Anthony was sleeping fitfully on a bed in the back bedroom and Zack was busying himself in the kitchen while Cody dozed in a rocking chair. He'd been up for almost two hours after a lengthy nap and had had the house to himself while Zack and Anthony sleep. Brothers, Cody had thought, I have two brothers now. Family is more than blood. He'd spent his time reloading their magazines and scavenging through the house for anything useful before calling it off and sitting back in the chair. He didn't think he was tired enough to fall asleep again but was proved wrong in less than five minutes.
"Hey, wake up, Cody. Wake up." Cody opened one eye to see a mass of sleep-tousled black hair and brown eyes mere inches from his own.
"Okay, I'm up," he said as he leaned forward and pushed Anthony back a bit. "Nice bed head, kid. You need a hair cut."
"You do, too," he squeaked.
"We'll stop at the next barber we find," Zack said from the other room. "There usually isn't much waiting at eleven at night so we can probably walk right in." He came out with three two-liter bottles filled with boiled water and set one in front of Anthony and another next to Cody.
"I vote a mohawk for Anthony," Cody said as he stood up and winced as his knees popped. "I might go for the dreadlocked look myself. That's different, right?"
"Different in a 'sort of like Rob Zombie if he couldn't sing or play guitar' kind of way. So different that I'll cut each one of them off while you sleep," Zack said with a laugh. "I like the mohawk idea, too." He winked at Anthony.
"I had one once. Did it when my little league team went to our tournament. My mom hated it and couldn't wait for us to lose so she could shave it off." Anthony smiled at the memory, Cody noticed.
"We'll see what we can find. I guess I could give you one with some scissors," Cody said as he ruffled Anthony's hair and lifted up a chunk of it from the center of the boy's head. "Yeah, I could."
"Okay, now that Cody is done playing beauty salon..." Zack said, shaking his head.
"Right. We should probably get moving." He picked his pack up and set it on the couch and started organizing it to make room for the bottle of water. "I guess this might be a good time to make sure we want to do this. Reconsider our plans a little."
"Do you want to? Reconsider them, I mean?" Zack asked as he shoved a bottle in his own bag.
"I just want to be sure we've thought everything through. We might have made a snap judgment this afternoon."
"You said it yourself, Cody, we have to be careful in the heat and there's no cooler time than right now. I saw a thermometer on the deck while I was filling the bottles and it was barely over seventy."
"Yeah, it's a cool night but there are other things we need to think about. Like zombies."
"We'll hear them if they come after us," Anthony said as he looked between the two brothers.
"Possibly, but not necessarily. They aren't all loud anymore." Which scares me more than a little, Cody added to himself.
"Flashlights," Zack said as if settled the issue. "Or headlights."
"Which might attract them to us," Anthony added, suddenly thinking of the dangers. Cody nodded.
"We can run a zombie over in a car just as easily at night as we can in the day," Zack told them, the fact that they didn't have a car ready and waiting was irrelevant to him.
"Okay, okay," Cody said with a placating gesture. "I'm not trying to talk us out of it, I just wanted to be sure we all know what might be out there. These things might be a problem or they might not. We don't know but we need to be aware."
"And knowing is half the battle," Zack said wryly. "I say we go." Anthony nodded his assent. Cody, not having a horse in the race, shrugged and it was settled.
Five minutes later they were geared up and heading out the door. Each boy had a flashlight in one hand but they had agreed to keep them off unless they needed them. There was enough moonlight to walk by as long as they stayed in the road and didn't wander off into the deep shadows behind houses.
They'd reached the highway after half an hour's walk and their hunt for a ride had begun in earnest after seeing almost nothing in the few miles since they left the house. Cody had his hands cupped around his face as he peered through a car's window when he heard a howl. His blood ran cold and he jerked back around to look at the others just as it was echoed by a second, longer, and seemingly closer, howl.
"That is not good news," Zack said as he leaned against the car's door and scanned his surroundings.
