Among Monsters: A Red Hill Novella Page 6

  Halle and I spoke in unison, both bored of the lesson already, “We’ll get in a wreck.”

  “I see it all the time,” Dad said as I mouthed his words at the exact same time.

  Tavia snorted.

  “What’s so funny?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing,” Tavia answered, trying to keep from smiling.

  Dad pulled to the side of the road and parked, leaving the SUV running. “Tavia,” he warned, “try to keep your voice down.”

  “What?” Tavia said, looking up.

  When she saw what Dad saw, she immediately covered Tobin’s eyes. A man the size of an NFL player was lying in Tavia’s front yard, his arms and legs sprawled out.

  Tavia sucked in a few gasps of air and then looked down at Tobin with a firm look on her face. “Son, do not, under any circumstances, look out this window,” she said, pointing to the glass. “Do you hear me?”

  Tobin quickly bobbed his head.

  She cupped his cheeks and kissed his forehead. “Good boy.”

  She pulled the handle and hopped out, and I followed her, again closing the door quietly. I froze when I saw two people standing over a lifeless body lying in the yard, holding hands.

  “Mema!” I said, running to her.

  She opened her arms. “Jenna!” She turned me away from the body. “Don’t look, honey.”

  Mema was stick-thin, but she always gave the best hugs. She would hold me like she meant it, and she was never in a hurry to let go.

  “Andrew!” Papa said when Dad stepped out of the Tahoe. “You’ve got both girls?”

  “I do,” Dad said.

  “Have you seen Scarlet?” Mema asked, fussing with her short permed hair.

  Dad slowly shook his head. “But she’s okay.” He looked over his shoulder, watching Tavia slowly approach.

  She threw her arms out and let them slap her sides. She fell to her knees beside her brother with a lost look in her eyes. I had never witnessed that kind of devastation in a person—the kind that made me want to help, but I knew nothing would.

  Tobin’s clothes were full of holes, and he’d been shot a few times in the face. It was strange how the bullets had gone into his body smoothly and made such a mess on their way out. The front of Tavia’s home was also pockmarked.

  “Look away, Jenna,” Dad said. “Tavia, I’m sorry.”

  Bent over her brother’s body, she sobbed.

  “But we have to go.” He looked to my grandparents. “Get your things together. We’re meeting Scarlet. We’ll make room.”

  Papa put his arm around Mema. “Tell her we love her. We’re staying put.”

  “Mema?” I said, looking up at her.

  She squeezed me tight. “We’re going to stay here at the house, sis.”

  Dad kneeled next to Tavia and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tavia?”

  “We can’t just leave him here,” she said, shrugging away from Dad’s touch.

  “We’ll bury him,” Papa said. “You have my word.”

  “Tobin,” she cried, touching her cheek to his. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “Tavia, I hate to rush you, but we have to get going,” Dad said.

  She wiped her wet cheeks. Dad helped her to stand, and she took one more look at her brother before going inside her house.

  Papa crossed his arms over his chest. “Poor guy. He never had a chance. See his ankle? Must have blown it out somehow on his way here. It’s the size of a cantaloupe. Were you at the armory?”

  “Yes. Were you?” Dad asked.

  Papa shook his head. “Nope. No, those soldier wannabes picked us up. We didn’t want to go, but the men said the governor ordered it. We were on our way when someone radioed that the armory was overrun. They let us out about four blocks from here. We walked the rest of the way. Wasn’t easy though. We’re not as spry as we used to be.”

  “It was overrun,” I said. “It was awful.”

  Mema walked me back to the Tahoe and opened the passenger door to hug Halle. She had tears in her eyes.

  “Give your mama kisses for me.”

  “What about Grandma?” I asked, meaning Mom’s mom. “Have you heard from her?”

  “Not yet,” she said, her lip trembling. “Take care of each other.”

  She hugged us both, and I climbed into the backseat with Tobin.

