A Matter of Time

Dec. 13 – Iowa
He first arrived to Fort Miller with the rest of his company to help the National Guard contain the situation. It was ten miles outside of a fairly populated area, and the pandemic was hitting hard. Local law enforcement had to defer to the National Guard, and now the National Guard was appealing to the Army. There's no one else to go to, Private Daniel Hill thought as he surveyed the base. People were being pooled from all the surviving evacuation centers in the surrounding areas. The first thing Hill noticed was that there weren't many people coming in. What the hell is going on?

The company briefing company given before arriving had been short. The major points were that some sort of biological agent was infecting the population, causing hysteria, cannibalism, and a resistance to pain. There was no known cure. Anyone infected was as good as dead. Similar situations were popping up all over the country - possibly the globe. Containing the infected was no longer an option; now it was time to contain the healthy.

That was why they had arrived. Private Hill and all the other soldiers were supposed to lock down Fort Miller and protect every living thing inside. At first it sounded like a cakewalk. But as Hill took it all in, he wasn't so sure. He made his way over to one of the gates to help bring in survivors. As he got closer, he noticed a commotion. There was a police officer holding his gun on a young woman clutching a child.

“I told you, you're not coming in!” shouted the officer.

“Please, we have no where else to go,” begged the woman.

Immediately Hill noticed that all three people were in blood covered clothing. What were these people doing, he thought. The officer then pulled back the hammer on his pistol.

“Hey!” Hill called to him. He ran up and got in front of him. “What the hell are you doing? These are civilians!”

“They both have bites,” the cop told him, nodding to the pair. “They're not getting in here like that.”

“What?” Hill had no idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the woman and child, and sure enough they both had areas of skin missing that looked like an animal had torn them off. What is happening?

The woman put her hand on Hill's shoulder. “Please . . .” She was crying.

“Ma'am, you can come in. The officer is going to lower his gun,” Hill said.

“No, he's not,” a new voice called. “And she is not coming in here.” Hill saw Captain Walker, his commanding officer, approaching.

“Sir, these civilians need serious medical care,” Hill said.

The captain just looked passed him at the woman and child. “Unfortunately there is no medical care on Earth that can help them now. They'll be a danger to us in a few short hours.” He stepped forward. “Miss, you will have to walk away from here right now. If you do not, I will allow this officer to do whatever he feels fit to keep everyone else safe.”

The woman started to argue, but no words came out. She simply looked at Hill, then to the officer behind him, and turned around. Private Hill watched as she walked away. When she was out of sight, he turned to Captain Walker. “Sir, what are we doing here, exactly? What are we up against?”

The captain looked up, beyond the fences, out to something not in view. “Son, I wish I could tell you. Just buckle down. We'll have a lot of work to do in the morning.”

December 14

When that first morning came, Private Hill did not know what to expect. They were called together in their barracks and told to sit. They were informed on the situation more. Over night, the infected had shown up all around the base. They were completely surrounded. And while the hostiles on the other side did not seem to be able to break through the fence, it was a matter of time before there were enough to push it over. The job was simple enough: shoot the hostiles to clear the fences.

After being handed magazines four each, they were told to line up along the south fence. Hill crouched, weapon loaded, with other soldiers positioned ten feet to his right and left. He looked out at the crowd outside the fence. They're people, he said to himself. It's just a crowd of people. Then he saw what would soon be his first target. It had probably been a man at one point. However, now it was missing an arm and had its intestines hanging out. There is no way that thing is still alive. Hill tightened his grip on his weapon, waiting for the order.

“You boys want to put any of those things down,” a voice called from behind them, “You best aim for the head. Damn things keep coming otherwise.” There was some nervous laughter among the ranks. Is he serious?

“That gentleman is correct,” Captain Walker said. “Aim for their heads. And when you fire, take your time. Breath in, take a shot, breath out. Alright? I expect thirty kills from each of you along each fence.” He paused, as if someone might object. When no one did, he spoke again. “Ready? Fire!”

The sound of dozens of rifles going off was deafening. The sight of dozens of bodies getting hit was sickening. Several men were stunned. A few began to get sick. Private Hill just sat there, looking out at the beings beyond the fence. Why are they still standing there? He had not had the chance to see major combat before, but common sense told him this was not right. The people on the other side of the fence, the things, were just directly shot at. Many of them took bullets, if not the head, then to a part close enough. And yet aside from those hit directly, not one moved. Not one flinched. It was as if they were in a different world. This is not right.

Soldiers around him starting firing again, so Hill did the same. Breath in. He fired a round. Breath out. He looked around for another target. Soon he found a former woman with an exposed trachea. Already dead, he told himself. Nothing wrong with this. He fired. After several minutes, there were fewer shots being fired. Some men were signaling that their magazine was empty.

“When you're done, pop the magazine, put a new one in, and head to the next fence,” ordered Captain Walker.

Even though his wasn't, Hill took his magazine in out. He did not want to look like he was not following orders. He lined up with the other at the next fence. He looked for targets, but only found bloodier versions of regular people. Just fire above their heads. No one knows who is targeting who. Private Hill did this for the last three fences. He was able to justify a few more targets to himself, but some of his shots went into empty space. He could not bring himself to keep firing his weapon in their direction the whole time, even if it was over their heads. Private Hill simply fired a few times and then waited for the others to finish.

The people or things on the other side hardly seemed to notice they were up against a firing squad. They just crowded as close as they could, desperate to get in at their attackers. When it was over, he turned in his magazines and went off to clean his rifle. He hoped no one would notice his nearly full magazines.

It was noticed.

December 15

Captain Walker came in the next morning looking furious. “I was informed by the armory last night that most of the magazines came back with rounds still in them.” He looked around the room. No one wanted to meet his eyes, including Hill. “Do you boys understand what we are up against?” He stepped out of the room and then reentered with a television. “I suppose not. I have a tape I want to show you. I want you all to see what you refused to kill yesterday. We are not up against people anymore.”

The captain turned on the tape and let it play. They watched what appeared to be security footage. At first it was hard to tell of what, and then it became clear: a hospital. More specifically, the nursery ward. Each solider watched as two people tried to fend off a group of attackers. The people were eventually overtaken and then repeatedly bitten. They're eating them, Hill thought. What kind of disease makes you want to eat people? The horror, however, did not end. Once the attackers finished the two people, they went to each cradle. Most of the soldiers made sounds of disgust and tried to turn away.

That was when the captain spoke up. “You will fucking watch this!” Everyone snapped back to attention. “This is what we are fighting. Do you understand now?”

The men were then given their four magazines and led out to the fences. Hill had an easier time picking targets. He just pictured what he had seen each time to justify it. It was almost enough. At the end, his magazines could be described as mostly empty.

How long can this go on for?

Feel the wrath. Read more.

Purpose in Life, Part 1

Told December 3, but covers the days of December 1-3

Frenchtown, N.J.

