“Move your fat ass,” he said as he shot past Taylor.
By the halfway point, Taylor was chugging air. That had always been one of his problems with running: he had never learned how to breathe right. He was okay for a few minutes, and then everything went to shit when he started gulping air. Despite the lack of oxygen, he kept going, pumping his legs, setting his sights on his brother’s back and making that his goal. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the crowd following them. Easily over a hundred of them. They were fast and untiring and he could feel their eyes boring into him as they came.
Taylor picked up his pace, closing the gap. Carl looked back at him. Don’t slow down, he thought. Especially not for me.
Carl reached the brownstone and kept going until he had rounded the corner. He slowed to a rapid walk, searching for something – anything - they could use. Where were all the cars? Had someone went to the trouble of hiding them all? He couldn’t recall seeing a single vehicle since they had walked into town.
Taylor came around the corner and almost plowed into him. “Why are you walking?”
“You said run to the brownstone and turn the corner. That’s what I did. You didn’t say what to do after that,” Carl said. “Not a fucking car in sight.”
Taylor scanned the streets in disbelief. Carl was right. Not a car or truck or motorcycle in sight. Right about then he would have been happy to have found a bicycle. A pink bicycle with tassels coming out of the handgrips and a white basket that sat in front of the handlebars. It wouldn’t have mattered; even that would have been faster than running on foot.
“Don’t waste your time,” Carl said. “You’re not going to find anything. I already told you, there’s nothing.”
Taylor jogged along the back of the brownstone. There were two doors on the ass end of the building. Both of them locked.
The first of the mob reached the brownstone, and Taylor said, “Follow me,” and began to run again. This time, they ran side-by-side, Carl asking him where exactly they were going.
“I’m not sure. We’re going to keep checking buildings until we find one that’s unlocked. Short of finding a car with keys in it and gas in the tank, I’d say that’s our only option.”
They took turns checking doors. At first, they followed the same street, but then started veering down alleys and zigzagging as they went in hopes of losing the mob that continued to follow them. Taylor guessed they had put around seventy-five yards between themselves and their pursuers.
Taylor gasped for air. His lungs burned and he couldn’t catch a full breath. His legs were numb. The pain was in his calves and the large muscles above his knees. The sun had been eaten by a string of thick clouds, but the air was humid and sweat trickled down into his eyes. He slowed to tug on the handle of a door without success.
“Locked,” he said, shouting to Carl, who was across the street trying the door of another building.
“This one too!”
How many movies had he watched where someone was being chased by a pack of zombies or an axe-wielding maniac? And, invariably, when he would watch them he would wonder how they could possibly get tired of running. He had always believed that if he was running for his life that he could run as long and fast as was necessary to keep his ass out of the fryer. But he was running for his life now, for what was probably less than ten full minutes, and the prospect of slowing down had crossed his mind a dozen times. Maybe it was a combination of the heat and being out of shape, and that as a kid he’d had asthma.
“Found one!”
Taylor crossed the street to his brother. Carl was holding open a metal door. Written on the inside of the door were the words: THIS DOOR TO REMAIN UNLOCKED DURING BUSINESS HOURS.
When they were inside, Carl pulled the door closed behind them. “I can’t lock it without a key.”
“Let’s hope they didn’t see us slip in here,” Taylor said.
“Let’s hope they can’t smell us.”
“Why would they be able to smell us?”
“Just something that crossed my mind.”
Past the back room there was another open door; this one of a flimsy wooden material, and beyond that they could see light pouring in through the plate glass windows at the front of the store. Rows and rows of clothing filled the store.
Taylor scanned the racks and said, “This is all women’s clothing.”
“Great,” Carl said. “Of all the stores in town we run into the most useless one possible. “Should have known. Just like a woman to forget to lock the back door.” They shared a smile over that one. Carl rapped on the door lightly with his knuckles. “It’s not going to be safe with this unlocked.”
“You’re right. I don’t think they saw us come in here, but they might figure it out given enough time. We don’t know how intelligent they are.”
Taylor inspected the backroom. The fusebox was on the wall to the left of the door. There was a cramped inset bathroom, flanked on one side by a gas furnace and a water heater on the other. A telephone terminal was located next to the fuse box. A dozen or so insulated telephone wires snaked their way up and disappeared into the suspended ceiling. He grabbed one of them and yanked it from the network terminal, wound the wire around his hand once and then gave it a hard pull. He kept tugging at the cord until there was a few feet of slack. Taylor looked it over and said, “Should be plenty long.”
He tied one end to the handle of the metal exit door and then ran it to the knob of the bathroom door. He pulled it taut and tied it around the knob. “It’s not much,” he said, “but better than nothing.”
“My brother, MacGyver.”
“Shut the fuck up, smartass.”
“What? It was a compliment.”
Taylor pushed on the metal door. It gave a quarter of an inch and then the telephone wire prevented it from opening any farther.
Carl had already wandered out into the store. He held a summer dress in front of him and said, “What do ya think? My color?”
“Get serious. And stay away from the window. I don’t want to chance those things walking by and seeing you.”
Carl tossed the dress over the rack. “Just trying to lighten the mood. Maybe this is how I deal with tense situations. Ever think of that? Tell me you don’t do the same thing?”
Taylor ignored him. He searched the store for anything useful. The clothing racks were positioned so that four racks ran from back to front, and five from side-to-side. A large wire shelf at the front of the store displayed a variety of purses.
I hate to admit it, but he’s right, Taylor thought. This is about the most useless place we could have stumbled into.
But for the moment they were safe; told himself that that had to count for something.
He walked behind the sales counter and bent down to rummage through the shelves behind it. There were two drawers on the right side of the counter. One contained a pricing gun, a roll of packing tape, and a pad of blank invoices. The other drawer was locked.
Carl said, “Get down!”
Taylor glanced up in time to see his brother hiding behind one of the clothing racks at the front of the store, and ducked down as he heard the sound of a hundred thunderous feet passing by on the sidewalk outside. He peeked his head above the top of the counter and watched the mob pass.
Once they had passed, Carl sneaked around the rack and up to the window, watching as they headed south along the street. “You think they’re still looking for us?”