CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Finally strong enough to migrate more, the group took to the streets as December set upon them in full force.
One foggy morning, the pack was ready, and after long discussions over many days, they had a course planned, still headed for warmer temperatures as far as they could manage to travel. Lewis predicted that it would probably take the group most of the winter to do it, but he was confident that they could make it and survive the distance.
Stepping lightly on her injured leg, Cassandra leaned onto the side walls of the building for support as she slipped out into the parking lot and into the cold air. She fidgeted with her rifle and glanced upward at the building above her, just double checking that there were no threats about.
She pulled the collar of her coat together and took a deep breath as she pulled herself away from the building, with Carlos and Lewis at her sides, offering help if she needed it.
They slowly walked for most of the day through abandoned towns. Cassandra almost could not believe that there were no people around at all.
Childishly she wondered where they all went, but if she caught herself wondering that question, her mind would flicker back to their discovery of the mall-hive, and the masses of cocooned, chest exploded people that lined its gory walls.
She knew where the people went. She had hoped of course, that this was not the case. Perhaps the residents of the towns had simply evacuated when they had the chance and had all found safety and were nestled somewhere awaiting their cue to return to their homes, jobs, and previous lives.
As she walked with the group down a dark street and stared at the many homes and apartment buildings all around her, Cassandra wondered if anyone simply just remained in their homes and locked the doors and hoped for the best.
Many of the windows had their curtains drawn, so she could not see inside to try to determine if there was any life in the homes at all. The group moved quietly and cautiously, trying not to step too loudly or shuffle a loose pebble on the streets and sidewalks where they walked, fearful of alerting anyone or anything to their presence.
With the bulk of their supplies usurped, the group had little choice but to remain moving to try to find more. Like vagabonds, they traveled with backpacks filled with what necessities they could carry.
Carlos was running far too short on medical supplies in his very empty carry bags. Each person carried their own bag of emergency medical supplies, and none were more than half full. Tending to the group members' many injuries for so long with no restocking had put a severe dent in their precious first aide supplies.
Thus, the first stop on the group's agenda would be a medical facility. They walked the entire day without seeing a hospital or any place where their resident physician could stock up.
As the temperature dropped sharply that night, they came to rest in a vacant, unlocked house. By the time the group had taken back to the streets after a quick meal in the morning, there was already a cold wind in the air, and the gray, cloud covered sky kept the sunlight from warming the temperatures.
Cassandra shivered against the ever dropping temperatures throughout the next three days, and quietly wondered if they might all just freeze to death before they found needed supplies or managed to make it to warmer climates.
The progression of their travel plans was slow, hampered by the group's weariness, still healing injuries, lack of food, and the cold temperatures.
Although few and far between, they did find new survivors and slowly Lewis' group grew from just over one dozen to three, then four, which put additional strain on all supplies.
With winter upon the group, and short days and long nights, travelling was slow and worrisome. Everyone knew the creatures ruled the night.
Fourteen hours of darkness seemed like the perfect situation for the bugs to come out in full force, but thankfully, it had been some time since anyone in the group, or any new survivors that joined them, had encountered any. Cassandra was glad for that, and did wonder if perhaps they had entered some sort of winter hibernation, allowing the humans a blessed chance at a long rest and regrouping.
She allowed that train of thought to comfort her as she limped along the cold street.
From time to time she glanced around at the group, at Carlos, and at Lewis. Each seemed lost in their own thoughts. Some had somber faces and kept their eyes low, while others still allowed their eyes to sweep the buildings around them.
With gritted teeth, they remained ever cautious for signs of the monstrous animals.
"Look, there!" Someone in the group called out suddenly after a long silence.
Daylight was quickly filtering away behind the clouds in the gray sky, but in the distance, probably not more than a mile away the group could see a sign for a hospital.
They shifted their course and took off along the empty streets, slightly reenergized by the sight of their destination. They strode on as quickly as they could, but in just a few minutes longer, they halted and glanced about.
Snow began to fall all around them. The falling white flakes had a different effect for each person, Cassandra noticed as she looked around again.