Obviously I don't need to explain the events to you because I think you know just as much as I do. However, I think it is fair to explain to you that I believe this is entirely my fault. You see, all my life I have been a very religious person. Not to say I was a radical or went door-to-door, but I have always believed that God is above us and He is watching over us. I am telling you this because a couple months ago I asked Him for some help, and I believe that He has answered.

It would be fair to say that my life was not going in a good direction. I had graduated college well enough, but I was not able to land a good job. I was waiting tables to support myself, but I did not see that becoming a career by any means. A degree in Literature was not helping me move up in the world. To add to my frustrations, my college loans were due and I had to take on a couple roommates just to make ends meet. Unfortunately, these ends were not meeting fast enough, and I could not catch a break. My life was not going in a good direction.

There I was, in a dead-end job, living with two people whose company I did not enjoy, and I thought things could not get worse. Of course, they did. My mother, my saintly mother who raised me on my own since birth, passed away suddenly. No, not like you think. She passed in the more traditional sense and stayed buried. The bills for her funeral began to pile up, and I was having trouble settling her estate. I turned to the only place I could, the church. I asked the Lord for guidance. To be honest, I did more than ask. I fell to my knees, tears in my eyes, and begged for His help. I begged for Him to change my life, to change the world even. I wanted Him to fix everything, and I just cried and cried without response. Or so I thought.

Well, I should have remembered that the Lord works in mysterious ways. Subtle ways, too. No one really noticed when things started happening, and neither did I. Sure, I would catch the quick news stories, maybe some gossip at the restaurant. None of it ever seemed to be anything life-altering until it was the only story, the only thing talked about. People attacking people. Massive riots. Mobs in the streets. No way of telling the good from the bad until it was too late. I began to take more notice, and I began to wonder if I should have paid more heed to the signs.

Before I knew it, they were everywhere. When things started shutting down, stores and even my own restaurant, I began to worry. I worried what was happening to the world and if things were actually, finally, at an end. One night a roommate did not come back. I prayed for him, and tried to call the police. I hung up after being put on hold. I did not know what to do. I had no guidance. I had nothing. But then He showed me. He showed me when my other roommate showed up.

I was at my apartment, this apartment, when he, Devon, stumbled in the door. He had gone out for food, while I had not because of the warnings not to. He came in, and immediately went to the bathroom. He was mumbling about being attacked, about having to run for his life. Devon told me outside was Hell. Hell, on Earth? He then told me he felt sick and slammed the bathroom door. I heard the water running, some vomiting, and that just kept repeating for awhile. I asked him to repeat himself, to tell me the full story.

“I went to the store,” Devon began, “to get some food. The place was packed. People were everywhere, grabbing all this stuff. No one was paying, just grabbing and running. So I grabbed what I wanted and ran out of there. But when I got to the parking lot . . . they were everywhere, and there was so much screaming. People were attacking each other. Like, all-out attacking. I don’t even think it was to take their stuff. They were just crazy. This guy came at me, and then another. One of them bit me. He actually bit me! That’s when I took off back here, man. Oh, God.” I heard him start vomiting again. He still refused to open the door.

Eventually I heard nothing and began to get concerned. I knocked on the door. I called to him. There was no response so I went in. He was just lying on the floor, unconscious. His breathing was shallow. I saw where his arm had been injured. The bite marks seemed deep and deliberate. I was concerned and I knew he needed help. So I called the emergency services.

Nothing. I called again. Nothing. I was panicking and I hit redial over and over until finally someone picked up. I immediately told the person what had happened, what I knew, and asked for an ambulance. She told me there were no available ambulances. I told her that was not possible. She told me it was because there weren't. Nothing was available. And then she told me to get out of the apartment. I asked her why.

“Because,” she said to me, “Because when your roommate gets up, he is going to try to kill you.”

I was stunned by this. I mean why, why on Earth would my roommate just get up and attack me? How would he get up in his condition?

“Leo,” she said, “Leo, you have to get out or prepare yourself for what is to come.”

Now I'll ask you this, but I don't expect you to have the answer; how did she know my name? That is something that has gone through my mind since it happened. How did that woman, a person I talked to for only a few minutes, know my name? Did I absentmindedly mention it when I first called? Or was it a sign? Was, “Leo, you have to prepare yourself for what is to come” a message from a higher power, THE higher power? Call me crazy if you'd like, but that was the turning point.

He did get up, my roommate. Devon got up an hour or two after I called. It took him awhile to stand, but he eventually did. He looked confused at first, and then he noticed me. When he noticed me, staring my down with those glazed eyes, he really saw something he wanted. Of course, I had to be sure of what I was doing.

“Devon,” I said to him. “Devon, are you feeling better?” He just stared at me. At first I thought it was a blank expression, but then I noticed the wicked curl of his lips and the focus in his uncomforting eyes. “Devon,” I repeated. “If you are okay, please just say something.” His leg shifted forward and then his body pulled with it, but just one step. “Please, Devon, say something . . . anything.” Another leg forward, and then another.

While I had the best of hopes, I did not enter the situation unprepared. When he stumbled in range I swung hard with my baseball bat. The bat had been a gift from my dear mother on my twelfth birthday. I was terrible at the sport and it was used only twice, yet I never had the heart to get rid of it. It sat in my room, then my dormitory, and then my apartment, for years without a purpose. On that night, though . . . well, I don't think I need to tell you that all things happen for a reason.

I swung hard and connected with his head. The crack was nothing short of thunderous. The damage was not as much as I had expected. He fell, but got up again almost immediately. I struck him again, and then again, and then finally I felt his skull give out. It was sickening. I just stood there, breathing heavy, unsure of what I had just done. Blood covered the end of my bat and was oozing from a pocket I had created in Devon’s skull. Although I literally had not blood on my hands, metaphorically I was soaking in it. Was that truly what God had wanted me to do? I sat on the floor and thought this over. I cursed and I cried and I told myself it was him or me. I fell asleep there, a few feet away from the body. My dreams were filled with my monstrous action. If Earth was becoming Hell, was my action going to keep me there?

The body was still there. I still feel wrong calling it the body, when I should be saying his body. You told me you haven't killed one yet, right? Well, then I cannot expect you to understand the emptiness it causes. I was more than a hollow person after that; I was rotting. I knew of only one place to go. I covered Devon with a sheet and left.

Once out the door I noticed that the parking lot to the apartment complex was empty. Every car, save for mine, was gone. I had never seen it like that, and I took it as a bad sign. Where could everyone have gone? I received my answer right away, of course. There, taped to the security gate at the front of my building, was the notice from the landlord. Everyone was being asked to leave for the emergency centers. I wondered if I had not been notified of this on purpose, or if I simply did not hear the commotion. The sounds of sirens still filled the air at that time. I drove my car to the church I attended as quickly as I could. The streets were full of abandoned cars and every once in a while I saw a group of people. However, I couldn’t say whether these were people I wanted to deal with or not.

