Painted Red Read online

  “I don’t know,” I respond walking faster. “Haven’t thought about it.”

  “Did you want to go on a supply run?”

  “I thought I was on probation?”

  “It’s just a medical run,” she says finally matching my pace. “I figured you’d be up for it. To clear your head and all.”

  “Sure. Just need to drop these off and the rest to the house.”

  “The rest?”

  “There’s a dozen snares filled,” I say. Nikia stops walking, and her jaw drops. “I told you to let me hunt alone.”

  “Noted,” she says after a couple more seconds of silence.

  * * *

  Nikia starts up the Jeep and clicks it into four-wheel drive. “I don’t drive slow.”

  “Ok,” I respond clicking my seatbelt on.

  She laughs and shifts into first. The car lurches forward and stalls. “Whoops.”

  “Have you driven a stick before?”

  “A couple of times,” she responds turning the engine over again. “I learned to drive about a month ago.”

  “Wait, what?” She slams on the gas again, this time shooting down the overgrown gravel driveway. I grip the door handle as she barrels onto the main road.

  “The look on your face is priceless.”

  The thick green trees pass by in a blurry whish of camouflage colors. In this moment, everything is beautiful. I feel safe in the quiet cab of the car—that is, until I look to my left. Nikia strums her fingers on the steering wheel with a shotgun strapped above her head, and I tighten my hand around my bow. What a fucked-up world we live in.

  “You from around these parts?” she asks turning down the static radio.

  “Not exactly,” I respond. “You’re from Queens, right?”

  “Sunnyside. My girlfriend and I ran up here the minute things got bad in the city. I never saw so many people in my life lose it all at once.”

  “Yeah,” I respond. A flash of Mr. Henderson lunging at me makes me flinch. I clear my throat trying to cover it up. “Any of your family left?”

  “Nope,” Nikia says turning off the road into the woods again. “I haven’t spoken to them since I met my girlfriend. I was the embodiment of sin to them. You?”

  “Dad died of liver cancer. Mom followed him shortly after when I was twenty.”

  “Sorry for your losses.”

  “One of many.”

  She clears her throat and shifts into second as we climb the final hill to the highway. “You might wanna hold on, this one is tricky.” The engine revs as she pushes the car up the hill. When we clear it, my heart starts pounding in my throat.

  “Nikia,” I whisper. “What are those—”

  Countdown

  A growling roars in the air. The car is swarmed in seconds by yellow-skinned people with bloodshot eyes.

  “Drive!” I yell. Nikia slams on the gas. The car lurches forward, followed by the engine cutting out.

  “Shit!”

  “Nikia!”

  “I know, I know!” She attempts to turn the car over with shaky hands. One of the people outside slams their shoulder into my window. I pull my arrow from my bow. It slams itself into the glass again leaving a small crack behind.

  “Nikia!”

  “I’m trying!”

  The window shatters on my side, and the growling fills the cabin of the car.

  “Get them!” one of them yells. I slam my arrow into the closest one’s eye. She screams as I pull the arrowhead out. Blood pours down her face, and she backs away.

  The driver’s side window begins to crack under the pressure of the slamming. I look out the front windshield to see a man with a fire axe walking toward us. “Nikia!” I yell. She starts the car and revs the engine. The man with the axe takes a few steps closer.

  “Hold on,” she says and shifts into first. She speeds toward the man. I grip the roll bar and brace myself for impact. At the last second, the yellow-skinned giant with the axe jumps to the side. We blaze down the highway away from the mob in silence.

  “Nikia—”

  “We have a huge problem,” she finishes. She pulls down the walkie-talkie from the visor and hands it to me. “Get in contact with the house. Tell Doc to lock everything down.”

  “Sure, but from now on, I’m driving.” She sneers at me from the corner of her eyes. “Your lack of driving skills almost got us killed back there. Whether I’m mentally stable or not, I can drive. Much better than you I might add.”

