Author: Pauline Creeden
Date: 2015-03-30 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Aliens; Apocalyptic; Young Adult; Horror
Description: *Novella companion to Sanctuary* What if the Biblical End Times unfolded in a way no one told you about and the rapture didn't happen before the tribulation began... Aliens have attacked and Rory's mother is missing, but none of that matters much to him. He's safe in his apartment complex, has his friends and his twin sister, Hailey. But as supplies start to dwindle, it becomes obvious that he needs to do something to make sure they all survive...even if it means he has to brave going outside through the Shisa and the zombies people have become. As long as they are safe, that's all that matter
Rights: All rights reserved (#3041998796512358)

SURVIVOR

A Sanctuary End Times Novella

© 2015 Pauline Creeden

Cover Design Copyright © 2015 by Najla Qamber Designs

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Interior formatting and design by Marcy Rachel Designs.

Synopsis:

What if the Biblical End Times unfolded in a way no one told you about
and the rapture didn't happen before the tribulation began...

Aliens have attacked and Rory's mother is missing, but none of that matters much to him. He's safe in his apartment complex, has his friends and his twin sister, Hailey. But as supplies start to dwindle, it becomes obvious that he needs to do something to make sure they all survive...even if it means he has to brave going outside through the Shisa and the zombies people have become. As long as they are safe, that's all that matters, right?

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“But in those days, following that distress,

“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ ”

(Mark 13:24-25)

CHAPTER ONE

“The worst part about the end of the world is the thirst,” Hailey said as she swiped a dirty blonde curl from her forehead and put it behind her ear. Even though she was Rory’s fraternal twin sister, her hair was a few shades lighter than his and wavy instead of curly. Red model paint from her fingers smeared on the edge of her ear, and Rory couldn’t help but hate the color. It looked too much like blood.

Water everywhere and not a drop to drink…

Wasn’t that a poem or saying or something? Even though water still poured from the tap in every single apartment, everyone knew it was completely undrinkable. It still made Rory salivate for it just thinking about it. He shook his head and tried to think on something else.

Tion shoved the window down on the last of the t-shirts in apartment 4F and pushed away from the window. “Shut up. We don’t need to talk about it. Talking about it makes us think about it. And thinking about it just makes it worse.” He dropped down on the floor beside them and sat cross-legged. When they all were on the floor together like this, it was funny how they all sat at about the same height. Tion was two years younger than Rory and Hailey, but at fifteen, he still towered over them both by more than six inches.

All legs.

“I wonder what it looks like from outside,” Rory asked, picking at the dried paint on his own fingers. Any transport that happened by wouldn’t be able to miss the four white t-shirts with red letters that spelled out “H-E-L-P.” At least, that’s what they hoped.

“Not like we could go out and take a look.” Tion stretched out on the floor and leaned on his elbows. He’d lost weight—they all had. But Tion hadn’t had weight that he could afford to lose in the first place. At 6-foot-2, he’d played basketball for their high school and had even made varsity his freshman year. Now his legs and arms could have belonged to a grasshopper instead of a teenage boy.

For a long while, they sat together in silence except for Hailey’s humming. Rory continued picking at the paint on his fingers. Tion had his eyes closed as if napping, and Hailey sat humming every top forty song she could think of. Faded white light came through the window, the sky a cloudy hue that hovered between gold and grey. Mrs.

Foster’s apartment smelled faintly of cinnamon. The plug-in air freshener in the wall hadn’t yet lost its ability to fill the room with the scent of freshly baked pastries. Rory’s stomach growled, and he moaned.

“Hang in there, bro. We’ve got at least two more hours until dinner.” Tion lowered himself all the way to the carpet.

Rory swallowed the saliva forming in his mouth. Some choice they had. Suffer in the scent of non-existent baked goods or head on down to the first floor where everyone wallowed in the rank odor of sweat and feet. While it was daylight, the teenagers had split into two groups to continue searching for supplies, but it was slim pickings. It had been over three weeks since the aliens known as Shisa were let loose on the population of Newport News, Virginia. No one had been let in the building or out… except Mr. Harris.

Now they were running out of water and food fast.

With a grunt, Rory pushed himself to his feet and peered out the window. He placed an ear against the glass and listened for a moment to see if any of the Shisa was nearby.

His breath fogged the window for a split second before he found a comfortable distance in which he could see the street below and yet keep the window clear. The world never looked so gray. Muted light from the cloud cover washed Warwick Avenue with a pale white. It had been spring when the aliens had attacked the sun and water supply.

Marooned cars were scattered carcasses from their abandonment nearly a month before.

Leafless tree limbs blew in the constant breeze, making the world look like winter although it was not quite September.

At this time of day, light would have played on the James River as the sun painted streaks of gold on the gentle waves. But now the river looked as dead and as black as the tongue of a Shisa. From his fourth floor position, Rory could see only a few people roaming around among the cars below. Those unfortunates who had been infected by the Shisa were cursed to roam the streets and were beyond help. Their swollen, red faces punctuated the distance like cherries among the leafless trees and lifeless vehicles.

Hailey stood behind him and sighed. “I suppose we should be getting back down.

Did you check all the drawers for batteries?”

Absently, Rory nodded, his eyes following one of the infected people below as he or she bobbed between vehicles. Those people’s movements never seemed to end. They
didn’t sit still, and as far as he could tell from watching them for weeks, they didn’t sleep

— turned into zombies by the bite of the Shisa.

When a hand landed on his shoulder, Rory could finally break the trance. “Yeah.

Let’s go.”

Tion had already gotten to his feet and held the plastic bag full of their bounty. It only held a few bags of ramen, a couple of canned goods, and two flashlights. But no water. Between them and Jose and the other two men, they’d scoured all fourteen floors of the building. They were out of places to look. Today had been a second search through the same apartments they’d already scoured before. A dehydration headache throbbed at the back of Rory’s head. If they didn’t find some water soon, things were going to get truly desperate.

They left the door to the apartment wide open as they went. The door jamb had
already been demolished from their kicking and it wouldn’t have stayed shut anyway. At the stairwell, Rory slipped a headlamp on and lead the way down the stairs. A bit of light made its way in through each floor’s doorway, helping keep the well from being pitch black, but it was still a struggle to keep the footing without a head lamp. Their echoing footsteps and panting breaths were the only sounds that broke the silence. If José had been with their group, they would never have had a moment’s peace, but he and Mr. Lee were on the upper floors having drawn the short straw. If they weren’t already in the lobby, they’d be heading down soon.

Muffled voices carried up the stairwell from the bottom. The light coming from the open doorway at the lobby level acted as a beacon and drew Rory’s every footstep as he lead the group down the stairs. Even the muted light of the setting sun in the lobby blinded him momentarily as he came out of the darkness and switched off his headlamp.

He blinked hard to relieve his aching eyes.

“Where you been?” José slapped him on the shoulder as soon as they came out the doorway.

Rory jumped and his spine stiffened in sudden surprise. He stifled a shout by
tightening his jaw. There were none of the infected or Shisa inside the building, but somehow the lobby level never quite felt safe to him. He preferred the upper floors. He
shook the fear from his head and relaxed his muscles, trying to play it off. “You guys are already done?”

José shrugged and bumped fists with Tion. “Yeah, man. We got down here nearly an hour ago. How could we be done before you anyway? You guys didn’t have as many
stairs to climb.”

Tion leaned toward him and quietly told him about the makeshift help sign made
with the white t-shirts they’d found in Mrs. Foster’s closet. Mrs. Foster was a very large woman, easily three hundred pounds. The XXL t-shirts weren’t going to do anyone any good, but made good signal flags. “It was Hailey’s idea.”

Hailey nodded with a half smile and then her gaze shot toward Mr. Black. Absently, Rory’s own gaze followed. The man stood in a burgundy track suit on the other side of the lobby, fully engrossed in a conversation with Mr. Dunn and Mr. Conway. The three were in a heated debate over what to do with the water supplies. Mr. Black ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I still feel it would be safest under lock and key. We can’t have anyone sneaking an extra bottle when we’re down to two a day.”

Mr. Dunn’s spine straightened, and he pushed his glasses a little farther up on his nose. “It’s safest out in the open. If only one or two people have the key to the storage room where the water is, things could get ugly. People become manipulative or desperate when given the control over resources. Here in the open, everyone can watch the water.

No one would worry about anyone taking extra when we’re on a time schedule.”

Rory shook his head. Water again. It seemed that’s all people thought about in the building these days. And who could blame them— everyone was thirsty and always on the verge of a headache from dehydration.

Señora Miggy, José’s mother, approached the arguing men with a woven bedspread.

She cleared her throat to draw their attention. Although no taller than five feet, Señora Miggy had a commanding presence. When she spoke, everyone listened. “We can use this to cover the water. Out of sight—out of mind. Locks only keep honest people honest, and this quilt will do the same.”

The super, Mr. Black, sighed, but didn’t say a word,putting his hands on the hips of his track pants. How many track suits did the man have anyway?

Mr. Dunn smiled, his teeth too straight to be real. “There. That’s a simple solution even you can’t argue with.”

Black shook his head and gestured to the pile of blankets beneath the windows.

“Whatever. You people seem to think that curtains and quilts can solve everything.”

As if on cue, the rumbling began.

Shisa.

Rory’s stomach sank, but at the same time, his heart quickened its tempo. As one, every person in the room headed toward the stack of blankets on the floor. Rory’s hands moved of their own accord. He gripped a rough brown blanket and grabbed one end while Tion grabbed another. Between the two of them, they pulled it over the string that hung between two nails over the window. They quickly straightened the blanket so that it covered and blocked out every bit of light from the window but a sliver.

Soon the room was swallowed in darkness and filled with the rumbling sound of the Shisa. The vibrations started in Rory’s chest. He closed his eyes as he sank to the floor.

Everyone in the room grew hushed, but how the Shisa could hear over their own constant rumbling was anyone’s guess.

Rory swallowed and opened his eyes, immediately searching the shadows for his
sister’s shape. He’d really grown to hate the darkness. At seventeen years old, he was too old to be afraid of the dark. He longed for a nightlight. When he couldn’t find Hailey among the shadows, momentary panic closed his throat. A small hand slipped into his, and he found his sister right next to him. Relief washed over him and prickled his skin. It had been years since he had held hands like this with his twin sister. Since middle school they’d done their best to avoid one another in public places and had become virtual strangers outside of the apartment. But then the end of the world happened. A week before the Shisa were released from those hovering metal disks, their mother had vanished, leaving them one short note. “Take good care of each other. Love, Mom.”

The ache in his chest for his mother returned with the thought. At first, being without a parent seemed like a fun thing. His mom wouldn’t come home high, with a new
boyfriend to beat him around or kick him out of the apartment. He’d already had to step up and be a man since he was twelve. Most of his time was spent at José’s apartment
anyway, so it hardly made a difference to him. And Hailey had kept herself occupied with after-school sports.

But as things got tougher outside, he missed his mom more and more. The good
memories started drumming back up, drowning out all the bad memories of recent years.

Hailey gently squeezed his hand as they waited in the dark for the Shisa to leave. Of course he’d take care of his sister, but it was unfair of their mother to abandon them like this. Was she one of those zombies out there, attacked by the Shisa, or had she found someplace safe to hole up? Did she worry about them the way they worried about her?

The rumbling of the Shisa drowned his thoughts. Everything resonated in response to them. The vibrations in his chest were nearly unbearable. Even the glass in the windows hummed with the alien bass. It was deafening and numbing at the same time. The Shisa were close.

Hailey released her hand from his and moved the curtain back slightly to peer out the crack.

“What are you doing?” he whispered as harshly as he could afford. Who knew if the Shisa could hear them? And they learned a week ago that the Shisa were willing to ram their heads into glass when they found survivors like them.

Hailey pressed a finger to her lips as the gold sliver of light illuminated the side of her face and her blue eye. Rory’s heart raced. Her face morphed from curiosity to horror in a split second. Her panicked eye focused on his. With a tilt of her head, she appealed for him to take a peek as well.

Anxiety plucked his spine like a guitar string, and his back muscles clenched in response. He kneeled behind Hailey and shifted his body. The faint light from the crack in the curtain revealed a horrified look on José’s face.

“What are you two doing?” he asked.

Somehow, Rory couldn’t help himself. He had to look, had to face this fear. With a quick shrug in José’s direction, Rory peered out the window and straight at one of the Shisa.

The alien life form still caused tremendous fear, even after months of seeing them, even from the safety of the apartment building. On the ground just in front of the Shisa lay a man whose face was so swollen and disfigured, that if Rory had known the man
before, he didn’trecognize him now. Open wounds, left by the man’s own fingernails, surrounded blood-matted clumps of hair.

A Shisa stood over the prone body. It was about twice the size of the bobcat Rory had seen at the Virginia Living Museum when they were kids. Smaller than some of the other Shisa he’d seen, its wrinkled, pug face didn’t hold back the black tongue which lulled over its bottom jaw. The most striking thing about the lion-dog’s appearance was its scorpion-like barb on the end of its tail. It whipped it around over its back and stabbed the man on the ground with it.

“Were the tails always like that?” Hailey’s voice shook as she whispered in his ear.

Speechless, Rory shook his head. They weren’t always like that, were they? As he searched his memory, it seemed that they’d been more like a lion’s…with tufts of hair at the end. But now the ends were bulbous and shiny with an exoskeleton-like armor and a curved, thorny stinger about the size of one of its claws. Were they changing? And if so, why?

“What’s going on?” José whisper-shouted and elbowed Rory, out of the way.. A
startled gasp escaped his lips as the makeshift curtain fell from the rod and light flooded the room.

A panicked cry from one of the ladies came up. The slit-like pupils of the Shisa focused on them, and for a moment, everyone froze, including the alien. But then the rumbling sound increased and two more dog-faced Shisa joined the frozen one and assessed the three teens standing in the light which poured into the apartment building’s lobby. The largest of the three sneered, exposing one of its bloodstained, porcelain fangs.

Rory’s heart beat so hard in his ears, they rang. The vibrations in his chest
intensified, causing his stomach to twist, and the sensation to hurl pulled at the back of his throat. He rushed forward, slamming his shoulder into José’s as he ripped the blanket from his friend’s hand and desperately tried to cover the window. Because it had become useless to whisper any longer, he glared into José’s eyes and shouted, “Help me!”

The two of them had just replaced the curtain when the first sound of a Shisa
ramming its head against the Plexiglas caused them to jump back. José tripped over Hailey, and the two of them sprawled on the floor. Gasps and squeals erupted about the
lobby. Collectively, the group moved toward the back of the room, closest to the stairwell.

Newport News was not exactly a bad area to live in, but it had never been the best either. When the towers were built fourteen years ago, the owners had installed a bullet proof Plexiglas in the lobby’s windows and glass front doors. Rory marveled at the builders’ unexpected foresight.

A Shisa slammed its head into the glass again. The constant ramming of skull against plastic was enough to crack the drywall casing around the window. White powder
fluttered from the wall to the floor. Was it possible for the Shisa to break the window cleanly from the wall?

Hailey gripped Rory’s shirt so tightly to both sides of him that it pulled on the collar and hurt the back of his neck. But this feeling wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It reminded him that she was there. Still alive, still safe. And even though he’d never been the religious type, he prayed that God would just let them make it through this.

CHAPTER TWO

The pounding against the window only lasted about twenty minutes. Rory wondered if the Shisa had taken turns or if it had just been one who had done the ramming.

Regardless, the window held and the Shisa stopped. But they did continue to remain close to the building for several hours, making it well past nightfall before the vibrations receded enough for them to be certain that the alien creatures were gone.

Most of the people in the lobby had fallen asleep. Rory’s mother had told him once that if she was a little stressed, she couldn’t sleep at all, but if she was stressed out of her mind, she couldn’t stay awake. That must have been how his friends and neighbors were

—stressed out of their minds.

Hailey’s grip on his sweatshirt had hardly let up, even while she slept with her head against his chest. When the noise had gone, she lifted her head and left behind a small wet spot where she’d obviously drooled. It was cold there. But Rory decided to do his best to play it off. He pushed his sister away gently.

Mr. Dunn stood and cleared his throat. “Let’s get the fire started, and then we can see about something to eat.”

A murmur of assent rose up.

The fireplace was another odd feature at James River Tower. It had never been lit before the aliens attacked. It stood as a decoration of the lobby before. Rory had always thought of it as a place for Santa to come down when he was little, but hadn’t really ever thought it a necessary item once he’d discovered that Santa was just a sham. Now the fully functional hearth was the source of their light and heat through the night. Without it, life would have become much more difficult.

Using a screwdriver and a hammer, Mr. Conway pried a leg from the coffee table
that Mr. Lee held down for him. The dismantling of wooden furniture for the fire had become an arduous but necessary task.

When they had finished getting the fire started, Señora Miggy clapped her hands.

“There were a couple cans of soup in with today’s scavenger run, and good news: it wasn’t condensed.”

A general murmur of relief went up from the crowd.

Señora Miggy nodded. “Right. So we’ll have extra liquid there, and save the water ration until after supper. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Firelight played on the faces of the survivors in the lobby. Fifteen people. Friends.

