoe following her. In a couple of minutes they were at the tall glass doors. Trash was strewn everywhere in the recessed area in front of the entrance. Nowen scurried in a hunched-over crouch to the door, Zoe clinging to her side like a shadow.

Nowen glanced around - so far their luck was holding, and no Revs had spotted them. Zoe nudged her and pointed at the doors.

The glass doors, twice her height, were intact, but the glass was dark and shot through with cracks. The faint odor of smoke clung to the entrance. Nowen reached out a hand and shoved against one of the doors, which swung open easily onto a dark hallway. She grabbed Zoe’s hand and pulled her along as she stepped into the center.

“Oh, shit, what happened here?” Zoe’s quiet words dropped into the dead silence of the short hallway. The walls and furniture were blackened with smoke. A smudged-grey sign, warped plastic edges curling inwards, pointed right to a convention hall. Nowen glanced at Zoe; the young woman nodded, and they turned to the right.

The absolute quiet of the center reminded Nowen of the Wyoming prairie. They reached a set of heavy wood doors and cautiously pushed through. Another dark, short hallway and then the massive convention hall opened before them. Zoe gasped, a sound of utter horror. Her cold hand wrapped around Nowen’s tightly.

This was where the majority of the refugees had been kept. There was still some semblance of order to the rows of cots that filled the floor, but the fire that had raged through this space had warped them into twisted, nightmarish sculptures. The remains of the refugees were everywhere. Blackened sticks of arms, blackened arcs of ribcages, blackened humps of skulls. Here and there a white flash of teeth shown amid the charcoal bodies. The roof and walls were as black as the dead, and there was a gaping hole in the back of the convention center where the fire had eaten away the wall. Nowen could see a glimpse of the parking lot through the collapsed area.