“Bryce!” I screamed. Our eyes met, and I was sure his reactive expression matched mine. He turned to face the dead one that had walked up behind him.
Just as I opened the door, the word no erupted out of me. Bryce pressed his forearm against the man’s chest to keep the snapping teeth at bay, and then reached across the counter to a pen that was attached to the cash register with twine. He yanked it away from its anchor, and in the next moment stabbed the man in the face. The man kept coming at him, so he stabbed him again; this time the pen went through the corner of its eye, and he collapsed against Bryce.
Movement on my left caught my eye, and dead ones, two females, one adult and one child, were slowly shuffling toward me. She was obese, her skirt dragging the floor around her ankles, and she was covered in dark, dried blood and dirt. The skin on her face and her lips were all gone. She’d been chewed on before she’d come back. I couldn’t see a wound on the girl, but her eyes were milky white like the woman’s.
“Bryce!” I screamed.
He pushed the man off of him and jumped back over the counter, yanking my arm as he pushed the door open and pulled me toward the Bug.
“Go! Get in!” Bryce swung his free arm around wildly as he commanded everyone standing around the Bug.
Everyone scrambled to get inside the car but me. I stood on the driver’s side with the door open, watching the dead ones claw at the glass on the double doors of the station.
“Miranda!” Ashley screamed.
“Look at them,” I said softly, my voice calm and full of wonder.
They couldn’t get out. Even though the doors would open a little when they pushed against it, they weren’t coordinated enough to continue pushing and walk. The doors would come back against them, so they clawed at the glass like it was a wall.
The woman’s swollen belly bumped the door, and I recoiled, realizing she wasn’t fat, but heavily pregnant.
I sat in the seat and closed the door, still breathing heavy. “Did you find a switch?”
Bryce shook his head. “We can’t make it to your dad’s?”
“I don’t think we should try. We might get stranded.”
“It’s too dangerous to go on foot. We need to figure out how to get inside and turn on that pump.”
“I have this,” the guy we picked up said. He held up a handgun.
“Did you see those things around that car earlier? They’re attracted to noise.”
He didn’t flinch. “We could search the houses for something quieter. Baseball bats, scissors, kitchen knives. Bryce took that one down with a pen.”
“That could take days,” I said.
He shrugged. “You got somewhere to be?”
“Yeah, I do, actually.”
“Not until you get gas in this car, you don’t.”
I turned to face forward in a huff. He was right, but I didn’t like his smart-ass comment. I glared at him in the rearview mirror. He was tall and looked ridiculous sitting in the back, his knees nearly as tall as his head. His dark eyes were deep set, and his face was still sprayed with that girl’s blood. Combined with his buzz cut and muscles, he looked like a serial killer, and I’d let him in my car. For all we knew, he could have killed that girl before she turned.
“What is your name, anyway?”
“Joey.”
“What’s with the haircut, Joey?”
“I just got back from Afghanistan.”
“Oh,” I said. My response was more acidic than I’d intended. I was trying not to show my surprise, or sudden admiration.
“Dude,” Cooper said. He wasn’t holding back the fact that he was impressed. Cooper shook Joey’s hand. “Appreciate you, man. And I suddenly feel much safer.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I only have what’s left in this clip.”
“Still,” Cooper said. “You’re a badass.”
I wasn’t sure if Bryce was as impressed with Joey as Cooper was and just trying to hide it like me, or if he wasn’t impressed at all. I caught him rolling his eyes at Cooper’s words, and I elbowed him. We exchanged smiles. It wasn’t uncommon for us to know what the other was thinking. We’d been together so long and had spent so much time together it wouldn’t surprise me if Bryce knew what I was thinking before I did. That was probably why marriage wouldn’t be on the table until well after we both graduated. We were accused frequently of acting like an old married couple.
“No one move,” I said, watching a dead one pass slowly across my rearview mirror. It was heading to the highway.
We all sat like statues. The females in the station were still pawing at the doors, and I hoped they didn’t draw the new dead one’s attention. He was dragging a broken ankle, even slower than was typical. Ashley began to turn to look, but Cooper stopped her, just as Bryce stopped himself from telling her no.
The dead one passed. Rattled, we stepped back out onto the cracked concrete. The sun was getting higher in the sky . . . and hotter. I peeled off my jacket and tied the arms around my waist into a double knot. There were only a few straggler clouds that broke up the blue sky. It was bluer than it had been in a long time, or maybe it had just been a long time since I’d noticed. A gentle wind blew the leaves on the trees, making it sound like lazy waves pulling away from the sand.
As beautiful and calm as it was in this tiny town, being outside was a risk, and the absence of cars on the road or even the occasional stray dog made even a perfect day fearsome.
Several gunshots rang out in the distance, echoing and bouncing so many times we didn’t know which direction they came from. It was too far away to be in town, but everyone but Joey looked around, uneasy and unsure how to react.
“Let’s get the shit we need, and get out of here,” I said.
Everyone agreed with a nod, and we set off toward the grocery store, more cautious knowing there were still dead citizens of Shallot making their way to the noisy car on the highway. Joey walked with both hands on his gun, holding it in front of his body while he walked sideways like you’d see in a movie. It was kind of sexy, but I still thought he was an arrogant ass**le. My mother liked to share what she learned while drowning in the dating pool, and the one thing she said over and over was that it took a certain personality to be a soldier, a cop, or a firefighter. None of which I was attracted to, but for whatever reason, watching Joey move like an action hero made something inside of me squeal like a fan girl.