Neighbors. The oldest among them was Mrs. Marquis, or maybe Mr. Dunn. And the
youngest, was José’s sister, Carmen, who was only eleven and a half years old. The soup was just a plain chicken noodle, but somehow the thin broth tasted better than any soup Rory had ever had.

Afterward, the people settled into a long line with their cups while Mr. Conway and Mr. Lee distributed the water. Hailey waited in front of Rory, bouncing on her toes—
excited, like a small girl. It’s funny how they would get worked up about something like water. Once the reached the front, the older Asian man, Mr. Lee, poured water from a gallon jug into Rory’s cup.

Carmen was dancing around the room with her cup of water and stopped next to her brother, José. “Did you all find any more water today?”

“Not today but I’m sure we’ll find something tomorrow.”

“How many floors do you have left to search?” Carmen asked, taking a long pull
from her circus cup.

José scratched his head and put a hand on the back of his neck “I think we have about six floors left.”

“What will you do then?” José’s sister was full of questions.

“We’ll figure something out. Won’t we, Rory?” José scrubbed his sister’s head
affectionately and gave her a wide smile.

Only by looking hard at his friend could Rory tell that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Yes, José was just as worried about their future as Rory was. What were they going to do then?

Mr. Black came up and set his large coffee cup on the table with a loud clang.

“There’s no need to worry your pretty little head over that, dear. We’ll be rescued by then. Those aliens won’t stand a chance once the government pulls their heads out of their rears and uses a real nuclear weapon on the ships.”

Rory shook his head. Didn’t Mr. Harris say something about the fallout killing people on the sidelines in that sort of situation? There was no way that they’d try a nuclear warhead. That must have been why the aliens parked the ships over city centers and highly militarized areas. Would the government gamble at killing all those people?

Hadn’t they tried to attack one of those ships with nuclear weapons in another country and failed?

The crowd made its way over to the fireplace, but Rory didn’t follow. Taking his own cup in his hands, he strode over toward the glass door front and pushed the curtain aside. The overcast night sky seemed greyer than usual, the light from the moon barely making it past the clouds. A grey pallor was cast on everything, and the fogginess made him think about snow. He sipped his cup slowly, holding the water in his mouth a few moments before swallowing it down. He wondered if this actually helped parch his thirst a bit more than just gulping.

Outside, a few bodies moved about. Warwick Boulevard looked more like a ghost
town than the busy city center it used to be. The abandoned cars served as gravestones in what had become an auto graveyard. The Shisa rarely frequented the area anymore, and the zombie-like infected didn’t seem to do much more than crawl by on occasion. Few of them seemed to have the strength to stand anymore.

How much danger would there be in going outside now?

Behind him, the high pitch whine of the wind-up emergency radio drowned out all thought. The noise set Rory’s teeth on edge. A necessary evil. Without the radio, they wouldn’t know what was going on outside of the building. The military did constant loops, telling survivors which bases were open to taking them in and what locations they were using for pick up.

They gave status reports from each base at certain times as well. Originally, they were giving weather reports, too, but they hadn’t had much more than overcast skies in weeks. No rain, no sun, no change…the weather report sounded the same everyday.

Even the temperature hadn’t had much fluctuation.

He couldn’t help but look longingly out the window like this. Even though he’d
never gotten along with his mom, he still hoped she was out there, somewhere…and doing okay. And for all he cared, his dad could rot in—

“Anything interesting going on out there?” José slid up next to him and punched him in the shoulder.

The half full cup in Rory’s hand sloshed. “Hey! What are you doing? I almost spilled it!”

José laughed. “Sorry, man. What are you saving it for? Everyone else already drank theirs.”

Rory shrugged and returned his gaze to the grey light outside.

“Whatever, bro,” José said and watched out the window with him.

The Shisa were still visible on the bridge, darting between broken down vehicles and presumably biting the zombie-like victims wherever they could find them…or stinging them now. Rory leaned his head back and downed the last two sips quickly. Turning around, he leaned back against the cool glass.

“It’s like they are patrolling, man. Their movements are pretty regular, doncha think?” José asked.

Rory nodded and looked around. “That’s true. I wonder if they are the same ones all the time, or waves of different aliens that are coming out of the ship?”

“Maybe one of us should start taking notes on it?”

Rory rolled his eyes. “Sounds too much like schoolwork.”

José shrugged. “Well, we were supposed to be learning that stuff for use in real life. I guess I’ll look for a notebook and pen…and a watch. Things can hardly get any more real than they are now.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jose watched the Shisa for five days, recording their movements. He soon had a
couple of pages of a legal pad filled with charts and numbers. Rory peered over his shoulder as he went over the stats. “It looks like they are most active at night, coming several times. I woke up and tried my best to write what time it was according to the light on that watch I found.”

“So is it regular or random?” Rory asked. They kept their heads pretty close together on the couch so that not everyone could cut in on their conversation. Some of the adults were playing cards at the table while Hailey and Tion played Monopoly in the corner with Carmen. At least that was a blessing for them. No younger kids. Carmen was the youngest.

“It seems pretty regular. Like, they come every hour and a half to two hours through the night, but during the day, it seems like it goes three or four hours before we see them again.”

“Huh.” Rory scratched his dark, tightly wound curls. Usually his hair was shorter, too. “I wonder why.”

José shrugged and looked at the scrawl on the notebook in front of him. “I don’t know, but it seems to follow a pretty distinct pattern. If we timed it just right, we could all make it to the train station without much worry.”

“Oh, no.” Mr. Black rested a firm grip on Rory’s shoulder. The man’s nails dug a bit into Rory’s collarbone until he flinched. “You boys better not be getting any bright ideas.

Just keep heading up in the building and getting food and water. The army will be coming any day now and picking us up here if they don’t kick these aliens back to where they came from.”

Rory ripped himself out of Mr. Black’s grip. “Who put you in charge anyway? The landlord is probably dead or zombified like the rest of the people out there.”

Dark beady eyes fixated on him, and Mr. Black’s lips drew into a taut line. “I’ve been in charge of this building for four years. Do you think some punk kid is going to tell me that I’m no longer in charge?”

The man’s face was turning red and his voice slowly grew louder. “But to ease your mind and the minds of those around you, let’s put it to a vote. Anyone want Rory in charge of what we do and don’t do, raise your hand.”

Blood rushed to Rory’s face as he peered around the room. He didn’t expect anyone to vote him as leader—honestly he didn’t even want to be leader. But when no one’s hand was raised—not even Hailey’s—his heart still sank into the pit of his stomach.

Mr. Black smirked. “Well, does anyone else want the position of leader? Who wants to take responsibility for the group? Anyone? Anyone? …No? Then I guess that I’ll continue in this role by default.”

The man punched Rory in the shoulder just hard enough to make him bruise, but the wide, playful smile on Mr. Black’s face was plastered on to make him look like he was just kidding. “Get on upstairs and see if you can find us some more food.”

“But it’s Tion and Mr. Lee’s turn,” José finally chimed in.

Mr. Black turned his glare on José. “But Rory just volunteered. Are you
volunteering, too?”

José stared at Rory for a moment, and broke his gaze to look toward his sister and mother as though asking for permission.

“Nah, man. Don’t worry about it, I’ll go,” Rory said. “Mr. Lee’s been looking tired since we’re at the top floors now. It’s becoming a younger man’s job anyway.”

Mr. Black nodded once and turned his gray velour jogging-suited back on them.

“Sounds like a plan. Get moving.”

Rory sneered and just barely resisted sticking his tongue out at the superintendent.

He made eye-contact with Tion, which wasn’t hard since the whole group was staring at them. He lifted a questioning eyebrow and made a quick shake of his head to gesture toward the stairwell. Tion got up from his cross-legged position on the floor and strode over. Mr. Lee sat back in his chair and smiled at them waving. The older Korean man hadn’t missed a single word of the conversation either, had he?

“Don’t sweat it, Tion,” Jose said, pulling an empty back pack over his shoulder. “I’ll go with Rory.”

Tion’s grin grew wide. He shrugged and headed back over toward Hailey and Carmen. Mr. Harris’s grey tabby cat sat in Rory’s sister’s lap. Her eyes asked him if she should go, too, but Rory shook his head. He eyed Jose with a half smile.

After throwing one of the empty backpacks over his shoulder, they entered the
stairwell. Once inside the darkened box, he closed his eyes and counted to twenty out loud. It was a ritual they’d come up with to help their eyes adjust to the dim light. Jose did the same. The shorter, Hispanic kid had been picked on back when they were in high school, but Rory had always found him to be dependable as a friend in the building, even though he didn’t talk to him much when they were at school. The kid used to be chubby, but after almost two months of rationed food and the every-other-day stairwell climb, he had become leaner and more muscular. His movements were catlike in the dim light as he darted up the steps before Rory.

After a long sigh, Rory started up as well. Several minutes later they were out of breath and had reached the top floor of the building. Even though they had taken it slow, it still had felt as if they had sprinted the five miles at school. The cool air at the top of the stairs didn’t keep the sweat from dripping down both sides of Rory’s face. José stumbled into the hallway and landed on the carpet sprawled out like he was getting ready to make a snow angel. His chest heaved as he attempted to suck in more oxygen.

Rory collapsed beside him. His dry throat screamed at him for relief, but he could only lick the sweat from his lips and concentrate on his breathing.

Once they had caught their breaths, Rory stood and dusted himself off, picking the fine gray lint off his navy blue sweatshirt. Light shone through the window at the end of the hall,but all that he could see out of it was gray overcast sky. Still, Rory was drawn to the glass pane like a moth to the flame. Sixteen stories below, everything looked almost normal. For a moment he could imagine that the cars sat still in traffic instead of being broken down in position. He couldn’t even see the zombies from here. And if he
squinted, he could imagine that the Shisa were just dogs… but even that took a lot of imagination.

“Man, it’s freezing up here,” José exclaimed, nudging Rory with his shoulder.

The sweat that had been running down Rory’s back now chilled in the cool air, and he could see his breath like white puffy clouds in front of his face. He shivered in response.

“Come on, man, let’s hurry up and get this done and get back downstairs. It is way colder up here, for sure.” Jose started for a door on his left.

With a groan and a shrug he followed José into the first apartment. The rancid odor of decay assaulted their noses the moment they stepped in the door. It had been worse before when the smell could seep into the hallway, but the cold and the month that had past had help keep it to the apartment.

“Ugh.” Rory covered his nose with his elbow. Because they were totally out of
options, they now had to search the apartments that they had previously avoided.

Specifically, the apartments that housed the dead. Up and down the apartment building, there had been six apartments they had avoided before. Two of them contained the bodies of people who seemed to have died of probable natural causes. But the other four, including this one, held people who were victims of suicide.

“My eyes are watering over here, man,” José mumbled through the shirt he had
grabbed from his pack and stuffed to his face. He reached out an arm with a second tee-shirt for Rory.

The apartment had belonged to a new guy who moved in about two months before
the first spaceships had arrived. Because he was a foreign dude from the Middle East, or India, or someplace like that, he had a strange smell that seemed to come from his skin.

Rory didn’t know if the guy just ate too much hummus or garlic, or what, but he made Rory hold his breath whenever he had to ride in the elevator with him. He was short with bronze skin, about thirty years old, wore glasses, and had no interest in talking to his neighbors. Although Mr. Black probably knew his name, most of the other residents of the James River Tower did not.

When they had stumbled on his apartment the first time, Tion had opened the
window a couple of inches to let out the smell and then closed the door to the man’s bedroom so they didn’t have to look at him while they scanned his apartment as fast as they could. But today, their plan was to brave the stench as best as they could and do a thorough search.

José was right. Rory’s eyes began to water from the strong odor, even though he tied a T-shirt around his face. It turned out that their first search of the apartment had been a pretty good one. This time, they only found a few D cell batteries that might fit a flashlight they had downstairs, and a few boxes of opened cereal that looked edible.

Unfortunately, they found no water bottles.

Rory came out of the second bedroom after gaining little to nothing, and found José with his hand on the doorknob to the master bedroom. Their eyes met in an unspoken understanding. It had to be done, but neither wanted to do it. Rory was at least thankful that neither of the girls was there with them. With a nod José turned the handle and ducked in. Rory followed after him.

The blood splatter across the white bedspread and the wall had become a burgundy-brown in the weeks since they had found the body. Tion had covered the man with the coverlet. Rory swallowed in relief. At least they didn’t have to look at the mess on the bed. A steady breeze came in through the four-inch crack in the window, and though the fresh air helped, it also chilled the room to an unbearable temperature. The morbid thought that perhaps the refrigerator-like temperature of the room was keeping the body

“fresh” popped into Rory’s mind. He shook his head at the thought.

Without a word, Rory headed for the master bathroom to look for any painkillers or bandages or anything that could be used to help the group of survivors downstairs. He collected what he could and threw them in his backpack. The sound of opening and closing drawers reached the bathroom. Rory called out, “Don’t forget to check under the bed.”

“I know, I know.”

A moment later Rory stepped back into the master bedroom.

José stood over the bed as if steadying himself. His sad eyes met Rory’s, before he put a hand under the blanket and pulled the black barrel and the brown stock of a shotgun from the blankets and held the weapon like a cane on the ground.

“Do you think we should take it with us?” He ran his fingers along the cold steel barrel.

Rory shrugged. He didn’t much like the idea of it, but who knew if they would ever need something like that? Before the TV signals went out, they had seen the video
footage of many people trying to shoot the Shisa with guns unsuccessfully. The guns didn’t even seem to have any effect on the zombies either. What would be the point? At the same time, he didn’t want to leave a find like this so far up the stairs that he couldn’t reach it if for some reason they needed it. Weren’t there always roving bands of marauders in zombie movies? “Maybe, we should stash it in Mrs. Foster’s place.”

The fourth floor apartment had become a sort of clubhouse for the teams. It wasn’t so far up the steps that it became inaccessible, but it was far enough up that none of the adults would go that far. Their help sign hung out the windows of the apartment, but Rory suspected the real reason they all liked hanging out there was the cinnamon smell.

José nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

In the hallway, they rested the shotgun against the wall, still wrapped in a blanket.

They still had seven more apartments to search on that floor before heading down to search the other two upper floors. The other apartments had been checked more
thoroughly, so they didn’t find much worthy of scavenging. With their bags full and the gun strapped across José’s back, they headed back down. Around the ninth floor, their lone headlamp winked out, leaving them in darkness.

“Chitlins!” José yelled. They had all taken to creative cursing ever since they had been living in close quarters with the adults. José’s mom had never let them cuss in his apartment, and now Mrs. Marquis especially would give them dirty looks if they slipped out with an actual curse word.

Although there was scant light in the stairwell from the open doors at each level, the darkness enveloped them and felt heavy upon their shoulders. The lack of light was one thing, but the absence of the constant hum of electricity that would have greeted them before the power went out left a vacuous void. Silence pressed down upon them as well as the darkness. You’d think that they’d have gotten used to it in the two weeks without electricity, but Rory hadn’t.

He gripped the railing and made his way ahead of José, closing his eyes on occasion and just feeling for each step with his toe. Before long they reached the fourth floor. He turned to José before sitting on a step. “I’ll wait here while you stash the shotgun.”

José nodded before marching out the open stairwell door.

The cold of the drywall in the stairwell felt good against Rory’s burning forehead.

Was he getting a fever now, too? Was that possible with dehydration? His lips had become cracked, and he had no hope to of quenching the thirst that scratched up the sides of his throat like steel wool. All he could do was breathe slower and try his best not to exert himself even though he was going up and down the stairs. The worst thing he could do would be breaking a sweat.

Sooner than expected, José returned. “I stuck it in Mrs. Foster’s bedroom closet. And then I put the ammo under her bed. Do you think that’s good enough? Tion wouldn’t come up here and mess with it by himself, right? Or Hailey… Or Carmen?”

Even Rory’s lids seem to scratch against his dry eyes, when he tried to open them.

“We’ll just tell them about it, okay?”

“Well, okay. Except for maybe Carmen.”

“Right,” Rory agreed.

José nodded and started toward the stairs again. How did he have so much energy? It was a chore for Rory to even pull himself to his feet and follow after his friend. He was worn out and another dehydration headache was building at the back of his head.

Right before they reached the bottom of the steps, they heard shouting.

“I know how many there were this morning when we were done rationing out. We
have only been using a gallon each time and we had six left. Enough for three days! Now we have only five,” shouted Mr. Conway.

“Well who took the other gallon then? One of the kids?” Mr. White’s voice cracked as it got higher at the end.

José and Rory looked each other, then rushed back down the last flight and broke out into the lobby. Mr. Conway was a full six inches shorter than Mr. Black, but still the former military officer managed to push his face into the taller, younger man’s. “I’m not blaming this on the kids. In fact, I don’t even think it was one of them.”

“Then who are you accusing, exactly?”

Mr. Lee stepped in, speaking in broken English. “Calm down. Stay calm.”

Mr. Black brushed Mr. Lee’s hand away when it rested on his elbow. “Don’t tell me to stay calm. I’m being accused of stealing here, and I want an apology. This is America.

You can’t go accusing someone of something without any evidence.”

“Who else could it have been? You were alone with the water for the past half hour.