The children smiled at the tiny, peaceful flakes that had begun to fall. Several others looked even more desperate by the sight of the snow, for it indicated a bitter road ahead battling winter, trying to survive.
Cassandra felt that too, and wondered how cold the temperatures would get and how much would fall, but at the same time she was also stunned and awestruck by the sight. It seemed so odd to her that the world could just keep spinning, cycling through its seasons, happily oblivious to the terrors that had unfolded upon its surface. The white flakes were shiny and glistening, perfectly shaped, like something out of a story book.
They gleamed in the darkening light as they danced happily and peacefully to the ground, and Cassandra found herself staring at the flakes like a child in a winter wonderland.
Perhaps it was the lack of exhaust fumes from vehicles, and the filth and smoke that arose from ordinary everyday life into the air that made the snow seem even whiter than it had ever been before. Or perhaps it was simply that the lacy flakes clashed so dramatically with the satanic black shells of the creatures that were slowly claiming the planet.
After a moment of considering the snowflakes, the group quietly pressed on and approached the hospital in the distance.
Slowly and cautiously Lewis and the others scanned the area before hesitantly entering the emergency room doors when they pried them apart. Carlos watched the others enter and felt a rush of fear over sweep him.
His mind flooded back to the hospital he once directed, which seemed so far gone it was like it was a faint memory of a dream he had had long ago. He paused momentarily at the entranceway and glanced about, terrified of what might lurk inside.
Lewis and Cassandra looked back to him and waited for him to join. His eyes were wide, but he stayed quiet and did his best not to allow too much of a reflection of the terrors running through his mind to gleam in his eyes.
Once he stepped over the threshold and looked around, he quickly let his fear subside. He forced his mind to rattle over the mental list he had crated of the supplies he desperately needed to restock on and would like to have if there was room to carry.
Trying to not to whisper too loudly he rattled off the list to himself as he moved through the waiting area of the emergency room.
His eyes scanned over the seats, most of which were vacant, save for two. Two men were slung over their chairs lifeless and decaying.
The foul odor that lingered in the stale air told the group that the men had been long dead.
From a brief look over, Carlos thought he could see that one of the men had a dead chest burster hanging from the gaping hole in his bloody tee shirt that covered his torso. The other man was kicked back in the opposite direction, slumped backwards over the low back of his chair.
Craning his neck to get a further look, Carlos saw that the second man had a hole clear through the sides of his temples. There was a dusty and blood covered gun on the man's lap, just under the blown out portions of his chest.
Carlos pressed his lips together and passed the row of chairs, silently commending the man for his effort to save his friend and keep himself from feeling the terrible pain of the baby creature's emergence from between his ribcage.
There was another body on the floor between two more rows of chairs on the other side of the large room. That man seemed freshly dead, and at first glance Carlos found himself questioning if the man was still alive.
He approached the face down body slowly and knelt next to it as the hushed group watched with bated breath. Carlos gently placed a hand on the man's sleeve and immediately knew that the body was dead.
The body was cold and that familiar pungent odor of rotting flesh greeted his nostrils. Carlos rolled the man's body onto its side, tempted to do so by professional instinct to evaluate the man's wounds or by morbid curiosity to see if this man had also played host to the horrible parasites.
The group took a communal deep breath of disgust as Carlos rolled the cadaver onto its side. The man's face was nearly torn off, or more appropriately, burned off by the acid blood that had hit it, and the chairs around him.
Aghast at the sight, Carlos quickly released the man and the body thumped flatly back to the floor.
Without any more delay, the group headed through the doors into the triage area and scanned for any signs of life, friendly or otherwise. The hospital was deserted of anything living, but the place had obviously seen its fair share of disaster.
The triage area looked like a mortuary and target range combined. There were no carcasses of the torturous black bodied creatures, but there were plenty of human cadavers strewn throughout the main floor and down several adjoining corridors.
Lewis scanned over the dead military as he walked through the area. Carlos took a moment to allow the group to adjust to the terrors they were seeing, before he spoke.