  She slams on the brakes screeching the Jeep to a stop. “Fine,” she mutters popping the car into neutral. She pulls the emergency brake up and hops out of the driver’s seat.

  “Doc, are you there?” I say into the walkie-talkie.

  “Yup, what do you need kid?”

  “Put the house on lockdown,” I say climbing into the driver’s seat. “We were attacked by a gang.”

  A few moments of crackling silence pass. “You two all right?” he says in a hushed tone.

  “Yeah for now,” I respond buckling my seatbelt. “Keep everyone else safe. We’ll be back soon.”

  “Ok,” he responds. “Keep Nikia safe, Xavier.”

  “Yes sir,” I say. “Over and out.” I shift into first and weave my way through the frozen traffic.

  “We’re gonna take the next exit,” Nikia says pointing ahead.

  “Ok,” I say pushing the engine faster in the clearing.

  “I wish you could’ve seen this highway when my girlfriend and I travelled it.”

  “I don’t. I saw enough fucked-up things for a lifetime.”

  “Like?”

  “Like my best friend’s father eating a person,” I respond tightening my twitching hand on the steering wheel. “Or a butcher shop with nothing but human meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling—that’s not even the worst.”

  “When we were back in Queens, things went south real quick. Much quicker than the suburbs,” she responds keeping her head turned around. “The looting got so bad after a week of no food that the cops either had to shoot them or risk being killed.

  I honestly thought that things were going to get better. I was running low on insulin, so my girlfriend and I went to go pick up more—that’s when we saw our first wendigo.”

  “Seriously?” I respond looking out of the corner of my eye. “Now you’re calling them that too?”

  “How else would you explain what happened back there Xavier? Or what happened to the girl you shot?” she says throwing her hands in the air. “Things are bad—worse than we thought. I can’t think in logical patterns anymore. You saw those people! They were like wild animals—they were like nightmares.”

  “Everything since the food going missing has been a nightmare,” I respond. “The only difference is that no one has been able to wake up from it. Thisis our life now.”

  “Then let me call those things what I want. The alternative isn’t any better,” she yells over the roar of the wind blowing in the cabin. She lets out a long sigh and runs shaky hands through her hair. “The pharmacist had locked himself in with the drugs. I walked to the back like I normally do, and he held a gun to my chest through a slit in the security grate.

  Three city officials—might’ve been the mayor’s security detail, who knows—waltzed in through the front doors and asked if I was causing any problems. The pharmacist said no, but that he was robbed earlier and was just taking precautions. They asked to be let in. The second he opened that door, I knew something was wrong.

  The men jumped him and tore into him with their teeth. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Theychoseto kill that pharmacist. They could’ve easily killed us, but the pharmacist was a challenge. They wanted tohunt him. We ran from that store and didn’t look back. That’s when we heard the radio broadcast about Fort Ticonderoga.

  I didn’t have my test strips with me when we left the City. I just had one dose of insulin left. I started getting sick around Albany. My fever wouldn’t go down, my blood felt like it was on fire. I took
my last dose of insulin hours before that.

  I remember when we reached the Fort, they took blood from me. They asked me if I had been bitten by anyone. I laughed and passed out.”

  “Bitten?” I say returning the laugh. “You mean like that girl who came to the house?”

  “I think I’m beginning to figure out what a bite from the wendigos can do,” she answers. “Whether it’s because of a demon possessing people or a virus infecting everyone—the entire human population is at risk from what’s happening.”

  “You think this is happening across the country?” I respond.

  “If it wasn’t back when it first started, after a year of radio silence and no help—there isn’t a doubt in my mind that we’re all screwed.”

  * * *

  I pull into a parking lot of a drug store. “This place good?”

  “Looks to be in pretty rough shape,” Nikia responds. “That’s usually a good sign.”

  “How do you come to that conclusion, Sherlock?”

