They pulled the vehicles tight against the ranger station, metal kissing wood and concrete, headlights briefly flooding the trees before being cut one by one. Darkness rushed back in immediately, heavier now that they felt the danger lurking.
The only lights outside the Ranger station were simple floodlights mounted over the front and rear doors. They pushed the darkness back about 15 feet.
“JoeJoe, you still have my pistol so you take the rear door and office area. Memo, you back him up with that axe. Hutch, you and I will watch the front door and these front windows. Michael, Vic, girls you guys rest and back us up if we need a break or help holding this down.”
“If you’re on watch, stay awake.” Hutch called out. “If you need a break, let us know.”
Tony turned off the lights as Hutch closed the blinds on the front windows. “Let’s lock it down. It’s going to be a long night.”
The ranger station felt smaller now. Less like shelter. More like a box.
Outside, the forest breathed; wind through branches, insects buzzing, something moving beyond the reach of the lights.
Tony crouched near the front door, peering out one of the front windows through a crack in the blinds.
Time stretched.
Then, a soft sound. Not loud enough to be obvious. Not quiet enough to ignore.
Leaves shifting.
Footsteps. Uneven. Shuffled.
Vic stiffened on the couch. “You hear that?”
Tony nodded. “Everyone stay quiet.”
Chelsey gripped Michael’s arm tightly.
The sound drifted closer. Stopped. Started again.
Step. Shuffle. Step. Shuffle. Step.
Then a shape slid into the edge of the floodlights.
Human. Sort of.
It looked like it had once been a middle-aged man. The outline of him was still there in the short hair, a lightweight jacket and faded grey jeans. But whatever had been human in him was buried under something ruined and wrong. It staggered farther into the light, and Tony saw that the front of its jacket was torn and darkened with dried blood.
Its movements were jerky and awkward, like its body was still working but no longer communicating with itself the way it should. One shoulder twitched with each step. Its head tilted at a strange angle, then snapped upright again.
As it stepped closer, Tony was able to see its face.
Jesus.
Its skin was ashen beneath a slick sheen of sweat. The horrible black spiderwebbing radiated from its eyes in jagged dark lines, like cracks through porcelain, turning the skin around them dark and ruined. Mottled, milky eyes floated inside that darkness, terrifying not because they looked dead, but because they were still capable of seeing.
Hutch held the shotgun ready.
“It’s one of the infected,” Tony whispered to the group as he watched it through the blinds. “Don’t move.”
The thing reached the porch.
It paused there and seemed to sniff the air, jerking its head sharply from side to side. A low, wet sound scraped out of its throat, something between a groan and a growl.
It moved toward the steps, swaying as it came. When it reached the first one, it stumbled and pitched forward, landing on its chest with a heavy thud.
Everyone held their breath.
For a second, it lay there motionless.
Then, it slowly pushed itself back up and resumed its slow shuffle off to the side. After several minutes, it shambled back into the darkness.
No one spoke. No one moved.
After a few minutes, with the infected no longer nearby, the group began to relax a bit.
Minutes turned to hours. Tony’s legs cramped from kneeling on the wood floor. But he wouldn’t dare take a break until everyone else had taken a break. He shifted to the other knee and peered outside through the blinds again.
The night stayed quiet.
Then, footsteps. Quick. Determined.
They grew louder. Someone was running directly towards the ranger station.
The footsteps bounded up the porch and stopped abruptly at the door. Tony held his tomahawk high. Hutch stood and trained the shotgun on the door. Ready.
The doorknob rattled.
A moment later, a knock on the front door.
Not the impact of infected flesh. A deliberate knock-knock-knock.
“Help!” A man’s voice, desperate and hoarse. “Please! Is anyone in there? Help!”
Tony glanced at Hutch.
“Please!” the voice continued. “I’m hurt… I was attacked! Please open the door!”
Tony stood and reached for the door.