He grabbed some paper and a pen from behind the nurse station and began to make his mental list written. Mumbling to himself as he scrawled his wish list onto paper, he rattled off names of drugs, instruments, and bandaging materials he desired.
"Should we split up to find these things faster or go as a group?" Carlos asked of Lewis when he was finished with his fairly long list.
Surrounded by a sea of terrified faces, Lewis wasted no time in answering the question. Though he could see Carlos' point of collecting the supplies, which were probably spread out in different areas and floors of the hospital, quickly and efficiently by splitting up, he made his choice.
"We go as a group," he said quietly.
Cassandra and several others sighed. No one had any desire to split up, regardless of how quiet their surroundings might seem.
So, the unit as a whole started down a corridor in search of their supplies. As they walked, they came across more bodies. Lewis scanned briefly over the dead military and paused when one man in the group halted over one's body and knelt down.
The body was ripped along the abdomen as though one of the creature's long spearheaded tails ripped through his side during the heat of battle. The man reached behind the solider and pulled out a shotgun the cadaver was laying upon.
"What are you doing?" One woman questioned defensively.
"Hey we need it more than he does." He responded as he slung the shot gun over his shoulder.
At first Lewis looked utterly enraged at the lack of respect for the dead soldier, but his face softened as he realized that the man had a valid point. Lewis turned away and continued scanning the hallway, looking over several other bodies in the corridor.
The walls were blasted apart in some areas from massive amounts of gunfire, and as they turned a corner, they met with a collapsed ceiling amongst charred debris where a grenade had exploded.
They were unable to follow the signs to the pharmacy with their path blocked, so they continued into the main part of the inpatient lobby and slowly headed for an alternate source of supplies.
They went up a stair case, through a hallway that clashed with the rest of the scenery around them. With nothing disturbed in the entire stretch of the corridor, it seemed like it did not even belong in the same hospital building at all.
As they found a set of stairs that would put them behind the blast site, they descended back in to the war field. The smell and the blood stained walls along with the shredded cadavers that littered the hallway sent shivers through Cassandra's body.
Even more eerie than looking at the rotting cadavers of a battle long past, was the sheer absence of the enemy's bodies. Cassandra was not the only one to notice this, as others in the group began to comment softly while they tiptoed carefully through body after body.
"They didn't kill one of those things..."
No one responded to the man who whispered the words through gritted teeth.
Carlos halted in front a steel door with a vertical window and a name placard that read PHARMACY on it. Lewis peered inside and pushed the door open.
The door slid to a halt against a knocked over shelving unit behind it. The pharmacy was in disarray. Shelves were knocked down and bottles of medication were strewn everywhere, but there were no bodies, human or otherwise, present.
It took Carlos and the others quite some time to sift through the rubble and find mostly everything on his list of medications.
By the end of that night, the medical supply bags were stocked full of much needed antibiotics, bandages, surgical instruments, suture, and at least one of everything on Carlos's list.
Having a good supply of emergency aide seemed to relieve the group a little and as they piled into a waiting room on the second floor of the hospital at just before dawn, they were all feeling a little stronger. Carlos put his new supplies to good use and tended to those who needed aide before stopping to rest sometime in the afternoon.
They spent the remainder of that day in the waiting area dining on their dwindling rations and watching the snow accumulate outside the window.
Cassandra glanced outside at dusk and figured there to be at least three inches of fresh white flakes on the ground. The snow blanketed the street and sidewalks outside untouched by man, beast, or snowplow.
Lewis took a quick inventory of each man's supplies and calculated that they would begin to run severely low on daily meals in three more days.
Each person in the group was instructed to try to curb their appetites as best they can, so they could hold out as long as possible so they did not try to move on in the snow.
He and Cassandra sat together for quite some time and then headed down a hallway towards the patient rooms to evaluate their surroundings in more detail. The hospital wing they entered was devoid of bodies in the corridor, but as they peered through some of the room doors, they found a terrible sight.