There were six bottles of water before we went to Mrs. Marquis’ apartment for lunch and when we came back, there were five.”

“Maybe you miscounted.” Mr. Black narrowed his eyes at Mr. Conway.

“Maybe we should search your apartment.” Mr. Conway countered, without backing
down an inch.

Señora Miggy stepped over. “Now, gentlemen, let’s not get into an uproar over this.

If there was an extra bottle before, and it’s gone now, we can’t do a whole lot about that

—”

“If we search his apartment, we might.”

“Ain’t no one going to set foot in my place. None of you tenants have before, and none of you will, as far as I’m concerned.” Red rose to Mr. Black’s cheeks.

Rory remembered counting the water bottles himself earlier in the day. Mr. Conway was right, there had been six. Had Mr. Black really stolen one of them? They needed that water to survive. It was hard enough that they were going around thirsty all of the time and living with dehydration headaches knocking at the brains all the time. Anger started bubbling up in Rory’s chest as he eyed the greasy superintendant. He stepped forward. “I counted them this morning, too. I know there were six.”

A look of satisfaction flickered across Mr. Conway’s face. The glare Rory got from Mr. Black struck him with an icy chill that reached to the tips of his fingers and toes. He didn’t care. He was sick of Mr. Black’s constant control. But, it was Señora Miggy’s gentle hand on his shoulder that stopped Rory in his tracks. Her soft brown eyes captured his, and she shook her head slightly, with her lips pursed. Rory’s jaw clamped.

“It makes no difference.” Señora Miggy stood between the two men with her hands on her hips and elbows toward each one’s midsection. They each backed a step in response. “To keep this fragile grasp on peace that we have here in the building, we need to forget that the water bottle ever existed.”

For a moment the two men just stared at Señora Miggy, Mr. Black’s face red, and Mr. Conway’s arms crossed over his chest. Moments passed with nostrils flaring and chest heaving, before finally someone spoke up. Across the room Mrs. Marquis held up a
gallon jug of water, about three-quarter’s full. She rushed over to them and pushed the jug into Mr. Conway’s hands.

“It was Carmen,” she said in a hushed tone with her head tilted toward them. “Don’t blame her. She’s just a kid. It’s not her fault.”

Señora Miggy’s jaw dropped, and then snapped shut again just as quickly. “Carmen.

My Carmen? Wait until I get my hands on her — she knows better than that.”

Mrs. Marquis pressed her hands against Señora Miggy’s shoulders. “Please, don’t.

The poor child was just really thirsty, and she came to me crying and confessed right away. It took me this long to calm her down. She didn’t want there to be a fight over this anymore.”

Señora Miggy sucked in a few breaths with her eyes closed as she tried to regain her composure.

“See. You can’t go around accusing people without evidence.” Mr. Black smoothed back his hair with a smug grin.

Mr. Conway’s hands had dropped to his sides, and his eyes darted in several
directions while he blinked over and over again. He grumbled a barely intelligible apology before marching away.

Tears formed in the corners of Señora Miggy’s eyes. “I just can’t believe…

Carmen… How could she?”

José put an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “She’s just thirsty, Mom, like we all are.”

Señora Miggy’s eyes fluttered open. “Did you find any more? Did you find any more water?”

The desperation in her voice even caused Rory to tense up and swallow what little spit he had in his mouth. José shook his head mournfully, but didn’t say a word.

“We need to do something,” Señora Miggy pleaded.

Rory glared at Mr. Black while he stepped closer to Señora Miggy. “We need to go outside and scavenge. We don’t have any other choice.”

Mr. Black’s eyes widened. “No way. These doors have kept everyone safe up till
now and I’m not going to open them except for the Calvary if they come calling.”

José glared at Mr. Black and spoke through a tight jaw. “No one is coming. No one has come in a month. If we don’t go out there, we’re going to die.”

The spot under Mr. Black’s ear moved in and out while he ground his teeth. His eyes were narrow and his lips thin.

Rory scowled. “José is right. We need to find supplies and fast.”

Mr. Black licked his lips and leaned back, his arms crossing over his chest. “So you boys are saying that you want to go out there. You want to risk your lives to find some food or water. Between the zombies and the Shisa, there is virtually no chance of you guys making it back. And if one of you boys gets bit, you could bring that infection in here. I don’t know about everybody else, but I don’t want to take that risk.”

“But you don’t speak for everyone.” Tion stepped up and took position between Mr.

Black and José. “My boys are right. If we don’t get more water, then we are gonna have to make it to the train station and meet up with the transporters ourselves.”

Sweat formed in beads Mr. Black’s nose. “You are talking about all kinds of
dangerous things, boy.”

Rory shook his head. “The whole world is a dangerous place, now more than ever.

We need to do something. We cannot just sit around and hope for somebody to rescue us.”

Mrs. Marquis hugged her grey tabby cat to her chest and cleared her throat. “God helps those who help themselves, right?”

Mr. Black ran his hands through his greasy hair again and backed up a step. “Fine.

Let’s put it to a vote then. After all, this is America, and it’s a democracy.”

Mrs. Marquis shifted the cat in her hands. “I think that sounds like a fine idea.”

She set down the cat, and then skipped toward the main hall of apartments calling out. “Everyone! Come into the lobby, please.”

The cold look on Mr. Black’s face remained unchanged. His eyes were still
narrowed, even if he didn’t plant his gaze on anyone in particular. Outside, the wind blew harder against the glass doors, causing them to quiver slightly against the deadbolt. Rory glanced at the clock on the wall. According to Jose’s notes, the Shisa would be coming within the next half hour.

“So what did you guys get?” Tion asked, punching Rory on the shoulder.

Carmen soon appeared and clung herself to her brother’s side. José lean toward her and asked, “Has Mama already talked to you?”

She nodded vigorously, her eyes filled with tears. Her bottom lids were lined red.

That seemed enough for José. He picked her up off her feet and hugged her tightly to his chest. His sister had always been small, but now she seemed to have reverted back to behaving more like an eight or nine-year-old instead of an eleven-year-old.

Tion unzipped José’s pack and started pawing through it. The lobby was soon
buzzing with the growing crowd.

“Has anyone seen Hailey?” Mrs. Marquis’s called out when she returned.

Rory’s stomach dropped as he scanned the crowd. He’d been too preoccupied to
notice before, but her absence froze him where he stood. Where was she?

CHAPTER FOUR

Lifting her head, Carmen whispered, “I think she went up to do laundry on the
second floor.”

Relief.

Rory nodded and handed his pack to Tion. She wasn’t with the others simply
because no one had checked upstairs for her. No problem. He started for the stairs. Since it was only a jaunt up one flight of steps to the second floor, he didn’t even bother with trying to fix a head lamp. He rushed up the steps two at a time in the dark stairwell.

“Hey, wait up!” José ran up the stairs after him.

Rory stood in the open stairwell on the second floor. Golden hues of light filled the empty hallway. The six doors on the floor were left wide open to allow more light. But at the end of the hall, the picture window allowed for the view of the top of the James River Bridge. Seagulls danced in the wind against the backdrop of the gray, overcast sky. It wasn’t yet too cold on the second floor, as some heat made it up that stairwell.

José bumped him in the shoulder as he reached the top of the steps. “Why didn’t Hailey just wash her clothes in the first floor laundry room like anyone else?”

Rory pushed off the wall and started towards the end of the hallway. “She tends to wash stuff in Mr. Thomas’s apartment because he had a hot tub installed a couple years ago. I guess she likes all the room in the tub, and she doesn’t like how crowded the laundry room gets.”

“So she’d rather wash her stuff by hand?”

“Actually, it’s by foot. She puts the soap in the water in the tub and then stomps on it all. Back when we lived on the ninth floor, she did laundry like that all the time to save money, and I guess ’cause she was too lazy to go downstairs.”

“That seems kind of backwards, man. Doesn’t it take more work to wash the stuff by hand then to go downstairs? And now she’s going upstairs and doing the work. Just seems backwards.”

Rory shrugged. “I guess it was mostly about the money before, but maybe it’s a habit now.”

When they reached the open apartment door of the apartment, Rory called in. “Hey, Hailey!”

Coughing returned in response followed by the sound of retching.

New anxiety pooled in the pit of Rory’s stomach. He rushed inside and found Hailey on the kitchen floor in a pool of clear vomit.

“What on earth?” José asked.

“Hailey!” Rory cried, rushing to her side. He grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her up.

Stringy blonde hair clung to Hailey’s cheeks and forehead. Her normally soft blue eyes were unfocused and kept moving back and forth. She couldn’t even stand of her own accord. Rory’s foot slipped in the mess she had made on the floor.

“What is this? What’s wrong with you?” He shook her shoulders slightly trying to get her to wake up.

For one moment her eyes focused on his. “Rory…” was all she said before her eyes rolled back into her head.

“Rory, I think she drank the water. Look at this.” José held the pan half full of water in front of him and a drinking glass.

“What do we do?” Panic gripped Rory, sending shivers down his body from head to toe.

Jose set the pot back on the table with a clank. “We need to get her downstairs.

Now.”

Rory blinked twice before he could move. He hooked his arms under his sister’s, while José grabbed her by the ankles. Together they carried her down the stairs, with Rory walking backwards. Each step made his heart beat stronger and faster in his chest,like when the Shisa were near.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with Hailey?” Señora Miggy caught up with them
as soon as they exited the stairwell.

José shook his head. “She drank the water. Straight from the tap.”

They had all heard months ago, before the Shisa were even let out of the alien ships, that drinking the tap water was dangerous. They had blasted it all over the news, and Rory had heard the rumor that someone from the building had died because of it. But it
seemed almost like an urban legend—something everyone had heard about, but didn’t know was true. It was something you just didn’t want to be the one to test.

Sweat beaded on Hailey’s brow, it ran down her cheeks, and made her clothes stick to her body. How could she be so hot? But then she began to shiver.

“Bring her over here. Lay her on the sofa,” Mrs. Marquis called to them and waved them over to the couch in the middle of the lobby.

José and Rory brought her over and set her down, with Rory keeping his hands on her shoulders. He just didn’t feel like he could let her go all the way. Cold air blew against his now wet chest—wet with his sister’s sweat. He stuttered, “W… What do we do?”

“Bring me a blanket!” Miggy ordered and waved Rory over to sit on the coffee table.

“Come over here and hold her hand.”

“Someone wet down a washcloth,” Mrs. Marquis called back. The backs of her
hands were touching Hailey’s cheeks as though checking her temperature.

Hailey’s eyes were squeezed tight but her jaw was slack, and her mouth hung
slightly open. She was breathing only through her mouth. Even through the shivers, occasionally her body would spasm and move in an unpredictable manner. The tips of Rory’s fingers brushed her hand gently. He held her hand softly, like someone would hold a bird he feared might fly away or break in his hand.

Mr. Lee arrived with a wet washcloth which Mrs. Marquis folded and placed on

Hailey’s forehead. Hailey’s eyes fluttered open again. Her lips moved, but only a croaking sound escaped her throat. She swallowed and tried again. “Rory…”

“I’m right here.” His voice cracked and came out barely more than a whisper.

Her eyes fixed on his for a moment, and a smile tugged at the side of her mouth.

Then a flicker of pain contorted her features, and she squeezed her eyes shut again. Rory locked his jaw. What had she done? What was happening to her? Guilt ate away at his insides, churning his stomach and threatening to make him vomit.

“What is it, child?” Mrs. Marquis asked. “Is it true? Did you drink the water?”

Hailey didn’t open her eyes. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She nodded and her chin wrinkled while her bottom lip quivered. A sob escaped her, and her shoulders shook in time with her rasping breath. But it all ceased again as more tremors
ran through her body while she seized. She lurched forward, her eyes wide in pain, and vomited clear liquid all over her lap.

With Señora Miggy’s help, Mrs. Marquis took away the soiled blanket and returned with a clean one. Time crawled to almost a standstill, and Rory could do no more than watch his sister go through various stages of pain, most of it in an unresponsive state.

There was no more vomiting, but her seizures became more violent and more frequent.

Then suddenly she quieted. Her breathing had returned almost to normal, and her face, although covered with sweat, had gained a serene appearance. Rory searched the faces of the people around him with hope. But what he found in their eyes worried him more.

“Hailey?” Rory’s throat felt dry and unused. His voice came out gravelly and deeper than normal. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, her breathing became shallower and her face paler.

Tears stung the back of Rory’s eyes. “What’s going on?”

No one spoke, and no one seemed able to meet his gaze.

Rory desperately patted his sister’s hand. “Hailey! Look at me. Open your eyes, and look at me.”

Her breathing stopped.

“No!” He patted her cheeks lightly with his hand and shook her shoulders. “Come on Hailey! Wake up.”

A pair of hands lightly gripped his shoulders. But he wrenched away and shook his sister more violently.

“Hailey come on.”

“Rory, that’s enough,” Señora Miggy said quietly.

But he didn’t want to listen. He lifted his sister up and pulled her to a sitting position.

Her flaccid body slid back down on the couch. Sobs wracked his body, and his stomach quivered.

“Hailey, please.” Rory begged. His voice barely made it past his constricted throat.

Her body was bent in a strange position on the couch, with one lifeless eye partially open. The otherwise serene look on her face became blurred through the tears in Rory’s eyes. He embraced her, holding tightly to her body as if he could somehow keep her in this world by the sheer force of his will. His mind became blank— white in his pain.

How long he sat there like that, he didn’t know. But soon the flood of his tears dried, making his throat and body feel as though they had been baked in a desert. Thirst clawed at the insides of his throat, but he didn’t care. He only wanted to die, and be like Hailey…

to be with Hailey.

“What are we going to do with that?” Mr. Black said in a hushed tone, but Rory
could hear him perfectly. “I ain’t going outside to bury her.”

“That is my sister,” Rory said through his parched throat, but it wasn’t loud enough for anyone to hear, muffled by Hailey’s shoulder.

“We can’t just leave her here,” Mr. Dunn added. “It’s surprising that we hadn’t come up with a plan for this sort of situation before now.”

“We could just stick her outside with those… things,” Mr. Black said.

“You will do no such thing!” Señora Miggy sucked in her breath. “She is one of us, and we will not even consider throwing out her body like trash.”

Without a word, Rory picked up his sister, wrapped in the blanket. A hush fell over the lobby and the whispering voices quieted. He started for the stairs.

“Where you going?” Mrs. Marquis asked.

Rory’s throat felt so dry and constricted that he could not possibly speak if he even had the inclination to, which he didn’t. His vision, blurry as it was, still wasn’t necessary for the job that he needed to do. In the dark, cold stairwell, his feet and legs had already gained the muscle memory necessary, so that his job going up the steps had just become a habit. She wasn’t heavy. The echo of his footsteps in the stairwell became the only sound he heard. When he reached the ninth floor, he turned into the hallway. His arms ached, but much less than his heart did. Only one apartment on the floor had not had the door kicked in, and it was his destination.

A hand shot out in front of him just as he reached the door, and turned the handle for him. José barely looked at him. He offered an understanding nod and remained in the hallway while Rory entered alone. Hailey’s bedroom door stood open, and her plain purple bedspread had been pulled back, just like their mother used to do, when they were little and she would get them ready for bed.

His eyes ached to cry, but no tears offered them relief. Pain webbed across his forehead, and when he laid her on the bed his muscles cramped up. His arm would not
straighten. For a moment, he could look at her and believe that she was just asleep. But he refused to lie to himself even though it made him feel better to believe it.

“I’m sorry I failed.” His voice sounded little more than a sigh or a deep breath. “I should’ve taken better care of you.”

He stood over her until the light in the room had winked out into nothing and he was in pitch darkness. Then he pulled the blanket up to her chin and tucked her in. He placed a kiss upon her forehead said, “Goodnight.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Rory stumbled over something in Hailey’s doorway as he came out of her bedroom
and entered the hallway. He flailed and caught himself against the wall.

“Hey, man.” José’s voice split the darkness.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Although he was touched that José had waited for him, he also found irritating that he wasn’t alone. “You waited for me?”

“Apparently.” José’s voice came from higher up this time, presumably because he stood.

The continuous buzz of the Shisa in the distance filled the void where appliances and the electricity in the building would have been. There was no such thing as absolute quiet anymore, but absolute darkness had become much more common than ever. If only the cloud cover would recede and allow the sun, the moon, or even the stars to show themselves. Instead it was constantly overcast, and no light from outdoors entered the building after nightfall.

With a click, José filled the room with the direct beam of a flashlight. He shined it up towards the ceiling, washing the hallway in the pale blue light from the LCD bulb. The moving light made Rory feel dizzy. He held the wall to keep his balance, closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing until his stomach settled.

“Do you need to sit down?” José asked.

Rory opened his eyes and focused as hard as he could on his surroundings instead of the moving light. “No, I’m fine. Let’s get back downstairs.”

“No kidding. I’m dying of thirst—” José sucked in his breath. “I… I’m sorry… I
didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.”

Rory blinked, his lids scratching against his dry eyes. He hadn’t even taken it that way. It was such a cliché remark, so flippant, that he hadn’t even thought about how it might relate to Hailey. He shook his head. “Naw, man. Don’t worry about it.”

