Ethan followed Nikola through the dark tunnel, his fingers digging into the dirt beneath him as he shuffled along. He kept his eyes locked onto the teenager’s thick, tangled blond hair, visible in the flickering blue halogen light of the lantern that she pushed along ahead of her. His stomach churned, and he clenched his teeth against a sudden surge of queasiness. He didn’t like the sinking feeling of the unknown.
Nikola chose that moment to disappear from Ethan’s view, and he reflexively jerked his head up to look for her. His head hit the ceiling of the dirt tunnel, and he winced. He ducked lower and scrambled for the end, where Nikola’s light still flickered weakly to illuminate his way. He gained his feet and squinted into the cellar in which they now stood; it was just as dark as the one they’d left, and the only light came from the lantern Nikola had lifted to shine across the cellar.
“So what’s the plan?” Ethan asked. He rubbed at the sore spot on top of his head. “I’m assuming you have one?”
Nikola let out a snort and looked at him in disbelief. “Wait, you’re asking a fourteen-year-old girl for a plan? My plan involved getting us over here. That’s as far as I got.”
“Oh Lord,” Ethan groaned. He covered his face with a hand. “Grant me serenity, etcetera, etcetera,” he said, his voice muffled by his hand. He blew out a heavy breath and looked around, trying to decide what their first action should be. The sound of the other cellar’s door cracking and groaning echoed through the small tunnel and decided it for him. “Shit,” he muttered. He glanced at Nikola; she watched the entrance to the tunnel with wide eyes. “We need to barricade this thing first, just to buy us some extra time,” he decided.
“With what?” Nikola asked. She waved her hands around the empty cellar. “This place isn’t exactly loaded down with furniture or whatever to shove in front of it.”
Ethan squinted in the meager light as he searched for anything with which to block the cellar’s entryway. Nikola was right; there just wasn’t anything. Ethan swore under his breath and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her toward the exit that led outside. “We need to get out of here fast then. We’re not going to have much time.” He laid a hand against the door, but he hesitated and looked back at her. “You know where my bike is?” he asked.
“The motorcycle you rolled up on?” Nikola asked. “Should still be in the middle of the street where you left it.”
Ethan’s mind raced. “Okay, I think I might have a plan,” he said. He tried to put the pieces together as the sound of cracking wood and beating hands echoed more frantically through the tunnel behind them. “We’re going to make a run for my bike. First, though, we need to go by this address.” Ethan rattled off Cade’s address, even as he pressed his ear to the slanted wooden door that opened to the outside world.
“I know where that is,” Nikola acknowledged. “But why do we need to go there?”
“I’ve got a few things to pick up that we could use,” Ethan answered vaguely. He rested his hand against the scratched wooden surface; splinters threatened to poke through his skin. “If we get separated, go for that house. Hide in the basement if I’m not there. And if I don’t show up within five minutes, I want you to make for the motorcycle and get out of here,” he instructed. He paused and turned to look at her. “Do you know how to drive a motorcycle?”
“I don’t even know how to drive,” Nikola admitted. Her cheeks flushed in the light of her lantern. “I’m only fourteen, remember?”
“Shit,” Ethan muttered. “I guess that means we’ll just have to not get separated, right?” He pressed his hand more firmly on the door’s flat surface as his other hand found the holster at his hip. He pulled the gun from it and flipped the safety off, then drew in a deep breath. “When we get out of here, which way do we run? Left or right?”
“Left,” Nikola confirmed. She set the lantern on the dirt beside her and tightened the straps of her pack, adjusting it to rest closely against her back.
“Any obstructions between here and there?”
“There’s a fence around the yard of this house,” Nikola said as she picked the lantern back up. “The gate is blocked, so we’re going to have to find a way over it.”
“That’s not a problem,” Ethan said dismissively. “I can get us over that. What else?”