"No. I could almost feel that last one," Cody whispered as he turned his light on and lit up the edge of the cut. Anthony turned his on and shone it on the other side of the road.
"I don't see anything," the younger boy said as he turned back to the twins, inadvertently blinding Cody with his flashlight. "Oh...sorry!"
"It's okay. Let's keep moving. We'll find something soon enough," Cody said, squinting as he put a hand on Anthony's shoulder and turned the boy and the light slightly away from himself.
Their pace increased and they kept the lights on as they walked. Consciously or not, Cody wasn't sure which, they'd placed Anthony between themselves and seemingly took turns checking on him. "I'm fine," he'd answer, his voice sounding more confident than either of theirs when they'd ask.
The howls and random barks seemed to keep pace with them and they'd narrowed it down to coming from somewhere in the trees on the right side of the road. There had been a few close calls when one of the boys thought he saw movement but nothing definite.
"I wish they'd stick their noses out so I can blow one off," Zack said as the stress began to wear on his nerves. Knowing they were there but invisible was worse than not knowing they were there at all as far as he was concerned.
"They will," Cody said, "you'll get your chance."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah. I'm willing to bet that they're sizing us up right now, waiting for the right time to come at us."
"I'd rather they be zombies than dogs," Anthony said softly. "Dogs are smart."
"Maybe they're zombie dogs," Zack joked.
"There's a scary thought," Cody shivered. " I wonder if they can carry the virus or whatever it is."
"Thanks, Mr. Cheerful Thoughts. So now instead of just rabies we have to worry about that, too." Zack reached over Anthony and playfully tapped Cody on the back of the head.
"I'm just putting it out there. They probably can't but you-there! Right there!" Cody pointed his light and saw it reflected in at least three sets of eyes. "Tapetum lucidum. That's what it's called when it does that," Cody said. "The light bounces off their-"
"I don't care. Hold this." Zack shoved his light into his brother's hand and pulled the pistol from his pocket. He took aim once Cody had turned the light on the group of dogs and calmly pulled the trigger until the hammer fell empty. He swapped mags and unloaded that one on both sides of where the lights were focused.
"I think you got at least four of them," Cody told him once Zack had taken his light back. "Three for sure, but I think I heard a fourth yip with one of your last shots."
"Good. I'll take three kills," he said. "Spy plane ready for launch," he whispered as he changed the clip and slid the empties in his pocket for later.
"Hmm?"
"Nothing, Cody. Just talking to myself." Heavy clouds began to roll in and cover the moon minutes later and Zack frowned. He frowned harder when the first drops of rain began spattering down on them. "That's great," he said. "We need a ride."
They were thoroughly drenched by the time they finally found a car with keys. Their feet were sloshing around in their shoes and Zack had mentioned trying to find a wetsuit while on the lookout for massive wooden arks.
"I mean, really, what's the point now?" Cody asked sarcastically. "It's not like we can possibly get any wetter." He reached back and pulled his soaked underwear from his crack while Zack got in and tried to start the car. Anthony shifted from foot to foot nervously while they waited.
"Alright!" Zack exclaimed as it came to life. "Get in and we'll see if the heater works." Anthony and Cody piled in, Anthony taking his usual seat in the back while Zack drove and Cody in the navigator position. The car pulled away from the side of the road and into the downpour, the wipers barely able to keep up and the headlights seeming to turn into a bright soup less than twenty feet from the car.
"Well, in good news, we'll make it to St. Louis in about two hours at this speed," Cody said as they rolled along at just over thirty miles per hour.
They settled in and gradually dried out as the odometer slowly rolled over. In an hour, Cody had gone from absolutely miserable to only minorly uncomfortable but was still looking forward to finding somewhere dry to stop at to change his clothes. Assuming at least a few of them weren't equally wet, of course. He hadn't thought to check. He turned to ask Anthony but saw the boy had fallen asleep with the side of his head resting against the window.
"Well, never mind that," he said as he turned back around.
"Never mind what?"
