The next morning snapped cold and cloudy. Ryan sat twirling a stick in the ground, waiting for Cassie to wake. Normally he would let her sleep late, but today he wanted to get back on the road. He would wait for another 120 count and then rouse her. The sun was trying valiantly to peek from behind the clouds, but it was an effort doomed to fail.
Ryan heard the distant rumble of thunder on the wind, the promise of rain etched in its voice. He began gathering their things and poked Cassie and called her name. She stirred but remained prone. “Cassie, wake up,” he called again. “There’s a storm coming, we need to find some decent shelter.”
That woke her up, sure enough. Cassie blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. “What are we going to do?” she asked.
Ryan shrugged as he stuffed the last of their meager belongings in his pack. “Same as always,” he replied, standing and offering his daughter a hand. “Walk until we can’t walk no more.”
Rain had only begun to pelt them by the time they came to the next town. A blackened sign proclaimed the name of the town to be Farson, pop. 2700.
It looked deserted as all the others and Ryan would have been shocked to find just three of those 2700 people still in town. He spot-checked a few houses set back from the main entrance and found one that he thought looked reasonably safe. A boom of thunder expedited his decision and he led Cassie inside, closing the door quickly behind them. A flash of lightning lit the entryway. He saw stairs leading up into darkness, a hallway, wood floors covered with pieces of trash. He wrapped his arm around Cassie’s shoulders, guiding her into the house. In the distance, he heard the thunder.
He led her towards what he thought was the direction of the living room. At each house they stayed in, he liked to start there, drop their packs, and let Cassie rest a bit while he searched the house. If anything happened, he wanted to be the first one to face it. She was the only reason he kept doing this. And he had the gun.
They lay their packs down on soft carpet. A bay window poured storm-light into the room, a slice of gray in an otherwise completely darkened room. Ryan rubbed Cassie’s shoulder and told her he would be taking a look around the house. He stood, and then ducked reflexively as thunder rumbled outside.
Cassie yelped and hugged his leg. “It’s okay,” he soothed her. “Just a little thunder.” They’d adjusted as best they could to a world of darkness. He’d thought relying more on the the feel and sound of their surroundings would have helped them adapt to unexpected loud noises. Instead, they felt like betrayals.
When he saw a flash of lightning, Ryan counted and waited for the rumble to follow. When it came, he gripped Cassie’s hand and helped her stand. “It’s just a passing storm,” he told her. She hugged her father and he waited.
Lightning flashed again and Ryan’s eyes caught movement outside; a shadow that he’d only seen because of the brief flare of light that God had seen fit to provide. It was enough to know that there was something outside the house, and he grabbed Cassie and threw them both to the ground. “Ow!” she cried. “Daddy, why’d you do that?” Ryan shushed her. Then, he crawled slowly across the carpet to the bay window. He had to know.
Ryan huddled with Cassie and peered over the edge of the window and in the coffin light of storm clouds mixed with fading day, he saw them. In the beginning, he’d taken to calling them wolves, but they were people, ragged and hungry and willing to do anything to survive; animals in human clothing perhaps, but still people. There were at least a dozen of them, men and women moving in a loose formation that made him think they all had a general sense of direction but no specific location in mind. He watched them walk past the house, not daring to breathe, much less move. Lightning lit their ranks and that’s when he saw her.
Cassie whimpered at his side and he clutched her, praying the slight movement would go unnoticed. The rational part of his brain knew they would never see him; they were beleaguered, starving humans, not supernatural hunters. Still, he could not shake the fear that locked his body in place and kept his movements to little more than a waver as his eyes remained frozen on their ranks.
At the next shout of thunder he ducked below the window and prayed they hadn’t seen him. Cassie’s hand gripped his but he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t reassure his daughter. He couldn’t be positive because she’d first come to them at night, and the moon provided only so much in the way of detail. But he no longer believed in coincidence and he’d learned to trust his instincts. It was the same woman that had tried to break into their motel room a few nights ago, and if she was with that group, it was because she had followed them.
They were being hunted.