After the world ends boo.., p.3
After The World Ends | Book 2 | Hide, page 3
part #2 of After The World Ends Series
Dessa scanned the shops until she landed on the little pharmacy that anchored the strip. A coffee shop and a little barbershop sat on either side. All their windows were busted and she couldn’t see inside from their current position. A store sign dangled, hanging by one corner.
Did anything wait for them inside?
She told herself to expect the worst. Assuming there was an infected or two still alive inside, they would have to be ready for a fight. She wasn’t leaving without the medicine.
“Spread out.” Dessa bent her knees and closed her hands into fists. “I don’t think we should clump together in case anyone is inside. We just need to look for the medicine and then get out of here.”
“Some food and water would be nice, too,” Egg said.
“Yeah, but the meds are the most important.” Dessa thought of Ivan still asleep in the taco truck. He had hours left until the dose wore off, but Ms. Winters had said preparing the Aeulbutrin would eat up some of that time. “The kids can eat and drink when we get to Sanctuary tonight.”
Dessa strained her ears, searching for any sign of trouble. Glass crunched under their shoes. Each step felt taut with tension.
Egg popped into the coffee shop by stepping through the broken window. She almost called him back. This was about the meds. But her voice could awaken trouble, so she settled for being annoyed with him in silence.
Egg popped out a minute later, carrying armfuls of water bottles. Hurrying back, he set the bottles at the base of a light pole and whispered. “It’s totally empty in there. No people, no food, or anything either. These bottles were scattered behind the register, like they’d been dropped and forgotten.”
Amos led them into the cool, dark interior of the pharmacy.
There were plenty of strange spoiled food smells, but something else, like the whisper of clothing.
“Wait,” Dessa said, ears straining. She hovered at his heels and let her eyes scan for movement. When she adjusted to the darkness, she stepped deeper into the store after Amos, and her stomach sank at the sight of the ransacked shelves.
“Ugg, I think someone broke a jar of pickles.” Tiana held her nose as she looked around. “Yep. That’s what it is.” She pointed to a smear of liquid and green goo near an end cap.
To the right of the entrance was an ice cream freezer, its contents long melted and dried on the tile. Dessa looked left and saw two cash registers behind bullet proof glass.
Something moved.
Dessa sucked in a breath. “Did you see that?”
They all froze.
She tried to discern details in the shadows. That light scraping sounded again and a shadow behind the bullet proof panels shifted.
Amos stepped toward the registers.
Dessa snaked out a hand and grabbed his shirt. “Amos, don’t.”
He covered her hand with his own. “It’s okay. I think… I think it can’t get out.”
“How do you know that?” Tiana hissed, crouching to the floor.
“Because it would already be on top of us if it could,” Amos said, talking at a regular volume. His noise acted as a trigger. The scraping sound turned into banging.
“We should go.” Egg backed up to stand on the threshold of the entrance. “We should go. We should go.”
Amos stepped away. “No, it’s fine. Can’t you see it’s trapped?”
Dessa held her breath and told herself that Amos knew what he was doing. He approached the cash registers, and she followed. He looked down each aisle and then focused on the next one. She did the same, looking for trouble, but also noticing empty shelf after empty shelf. Someone, maybe many someones, had been here before them and taken everything.
The infected man still wore his uniform—a collared light blue shirt with his name embroidered on the pocket—Dave. Sweat stained his armpits and a darker liquid stained the front of his chest. He threw himself against the panel, but other than it vibrating, nothing happened.
That didn’t stop him from trying again and again.
She waited as long as possible to look at his face, hating the way the Lyssa virus changed the eyes. A gory wound on his neck had spilled blood down his shirt, and marked the injury that allowed the Lyssa virus to flood his bloodstream and take over his mind and body. Several days’ worth of stubble dotted his chin. His nose sat at a crazy angle on his face and had swelled to what she figured was twice its normal size. Finally, there was nothing left to do but look into his eyes. The shock of his vacant, rage-filled stare made her step back.