"I was going to ask Anthony to see if any of the clothes in our bags were dry. I know the bags are water-resistant but that's a long way from waterproof."
"The gun bag is dry, or it should be as long as it was zipped all the way," Zack said as he tried to remember sealing it before they left the house. He was almost positive he had. "As for our clothes and all that, well, I guess one of the only good things about zombies having eaten everyone is that we can always just get more if they're soaked. No more putting things in a dryer and waiting."
"Yeah, as if you ever put anything in a dryer in your life," Cody laughed.
"I put some superballs in the dryer once. I wanted to hear what it sounded like when they bounced around."
"I remember that. Mom you were throwing rocks at the house or something." Cody grinned as the scene replayed in his head. "She was mad."
"Yes she was. But I was banned from touching it ever again, wasn't I? Who did my laundry? Not this guy!" Zack pointed a thumb at himself as he drove.
"I did your laundry, Zack. I saw all your little stains and accidents. I wore gloves when I did your underwear once you started, well, you know."
Zack laughed. Cody was entirely not amused at the memory and Zack was just about to tell him to lighten up when the human form appeared directly in front of them. "Oh shit!" Zack said as he slammed on the brakes and tried to keep the car from fishtailing across the road. The body flipped sideways when they struck it and Cody clearly saw the zombie's spine as it crashed into and spidered the windshield.
"Bust it out!" Zack screamed as he scrambled to roll the window down. "I can't see!" Rain whipped his face when he finally managed to get it down.
Cody threw his seat back as far as it would go while his brother stuck his head out the window. Cody kicked with all his might against the glass. The top half broke away and flew off and rain began pouring into the car.
"What's going on?" Anthony asked, rudely jarred from his sleep and seeing Zack halfway out the window and Cody with one foot through the remains of the windshield.
"Just making some roadkill, kiddo," Zack said as he pulled his head back inside the car. He had it back under control again, barely, but they were going straight instead of off into the ditch. He relaxed his death grip on the wheel when he noticed how white his knuckles were. "That was almost awesome." He calmed down and got the car back up to speed.
"Awesome? I can think of a thousand things to call it before I'd get to awesome," Cody told him. "Terrifying, for one."
"Yeah, but how often do you get to-"
"There's another one!" Cody yelled, interrupting his brother in mid-thought.
Zack had been looking at Cody and didn't see it in time to swerve. Oh, that's a fat one sped through his mind as they hit their second zombie in less than twenty seconds.
The first zombie had pinwheeled against the windshield and spun off to the side but this one exploded when it hit the front of the car and rained dark blood and gore across the interior. Cody looked down into his lap and was one hundred percent sure he had a mildewed boob sitting on his crotch. They were both covered in red pieces and Anthony had caught his fair share as well in the back.
"Stop the car, I'm going to puke," Cody said as his stomach began to rebel.
"I'm working on it," Zack replied as he did his best to steer the car's skid down a gentle embankment. Mud added to their woes as it blasted through the window and the hole in the windshield while the car slewed around. When they finally came to a stop, they were ass-first on a side road. Cody threw the door open and barely managed to stumble out before he vomited onto the concrete.
Zack, having a slightly stronger stomach, simply sat in the seat for a few seconds and looked himself over. He was red and brown and wet and there was a lock of matted hair hanging from the jagged remains of the glass. "Fuck that," he finally said as he opened the door to get out. "You okay, kid?" he stuck his head back in to see Anthony sitting wide-eyed and motionless. "Anthony?"
"That was the grossest thing I've ever seen," the boy responded. "It was like a pack of raw hamburger meat exploded all over us." He absently wiped a line of zombie something from his arm as he opened the back door. "Eww," he said as he noticed the left side of his shirt had changed from a wet grey to a soggy red.
"Tell me about it." Zack pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop to the ground. He watched as the blood began to run into the water. Anthony's shirt quickly joined his and they waited for Cody to finish up.
"I would love anything to get this taste out of my mouth," Cody finally said. He was sitting on his knees in the gravel and trying his best not to look back in the car.