Once at the church, I tried to walk in the front doors. They were locked. A church, locked, at a time like this! I could not believe it. I would not give up. I banged on the door, over and over. Nothing. I went around back to the side door. I knocked again and again and again. Finally I started yelling, calling for anyone inside to answer me. I was about to start yelling for God Himself. Eventually the door opened a crack and I heard a voice. I recognized it as the priest, Father Patterson. He asked me who I was. I told him and he opened the door wider. There I saw he carried a pistol in his hand. Can you believe that? A man of the cloth carrying a pistol! I went to walk in but he stopped me. He asked if I had been bitten. I told him no. He stared at me for a moment, then relaxed.

“Enter quickly,” he said.

“Father,” I began, “I have sinned. I have damned my soul, Father.” I could feel the tears building back inside me from the incident. They would have burst forth had the priest not stopped me right there.

“My son, the world has changed. I do not believe you have sinned.” I had not even told him what I had done. He just seemed to know. We sat on a pew together. “These are troubling times. The Lord has seen fit to challenge us, but for what, I do not know.”

“I killed a man, Father,” I blurted out.

“Did you, now?” he asked.

I could not meet his eyes as I told him the story. How my roommate came home sick and injured, and I did nothing. I told him how I made my call to 9-1-1, and how I waited with the bat. I told him how I took my roommate's life and then just drifted to sleep in the very same room. “I am a monster, Father.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “No, my son, you are not. Your friend, he was the monster. The doctors on television can say what they want, but I know the truth. These bites, these bites from people that transform others . . . these are not the work of a disease or infection. These are the marks of the Devil. My son, you did not kill your friend. He was already damned. You simply released his soul, which was trapped in the unholy vessel.”

I did cry then, but not out of sadness. I was filled with such a relief. Those words made me feel clean, made me feel as if I was not cursed. I felt almost rejuvenated from this knowledge.

“What am I to do, Father? What are we to do?”

Father Patterson stood and walked to the altar. Without facing me, he said the following things. “Son, I can no longer tell you what we will do. It is up to the free will of every remaining soul out there. I will stay here. I belong in a church. You go out and make your own decision. But you should follow the advice you were given before. Prepare yourself for what is to come. I doubt the forces of man will keep us all safe for very long.” He paused and knelt. “Yes, I will remain here and attempt to find out why God is doing this to us.”

I said not another word to him. I left the priest in peace and exited the door I came in. I heard it lock as I walked back to the parking lot. I made my way back to my apartment, safely, and thought of what I needed to do. I decided to take the body outside. I had no shovel to dig a grave. The ground was too cold and I feared being in the open for too long, so I carried it as far as I could across the parking lot. When I made my way back to my apartment, I could still see the red stained sheet in the distance. I scrubbed the blood up the best I could, and made a list of everything I needed. I then attempted to sleep, as if I could with all the sirens still blaring. I must have drifted off eventually, because when I opened my eyes again, it was a new day. It was this day.

You know most of these events, but I need to retell some of them for the sake of this story. I needed to get supplies if I was to be prepared. I know this is a literal way of taking that statement, but I felt it was the best. I drove my car down a few blocks to the department store. The windows had been smashed out and its goods were scattered all over the parking lot. It seemed that I was not the only one who had this plan. Still, I gave it a chance. The main power of the store was not working, but the emergency lights seemed bright enough. I made my way inside quietly. I heard rustling, and every minute or so there were scattered footsteps, but I made no attempt to investigate. Still, my baseball bat was gripped tightly.

Now the first place I went was food. The store seemed to have been without power for days, so the smell was overpowering. Rotting fruit and frozen goods were too much for me to stomach. I made my way to the dry goods, which would be better for long term anyway. When I got to the aisle, I noticed a streak of blood amongst the scattered boxes. And that blood was a pathway that led right to a woman. She was standing, although I do not know how. Her face seemed scraped apart, and something was falling out of her stomach area. I did my best not to make noise, but my gasp was loud enough. She turned to look at me. Her eyes . . . I will just say this: Her eyes were that of a demon. They looked onto me, those dead-white pearls, and her jaw dropped open. She moved at me as Devon had.

She was several away when I first spoke to her. “Ma’am,” I whispered. “Ma’am, I need you to tell me if you’re okay.” Her pace quickened. “Ma’am, just one word from you and I won’t do this.” As I finished my sentence she was lunging forward.

Survival instincts took over, and just as before, I swung hard. The noise echoed inside the store, and fortunately she dropped from one blow. The bat had caught her lower than I expected. Still, once she hit the floor she made not attempt to stand. I just stared down at her as a trickle of blood moved from her. It suddenly curved and came in my direction. I stepped aside and watched it move under a shelf. I could not stand to be in that aisle anymore. I made my way to another, and decided I would take canned goods instead.

Luckily there was a shopping cart. I had not thought of that when I first went in. Too be honest, I had not planned much of this except for what I needed to buy. And yes, I realized that buying was no longer an option. I filled the cart with the best of the foods I could find, seeing which was healthiest and longest-lasting. I found boxed, just-add-water pasta meals as well. You know this because we are enjoying them now. My cart was full and I believed that I had enough to last me for several weeks. I thought this was good enough, and the sound of approaching footsteps encouraged me to leave. And that's when I did, and that's when you and I met.

I don't know what made me look across the street to the window. I don't know why you decided at that moment to look out the window. Neither of us could have heard the other. Maybe divine intervention is too strong for that type of situation, but you must admit it makes sense. And of course we noticed each other, and that's when you opened the window. And that, of course, is when you called to me for help, Kate. I made my way over to hear you better. You told me about the people downstairs, the ones that had the infection. You told me you were trapped. And then you asked me to save you.

You know, then, that I entered the house and saw the two people at the top of the stairs. You heard me call to them, to ask them to say just one word. You know how the one stumbled and fell down them trying to attack me. You know how I took care of him. You saw the body mess when you eventually came down. And you know how the other just stood there watching. You know how I charged him with fury, crushing his skull with a victorious force, over and over again. You saw the blood that had gotten on me from that. You know how I was bawling when you opened the door, begging God for forgiveness about what I had just done. And that's when you put your arms around me, Kate. You thanked me and cried yourself and told me to take you someplace safe. You told me that your parents had called from the emergency center in town and told you not to come. You told me how they said it was being overrun. You told me how their last words to you were, “Keep safe.” You asked me to keep you safe, and I promised I would. And I still will.

We came back to my apartment with the food. We looked around to see if anyone was nearby, human or monster. When we saw that there wasn’t, I made sure both the security gate at the front of the building and my own apartment were locked up tightly. We talked some more and then you asked me the question that just led to all of this. You asked why God was doing this to us.

Kate, I know my purpose now. I am here to save people, to save you, to save as many as I can. I am saving people and their souls. So when you asked me earlier, “Why is God doing this to us?” I think you're wrong. God isn't doing anything to us. God is doing this for me.

Feel the wrath. Read more.

Hell on Earth

9:33 p.m., Nov. 22 – Schaumburg, Ill.

Jim found the sight of his own blood horrifying. The hunk of flesh missing from his bicep seemed impossible in scope. It bloomed an expanding rose that smeared and ran down toward his hand as he stumbled backward out the door.