Patients brought to the hospital for care, had been abandoned to their beds. Several of the rooms were occupied by bedridden corpses that had either starved or died of their ailments that brought them there in the first place. Lewis and Cassandra saw all that they needed to see in that hallway, and returned to the group a short time later.
The snow fell all through that day and stopped sometime during the night while much of the group slept. By the time they were prepared to move on, five inches of the powdery white flakes had been draped over the ground and remained untouched for two solid days.
A little hesitant at first to make such easily followable tracks in the snow, Lewis did step out into the cold and started on course. Flowing in behind him, the rest of the group marched quietly with him towards their next destination, which was for food.
Sources of food were easy to find, with homes, restaurants, delis, grocery stores, and a variety of other places in every town and on nearly every street. However, finding edible foods after nearly three solid months of no electricity was becoming far more difficult, just as was staying warm in the winter months.
They entered shops and stores and filled up with long-lasting foods and found plenty of clothes to pile on their bodies to help keep warm.
When well hidden deep inside buildings, they would light small fires and huddle around to help kill the chill in the air, always bearing in mind that the smell of the smoke would help attract the bugs that they hid from.
One week had passed and Lewis was disappointed with how little ground the group have covered. It was a difficult situation they were in, one that none of the people could have possibly planned or trained for, so traveling was hard and far slower than he felt ideal.
He silently feared that they would not survive the winter, for they would not make it to warmer climates. Despite the need to seek warmer weather, the cold temperatures caused the group to slow their journey dramatically, so they did the best they could given their situation.
Despite the slow migration of the group of men, women, and children, Lewis still felt that they were not faring all that poorly. Though the members of the traveling band had no or little survival training, they all had the will they needed and Lewis did his best to guide them to survival.
He was grateful for surviving what they had so far, and for not having had another encounter with the vile creatures in several precious weeks. He and Cassandra discussed their opinions on the lack of encounters, but quickly ended their conversation out of superstitious fear of jinxing their run of luck.
As they walked out of the empty city, they took to a highway and walked along the snow covered traffic lanes, bracing against the cold wind and icy temperatures. Lewis began to slow his walk as he cast his eyes to the ground. Cassandra followed his line of vision and her eyes set upon tracks in the snow.
"They're human anyway," Carlos said with relief.
Lewis scanned the roadway ahead and saw the tracks disappear down an exit ramp just ahead. He bounced over to the guardrail and looked over the side, scanning the area along the road with the others for any people that may have still been nearby. He saw no one and started forward with his group down the ramp, following the tracks in the snow.
They walked quickly along a wooded street and began to see the edge of a city take shape ahead on the road. There were vehicles crammed so tightly into the street the group had to forge a path around them through the trees, following the tracks of those before them that had done the same thing.
Cassandra kept pace alongside Lewis and warily watched the streets around her. Not every group of people they had encountered thus far was sociable and willing to tolerate any invaders, beast or man, in what they called 'their' territories. She was tense as she paced with Lewis down the road.
They slowed as they approached a line of defeated tanks along the intersection ahead. Cassandra glanced at the damaged vehicles with only a fleeting interest, while others in the group gaped in shock at the terrible sights around them.
The nearest buildings of the city they entered were demolished from cannon fire. Here at least, there were signs of some victory over the bugs. Tattered black corpses littered
the acid burned streets for several blocks.
"This must have been a safety zone," Cassandra whispered softly as she stared at a pile of bug bodies.
Lewis said nothing he just stepped past her and continued down the street slowly, weapon drawn and ready. The city had a hostile air to it, but Lewis wondered to himself if it was just his nerves and exhaustion catching up to him.
It was just a city after all, and the horrible events that had taken place there had obviously come and gone some time ago. One thing vacant from the battle scene, was the opposite of what was missing from the hospital's corridors.
There, there were only human victims and no animal bodies at all, but the streets before him were quite the opposite. There were no human corpses along the wreckage and burnt buildings and vehicles all along the streets.
The tracks in the snow seemed to be scattered everywhere, giving the impression that a group of people had been here in the last few days, and could possibly still be around. As Lewis walked on, he and Cassandra exchanged nervous glances.