Next to the V, on his side of the bullet proof walls, lay a body at his feet. She also wore a blue collared shirt, but lay face down, keeping Dessa from seeing her name tag. She looked more… torn up than the V standing in front of them.
Infected could die. It wasn’t just headshots that would take them down, but they didn’t die easy. Their rage seemed to fuel a life force that was almost, but not quite, superhuman.
Dessa felt Egg and Tiana join them.
“I told you. He can’t get to us.” Amos jogged away. Dessa felt a shock of vulnerability. Everything was safer with Amos around. He scanned the length of each aisle and then returned to the registers. “Looks empty otherwise. Though there are a few bodies.”
“Empty of stuff?” Egg said.
“Yeah, and of infected,” Amos said.
Dessa turned and began to head for the back of the store to get away from the infected and to get this whole thing over with. “We have to know if they left anything behind.”
“Who do you think they are?” Egg said, following after her, as if also eager to leave the creepy scene behind.
“Dessa?” Amos said.
She turned around.
Amos was still at the register—
Amos pressed against the lower part of the transparent bullet proof panels. Tiana stood back, her gaze averted. The infected pressed his broken nose against the panel. In another world, Amos and the infected would look like they were about to kiss through it. Her stomach turned.
Amos moved, snaking his gaze up and around the infected. Of course, the infected followed, but not before Amos pointed and said, “There’s some of the medicine, I think. A package of it.”
She raced back to stand next to Amos and see for herself. The infected didn’t know who to lunge for, so it took turns, giving her and Amos a better view.
She saw a label on the wall shelf that looked like the right name. At least the part she could see. Aeulbut—
“Maybe we should check the actual pharmacy shelves first before we go after it,” Amos said, his breath tickling her ear.
The infected pounded a bloody fist on the panel, frustrated, mouth open and broken teeth showing.
Dessa jumped. “I really, really like that idea.”
They retreated down the aisle. Dessa prayed to anyone who might be listening to please, please let there be Aeulbutrin somewhere else in the pharmacy besides the one place where an infected was trapped.
She stepped over a smashed can of tomatoes. A stick of deodorant, uncapped, showed the print of a large boot. She and Amos reached the long counter of the pharmacy just as Egg and Tiana popped out of separate aisles. Enough light filtered inside to show ransacked medical shelves.
Amos hopped the counter. Dessa followed him over, still listening for groans and watching for infected. She started in one corner and searched the floors and all the shelves, but only found a bottle of cough syrup with its seal broken, dripping green, sweet-smelling alcohol onto the shelf underneath.
Dessa cursed. “There’s… there’s nothing!” She closed her eyes and imagined her brother, the fever rising in him once again as the medicine wore off and the Lyssa virus roared back, transforming him into something monstrous.
“Woah.”
Dessa’s eyes flew open and she locked onto Amos. He held a cardboard box with a label she could half read. Rushing over, she examined it.
Aeulbutrin.
“Dessa—”
“You found it! You seriously found it!” She hugged Amos around the neck and spontaneously kissed him on the cheek.
“No, Dessa. Wait—”
5
Amos pushed the flaps of the box open wider. She deflated. The box was empty. Totally empty.
They stared at it in defeat for what seemed an eternity.
She scoured the lining for any missed bottle or pill as the cardboard scuffed her hands. One corner looked crunched and a bit of white powder dusted the bottom.
A wave of realization roared past Dessa’s ears. “The cash register.” She could still hear its pounding fists.
Amos set down the box. “Yeah.”
They headed to the front of the store and turned right. There Dave was—stained shirt, broken nose, dark blood everywhere. More liquid smeared the transparent panel into a cloudy blur.
Dessa approached step-by-step. She took in the shadows and smells of a pharmacy ransacked who knew how long ago. A day? Weeks?
The V had been behind the cash register since then, at least. Had he infected the dead woman on the floor? Maybe. Or maybe it had happened the other way around. There was no way to know for sure.