Lucas reached for Jim’s foot, which hung in the doorway. It had stuck against the door and the frame as he’d bounced backward down the stairs, landing hard in the snow. Lucas’ fingers were gnarled, bones clenching and straining against his rapidly paling skin.

The fingers worked like jaws, wrapping around Jim’s ankle, their grip unyielding, as he struggled against the shock of the cold. The icy touch penetrated his jeans, the nerves screaming and flaring beneath his skin, and his leg instinctively thrashed out. The heel of Jim’s boot slammed into Lucas’ jaw with a sharp crack. Jim scrambled back, his hands scraping pavement beneath snow. Lucas’ jaw looked dislodged, hanging a little low on the right. Jim’s shock led to pain and horror at the thought of what he’d done to the young man.

Lucas struggled against the doorway. Jim saw after a second that he was in no immediate danger. His son was slow, making stupid, deliberate movements. He struggled to put more than one motion together with another. Finding his way back to a standing position seemed beyond him.

As Jim stared at him, he started to cry. The pain in his arm was excruciating, like a flame stabbed through the limb on a sword. But worse was the cold crushing he felt on his chest as he watched his son’s dark, listing eyes moving over Jim with singular, unthinking brutality.

Jim saw in those eyes Lucas slipping away, disappearing.

“Luke,” he muttered through sobs. “Luke, where are you?”

Lucas pushed his way through the door, belly sliding over the ground as if he were a bloated snake, and flopped down the stairs head first, bouncing with awkward flailing.

It seemed only a few years ago that the two of them had practiced pop-flies in the back yard. Only eighteen months since Lucas had come to Jim, guilt-stricken over shoplifting with a friend and demanding to go to church for confession. Only four days since Jim had sat by Lucas’ bedside while his lungs fought every few seconds to tug in air.

Only minutes ago, Jim watched the light drain from the still, stagnant pools that had become Lucas’ eyes. What was left of him in that husk, Jim couldn’t be sure.

He glanced down. Already Jim saw black bands writhing up his arms, replacing blue veins.
His knees buckled. He dropped into the snow as his son reached for him, just a few feet away.

His vision blurred, and Jim thought about the handgun he kept in the closet in his bedroom. Immediately his stomach heaved. The vision of the gun against Lucas’ head was unbearable.

Jim looked down at his hands. He reached out for the searching limbs, Jim’s fingers stained red – the joints already contracting. The skin already graying.

His hand reached Lucas’, and Jim pulled him in. He wrapped his uninjured arm under Lucas’ chin and held his head tight, despite his jaws’ clenching. Jim felt the yearning in it and shuddered.

Jim’s eyes filled again. The two of them were damned, he thought. The gun wouldn’t change that.

As the cold crept over them and he embraced his son tighter than he ever had before, Jim thought of the gun, and of Lucas, still inside that husk. Jim knew he could see the soul still there.

He would stay here, together with his boy, and wait, Jim decided. He prayed he was right; he prayed this hell was better than what God had planned.

Feel the wrath. Read more.

Calculated Risk

7:13 p.m., Nov. 20 - Ft. Worth, Texas

There were eleven bodies covering the pattered maroon carpet.

One row of six, one row of five, all in the lobby so that everyone could see. Everyone being the concerned parties: Shane and Dale from within the bank, and the police from outside the bank, peering in through the glass.

The negotiators had just left the front doors, trying to work out a deal with Shane. Dale had stayed back with the hostages so that there would be no attempts at heroism from the unfortunate souls who had needed to make a financial transaction that particular afternoon. Dale had tried to plan the heist at a time when hostages would be available, but not over-abundant. Eleven was just fine with him, though he knew odd numbers put Shane on edge.

Shane wouldn't let the negotiators into the bank, nor would he take off his black ski-mask to talk. He had communicated by holding responses written on Xerox paper up to the glass. Dale liked the idea, but it nagged at his curiosity only being able to hear half of the conversation.

"How many hostages do you have?"

"Has anyone been harmed?"

"What are you demands?"

"If we do, you're going to have to release one hostage to show you're willing to work with us."

In between each muffled inquiry, Shane would scribble without delay, and slap the response up to the door. With each slap, the eleven bodies on the floor twitched uncomfortably.

Though still quite alive, Dale considered each hostage a "body." It ensured not only that the captive were listening, but made it easier to not think of them as real people. Internally, however, he had no intention of harming them, save for a rug-burn goatee from lying face down on the floor for so long.

"Get them up," Shane said when he returned.

"Up? Why?" Dale asked from under his black ski mask.

Shane looked to Dale's eyes, sternly.

"Get them up. We're moving to the vault."

Dale nodded and began to move the hostages to the vault one by one. Getting the vault open was the first priority when the heist began hours ago. It took only some shouting and a wave of Shane's shotgun to get the job done, but the cash within wasn't their final goal. After robbing a bank, a police confrontation was inevitable, and Shane wanted to make sure it was on his terms. This was fine by Dale, who knew that the amount they could demand for eleven safe hostages was more than they could hope to find in any one vault.

Nine bodies were in the vault and two were to go when Dale bent down and pulled on the shoulder of a rather large man in a business suit.

"Come on, buddy, let's go," Dale said.

The large man swung around quickly, bringing his elbow across Dale's jaw with full force. Dale flew back and then down, for what felt like much further than five feet, ten inches. The other remaining hostage -- a petite woman in jeans -- leaped into action, throwing herself at Dale's back. She wasn't very strong, which she seemed to realize quickly. She instead attempted to bite at Dale's ear. The pain was sharp and immediate, but before she could clamp down fully, a rubber-soled black boot snapped into the woman's forehead and sent her flying from Dale's shoulders.

Dale heard a crunch and looked up in time to see the butt of Shane's shotgun return the large man to the ground. The man squealed in pain: the preceding crunch the sound of his wide-set nose breaking.

"You wanna try some more funny stuff? Huh?" Shane hollered. The large man had both hands over his face, and his collar was beginning to absorb the blood streaming from beneath them.

Dale could hear faint sounds of commotion from outside, and knew the police had seen. He could feel their shadows cut through the evening sun, but didn't bother to look. He grabbed at his ear slowly, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Both bled lightly.

"You alright?" Shane asked him. Dale nodded. "Alright, then. Bring that bitch in here."

Dale looked to his second attacker. She was unconscious. Dale huffed, pushing himself to his feet, then bent down and swung the body into his arms.

Shane had left the other hostages behind in order to defend Dale, but none of them had dared make a move when they saw the ferocity of Shane's reaction. When he pushed the large man to his ass, two other bodies came to the man's aide.

"Don't fucking touch him," Shane ordered. "Let him bleed."

They slunk away from the man resentfully.

Dale laid the unconscious woman by the vault door and moved to close it behind them.
"Hey. Hold on," Shane said. He pulled Dale with him just outside the door and leaned in to whisper: "I told them they have two hours."

Dale looked through the slits in Shane's mask.

"And then?"