Carlos, too, seemed to sense what they did. The air was getting hotter and a terrible stench met their frozen nostrils. Frowning, Lewis signaled the group to a halt and crouched low. Cassandra and Carlos flattened their backs against a building and watched Lewis skulk towards the corner.
He slowly peered around the edge of the building then looked back to Cassandra and Carlos, who were watching him with wide, worried eyes. Lewis shot them a quizzical look and stood up.
He tipped his head in the direction he was looking, indicating it was safe enough for the group to follow him and he disappeared around the corner. Cassandra hopped into action immediately, walking with Carlos around the corner where they halted once more.
Their jaws dropped in horrified amazement.
The road was blocked off with a massive pile of human corpses. The bodies were stacked on top of one another forming a pyramid shape ten feet high and as wide as the street itself.
Bodies touched from building to building and Cassandra could not tell how far back the pile went. The sight was difficult to evaluate through the flames that were burning away at the thick pile of corpses in the road. The stench that overtook the winter air was overwhelmingly powerful and nauseating.
Sickened, Cassandra slid off to the side and turned away, trying hard to avoid retching. She looked down the block behind the group and noticed another odd sight on that street.
Giant cardboard signs, painted with what she was certain was blood, were propped up against buildings and cars all along the street, forming a flimsy fence line that separated the rest of the world from the man in a fur coat that swayed atop another tank.
Cassandra got Lewis's attention and he and the others turned to look down the street. They walked apprehensively towards the man on top of the tank. He was holding two more signs at his sides, swaying, crying and talking to himself.
As the group approached, the man's voice projected louder, but he did not seem to make eye contact with the people that closed in.
The signs offered to the amazed onlookers warnings of the end of the world, the end of mankind, the destruction of the human race, the wrath of the devil, and a numerous other variety of foreboding phrases.
"Are you all right?" Carlos asked up to the man on the tank.
The man shivered and swayed. His face was red and teary and Cassandra had the distinct impression he was naked under the long ladies' coat he wore.
He was standing barefoot on an acid burned tank in the middle of the road, surrounded by his cardboard barrier, howling quotes from the book of God and sobbing over the end of times.
"Hey!" Lewis called once.
He called out again louder and louder yet a third time until finally the man on the tank looked down at the stunned group that stared up at him.
Before Lewis could even eek out another word, the man halfway fell down off the tank and strode through the snow over to his cardboard fence, immediately feeding Lewis information he probably did not want to know.
"The end has come, renounce your sins, kneel and pray! The end has come; this is our punishment...our punishment...punishment..."
He swallowed an announced louder, with ever reddening eyes, "This is the finger of God, the finger of God...the gnats. The gnats... finger of God. We are lost. We are lost."
He continued on, repeating broken words over and over, paying no attention to Lewis and Carlos's attempts at quelling him. He continued to sway, cry, and preach barefoot in the snow before the shocked group in the street.
"That's enough!" Lewis growled at the man, grabbing hold of his shoulders and shaking him to try to get the man's attention.
Through his teary eyes, the man continued to rattle on about the end of the world. His eyes never quite made contact with Lewis. He continued on, repeating words and stuttering, acting as though he could not see or hear or sense the group in front of him, yet it was obviously clear that he knew full well they were there.
"Ah, don't mind him, you won't get him to move." A voice said loudly from the street corner.
Heads turned in the voice's direction and the group laid eyes upon another band of people.
The man in the lead strode forward with a thin smile on his pleasant face and shook Lewis's hand as he introduced himself warmly. His name was Tanner and he looked hardened and battle-weary, but he smiled all the same as his small troop and Lewis's band of survivors intermingled before he led them to their hideout.
Cassandra listened as the gritty man tell them of their struggles and informed them of the battle they had been through only a few days prior. When questioned about the bodies, at first the man tried to avoid answering, but eventually he did tell the trio that their band of survivors had indeed piled the bodies there to burn instead of leaving them to rot in the streets.