  Nikia rolls her eyes and unbuckles her seatbelt. “Sorry. I forgot you were mountain man for a year,” she says grabbing the shotgun from the rack over my head. “Newer shops mean they’re a target for wendigos and looters alike. The shops that have the most damage have consistently been the ones we’ve scavenged the most out of. I think it’s because of how bad they look on the outside—people skip past them.”

  “Oh. Makes sense.”

  She nods her head and slings her book bag over her shoulder. “Here take this.” She tosses an empty ragged knapsack at me. “We go in, grab as much as we can in sixty seconds and then we leave.”

  “Sixty seconds?”

  “Remember that home improvement store? We were there for a minute, give or take. That’s the average amount of time we have until someone shows up.”

  “Got it.” I reach for my bow, but Nikia stops me.

  “This job calls for a quicker means of defense,” she says pulling a 9MM from her belt loop. “You as good of a shot with this as you are with a bow?”

  I raise an eyebrow at her, and she throws up her hands in surrender. The metal of the grip touches my fingertips. My heart races. I try to stifle the screams and pleas of mercy from the people I’ve killed.

  It’s all right, Xavier. Just breathe.Hayley’s voice makes the flashbacks bearable.

  “You all right?” Nikia asks frowning.

  “Been a while since I’ve held a pistol, that’s all.”

  She nods her head and smiles. Her face changes once she looks at the abandoned building. The natural curves in her face turn to hard sharp angles. She stuffs the butt of a shotgun into her shoulder and stalks into the doorway of the drug store like she’s hunting the darkness in there.

  I follow on her left checking the busted windows for movement. When we enter the darkness of the store, I hear her go to the right. I mirror her and grab anything useful off the shelves.

  One—two—three—four—five—a crash from the other side of the store stops me.

  “Just me,” Nikia’s voice says through the darkness.

  “Ok.”

  Ten—eleven—twelve—thirteen.I move my way to the back checking each aisle with the faint light from the entrance.

  Sixteen—seventeen—eighteen. A door opens near the pharmacy. I aim my pistol in that direction.

  Twenty—twenty-one.I hop over an overturned display shelf and crouch below the pharmacy counter.

  Twenty-five—twenty-six. “Nikia?” I whisper. Silence answers me.

  Thirty—thirty-one. “Hey,” someone calls from the darkness.

  “Jesus Christ. I thought you would announce when you’d go into the pharmacy.”

  Forty-three—forty-four. “What are you talking about? I’m right next to you.”

  Forty-nine—fifty.

  “That wasn’t you just now that went back there?”

  “No,” I respond.

  Fifty-three—fifty-four.

  “We’ve gotta go, now,” she says.

  Another crash from the behind the pharmacy counter makes us both jump. The entrance to the store is too far to run to now.

  “Nikia—”

  Sixty.

  Lost And Found

  The growling starts out as a low rumbling. I reach for Nikia’s arm and pull her toward me. She presses herself against the wall until I can barely see her.

  A foot crunches on the ground in front of us. I barely make out the outline of a hunched-over figure. It walks in a half shuffle out of the doorway.

  “Somebody,” it croaks. “Is somebody there?”

  Nikia taps my shoulder. She points to the open doorway of the pharmacy. I crouch and reach back for Nikia’s hand. We duck around the counter and close the door noiselessly.

  “Who’s here?” The person’s voice sounds young. Sounds familiar. “I heard you before. I’m not one of them. I’m not a cannibal.”

  I lock the door. Nikia scrambles to the back of the aisles and shovels meds into her bag.

  “Please help me,” the voice begs. I hear them begin to sob.

  “Xavier,” Nikia whispers. “Focus on what we’re here for.”

  I march to the refrigerator and grab trays of vials from the shelves. “They’re going to kill me,” the voice says. “I don’t wanna die. Please—I want my mom and dad.”

  I freeze. The voice—it sounds so familiar. Too familiar.Aisley? A tray falls through my fingers and crashes to the ground.