  The boy was kicking his feet back and forth, keeping his chin nearly to his chest, minding his mother exactly the way she’d asked.

  “You okay, Tobin?”

  “Yes.” His eyes strained to look up at me. “It’s my Uncle T, ain’t it? Is he out there? I heard Mama crying.”

  I pressed my lips together. “Just…don’t look outside. Your mom will be back soon.”

  “With cereal,” he said, looking at his feet again.

  Dad and Tavia entered the SUV a few moments later. Dad was holding a duffel bag, and Tavia had three plastic sacks and a bowl with a spoon.

  “I just put a spot of milk in there, so it doesn’t spill. We have to get on the road,” she said. The whites of her eyes were red, the skin around them sagging, but she was trying to stay strong in front of her son. “Keep looking down until I say.”

  Tavia kept her eyes on her front lawn as Dad pulled away.

  “Okay, baby. You can look around.”

  Tobin leaned his head against his mom, and she hugged him to her, holding her breath to keep from crying. She looked up at the ceiling and then straight forward. I could tell that she had decided to push it out of her mind for the moment.

  We had a long road ahead, and we all had to stay focused. Besides not knowing the condition of the interstate overpass, we had four tiny towns to get through before Red Hill ranch.

  “Daddy?” Halle said.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “I want Mom.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m trying.”

  “MERCIFUL JESUS,” Tavia said.

  Her mouth hung open as her eyes scanned the carnage on the interstate. Cars were facing in every direction, gridlocked so tightly that it looked like the hopeless last few seconds of a Tetris game.

  Infected were ambling about—men, women, and children.

  “Don’t look, Halle!” I said, reaching up too late to cover her eyes.

  “There are kids!” she said in a panic. “Why are they like that, Daddy? Why do they look like that? Are they dead?”

  Dad drove slowly across the overpass, weaving between the various military vehicles and pickup trucks. Half-eaten men in camo were lying on the concrete, their weapons still in their hands.

  Dad pressed the breaks gently until we came to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” I said, afraid. “What are you doing, Dad?”

  Before I could ask again, Dad was back inside the Tahoe with a huge rifle and a lot of ammo in his arms.

  He set the gun, stock down, on the floorboard next to Halle. “Don’t touch that,” he said. “The safety’s on, but until you learn how to shoot a gun, you don’t need to handle one.”

  Halle quickly bobbed her head.

  Dad switched the gear to Drive, and we continued forward.

  Finally, we were at the edge of the overpass. A man, his suit tattered with bullet holes, reached out for the SUV, but we easily passed by him. He was wearing a wedding ring, and I wondered if his wife was wandering somewhere below, if he remembered her, or if they had any children. Maybe he had taken the interstate home, and his wife was waiting, looking out the window and thinking he’d pull into the driveway at any minute.

  “Do you think they know they’re alone?” I asked.

  Tavia reached up to put her warm hand on my shoulder. “Who they were has left that body and gone on.”

  “To where?” Halle asked.

  Tavia hesitated. “To a place where they can rest, where they aren’t afraid, where they can’t see this mess down here.”

  “I wanna go there,” Halle said, absently twirling her hair, as she watched the pastures and farmhouses blur b
y.

  Dad gave her a side glance. “Don’t say that, honey.” His voice was strained, and his Adam’s apple bobbled as he swallowed down the sadness we all felt.

  “Damn it,” Dad grumbled.

  “What is it?” Tavia asked.

  “I meant to get gas when we got back into Anderson, but it slipped my mind.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Tavia said. “Let’s all keep an eye out for a gas station. Maybe we could stop at the next house and see if they have a gas can?”

  “I can try to siphon off gas from a car, if I can find some tubing and a container,” Dad said. “I’ve never done it before, so no promises.”

  “How low are we?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask,” Dad said just as his dashboard chimed.

  Tavia fidgeted, and then asked anyway, “Did the gas light just come on?”

  “Don’t ask,” Dad said again.