Tanner seemed filled with remorse over all that he had witnessed and taken part in, but he gritted his teeth and continued on in his discussion, adding that the bugs had passed through in a massive wave less than seventy-two hours ago, and the man in the fur coat, who no one knew his name, had been preaching ever since.
The area was indeed a safety zone, one of the last, Cassandra imagined. Tanner told them the zone had been up since the middle of October since he and many others had established it before the military ever showed up.
He led the tired, cold group into an apartment building and Cassandra could not quite believe what she was seeing. Despite having no electricity, the people that lined the halls and every room, were mingling quietly and seemed rather oblivious to the destruction outside them.
Cassandra was glad for the lifted spirits, and as Tanner gave them a personal tour through the buildings, she began to understand their mentality.
The people had held out through seven massive attacks and multiple smaller scales battles. They held their ground and managed to horde plenty of supplies, food, weapons, and ammunition.
They had no intention of leaving the building unless they absolutely had to, and thus far, they had not been forced to leave in mass. They had obviously seen their fair shares of death and lost many of their numbers to the bug drones, but Cassandra estimated that if every floor was as jam packed as the first and second floors were, the building was probably housing nearly two hundred strong willed and well-armed survivors.
Lewis and his followers were welcomed with open arms, given food, extra ammunition, clothing, a place to sleep, and even water to bathe and groom with.
Cassandra was immensely comforted by the large group of people fighting the battle so well. She began to feel their pride and power as she settled next to Lewis for the first night's true solid rest on an actual bed mattress.
Cassandra picked up on the lifestyle the group led right away. While it was not much different than the one she had been leading all this time, there were subtle, but very noticeable and much needed differences.
While the people in the building mingled and ate their meals and told stories and even laughed as they joked and conversed, there was always a certain air of caution in everything they did. No one was ever alone or unarmed at any time.
The doors to every apartment in the ten floor building were always open and noise levels were kept to a minimum most of the time.
Food was conserved and rationed very well and very strictly, to be sure that everyone always had something to eat as often as possible. While this usually meant tiny meals, at least there was food for everyone more than once a day.
This alone was a massive difference, Cassandra thought as she ate a small bowl of warm breakfast oatmeal.
As the days passed she began to feel as confident as the members of the surviving band. While she was not sure if an end to the war against the creatures was nearing, she did feel that she might be able to hold out there until the end did come.
She began to find herself wondering how many other places in the country, in the world, were just like this. As she considered the huddled survivors, she began to wonder how they could all come together as one to defeat the creatures that had overrun the plant, or if such a victory was even possible.
Once again, her mind followed through all the same thoughts and ended up back at the same useless, unanswerable question. Where did they come from?
She shrugged those thoughts from her mind and looked at Lewis as she finished her meal. He smiled softly at her and she did the same. They talked softly for a while and decided to venture through the rest of the building, meet the other survivors and fully evaluate where they now called home.
Invited to join them, Carlos declined. He had an entire apartment full of medical supplies and patients to care for, and he seemed eager to get to work with several trained nurses and one other doctor in the new group.
Cassandra watched him prance off after cleaning his bowl with a damp cloth and placing it back in the dish pile on the floor. She smiled softly as he disappeared out of one apartment and down the corridor.
The breakfast dishware was cleaned up quickly, each person taking care of their own bowls and silverware with dampened towels and in just a few minutes after the meal had ended, the people living on the first floor broke off into little clusters to occupy their time in whatever ways they saw fit to do so.
Cassandra and Lewis walked through the corridor and headed up the stairs to the second floor. As the day progressed and the pair walked from floor to floor, Cassandra decided the set up in the building was quite unique. Each floor seemed to have a different theme to it in a way.
One floor of the building was packed full of people that simply wanted to hold out and wait for an end, in whatever way the end would come, though they all had weapons with which to fight when their chance came.
On other floors, there were groups of people who spent every waking second of the day praying in large groups, while others yet seemed to spend their time planning their re-invasion of their own world.
Another entire floor of the building was a dedicated school where children spent their days learning and playing and the adults who watched them tried hard to engage their minds and distract them from the world outside.