  The growling switches to an ear-splitting screech. The metal security gate that separates the pharmacy from the store vibrates as the girl slams her body against it. I shovel the rest of the trays into my bag.

  “Nikia!”

  “Let’s go!” she says running for the emergency exit.

  “We’ll find you! We’ll fucking find you all!” the girl screams. I turn and look back at her. Her skin glows a sickly yellow. She shows her teeth—all of which have been sharpened to points—and laughs. “I’ll eat your family first.”

  Nikia pulls me into the afternoon sunlight and slams the door behind me. I start to head towards the Jeep, but she stops me. “Jeep’s been compromised. You know how to hot wire a car?”

  “Yeah—” She takes off away from the building. I follow close on her heels listening to the dozens of footsteps joining ours.

  “Brown truck—see it?”

  “Yeah—”

  “Go!”

  I sprint past and hear gunshots from behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Nikia firing her shotgun; three cannibals drop to the ground. I reach the truck and feel my heart drop—diesel.

  I pull on the handle and feel the latch pop. “Thank god.” I tear apart the car looking for a screwdriver or tool to turn the engine over with. The gunshots grow closer with each panicked second.

  “Xavier!”

  “I’m working on it!” Underneath the ratty tan floor mat, something shines in the sunlight. I reach for it and pull it from the floor. Keys. Whoever it was left the keys behind. “Nikia, come on!”

  She’s in the truck bed in seconds. I toss her my pistol and hop into the driver’s seat. The truck struggles to turn over, but after a few tries, it sputters to life.

  Nikia fires her last round in her shotgun exploding pieces of one of the cannibal’s chest onto my window. I slam on the gas and peel out of the parking lot and away from the pharmacy as the growling slowly dissipates into nothing.

  * * *

  By the time I reach the highway, my knuckles are on fire. I try to slow my breathing, but it gets caught in my throat. The sliding glass window opens behind me. Nikia pulls herself through it after chucking the empty shotgun in.

  “You ok?” I ask feeling my heart rate settle.

  “My blood sugar is seriously fucked. I can feel it,” she says digging through her book bag. She pulls out a vial filled with a clear liquid. “I hope we were able to scrounge more insulin in that run.” She fills a needle and injects it into her stomach.

  “I grabbed a bunch of r
efrigerated stuff,” I respond. “Isn’t that supposed to be in there?”

  She nods her head. “That was my last vial. Insulin is getting harder and harder to come by.”

  “What happens if you run out?”

  “I die,” she says. “Slow and painfully.”

  I nod my head. Accepting death is easier than fighting it now. Something else I picked up over the year in the woods. “Check my knapsack.”

  She combs through my bag with the vials from the fridge. “Thank god,” she says pulling out two vials. “I really thought this place wouldn’t have any.”

  “Why’d you choose this pharmacy then?”

  “Because I knew there’d be clindamycin and other antibiotics here,” she responds returning the vials to the bag. “Some of the kids are sick and who knows what might happen in the future.”

  “What about your health?” I say weaving through rusted cars and eighteen-wheelers. “Your wellbeing is just as important as theirs’.”

  “Not in my eyes,” she says loading shells into her shotgun. “I’ve got nothing to lose. My daughter and my girlfriend were the only thing I cared about. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see them again. All that matters is the people who get rejected from the fort. I have to at least save them.

  I’ve accepted that this disease will be what kills me. The minute everything went south in the city, the first thing that came across my mind was the insulin,” she says. “My girlfriend and I knew I was screwed.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “Your girlfriend. Why don’t you ever say her name?”

  “Because she’s gone—she’s gone like I’ll be one day.”

  I swallow and look back out the front window. She’s right. It only took me until now to figure that out. Things are going to get much worse before they get better.

  The brothers meet us at the front gate with rifles pointed at the windshield. “Why are they aiming at us?”

  “They don’t recognize the truck,” she responds. She waves the radio out the window. Both of them lower their rifles. I pull into the open gate and next to their suped-up truck.