"I've got a little Coke left," Anthony said and disappeared into the backseat for a moment. He came out and tossed it to Cody and watched as the boy took three sips and spit all three back out before swallowing a fourth.
"Thanks," Cody told him and allowed himself to be helped up by his brothers. He looked a little shaky and Zack led him around to the trunk and told him to sit. "I'm fine."
"Just in case. You look paler than usual so just chill for a minute," Zack told him.
Cody did feel a bit dizzy. Zack's face washed in and out of focus a few times before everything settled into place again. "By the way, you're never driving again," Cody told him once he felt like himself again. "Just saying. At least not until we find a bulldozer or something."
"We'll talk about that later," he laughed before he straightened up and pointed out across the field in front of them. "A building. Hopefully a building with a roof over it."
"Let's go," Cody said, stopping unloading the car just long enough to pull his blood and puke-stained shirt over his head. "We can sort through everything and see what's salvageable and what's not."
The walk took no more than five minutes but to the boys it felt like forever. They seemingly found every last gopher hole and muddy puddle on their route. When they finally stood on the building's parking lot, they were covered in mud. Anthony ran a hand across his forehead and slung a streamer of mud against the wall. "Gross."
"Well, at least we can't see the zombie goo anymore," Zack said as they forced open a door.
"I couldn't see it in the dark, anyway," Cody mumbled.
They stepped into the building by flashlight and closed the door as quietly as they could behind them. Zack pointed to a small couch and they moved it in front of the door. It wouldn't stop a horde of zombies but it would give them warning and time to find another way out. As they walked through the rooms and shined their lights around, it became obvious that they were in some sort of office building. They passed a row of offices and then into a maze of cubicles.
"Man, this is like Left 4 Dead," Zack said softly as he glanced around.
"Is that the game with the big zombie that throws cars at you?" Cody asked.
"Yeah, that's the tank," Anthony told him.
"I hate that game." Cody saw a water cooler and let the water flow and ran his hands under it.
They found an open space and set their packs in the middle of the floor. Zack pulled the small battery lantern from the gun bag, dry as a bone and he was relieved, and turned it on. The glow was dull and he scowled. The battery was almost dead and they might have five minutes before it went out completely.
"Let's make this fast," he said as he started dumping everything out of his bag. Anthony and Cody did the same and sorted through everything. Their clothes were mostly soaked and were set aside as they continued digging.
"Most of the food seems okay," Cody told them as he looked it over. "Some of the crackers got smashed, though." He set them aside.
"Oh man, that sucks," Zack said.
"I thought you were sick of crackers," Cody said as he looked up.
"Nah, I don't care about those. Everything in here is wet and Ms. December is stuck to Ms. July." Zack held up two of his not-so-secret porn stash magazines and shook them.
"Are you sure you didn't do that?" Cody asked with a grin. Anthony snorted.
"Ha ha. No." Zack gave them one more shake to pry them apart before he tossed them over his shoulder. "The hell with it," he said and tossed the whole wet pile. "Not like I can read them now anyway."
"You actually read those?" Anthony asked and it was Cody's turn to snort.
"Jeez, now there's two of them." Zack put his hands on his hips and turned to the other boys and shook his head. "I'm outnumbered." They finished sorting everything just as the light began to dim. The wet clothes were to be left while the food was repacked along with the other odds and ends they'd collected that weren't ruined. "I don't know about you guys but I'm changing from clothes that are nasty and wet into some that are just wet."
Zack began stripping his foul clothes off and tossing them as far across the room as he could before wiping every inch of skin he could reach clean with a wet t-shirt. After a few seconds Cody joined him. Zack was pulling on a soggy pair of underwear when he saw that Anthony hadn't moved yet. He shot Cody a do you want to deal with this or should I? glance and Cody nodded.
"You aren't going to keep wearing those, are you, Anthony?"
"Uh, no," he replied after a second's hesitation.
