The Darkest Days (Death & Decay Book 0.5) (3 page)

“The head!” Wyatt shouted. A half a dozen
brutally disfigured monsters converged on them at once. Others had
noticed the commotion they had created. “Shoot them in the
head!”

Wyatt cursed as his first shot missed its
target. The wild animals were a couple of yards away, but their
unpredictable, staggering gait made it difficult to aim for such a
small target. As the limping man moved closer, his arms swung up as
he reached for Wyatt. This time, when Wyatt fired his weapon, the
bullet found its mark.

In the time it had taken for him to dispatch the
one attacker, a handful of others had quickly joined their ranks.
With each second that passed, their odds of any positive outcome
became more and more slim.

Suddenly he saw it. A small gap opened in their
ring of captors.

“Let’s go!” Without waiting, Wyatt grabbed
Trevor’s collar and dragged him along. After only a few steps,
Trevor turned to follow.

As they dodged between the groping hands, Wyatt
assessed their situation. Behind them, more of the deranged moved
down the road towards the station. The front of the station was
swarming with people as they tried to escape the vicious maws at
their heels. Neither path would be easy.

“Cover my back,” Wyatt shouted over din. “I’ll
make a path towards the station. Move fast and stick close.”

“Clear!”

The shots rang out as they slowly pushed
forward. The mass of bodies raged like a storming sea with the
combatants shifting and moving unpredictably. Wyatt’s heart raced
as his eyes frantically and impossibly tried to catch every
movement. He fought down the urge to simply run for safety. More
than anything, he wanted out of the expanse of snarling face and
grasping hands.

In quick succession, he fired four shots and
cleared a relatively wide path. “Let’s go!”

They stepped forward as a group of the ravenous
monsters managed to tackle a man to the ground. The man’s screams
cut off abruptly as the group tore into him. In the blink of an
eye, the man disappeared underneath a pile of the gluttonous
creatures.

With the brief pause in their progress, the
pathway closed up. Wyatt’s heart sank as their path
disappeared.

A cry just over his shoulder ripped his
attention from their desperate situation. He whirled around to see
Trevor’s forearm gripped in the teeth of a ragged, middle-aged
woman. Without thinking, he brought his gun to her forehead and
pulled the trigger.

“Shit!” Trevor could only stare at his arm as
trails of blood ran from the wound to drip off his fingers. “She
bit me!”

“Come on! We have to move now!” Trevor’s gun had
fallen from his hand somewhere into the fray of feet.

Wyatt’s shots became more erratic as he tried to
cover both of them while they ran through the crowd. One down. The
second target toppled as the bullet slammed into its shoulder and
spun the body around. The action was enough to open a path. He no
longer cared about whether or not they were down for good. He would
never be able to end all the fighting by himself.

The third shot hit a woman in the hip, causing
her leg to collapse. The doors to the station were close now. Wyatt
could see three people at the doors. Two of them were firing into
the crowd, holding the monsters at bay, while the third was
snatching up survivors and taking them inside.

“Thomas!” Wyatt called out with relief as an
older man with a small paunch and salt-and-pepper hair stumbled
directly into their path. The relief quickly turned to horror as
Thomas turned towards him. Blood was plastered across his face like
a mask. Thomas sneered as he caught sight of them and charged.
Wyatt backpedaled a few steps and ran into Trevor.

How could he raise his weapon against a fellow
officer?

“Thomas, stop right there!” he shouted
uselessly.

This was a friend, someone he had sat and
laughed with. Someone he trusted and respected. Someone he had gone
to for advice when he needed an experienced opinion. No recognition
showed in the man’s face. His eyes were blank and lifeless.

How could he kill his friend?

As the gap between them closed, taking with it
the opportunity to react, Wyatt raised his gun and fired. The
bullet grazed the side of the officer’s head, but he didn’t even
flinch. Instead he pushed towards them, arms outstretched as he
reached for them, teeth working in anticipation. Another scream
tore from Thomas’s throat, and all traces of the man disappeared as
the raging beast took control.