  I clenched my teeth. He knew what was happening, and he forgot to get gas?

  Tavia noticed the expression on my face and mouthed to me, We’re still okay.

  “Mama?” Tobin said.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “I wanna go home.”

  Tavia pulled her son’s head against her side and kissed his temple. “Me, too, baby. Me, too.”

  Dad pulled into the long driveway of an old farmhouse sitting next to a much newer barn. The gravel crunched under the tires until the Tahoe came to a stop.

  Dad turned off the engine. “Jenna, come with me. Tavia, I’m leaving the keys in the ignition. Stay with the kids.”

  I found that funny. Last week, Dad had told me that he didn’t have to explain his decision not to take us to the theater—he wanted to hang out with Five and her son, who was much too young to sit through a cartoon, much less a movie—because I was a kid, and he was the adult. Now, when he talked about kids, he wasn’t referring to me.

  I shut the door most of the way and then pressed it closed. My black Converse made less noise against the gravel than Dad’s boots, but it still sounded louder than it should have. I hopped onto the grass, and Dad took a wide sidestep to do the same. We smiled at each other and walked toward the house.

  There were four steps to the side door, bordered in black iron rails. We climbed the steps together, and even that seemed too loud. There was no sound—no vehicles going by, no combines in the fields, no dogs barking, not even wind. I’d never realized how quiet the world could be without people in it.

  Dad and I stood on the small concrete porch. The door was like Dad’s—Plexiglas on top, wood on the bottom—except these people had a doggy door.

  “Their dad got them a dog,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t start,” he said.

  He tapped lightly on the Plexiglas.

  “What good will that do?” I asked. “If any of those things are in there, that’s not loud enough to draw them out. If people are inside, they won’t hear us, and they will probably shoot us in the face if we—”

  A man’s face pressed against the door, and his mouth was open and wide, too wide. One of his cheeks had been chewed off. Dad and I startled. A smear of blood streaked across the window, and the man’s molars were in full view.

  “Don’t look at it,” Dad said.

  “I don’t want to, but I can’t stop.”

  Another one, a woman, shouldered by the man and started clawing at the door.

  “They can’t open the door,” Dad said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Apocalypse level—genius.”

  “Okay, smart-ass. I’ll be in the barn, being useful. Try to keep an eye on…them without looking too close.”

  I will myself to look back at him, but I couldn’t pull my line of sight away from the couple. The woman had a patch of hair missing from above her left ear, but that was the only wound I could see. Her skin was a bluish color, and her veins were a shade darker, visible underneath.

  As they clumsily pawed at the door, I tried not to look into the vacant milky eyes of the woman. She wasn’t overweight, but I couldn’t help but notice her ill-fitting dress. Both of them had blood-covered chins and hands, and I found myself wondering who bit whom first.

  Have they been feeding on one another?

  Then, I saw it.

  My chest heaved, and my eyes bulged. “Dad?” I took a step back. “Dad?” I called again, reaching for the railing. I nearly fell off the top step. I stepped down backward and down again until I could no longer see it—the portable crib sitting against the wall in the living room behind the couple. The wall was spattered and smeared with blood, and the crib was saturated in it.

  “Daddy!” I screamed.

  He ran up behind me. “What? What is it?” he asked, breathing hard.

  I buried my face into his torso, pointing with a trembling hand at the door. “They…they have a baby! It’s—”

  “In there?” Dad ran up the steps. After a few quiet moments, his footsteps could be heard on the steps, and then he pulled me against him again. “Christ almighty, Jenna. Think about something else. Think about your mom. Think about school. Anything else.”

  I shook my head, wiping my wet face on his T-shirt, while he comforted me. “They—”

  He held my chin in his hand and lifted it. “No, they didn’t. Remember what Tavia said—about how they’re not the same as they were before?”

  “The baby didn’t know that.”

  Dad clenched his jaw and then turned toward the SUV. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. There’s a station down the road.”