“Don’t,” Hutch said, stepping closer to Tony so he could whisper. “We don’t know who that is.”
“He’s hurt and needs our help.” Tony said as he peered through the crack in the blinds at the man on the porch. From his angle, Tony could see the man holding his upper chest area as he knocked on the door. Blood stained the front of his shirt.
Hutch shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
JoeJoe stepped forward and whispered, “We can’t leave him out there.”
“He’s asking for help,” Veronica added quietly from the corner of the room.
Tony hesitated. He had learned to listen to Hutch’s instincts over the years. But the man was hurt and begging for help.
Tony looked at JoeJoe, “Let me have that pistol, JoeJoe.”
JoeJoe passed him the Glock, grip first, which Tony exchanged with the tomahawk.
Outside, a low, wet growl cut the man off. The same shuffling footsteps from earlier, but faster.
“No! No, it’s back!” The man’s voice cracked with terror. “Please! Open the door!”
The growl was snarling and vicious. Something inhuman. The shuffling footsteps grew louder.
“It’s going to kill me! Please!”
Tony felt the weight of every eye on him.
His hand moved to the doorknob.
Outside, the man screamed. A sound of pure agony.
Tony looked at Hutch. The disagreement, between mercy and survival, was written in their faces as the screaming outside continued.
For a moment, no one on this side of the door moved.
Tony’s hand was still on the door handle. He glanced into the room and saw a look of horror on Michael’s face. Instinctively, he yanked the door open and stepped outside, pistol ready.
Outside, the undead thing was unfazed by the man’s screams as it hunched over his writhing body, its head down, feeding. It looked up at the sudden light, eyes devoid of humanity as it looked at Tony with those soulless, milky eyes.
For a split second, everything froze.
Tony, centered the pistol sights on the thing’s head.
Then it moved. It launched itself toward the open door with speed that shouldn’t have been possible. Its arms flailed, teeth snapping, a howl ripping from its throat.
Tony and Hutch opened fire at the same time.
The shotgun roared and its powerful blast caught the thing high in the chest, mid-leap. Tony’s smaller caliber 9mm pistol round hit the thing in the jaw. A combination of blood and bone exploded outward as it collapsed on the steps of the ranger station.
The combination of both firearms firing inside the station was deafening. Tony was momentarily unable to hear anything but a distant ringing. He instinctively opened his mouth to pop his ears, to no avail.
Despite being momentarily deafened by the gunshots, Tony kept his pistol trained on the creature as he stepped forward onto the porch.
It twitched a few times and made a noise that sounded like and exhale before finally going still.
“Grab him!” Tony shouted to Hutch, indicating the injured man on the porch, though neither man had recovered their hearing yet.
Hutch was already moving and JoeJoe was right behind him as Tony kept his pistol on the thing. They grabbed the half-conscious man, covered in blood, while Tony covered them. Together, they dragged him inside. Tony used his boot to push the corpse of the undead thing off the porch before slamming the door shut.
The man lay on the lobby floor, gasping, bleeding from multiple bites on his arms and shoulder. His shirt was shredded and barely resembled anything but rags. One of the bites on the forearm was very deep and blood poured out like a faucet.
Veronica sprang into action. “We need to get a tourniquet on his arm!” She ordered, already moving into medical mode. She knelt beside the man, pulling on gloves from the Ranger Station first aid kit. Vic hesitated only a moment before joining, his face pale but determined.
They worked quickly, cleaning wounds, applying pressure, wrapping deep lacerations with bandages.
The man’s eyes were wide with shock. “Thank you,” he gasped. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “T-Thank you. I thought – I thought I was dead.”
Tony took a moment to look at the man. He was older, perhaps mid-fifties, with a wiry build and a hard, outdoor look to him. His light brown hair had given way to grey and a short beard flecked with even more grey. What was left of his shirt was a tattered white undershirt, now stained with blood. He wore tactical green shorts and hiking boots.
