It was quiet on Renee’s farm, and she could almost remember a time when they had sleepovers where they’d order pizza and talk about boys and school. Those times were gone now. They were packing her family’s home full of supplies to take to her home because her parents were dead, so were Avery’s, and society was collapsing around them at a rate that was unprecedented in known history.
They went together to check on the horses in the stables and scanned the fields with flashlights. Renee carried her father’s shotgun, which she explained was loaded with buckshot. Avery didn’t really know what it meant. She had a lot to learn. Her friend gave her a revolver. Avery was familiar with that. It was fairly simple. She had an airsoft pistol like this one time, but it eventually broke. And Abraham still had Tristan’s pistol, which held fifteen rounds according to her little brother, who was trying so hard now to be an adult man.
The animals were tucked in for the night and seemed calm and quiet. All was well.
They locked up the house and sat down to watch the television. Abraham drank a soda and had some pre-packaged snack cakes while she and Renee drank hot tea. They were also planning on moving all of her family’s food supply and everything else they could use to the Andersson compound, which is what her friend was now calling her home.
Miraculously, she was able to get two calls through to Kaia already to make sure everything was okay, and her little sister said they were fine and that she put Finn to bed on the living room sofa so he wasn’t somewhere in the house by himself. Avery hadn’t even thought of telling them to do something like that, but she was glad that her sister was thinking this way now, even if she wasn’t.
“Hey,” Abraham called from the formal sitting room in the front of the house. “I see headlights coming down the street!”
They rushed to her brother just in time to see a mini-van drive past the house without pausing.
“Probably just a neighbor down the road,” Renee said. “We’ve got a lot more than you. There’s small farms and properties all along this road till you get to town. And the closer you get to town, the more populated it gets. There’s even a small neighborhood about two miles that way. Probably fifty or sixty houses in an allotment.”
Avery retrieved their tea mugs and brought them to the front room where they could be with Abraham who was finishing off his cakes. It was exactly the kind of food her mother would’ve hated them eating. Avery wasn’t about to say a thing. Life was too precious to worry about empty sugar calories now.
When they were done sipping tea and hanging out with Abraham, she and Renee got to work packing boxes and plastic tubs full of grocery items and anything medical related, which was what Tristan told her would be the most important. They also packed bedding, blankets, and pillows into trash bags to take. Her clothing was stored the same way. She suggested taking some of her parents’ shoes, especially boots, in case the kids grew into them. It was a good idea. Renee went to her parents’ bedroom, and Avery headed downstairs to the basement where they had a cold cellar and pantry. There wasn’t a lot, certainly not as much as Tristan had been bringing home to the compound and storing in the basement, in the garage, and in the storage room of her apartment. But she wasn’t going to complain, either. She simply found some boxes and started packing the canned goods first in the bottom. Renee’s mother enjoyed canning, so there were green beans, peaches, potted meat, and what looked like salsa.
A loud bang upstairs against the back wall of the house startled her so badly she jumped. Avery rushed to the foot of the stairs.
“Renee, was that you?” she asked without being loud.
Renee’s face appeared around the corner at the top of the stairs. “I was just coming to ask you that same thing.”
Abraham’s feet above her came at a rush toward the stairwell, too.
“What was that?” he asked, fear already in his eyes. “Was that…”
“No, not us.”
Avery ran up the stairs, despite the fact that her stitches hurt. She started turning off the lights as Tristan told her to do if there was trouble. Renee turned on the outside lights on the house, the back porches, the long deck running almost the whole length of the house, and the dim light on the small porch. Her family also had motion sensor lights that would work on their own without them operating them. A second later, they heard a few of the bulbs get smashed.
They gathered in the middle of the room- huddled more like.
“We need to call for help,” Abraham said and immediately dialed Tristan. The call went through and then dropped before he said anything. “He didn’t answer. I’m sending a text.”
“Maybe they’re in a dead zone,” she said with more hope than confidence.
“Or they can’t hear the phone ‘cuz they’ve got their own problems,” her little brother said and stood up a little straighter.
“We’re on our own,” Renee finished his thought as she also pocketed her phone again, too. “Spencer’s not answering, either.”
“Where do we go?” Avery asked. “We can’t make a run for it. Whatever or whoever’s out there, we can’t assume we can get to the truck before they get to us.”
Something crashed against the kitchen door leading to the back deck. It was sturdy, steel, but wouldn’t hold forever, not with the weight that sounded like it was being slammed against that barrier. Avery didn’t want one of those things getting in here.
“We should make a stand,” Abraham whispered. “If it breaches that door, I’ll shoot first.”
Another one crashed into the front door. Then a window was broken in the formal sitting room.