  “Can we make it?”

  “Yeah. I just didn’t want to chance it. Jenna?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell Halle. Don’t tell any of them. Let’s pretend that we didn’t see it.”

  I nodded, wiping my eyes.

  “Any luck?” Tavia asked when we got back into the vehicle.

  Halle and Tobin were coloring.

  Dad shook his head.

  Tavia’s eyebrows pulled together. “Jenna? You all right, honey?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Andrew, what’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing.”

  Halle turned around in her seat, her elbows perched on the console. “What did you see?”

  Dad turned, too. “Don’t answer, Jenna.” He looked to Tavia. “You don’t want to know. Some things you can’t unsee.”

  Tavia covered her mouth as Dad backed out of the driveway, and then she reached up to grab my hand, squeezing tightly. We both knew that was just one of the first of many awful things I would see, that we would all see. Even when we wanted to look away, we would have to stare ugly things in the face just to stay alive.

  Halle turned around, and I closed my eyes. It was only a matter of time before she would have that last bit of innocence taken from her, too. I couldn’t cover her eyes forever.

  Dad pulled out onto the road, turning west.

  West on Highway 11.

  On our way to heaven…

  Right after we get through hell.

  The gas station was in the next town, but no one was manning the store inside. Dad used his credit card, whispering prayers I couldn’t quite make out. Then, he punched the air, the vein in his forehead bulging. He crossed his arms on the back corner of the Tahoe and rested his head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I think something has to be tripped in there. I hope,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the store.

  It was smaller than small. Dad reached inside, his feet coming off the ground, as he leaned over his seat toward the passenger side and grabbed his rifle.

  “What are you doing?”

  He cocked the gun. “I’m going to see if I can get the juice flowing. Can you try to run the card out here? Just do this.” He showed me how to insert the card into the slit and then pull it out. “Choose the grade by pressing the eighty-seven button,” he instructed, pressing it. “Then, take the pump off the holder and pull up the lever. The nozzle fits into the gas tank, like thi
s, and squeeze the trigger,” he said as I watched him act it all out. “You got it?”

  “I can do it.”

  Tavia leaned out of her open window. “You didn’t have to go through all that. I can do it.”

  “She needs to learn. She needs to learn everything,” Dad said, keeping his eyes on the store. He held the rifle in front of him with both hands and took his first step.

  “Be careful,” I said. “They can sneak up on you.”

  Dad didn’t turn around. When he reached the double doors, he banged on the glass with the stock of his gun. After nothing happened, he went inside.

  I dipped the card into the slot, chose the grade, and then lifted the nozzle before placing it into the mouth of the SUV’s tank. The gas pump beeped again, but again, nothing happened, and the digital display returned to scrolling words.

  Dad popped his head out of the door. “Try it one more time. I think I figured it out.”

  I ran the card, but this time it was denied. “What? No,” I said, trying it again. The word Denied came up again.

  Dad pushed through the doors and held up his hands, frustrated and confused.

  “It says the card is denied!” I yelled.

  He jogged over to me.

  “She’s right,” Tavia said. “I was watching.”

  “Damn it. Damn it!” Dad yelled to the sky. He palms against the driver’s side door, his fingertips turning white, his jaw muscles working beneath the skin. “We have to go back to Anderson.”

  “What? No. We’ll go as far as we can, and then we’ll walk the rest of the way,” I said.

  Dad glared at me. “With a toddler and a seven-year-old? Jenna, that’s not realistic.”

  “We have a tent. We have everything we need. We’ll keep watch. We can find an empty house. We can make it.”

  “It’s too dangerous. Those things are everywhere! We’re going back.”

  “Mom isn’t in Anderson.”

  “Jenna, something bad could happen. Are you willing to risk your sister’s life? Your mom wouldn’t want that.”

  “She didn’t stay in Anderson because she knew we couldn’t survive there. We’ve talked about it. We—”

  “I said no,” Dad said, his tone final.