"And then...we kill a hostage."

Dale's eyes widened. "What, Shane, we can't--"

"Do not use my name! How many times do I fucking tell you?" Shane sighed emphatically, calming himself. "Don't worry. They'll see our demands are met." Shane stepped into the vault. "They don't want blood on their hands."

"Yeah," Dale muttered under his breath. "Neither do I."



One hour and fifty-five minutes later, Dale's stomach lurched.

Despite the dry cool of the room, everyone was sweating. Those with watches checked them compulsively, often just seconds apart. He and Shane hadn't told the hostages that one of them was to be executed -- there had been no more attacks -- but it seemed the unconscious woman had been playing dead. She was the only one close enough to the door to hear Shane give the news, and word had spread at a whisper to every shivering soul.

Thirty minutes prior, the police had cut the power to the bank, which was a curious decision to Dale. Of course it made things less comfortable for him and Shane, but it also made things less comfortable for the bodies, and they certainly weren't in charge of available amenities. Shane had split the last of the coffee with Dale forty-five minutes ago, a gift that Dale's nerves soon abhorred.

"Where the fuck are they?" Shane mumbled to himself. The silence of the room ensured that everyone heard.

"Maybe I should go out and check--" Dale began.

"No!" Shane stopped pacing and turned to Dale. "They have their instructions. If they're waiting for me to break, if they're waiting for me to change course, then they have another thing coming."

Dale looked down at his watch. One minute.

"Alright," he heard Shane mumble. "Alright, it's time."

"What? No, there's still one minute--"

"Well, let's not be late, then! Come'ere--" Shane grabbed the petite woman in jeans by the collar and dragged her to the center of the room. She screamed immediately, and the effect was viral. Whether they wanted to or not, all the other bodies began screaming along with her. The wails bounced back and forth off the metals walls so that eleven sounded like hundreds.

Shane leveled his shotgun and lined his sights, though at that range he could have hit a sunflower seed from a squirrel's mouth. The squirrel notwithstanding.

"Don't you move!" Shane shouted as the woman attempted to crawl away. She froze, staring down Shane's barrel. "Time."

Dale breathed heavily.

"Time, Dale!" Shane shot a glance at Dale.

"It's...it-it's time! But come on, Shane, let's think this through! We can't just go on killing people, we at least have to see what the hold up is."

Shane sights relaxed, but not his posture. Instead, he stepped over the girl in a march toward Dale. Without warning, he pressed the gun up to Dale's cheek. Dale didn't dare move.

"What. Did. I. Tell. You. About. Using. My. Name?" Shane asked, the spacing between each word more pronounced than the last.

Dale stammered. "I...I...I'm sorry, Sh--I'm sorry. But--"

"But?" Shane said sharply.

"But you just used mine -- Jesus, put the gun down!"

"I..." Shane relaxed his gun once more. He turned away without looking Dale in the eyes. "I'm sorry."

Dale sighed and looked around the room. All twenty-two eyes were fixated upon him and Shane, taught and unblinking.

"But this isn't a discussion. We came here to get what was ours, and we're going to get it. The authorities have to know that they're playing by our rules, and not the other way around. Don't you understand?"

Dale nodded slowly. Shane nodded once back and made his way back in front of the petite woman on the floor, which immediately re-initiated the cacophony of screams. This time, though, Shane's back was to Dale.

Dale heard the deep click of Shane loading the barrel, even through the wails. "Shane, I still don't think we should--"

The explosion from the end of Shane's gun reverberated through the room and trampled over the screams like bulls through a red alley. The room was silent in its wake as everyone surveyed what had been done. The petite woman was dead without question this time.

Dale expected the screams to start again, but they didn't. Only a few sobs. He was staring down at her when he felt hot metal in his hands.

"I'm going to tell those sons of bitches where we stand. And if they want to ignore our demands again, then another one's gonna die every hour." Shane had pushed his shotgun into Dale's hands. Dale finally looked up, away from the dead woman, and nodded slowly at Shane.

Shane went to the vault door, wrenched it open, and left.

Dale slumped to the floor. He couldn't believe what Shane had done. No, what he had done. What he had allowed to happen. Everyone else looked away, but Dale couldn't pry his eyes. The purple knot on her forehead from where Shane had kicked her earlier. The splatter of black blood, ripped skin and cotton where just moments ago had been her chest. He forced himself to encounter his mistake. His sin.

A tear formed in the corner of his left eye, but he sucked it back. He wouldn't allow the rest of the bodies, those still living, to see him any weaker than they already had. As he pushed himself to his feet, he could have sworn he saw something that wasn't possible.

The petite woman had blinked. His gaze snapped to her face, scouring it for more movement. After a moment, Dale convinced himself that he had seen nothing. He was tired, stressed and saddened. He wouldn't allow himself to become delusional as well.

That was when he decided he was through. So much planning, so much time...but he wouldn't be a part of murder. He would march out, turn himself in, and hope that Shane would forgive him. No money was worth this, he thought.

Dale left the hostages behind. Half were too upset to notice, and the rest still too scared to make a move at his back. As he approached the black of the glass front doors, Dale slowed from a confident march to cautious tip-toe.

There were no lights.

No police.

Shane stood before the doors where Dale stopped in bewildered silence.

Dale peered into the dark, trying to spot something. Anything. He slowly wrapped his fingers around the cold handle of the door and pushed. Before he let himself through, he dropped the shotgun to his side.

After two more cautious steps, it dawned on Dale that this might be a trap. He was surprised, suddenly, that Shane hadn't stopped him from going through the first set of doors. Before he could look back, there was a slam against the glass from outside. It was a police officer...dying. His skin was serrated and his tongue was visible through the gaps in his in his cheeks. His clothes were bloodied and ripped. In Dale's estimation, the man already looked dead. But there he was, propped upright and oozing against the glass.

With spastic haste, Dale turned and pulled back through the first set of doors. Shane was gone.

"Shane? Did you...?"

"Dale," Shane said. "Dale, where is my shotgun?" Shane backed out through the vault door shaking his head involuntarily. Dale found the shotgun on the floor and picked it up in time to meet Shane's outstretched hands. Shane immediately shouldered and cocked the weapon.

"What's wrong?" Dale asked.

"That bitch I just shot is up--up, moving around!"

"Up? You mean she's not dead?" Dale mustered, hopefully. He moved back toward the vault.

"Of course she's dead, I shot her in the chest! Now she's up and--she was biting another hostage!"

"Biting...?" Dale mumbled.

In his final steps toward the vault, Dale could now hear the screams that the thick metal door had suffocated. A hand reached out from the small opening and slid to the ground, bloodied and stiff.

Dale glanced over his shoulder back at Shane, who steadied his gun as best he could, but shivered all over, his wayward aim on the entrance to the vault. He had never seen Shane so afraid.

"Look out!"

Dale didn't have time to react. For the second time that day, the petite woman was hanging from his shoulders. He began swinging wildly, trying to remove her.

"Well I'll be god damned..." Shane muttered.

