Jake Morrison's Arc

Chapter 2 of 54

The creatures kept slamming the front glass. Jake counted the crowbar in his hand and did the math. One bar. Four of them, maybe more. If the glass broke, he had one swing before they were on him. On Marisol too. She sat against the shelf, knees pulled to her chest, watching the door shake. Jake gripped the bar tighter. It felt thin and useless now. "That won't hold if they get through," Marisol said. She stood and wiped her palms on her black shorts. Her converse squeaked on the floor. "But I can build us something. A radio. I fix electronics. If I strip the boards from these sets, I can put out a signal. Call somebody." Her voice still shook, but her hands were already reaching for a shelf of dead TVs. Jake stared at her. Yesterday she was a stranger screaming on a sidewalk. Now she talked like she had a plan. "Do it," he said. "But I need a real weapon first. A radio won't stop one of those things at arm's length." He swept his light across the back of the shop. Past the register, a doorway led deeper. He saw racks of camping gear, then a wall of bright packaging. Sporting goods. The shop shared a wall with the next store. Jake pushed through and found the connecting door already broken open. He went fast. His boots crunched glass. He grabbed a steel baseball bat from a bin and swung it once to feel the weight. Solid. Then he saw the case behind the counter. Hunting knives, locked under glass. He smashed the case with the bat and took the biggest blade, a fixed hunting knife with a full handle. He shoved it through his belt. A sound stopped him. Wet breathing, close. Jake turned. One of them stood in the broken doorway. Gray skin. Yellow eyes. Torn cloth hung off its bent frame. It had come through the same gap he had. Long claws scraped the counter as it crept toward him. Jake didn't wait. He stepped in and swung the bat two-handed. It caught the creature across the skull. The head snapped sideways. He swung again, and it dropped. He stood over it, chest heaving, bat raised. It did not get up. He walked back through the doorway. Marisol looked up from a mess of wires and torn plastic. Her eyes went to the bat, then the knife on his belt, then the blood on his sleeve. "There was one back there," Jake said. "Came through a busted door between the shops." He set the bat down beside her. "Which means the front isn't our only weak point. We're open on two sides now." Marisol set down her wire cutters. "Then I better build fast," she said.