“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. Then, in a softer, apologetic tone, “Look for another gas station. This car can’t keep running on ‘E’ forever.”
“It just occurred to me that finding a gas station is probably not going to help.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no power.”
“What?”
“There’s no power to pump the gas,” he said. “The lights. They died after midnight. You don’t know?”
“I…”
It dawned on her that she had been driving in a daze all morning, oblivious to the fact that the street lights weren’t working.
She stopped the Buick and put the gear in park. She felt tired, helpless, and a part of her wanted to just sit back and wait for darkness and get it over with.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking worriedly over at her. “Are we out of gas?”
“Not yet. But I don’t think we’re going to find a gas station without those things inside. How many have we already passed so far?”
“We can always just get another car.”
She looked over at him. “Another car?”
“All those cars out there,” he said, nodding outside the window. “I don’t think their owners are going to care if we take them.”
She smiled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You would have, sooner or later,” he smiled back.
“Maybe.”
“I should probably tell you that I don’t know how to drive.”
“You don’t?” she said, genuinely surprised.
“I’m fourteen,” he said defensively.
Even younger than I thought…
“Then we better find a car that I’ll like driving,” she said. “Something smaller this time.”
They climbed out of the Buick. Luke had his bat gripped tightly in his right hand, and he swung it around, even as his eyes suspiciously razed the street and buildings around them. The whip-whip noise of the bat making circles in the air was the only sound for blocks.
Kate looked over the hood at him. “I guess we should find a car with keys in it.”
“Unless you can hotwire a car?” he grinned.
“I can’t. Can—”
“No,” he said before she could finish. “My parents were teachers, and I grew up in the suburbs. So no, I don’t know how to hotwire a car. Just in case you were wondering.”
“Like I said, we better find a car with the keys still inside, then.”
They started up the street, but didn’t get more than a few feet before Luke froze and looked over at her, eyes wide with excitement. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen.”
“I am.”
“No, listen.”
Kate stopped moving and listened. Really listened.
She heard the silence. The sounds of tossed-aside newspapers moving along the streets around them. A flock of birds in the sky.
Then, from nowhere, a new sound. A familiar sound.
Police sirens!
They were very faint, but she would recognize that very distinct wail anywhere.
It was coming from their left, from the other side of the I-45…
CHAPTER 10
WILL
They spent a few hours collecting as much ammunition and weapons as they could find, digging among the squad cars parked outside the Wilshire Apartments and spread along West Dallas Street. Civilization seemed to have vanished, leaving behind dried bloodstains and discarded, bloody clothes on the sidewalks and streets to mark their passing.
The SWAT van yielded new batteries for the Motorola radios, extra comms systems, and more ammunition and weapons than they could carry. They tossed everything into one of the few squad cars that wasn’t covered in blood. All the battery chargers were electric, which made them useless if the power stayed down.
If the city looked and felt deserted from a window, it was like stepping into another universe once they were outside. The hush around them was disturbing, and Will was reminded of it every time the soles of his boots squeaked, he dropped something, or closed a car door. After a while, he found himself moving as quietly as possible.
He tried the police radio in the car, but couldn’t raise anyone. Static became his new enemy, at once irritating and omnipresent. By the time Danny returned from his foraging, Will had given up on the radio.
Danny put a couple of Remington 870 tactical shotguns into the trunk, then slid into the front passenger’s seat. He tossed a plastic grocery bag that crunched as it hit the floor. “Anything?”
“Static. Lots of static. Cell towers are probably down, but I should have still been able to reach someone with a radio.”
“Sheriff’s Department?”
“Nope.”
“Government?”
“Nothing on the emergency frequencies.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“Uh huh.”
“Statewide, and probably nationwide, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That seems to be what I’m telling you.”
“Hunh,” Danny said. “That’s not good.”
“Nope.”
“All of that in one night?”
“It looks like it.”
“Damn. That’s kind of impressive. I mean, it sucks, but you gotta admit, that’s really impressive.”
Will nodded. It was impressive.
His mind kept going back to last night, mulling over the way the creatures fought. He recognized the intelligence, the organization, the discipline. And most of all, the planning.
“Well, at least the vending machines still work,” Danny said. He upended the contents of a Funyuns bag into his mouth. “What now?” he asked with a mouth full of crumpled yellow bits.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Go back to the House, see if anyone made it through the night?”
“Captain Optimism,” Will smirked.
“Worth a shot. Even if no one else made it, there are those C4 in the armory we can liberate. You can’t have a Plan Z without C4.”
“When did you suddenly buy into Plan Z?”
“Who says I’m buying? I’m just saying, we can’t have one without the C4.”
“So, the House, then?”
“Unless you got some other place to be.”
“Not at the moment, no.”
Will put the car in gear and started down West Dallas Street, back toward the I-45. He could see the Downtown skyscrapers beyond that, colossal sentries over a city stuck in repose.
He drove slowly. There were too many cars and debris in the streets.
“You drive like an old woman,” Danny said.
“You wanna drive?”
“Pass.”
“Then sit back and shut up.”
Will’s mind was already elsewhere. He had noticed them as soon as they began moving up the street. There were a few of them at first, but the numbers increased until he couldn’t look out the car windows and not see them.
“You see it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Danny said.
The windows. Blinds and shades were squeezed shut, curtains pulled in tight. And where there were no blinds or curtains to close, blankets and furniture had been piled over the windows from inside the buildings. Store fronts, offices, and homes.
Everywhere…
“One night,” Will said. “All of this in one night.” He shook his head. Saying it out loud didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “They must have planned this out for God knows how long.”
“You scared yet?”
“Just about.”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m already shitting my pants.”