LOGIN“Me, John, and Errol will look into it. In the meantime, you barricade yourselves in here. Don’t open the door unless it’s us,” Art said as he retrieved his AR-15 and the golf club we had taken from Mabel’s house.I looked down at my still-swollen ankle and sighed. “Fine.”We watched Art, John, and Errol approach the fortified gate. They stopped a few feet from it while voices carried from the other side, too far away for me to make out anything beyond the occasional rise in volume.Art stood with his AR-15 lowered beside him while John did most of the talking at first. Errol stayed a little behind them, glancing between the two as the conversation dragged on.I leaned against the window, trying uselessly to catch even a single word.Whatever was being said clearly wasn’t improving Art’s mood. His shoulders had gone stiff, and at one point he turned his head toward John before looking back at the gate.A burst of laughter came from the other side.Art didn’t laugh.A few minutes later
I woke up the next morning because nothing was happening.There were no gunshots outside, no screaming downstairs, and no radio calls asking us to rescue somebody trapped in another motel building while getting haunted by another Mr. McMouthface. I stayed in bed for a few seconds listening anyway — for what I was not sure, but I did it anyways, half expecting something horrible to announce itself the moment I relaxed, but all I could hear were voices downstairs and Jumbo King barking like he had been excluded from an important meeting.Everybody was alive, which is a good thing, a very good thing, actually.Art wasn’t beside me anymore, but there was a note on his pillow telling me not to move until he came back upstairs. Naturally, my first thought was that I could probably make it downstairs by myself if I held onto the walls. But then I looked at my ankle as I tried to move it a little. It was still swollen, although not nearly as horrifying as yesterday. I could probably stand if
The third time I woke up, Art was still hugging me tightly from behind. I gently shook his arm to wake him, but he only tightened his hold and kept his eyes closed.“Art, let’s break up. Tomi texted me and I love him again.” That got his eyes open immediately, and the frown on his face was so fast that I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “I’m kidding. We need to get up. It’s noon already.”“Five more minutes.” He shook his head and hugged me tighter.“Mhm, but baby, I won’t be able to go downstairs without you. My ankle’s still swollen, remember?” I paused before adding, “Well, unless you want me to call Errol to help me down.”“That’s foul. You know I don’t like that.” I chuckled at how possessive he could be.“Okay, I’m sorry. But I want to be helpful, at least,” I said as I sat up. Art was still holding onto my waist, so I just reached down and stroked his hair.That was when I noticed his bare torso and remembered that he was probably still naked under the bedsheets wrapped aroun
Instead of immediately getting into the van, John suddenly ran to the other side of the street. I was about to go after him, but Art shoved me toward the van instead and went after my brother himself. By the time I looked back, John was already crouched beside Mr. McMouthface’s corpse, poking at different parts of its body like examining a horrifying science project in the middle of the road was somehow a normal thing to do.Art clearly disagreed because he grabbed John by the back of his collar and practically dragged him away from the corpse while John kept trying to look over his shoulder at it.The death of the first Mr. McMouthface we encountered had been surprisingly anticlimactic, but I was more than happy with that. As far as I was concerned, the best possible discovery we could make tonight was that no matter how disgusting or ridiculously strong these variants became, destroying the head still killed them the same way it killed every other infected.Luckily, when we finally
With the clear summer moon acting as our only light, Mrs. Nixon started toward the wreck without waiting for anyone’s approval. Not that she needed it, but a warning would have been nice, especially when the second she got close enough to one of the cars, the alarm suddenly started blaring through the street.Every one of us froze.The sound was deafening in the otherwise quiet night, bouncing between the buildings and carrying far enough that I immediately imagined every infected in Errol turning its head toward us. Worse, Mr. McMouthface could show up and start throwing random vehicles at everybody again.Mrs. Nixon, however, didn’t seem fazed at all. She kept going toward the wreck, and I immediately insisted on going after her with Art. John didn’t have time to argue because infected were already starting to move toward the noise, so he took Errol and the kids and started getting them away from the street.Art and I found Mrs. Nixon beside the wrecked car, struggling with one of t
We made our way slowly through the motel, using the darkness to our advantage and making sure not to step on anything that could alert the infected around us. Art reached the diner first and carefully pushed the door open.The small bell above it rang.The sound seemed impossibly loud in the dark room, and almost immediately I heard heavy thumping against the floor from somewhere inside. Whatever infected had been left in the diner had definitely heard us. I tightened my grip on the golf club, staring into the darkness while the footsteps came closer, and before my eyes could even make out what was moving toward us, I already knew we had company.It was a waitress who couldn’t have been more than a year older than me. John hit her with the bat before she even reached the door, and once she was down, we stepped into the diner and made sure to close the door behind us in case the bell had attracted more infected from somewhere else in the motel.We had the kids and Mrs. Nixon sit in one







