Kate knotted the bag of clothing, then tossed it on her cot. She went straight to the desk and began rummaging through its drawers for a lighter, a book of matches—anything that would catch fire. Blessedly, she located a Zippo with the Marines insignia on the side, and she silently thanked a God that she wasn’t so sure she believed in at the moment. She slipped the lighter into her pocket.
“What if they’re dead?” Molly wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
Kate reeled around to her. “Listen—if those things do come back here, I don’t think it’s a good idea that you stay down here.”
“It’s safe down here.”
“No,” Kate said. “It’s not. There’s only one door. If they come to it, where are you gonna go?”
“Are they inside?”
“No.” But she wondered. “I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“Oh, my God…”
“I took the kids to the sally port—it’s where they keep the cars—”
“The cars don’t work,” Molly moaned. She wasn’t listening anymore.
“It’s safer there. They’re hiding in the cars. I think you should go there, too. If anything gets inside, there’s more than one way out from the sally port. Plus, it’s made of concrete, like a garage.” She drummed her knuckles against the drywall. “Not like this Sheetrock shit.”
“You’re talking too fast.”
Kate squatted down in front of the woman. “Molly, I think you should come with me to the sally port. Do you understand?”
But Molly was shaking her head. “Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere.”
For one instant, Kate considered snatching her by the hair and dragging her upstairs. Had the woman not been pregnant, she might have done just that. But despite her terror, Molly had fight enough left in her; dragging her up the stairs might prove dangerous, even lethal, for one or both of them.
Smirking, Kate stood. “No,” she said. “Fuck you.”
Back upstairs, she gathered some food from the commissary—bags of pretzels and potato chips, a six-pack of Mountain Dew, granola bars, an uneaten Italian sub wrapped in tinfoil in the fridge—and, burdened with the halogen lamp, bag of clothes, and the shotgun by its strap over one shoulder, she carried the stuff back to the sally port.
She expected the kids to still be whimpering in the backseat of the cruiser, but when she opened the door she was startled to find them sitting stock still, their heads slightly cocked in the direction of the open door.
“Jesus,” Kate said, dumping the food and clothes into the foot well. She reached out and grabbed the collar of Charlie’s shirt, pulled him toward her. “Come here.” Slipping a hand down his collar, she felt around the smooth flesh of his shoulder blades.
“Stop it,” he whined. “Your hand’s cold.”
“I’m sorry.” She withdrew her hand, uncomfortable.
“We’re just tired,” Charlie said. Eerily, he sounded much older than he was.
“Here,” Kate said, opening the bag and pulling out the various articles of clothes. “I grabbed whatever was there. Put these on and stay warm. It’s cold in here. Just keep warm, okay?” She looked over to Cody. “How’s your headache?”
“Hurts.”
“Okay, okay. Todd and the others will be back soon, okay?”
“And then what?” Charlie said.
Kate did not have an answer for him. “And here,” she continued, filling their laps with the junk food and sodas. “Eat if you’re hungry, but don’t get sick.” She slipped back out of the car.
“Where are you going?” Cody said.
“I need to go back out into the hall, sweetheart. I need to check things out.”
“With the gun?” Cody sounded so small.
Kate nodded. “Yeah. With the gun.” She looked at Charlie. “Keep your sister warm.”
In the hall, she went around to every window she could find, peering out. The pebbled glass made it difficult to see what exactly was going on out there. At the double doors, she checked and rechecked the lock on the inside of the doors, even though she hadn’t unlocked it since Todd and the others left.
Get the fuck back here, Todd.
Nonetheless, she managed to drag one of the secretary desks out into the foyer and prop it up in front of the door. It might not stop the possessed townspeople from breaking in but it might slow them down. Enough to take a few down and then reload the shotgun, anyway.
She hoped.
Returning to the darkened storage room, she began looking around for things with which to board up the windows. There were more than enough wooden crates and the slats seemed sturdy enough; it was locating a hammer and nails that proved difficult. Eventually, though, she found some in a tool chest under an old poker table. Quickly, she set to work prying apart the crates, working like a demon and sweating through the layers of her clothes.
She stopped only when she felt a cold breeze at her back.
Holding the hammer up by her face as a weapon, she spun around and faced the darkness. Only stacked boxes caroused in the shadows, leaning into one another like deteriorating architecture. She bent and groped for the shotgun that she’d set on the floor, walking her fingers across its girth before snatching it up and propping the hilt beneath her right armpit.
I’m just scared and jumpy. I’m alone. There’s no one here.
But was she? Was she alone?
One of those things had been trying to come in through that pipe, she recalled. Had Charlie not seen it…had I not plugged it up…
She went to the wall to see if the oil rag was still jammed into the mouth of the exposed pipe. It was.
But there could be more.
The thought caused goose bumps to break out along her arms.
Frantically, she searched all the walls, and even moved heavy boxes out of the way to make sure there weren’t any more exposed pipes. Satisfied that there weren’t—and exhausted from the exercise—she paused to give herself a few moments to catch her breath.
Something was moving across the floor.
Her hand vibrating like a seismograph, she lifted the halogen lamp to better illuminate the room.
At first she didn’t see it—a dark patch in a world of dark patches; a slick of spilled oil on the concrete—but then it moved, betraying all sense of the inanimate, and Kate uttered a sharp cry. The halogen lamp fell from her hand and struck the floor. There was a shattering sound and the room went pitch black.
Oh my God oh my God oh my God what was that thing?
She’d caught only the vaguest glimpse of it, yet its image resonated like the afterimage of a flashbulb in her mind—a meaty twist of fibrous tissue, perhaps as long and as thick as an infant’s arm, that arched like an overgrown inchworm along the floor while trailing a slick of glistening mucus behind it…
And now it was somewhere in here with her.
In the dark.
Oh my God oh my God oh my God what was that THING?
Trying not to panic, she began patting down her pockets until she felt the bulge of the Zippo lighter in her hip pocket. She tweezed it out with two fingers, flipped open the lid, and rolled the flint wheel. A narrow white flame issued out of the lighter, illuminating a circle roughly three feet in diameter around her.
Then she heard it—a sandpapery shhhh as it dragged itself across the floor, followed by the tacky peel of the sticky mucus. The sound was like an old man smacking his lips in his sleep.
Kate squatted and brought the flame closer to the floor. She could see it, less than a foot away from her, coming toward her. Disgusted, she thought of dried meats hanging from deli ceilings, the phallic protrusion of cured, uncut salami. Acid burned at the back of her throat.