He thought about all he had lost in the last day: his house, his friends, his dog, his family. He was all that was left. He stayed awake as long as he could, listening to the shuffling as they passed below him, terrified that one of them would figure out how to climb up at him.
He was drifting off when he heard it shuffling in the leaves below. He knew it was just one. Then, the sound of something hitting wood. A shoe hitting the first step. Then the second step.
Frozen with terror, he tried to scream for help, but all that came out was a gasping crack from his throat.
The steps came up steadier.
Suddenly a hand—a bloodied, mangled hand—came through the hole. Then another. The pale light from the moon gave them a sickly, white-green hue.
Alex tried to scramble away, but he couldn’t. He tried to look away, but his eyes were glued to the opening.
The bloody, distorted, snarling face pulled itself up through the hole.
It was his father. And he had the disease.
He climbed up through the hole, dragging what was left of his legs behind him.
He pulled himself up Alex’s legs. Alex was paralyzed with fear.
He pulled Alex’s face to his own, a thick mix of blood and spit oozing onto him.
Cold, dead white eyes stared into him. Recognizing his son, but not caring. He raised his head to bite into his son’s neck ...
SNAP!
Alex woke with a jolt and quickly rolled to get away from his diseased father…
…and fell into confusing space, until he hit the ground with a thud. In a painful daze, he looked around. The sun was shining.
Then: blackness.
DAY 4
ALEX
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. Do you even know this kid?”
“Yes. And what do you want to do, drop him here? Real nice.”
“No, I didn’t want to go in the first place. This is stupid. This is really, really stupid.”
“We’re fine.”
Alex was being carried. He opened his eyes and then shut them against the sun. “Hello?”
“He’s awake.”
“No, really?”
They dropped him. He hit the ground hard, but ignored the pain to deal with more pressing issues, like who was carrying him. He shaded his eyes from the sun to see who it was.
It was two other kids. Kids he didn’t know.
No. He recognized the boy from school. David. David something. He looked at the other one—a tall girl, all in black and not too happy. He had no idea who she was.
“You all right, Alex?” David asked him.
“Uh ... what?” Alex asked.
“Oh good.” The girl sighed, walking away. “He broke his brain.”
David shook his head. “Alex, are you okay?”
Alex’s head was killing him and his whole body ached. He remembered falling out of a tree after a nightmare. It had felt so real; the image of his father’s bloodied face still lingered when he closed his eyes.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he lied.
“Okay, good,” David said. “Think you can walk?”
Alex moved his legs back and forth. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
“What were you doing in the woods, anyway?” the girl asked him.
“I was hiding,” he said simply.
“Well, you did a real bang up job with that!” she snapped, turning away again. “Jesus, all that noise! You’re lucky we found you before the deadies did!”
“Deadies?” Alex asked.
“Stop calling them that,” David said. “It’s a ridiculous word.”
Alex paused for a moment. “What noise? What noises was I making? Did I say anything?”
“Not you,” the girl said. “Him.” She pointed down at Alex’s feet.
Alex sat up. Tears welled up despite his shock. “She’s a girl,” he said. Shadow sat looking at him, her head tilted. His mind raced: how?
“So,” David said, somewhat awkwardly. “The good news is, we found you because of the noise that she was making.”
Alex sat, waiting for the bad news. David paused.
The girl sighed. “The bad news is the deadies heard it too, and now they’re following us. So good job.”
“Please stop calling them that!” David said, frustrated. “You’re making them sound like the bad guys on some kids’ show or something!”
“Oh,” his sister replied, “you got a better name for them?”
“Mudmen,” Alex said absently, thinking back to his nightmares; nightmares of creatures attacking people, turning them into themselves. People he knew. “They’re mudmen.”
“Mudmen,” David said, mulling it over. “I like it. Sounds more like a real thing.”
“I didn’t call them deadies to meet your approval,” Nicole said. “It’s just what they are. They are dead. They are not made of mud. Morons.”
“Deadies sounds like ... like they’re from the Care Bears!” David said, laughing.
“I wouldn’t know, spaz!”
“Yeah right, Nicole! You watched the movie last summer with Kim and Lindsay!”
“Kim and Lindsay are six!”
“Exactly!”
Alex was alarmed by how calm these two siblings were acting, even though they had just told him that more of those things were coming after them. He looked down at Shadow, who now followed along obediently, as if she had never left his side.
How did you get out of there? He tried to visualize the moment at Mark’s house, but now it seemed almost cartoonish. Not nearly as terrifying as it had been. Two bumbling, mindless, drooling maniacs, chasing a dog around the small room, almost like an episode of Scooby-Doo. There were windows in Mark’s basement, but way too high for Shadow to get out. The back hatch! They sometimes left it open for Buster! Maybe you gave them the slip and snuck out that way? Maybe they found it too? Maybe they’re ...
“So, where are we going, guys?” he asked, forcing out of his mind the image of those crazed, murderous monsters now roaming the streets.
David looked at him, smiling. “Our fortress!”
Nicole stopped. David and Alex also stopped and turned to face her. “It’s a community centre, David,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not a fortress.”
Leaning over to Alex, David kept smiling. “Not yet.”
KAITLYN
“We need to do something.”
Kaitlyn overheard Hannah’s father from downstairs.
She could tell he was frustrated after being stuck in the house—staring out the window—for three days