“There’s more than one. They’ll be inside in a second,” Renee said.
“They said on the news that they don’t work in groups. Maybe it’s not one of those…things,” her brother said.
“We need to go to a bathroom,” Avery said. “It’s too small of a room to get in without being shot first.”
“We know you’re in there, girly girls!” a man taunted probably through the window he broke, confirming Abraham’s theory.
Knowing it wasn’t a night crawler out there trying to get in did little to make her feel better. Behind them, the kitchen door slammed into the wall as it was hit this time with the force it required to be shoved open. Renee let out a scream that was cut off in her throat. Avery swung toward the noise as a man came through. Without pausing, she raised the revolver and shot. She missed him, but it forced him out of the house as he stumbled backward with fear. They were obviously under the impression they were attacking an unarmed home. Abraham ran over and jammed an oak dining room chair under the knob.
“Bathroom,” Renee said and started backtracking. She didn’t have her shotgun with her. Her friend must’ve left it in the other room where she was packing before this all started.
Avery followed as another window was broken. When they passed by the opening to the formal sitting room, Avery watched as a man crawled through the wide picture window he must’ve broken. Renee let out a startled scream.
Abraham shoved her behind him. Then her little brother raised the pistol Tristan gave him and fired it. The man was struck and screamed out in pain. Behind her, she could hear Renee retreating more quickly as another window somewhere was broken. The man retreated out of the window again and howled in pain as sharp glass shards cut his stomach and hands.
“Shit, that’s my parents’ room,” she said. “We can’t go back there now.”
Outside, men hooted and called out to one another as if they were high on the euphoria they were gaining from causing fear and belonged to some sort of group for the criminally insane bonded by their mutual desire to terrorize people. Maybe they were just on drugs.
“Basement,” Avery blurted since it was the closest door, only twenty or thirty feet away.
Abraham rushed ahead of them toward the basement door. In front of her, Avery could see it around the corner and down the dark hallway. Renee held onto the tail of her sweater and followed. Outside, someone revved up an engine. Avery’s heart slammed in her chest as she realized Tristan and Spencer might not save them. They could be dead right now. Or they could arrive and be killed, too, because they couldn’t warn them. It was time to stand on her own two feet.
In front of her, Abraham froze mid-step and held up his hand. She heard it, too. Someone was in the house at the other end of the hallway near Renee’s bedroom. A loud blast sounded near the formal sitting room and entryway. Then the front door crashed inward hitting the wall. At least two potential exits were now blocked.
“Back, back,” Abraham whispered and started walking backward almost stepping on Avery’s foot.
They rushed as one mass back where they’d just come from until they were in the kitchen where she’d shot at the man. The door was still blocked, so they knew if someone had entered from this direction, too, it was through a window. Her answer came when a noise behind Renee drew her attention. She and her friend both spun at the same time. A man was trying to sneak up on them from behind in the dining room. Avery pulled the gun up and fired, this time hitting him in the chest. He fell backward with a scream into the dining room again and slammed into the oak table.
“Come on!” Renee whispered vehemently and tugged her arm as they continued to rev their engines outside. It sounded like they were doing donuts in the gravel parking lot between the house and barns and in the front yard.
They hurried toward the other wing of the house. She knew there were two more bedrooms, a jack-and-jill bathroom connecting them, and a rec room with a pool table. Her friend led the way, but when they came to the dark hallway, Avery stepped ahead. Her friend didn’t have a weapon.
When they reached the furthest bedroom, Abraham locked the door. The door was solid wood, but the lock was flimsy at best.
“Hold this!” he whispered to Avery, handing her his pistol. Then her little brother heaved until he got the antique mahogany dresser slid across the carpeted floor to bar the door. There were still two windows behind them. But this felt slightly safer than being out in the open like they were.
“We gotta get outta’ here,” Abraham whispered. “We need to go through that window.”
“What? They’re out there!” Renee whispered hysterically.
“They’re in here, too,” he pointed out in a hushed tone and took back his pistol.
“He’s…” Avery was about to agree with her brother when a scream broke through the revving engines, the people ransacking the house, and the violent, bold hooting and hollering of the men outside. It was enough to cause all noise outside, inside, and even everyone’s breathing to stop. Even the psychopaths outside trying to hurt them knew what that sound meant. Then she heard the panicked voices of the men.
“…where is it?” one shouted just outside the bedroom window on the far wall.
Someone in the distance, probably closer to the pasture yelled back, “Don’t see it yet.”
Another man, someone with a deeper voice strode closer, oblivious to the noise he was making outside, “Get the women first. Kill that kid, and let’s get outta here. That thing comes close, shoot it.”
