Logan
Standing on the edge of a street corner, I assessed the desolate scene before me. Hollowed-out shops cast long shadows across a crumbling two-lane road. Ahead, a streetlight lay on its side in the center of the intersection. Nearby, a busted sign swung idly from its chain.
Behind me loomed a familiar-looking barricade—a two-story monstrosity composed of stacked cars and concrete highway dividers with a multilayered soft-fence middle. It was nearly identical to the barricade the National Guard had erected around my hometown back when this nightmare had first begun. And it was the same ugly structure I’d seen erected around almost every other town I’d come across since.
The farmhouse we’d found wasn’t as isolated as I’d initially thought—something I’d quickly learned only a few miles into my journey down the highway when I’d come across a second farmhouse. And another half dozen miles later, another one. Eventually the long distances between homes began to lessen, as did the size of the homes, until the houses became virtual carbon copies of one another, with only a driveway and small sliver of lawn between each. I continued on through several neighborhoods, eventually finding my way here—Main Street in the Town of Elkins Point, population 8,216, according to the welcome sign I’d passed on the road in.
My tire iron firmly in hand, I started down the sidewalk, pausing to glance inside each storefront. It was rare to find a town this empty, even small towns like this one. In fact, there’d been a distinct lack of Creepers in these parts, something that should’ve been cause for celebration… only, I found it concerning. Creepers, unless caught up in a moving horde, tended to congregate in places just like this—once populated areas. I didn’t know whether it was muscle memory—some leftover spark of who they’d been—or simply because towns were remnants of people and people were their favorite prey. And yet, I hadn’t seen a single Creeper since the two at the house—the ones Willow and I had disposed of.
Willow.
Just leave, she’d said.
It had taken me all of yesterday and the better part of today to find this place and I was still seething. It would serve her right if I did leave—leaving her to fend for herself for the first time in her life. She wasn’t without skills but she was for damn sure without sense and I didn’t doubt she would make it little more than a week without my direction. Lucas either.
I closed my eyes briefly. Of course, I could never leave my brother behind. It wasn’t his fault he was so impressionable, and so goddamn softhearted. And in love with a raging bitch.
Peering into a shattered storefront, CAROLE’S CAFÉ painted boldly overhead, I climbed inside. Snaking around toppled furniture and scattered dishes, I made my way to the back of the store where its display counters had been smashed and cupboard doors ripped from their hinges. The cash register, torn from its wires, lay upside down on the floor, its drawer open and its contents long gone.
Ducking beneath the bar flap, I muscled my way through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY—a tight squeeze due to a heavy shelving unit tipped on its side, blocking the door from fully opening. Finding myself inside a kitchen, I gazed at the various pots, pans, and stacks of dishes piled on the work surfaces. Numerous machines and gadgets that I had no name for lay among them, rusted into oblivion. The entire room was dusty, but otherwise undisturbed. Standing there, envisioning steam rising from the pots, hearing the clang of dishes being stacked, the din of the employees rushing around, I felt as if I were standing in the middle of two worlds, toeing the line between before… and after.
And I hated it.
I didn’t want to see the before; I didn’t want to look at what could have been, at everything this world had taken from me.
“That’s what you get,” I muttered.
That’s what you get!Those four words pounded through my thoughts like a battering ram, wreaking havoc on my emotions, upending a tornado of memories.
I was seven years old again. My father, knees bent, hands on his thighs, shouting in my face,you hear me, you disrespectful little shit—that’s what you fucking get! And then he wasn’t just shouting, he was gripping a handful of my shirt and he was shaking me so hard that my front teeth broke.
Just go…
“Fuck you,” I growled with a heavy, panting breath.
You’re just like your father…
“Fuck you.” Anger surging. I sent the tire iron smashing into a stack of dishes, sending plates flying across the room in different directions.
I was fourteen years old and this time we were eye to eye and toe to toe. I could smell the gin on his breath. And this time he wasn’t shouting, he was screaming. And instead of shaking me, he curled his hand into a fist and smashed his knuckles into my nose, breaking it.
A spike of adrenaline and a second surge of anger came crashing together in the center of my chest, swooping upward in a breathless rush.
“Fuck you and this fucking world!” I roared, and swung again, sending the socket end of the tire iron into a nearby coffee maker. Iron collided with metal, the painful reverberations of which I felt echo up and down my arm.
Hell, yes, that felt good!
I swung again at another stack of dishes, sending an explosion of broken shards down the countertop. Another surge of adrenaline shot through me, a heady rush twice as potent as its predecessor.
I swung again and again, in front of me, behind me. I was a human-shaped tornado, nothing but a spinning gust of anger, destroying without rhyme or reason. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I was making too much noise, that I needed to be fucking quiet like I preached about endlessly, only I couldn’t seem to care just then. Maybe I’d finally snapped.
Like father, like son, I thought bitterly.
I continued swinging and smashing my way around the room until not a single surface remained untouched, until the floor was covered in broken bits and I had kicked up so much dust and debris that I was choking on it. Breathing hard, sweat dripping down my face and back, my arms fell limply to my sides. Surveying my ruins, I felt a sense of satisfaction that the room matched the rest of things now—utterly fucking destroyed.
Ceramic shards and slivers of glass crunched beneath my boots as I retreated from the kitchen, my tire iron dragging noisily behind me. Righting a toppled table and chair, I relieved myself of my pack and sat down hard. Droplets of sweat fell from my face, splashing down on the grubby tabletop, out of sync with the slow pitter-patter of blood dripping from my right hand. I had no idea how I’d cut myself, nor did I care. Squeezing my hand into a fist, the blood dripped faster.
I felt strangely detached and oddly drunk. My muscles were tense but also heavy with fatigue; my thoughts were exceptionally blank for the first time in a long time—maybe the first time ever. Energy still thrummed through me, my wild pulse still visible in my veins. Yet, if I were to close my eyes, I wondered if I might fall asleep.