"Well come on then. Brothers shouldn't be embarrassed to change with each other." He could see the smile forming at the corners of the boy's mouth even in the dying light. "C'mon, on three. You can turn around if you want but you don't have anything either of us hasn't seen before." Cody hitched his thumbs in his waistband and counted. "One, two, three." He shucked his pants and was a little surprised when Anthony did the same. "Not so bad, huh?"
"Not really." He cleaned up like Zack had before stepping into a clean but damp pair of briefs.
They were dressed again in short order and they continued their tour of the building, hoping that they might find something useful in the various cubicles. Zack found a Snickers bar in a desk and tossed it to Anthony. Aside from staplers and reams of printer paper, it was the only thing they found.
"Okay, so I'll ask the million dollar question," Cody said after they'd torn through the last office on the far wall. "Do we stay here or do we push on? We aren't that far from the river now, maybe twenty minutes or a half hour. At the very least, we can scout the bridge and find dry clothes to sleep in before we call it a day."
"I'm all for moving on," Zack announced after thinking it over. "There isn't anything here for us and, honestly, if we stop now it'll be like we're admitting defeat, that we can't handle it at night."
Cody hadn't been thinking of it in terms of victories but found that Zack's point resonated with him. He looked to Anthony for his opinion.
"I don't want to stop now. I'm not tired and this place, this whole area, kind of gives me the creeps."
Zack's eyes perked up. "Did you see something? Hear something?"
"No, nothing like that. I don't know what it is but it feels wrong. Wronger than normal, I mean."
"I'm with you, kid," Cody told him. "It might just be from that zombie gut shower we had earlier but I can't get away from this place soon enough."
"I guess that settles it," Zack said, reshouldering his bag. "We're moving on. And so help me, we're finding a car so we can get out of this rain."
"I'm driving."
"We'll see, Cody."
"I'll drive," Anthony piped in.
"Squirt, you won't be able to see over the dashboard," Zack laughed.
"He could always sit on your lap."
"No, Cody, that's not working. Maybe one day, though, Anthony. We'll figure something out. It might be good for you to be able to drive a car just in case anything bad ever happens to the two of us."
"Sweet," the younger boy said as they found another door. "I won't hit any zombies when I get to drive."
It was still raining buckets when they stepped outside and they were soaked again within seconds. A small mob of zombies stumbled around the corner of the building and took them by surprise, their tell-tale moans drowned out by the sound of the downpour. They were close enough that Zack only had time to hit the lead zombie in the head with the end of the flashlight before it was on him. They jumped back and pulled their irons and dropped the zombies to the ground. One was still twitching and attempting to come after them. Cody stepped forward and put a bullet into its head and stopped it.
"That was too close," he said as he looked them over. "We need to find that car."
"We will," Zack said as he slipped a new clip into his gun.
Zack's words held true. They left the office building behind and found what they were looking for in a Burger King parking lot a few blocks over. Cody opened the door and picked the keys up from the seat and hopped in. Anthony rode up front with him and Cody paused to wonder how the arrangements would be if and when Anthony drove. He might make us both ride in the back, he thought with a smile. He pulled the gearshift into D and pulled out.
He kept his speed down in the driving rain despite calls of c'mon, grandma from the backseat. He wasn't about to pull a Zack and run down a zombie and wreck the nice Sunbird. It was older but it ran very well and Cody was sorry they were probably going to have to leave it when they reached the bridge. Maybe they hadn't blown it. He shook his head. No, of course they would have. They'd blown every other bridge they boys had come upon so why not that one, too? Cody pushed his wet hair back and shrugged. They'd find out soon enough.
"Well would you look at that?" Zack said from the back seat. "Look at the river." Cody did, not sure what to expect from the tone of his brother's voice.
A bolt of lightning forked across the clouds and Cody was able to make out the form of a huge span of concrete reaching across the blackness that was the river. "It's still up! I don't believe it," he exclaimed, his spirits buoyed at the thought of not having to backtrack and find a way to cross the river by boat. "I guess we're not floating to New Orleans after all, Zack."
