Listening to their fingers scratch over the siding of his house, the hair on the back of Kyle’s neck stood on end. His mother stood in the center of her house, terrified. From the center of the street, he could see her face, frozen in disbelief and terror. He reached toward the door handle and the boy grabbed his hand.
His grip surprised Kyle, and he almost struck the kid in retaliation. Anger flared through his white hot nerves, but Anna’s voice calmed him in an instant.
“Kyle, we can’t do anything for her.”
He turned to her, fury slowly ebbing toward her, but the look of complete hopelessness on her face and somewhere inside his reason spoke up. She was right. There wasn’t anything they could do. Before he could feel sorry for himself anymore, a creature struck the side of the car. Its gnarled hand pounding the glass as it shuffled along the side of the car, glaring at them with its one good eye among the grizzled features on its face.
Kyle didn’t jump, almost coming to the conclusion that death would almost be worth it. His mother had raised him for the past three years, and he was just going to abandon her. He closed his eyes to hold back the tears begging to fall.
“Go.” He didn’t move at the gentle touch of Anna as the car moved onward. As he glanced toward his house one last time, he saw a creature start hacking at the door with its hand. It would only take them mere hours before they were in.
“I know it’s hard, but there isn’t anything we can do.” Anna said.
“Where do you want to go now?” The boy asked as he steadily put the car pedal to the metal.
“Police station?” Anna offered up, not very convincingly. “They should be able to help us.”
“Fine, whatever.” Kyle said and turned his gaze to the blood, left over by the creature, running down the window. Partially congealed and chunks of flesh mixed in, it crawled its way down the glass in a muddy way.
The car lurched forward and then died. The boy banged his hands against the steering wheel. “What the?”
He hit his hands repeatedly, shaking the car slightly. The sound of his hand against the leather was more nerve-wracking that it had to be, and it drove Kyle to catch one of his hands. The warmth surprised him, but only for a moment as the kid lashed out at him with a punch.
It caught Kyle in the cheek, and he reacted on impulse and knocked the kid out with a single blow to his chin.
Shaking, he let the kids arm drop and looked at Anna. “I didn’t mean to… not so hard anyway.”
Anna stared at him, her mouth hung open. “I know, but still did—“
“He hit me first.” Kyle defended himself immediately.
“I know I was going to say did he have to flip out like that?”
Kyle looked at the gas gauge on empty. The car simply ran out of gas and the kid flipped out. Groans came from shadows of the house they rolled to a stop in front of.
Anna clutched his arm in terror and moved away from the sound. It didn’t sound like one, but five or more. More groans came from the other side of the car. In the dim streetlights above, Kyle counted fifteen of them coming from all angles. Not fast yet, but once they saw what was inside, it wouldn’t take them long.
“We need to get out of here.” Anna whispered her nails dug deeper into Kyle’s arm.
Kyle grabbed the boy’s bat and reached for the door handle again.
“What about him?” Anna pointed to the boy, who remained slumped over in the seat.
His first instinct was to leave him, but then why did they risk their lives for him a mere hour ago.
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