“The cars on the street,” Nikola continued. “They’re pretty much bumper to bumper, sort of shoved up against each other. We’re going to have to go over those.”
“No way around?”
Nikola shook her head. “It would take too long.”
“Good to know. Anything else?”
“Nothing that I can think of. But I haven’t studied the streets outside very carefully since I started hiding in people’s basements,” Nikola admitted sheepishly.
“Hey, that’s okay,” Ethan said. He motioned for her to join him. She carried the lantern forward, lighting her way. “You might have to ditch the lantern. You’ll need both hands out there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Nikola said with a sigh. “I just kind of don’t want to. It’s been useful.”
Ethan gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “Don’t worry. We’ll try to find you another one.” He put his hand against the door again and gently pushed. “Ready?”
“As ready as I can ever be.” The girl’s voice was cheerful, and Ethan was surprised at how easily she’d fallen into a confident mindset. He wondered how she did it, how she could just dismiss the horrors outside. A fleeting thought that maybe she didn’t actually do so whipped through his mind faster than he could catch it, and he wondered what this young girl beside him dealt with on a daily basis, alone in the world with no one to rely on.
“Okay,” Ethan finally said. He drew in a slow breath and let it out. Nikola set the lantern down on the top step as Ethan pushed the door open, using his shoulder to heave it up and to the side. The door fell with a loud bang against the ground. There was no way to prevent the noise, but Ethan still winced at its volume.
Ethan lifted his gun and scrambled up the steps. He swept the immediate area to make sure there weren’t any infected waiting to grab them the moment they emerged from the cellar. With the coast clear, he hauled himself out and reached back to pull Nikola with him. Without another word between them, Ethan ran left as Nikola had instructed. Nikola’s feet struck the dead grass behind him as they sprinted toward the wire fence that loomed ahead.
Ethan grabbed the top of the fence and vaulted over it, narrowly avoiding the Romeo catchers. Thankfully, none of his clothing snagged on the dull v-shaped spikes. He grabbed Nikola, picking her up and physically hauling her over the fence as she dug her feet into it and pushed herself along. She breathed a quick word of thanks as her feet touched the ground on the other side, and then she started to run. She took the lead, getting out ahead of him as they made for the sidewalk and the line of cars blocking the path to Cade’s house.
Ethan dashed madly for the street, his legs pumping and his breath picking up. Movement to the right caught his attention as he ran. One of the infected was making its way straight toward them. Nikola saw it too; her step faltered, and she glanced back at Ethan uncertainly.
“I’ve got it! Keep going!” Ethan called. He pointed his gun at the oncoming enemy. The infected woman didn’t break stride as Ethan aimed, absorbed as she was in the acquisition of her next meal. Ethan gritted his teeth and squeezed the trigger. The shot struck her in the shoulder, but Ethan didn’t stop to try to shoot her again. Instead, he sped up to catch up with Nikola; she’d just barely reached the line of cars ahead of him.
“Go over them!” Ethan yelled as he covered the last few feet between him and Nikola. He nearly slammed into a car as his shoes slipped on the gravel scattered across the sidewalk. He and Nikola scrambled across the hood of the car, their feet finding purchase on the tires and bumper.
Ethan cleared the car first, and he turned to help Nikola over the last half of the hood. The infected woman had reached the other side of the car, and she grabbed for Nikola’s shoe. Ethan wrapped his fingers around Nikola’s wrist and hauled her bodily across the hood. He pushed her behind him and lifted his gun once more.
It only took one shot. The woman’s brains sprayed backwards in a shower of bone and blood and gray matter. She fell back to the sidewalk, disappearing from view.
“Holy shit,” the teenager squeaked. Ethan lowered the gun and grabbed her hand, tugging her in the direction of Cade’s house.
“Run! There’s more coming!” he snapped. His angry tone seemed to break through her frozen shock. Her black-and-white Chucks pounded the pavement alongside Ethan’s sneakers as they both ran for the house. Ethan dodged through a small gap between two cars. He banged his knee against the bumper of one and tried to ignore the pain as he grabbed for Nikola again. They stumbled their way up the steps of Cade’s front porch.