Wyatt slowly breathed out as he squeezed the
trigger again. This time instead of a deafening roar a sharp click
emanated from the gun. His heart leapt into his throat as it
clicked uselessly twice more.

Empty. The magazine was empty.

Thomas leapt forward to close the last few feet.
Without thinking, Wyatt changed his grip on the gun, wielding it
like a club. Even through the clamor, he could make out the crunch
of bone as the man’s skull caved in.

There was no time to reload. The closer they got
to the station, the more intense the fighting became and the more
of them there were. In one smooth motion, he holstered his weapon
and pulled his asp, a compact, collapsible baton, from its place.
With a quick flick of the wrist, it unfolded from its compact eight
inches to nearly two feet in length.

The weapon was short but powerful. Though it had
served him well before, it was only meant for debilitating nerve
and joint strikes. In fact, while being trained to use the weapon,
they had been instructed countless times not to strike the
head.

His first swing was too rigid. To elicit a good
strike, the arm had to be lose and rubbery. With each successive
swing, the practiced rhythm fell into place. Now, the one place he
was forbidden to strike had become his target as he forced his way
through the snarling mass.

“Wyatt! I’ve got you covered!” The cry revived
his tired muscles, and for the first time since that afternoon he
smiled.

Tightening his grip on Trevor, Wyatt propelled
himself forward. The monsters fell away as he bulldozed ahead. In
mere seconds, they stood with Andrew and another veteran officer
named Stephen Woodland. Andrew and Stephen continued to keep the
monsters at bay.

“Go inside.” Wyatt pushed Trevor towards the
doors. “See if someone can look at your arm.”

He turned and drew his weapon again. With
practiced deftness, he reloaded the gun. Wyatt took his place in
the opening between his two comrades.

As Stephen paused to reload his own weapon, the
vicious monsters took the opportunity to push forward. Wyatt swung
around to cover Stephen as he slapped the clip into place.

A half a dozen yards of empty space was all that
separated them and the hungry, chopping maws of the deranged mass.
The rule of thumb was that an officer needed twenty-one feet to
draw and fire his weapon if he was incredibly accurate, further if
he wasn’t. The monsters were much closer than that.

The mass seethed angrily as they attempted to
find any weak link. Dozens of rabid people snarled as they tried to
clamor over the fallen to get their hands on the few who were
unchanged. Wyatt could no longer see the small skirmishes that had
played out while he made his way to the front doors. All that
remained were the vicious howls and angry faces.

As Andrew paused to reload, the monsters once
again crept closer.

“We need to get inside!” Wyatt reloaded his own
weapon with his last clip.

“These things aren’t just going to go away!”
Andrew shouted back.

“We can’t hold them off forever,” Stephen
agreed. “We’ll regroup inside and figure out what to do.” The three
men nodded and simultaneously took slow, careful steps as they
moved towards the doors.

Andrew was the first to the door and he ducked
inside. Stephen quickly followed. Each continued to lay down cover
fire from behind the doorframe. Carefully inching back until he was
through the doorway, Wyatt looked out of the large glass
windows.

As Wyatt hurriedly pulled the door shut, wide,
terrified eyes stared up at him from between the mass of legs.
Immediately, he threw the door back open. Three shots burst from
his weapon, each followed by a thud as one of the deranged fell. He
reached out and snatched a tiny wrist from between two of the
bodies. Without waiting, he pulled the small figures into his arms
and charged back through the door.

“What the hell was that?” Stephen shouted as he
pulled the door closed and clicked the lock into place. Wyatt bent
down and deposited his charges on the ground.

“Holy crap!” Andrew exclaimed. “How did they
make it through the lunatics?”

Wyatt looked over the two children. “Are you
hurt?” he asked gently. The fair-haired boy jumped as people began
to throw themselves against the glass doors. His eyes grew
impossibly wide as they focused just over Wyatt’s shoulder and his
sister a bit closer to him.

The little girl’s silence was more
heart-wrenching than her screams could have been. Her eyes were
squeezed shut as if she could will the world away if she couldn’t
see it. Tears streamed down her cheeks, a testament to her silent
fear. Still clutched tightly in her small hands was the purple
unicorn. She clung to it as tightly as she clung to her
brother.