The petite woman swung back her head. The blood from her cole slaw chest smeared against Dale's back and her arms twitched strangely across Dale's face, knocking off his black ski mask. Her head was still purple from Shane's kick, but the wound was pronounced by her moon-pale skin and glowing white eyes.

Dale screamed and reached back, but couldn't pry her from his shoulders. She was too strong.
"Her eyes..." Shane hesitated...then, snapping to: "Stop moving, god dammit, or I'll put a round through you!"

"I'm...trying!" Dale gasped.

The woman swung her head back again, coming forward for Dale's ear. This time -- in one slow, methodical sinking of her jaws -- she bit the ear clean off. The echoing screams of the hostages in the vault could not compare to Dale's squawks of horror. Before Shane could get a clean shot, the man with the broken nose stumbled from the vault.

His movements were slow and rigid -- perhaps from loss of blood.

"Don't you come any closer!" Shane shouted, temporarily swinging his aim away from his friend. "I said stop!"

With one hand to his missing ear and the other holding back his assailant, Dale watched as Shane let loose a shell. He hit the large man at the left elbow. His arm swung there for a moment, before falling free. His slow pace, however, did not become slower.

"What the hell..."

"SHAAAANE!" Dale screamed as loud as Shane had ever heard anyone scream. He looked down to see the pale, petite woman pulling flesh and bloodied muscle from Dale's neck. "Shane..." his voice faded as he collapsed to the floor. Shane hesitated no more. He fired another round at the woman and she flew back from the force.

"Dale...Dale, come on now..." Shane slung his gun into one hand and slid to his knees beside his partner. Shane glanced up at the one-armed businessman, still in pursuit, before flipping his friend onto his back.

Dale was dead.

"Ah, dammit..." Shane sighed. "Ah, no, no, no. Not like this, not like this." Shane re-tightened his grip on his shotgun and in one motion cocked the weapon and pushed himself to a stand. Ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump. Shane fired three cartridges into the lumbering business man, who took each blast as a soft spring breeze. His pursuit still did not slow.

Shane reached into his pocket and fumbled for more shells, then popped open his gun to reload. When he looked down at his hand, re-emerging with the shells, he saw the petite woman on the floor. She was getting up. Without even time to curse, two more bodies emerged from the vault, moving as strangely as the man who had just taken four rounds without so much as a complaint.

Shane fired more frantically now, rotating targets, hoping for any contact that might slow them. After one last bam and an empty click, Shane knew he was out of ammunition. He had come for a battle, but hadn't planned for a war. He dropped his gun and turned for the exit. One more body stood in his way.

It was Dale. The side of his head and neck glistened black and red from his bite wounds, but the bleeding had stopped. His eyes were now overcast, matching those of the petite woman.

"Oh, Dale, no. It's me..." Shane pleaded. Dale swayed, Shane's words ineffectual. "It's me, Shane." Shane began to sob. "What's my name, Dale...What's my na--"

Dale lunged at Shane, jaws poised. Shane fell backward, where the large businessman was waiting to catch him. Shane pushed himself out of his grasp and into the patterned maroon carpet. Shane wept as Dale's fingers sunk into his arms, teeth into his shoulder, and four more lumbering bodies fell upon him.

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Test of Bravery

4:02 a.m., Nov. 21 - Shepherd/Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Terrorist attack.

It was the first thing Brandon McClean thought when he was awoken after three hours of sleep immediately after finishing a double.

Driving the glistening, white-and-black patchwork of the snowy highway, it was still his chief theory.

He tried to suppress a grin. It wasn’t like he was happy about a terrorist attack, he insisted to himself, but the news coverage he’d seen when he was young of 9/11 – first-responders risking their lives to help people out of burning buildings, pulling people out of rubble, saving people who couldn’t save themselves – was the reason he’d joined the Michigan State Police.

Still, Brandon discussed with himself as he drove, a terrorist attack around here was pretty unlikely. He was living pretty far north of Detroit, the only thing for a few hundred miles that might be worth targeting, if you didn’t count the Dow Chemical plant in Midland (which he didn’t -- that area wasn’t densely populated enough).

And even Detroit wasn’t much of a target; the city was a shit hole anyway.

But something big had to be happening. Rick Powers had said so when he called to wake Brandon up.

General mobilization.

Had to be terrorists. What else could it be?

His scanner squelched. It always did as Brandon approached the station and came into range of the other cops on his force. He leaned down and turned it up, but static mostly prevailed with garbled words popping through only intermittently.

Then, clearly, “There’s lots of them and I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Brandon recognized Laney Thoms, one of only three female officers at Post No. 38. Her voice was shaky, distorted by the radio.

“Say again location, two-one-one,” the dispatcher returned. Ira Serenson.

“Jesus, whatever’s wrong with these people, it’s bad. Like flesh-eating bacteria,” Thoms said. “They all look drunk or high and they’re not responding to warnings.”

“Twenty one, I need your location.”

“US 10—”

Eight seconds passed before Brandon realized Thoms wasn’t coming back. Ira called through the radio for the other officer to respond twice more, but silence was his reward.

Brandon snatched up his radio transmitter and clicked down the button.

“Base, this is five-five, what was twenty one’s last location?”

There was a pause, then, “Ballpark estimate has her right around MPPH. Given her last, she might be within a mile north.”

“Ten-four,” Brandon returned. “I’m heading over there before I report in.”

“Make it fast, five-five. We need you here.”

“Got it,” said Brandon, snapping the transmitter back onto the side of the radio.



He was there in less than ten minutes. His SUV bounced onto the darkened street, a little south of US 10, where the high school stood silently with white slopes building on its roof and window sills. He slid a little on the unplowed street, but with no other cars out, he didn’t worry, and just corrected the slight drift.

The first thing Brandon thought was that it was really dark. A second later, he perceived that the streetlights were out for about a block – a messed-up transformer or a chunk of the grid was out, he thought.

He clicked on the spotlight that was connected to his window and ran the scanning glare at low speed over the landscape. He didn’t see any sign of Thoms or her cruiser. He didn’t see sign of much of anything, but there did seem to be a lot of tracks through the snow along the side of the school.

Brandon’s car slid to a stop in the parking lot and he shut it down, but left the lights on, including the spot that was trained on the mess of tracks where he was headed. Stepping out of the car, he pulled on his coat, then grabbed his gun belt from the passenger seat. Other than that, he was still in his street clothes. Finally, he pulled a small flashlight from his glove compartment.

The wind was dying, but it was cold and the snow was relentless. Brandon wasn’t even alongside the big school before it was starting to coat his face.

The structure hulked in the darkness, motionless and frozen gray. He pressed a hand against icy bricks as he crunched through the snow, which was already up to his ankles.

The side of the school stretched for a long while, but finally he found himself at the corner. Brandon knew the school’s yard opened onto a football field that was surrounded by a track, but all he could see were the snow drifts building on the bleachers and the uprights poking into the brown-black sky.