"I can live with that. Keep driving, Cody."
Cody did, but had to slow down to nearly a crawl as he got closer. Cars were parked and wrecked three and four deep in some places and it was becoming increasingly difficult for Cody to find a way around them. He gritted his teeth as he scraped a long gash along the side of the car when he sideswiped the nose of a truck.
"Yeah, you can drive," Zack joked.
"I just tore the side up, you knocked the windshield out. I'm still ahead on points."
"You got the mirror, too, buddy," Zack told him and Cody looked to see that he was right. The mirror was hanging by its electrical wires, gently rocking back and forth as he drove.
"It's still attached. Doesn't count," he fired back. He drove another half mile and was on the bridge deck itself. Cody managed to maneuver around one more pile of cars before he had to call it quits. "I think we're walking from here," he said as he sat back against the seat. He drummed his fingers on the wheel before dropping them into his lap.
They piled out of the car and unloaded their much smaller packs. Zack took time to give the sky a middle finger salute before they started picking their way through and around the obstacles. Their lights were out and lit and they scanned the area in front of them zealously as they advanced. The thought of being stuck between two masses of zombies while on the bridge with nowhere to go but over the side was enough to make Cody's skin crawl.
The abandoned traffic had caused them to steadily drift to the left side of the span but they kept plodding along through it and soon enough came to the bridge's peak. As they reached it, they were finally able to see the other side of it and instantly knew why there were so many cars piled up around and behind them. The majority of the western half of the span was gone.
"Holy shit," Zack said as he gazed at the gaping holes in the bridge deck. Somewhere far below was the raging Mississippi River but he couldn't see it in the inky blackness of the night. "Can we even get across it?"
"We can. It's not entirely gone over there along the wall or whatever," Anthony said as he shone his light. "We can cross it."
"We can, but is it safe? That's the important question," Cody said as he looked at the two of them. "I say we at least take a look. We've come too far to turn back now." Cody felt the first butterflies begin to dance in his stomach as he looked at the sliver of decking again. He swallowed hard.
"I guess someone didn't wire the explosives right," he said as they approached the chasm. "Or they tried to bomb it from the air and missed."
"No, they hit it all right, one way or the other. They just saved us a lot of time by not hitting it where they wanted to," Zack told him.
The three boys stopped cold where the decking fell away to a small path along the edge of the bridge. They could see portions of rebar poking out from the shattered concrete in their lights. None of them were happy to see that the roadbed itself was cracked in a few places. "Wow," Cody said as he looked on. "It's not more than three feet across in the middle of the strip."
"I'll go across first," Zack asserted. "If it can hold me with all my gear, it'll hold you two easily."
"Zack, wait. We can go back and find another way across the river."
"It'll hold, Cody. Just watch." Cody suddenly found he was shaking. "I'll go across and then Anthony can go and you'll bring up the rear. Cool?"
"I guess," Cody answered.
"Okay, here we go." Zack slowly approached the sliver of decking and kept his eyes firmly on the ground in front of him. Under no circumstances was he going to allow his gaze to slip over the side and see the emptiness that was waiting to swallow him whole. One foot in front of the other in front of the other was his mantra. When he reached the narrowest part, which he judged to be three feet only if he was being very generous, he took a deep breath and forced his feet to keep moving. It took every ounce of control he had to not fall over and kiss the ground when he reached the other side.
"It's okay," he yelled. "Just keep moving and you'll be across before you know it."
Cody knelt before Anthony and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "You heard Zack. Be careful and keep moving, okay?"
"I'm okay, Cody. I can do this."
"Go on then. Watch your feet."
Anthony nodded and began crossing the sliver. He kept a slow but steady pace and navigated the narrowest stretch with no problems as far as Cody could tell. When he was safely at Zack's side Cody allowed himself to breathe again.
"Your turn, Cody!" Anthony called to him. "Just like you told me."