Someone tried the knob of the bedroom door.
“They’re back here!” the man called out to raise the alarm. Footsteps thundered through the house.
“Shoot through the door up higher than the dresser, Abraham,” Renee instructed softly.
Her little brother raised the pistol, gripped it with two hands, and pulled the trigger. A man screamed, a loud thump hit against the hallway wall, and the footsteps stopped momentarily. Outside, a night crawler screamed out again. It seemed like a new one. This one sounded closer, but on the other side of the house.
“We can’t go out there,” Renee said.
“We have to,” Avery commented. “They’ll eventually get through the door or start shooting through it.”
She crouched over and went to the edge of the window, peeking out furtively and slumping back down. “I don’t see anyone.”
Somewhere in the house, men were arguing. It sounded like the man who had given the orders outside the window minutes ago.
“Now’s our chance,” Abraham said, joining her by the window and sliding it open quietly.
Avery stuck her head out just barely and saw flashlights over by the barn. This end of the house was quiet. The men in the house were not. They were arguing, and it actually sounded like fighting. Furniture was getting smashed, glass broken. Then a gunshot went off somewhere towards the living room.
“Now,” Abraham urged.
Avery slipped one leg through and then balanced on the edge before hopping to the ground about four feet down. Her brother and Renee followed.
“This way,” Renee said and bent over and jogged toward the woods near the cattle pasture.
Once they were all inside the tree line, Avery felt she could breathe. The cows and horses were stirred up in the fields, whinnying and running, mooing and stampeding with agitation. Animals knew when something was wrong, even in their owners’ worlds.
They squatted behind a stack of trees that Renee’s father had cut this summer and pushed into the woods with his tractor’s loader, which in turn had created a wall of logs and branches. They were dead and had fallen during windstorms over the years, but he just hadn’t gotten a chance to clean up this particular area of their woods yet. Avery was thankful he finally had. Now they had good cover for a few moments.
“What was that?” Abraham whispered in a rush of fear and panic in his deep voice. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” she asked her brother as he pointed out into the pasture.
“I saw something, a shadow moving. I think it’s one….a night crawler,” he answered, sending a chill skittering across the back of her neck.
“Could be a cow,” Renee said.
“It was runnin’ on two legs, not four,” he clarified.
Avery pulled out her phone, which used to be her mother’s, and called Tristan again. And again, got no answer.
“We’re gonna have to move,” Abraham said softly. “We can’t stay here forever. They’re gonna be in that bedroom in a second and know we went out the window. They’ll find us quickly.”
“We can’t get to the cars,” Avery pointed out.
“If we go out that way, we could run into one of them,” Renee said with a shiver that was visible by just the moon’s light as she pointed toward the pasture. Avery knew she didn’t mean one of the human men. She meant ones that used to be.
“Where’s this go?” Abraham asked, pointing to the woods behind them.
Avery sent Tristan a text stating that the house was overrun and the area was covered with crawlers. She didn’t want them walking in on any of that.
Shouting drew their attention, “…look by the barns, dumbass!” It sounded like the one man who’d barked orders earlier. He was obviously the ring leader. “They didn’t get far. The cars are still here.”
Smoke billowed from the kitchen door leading to the deck, which made Avery think they’d caught something in the house on fire. Or perhaps they were purposely torching it. She grabbed her friend’s arm as Renee took a mindless step in the direction of her home.
“Let’s go,” she said firmly and took Renee’s hand in hers.
Avery led them further into the woods, tripping several times in the dark. The deeper they went, the less light came down through the trees from the stars above. The woods became denser and more difficult to travel due to pricker bushes and interwoven thickets and deep underbrush.
“Through the field,” Abraham suggested. “We could run to the end of the pasture and go through the woods back there. You know, on the ATV trail.”
Her little brother and also Kaia had been here in the past and rode horses with them. He had a good memory because that was last summer.
“That’s really far, Abraham,” Avery said, staring out at the vast blackness of the animal pasture. Those things were out there. She didn’t know how many.
“We could…” he started but stopped as they heard a man scream in pain from the direction of Renee’s home. None of them breathed. There was erratic shooting next.
“Was that one of…” Renee began, but Avery clamped her hand over her friend’s mouth.
“Shh!” she urged and held still a moment. She’d heard something else.
Her brother turned away from them to scan in the other direction. Then Avery heard it again. There was a distinctive cracking of a twig. They couldn’t go back, but neither could they continue through the woods in the direction of the twig breaking sound. Another man screamed and cried out in pain as if he, too, were being attacked by a crawler. He was begging for help.