“Look at me.” The command was gentle as Wyatt
gave the boy’s hand a soft squeeze. His white shirt was no longer
white, but dirty and covered in gore.

As the boy’s gaze returned to him, he repeated
the question: “Are you hurt?”

“I-I don’t think so.” Both children were
splattered with blood, but Wyatt couldn’t see any wounds on either
of them.

“Alright, go find a spot in the hallway and I’ll
check on you soon.” He gave the boy a gentle nudge towards the
long, wide hallway that wound through the building.

The boy’s hand shot out and grabbed ahold of
Wyatt. “Don’t leave us.” The quick gesture took hold of Wyatt’s
heart. The boy was tough. To have survived the massacre outside, he
had to be. But in the end he was still just a child.

Wyatt squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “I have to
make sure we’re all safe in here. I’ll come find you soon. I
promise.” After a moment, the boy nodded and reluctantly turned.
The sea of people who crowded the hall almost instantly swallowed
him.

Wyatt turned back to the clatter at the
windows.

“How the hell do you suppose they made it
through all of”—Andrew gestured to the rabid beasts on the other
side of the window—“that.” Andrew’s forest-green eyes were wide and
his chest was heaving. His hands ran through his chocolate-brown
hair and he shifted nervously back and forth as he attempted to
calm himself down. His summer-tanned skin glistened with sweat in
the dying sunlight.

Wyatt just shook his head. “Who knows.”

Day 2
1:03 am

Wyatt rubbed his hands across his face wearily
as he set down the phone. Hours earlier, the power had gone out
along with the phone lines. The backup generator had kicked in, but
most of the lights remained off in an effort to avoid drawing any
attention.

Still, he picked up the receiver every chance
that he got, in hopes that the line would work. Sarah would have
expected him home five hours ago, and he desperately wanted to hear
her voice. He needed to know she and Ben were safe. Perhaps he
could get ahold of them with his cell phone if it weren’t still
sitting in the cup holder of his patrol car.

After a moment, he pulled a small picture from
his breast pocket. The edges were worn and crumpled. In the
picture, Ben clung to Sarah as her arms gently enfolded him. Ben
was no more than a few weeks old when the picture was taken, and
though it was out of date, it remained his favorite.

When the situation had started to spiral out of
control, the chief had called all officers, including those off
duty, to the station. He had been able to reach thirteen of the
department’s sixteen officers. Only eleven had made it in. Of the
eleven who had arrived to the station, only six had made it inside
the station once the chaos had started. Many of those who were no
longer present had simply vanished in the turmoil, leaving the
others uncertain of their fates. That only left about 35 percent of
their original numbers.

Those who had been able to escape into the
station were crowded into the hallway that connected every room in
the small building. Those who were sick or who had been injured
were being cared for in the holding cells. It was the only place
where they could lay down to be treated, though the concrete slabs
were hardly comfortable.

The doors had been fortified with desks and
chairs, which took up more space in the already crowded hallway.
With the station barricaded, the officers had raided the armory.
The chief quickly handed out loaded clips to what remained of his
department.

The radio sat silently on his hip. He had shut
it off shortly after they sealed up the doors. The chatter had been
nothing but the dying screams and pleas for help from officers
across the city. Stuck as they were, they couldn’t help anyone, and
the cries had only worked to break his already fragile nerves.

The station contained a few precious suits of
riot gear, but not nearly enough for everyone. The pieces were
split amongst the officers. Wyatt considered himself lucky to have
received one of the large, clear riot shields. At the very least,
it could be used to hold the deranged at bay.

The work inside the station never ended. Of all
the people outside, only forty-seven had made it into the station.
Many had been injured. Some only suffered from bruises and scrapes.
A few had broken bones. Others had been bitten by the deranged.

Though the holding cells had been converted into
a triage center, only a few people knew even basic first aid, and
none were trained doctors or nurses. Hopefully, they could make do
until help could arrive.