But what she did know was that whoever had taken everything out of the store and left a broken jar of pickles near the entrance had not bothered to clear out the shelves behind the cash register. The V—Dave—had protected those odd bits of behind-the-counter desirables.
Cigarettes, candy bars, liquor, and some basic allergy medicine.
They stared at that box. The bottom half was counter and cabinet and a locked door that met the bullet proof panels about waist-high. Three transparent walls formed corners and met the wall of the pharmacy itself with the top opened to the air of the store, the panels too high to allow Dave to climb out.
There, behind Dave’s pounding fists and broken nose and the woman who lay dead at his feet, on a shelf about three feet from the floor, was a box of the meds Ivan needed.
Dessa had not asked Ms. Winters how much the kids required. She guessed the box would not be enough for anyone but Ivan. But all they needed was a little more time to get everyone, including the kids, to Sanctuary. Ms. Winters had promised there would be medicine at Sanctuary—more than enough for everyone. Including Dessa and her friends.
The other kids could go almost seven more days without a new dose. But Ivan’s bite had put him on a much shorter clock.
“We have to let it out,” Dessa said.
“The hell we do,” Egg said.
“Maybe we can go from above. Like, climb the panel and stick it in the head from there,” Tiana said.
Amos walked the short distance along the perimeter of Dave’s box. He checked the counter, the shelves, the door itself. Dave dogged his every move, running at the transparent wall, growing more agitated with prey close yet unreachable.
Amos looked up and then back down and shook his head. “We can’t go over the top. The whole thing might come down. It’s too risky.”
Dessa stepped forward. “We have to do something.”
Amos looked at her with a strange light in his eyes. “We will.”
Dessa looked around the empty store. “We need a distraction.” Smeared pickles. Empty shelves. A few metal merchandise stands that had once held baskets and other odds and ends, now empty.
“Yeah, but there’s nothing,” Egg said.
Dessa’s mind landed on an idea. “We use one of the cars.” She looked at the other three and motioned out the entrance. “We use one of those wrecked cars. Somebody goes out there and beeps on the horn while somebody else in here breaks open the door and lets him loose.”
“And when any other infected around hears the horn and comes running?” Tiana said.
Dessa slumped. “Right.”
Dave continued to pound, vibrating the panels.
“I just wish he would shut up.” Egg began to walk up and down the length of the store. “I can’t even think like this.”
There was a crack. Where the bullet proof panel met the waist-high door, something shifted. Dave took the sound as encouragement and got a running start, slamming his body against the door, inches from where Amos bent to examine a hinge.
“Amos,” Tiana said. “You should step back—”
Amos looked up and did step back, his eyes wide, but Dave took another running leap. The door crashed open.
Amos scrambled backward, falling onto his butt next to an empty merchandise stand. Dessa shouted and dove, just as Dave launched himself at Amos. She snatched at the closest rack, one with spindly metal arms, and swung it around, hoping to get it in between the infected’s mouth full of broken teeth and Amos’ flesh.
Amos was on his back, horror filling his expression. The infected snapped once, and then again, catching one of the rack’s arms in his teeth. There was a crunch and a little piece of enamel flew into the air. Her arms were pulled forward and side to side as Dave struggled to free himself.
“Amos, hold on!” It took all her strength not to let go. Even that wasn’t enough, as she felt the rack slipping out of her hands. This close to an infected, she could smell his rot and see the globs that had not yet dried on top of the dark liquid that stained his clothes. The cloudiness in his eyes stood in contrast to the dark veins that webbed and rippled under his skin. The telltale marks of the Lyssa virus.
As if the ravenous rage wasn’t enough to give it away.
Tiana and Egg scrambled to find anything that could help, but before they had returned, brandishing pieces of glass from the broken pickle jar, the struggle ceased.
The rack ripped out of Dessa’s hands as the weight became unbearable. “No!”