“Let’s…” she said but was interrupted by a man rushing out of the brush to her left. Avery swung her gun in his direction just in time to see the crazed look in his eyes and hear the garbled words that were more frightening than anything else. She and her brother both pulled their triggers at the same time. Avery wasn’t sure who actually hit the crawler, but it went down hard and didn’t move.
“We gotta go!” Abraham nearly shouted. “Now they know where we are. Their kind and the men at the farm. Let’s haul ass.”
Her little brother never swore. Well, occasionally she’d overhear him say something like ‘damn’ when he was working on his car, but never on purpose in front of her or the kids. She knew he felt genuine fear to be talking that way.
She and Renee followed as he barreled with less care through the woods.
“Our neighbors have a car. I know they were home a few days ago. Those are the dogs you hear barking,” Renee explained as they walked as fast as they could in a single line following her brother.
“Right, they raise Pointers or something,” she said over her shoulder.
“Yeah, our other neighbors are gone, but the Quincy’s were still there,” she clarified. “We could get their car. Try to get out of here.”
“Or hide there if all else fails,” Avery suggested.
“Yeah, and Mr. Quincy has a few guns. I’ve heard him shooting.”
“Good,” Abraham said as they came to a slightly clearer path and picked up the pace.
The closer they came to her neighbors’ home, the faster they walked until they were in a field and jogging again.
“There they are!” a man yelled to their left somewhere out there in the dark.
“Run!” Avery encouraged and fired off her pistol three times to send them flying, which worked. Then the hammer struck with a loud click signifying it was empty.
They made it to the neighbors’ house, Renee taking the lead to the garage’s side man door, which she must’ve known was unlocked. The dogs in the outdoor kennels were going crazy barking and yipping and stirring each other up into a frenzy.
Abraham was the last in and locked the door behind them. An older model sedan was parked in the garage.
“We should get in it and leave,” her brother suggested.
“No,” Avery didn’t even pause to reject the idea. “If they’re out there waiting for us to back out, they’ll just shoot us or disable the car. Some of them have guns. We…”
A racket inside the house alerted them that they weren’t alone.
“Mr. and Mrs. Quincy,” Renee stated with confidence and rushed to the door separating the garage from the house.
Avery grabbed her arm and stayed her hand from twisting the doorknob.
“Wait,” she hissed. “What if it’s not them? What if those men went in the front door?”
“Let me go first,” Abraham said quietly. “I’m the only one with a gun that has bullets.”
They both nodded as he slid past her friend. Outside, a gun blast was followed immediately by the tell-tale whine of a dog being hurt. Then some of the dogs grew quiet. It didn’t last long. They started back up again.
Abraham pushed open the door quietly and went up the two wooden steps into their house. Avery had never been in this house before, so it was unfamiliar. They walked straight from the garage into a utility room with a shower, washer and dryer, and a freezer, along with a hot water tank. They all heard a noise again in the house. She knew they heard it, too, because they collectively froze.
Her brother looked over his shoulder and down at her. Then he nodded and kept going ten or twelve feet until they came to another door. He paused a moment before opening it quietly and pulling it toward them. Her brother stepped cautiously inside what she could see was a kitchen with dark cupboards and a linoleum floor. In the middle of the room was an island workspace. She could see feet on the floor sticking out on the other side of the island. Renee rushed over and knelt down. She came back a second later.
Whispering, her friend said heartbrokenly, “Mrs. Quincy.”
At hearing this, her brother raised the pistol, holding it with two hands like Tristan taught him, and aimed it ahead of them. They proceeded more slowly this time as they moved out as a group.
Outside, she heard gunfire again. She hoped they weren’t shooting any more dogs.
“Stop where you are!” a man stated angrily. “I’ve got a gun, and I’ll use it.”
“M-Mr. Quincy?” Renee questioned nervously.
“Who’s there?” he asked gruffly.
“It’s me, Renee from next door,” she said.
“You with them criminals that shot my wife?”
“What?” she asked with shock. “No! No, sir. Never. They attacked us, too. We ran here.”
“I came home a little bit ago and found her like that. They ransacked the house, took the food and money. Didn’t find my shotgun, though.”
“Don’t shoot. My house is under attack. My friends and I don’t know what to do. They burned it. We had to get out of there. Please, Mr. Quincy, they’re after us. Please, help us.”
A moment later, an older gentleman came into view from the dining room, being backlit from the lighting outside. Relief flooded Avery as she saw his shotgun and realized he was a beacon of hope in this dark void tonight.
A second later, a shot rang out but not from Mr. Quincy. Renee screamed. Her neighbor was shot from behind, the bullet having gone through the glass patio door. Avery felt blood hit her. He turned and rattled off a few rounds before falling into the kitchen with them.