The footprints in the snow curled sideways, heading directly for the bleachers, and Brandon could hear something indistinct in the darkness. He swung the light sideways; standing on the track was Thoms’ cruiser, a trail behind it leading toward him to a set of tire tracks about thirty feet to his right, which he’d missed.

Beside the cruiser was a hunched group of maybe five people, surrounding something that was propped up on the bleachers, but Brandon couldn’t see beyond them at whatever it was. He couldn’t see much of anything about the people from this distance, but something didn’t feel right and Thoms’ cruiser was there with no Thoms, so he drew his gun.

“Hey!” he shouted as he walked forward. “State police! Everybody on your feet!”

The group at first didn’t react under his flashlight or warnings. One of them looked up for a second, but then plunged back into the circle.

Brandon got the distinct impression they were eating something, like hyenas pressed tight around a carcass.

He shouted again, raising his gun. “Stop what you’re doing and get up now!”

This time, the one that had looked up rose to his feet with his back to Brandon. He moved slowly and Brandon guessed they were all high, like Thoms had said. It also crossed his mind that whatever was messing with these people could be connected to the terrorist attack.

The man started to turn toward Brandon, almost in slow motion. He moved strangely, as if everything wasn’t really working correctly, Brandon thought – like his joints were stiff and his muscles were organizing a mutiny. As he turned, Brandon’s light went to his face.

It was covered in red, all over the lower half of it. Bits of stringy flesh still hung from the man’s jaws. He made no sound and Brandon saw next that the man had no pupils – cataracts or something had hazed them into egg-white blobs set in his head.

“Jesus,” Brandon breathed. He didn’t know of anything, biological, chemical, or radiological, that did that to the eyes.

He stepped sideways to focus the light down in the middle of the circle. More people were getting up now and he could see clearly exactly what they’d been devouring – Thoms. She was dead, torn apart from what he could tell. Brandon dry heaved, swinging the light away.

They were headed toward him now, all of them, but still pretty far off. He raised his gun again and shouted, “Down on the ground, right now!”

When no response came, he fired a shot into the air, to no effect.

He heard crunching to his left and spun the light that way. The bleachers stretched closer to the building here, and there were three more of them, leaning into the stands, stretching their hands in.

As if to catch something beneath the seats.

But these new ones were already abandoning what they’d been doing to start after Brandon. They shuffled along slowly, and he could see these three new ones were more hurt. They were bloody and injured, but not bleeding. They were so awkward and unnatural that Brandon couldn’t understand what had happened to them.

There was some kind of scream, and something blurred out from under the bleachers, streaking past the bloody people and ripping through the snow toward him. Brandon swung the light and his gun over, ready to kill this new horror – but he didn’t. It was a kid. She was screaming and tears were streaming down her face.

“Help, please!” She shouted as she passed the three that had been after her. They reacted slowly, reaching for her after she was well past them.

Brandon didn’t even think. He squatted as the girl came running up – she couldn’t have been older than five or six – and scooped her up as he came back to a standing position. Then he backed up.

“I’m a police officer,” Brandon muttered, as means of allaying the girl’s expected fear of strangers, but she wept openly and he realized it didn’t matter who he was as long as he was taking her with him.

He had his back to the wall of the high school. He was walking backward, away from the small, slow-moving mob that was headed his way, but he wanted to head another twenty feet to his right, toward the path back to his car. He looked over his shoulder toward it, then asked the girl, “Where are your parents?”

Sobbing, she leaned back slightly – she didn’t want to pull away from him – and pointed toward where he was heading. Brandon turned to see an indistinct black redness in the snow in the distance, and two more bloody people (victims?) stumbling his way. They were already nearly on them.

Brandon trained his gun on the closest of this new pair and shouted, one last time, “Stop!”

He saw no hesitation, though, and he told the girl, “Cover your ears,” and as she did so he, fired at the first of them.

It was definitely a hit, because blood and bits of flesh exploded from the impact in the man’s upper chest. But the man was barely fazed, stopping only slightly from the energy of the bullet. He kept walking.

What let’s you take a bullet and keep going? Brandon’s mind demanded.

He fired again. Four more shots. The first two missed. The third slammed into the man’s neck, whipping his head back from the impact. This didn’t even slow him.

When Brandon fired the fourth shot, rational thought was on hold and he already was on the move, backing toward the building. The bullet clipped the man’s knee, which buckled, and he fell into the snow. The others continued on, and it took a long time, but the man eventually started to pick himself back up and keep on toward them.

Now the three groups were converging. The ones that had been after the girl were closest, on his left, pinning him to the building. The ones to the right, where he’d shot, had been joined by the five that had been eating Thoms.

There were lots of them and nowhere to go.

Risking putting his back to them, Brandon turned toward the building. There was a door about twenty feet along the wall near the bleachers. It had been broken open about a month earlier by some students who’d been looking to steal computers, and they’d dented the door. The lock had been replaced, Brandon knew, but the door was still weak.

He went to it quickly, still carrying the crying girl, whose sobs were subsiding under her growing fear.

“Hold on, sweetie,” Brandon told her, trying to sound comforting, and he took three steps back from the door and then rushed forward and kicked it as hard as he could.

It gave but Brandon fell, rolling so the girl landed on top of him. A burst of pain exploded from his ankle to his knee and he cried out, and then another sharp blast hit him in the shoulder as he slammed to the linoleum of the high school floor.

The girl scrambled out of his grip and got on her feet. Brandon winced and grabbed at his ankle.

“C’mon!” she shouted, taking his other hand and pulling.

The victims were almost to the broken door now. The flashlight lay beside him and Brandon could see plodding ankles and stained knees in the thinning stretch of light just outside the door.

He rolled, pushed himself up, and got to his feet. His ankle felt like millions of pieces of shattered glass were running through the veins and Brandon thought he was probably hurt much worse than he realized. But he was pumping adrenaline and despite the pain, he hobbled up, grabbed the kid and left the light, and started moving as quickly as he could into the school.

He felt a strange exhilaration and he couldn’t help thinking of a photo he’d seen of a New York firefighter carrying a little girl out of a building. The feeling mixed with the chemicals his body was using to get him out of danger and Brandon felt excited and alive.

Even hurt and carrying the girl, Brandon was much faster than their attackers. By the time he’d rounded two corners, he thought he’d lost them completely. He slowed, starting to feel the pain in his leg.

Wincing, he asked the girl, “Can you walk?”

She nodded and he lowered her down. The girl immediately grabbed his hand tightly. She still looked terrified and he thought that being in that state couldn’t be good for her. He holstered his gun as they went through a set of heavy metal fire doors, and as they closed, he snapped up the bolt that went into the ceiling. There was no sign of the attackers.

“I locked it,” he told the girl as he leaned against the wall, letting himself slide down. “We’re safe. I need to rest a minute.”

The girl stayed on her feet, looking up and down the hall and through the windows in the doors. Brandon winced as he dragged up his pant leg – sure enough, his ankle was turning light purple and starting to swell, up into his calf. His knee was all right though, so he was able to reach his foot to loosen his boot.

