“Everyone hurry inside!” A deep voice called from a bay door.
Quinn and Lucy directed us abruptly into the warehouse. We followed quietly, the door closed behind us. We heard more screams enter the evening air. The inside of the warehouse was dimly lit, cots and makeshift beds were spread across the open dock. There were aisles upon aisles of food stacked on pallets that reached to the ceiling. The warehouse was enormous with people wandering around all over the place. Some were sleeping on cots and some were eating at tables. I mentally counted twenty plus women, men and a few teens. There were no infants or children to be found.
“Please follow me,” Quinn stated and walked down a hall.
We followed at a close distance. Lucy caught up to us and walked next to me.
“I didn’t realize you and Si were together!” She winked at me.
I felt my face redden as Silas scanned the floor. He pretended not to hear but I knew he had.
“We aren’t together, I mean not like that! We’re just friends!”
Lucy smiled her movie star smile and skipped forward to Quinn. She wrapped her arm around his. We walked through many doors, down stairs and through hallways. Finally, we entered into a big white room with bright lights. There were two people in the room a stout man in a white lab coat and a medium built woman with grey hair. She was gazing into a microscope and didn’t look up when we entered. In the center of the room lay a man, he was clearly dead. His skin ashen, dried crusty blood exited his nose, mouth, ears and eyes. A bullet hole left a nasty wound on the side of his head. I examined the body, I hadn’t been so close to a dead screamer. The putrid odor was awful and made my nose burn. Silas spoke with the man in the white lab coat.
“Hi, my name is Dr. Nickels. It is refreshing to see new faces. It has been weeks since this all started and you two are the first we’ve seen. I am going to need to examine the two of you.”
I considered Dr. Nickels for some time, I didn’t want to be examined, especially by someone I didn’t know. I felt Silas tense by my side.
“What kind of exam are you talking about?” Silas questioned.
“No need to worry, it is a basic examination. We will need a few blood samples and I’ll check your vitals. The two of you are the first to arrive; alive that is. We need to make sure you are well.”
Over the next hour Dr. Nickels examined us. We were poked and prodded with needles and other medical instruments. Dr. Nickels and his assistant Mabel took notes and spoke quietly to each other. For the most part they ignored us and treated us like test subjects. Quinn sat at a desk in a corner of the room. He had his feet lazily planted on the desk and was reading a book. Lucy grew bored after a few minutes and walked out the door but not before kissing Quinn on the lips. I was internally smiling knowing Lucy and Quinn were a couple. Something about Lucy’s cheeriness made me cringe and want to hit something or someone. How could anyone be happy these days? Also how could anyone look that good when the world was falling apart? I felt stress was aging me at an alarming rate. I guess I looked to be in my twenties by now. In a few weeks I’d probably look like I was fifty. Okay maybe I was exaggerating a little bit. Dr. Nickels distracted my wandering mind by finally giving us the okay to leave.
“Quinn,” Dr. Nickels called as we exited the room.
We all turned and regarded the doctor with curiosity.
“Would you please come back after you show Miss Layla and Mr. Silas to the cafeteria? I need to speak with you in private.”
Quinn nodded his head and said, “sure thing Doc.”
Quinn spoke with lots of enthusiasm while he showed us around our new surroundings.
“The warehouse has proven to be our saving grace. A bunch of us were here working when the world went to shit. A few of us watched the people around us become extremely ill and then unconscious. We thought the sick would die but after a week or two, depending on the individual they woke and were better. Most of the sick have changed but I know you already know that. Some of the sick woke up and have some unique abilities. They have been struggling to cope and learn how to control them.”
I asked, “You mean not all of you were sick?”
“We all had one form of the illness or another, but not all of us woke up with abilities, some turned into the ravenous creatures that lurk at night. Some of us, like myself woke up and are the same as we were before we were sick,” Quinn stated.
“What did you do when the sick turned into the night screamers?” I questioned.
“Night Screamers?” Quinn inquired with a quizzical expression.
“That’s what we call them, “Night Screamers.” You know, they come out at night and well, scream and kill.”
I found the last word to be sour in my mouth.
“All right, I like that, Night Screamers! Sounds about right from what we all have heard and seen,” he said laughing.
He rubbed his gruffy beard then ran his hands through his shoulder length hair. At closer inspection I could see little white hairs poking their way through all the blackish brown in his beard and on his head. It appeared stress was the cause of Quinn’s premature aging; stress seemed to play a role in everyone’s life now.
He continued on, “We thought the people that were not waking up had died. They didn’t have a pulse, they smelt rotten and their skin was grey. The doctor suggested we remove them from the warehouse. We didn’t want to spread the illness to anyone else.”
Quinn continued, “It was pure luck we moved them when we did. The sun was almost completely gone by the time we loaded the last one in the back of a tractor trailer truck. We had closed the trailer and were getting ready to drive the bodies away from the warehouse when the first screams echoed in the night. The screams, like nothing we had ever heard. Moments later wailing screams came seeping through the back of the trailer followed by banging, scratching and smashing. We hurried inside leaving the people in the trailer.”
I felt myself tense hanging onto each word Quinn said.
“Thankfully they didn’t break out of the trailer that night. The next morning when we went to check on them they appeared to be dead again. They were laying on the floor of the trailer quiet and unmoving. We drove them far from the warehouse and left them in the trailer.”
We entered the cafeteria and found people gathered and speaking in hushed whispers. Everyone stopped speaking and stared at us as we entered.
Quinn lowered his voice and spoke, “We have to be very quiet in here.”
He pointed to the ceiling which revealed barbed wires and boarded skylights. Then pointed to boarded up doors that led outside.
“This room echos and we don’t want to take any unnecessary chances. We have had a few close calls with the screamers. We try and keep it as quiet as possible at night.”
Quinn stopped at a table where a few teenagers were gathered.
“You two can sit here with Sara, Hannah, Wes and Greg.”
“Greg?” Silas stepped forward.
“Silas! No way man!”
The two half hugged and slapped each other on the backs like old pals. Greg was tall like Silas and was wearing a KHS basketball jersey. The back of the jersey had a Number 24 and the name Lang across the top.
“It looks like the two of you will fit right in,” Quinn said, turning and walking back in the direction we had come from.
Silas and Greg sat together catching up like long lost friends. I sat quietly and half listened to them converse. My mind wandered off and I wanted more information to what was happening. Quinn seemed like a nice guy and open to share what he knew with us. Dr. Nickels on the other hand seemed reserved. I doubted he would relinquish information to a teenage girl. I glanced around the room and watched people converse. I felt as though everyone in the room had their eyes on me. I was restless sitting there, time slowly ticked by. Hannah passed a plate of food to me a large slice of vegetarian chicken, corn, peaches and bread. I eyed the vegetarian chicken and wondered why they didn’t name it something else. Why name it chicken if it wasn’t chicken? Hannah also handed me a tall glass of water. The food was unappealing. I consumed the water in seconds, leaving the wannabe chicken and sides untouched.