He wanted to run. Up the stairs, down the stairs, it didn’t matter. But he didn’t want to be with José, and he didn’t want to be with anyone else. But the relentless thirst drove him to choose to go down once they got to the stairwell. And there was a little comfort in José’s presence, even though it wasn’t entirely wanted. Did he really deserve any
consolation when he couldn’t even protect his sister? Rory’s legs felt as though they had lead weights instead of feet at the bottom of them. Each step was a terrible burden, and he considered throwing himself down the steps with the hope that he would die. He
considered drinking the water and joining Hailey that way. His eyes burned as though they wanted to release tears, but there were none to be had. Coward. Hailey’s way had looked so painful that a fear pricked his heart at the thought.

As they drew near the bottom of the steps, the smell of burning wood from the
fireplace met them, and the flicker of light from the dancing flames gave them a beacon to draw closer to. Somehow the natural light from the flames offered more comfort than the blue light from the flashlight that they used to make it down the nine flights.

Mr. Conway’s voice was the first thing they heard when they stepped out of the
stairwell. “I don’t see how we have much choice.”

“Well, there is always a choice. We just gotta decide which one we’re gonna make,”

Mr. Black said, waving his bamboo back scratcher through the air at the crowd of neighbors who sat on the floor around the fire.

Señora Miggy met eyes with the boys, and she limped over to them with two cups.

Her foot went slightly too much to one side, a break that didn’t heal properly. Once the two boys had taken the cups from her hands, she leaned in and gave Rory a gentle hug.

She looked up at him as she pulled away. “Are you doing okay?”

Rory nodded, the lump in his throat keeping him from saying a word. He could
hardly meet her eyes for the sadness that he saw in them. Instead he put his cup to his lips and drank the room temperature water within. Although he tried to keep his sip small, he soon found himself guzzling it down in one gulp. Remorse knotted in his chest, because he knew that he would have liked to drink about six more of those.

“So can we see who would be interested?” Mr. Conway asked. “The boys are here
now. That makes everyone, so let’s make a decision on it.”

Mr. Black shrugged and put his hands up in the air as if in surrender. “Fine by me, provided that you understand that I’m not going to get involved in this. You all might be putting your lives in jeopardy, but I refuse to be a part of it. If one of y’all get bit out there, don’t even try to come back in here.”

Rory blinked.

“Are we thinking about going outside?” José’s eyes flashed in the dancing firelight while he whispered to his mother.

She nodded and then shushed him.

Mr. Conway put his hands on his hips and stood akimbo. He addressed the crowd
with pleading eyes. “Supplies are running dangerously low. I know that many of you have been whispering about wanting to go out and look for more. I think it’s time. Past time. That little girl didn’t need to die today. As adults, we failed her. We should have been providing enough water that no one would try to do what she did. I’m ashamed that we didn’t act sooner.” He cleared his throat as though trying to choke back tears. “So let’s make it right. Tomorrow morning, I want to take a small group of about three or four out to scrounge for supplies at the neighborhood nearby.”

A hushed but worried whisper went up among some of the others.

“I’m not making anyone go on this trip. It will be based on volunteers. There are dangers out there that we know about. The Shisa are easy enough to hear coming, but might be harder to avoid than we think. None of us knows. The zombies are slow and half blind, most of them. I don’t think they are much to worry about, provided they don’t take us by surprise.”

“Will we take weapons?” Tion asked.

“What do you mean, ‘we?’ Who says you’re going out there?” Tion’s mother, Mrs.

Robertson, sat up straighter.

“Mom!”

Mr. Conway shook his head. “First we need to decide if anyone is going. I know that the first set we’d like to lead out there will include myself and Mr. Lee. We’d rather Mr.

Dunn and Mr. Black stay behind to take care of protecting the main group. I don’t want to ask that any of the ladies risk themselves. All that are left are the three boys.”

Mrs. Robertson shook her head. “No, not my son.”

“Mom!” Tion yelled again, shooting up to his feet. “I’m not a little kid.”

She shook her head harder and refused to meet his eyes even as he came closer.

“There’s no way I’m letting my only son go out there and get himself killed. No.”

Mr. Conway’s face fell. “I don’t think this is something Mr. Lee and I could do alone, or we would. We need to have one or two of the boys willing to go in order to keep
everyone safe. And we truly need these supplies, or else we’d all stay inside. I can’t promise we’ll be safe, but kids’ reflexes are sharper than us middle-aged men. We’d be best off if at least—”

“I’ll go.” Rory’s words came out before his brain had even had a chance to think them. But he lifted his eyes and nodded resolutely. Mr. Conway was right. If they had gone out sooner, Hailey would have never died. “I don’t have a mother to hold me back.”

“Hold on one second,” Señora Miggy said and grabbed him by the arm. “I am a
perfectly good substitute mother, and I’m not so sure about just letting you go out there in your present condition.”

His heart warmed at her declaration, but it was a short lived flame. The frozen wasteland that had once been his heart had become a much harder place in a very short time. He yanked his arm from her grasp. “What condition?”

She softly patted his shoulder, and looked up at him with sad eyes. “You are loved. I love you like a second son. My José and Carmen have always thought of you as family.

You and Hailey both. Don’t go around thinking that you’re alone, because you are not.

We want you and need you to stay alive. Please do not take this opportunity to join your sister. It would not do her memory any justice.”

The lump in Rory’s throat grew, and tears threatened to spill over. He swallowed it all back and took her hand in both of his. “I wasn’t thinking that way, Señora. I just want to make sure that nothing like what happened to Hailey happens to anyone else in this group. I understand your concern for me and I appreciate your love.”

“Me too,” José said firmly. “I’m going, too.”

“What?” The little bit of color in Señora’s cheeks faded in the light from the fire.

“Momma.” José took hold of her other hand, his eyes filling with watery tears as well. “What if it had been Carmen?”

Señora Miggy’s eyes grew wide and then softened. She nodded her head and pulled her hands from each boy’s grasp. “Okay. I understand. Go.”

Since the Shisa had been released from the spaceships, Rory had done his best to be a pillar of support for his sister, but with her gone, he suddenly realized that he had been leaning upon her just as much, if not more. When Señora Miggy had pulled her hand from his, he felt the emptiness that had been left by his sister when he wanted to turn to
her and smile a smile that said things that they didn’t need to say to each other. He had won a small victory, and she wasn’t there for him to share it with.

José punched him lightly in the arm and looked up at Mr. Conway. “You have us
both, so is it a go?”

Mr. Conway’s face held a mixture of relief and revulsion as he said, “Yes.”

***

Sleep played a game of hide and seek with Rory all night. It remained elusive and

only visited him lightly before withdrawing again. Without Hailey’s warm back against his, he had no reassurance, no anchor to ground him. He stared at the dying embers that sat at the bottom of the fireplace for a long while before finally drawing himself up to a sitting position. The other people who lived in his building were strewn about in small groupings by family, but no person was very far from another. There had been fifteen of them… but now there were fourteen. All huddled close together for warmth by the fireplace.

He pulled himself from his small family—José’s family—and stepped over a few
limbs to make his way closer to the fire. Slowly, he fed a few wooden chair legs into the remaining embers. He used the first chair leg to push around the ashes and get a small flame going again, and then placed two more on top.

For a long while, he just watched as the laminated wood started to catch fire. The chemical smell from the flames only lasted a short while before the wood began to burn in earnest. The radiant heat from the flames felt good against his face, and while he watched its hypnotic dance, his mind wandered.

There had never been a time when he was separated from his sister for more than a few hours… half a day, maximum. Now was about his limit. Of course they had separate bedrooms before they all took residence in the lobby of the apartment complex, but for the past several months, it had just been the two of them, even before the Shisa had been released.

Before then, he’d had other worries. That week had been rough. Trying to find a job in the fallen economy had been horrible, and once the aliens had attacked the sun, virtually no one would hire a teenager any more. He had had no idea how was he going to be able to keep up with rent once his mother left him alone with his sister. The stress had
caused him to have heart palpations and momentary panic attacks. The two of them had spent less time in the apartment than ever and had taken to sleeping over at José’s place on the sectional couch.

All he’d cared about was taking care of Hailey.

She had become his world, and now she was gone.

His chest constricted, and his heart pounded against his ribcage. He had no idea how he was going to live now. How would he go on from here, and was it even worth it?

He probably would’ve cried again, if it weren’t for the fact he was so dehydrated.

His eyes couldn’t afford the tears. Again, he considered drinking the water and joining his sister. All this panic, all this anxiety. It wasn’t worth it. Living wasn’t worth it.

A soft sigh sounded behind to him, followed by a yawn.

Carmen snuggled up next to him and watched the fire, taking hold of his arm and hugging it. Silently, she gazed up at him, blinked twice, and then watched the fire with him. The eleven-year-old girl had taken to being everyone’s little sister. She could be found hugging anyone at any time. Rory supposed it was an ingrained defense
mechanism. The little girl obviously couldn’t defend herself, so she needed to make sure that everyone else would feel attached to her and protect her. Not that she did it on purpose, but a natural inclination. While she leaned against his bicep and closed her eyes, he had to say that it was working. The same protectiveness he felt for Hailey was transferring to Carmen.

Her hands continued to cling to his arm while he stoked the fire with a poker. The comfort of her touch was like a balm to his open wound. The injury was far from healing, but the feeling of Carmen’s closeness brought the temperature of his fever down a few notches.

He nudged her with his elbow and smiled.

She lifted her face and blinked at him, her eyes half glazed over with sleepiness.

He faked a yawn. “I’m going back to sleep. Want to come?”

She nodded and started to her feet.

Rory pushed himself up, too and looked over to their family pod. Her fingers slipped into his palm without preamble. He squeezed her small hand and together they tip-toed over the limbs of their neighbors back to the empty floor space they could claim as their
own. When they drew near their unit, Carmen slipped from his grip and returned to the shared blanket with her mother.

Next to José, an empty brown blanket awaited him. When he snuggled into it, he
could smell Hailey. She had used the queen-sized bedspread last. The emptiness
descended upon him once more as he sunk down into the plush carpeting.

How many hours were left before morning?

***

Morning light flooded the room the moment some of the blankets were removed

from the windows at the front of the lobby. It burned against Rory’s eyelids, washing the world in a reddish orange before he finally pushed his eyes open. It was a struggle. He couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or so before people started milling about and putting stuff away. Voices around him were little more than mumbles and whispers.

He sat up.

His face felt swollen and his neck and shoulders were sore. He found that he was the last one still remaining on the floor while everyone else had stood and were folding their blankets.

“Morning, Sunshine,” José said as he plopped down on the floor beside Rory.

Good thing he did, since looking up would have ached Rory’s neck even further. He grunted in response to his friend.

“Rough night?”

Rory just looked at him.

While José offered a wide smile, his brown eyes studied Rory’s face. His smile and eyes didn’t match. Everything seemed a little off this morning.

José jumped to his feet and offered Rory a hand. “Come on. I was waiting for you before heading up to the bathroom.”

Rory nodded, rubbing his eyes before finally taking the offered help up. The teens had taken to using the facilities on the second floor because all the ones on the first floor tended to be occupied, especially in the morning. Most of the adults seemed content with first-floor living since they had to go up the steps in the dark in order to get any higher.

For the teens, going to the second floor was a cake walk compared to their constant adventures higher up.

On the second floor, they ran into Tion.

Tion couldn’t keep eye contact with Rory. “Hey, man. Sorry about your sister.”

Rory didn’t feel much like looking his friend in the eye anyway. He nodded, while his gaze dropped toward the floor. He didn’t feel much like stopping, so he continued to walk to the bathroom in the apartment that Tion had just left.

José and Tion talked just outside in the hallway in hushed tones so that Rory could only make out the occasional word until Tion laughed. “I really wish I could go with you all.”

“I don’t think this is supposed to be fun. It’s dangerous—not an adventure.”

Rory stepped back out of the bathroom and joined them in the hallway.

“It is an adventure. What kind of adventure would there be without danger?” Tion’s broad smile lit up the hallway.

José shook his head.

Rory leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the wall and closed his eyes. He felt so lethargic. Whether it was from depression or lack of sleep, he was unsure. But would he even be able to get the energy together to participate in this “adventure” as Tion called it?

“Well, I don’t know about you all, but I’m ready for some breakfast,” Tion said, laying a hand on Rory’s shoulder.

Rory’s eyes snapped open, and he stood up straighter. He nodded. Although he
hardly felt like eating, he hoped that getting some food down his gullet would at least bolster his energy level. He tried to be chipper. “What’s on the menu?”

“Same as everyday… dry cereal without milk… or cereal bars if we still got them.”

José’s stomach audibly growled.

Hunger and thirst. Those two things used to be strangers, but now they were
constant, unwanted companions. Nothing drove them away. Perhaps today if they could find a real supply of food and drink, they’d keep them at bay at least for a little while.

The threesome made their way down the darkened stairs and into the brighter
morning sunlight just before they drew the curtains closed again. The gentle background vibrations caused by the Shisa were steadily increasing. Rory nodded to himself. It was
about time for them to come around again. Once the makeshift curtains were pulled tightly around the windows, everyone hunkered down again and sat on the floor.

The teen boys sat with them. Senora Miggy handed each of them a small bowl of
dried cereal and a cup of water. Rory took a handful and shoved it into his mouth. Sugar and salt. He barely swallowed the dryness and took a swig of the cup to help it down.

There was something about the way the Shisa’s bass-like hum would cause
everyone’s chest and innards to resonate uncontrollably. The constancy was something impossible to become desensitized to. All activities stopped while the Shisa made their rounds. No one wanted to continue what they were doing in the uncomfortable noise and shaking. The aliens always stayed just long enough to make Rory feel as though they would never leave, and he’d have to learn to function with his insides hopping with the tune of the Shisa’s roar—that he’d have to live with the half-deafening sound the rest of his life. But just when those thoughts pinged against the sides of his brain, the Shisa would recede and take their warning with them.

And just like clockwork, everyone stood, pulled the covers from the windows and continued with their day. At first, Rory wondered what the point was in ever uncovering the windows at all. But then the very idea of living in a cave-like permanent darkness made him cringe. It was enough that the freedom of leaving the building had been taken away from them, but to take away the light of the half-lit sun as well? That would be unthinkable.

“Are you ready?” Mr. Conway stepped over with an uneasy smile and nodded to
both José and Rory.

Rory nodded.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” José said, his eyes darting toward his mother.

Señora Miggy’s hands were clasped in front of her tightly enough that the white of her knuckles were visible from across the room. Her eyes matched Carmen’s, who clung to her side. Tears glistened in both of their eyes as they took the bowls and cups from the boys.

Mr. C.’s shoved an empty pack into his and Jose’s hands. In school, he used to carry his back pack over one shoulder, because putting them over both was a bit dorky, but
given the circumstances, and knowing that at any moment he might need to run, it just wasn’t prudent to even consider putting it over only one shoulder instead of both.

Once each of them had a pack strapped to their backs, Mr. Lee, Mr. Conway, and

Jose stood in front of the glass doors to the lobby and peered outside. Rory joined them.

The parking lot ahead was a sepia painting. Cars spotted the otherwise empty lot, and beyond that, a few wrecked vehicles could clearly be seen. This time, no zombies were milling about in front of the building, and the sounds of the Shisa declared them to be far off.

Even though Rory had grown used to having a dry mouth, his tongue felt even more like a dry foreign object that scraped along the roof of his mouth when he attempted to swallow.

Mr. Conway nodded, and Mr. Black nodded back. The piercing gaze that Mr. Black
gave them mirrored their determination. There was no hint of hope or disapproval in the superintendant’s eyes. His serious gaze fell upon them and then he spun the lock on the door. “No bites or scratches, or you don’t come back in. Got it?”

José and Rory both nodded, but Mr. Conway smirked. “Don’t even consider locking us out. We’re coming back clean.”

After running a hand through his thick, peppered black and grey hair, Mr. Lee smiled widely. His eyes looked nearly closed as he squinted at both men and spoke in his characteristic broken English. “We be safe. No need worry.”

Mr. Black pulled the door open and made a gesture with his hand to welcome them out. The wind pushed in with a freshness that hinted at rain. Or a storm. Maybe a storm was coming? Either way, the wind bit at every patch of bare, exposed skin. Instantly, Rory’s hands and face were stung with cold. Maybe he should have accepted those gloves that Tion’s mom had offered.

First through the door, Mr. Lee marched out with a determined scowl. José and Rory followed right after, and Mr. C. took up the rear. They couldn’t help but look in all directions at once. The constant hum of the Shisa had grown louder, and Rory’s heart skipped a beat in response. They sounded closer, but he was unsure whether they were actually nearer to them or if it was that the glass and drywall that had kept the noise
buffered had been removed. Raw sound reached their senses, and it was all too strong, too much, too soon.

Salt from the river and the rancid smell of decay traveled on the constant breeze.

Everything seemed brighter than he’d been used to, and he felt the need to blink over and over as his eyes dried in the wind. His heart pounded in his chest and slammed against his ribcage. His ears rang so that only the sounds of the Shisa made it past the plugged up feeling in them. After several swallows, his ears popped and his hearing grew more acute.