The girl finally sat down beside him, but kept her distance, still nervous, her muscles jittery and tense as if she might have to bolt at any moment. Brandon thought he ought to calm her down.

“What’s your name?” He asked, trying to sound more relaxed than he felt.

The girl looked at him, hesitant. She looked at the gun, then back at him. Finally, in a whisper, “Are you really a police man?”

Brandon smiled. He shifted his weight, trying to protect his ankle, and dug his wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open before the girl to reveal his state police badge.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he did this. “Everything’s going to be fine. My car’s out front. We’ll just go out there and drive to the police station.”

He didn’t quite know how to ask the next part, but he needed to know if there was anyone else who might need help.

“Do you have … any other family? Was anyone else out there with you?”

The girl’s eyes went vacant, and she shook her head, staring at the floor. “Just my mommy. My daddy and her are divorst.”

She paused again, looking at her hands and at the floor. Then she whispered, as if divulging a closely guarded secret that might help others find her, “My name’s Shannon.”

He grinned again. He felt like everything was going to be okay in the long run. He reached out a hand for her to shake. “You can call me Brandon.”

Shannon took the handshake with her tiny hand, moving her arm tentatively. It was then that Brandon realized the girl wasn’t wearing a coat. Even inside, it was cold – their breath hung in the air like tiny storm clouds.

“Come sit by me,” he told her, extending an arm. “You look like you’re freezing, and I need somebody little to help me stand up when we leave here.”

He could see she was starting to relax. She smiled a little, and pulled closer to him. Brandon wrapped his arm around her shoulder and could feel her shivering.

“We’ll let you get warmed up and then we’ll get out of here,” he said cheerily.

Brandon closed his eyes. The girl’s breathing was slowing against his chest. He smiled to himself. He was pretty good at this, he thought. He was going to get them out of here.

The school had its emergency power setup on from the outage, which meant every fourth big fluorescent in the ceiling was lit from a backup battery, but it was enough that they could see mostly what was around them. Brandon kept his eyes open, though he believed they were out of danger from the worst of it. Those … things – he couldn’t call them people – they might pursue, but they seemed slow and dumb. He was confident he and the girl could easily get to the car, and he had an idea of how to get out of the school, as well. It only involved backtracking a little.

He shifted. “All right, sweetie, we’ve got to go.”

Shannon got to her feet quickly, while Brandon had to prop himself against the wall and rise in tiny increments. When he was finally at full height, he looked down at the girl. “You okay with walking?”

She took his hand again but nodded. Brandon stepped forward and leaned toward the door, looking out the tiny windows. They afforded him little vantage, really, but it was enough to get an idea of the mostly dark hallway – empty.

He guessed if they were out there, he’d see or hear something. But the hall was dark and silent, so he reached up and pulled the deadbolt back down, which drew home with a sharp, loud click!

Brandon turned back to Shannon. “We’re going to go through this door, and there will be a hall right there on our left. That way,” and he pointed to where the junction was ahead of them. “Go down there and then at the end of the hall is a right turn. The door to the front should be down there. Got it?”

Shannon gave two brisk nods. Brandon turned back to the door, his hand on the cold steel handle.

His eyes met the glass and on the other side was a half-destroyed, bloody face, sneering at him.

He cried out and the door bucked toward him, slamming Brandon in the forehead and sending him backward, falling to the ground.

He was dazed only for a moment. Brandon hit the linoleum hard on his tailbone, but he was already scrambling as best he could to get back up as the doors opened. With his uninjured foot he gave the right door a hard kick and it snapped back, hitting one of them. Hard.

But they were through and there was shrieking and by instinct Brandon reached out, catching Shannon’s hands in each of his as she was being pulled through the open door. He kicked at it with his hurt ankle, refusing to give up traction with his unhurt left foot, but pain shot through him and he nearly lost his grip on the girl.

She cried out, terrified, as a gray hand pulled over her face.

“Brandon!”

Then his grip gave way and the door fell back. She was gone.

Brandon hit the linoleum again, off-balance from the sudden loss. “Shannon!” he screamed. “Shannon!”

He could hear her cries through the door. They sounded distant and choked. Three seconds went by and the sound of her cries died off and he started sobbing. He thought of the firefighter carrying the child.

Then the door bucked open again, and Brandon got to his feet and turned toward the darkened hall, running as fast as his hurt ankle would allow, never looking back.

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DNR, police: Feral animals responsible for Shepherd hiker deaths

Authorities warn against visiting woods alone, ask citizens to report sightings

By Phil Hornshaw
Staff Reporter


SHEPHERD – Michigan State Police are searching for a group of feral animals they believe to be responsible for at least three deaths during the past six weeks near U.S. 127.

Four people have been found dead in the area since the beginning of October. The two most recent victims, the identities of whom police have not released, were discovered by search parties Friday evening after they went missing nearly a week ago. Rescue personnel reported the victims were mauled and covered in tooth and claw marks.

Michigan Department of Natural Resources Officer Will Quinn said the species of animal believed to be involved has not yet been determined because of the condition of the bodies.

“Unfortunately, the recent weather conditions and scavenging by smaller predators has made it impossible to determine what we’re dealing with in these woods,” Quinn said. “The wildlife in this area rules out most major man-killing predators, but wolves and coyotes have been known to become dangerous during hard times.”

Authorities in the DNR have issued a warning to hikers and hunters to move in groups and be on the lookout for packs of wild animals in the vicinity of the woods bordering U.S. 127 to the east, about a mile outside Shepherd.

DNR officials also ask that any sightings of feral animals in and around the Shepherd area be reported to the department. Sightings can be reported by phone by calling the Midland DNR office at (989) 776-6661.

Earlier in October, two other victims were discovered killed about two miles apart. The first victim, Louis Allen, 36, of Shepherd, was found on Oct. 14 on a commonly used hunting trail. He was discovered with injuries sustained to his neck, arms and eyes.

State Police Information Officer Hilary Oliver said evidence collected at the scene of Allen’s death is consistent with animal attacks, and the hunter probably tried unsuccessfully to defend himself with the .22 caliber rifle he carried with him.

“Mr. Allen’s injuries suggest a group of animals, which would have made it difficult for him to ward them off with his firearm,” Oliver said. “He was an experienced hunter and we found three shell casings near his body. If there was just one animal, he probably would have killed it.”

The first victim discovered in the woods was Central Michigan University student Lisa Lambert. Oliver said Lambert and her boyfriend, Todd Campbell, were picnicking and hiking in the woods when Lambert disappeared.

Mount Pleasant and Michigan State police have listed Campbell as a person of interest in Lambert’s death, but so far have been unable to locate him for questioning.

“Since Mr. Campbell is the last person to have seen Ms. Lambert alive, speaking with him is paramount in determining what happened to her,” Oliver said. “While her case resembles the other victims discovered in the woods near Shepherd, there are inconsistencies we need to clear up.”

State police officials refused to give details about the Lambert case or how it differs from the others, citing the fact that the investigation is ongoing.

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