Then he thought about the pretty girl he’d seen the other day at Stonewall. She’d had beautiful red hair, long and flowing, and skin so pale it reminded him of Snow White, one of the few VHS tapes Ma still owned.
Ma and Pa. They’re gone now. You’re all alone.
He didn’t have to be alone though. Thomas knew he could go to Stonewall Forge and rescue those other kids. He wasn’t sure how he’d do it, but he could. He could show that pretty girl how manly he was.
Thomas sat up and breathed in the forest air. He wasn’t afraid of animals. He never had been. He’d gotten bitten by a copperhead once and barely flinched. Leaning over the edge of the house once more, he saw Pa’s truck in the driveway. It was still loaded with all their work equipment. Once inside that old rusty truck, Thomas wouldn’t be afraid of anything.
Carefully, he climbed down from the roof and peeked through the bathroom window. It was empty.
“Moses,” he called out, to make sure the dog wasn’t around.
All was silent. No sound of the dog’s paws racing through the house to take a giant chunk out of his neck. No sound at all.
“Moses,” he called once more.
When he was certain the dog was gone, he climbed through the bathroom window and into the house. The bathroom door was completely destroyed. The dog had chewed its way through the wood. Blood and saliva were all over the floor along with random clutter the dog had knocked over as it searched for the boy.
Thomas took his time moving through the house, always ready to run for that bathroom window if need be.
Nothing attacked him. All the animals had run toward the gunshots.
It wasn’t until Thomas entered his parents’ bedroom that he was struck with the realization he’d never see them again. They were both gone. They’d left the house and were out there somewhere searching for other people to infect. They were like zombies.
Pa was an asshole a lot of the time and Ma was much too overbearing, but they were his parents, and they were gone.
Thomas shook himself out of his stupor. He’d have plenty of time to think about his parents later. Right now, he needed to find Pa’s shotgun, which was always under his bed, and get to that campus. Once he’d retrieved the gun and the box of shells from the nightstand, he ran to the truck, took the keys out of the visor, and fired up the engine.
Scrambling to roll up the windows, Thomas sat in the driveway for a few seconds and waited. The headlights shined over the trees and he thought any second a giant crowd of animals might come rushing at him. Then he thought about the bats that often swooped down over his house. What if they could be infected? He could fight off land creatures, but what if the ones in the sky came after him?
He hoped they’d had enough sense to stay far away from the madness down below. Land mammals had no way of escaping getting too close to other creatures, but bats and birds… they could stick to the treetops and watch the animals down below battle it out for supremacy.
Vultures. They would be the ones to spread it to the sky if whatever was infecting people and animals liked feathers too. He could imagine one of those sick, nasty birds picking at the flesh of an infected, dead animal.
As soon as the thought came to him, he pushed it away and stepped on the gas, throwing the old truck forward. He hopped up and down in his seat as he drove toward Stonewall Forge.
“I’m coming for you, you bastards!” he shouted. “I’m coming to get revenge for what you did to Ma and Pa.”
Andre Pete stared through the window and waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he supposed the animals would get tired of sitting there and either decide to attack or flee.
“What if we go out there and you start shooting them?” Eggo asked.
Andre turned and looked at the young man like he’d lost his mind. Robbie thought he might reach out and slap Eggo for asking such a dumb question. After a moment of silence, Eggo shrugged as if to say, “It was only a suggestion.”
“I’d never be able to hit enough of them,” Andre replied. “I might get a couple of the larger animals, like them black bears right there, but those small sonsabitches would be on me in a matter of seconds.”
“What if you got to higher ground?” Nitsy asked. “Like up on the school’s roof.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Robbie said. Andre seemed to be thinking about it, so Robbie continued, “If we go out the door, real fast, before any of those things have a chance to attack us, maybe Eggo and I could boost you up onto the roof and then run back in here and lock the door.”
“It’s risky,” Andre said.
“So is sitting here,” Robbie replied. “How long do you think it’s gonna be before one of those things, or all of them, find a way in here. If they all started attacking the door, we’d be fucked.”
“How many bullets do you have?” Eggo asked.
“I don’t know,” Andre said. “Quite a few. That ain’t the problem. It’s making sure I don’t piss them off enough to come barreling through this door. You think this rake lodged between the handles is going to keep you safe for long?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Robbie replied.
“Right now, they’re not interested in you,” Andre reminded him. “And you’re in a damn cafeteria so at least you have food.”
“That’ll run out,” Nitsy said.
“It was a mouse!” Bradley announced. Usually, he was quiet, so when he spoke, the others listened. Everyone turned to look at him. “None of you asked what happened in the music room. It was a mouse. Phyllis saw it too. Somehow, it got into that room, and it jumped on Lance. He changed instantly. He became one of them. How long do you think it’ll take for a mouse to make its way in here?”
Everyone was quiet.
“A mouse,” Andre repeated under his breath. “A goddamn mouse. All right, I’ll do it, but we need to be smart about this. And fast.”
When Andre said they needed to be smart about it, apparently he meant smart was using Robbie’s idea of boosting him up on the roof. Now that they were standing at the door with every intention of putting the plan into place, it seemed stupid. He and Eggo would interlace their fingers, the way young kids did when trying to help a friend reach the cookies on the top shelf in the kitchen, Andre would step into their hands, and they would shove upward. That was supposed to launch Andre onto the roof.
“I don’t know about this,” Robbie said as they were about to open the door.
“What do you mean?” Andre asked.
“Dude, you’re like two hundred and something pounds,” Robbie said.
“Two-twenty,” Andre informed him.
“We’ve got this,” Eggo assured them. “If we work together, we’ll get him up there.”
“I’m just saying maybe we should find something here in the cafeteria that he could, I don’t know, climb.”
“There’s no time for that,” Nitsy said as she put her hands on Robbie’s cheeks and pulled him in close for a kiss. He looked at her in the dark cafeteria, her hair gone and the cap she’d worn below the wig keeping whatever real hair she had hidden, and he still thought she was beautiful. She had the face of an angel. If angel’s wielded fiery swords. This chick was braver than he could ever be, and he knew if she were strong enough to lift Andre, she would be out there instead of him. That gave him the strength to do it. “Hurry back to me,” she added with another kiss.
Andre Pete considered telling the kids they didn’t have time for all that lovey-dovey nonsense. They were at war, and the enemy was head lice that liked to chew their way into their host’s brain. At least that’s what it seemed like they did. Yet, as ridiculous as it seemed to be kissing at a time like this, he couldn’t bring himself to break the two apart. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in real love.