A wailing sound drew closer to them, and Mr. Lee looked back in that direction. The rest of the group turned at once to the sound. A bloated man with blond hair streaked with blood stumbled around the side of the building. His eyes were swollen shut and red foam dripped from his lips. His jaw was unhinged and broken looking. Red bite wounds peeked out from his shoulder and his upper thigh. His gait faltered again as he stepped off the sidewalk’s curb. The man fell to his hands and knees on the concrete.

Even though he was several feet away, Rory’s first instinct was to help the man back up. But then he cringed at that thought and pulled himself back at the same time that Mr.

C’s hand landed on his shoulder to restrain him.

Without a word, Mr. C. shook his head.

Rory nodded his understanding.

Their lips were sealed.

Even though they’d never talked about a plan to stay silent on this run, it was somehow understood that speaking would be detrimental to their mission. It might draw in zombies… or worse, Shisa.

Continuing in quiet, the foursome turned toward the neighborhood behind the James River Tower. After crossing the board-bridge over the drainage ditch, they ducked through the cutback corner on the chain-link fence, and made a beeline for the first house.

There were two kinds of neighborhoods in the Hilton Area of Newport News.

Common middle-class two-story homes with large yards for families, and large
townhouses squished together side by side up the street. Contrary to what most would think, the townhomes were the more expensive and more sought after locations because of the greater square footage and the colonial, classic details that some architect added in. The neighborhood they entered was part of the common middle-class.

A tire swing hung on a thick rope from a large sugar maple in the front yard of the two-story house they first approached. The windows were still intact, and a silver mini-van sat unhindered in the driveway. Mr. Lee stepped up to the porch and leaned toward the front window. He looked over at Rory and the others and shook his head. His voice stayed low as he said, “I no think anyone home.”

“Let’s knock anyway,” Mr. Conway answered, stepping up and grabbing hold of the large iron knocker on the front door.

Three raps. Rory flinched with each sound, and his eyes kept darting around for any danger while his ears strained for the slightest noise. His fingers gripped the porch railing and his left foot sat on the first step. The wind whistled through the bare branches of the maple. Regardless how the wind bit at him, he could feel the sweat under his jacket. This was too much.

Mr. Conway knocked on the door again after they had waited about ten seconds or so. The tension in the man’s jaw and the way he concentrated heavily upon the large white door made Rory nervous.

“How much longer should we wait?” Rory asked. “I don’t think there’s anyone
home.”

Mr. C. nodded and tried the door handle, which was locked. For a moment, the fifty-something year old man looked at a loss for what to do.

José stepped forward, pushing his way in between the two older men. “I’ve got this.

Step back.”

Rory frowned while the two men stepped back. Back in the apartment building,
when they had made their way up and down the apartment complex, it was typically Tion who broke in the doors. Although José was a strong kid, with layers of muscle, he didn’t have the weight and athletic ability that Tion did to kick in a door. And this one also seemed a bit tougher than the ones they were used to..

Getting what little momentum the small front porch offered, José launched himself at the door, kicking with his foot with all the energy his one hundred-fifty pound body could muster. They’d all lost weight on the rationing of food and water. The exercise of running up and down the stairs each day had muscled up their legs and calves. But still, the door did no budging although a distinct cracking sound split the air.

Nervously, they all looked around to see if the loud noise brought anyone in their direction. With a quick nod, José attempted his kick again. The second kick deepened the crack, making it visible against the white paint where the door handle’s lock was engaged. José flashed a quick smile to Rory and then switched to using his shoulder on the door. After two more slams, the door swung in. José stood on the threshold with a wide smile, rubbing his shoulder.

Mr. C. and Mr. Lee pushed past him and entered the house. José followed, and Rory took up the rear. Gauzy curtains covered the windows, allowing in as much light as possible and keeping the interior a little brighter than the lobby of the building they had been used to. The air was stale around them, a mixture of dust and lemon-scented furniture polish saturated each breath.

For a moment, Rory gulped air in the door way, mixing the fresh with the stale, and generally trying to ease himself into it the way he’d ease himself into a pool of cool water. The only blessing was that the stale interior of the house was several degrees warmer than outside. The residual pins and needles in his cheeks thanked him for the wind blockage.

“First, the kitchen,” Mr. Conway announced and headed directly for the unseen room past the formal dining room.

Lee and José followed behind.

Somehow, Rory didn’t feel comfortable with the whole group being in one place. He remained at the door, keeping an eye both on the interior and exterior of the house. With all the noise they’d made earlier in order to break into the house, had nothing been alerted to their presence? Maybe the sound hadn’t been as loud as it had felt. Maybe like the creak of a floorboard when you’re trying to sneak across a room, it just sounded louder because they were struggling to be quiet.

The sky above still had that grey, silver hue, and Rory found himself searching for the sun. It had been so long since he’d seen the slightest sign of any celestial body beyond the cloud cover. If he searched for it, he could just make out the outline of the sun through the clouds sometimes. At least he could determine its general location in the sky.

Looking up at the sky made him think about heaven and Hailey. Would she be there?

He squeezed his eyes shut tight for a second just to relieve the pressure that suddenly built up. He didn’t have the tears to cry, and even if he did, he couldn’t afford to break down right now. When he opened his eyes again, they still felt dry. His nose stung, but he’d held it all in. No need to cry.

After drawing another deep breath of stale and fresh mixed air, he scanned the
neighborhood block. A movement about four houses down caught his attention, and he fixated on it. Another zombie-like infected man pulled himself along the grass by his hands. Once he made it past the building, Rory could see that one of his legs was partially detached at the knee and being dragged behind his body, bent at a wrong angle.

Rory released a shuddered breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

There was nothing to worry about there. It would take that person all day to make it across the four yards to the house they were searching. The scrape of a chair across the hardwood floor within drew Rory’s attention back into the house.

José returned to the foyer with a wide smile on his face. “Jackpot.”

Rory’s lip twitched. He was tempted to return the smile but was afraid to get his hopes up. He eyed the full back pack in José’s hand while his friend unzipped it.

“This one’s full of water bottles.” José tossed one to Rory.

“No way.” It crinkled in his hand, and his face flushed in response to the sudden racing beat of his heart.

“Way,” José said with a grin. “Hand me your pack. There’s more where that came
from. We’re filling these up with the water and some of the canned goods we find. These people must have been gone from this house for a while. I don’t think we’ll be able to get all that’s here in one trip.”

Rory blinked. “Wow.”

José punched him in the arm. “You’re not kidding.”

Shock kept Rory from doing anything but blinking again.

With a smile, José took Rory’s empty pack with him and virtually skipped back to the kitchen.

Saliva formed in Rory’s mouth as he studied the bottle in his hand. Guilt gnawed at him. Was it really okay to drink this? Would the others at the tower lose out because he
was taking out of turn and beyond the ration? Even with the saliva that wet his palate, his tongue still grated against the roof of his mouth like sandpaper.

The debate didn’t last long as his thirst won out. He twisted the cap with a quick flick of the wrist and downed the bottle as quickly as gravity would drive the liquid down his throat. The cool water flushed past, but as the last trickle was swallowed down, Rory was left with a desire for another. They’d been dry for so long, would they ever be able to quench this constant condition? Out of habit, he crumpled the bottle in his fist to force out the air and then replaced the cap. The sudden loud noise shocked him out of his stupor.

He scanned the area again but saw no movement accept the body that was dragging along the brown grass four yards away. But something bothered him. Something seemed different. Then he realized. The drone of the Shisa was increasing. They were coming.

His feet sprang to action before he even realized it. After jumping out of the way, Rory forced the door closed, but his heart sank when he realized that they’d busted the jam, and it wouldn’t latch. What were they going to do? He leaned against the door as if his weight could keep it closed. He imagined a Shisa slamming itself against it.

Cold fear formed in the pit of his stomach. A quick swallow passed down his
constricted throat and then he shouted toward the kitchen. “Shisa!”

The threesome from the back stumbled through the dining area, their eyes wide and the color drained from their faces.

Mr. Conway ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. “Are you sure, son?”

Rory nodded, but he didn’t need to, the windows began their tell-tale rattle. They were getting closer without a doubt. Sweat formed on Rory’s brow.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, the words sounding forced and getting whiny at the end.

Mr. Lee sprang into action. “Help me.”

It took Rory a moment to realize what Mr. Lee wanted. The Asian man went around to the other side of the sofa and grabbed it by the arm. José and Mr. Conway rushed toward it and the three of them carried it toward the door.

Rory hadn’t moved. Fear had kept him rooted to the spot. If he released the door at all, it would have fallen open. Even as they drew near with the leather couch, he stepped to the side but kept the door closed with his hand.

They pushed the couch against the door until the arm on the side closest was
squished against it. Mr. Conway shook his head. “Even though that will keep the door closed, it’s not going to be much of a barrier if the Shisa push against the door at all.

There’s not enough weight to it.”

José jumped into one of the seats on the couch. “What if we sit on it? Will there be enough weight then?”

A shiver ran through Rory. Sit on the couch. Each of them only weighed about a
hundred and fifty a piece. They were all small to begin with, and with the rationing of the food, Rory had lost fifteen pounds, himself. Together they’d be lucky to reach six hundred pounds. And the four of them could just fit together on the sofa to start with.

Mr. Lee nodded and sat next to José, his backpack full and sitting on his lap.

“It’s the best shot we’ve got,” Mr. Conway agreed, plopping himself into the cushion next to Mr. Lee.

Rory’s stomach wouldn’t quit shivering, and the resonance of the Shisa drowned out all other sounds and his chest vibrated in response. He swallowed, but it was
unproductive. Why was his mouth so dry when he’d just drank a bottle of water? His joints ached as he forced himself to turn around and sit on the seat nearest the door.

The cold leather chilled the backs of his legs even further as he squished his body as close to Mr. Conway as he could. It wasn’t time for personal space issues. The warmth of Mr. Conway’s thigh against his didn’t comfort him as much as the cold door to his left made him cringe. A heavy backpack was pushed into his hands, and he blinked at it. It had to have weighed thirty pounds. All four of them held a bag in their laps. It would add a little more weight to them. He hugged the bag to his chest, not caring how the corners of a few cans poked him in the ribs.

The door vibrated in crescendo, so that the rhythm found its way through the couch, through Rory’s arm, and through his spine. The vibrations had always been the worst thing he endured, before. Worse than the clicking of a roller coaster as it pulled the cars up to the top of that first hill. Worse than the burning feeling he’d get in his stomach
when he’d gotten a bad grade and had to face his mother. But then he wondered if Hailey was okay and if the Shisa were back at the building, too. His heart stung when he remembered she wasn’t there. Then what had always been the worst feeling suddenly grew even more horrible.

He couldn’t stop shaking, and it wasn’t only the Shisa. It wasn’t only the cold. He clenched his jaw and drew up his knees so that his feet were on the end of the couch cushion. And then the first bang against the door vibrated through the couch.

CHAPTER SIX

The couch shook in response to each successive bang against the door, but
thankfully, it didn’t budge an inch. Still, Rory’s heart was racing and had leapt into his throat. Closing his eyes to the fear, he found himself leaning toward Mr. Conway until his shoulder pressed against the older man’s. Amazingly, none of them said a word.

Although a scream held itself on the tip of Rory’s tongue, nothing escaped the lump in his throat.

How long had he sat there with his eyes closed, praying that the monsters would leave? At least if they’d quit banging against the door, that would be something. How did they know that humans were in there? Rory wondered if the aliens could smell them, like dogs or any other wild animal. It wouldn’t be too surprising. The alien creatures looked mostly like mammals, but had some insect-like qualities as well.

He sat with stiffened spine, waiting for the next bang, when he realized finally that they had stopped. Although the roaring buzz of the Shisa continued, the banging and snuffling against the door quit. Rory slowly let out a shaky breath, and the knot in his chest loosened. He was still too afraid to relax completely, but the tension he’d been holding in all of his muscles calmed down.

“I think they’re leaving,” José said. His voice started high pitched with fear, and then he lowered and deepened it purposefully.

Mr. Conway nodded.

The vibrations in their chest receded to a more tolerable level, and the roaring buzz was no longer deafening. The aliens were definitely leaving. Collectively, the group on the couch let out another sigh and released more tension. Rory stood. His knees buckled beneath him, and he grasped the door handle to help himself to stand straight again. He felt the urge to unzip his jacket. Sweat had beaded on his brow. How much stress could they all handle? What exactly were the aliens’ plans?

Mr. Lee and Mr. Conway stood as well. Mr. Conway grasped José’s hand and helped him to his feet. They were all a bit shaky and pale.

“I believe we’ve already got about as much as we can carry back. We can save the rest for later,” Mr. Conway said and then made eye contact with Rory. “Three of us
should go through the door, but one should exit through the window. That way we can push the couch back into position. It may not keep the Shisa out without our added weight, but maybe it will keep as a deterrent.”

Rory nodded. “I’ll go out the window.”

Mr. Conway set a hand on his shoulder. His icy blue eyes gazed deeply into Rory’s.

“That’s good, son. I don’t know if us old men could handle the drop.”

“We could use the back door instead, right?” José asked, pointing toward the
kitchen.

After running a hand through his thinning hair and casting a glance in the direction José pointed, Mr. Conway shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. I don’t want us to get separated, even for a few minutes. We also don’t know if there’s anything stuck in the backyard. There’s a privacy fence around it and we didn’t scout it. I think it’s best if we just use the window right here.”

Mr. Conway pushed the window open and knocked out the screen. When finished,
he nodded toward the others.

Rory nodded, and grabbed hold of the couch arm. When the others started to lean in to help, he shook his head. “Let me get it by myself since I need to push it back alone, anyway.”

They each gave him a knowing glance and stepped back.

Although the couch wasn’t lightweight by any means, it wasn’t terribly difficult to move it back the three feet alone or so to allow the door to open enough for the threesome to step through. Mr. Conway stepped through first, holding a finger up to the others in a silent signal to wait.

After a moment, he motioned for them to continue. Once the three of them were
through the door, Rory pushed the couch back into place. It certainly was easier to push forward than to pull back. It scraped against the hardwood floor on the two legs closest to the door. After wiping back his sweaty hair from his eyes, he made a bee-line to the window they had left open.

He stood there for a second, surveying what lay beyond the window. The boxwood
bushes beneath the window were barren of leaves, and the brown, thorny-looking
branches provided a bramble for him to jump into. He pulled his hands into the sleeves of
his jacket, and pulled up his hood. After pulling the strings tight, the only part of his skin that was still exposed was his face. He only needed to keep his face out of the bush and his clothing would protect him from all the thorns. With a quick glance at the others, he found that they alternated gazes from watching him to watching their surroundings. The dragging zombie had managed to pull himself to the end of the yard and was halfway across the next one.

The wind kissed his cheeks, and he could feel blood rushing into them. The Shisa were still far off according to their constant buzz. Rory pushed both legs over the sill and slid into the bush below. He flipped to the side and landed with a thud on his belly in the flowerbed between the two bushes. The fall knocked the wind out of him, but at least he had avoided the brambles. After crawling out from under the bushes, he found the hands of his friends helping him to his feet. They even dusted off the mulch that covered the front of his jacket.

“Let’s move quickly,” Mr. Conway said and started toward the street before Rory even had a chance to look up.

Each member of the group held grave expressions. Faces were taut and pale, but not just from lack of sustenance as much from the tension that they all felt from being out in the open. The buzz was their only warning, and their ears were in a constant state of strain looking for any change in the pitch of the sound that would let them know the aliens were approaching.

After darting between the houses and taking the same path they’d used to come into the neighborhood, they made it back to the apartment complex without incident. Mr.

Black scanned them through the glass when they arrived back, as though looking to see if anyone had been bitten through their layers of clothing. But once José had opened his backpack and showed the man the bounty they’d brought with them, Mr. Black couldn’t get the door open fast enough.

With a wide smile on his lips, he said, “Glad to see you guys made it back so well.

How much stuff did ya get?”

***

Once things were declared safe enough for scavenging outside, Tion was allowed to

join the raiding parties. The houses in the neighborhood behind the James River Tower
were surprisingly well stocked and untouched for the most part. Only once did they have to fend off a zombie, but the Shisa always came around while the scavangers were out.

With water and food more readily available, the headaches went away for everyone, and the general morale of the group rose. They could do this and survive for a while again. But was it really any different than what they had been doing before, when they were raiding apartments? It was the same general thing but instead of the strain of going up and down steps, they now had the danger of the aliens and their victims.

The group had relaxed their strict rationing and had more than doubled the amount of food and water that they had allowed for use. Rory had to continuously fight the gnawing feeling in his gut that this respite was temporary—it couldn’t possibly last.

Mr. Black leaned against the doorjamb when it swung wide for them on their fifth outing. He’d gotten brave enough to stand just outside the glass doors to look for their return, but still avoided going on the scavenging runs himself.

“Looks like you all brought in a good haul again,” he said with a wide smile. He turned the key to lock the door once they were all inside. “I think we can keep this up for a good long time.”

Rory clenched his teeth. A long time?

Mr. Conway shook his head. “The Shisa are getting wise to us, I think. They came by the house we were in twice this time. That was a first. There’s never been so short an interval between visits.”