The front door still stood wide open, just the way Ethan and Cade had left it. Ethan didn’t have time to wonder why that was. He grabbed the teenager again and nearly slung her into the house. He darted in behind her and slammed the door shut, throwing the locks as quickly as his shaking fingers would cooperate.
“Barricade that door!” Ethan ordered breathlessly. But even as he barked out the words, the memory of a shattered patio door flashed through his mind, and he knew that the effort would be wasted. One glance into the kitchen confirmed that it was, in fact, broken. The girl was in the process of shoving a heavy table in front of the front door, but Ethan stopped her. “Never mind, not enough time,” he said. “And it’s pointless anyway. Upstairs, now.”
“Why is it pointless?” Nikola asked. She followed Ethan up the stairs, panting from the exertion of her run.
“Because the back door is busted wide open,” Ethan said. “It happened last month, when the virus hit Memphis. Cade and I were here, and they came in.”
“Cade?” Nikola asked as she tried to keep up with his pace. “Who is he?”
“She,” Ethan corrected absently. He reached the top of the stairs and motioned for her to stop just behind him. The stench of rot and decay hit his nose. It was the distinctive smell of death, one that Ethan had experienced several times in his line of work, and it was enough to draw him up short. He looked around cautiously, squinting into the darkness of the hallway. He fumbled for a small flashlight in his bag, finding it and turning it on to shine around them. It took him precious seconds that they could ill afford to spare to realize that it was the remains of Andrew’s body that he smelled. The man lay in a heap at the top of the stairs, exactly where he had fallen when Ethan shot him the month before.
The sight of the body reminded Ethan of the other body that was in the house somewhere. He breathed in slowly and glanced back at Nikola. He didn’t want to worry her, so he continued speaking casually, picking up where he’d left off.
“Cade is my best friend. She’s a marksman. Served in the Israel Defense Forces,” Ethan explained. He took a step forward and eased his way over Andrew’s remains, one foot at a time. Nikola hesitated as she glanced at the body, and Ethan wondered if her legs were long enough to step over him like she needed to. Ethan handed his gun to Nikola wordlessly before he picked her up and physically passed her over the body. “So basically, she’s perfectly suited to survive this kind of thing,” Ethan continued. “Maybe you’ll meet her sometime soon, if our luck holds out.”
“I hope it does,” Nikola admitted, her voice hushed. She stuck close to Ethan, right by his elbow, and he began to move toward Cade’s room, one slow step at a time. “I haven’t seen many people. You’re the first in a long while.” She slipped her backpack around and slid the aluminum baseball bat out of her bag, gripping it tightly in her hands. “It gets really old being by myself all the time.”
“I can imagine,” Ethan said. He paused in the doorway to Josie’s room and forced himself to look inside. The late afternoon was passing them by and early evening settling in, making everything around him more difficult to see. Ethan clenched his jaw and resigned himself to stepping into the room to make sure there were no dangers inside.
Ethan startled as he felt a sudden touch on his elbow. It was only Nikola, though, pressing closer to him in the dark hallway. Ethan shone the flashlight he held into the guest room. The beam of whitish-blue light illuminated the bloodstained bed in the center of the room. Ethan struggled to not close his eyes as he remembered what had happened to the little girl the month before.
The room was blessedly empty of anything that moved. Ethan breathed out in relief. “Come on, Nikola. We’ve got a few things to grab back here,” he said. He stepped away from the doorway and headed for the master bedroom.
Ethan had managed two steps down the hall when a shriek behind him pulled him back around again. He froze in shock as a small dark-haired girl pounced out of the shadows of the bathroom and slammed into Nikola. She bowled her over to the rough hallway carpet, and her small hands grasped desperately at the teenager’s face.