“What’s your name?” Tony asked.
“R-Rawlings.” he answered, his voice raspy and tired. “I’m the Ranger h-here.” He closed his eyes but looked like he was going into shock.
“What happened here?” Tony asked.
Rawlings shook his head, clearly terrified, and said, “He came out of nowhere… bit one of them…”
“Who?” Hutch asked.
Rawlings whispered deliriously, “They drove off… into the w-woods… tried to help…” His eyes closed as his breathing grew increasingly labored.
The skin around the bites was already showing signs of discoloration. Black veins, spider-webbing outward from the bites.
Tony’s stomach dropped.
He looked at Veronica. Her eyes met his. She’d seen it too.
Tony looked closely at the man. His eyes were closed, but the skin around his eyes was unusually darkened.
Hutch was standing at the front door peering out into the night through the blinds. JoeJoe and Memo had drifted into the lobby to watch the commotion unfold. Tony asked them to return to the office and maintain watch at the rear of the building.
Chelsey stood near Michael in the corner of the lobby, both with horrified looks on their faces. Tony asked them to look through the storage closet in the back and see if there was any food or water they could pass around for the group.
Tony returned his attention to the injured man. Veronica and Vic continued dressing Rawlings’ wounds. Jackie had fetched a bottle of water and as she was helping the man drink, her fingers accidentally grazed his forehead. She looked at Tony concerned.
Jackie stood and crossed the room over to Tony. “He’s burning up.” She whispered.
Veronica, having heard Jackie, touched Rawlings’ head. “How are you feeling?” She asked.
“I’m hot…” he said.
The words came out thin and slurred, barely more than a whisper. His face glistened with sweat, and there was a heavy, exhausted aura about him, as if speaking had taken everything out of him.
Vic unscrewed the water bottle and tried to help him take another drink, but Rawlings only let the rim bump weakly against his lips. Most of the water ran down his chin and into the collar of his shirt.
His breathing had gone shallow and uneven.
Tony crouched nearby and watched the dark spiderwebbing spread from the blackened flesh around Rawling’s closed eyes. It hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. Now it was impossible to miss. Fine black lines crept outward beneath the skin, branching slowly, thickening as they spread.
Time dragged on.
Veronica wiped Rawlings’ forehead with a damp cloth, then checked his pulse. A few minutes later, she did it again. And again. Each time her expression tightened a little more. Rawlings’ skin had taken on a waxy, ashen cast beneath the sweat.
“Look at his lips.” Veronica whispered to Tony. They were a darkened shade of purple. Tony had never seen anything like it before.
The black spiderwebbing had spread over his arms and up his neck by now, threading along the veins. It seemed to spread from each of his wounds, his eyes and mouth.
His fingers twitched every so often. His jaw trembled. Once, his whole body gave a small involuntary jerk that made Vic jump.
It didn’t look good for Rawlings.
Veronica stood and walked to Tony. The look on her face told him everything she didn’t say. Whatever was happening to Rawlings, he was slipping fast, and she couldn’t stop it.
Tony tightened his grip on the pistol.
Then it happened.
Rawlings’ breath caught.
His chest stopped moving for a second. Long enough for everyone in the room to notice.
Then a hard shudder ripped through him.
His back arched so suddenly and violently his shoulders came up off the floor. His hands clenched into claws. His jaw snapped shut with enough force to make his teeth crack together. The sound that came out of him wasn’t human – wet, raw, and full of pain.
“Get back!” Tony shouted.
But the warning came a heartbeat too late.
Vic hesitated a moment too long.
Rawlings’ eyes opened.
Milky. Unfocused. Empty.
Then the thing that was once Rawlings lunged off the ground with shocking speed, one hand shooting out and clamping onto Vic’s arm with a powerful hand. Its teeth, once a shade of white, now darkened and protruding from swollen, purplish gums, clamped down on Vic’s forearm with a sickening wet crunch.