Furrowing his brow, Mr. Black said, “Are you sure about that? You all were gone for an especially long time.”

“That’s because we’d cleared the first street over, and had to go over to the next block. And then we had to wait out the Shisa twice.” Mr. Conway dropped his pack at the base of the supply hill they’d created. “I think we’ll have to back off to making a run only once a week. Three times a week is too often, and the Shisa could learn our habits. They are not unintelligent beings.”

Mr. Black scratched his chin. “I don’t know about that. The stuff ya’ll get only lasts us about four days max.”

“Not of we back off and ration just a bit.”

Mr. Black frowned. “No one wants to do that.”

Señora Miggy took the pack from Rory and began to unpack the supplies from it. “I agree with Mr. Conway. While we were all recovering from our emergency rationing, it was good to live in a time of plenty. But we really should not waste resources. We can cut back our consumption by one-third and still live comfortably.”

“I don’t see the reason we should. The government is working toward doing
something with these aliens out there as we speak. It’s not as though we’ll have to last for months and months. Any day now things could go back to normal.”

José nearly choked on the water he’d been drinking. He shot a look at Rory that asked without words, “Does he really believe that?”

“You’re living in a fantasy,” Mr. Conway gave voice to what everyone was thinking.

“We’ve been going out into that world every day. We’ve not seen one soldier or plane overhead or anything that says that things are working in a direction toward end or resolution. Instead things look as bleak as ever.”

Mr. Black crossed his arms, indignant. “You’re only in one neighborhood. The world is a lot bigger than that.”

There simply was no talking to the man. Rory shook his head and joined José and his family who had been playing a continuous game of Monopoly for over a week. They went through the game once a day, because José’s little sister loved the game and wanted to play it constantly. To keep her from bugging them, they appeased her but also restricted her to one game per day. As she moved her favorite piece, the dog, across the board, Rory found himself losing his focus on the game.

“Is that snow?” Someone said from behind them. Mr. Dunn was standing at the front door and looking back at everyone with a furrowed brow.

Everyone jumped to their feet and crowded around the glass door and window. Large grey-white flakes fell from the sky somewhat infrequently. As one of the flakes landed on the concrete in front of the doors, Rory expected it to melt, but instead it just danced on the wind until it butted up against the column that held up the overhang. It didn’t quite look like snow or behave like it.

“Who would have thought we’d get snow in September?” Mr. Black asked.

“Isn’t it October?” Mrs. Marquis wondered.

Mr. Black shrugged. “Regardless. Either way, it’s snowing and it’s not near the right time of year yet.”

Mrs. Marquis shook her head. “Not much about this world seems right anymore,
does it?”

No one answered, but the following silence resounded the answer clearly enough.

Snow.

In October.

But the more Rory watched the stuff falling from the sky, the less it actually looked like snow to him. “What if it’s not snow? What if it’s some new weapon the aliens have come up with?”

Carmen whimpered.

Mr. Dunn cleared his throat. “Now let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“What if the kid’s right? What if it’s like acid rain? Acid snow?” Mr. Black rubbed his chin, his dark eyes wide as he studied the world outside the glass doorway.

Rory half-wondered if it would become the end of Mr. Black’s meeting them outside the lobby like he’d been doing. As a group they watched the flakes drop from the sky. It was sparse, and the flakes were few and far between. They fell a little bit faster than snow, making Rory feel that they might be heavier. What chemical were they made of?

Could they be acidic like Mr. Black suggested? If so, would it be the end of their runs outside?

The flakes touched the ground but didn’t melt. However, there weren’t enough of them to really start to cover the ground yet. No one stepped away from the window. They were all mesmerized by the dancing snow.

“The color’s not quite right. It doesn’t seem like it’s made from water. I wonder if it’s even snow,” Mr. Conway said after a short while.

“I don’t think it’s acidic, either. It doesn’t seem to be doing anything to the cars that it’s touching.” Mrs. Marquis’ cottony grey hair had lost some of its curl since they’d been living in the lobby. No one had time to make themselves up anymore, although they had plenty of products to the do the job. It seemed like more of a hassle than it was worth considering that they only saw the same people each day. But he stood close to her, and the smell of her berry scented body powder tickled Rory’s nose.

A wailing sound reached their ears, and everyone looked around the edges of the door to find the zombie. It was hard to tell for sure which direction the sound came from.

The constant buzzing of the Shisa outside made it more difficult to judge. As soon as he came around from the side of the building and into view, a bloated man tripped to the ground. His eyes were swollen shut, just like most of the zombies lately.

He pulled himself to his feet. His jeans were in tatters, ripped to shreds in several places and the skin beneath was red and oozing pus. The long sleeve tee-shirt the man wore had said “Virginia” on the front, but two of the letters were covered in bloody smears. Most of the man’s scalp was covered in scabs, and only scant sections of his once brown hair remained.

They watched as the snowflakes landed upon the man.

“They aren’t melting,” José whispered.

He was right. The flakes stuck to the man’s clothing, hair, and anywhere on his body that was wet, but didn’t melt the way that it should have.

“They are hot, right? Didn’t the radio say that people who are infected with the alien virus have a fever?” José looked around. “So why isn’t the snow melting?”

Pale faces from the adults stared back at José. No one had an answer. Without a doubt, this snow was strange, if not alien.

Señora Miggy cleared her throat and pulled Carmen from the window. “I have an
idea. How about we listen to the radio? Maybe they’ll have something about this… some kind of report or something.”

Mr. Conway nodded and left the glass door as well. He headed over to the wind-up radio and started turning the handle to give it the energy needed to run without batteries.

The radio was already tuned into the emergency broadcast station that the military had been airing on, and when Mr. Conway had finished turning the crank for about a minute, he flipped the switch.

“…strongly suggest that no one go out of doors without protective gear. Although the ash is not dangerous, if inhaled in large quantities, it may cause frequent coughing and respiratory distress.”

“Did they say ash?” Mr. Dunn’s eyes went wide.

“Finally! They got them!” Mr. Black clapped his hands together and danced a jig.

“They got those alien suckers. This is the ash from their burning spaceships. Of course!”

Señora Miggy frowned. “Jumping to conclusions again.”

The voice on the radio was still going, but no one was able to hear over Mr. Black’s continuous hooping and hollering.

“Shhhh,” three people shushed the man at once.

“…from the Yellowstone Caldera. The eruption occurred almost two weeks ago, but we did not get a report about it until this morning. Researchers suggest that any of the population within two hundred miles of the volcano’s blast would have felt the impact right away. Much of that area has no survivors. The majority of the sky over the United States has been covered with the ash, which is why it has become impossible to see the sun or moon past the constant cloud cover. We will keep the people posted. Again, transport is offered to survivors at the following locations and dates…”

“Volcano?” Carmen’s voice cracked. Her usually pouty lips were pulled into a thin straight line as she chewed on them. Her eyes couldn’t possibly have grown wider.

Señora Miggy hugged her to her side, but didn’t say a word. No one did. Together they sat in silence listening to the repeated recording as it played on a loop every three to five minutes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rory didn’t like this feeling. He couldn’t get used to the white tee-shirt he had tied around his mouth, and the presence of it against his cheeks made him feel as though he had blinders on. He couldn’t see as well through his periphery. The ash covered everything with a light dusting of grey, and it left behind the faint smell of burning—the whole world had become the leavings behind of a fireplace.

“I don’t like this.” José’s voice was muffled by the tee-shirt over his own face. “The Shisa are louder than ever. It’s like they don’t ever really get very far away from us any more. I can feel the vibration of their buzz on my skin, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.”

“We’ve waited for days, and it seems pretty much unchanging. You’re right—they
are not far, but it doesn’t mean they’re super close by, either.” But Rory still couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that kept his muscles taut and his own hairs standing up.

The five of them stayed close together. José and Rory to the back of the group, with Mr. Conway and Mr. Lee not very far ahead. Tion, however, had broken out and walked several feet in front of them. Typically, only four of them went together, but all five of them went out this time, simply because they could carry more back to the group. It had been nearly a week since they had went out last and supplies were running low.

Tion kicked up very little dust as he marched forward and led them between two
yards to the next street over. They were all on high alert because of the nearness of the Shisa, but were going as fast as they could. Still, no one had legs as long as Tion’s.

Rory couldn’t shake the feeling that going a little slower and keeping an eye in every direction would be smarter and keep them safer than just trying to go full tilt in the direction they needed to go.

At least the Shisa were far enough off that they weren’t visible. And worry found him turning his head in every direction, looking for the first sign of movement that would give them a warning that the aliens were approaching. A light wind blew the flurries and a dusting of ash surrounded their faces. Their feet kicked up small puffy clouds of gray with each step. Especially Mr. Conway, who drove his feet in a paddling fashion so that his footprints created two curved lines that went out and back in with each footprint.

“Look at that,” José said pointing to their left. He cut in front of Rory and bent down in the ash to take a closer look. “It’s a footprint. Look. The Shisa’s prints don’t quite look like how you expect. I thought it would be like a lion or a dog, but they’re more like a monkey’s or something like a cross between a human hand and a paw print.”

Rory tried to take a quick glance at the print in the ash. The paw prints were smaller than footprints left behind, but they were bigger than most animal prints he’d seen in the past. They had elongated base pads slightly with fingerlike digits. The only consolation was that the prints went in a westward direction from where they were heading. The prints of several Shisa and a few humans mixed in the ash almost every direction. Most of them seem older—they were half filled with new ash.

Rory swallowed. A thought suddenly occurred to him and caused a shiver to run
through spine. Were the Shisa smart enough to follow tracks?

He shook his head. No. He couldn’t allow himself to imagine things that might not even be true. If he considered all the variables and all the danger that they were in, he would freeze and not be able to move. Even at the thought , his arms and legs slowed, like moving through thick water. He did his best to shrug it all off.

“Is it just my imagination, or do the Shisa sound closer?” José whispered harshly.

All this time, Rory had only been hoping that it was his imagination, but now José had voiced his fear.

Rory swallowed and nodded.

The two of them rushed forward to catch up with the two older men.

“Shisa,” Rory said in a harsh whisper. “I think they are getting closer.”

Mr. Conway gave a quick nod and pointed to the nearest house. It was a two-story colonial that they had raided last week. The door would already have been broken, so there wouldn’t be a need to break it now. Mr. Lee and Mr. Conway veered off in that direction. José and Rory jogged to catch up with Tion who had gotten too far ahead. No one wanted to risk shouting and drawing the aliens near if they didn’t have to.

Once he’d gotten close enough, Rory grabbed Tion by the arm. He pointed in the
direction that the two older men were headed. Tion’s brown eyes grew wide as though he just noticed the sound himself. Had they all become numb to it? Together the three of them jogged toward the house. Rory tried to dismiss it as his imagination, but the
vibration in his chest deepened as he drew near. Before even stepping foot in the yard of the house, Rory froze. Both his hands shot out and grabbed the arms of both friends before they took another step.

José stumbled to his knee in the grass over the curb.

Around the left side of the house, the faint shadow of one of the large aliens flickered across the ground. Rory met gazes with both friends as he quickly helped José to his feet.

Both of them had their eyes wide and focused on the monster. Together the three of them backed away instinctively.

Rory cast a quick glance toward the two older men at the same time as they both froze as well. But they were yards away, nearly at the door to the building. He wanted to scream to shout at everyone to run. Maybe the two old men could make it to the house if they started running now. Maybe Rory and his friends could backtrack to the nearest house over and make it inside before they were noticed.

He swallowed. The two old men hadn’t moved. No surprise, since it hurt to even
move his own joints. The Shisa rounded the corner and caught sight of the two men on the sidewalk.

A squeal escaped José’s lips before he covered his face with both hands as if to stop the scream. Rory understood. In response, his own hands covered the shirt over his mouth as he backed farther away. His heart pounded in his ears so that it even muffled the sound of the Shisa.

Mr. Lee shouted and darted for the doorway.

They had gotten in the habit of pushing couches or other large furniture against the doors inside and then one of the teens would climb out the window. If Rory remembered correctly, they’d pushed a cabinet in front of this one’s door. It would be more difficult to push hard against it and make it through alone.

Rory’s retreating steps faltered as his heart wanted to rush forward and help them with the door. But it would be impossible. The Shisa would make it there before he could. A tug at his arm reminded him of his own situation. Tion had already turned his back on the two older men and pointed to a house across the street. It was one that didn’t have a broken door jamb because it hadn’t been locked. Rory turned to José, whose eyes
were still fixated on the horror in front of him. His eyes were so focused, that they drew Rory’s eyes back to the nightmare as well.

Mr. Conway and Mr. Lee had both made it back to the doorway. They had pushed
the door just enough that Mr. Lee had already made it halfway through. Relief flushed Rory’s face. They were going to make it. He yanked on José’s arm and broke the
hypnotic trance that had taken his friend.

“Come on. There’s nothing we can do. Let’s go,” Rory whispered harshly.

They both jogged after Tion who’d already made it to the porch steps. He had the door open in moments and then his gaze focused back beyond the two who were heading toward him. He looked past and across the street. Rory would have sworn that Tion grew pale.

He forced himself up the steps to stand on the porch before he spun around to take a look. José turned back at the same time. Four Shisa stood at the bottom step of the porch across the street. Mr. Lee had made it inside, but Mr. Conway was stuck in the door.

The largest of the Shisa leapt toward Mr. C, knocking the door in so that it sat wide open.

Screaming.

Two grown men made a sound Rory never thought he’d hear out of a man’s mouth.

The high pitched, panicked sound set his teeth on edge like nails on a chalkboard. It wasn’t like the wailing he’d heard from the infected zombies. This was a death cry. Tears flooded his vision and made it blur before he blinked them away. Three of the Shisa forced their way into the door with little effort—nothing holding them back. The last of the Shisa slowly turned its head toward Rory and his friends.

Hands clamped down on his shoulders as both his friends pulled him into the
doorway of their own safe house. Tion’s voice cracked. “Come on. Hurry inside.”

***

Fueled by fear, the three of them rushed through the house and pulled closed all the curtains and blinds. They pushed the couch in front of the front door, and then they hefted the footstool and the side chairs on top of it for good measure. Sweat beaded on Rory’s brow as he collapsed on the second-story floor and pulled the tee-shirt from his face so that he could breathe freely.

“Should we break the stairs or something s… so that the monsters can’t come up?

What if they get p…past the door?” Tion’s stutter appeared again. He hadn’t really done much of that since middle school, but in the stress of the situation, it wasn’t surprising.

“What are we going to break the stairs with?” José’s eyes were still wide with panic and red rimmed. He sucked back snot that had trickled from one nostril. Had he been crying? “And how will we get down if they leave?”

A bang at the front door answered that.

José couldn’t help but let a panicked squeal sneak past his lips again before he covered his mouth with his fingers once more. He wiped his face with the tee-shirt that swung in a circle around his neck.

Rory let the fear settle in as anger. He admonished them in a harsh whisper, “Chill.

Both of you. We are not going to break the stairs.”

They stood in the narrow upstairs hallway. Not one of them was brave enough to go near a doorway or window. What could they possibly do now? Rory glanced around
quickly, raking his hands through his hair. His breath floated around his face in a cloud of vapor. He blinked hard and then a glint above Tion’s head caught his eye.

“What is that?” he asked pointing to a string with what looked like a crystal cabinet knob at the bottom. The string was attached to a rectangle in the ceiling.

“It’s the door to the attic,” José said, glancing up for only a moment before staring toward the front door again.

“Wait,” Rory said and grabbed Tion’s upper arm. “Can you reach it?”

Tion grabbed a hold of the crystal bulb and pulled. A set of foldaway stairs come down along with the scent of dust, old wood, and moth balls. Tion smiled. “I get it. If we go up there, we can fold up the stairs and the aliens can’t get us, right?”

José whipped his head around. “Seriously? Let’s go.”

The banging against the door grew in intensity and came more frequently. With a slow creak, the door developed a crack just above the door handle. The footstool and one of the chairs fell from the couch. Their barricade wouldn’t hold much longer. Tion led the way up the wooden ladder to the attic.

José followed, and Rory took up the rear. Once he’d made it to the top, he pulled the bottom half of the ladder to fold it against the rest of the drop down door. Then he and Tion pulled the door back up so that it was flush with the ceiling.

Breath vapors surrounded all of their heads as the bitter, un-insulated cold of the attic settled in around them. Shivers that weren’t entirely due to the chill gripped and shook Rory’s insides along with the resonance of the Shisa. He swallowed. The attic would have been pitch dark except the vents in each of the gables in the house allowed in a scant amount of filtered light.

Tion pulled the cord attached to the light bulb that hung over their heads. It didn’t respond. With a shrug he said, “It couldn’t hurt to try.”

Most of the boxes that surrounded them were taped shut with words written in
sharpie on the sides. Christmas decorations, kid’s toys, winter jackets. The labels on each of the boxes forced him to think about the family who had once lived in the home. He had to turn away and stop reading them in the dim light.

José plopped down on the floor and sat cross legged. “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?”

“I don’t know.” Rory sat on the floor beside him.

Tion carefully traversed around the boxes and made it to one of the air vents. He tilted his head both directions, ducking and trying to look over it.