Then she saw Amos had broken off one of the rack’s arms and drove it into the side of Dave’s head.
Amos lay back, looking up at the ceiling tile, the rack, and dead-Dave, laying across him. “I could use some help here. He’s kind of heavy.”
Dessa grabbed dead-Dave’s shirt. Egg rushed over and took hold of his belt. Tiana lifted one of the shoulders. With the help of all three of them, they pulled this dead weight off and slid it across the ground.
Dessa crouched next to Amos and threw away the remaining parts of the rack. “Amos, are you okay?”
He nodded, taking deep breaths, and staring at the ceiling tiles like his life depended on it. “Go check the medicine, Dessa. I’m all right.”
Tiana came to Amos’ other side. Dessa stood and stepped through the splinters of the broken door and into the little cash register cave. Somehow, even though it had an open top, the smells of blood and rot were thicker, almost suffocating, in the space. She held her nose and stepped around the female employee’s body. Her eyes lit upon the box worth all this trouble.
She snatched for the Aeulbutrin—
There was something wrong. Her hand came away with a piece of paper.
She crumpled it in her fist, smoothed it out, and held it up to the light. “Crap.”
Turning back to the shelf, she dug around, reaching across until she hit the wall and then feeling from side to side. Pulling out lint, a paperclip, and a crumpled package of gum, she sent out another prayer to the universe to please let her find one box. Please.
Finally, she had to give up. Her chest heaved as she stared at the empty shelf and the paper crumpled in her hand. The world closed down and a roar rushed past her ears.
Nothing.
She returned to the others. Amos was sitting up now, Tiana helping him. Egg stood, patting Amos awkwardly on the shoulder.
She held out the paper like a badge. “It’s just a placeholder. The ticket that you pull for the cashier to scan, and then you take your receipt to the back counter. To the pharmacist to trade it out.”
Amos looked as crestfallen as Dessa felt. Tiana and Egg didn’t look much better.
This was her fault. She should have looked more closely when Amos had pointed out the label. She would have recognized the scanning code and known it didn’t actually contain a box of the medicine itself.
It was too late now.
And now there was only one chance left.
Dessa said out loud what they must know. “We have to get to Sanctuary before Ivan runs out of time.”
6
But even though Dessa knew what they needed to do, it felt impossible to move. She stared helplessly at the crumpled paper.
Tiana clapped her hands.
Dessa jumped, shocked out of her circling thoughts.
“Egg already found some water,” Tiana said. “We’ll take whatever is left on the shelves behind the cash register. Hey, I’m thinking we’ll get lucky and find a few frozen pizzas for dinner tonight.”
Dessa looked at Tiana like she was crazy.
“Oh, you don’t think so? Then I guess you better stop standing around. So we didn’t find the medicine. There’s still time to get to Sanctuary. We’ve got ten kids to feed and I don’t know about you but I’m kinda hungry too.”
Egg rolled his eyes and stepped over to loop his arm around Tiana’s shoulder as they headed back into the aisles to search for any missed food. “Look, I know you were trying really hard to be funny right then, but you should leave it to the professionals.”
Tiana jokingly socked him in the arm. Egg yelped though she hadn’t punched hard.
Of course, Tiana was right. There was no time to waste. Dessa should have known as soon as they stepped into the ransacked pharmacy they would not find what they needed.
There was no medicine for Ivan or the other children. They would have to make a run for Sanctuary and hope for a clear route.
Amos discarded the paper. “Dessa, don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
She bit her lip, but there wasn’t time to argue. It would only delay them. Taking different aisles, Dessa and Amos split up to check for anything missed. That drumbeat of time ticking away in her mind. The faster they hit the road to Sanctuary, the better their chances of arriving in time. But Tiana was right. It would be foolish not to check the store for food and more water.
Halfway down her chosen aisle, she stopped at a shelf stacked with small, circular cans, and started laughing like she’d heard the greatest joke in the whole world. It sounded a little hysterical even to her own ears.