"Right. Just like I told you," Cody whispered. "Right." He rubbed his hands together and tried to psych himself up. "Right." he said again as he took his first steps.
Cody kept his eyes centered on the bobbing beam of light in front of him. He could hear the river rushing by however many hundreds of feet below him even over the torrents of rain that were falling on him. I can do this, he thought to himself as he reached the narrow. I can do this. Cody made the fatal mistake of letting his eyes drift to the blackness beside him. Ah fuck no I can't. He sank to one knee and froze, his heart thundering like a thoroughbred in his chest. The flashlight slipped from his fingers and went tumbling over the side, spinning end over end until it was swallowed by the river. I think I just peed my pants a little he thought absently as he slammed his eyes closed.
"Shit, what's he doing?" Zack said as he looked into the rain. "What the fuck is he doing?"
"He froze up, Zack. He must have looked down."
"Damn it," he swore under his breath. "Cody, come on, buddy, you can do this. Lift your head up and get moving again."
"I can't!" Cody cried back. He opened his eyes and felt a vertigo swoon coming over him. He closed them again and rested his forehead on the deck.
"Yes you can, Cody," Anthony called out to him. "You're almost here."
"I can't!" both boys could hear the tears in their brother's voice. Cody was sobbing.
"Please, Cody. You can do it. I know you can," Anthony said. "Come on." They received no response from Cody, none that they could hear anyway.
"I'm going out after him," Zack said as he started taking his pack off.
"No you're not. Even without all that stuff you're carrying, I still weigh a lot less than you do. I'll go."
"No way. Out of the question."
"It might crack if you are both on it. I'll go get him."
"Not happening, Anthony. What if you can't get him to move? Are you going to drag him? You aren't that strong, kiddo. Sorry."
"I won't have to. Just watch." He looked up to Zack's face for approval. No matter how much he thought he was right, knew he was right, he would defer to the older boy. His older brother. "I can do it. I can get him over here."
Zack moaned aloud. "You really think you can get him up?"
"I know I can. Just trust me. Please?"
"Go before I change my mind," he finally said and helped Anthony take all his gear off. "Be careful. I don't want to have to come in after you," he said, the joke sounding hollow in his own ears.
"I will. Promise." He gave Zack a quick hug, surprising him mightily, and was off. He crept across the cracked concrete until he was squatting a few feet from Cody. "Hey, come on, let's get moving already."
Cody's head lifted and he saw Anthony in the reflected light. "What are you doing out here? Get back over there with Zack."
"Not without you."
"Anthony, get over there now. I can't do this."
"No way. Now get up already. I'm not leaving my brother behind!"
"I can't," Cody said softly, shaking his head at Anthony.
"Yes you can." The boy stood up and offered his hand. "Come on, take my hand. I'll lead you across." Cody looked up again and saw the look in the boy's face and couldn't refuse him. So earnest, so trusting. Cody reached his hand out and latched on. "Good. Very good. Now stand up. Slowly."
Cody did just that and slowly rose to his feet, not taking his eyes off of Anthony. He was scared that if he did they would find the blackness again. Tiny steps, baby steps.
"You're doing great, Cody. Keep it up. We're almost home free."
Cody didn't respond. He was too busy focusing all his will to lift each foot and gently lower it again. Up. Down. Up. Down.
"Five more steps, Cody. Four. Three. Two. One. You made it!" Only then did Cody look up and see his brother standing a few feet away. Anthony wrapped him in a hug. "I told you you could do it!"
"Thanks, Anthony," he said at last. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything."
"That's right," Zack said. "That's what family does."
I'd just like to say that this was probably the easiest chapter I've written for the story so far. I sat down to start messing with it during a Little League World Series game and had the whole thing finished a few hours later.
I'd also like to say that Zack doesn't use Hardline since it's for n00bs. He also doesn't use Second Chance for the same reason. Of course if you didn't get his little joke early in the chapter...never mind! Just chalk it up to video game nerdiness on my part and move along.