“See anything?” Rory asked.

Tion shook his head. “Just the sky. The way these vents are tilted, it’s impossible to see more. Do you think I’d make too much noise if I tried to break off one of the slats?”

“Don’t!” José whined and then looked down as though ashamed of his outburst.

Rory nodded. “Don’t do it now. Once we can tell the Shisa have left, we’ll risk it then. But with them nearby, we don’t need anything telling them where we are.”

A crashing sound below signaled to them that the Shisa had finally made it into the house. The shivering that had taken hold of Rory’s insides made his teeth chatter. He hugged his arms around himself, doing his best to keep as warm as possible.

José’s eyes were wide, and he stared at the dropdown door as though waiting for the moment when the Shisa would discover a way to break in. Rory couldn’t do anything to
console his friend. What could he possibly do to make things better for him, when he was gripped with the same fear himself?

Tion ripped open one of the boxes.

Rory frowned. He didn’t want to say anything, but he felt guilty that Tion was going through someone’s personal belongings. Silly that he would feel this way suddenly.

Hadn’t they been doing that all along? Breaking into apartments looking for supplies, breaking into houses and doing the same? Why did it suddenly feel as though he was intruding because Tion was opening a box in someone’s attic?

When Tion pulled out a coat, it occurred to Rory just how stupid he’d been. The grey down jacket was extra large. Too big for any of them, but at least it wasn’t too small.

Tion tossed the jacket toward José with a nod. A camouflaged down jacket followed, and Tion tossed it toward Rory. It was also an extra large, and when he pushed his arms through, it felt as though it might swallow him.

The last jacket that Tion pulled out was brown with fur around the collar. It was obviously meant for a woman, but wasn’t much smaller than the other ones. With a shrug, Tion pushed his arms through and zipped it to his chin. He pulled over the hood for good measure, and for all intents and purposes, looked like a black Eskimo.

Laughing would be too dangerous. Rory slapped his hand over his mouth and held
his breath. He closed his eyes. No, he refused to laugh. He didn’t open his eyes again until he felt something brush his shoulder. Tion had taken a seat between Rory and José.

Sitting together in the cold dark, they quietly listened to the Shisa crash through the house downstairs for at least an hour. The roar was constant and louder than anything they’d ever heard before. The shiver in Rory’s insides may have stopped, but the resonating vibration had intensified in its place. Motion sickness overcame him, and he felt he’d wretch if he didn’t get a reprieve soon.

By the time the sounds of the Shisa finally faded, José had fallen asleep and Tion had taken to carving stick figures into the wooden floor panel with a key he’d found in his coat pocket. The shadows in the room had grown longer, and the light had decreased by half. Would it be night soon?

Rory’s butt had grown numb and one of his legs had fallen asleep. When he stood, he gripped one of the trusses over his head for balance while he waited through the numbness and then the pins and needles that followed.

With his head against Tion’s shoulder, José continued to doze.

“I’m going to work on one of those panels and see if I can get it free. Once we see outside, we’ll decide if we can leave.”

Tion nodded but didn’t look up from his stick figures.

Rory made his way through the maze of boxes to the gable and the vent beneath. The panels were made of grey plastic and had a shutter-like quality. The OSB panels on the inside proved that the brick outside was just a façade. Each plastic plank in the shutter was attached on the end with a ball and socket joint. If he could work on bending the plank, he might be able to pull the ball out of the socket and then work the panel out.

His knuckles stung with pain as the wind from outside bit into his bare skin. The tips of his fingers felt as though frostbite might become a real possibility. After a little struggle, one side of the panel worked free, and the other side was just a matter of pulling a little harder.

Once the panel was removed, a five inch gap revealed the street and yard below. He pulled the tee-shirt back over his mouth and nose as small flakes of ash danced their way in through the three-inch hole and stuck in his eyelashes. Even though he couldn’t see it past the grey clouds overhead, it was obvious the sun was setting. Across the street, the front door still stood wide open. No visible shadows or movement inside.

Just as he was getting ready to turn around and signal what he’d hope would be an all clear, Mr. Lee stumbled out the front door of the house across the street. Blood trickled from the man’s forehead and into his eyes. His hair had already been matted with blood.

Bite wounds had ripped holes in his yellow jacket and bled all over the front in two stripes. His mouth sat open in a crooked “o” and the wailing reached Rory’s ears. When Mr. Lee reached the front porch step, he fell down the three steps and hit the concrete walkway without even attempting to catch himself. His skull hit the sidewalk with an audible crack.

Tion pushed Rory to the side and peered out the crack. “Mr. Lee,” he whispered.

“What about Mr. Lee?” José asked, drawing near with a yawn.

Rory blinked at the tears stinging the backs of his eyes and stepped away from the gable. He didn't want to see any more. He didn't want to see Mr. Conway like that, too.

José stepped into the space Rory had vacated. His teeth clacked together when he tightened his jaw. Then he sighed and said, “The Shisa aren't nearby. Should we go down and try to make it back to the tower?”

“Naw, man. Mr. Lee and Mr. Conway are newly infected zombies. They aren't blind or slow like the old ones.” Tion shook his head. Between his tee-shirt face mask and the fur hood, he looked like a ninja.

“He's right. If they spot us, it's going to be hard out running them. If we wait a while, they might just wander off. Besides, it's going to be dark soon.” Rory’s unspoken implication pulled nods from both his friends.

“So we’re stuck here for the night.” José pulled himself from the window and sank to the floor.

“Yep.” Rory stepped over his friend and replaced the plastic vent slat. It was bent a little to the right side, but still held and cut down on the ash that had been fluttering in.

The darkness engulfed them as the light from the setting sun was cut off.

“I guess it's good that the old fart made us take flashlights and water bottles.” Tion pulled the light from his pack and flicked it on.

“And you told him it was a waste of space,” José said with a laugh. Old Mr. Dunn had suggested they pack those two items just in case of an emergency. But this being their twelfth trip out with no real danger, they had grown to believe there would be no emergencies. How wrong could they have been? José flicked on his light, too.

“Let's keep it to only one flashlight at a time so we don't run down all the batteries at once.” Rory reached for his water bottle. “And only drink half your water. Save the rest for morning.”

“Okay,” Tion said, shining his light to his face. “Should we tell scary stories?”

“No.” Rory frowned. “And keep the light low so it can't be seen moving around in the gables.”

With a sigh of exasperation, Tion lowered his light and dug into his pack for his water bottle. “Yes, Mama Rory.”

José snickered.

Blood rushed to Rory's face. He was glad for the darkness since it kept the others from seeing him blush. And he was glad Tion was the one holding the light so he could see his faux ninja friend well enough to reach over and punch him in the arm.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Shisa returned a dozen times through the dead of night, and in the morning, they could hear moaning and wailing downstairs in the house. The three of them huddled together to stay warm enough to sleep off and on. The cold and constant fear kept them from sleeping well, but the darkness of the attic and the fact they couldn't move much made them bored and tired. It was nearly sunset again when the wailing below subsided.

The Shisa had returned to the house four times during that day as well.

“They all know we’re here, and they are waiting us out,” José whispered and then took the last swig of his water.

“I think the best plan is to just go. The Shisa were here an hour ago, and the zombies have obviously left, too.” Tion stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Rory winced. He didn’t like the fact they were already looping Mr. Lee and Mr.

Conway in with all the rest of the zombies. But it was the truth, wasn’t it? The cold wasn’t helping, and with them out of water, they really needed to get going before the dehydration headaches started again. Because he was the oldest, the other two tended to defer to him automatically as leader. He hated making these decisions.

José’s gaze met his with an eyebrow lifted. “Don’t you think Tion’s right? This is likely our best chance. We’ve still got almost an hour before sunset. If we move quick, it’ll only take us about twenty minutes to get back to the tower.”

A hard lump formed in Rory’s throat. Twenty minutes. The zombie versions of Mr.

Lee and Mr. Conway could be over in the next yard. The Shisa might only be a block away. No matter what, the danger was there. If they left now or tomorrow morning, the dangers would still be the same.

“You’re right. We should go.”

Clapping his hands, Tion marched toward the dropdown stairs.

“Hold on a second,” Rory said, pulling himself out of his cross-legged position so that he could stand. “My foot needs a minute to wake up. If it’s got pins and needles and I need to run…”

“Yeah. You might break something.” José shook his head.

After a minute of recovery, Rory nodded.

The attic stairwell squealed as they pushed it down as far as the chains on the sides would allow. Tion hesitated with his head hanging down into the hallway. They all strained their ears to listen for any wailing or the possibility of a Shisa nearby. After a moment of holding their breath, Tion unfolded the second half of the ladder so that it reached all the way down to the floor.

Once it was unfolded completely, he was the first to hop down the wooden
contraption. José followed and last down was Rory. The house was eerily quiet, and the ash that flew in from the open front door danced around the room on a breeze that blew in unabated. The ghostly appearance of Shisa tracks through the light dusting of ash gave Rory the chills.

Each of them pulled his tee-shirt over his nose at the first appearance of the ash.

Although the walls blocked the wind, the door stood wide open and deposited the soot on the carpet. Outside, the ground appeared to be covered with nearly two inches of ash.

Tracks ran to and fro through the grey dusting, both human—or zombie—and Shisa.

When they finally made it outside, relief washed over Rory. He hadn’t realized how claustrophobic he’d been until they were finally outside. If he didn’t have a tee-shirt over his face and ash in the air, he might have taken a deep breath of open air. As it was, his gaze immediately darted in every direction while his ears strained for the slightest warning sound of danger.

His breath warmed the inside of his tee-shirt dust mask with every exhale, and sweat had started to bead on his forehead. Pain radiated through his jaw from clenching his teeth so tightly together. They didn’t stop for a moment. As though they had planned it as a military maneuver beforehand, Tion marched up the sidewalk while José and Rory flanked to each side, staying a couple yards away so that they could cover more ground with their eyes. They automatically fell into their training without discussion.

Instinct had made Rory want to huddle close to the other two for safety, but he had learned over the past few weeks from Mr. Conway that instinct was often wrong. He used to say, “Fear of failure won’t save you from failure. Fear will cause failure.”

Spreading out would make it easier for the enemy, Shisa or zombie, to pick one off.

But if they concentrated their focus on the one third of the perimeter to which they were
assigned and trusted their team to focus on their perimeter, they could make it through.

They would survive.

Walking like this, they made it through the neighborhood block. After they crossed through the back yard of a brick rancher house, they’d be in the back parking lot of the tower complex. When they pulled around the corner, a shuffling behind them caught Rory’s eye.

Mr. Conway limped toward them. His bloodshot eyes were focused intently on them, but his glossy gaze focused through them. The older man had been retired from the army at Fort Eustis. Even though he hadn’t been an officer and always deferred to Mr. Black as the leader within the tower, outside, Mr. Conway had shined as the leader of their scavenger group. Trails of blood made tracks down his cheeks in the way that tears would have, but the blood didn’t come from his eyes. Instead, portions of Mr. Conway’s scalp had been ripped away and the blood flowed freely from the top of his head.

There were four distinct Shisa bites visible from where Rory stood. His jeans had been ripped away from his thigh, exposing a meaty portion—red from both blood and muscle tissue. Below, on the same leg, the bottom portion of his jeans had been ripped away, and his boot was missing. His bare foot had teeth marks raked down the front from his ankle. That foot protruded to the outside of Mr. Conway’s gait and caused the irregular limp that resembled Senora Miggy’s.

As the man who used to be their leader closed in, Rory sped up and drew closer to Tion and whisper-shouted to José, “Mr. Conway’s right behind us.”

José and Tion both looked back and then rushed forward in a light jog to stay up with Rory. The chain-link fence between the neighborhood and the tower had a corner that was torn away near the western most post. They quickly made their way to that location and ducked under the opening.

How much would the zombies remember from before they were infected with the
virus? The three of them walked along the edge of the drainage ditch on the other side of the fence to get to the bridge of two 2-by-4s some neighborhood kids had made.

Mr. Conway followed them along the edge of the fence, rattling the chain links with his hands. He didn’t take one step toward the opening in the fence. That much was a relief.

One at a time, they crossed over the ditch and came out into the parking lot area. Had they put enough distance between themselves and the zombified Mr. Conway? He stood on the other side of the ditch, chewing on the metal diamonds of chain link. Rory chocked back tears. The radio had said that people infected by the aliens were sick and did have a chance of recovery. This wasn’t like a movie or popular TV show about zombies, where a head injury would put the zombie out of his misery. From what he understood, even head injuries didn’t stop the alien infection from animating the body.

And there was no way that Rory would allow his friends to harm Mr. Conway
further if there was any chance he might actually recover. With a deep breath, he turned his back on the wailing man—no, neighbor—that he’d known for more than half his life, and followed his friends back to the apartment complex in the last bit of sunlight.

***

The blankets were covering the windows and glass doors when they came up to them

in front of the lobby. The Shisa must have been by the complex. A feeling of dread pooled in the pit of Rory’s stomach, making it cold as ice. He strained his ears. Although for the past week or so, the Shisa had been sounding as close as ever, they definitely weren’t close enough to cause the tell-tale resonance in their core. He stepped up to the glass doors and knocked.

His gaze swept over his two friends quickly. Ash stuck to Tion’s eyelashes, making them grey. The shirt over his mouth and nose had been black, but it, too, had ash polka dots. José hopped on one foot then the other while they waited. When they had spent the night in the attic space, they were able to pull their legs up under the oversized down jackets they wore, but now the wind whipped at their legs. Skinny jeans. Not the most practical clothing in the apocalypse.

How long had they waited for an answer? Too long. Rory crinkled his brow and
lifted his hand to knock against the glass again, but the blanket was pulled aside, and Señora Miggy’s face filled the space. Bags sat under her red-rimmed eyes. Had she spent the whole night crying? When her eyes fixed on Rory and José, she blinked twice and then screamed.

“Oh! My boys. Oh! Thank-you, Jesus. Thank you.” Her face disappeared as she released the blanket to fall back into place. Presumably to go get Mr. Black, who had the only key to the lobby door.

During the awkward moment they waited, Rory found himself searching every
direction for any strange movement, but luckily, nothing happened. Relief washed over him when he heard the turning of the lock tumbler and turned around to face the people in the lobby.

“Glad to see you boys back,” Mr. Black said, with an arm out to hold back Señora Miggy. “But let’s just be sure. Any of you boys been bit? Where are Bob and Lee?”

Rory shook his head, but no words could push its way past his dry throat.

“We haven’t been bit, but Mr. C. and Mr. Lee were both attacked by the aliens,”

Tion answered for them.

Señora Miggy’s hands were reaching past Mr. Black’s outstretched arm, and he
finally gave into her pushing. She stepped outside and pulled José into a tight embrace.

After only about two seconds, she looked up, released one arm and pulled Rory into a three-way hug. His forehead smacked into José’s temple, giving him an instant headache.

He half-heartedly attempted to pull free, but Señora Miggy wouldn’t let up her fierce grip. Her body shook with sobs. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I thought you were gone. I’m so happy to see you. Thank you, Jesus.”

The warmth of her embrace comforted Rory and made him truly feel at home.

Feelings of both guilt and longing followed when he thought about Hailey. It would have been great if she could have been there waiting for him, too. Her embrace would have made him feel complete.

CHAPTER NINE

“So you didn’t bring anything back with you at all?” Mr Black asked, his hands
clenched into fists. “Not even one, single water bottle?”

Tion looked down as though he was ashamed of the fact they didn’t bring back
supplies.

José just looked at his mother and shook his head. His eyes silently gave his apology.

Rory frowned. “We couldn’t even get to the next empty house. It’s just amazing that we survived.”

Mr. Black gave an exasperated sigh and waved his hand dismissively. “I know, I
know. Shisa everywhere.”

“Fred Black. We have lost both Bob Conway and Mr. Lee. It’s a miracle that the
boys made it back in one piece. Let us be thankful for that.” Señora Miggy’s brows knit together as she glared at Mr. Black.

“Yeah. I get that. But we have a dire situation here, Migdalia.” Mr. Black set his hands on his hips. “We’re just about out of supplies, and these boys came back empty handed. Now what? They need to go back out there and try again come daylight. That’s our only option.”

Señora Miggy’s teeth clacked together. “There is no way you are sending the boys back out there right now.”

He turned back toward her and crossed his arms. “They have to go. We’ll be out of water completely…probably tomorrow…if they don’t go. What other choice do we
have?”

Tion’s mother cleared her throat. “Tomorrow’s Tuesday. I’ve had enough of this
hiding in a hovel while everything falls apart around us. Me and my family are leaving.

Tomorrow. We’ll go to the train station for the noon pick-up.”

Mrs. Marquis gasped. “Are you certain, dear?”

Tion’s mother nodded, but her eyes were wide with fear. “Anyone who wants to
come with me is welcome to.”

Everyone in the lobby stood and crowded around. Generally the voices were full of consent, but no one could understand one another as they all spoke at once. Mr. Black
gave a whistle after trying unsuccessfully to get everyone’s attention. “Hey! I’m not too sure that’s wise. We been doing fine as we’ve been.”

