Never again…
He glanced back at Lara, crouched low in front of her seat, clutching her Glock in one hand. She mouthed, “What now?”
He shook his head, then looked back at Danny standing behind his truck’s open door, M4A1 at the ready, eyes scanning the road and trees. Carly was crouched low in the passenger seat of the second truck, and the two girls were invisible in the back, just the way they were trained.
“I don’t see anything,” Danny said.
Will looked down the road at the bodies again. He focused on the one in the center. Big, about six-two, with a thick, shaggy beard and dark curly hair. The man lay on the road with his face toward Will. He had been shot. More than once, from the placement of blood underneath his body. A hole in the man’s leg, another one somewhere along his shoulder. Dull black eyes were staring back at him—dead?
“I see two bodies,” Will said into the radio. “Gunshots. One’s one hundred percent dead. The other one is probably dead. Wait—”
He saw movement from the big man. It hadn’t been much — just enough to get his attention. He focused on the man’s right hand, waiting—there. The man had moved his pinky finger. As Will watched, the finger moved again, then a third time.
“Looks like the second body’s still kicking,” Will said.
“I see bullet holes in the Jeep behind us,” Danny said. “Shell casings along the shoulder. Looks like a firefight.”
Will scanned the trees to his left and right again, then made up his mind. “Cover me.”
“Go for it,” Danny said.
Will slipped out from behind the door and rushed toward the man in the middle of the road. He passed the first body, which didn’t move as he glided past it. As he moved forward, he heard a truck door slam farther behind him, then quick footsteps chasing — Danny, moving forward from his truck to take over the position at the door of Will’s Ranger.
Will moved quickly, keeping low, toward the survivor in the road.
The man looked worse up close, though not by much. The hot sun had been baking him for a while. Amazingly, he was still alive, chest moving, if just slightly. Will crouched next to him and felt for a pulse. There. It wasn’t very strong, but it was enough.
The man’s eyes fixed on Will. Cracked lips struggled to make a sound.
“You don’t look like a decoy,” Will said, smiling down at the man.
The man moved his head side to side. Or tried to, anyway.
No.
“You sure?” Will asked.
The man nodded. Or something that resembled a nod.
Yes.
Will watched the man for a moment, trying to read his soul through dull brown eyes. He was in his mid-thirties, but there was a lot of mileage there. Will saw a stubbornness that bordered on being impressive.
His radio squawked and he heard Lara’s voice: “Will, if he’s still alive, we can’t just leave him out here.”
Will considered his options. Saving this man’s life didn’t fit into his priorities, which were simple: stay alive, and keep everyone else alive, too. Will could leave him now and not think about it ever again. Smart people with medical degrees called it triage. Will called it practical survival.
His radio squawked again, and he heard Danny’s voice this time: “What’s the call, Kemosabe?”
“I’m trying to decide,” Will said.
“Decide faster. I hate standing out here with my nuts in my hands.”
“Uh, great visual, babe,” Carly said through the radio.
“I love you, too,” Danny said.
Will realized the man was saying something. Or trying to. He was drooling blood, and would have been coughing up blood, too, if he had the strength.
How was this guy even still alive?
Will leaned in closer. “I can’t hear you. Say again.”
“Sandra,” the man said, with as much life as he could muster. “Sandra…”
CHAPTER 4
JOSH
He remembered that night vividly. How could he forget? It was the night the world as he knew it died. Oh sure, the planet kept turning and the sun kept rising in the east and setting in the west, and the oceans certainly kept lapping (or whatever it was that oceans did), but everything else was irrevocably changed.
It was Thursday, which meant Date Night for his parents. He was left home alone — because it would be Family Night if he went along, and that defeated the purpose of Date Night — which was fine with him. He didn’t feel the need to see his parents canoodling or exchanging baby talk over a meal…and in public. No, thanks.
It didn’t happen right away.
At first there was the news about police actions from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As soon as night fell, the news seemed to just shut down, and Josh resorted to following reports on the Internet, which was blowing up with rumors of crazy stuff happening around the world. Twitter, Facebook, and guys uploading videos onto YouTube. The word “impossible” kept coming up over and over again.
Josh remembered sitting in his room, staring slack-jawed and taking it all in. It was almost like watching a movie, because things like that didn’t happen in his small town of Ridley, Texas. And if it didn’t happen outside his window, then it didn’t feel real.
Then it got real, real fast when he heard police sirens start up around town. It wasn’t like Ridley had a big police department. They had a sheriff and five deputies, and even that was overkill. So it was a rarity to hear police sirens, especially one that didn’t seem to ever end.
But it still didn’t feel real until he heard the loud pounding on the front door. He ran down, expecting to see his parents, but instead there was Gaby, all five-seven and long blonde hair of her, screaming, makeup smeared and bawling her eyes out, and yet somehow still managing to look like the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She stood in his doorway and the rush of information came between spurts of crying and hysterics. Her parents were dead — or dying — and something, some creature, was in her house.
That was when Josh saw it.
This thing, all black pruned skin, hairless, racing across the street toward his house. The street lights were still on then, and the sight of the bloodsucker made Josh freeze in place. It was such an anomaly, like one of those bad B-movies he sometimes caught late at night suddenly come to life.
Gaby must have seen the look on his face, because she turned and saw the bloodsucker. She rushed inside the house, almost pushing him out of the way. “Close the door, Josh! Close the door!” she screamed at him.
Josh didn’t close the door. He couldn’t move. He was frozen and he couldn’t take his eyes off the bloodsucker as it bounded across the street toward him. Gaby was the one who grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, then snatched the door and slammed it shut and pushed the deadbolt in place.
Almost right away, the creature crashed into the door and they felt the wall shaking against the impact. It was then Josh snapped out of it, just in time to hear the living room window shattering.
Josh saw Gaby’s face, even more terrified than his own. Then something must have kicked in and he knew what he had to do. He grabbed Gaby’s hand, stunning her for a moment, and led her toward the back of the house.
She might have asked him where they were going, but he couldn’t hear anything at the moment. His ears were pounding and his heart was rampaging against his chest. He thought he might have heard glass breaking behind them. He wasn’t sure. But he was sure of where to go, and that was the basement. He saw the door coming up and pushed at it and it opened, because his dad never locked it.