“We’ve been a bunch of fools to listen to that line for so long,” Mr. Dunn said, his cheeks filling with red. His hands were clenched into fists, as though he was ready for a fight. “We can’t keep waiting here any more. It’s been months now. They say the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a new result.

Well, what we’ve been doing so far is just that—crazy.”

The voices in the lobby grew louder as everyone agreed and took sides. Before the argument escalated to shouting, Señora Miggy interrupted, “It’s true. It’s time for us to make the change, and with it being Tuesday tomorrow, it’s best to go ahead and get started in that direction. Let’s pack up and get ready to go.”

“Hold on one second.” Mr. Black’s voice had ticked up to almost whine quality.

“You can’t pack anything,” Rory finally said. “If the Shisa come, you need to be ready to run. Packs would only slow you down.”

“But you boys were carrying backpacks every time you went out,” Tion’s Aunt Bea interrupted. No one had lost more weight than Aunt Bea since the end of the world. The formally obese black woman wore clothing that hung on her much smaller frame.

“Hold on a second,” Mr. Black tried again, but everyone had made up their mind
collectively to ignore him, it seemed.

Tion shook his head. “Rory’s right. Our packs were empty when the Shisa were after us this time. I’m afraid of what it would have been like if they were full.”

Señora Miggy nodded with a determined glare cast upon the crowd. “No treasures on Earth can be brought with us to Heaven. We’ll leave as we are then.”

“Hold on a second,” Mr. Black yelled, finally drawing some attention to himself. His hands were up in front of him in surrender pose. “We need to think about this one second.

Okay. Tomorrow is the military pick up at the train station. Martha has said that her and her family are going. Okay. No one’s going to stop them. But we can’t all go.”

Angry voices argued and piled on top of each other again.

“Let me finish,” he shouted. When they quieted again, he took a deep breath. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he whipped it back. “Putting all your eggs in one basket is
never a good idea. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right. Half of us leave tomorrow, and then the other half waits until next pick up.”

The argument that followed was much calmer than the one before. Rory slunk back, suddenly tired and cold. He headed toward the fireplace to get his hands warmed up again, while all the adults worked out the situation. He didn’t rightly care whether they stayed or went. Part of him didn’t care if they all left and he stayed there alone with Hailey until he died from dehydration.

A small hand slipped into his. “Your hands are cold.”

Carmen’s wide brown eyes met with his. The firelight danced in her irises and gave her skin a warm glow. He smiled down at her. “They’ll be fine in a minute. That’s what the fire’s for, right?”

She smiled back and nodded, but didn’t release his hand. “So we can’t take the

Monopoly with us when we go?”

He shook his head. “Maybe someone will have Monopoly at the military base.”

“I hope so.”

José stepped over and scooped up his sister. She flew into the air with giggles and released Rory’s fingers. “What are you two talking about over here?”

After her giggles died down, Carmen answered, “Do you think they’ll have

Monopoly at the base?”

He set her down again and shrugged, pushing his own hands toward the fire. “Who knows?”

For a short while they stood in front of the fire silently, their hands toward the flames. Even Carmen joined them in the pose as though her hands needed warming.

“All right. It’s settled then. Martha, Beatrice, and Tion will go as a family. Miss Doris and Mrs. Lincoln want to go with them, and I’ll join them to protect them along with the shotgun that Tion found.”

“Shotgun?” Rory asked. He shot a glare at Tion, but Tion wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“That won’t do you any good.”

Mr. Black scowled. “How do you know? Have you used one on the zombies or the

Shisa?”

“No, but the radio said—”

“I know what the radio said just as good as anybody. I’m taking the gun with us.

What if there are other things out there? Rabid dogs? Marauders?”

José snickered. “We didn’t see any of those when we were out.”

Mr. Black narrowed his eyes at José. “And you didn’t go toward the train tracks did you? Everybody knows that the military’s coming to the train station at noon on Tuesday.

So if you were a marauder, where and when would you go looking for people to rob?”

José rolled his eyes, but turned his back on Mr. Black so the man couldn’t see.

Rory shook his head. How did anyone ever argue with that man?

“As I was saying,” Mr. Black continued. “Group two will leave on Friday. Mr. Dunn will be in charge with José and Rory adding to the man power on that trip. Mrs. Marquis, and the rest of Migdalia’s family will leave then.”

Mr. Dunn? The soft spoken old man didn’t seem like the kind to take charge of much of anything. Rory frowned. Mrs. Marquis was just as old and frail, and Señora Miggy walked with a limp because of her bum knee and running was out of the question. Mr.

Black had chosen the healthier group to join and stacked the deck against group two. No matter. They had to make it to the station. They didn’t have a choice. It would be up to José and himself to make that happen.

***

That night it was difficult for much of anyone to sleep. The Shisa came through a

few times, but their constant drone stayed nearby. The aliens must have known where they were hiding and didn’t stay as far away as they used to before they started making scavenger trips. Would they even make it to the train station without running into the monsters? A cold feeling of dread pricked the skin on his shoulders and down his arms.

He shook the thoughts from his head. Group one had a better chance of making it. They were all younger and healthier.

“One bottle of water for each that is leaving,” Tion’s mother, Mrs. Robertson.

ordered the group. “Put it in your jacket pocket. There should be enough water for the other half to make it to Friday if you use it sparingly today and tomorrow. Everyone’s pockets are full now, right? But you ain’t bringing nothing that’s weighing you down, right?”

All four of the rest of the group shook their heads, but Mr. Black just chewed on his bottom lip. He gripped the barrel of the shotgun in his fist and watched out the glass door.

It was eleven fifteen. They would need to get going if they were to make it to the train station by noon for the pickup. Forty minutes was a long time to be out in the open, exposed to the Shisa and anything else that might come up.

Each member of the first group pulled tee-shirts over their faces to keep the ash out and then resolutely exited one by one. Señora Miggy stood at the door with her hand on the key as they all watched the group, but didn’t turn it.

The ashen world outside seemed more foreign and alien when he was watching out
the window than it had been when Rory was standing in it. Dust flew up with each step that the group made. A black and white picture. Even the colors of the jackets on the group were slowly covered in ash, colors washed out and bleached in to match the rest.

The farther the group got, the more they blended in.

They were going to make it without running into Shisa or zombies. He had to keep telling himself that, although his stomach twisted and rolled over on itself when he thought about how he’d have to attempt the same soon. When they had finally crested the hill and left their sight altogether, Señora Miggy turned the key in the lock of the glass door. The tumbling sound echoed in the otherwise silent room.

Two days.

Rory hated waiting.

“Want to play Monopoly?” Carmen’s small voice pulled his eyes from the world
outside the glass.

She stared up at him and José with wide eyes.

“Of course,” José answered, and took the box from her to set on the floor in front of the fireplace.

“I think I’ll join you this time,” Mr. Dunn said, working himself into a cross-legged position on the floor. The grey tabby cat crawled into his lap.

“Me, too,” José’s mom said.

“Yes.” Mrs. Marquis smiled and leaned on Mr. Dunn’s shoulder to help her sit
beside him. “Let’s all play.”

Rory smiled. The knot in his stomach slowly untwisted. He didn’t need to think about what would happen two days from now. With a smile he took his place between José and Senora Miggy. He winked at Carmen. “Anyone call the dog piece yet??”

###

Continue reading for a first chapter preview of

the next book in the Sanctuary End-Times series, Silence.

Chapter 1

Hugh

“Always winter, and never Christmas…” Hugh whispered.

White ash rained upon them like snow, covering the world in a dusting of white. The transport truck ran over the curb, and Hugh gripped his seat tighter to keep from being launched to the floor. Drafts and grey light filtered in from the bottom of the canvas cover where rope looped through the grommets and kept the camouflage top attached to the sides of the transport. The back flap stood open to the carnage of mangled vehicles outside, but at least there were no wailers, and the constant buzz of the Shisa still loomed far enough away.

“What’s that you said?” the soldier across from him asked over the din of the diesel engine. His chest bore the name of Geoffrey, but didn’t tell whether that was a first name, a last name, or even just a random name patch sewn onto a borrowed shirt.

Hugh scrubbed a hand through the half-inch crew cut on his itchy scalp. He
shrugged. “It’s a quote from a book.”

The soldier nodded, his blue eyes turned glassy as he gazed out the back of the transport, hands gripped on an assault rifle. Four more men sat on the other side of them both, closer to the cab of the truck. They had less drafty conditions, but Hugh wanted to be able to see where they were going… or rather where they had been.

It had been weeks since the volcanic eruptions in the Midwest had finally spread their ashen sky across the country to reach the East Coast. Hugh longed for the sun. Even the half-lit sun they’d had before was better than the constant overcast of grey they were party to now. He pinched the nose on his dust mask to filter the air. Breathe in too much of the smoky residue, and he’d be up coughing all night.

A long squeal sounded as the truck’s brakes were engaged, and they pulled to a stop.

Hugh and Geoffrey each put an arm outside of the truck bed to let down the tailgate.

They both hopped out, Hugh trying to land as gently as he could in his “new” combat boots. He’d not had time to grow accustomed to them since he’d been pressed into service.

Smoky clouds blanketed the sky in heavy, upside down waves. Flurries of ash
danced around the barren tree limbs, swept between the buildings near the train station,
and blanketed the brown grass in delicate powder. The deserted station gave no sign of life.

The two soldiers from the truck cab hopped down, sending puffs of ash upward a bit as they landed. Captain Schmidt glanced at his wrist watch and announced, “We’re twenty minutes early, but this still may have been a wasted effort.”

Every Tuesday and Friday at noon, soldiers from Fort Monroe had been arriving at the train station to pick up any refugees who heard the broadcasts. On every radio station, the military used the emergency alert system to let people know the strategic locations around town for either Langley or Monroe to pick up stragglers.

Geoffrey unwound the hose at the fire hydrant next to their position and Hugh pulled on an oversized wrench to open the water flow. The section of hose filled with water and finished the job of uncoiling itself as it twisted and writhed like a living snake. Another soldier leapt forward to help wrangle the hose until Hugh relieved him and stood behind Geoffrey.

Then they waited.

Six people crested the hill of the overpass of the James River Bridge. One of the soldiers yelled, “Wailers or refugees at 11 o’clock.”

Two of the soldiers trained their guns on the shadowed figures. Hugh swallowed
nervously. He hated this. Why were the soldiers so willing to take the lives of the wailers now that they knew of the cure? Even if most were too far gone, it was worth waiting to find out.

The group shuffled toward them, becoming more distinct. The three in the middle huddled together, one of their number stumbling, but the other three were jogging, and continued to look behind them. Then the vibrations started in Hugh’s chest. His heart began to race.

“Shisa,” Geoffrey whispered, pointing his hose in the general direction of the group that ambled toward them at a forced march.

Captain Schmidt cursed. “They are being followed by the monsters. Soldiers, take your positions.”

And here was where Hugh felt most vulnerable. Although they needed the manpower and the extra men to help the military on these missions, Hugh was no soldier. He had not
yet been trained with weapons, so they gave him none. Geoffrey turned back and nodded to him. All the color had left the man’s face, and his eyes were wide over his dust mask.

Hugh nodded back and took hold of the hose alone so that Geoffrey could take position with his rifle.

One of the people in the survivor group was coughing as they approached. They
drew closer, all of them as close to a run as the lame one in the middle would allow.

Hugh’s hopes rose. Not one of their number ran forward to save himself. It was
heartening.

Although the Shisa were not yet visible, their drone had already drowned out any other noise. With a quick jerk of his head, Captain Schmidt gave a silent command to one of the soldiers, Kelso. He pushed his rifle onto his back and ran forward to help the injured one. The party stopped for a moment while Kelso lifted the dark-haired woman into a fireman’s carry and started jogging back toward the transport. The rest of the group jogged with him.

The Shisa crested the hill. Four of the demon dogs stopped for a moment as if
surveying the transport team and the people. Their lion-like manes blew in the breeze, and their pug snouts exposed the triangular, shark-like teeth. Hugh’s ears began to ring, but he tore his eyes away from the aliens so that he could judge how close the survivors were.

Each person began to take shape and he realized suddenly that he knew these people.

They were from his building. He recognized the teenagers, Mrs. Marquis, and Mr.

Donovan, and though he couldn’t tell who the woman Kelso carried yet, he imagined it must have been the teen’s mother, since he refused to leave her side.

A Shisa from the top of the hill roared, causing the pre-teen girl to scream and cover her ears. She fell to her knees on the concrete. One of the boys grabbed her under the arms and lifted, forcing her back to her feet. With his support, they ran toward the transport vehicle.

The Shisa began their pursuit down the hill.

Hugh’s jaw tightened, and his hand made ready on the fire hose’s lever. His gaze flicked between the survivors and the aliens behind them. They could make it if they kept at their pace.

The captain shouted toward one of the soldiers, “Get in the driver’s seat and be ready to go.”

With a nod, the soldier lowered his weapon and hopped into the cab. The Shisa bore down on the small group of refugees.

“Ready!” Captain Schmidt shouted.

The clicking of the unit’s guns cocking began. The first of the survivors made it to the transport, and Geoffrey helped them into the back of the truck as the two remaining soldiers fired upon the Shisa. The aliens barely flinched. Black blood poured from their wounds, as thick as tar, but they still came, unwavering.

Hugh opened the valve on his hose. The spray of water nearly pulled the hose from his hands, but flew at an arc, covering over forty feet of ground. With a sudden cry. the Shisa slid to a stop.

Fine droplets of water misted the air, clinging to Hugh’s hands and cheeks. The other soldiers and the refugees were getting even more of the spray on themselves. But the Shisa paced back and forth, just out of the reach of the water.

Hugh checked the valve again to make sure it was on full blast. If only he had a few more yards of reach. The lead Shisa eyed the group of soldiers and refugees, winced at the spray of water, and met eyes with Hugh. The vertical slits of its pupils narrowed, and the golden hue of its irises shimmered, sending a shiver down his spine. With another rumbling roar, the Shisa turned back and bolted away.

When they were clearly on the retreat, Hugh pulled the valve on the hose, cutting it off. The rumbling in his chest withdrew with the aliens, and his heart mellowed into a more normal pace. Two of the soldiers whooped and fist bumped one another. Smiles crossed the faces of the refugees. Geoffrey stepped over to Hugh and offered his open palm for a high five, which Hugh accepted with a grin.

“Let me help you with that,” the soldier offered and manned the wrench while Hugh let off the remaining pressure in the hose. Together they coiled the hose around the hydrant, readying for the next use.

As they finished up, a wailer came around the corner of the train station. Its cry was way too close. In the din of the Shisa’s rumble, the roar of the fire hose, and the celebratory whoops, the moans and cries of the wailer had gone unnoticed. A red, puffy
hand reached out for Geoffrey’s shoulder. Moving more on instinct and self preservation than thought, Hugh leapt forward and wrenched the infected man’s arm behind his back.

He wrestled the weak man to the ground and set a boot upon his neck.

Geoffrey had recovered from his near attack and pointed the assault rifle at the wailer’s head. “What the…”

“Wait.” Hugh held up a hand. He checked the infected man’s injuries and condition.

The man’s skin was red and swollen, but his eyes had not yet swollen shut. He
couldn’t have been more than two or three days like this. The scratches on his head were fresh and he had pulled out most of his hair. What was left of the clumps of matted hair were black and greasy. His sweat suit struck a familiar cord in the back of Hugh’s brain.

“Mr. Black!” one of the teens from the back of the transport called out. His voice wavered and his eyes were wide. “It’s Mr. Black. Oh my G—”

The teen flung his head down and vomited.

A cold shiver ran over Hugh. Fred Black’s bicep had been bitten off, exposing the bone. The remaining lower half of the arm had turned a necrotic blackish-purple. The man’s sweatshirt rode up, exposing another large bite from his abdomen. Fred wasn’t likely to survive from these injuries, but Hugh still couldn’t let Geoffrey kill his old super. Hugh shook his head. “Go ahead and hop in the transport. I’ll catch up in a minute. We can’t take him with us, but I’d rather just let him go.”

Geoffrey scrunched his forehead, but swung his rifle onto his back and gave a quick nod, jogging to the back of the transport. With another soldier’s help, they closed the tailgate and hopped in over the bumper. The diesel engine revved as the truck inched forward.

Hugh took a deep breath, nearly gagging at the rancid odor coming from the body under his foot. He shook his head and said, “Sorry things had to be like this, Fred.”

Then he pulled his boot from the man’s neck and jogged to catch up with the truck.

He gripped the tailgate and put a boot on the bumper when the loud rapport of a rifle near his right ear deafened him and made his foot slip. His vision went white from the pain in his eardrum.

He caught himself and pulled over the tailgate with his ears ringing. He shook his head as the truck lurched forward. Behind them, the body of Fred White sprawled on the

street with a bullet through his head, not two steps from where Hugh had been standing on his neck.

“What did you do that for?” one of the teens cried out, his voice high pitched like a girl’s and broke through over the ringing in Hugh’s ear.

Hugh stuck his fingers in his ears, trying to get the pain and the ringing to quit. But still he heard the voice of one of the soldiers laughing and saying, “What difference does it make? He was going to die anyway.”

###

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Document Outline

- SURVIVOR