Each floor, each cluster of people, each individual person had their own energy, their own aura around them. It did not take long for Cassandra to decide which group of people she wanted to be amongst.
Lewis stayed with her and sometimes she would catch from him what she thought was a longing stare. As the time passed by slowly, the apartments building became home and as the weather turned even worse, Cassandra was glad to have a home and something of a family to share it with.
She tried hard to keep her mind focused, but sometimes it would drift back to the life she once had and she would find herself thinking about her own family and her future as she thought it would be.
Sometimes during her sleep, she would wake with a start as a terrible image of Stephanie's body thumping to the floor covered in blood with the horrific chest bursting creature spawning and she would clench her own chest while she tried to catch her breath and remember where she was and what was going on.
Lewis tried to content her as best he could, and they spent much of their time discussing what they thought and hoped the end of all this might be.
They imagined the end of the bug war, and a revitalization of the human race once again and of course they hoped it would come sooner than later.
During a quiet and still moment, Lewis offered Cassandra a steaming cup of hot chocolate while they sat in one apartment's bedroom and watched the winds whip the bare trees while little icicles glistened in the moon light. Lewis and Cassandra talked softly for a long while.
She watched him fidget and run his hands through his dark hair. His dark skin, for the first time in a long while was clean and his bruises and injuries were healed. Cassandra, too, finally clean from head to toe for the first time in weeks, was stronger every day.
Her wounds had healed and only scars of the battles she survived under the many layers of clothing.
Lewis eyed her with a soft smile and intent stare and after a brief pause he leaned in towards her and kissed her cheek.
Cassandra shut her eyes and felt his lips against her. She listened to him take and hold a nervous breath, and inch closer to her as he gently gripped her shoulders.
Cassandra sighed softly and tipped her head towards him, bringing her lips closer to his. He pressed his lips to hers and she slowly reached towards his cleanly shaven chin and placed her palm on his face, kissing him back softly, apprehensively.
She dropped her head, lowered her eyes and pulled back slightly away from him.
"Lewis… I'm sorry… I just…" she sighed, seeing the disappointment in his eyes. "I just can't. It doesn't feel right. I just can't do this."
Lewis nodded and pulled away, a brief but awkward silence filling the room.
"Movement!" A shouting voice rang out through the hallways.
Cassandra and Lewis glanced at each other and looked out the window. Activity hastened in the hallway and in the apartment as people went into high alert.
All heads turned towards windows and doors to the outside per the watchman. Cassandra peered out and scanned the dark streets.
The storm raging outside made it nearly impossible to see even just a few feet out of the window and even more impossible to imagine that people would be out in such weather, at least by choice.
However, surely as the watchman called, Cassandra began to see an unbelievable sight through the blinding snow.
Ten people, or walking piles of clothing, were heading down the street not far from the apartment building. Tanner quickly called out and a group of volunteers, Lewis included, shot out into the night to fetch the lost travelers.
Cassandra followed Lewis to the door, but remained inside. Carlos caught up with her just as the door swung open and a bitter wind filled the hallway of the large building. She shivered from the cold as she updated Carlos on what was going on and the door slammed shut.
Restless and worried people waited in silence clinging to their weapons and looking to one another as though each person might have the answers they sought.
Several others that peered out of the windows called out to those in the hallways and Cassandra could hear the same event taking place on the upper floors too as each person wondered what was going to happen next. There was such an excitement in the air, Cassandra could feel it.
Humans were becoming scarce, and to see a small band walking through the night in the middle of a severe snow storm was arousing in so many different ways. She felt nervous as the door swung back open.
Tanner and Lewis were the first two to step back inside. Cassandra immediately felt a rush of relief through her body seeing Lewis enter. Behind him came the group that had been wandering the streets, and behind them, the rest of the hold out volunteers that had gone out to fetch them.
The ten people collapsed once inside the hallway, gasping for air, obviously exhausted. Dozens of people began to rush to get dry clothing, warm drinks, and food. Carlos immediately dropped to his knees to evaluate the people shivering on the floor.
Cassandra took Lewis's hand and watched with him as Carlos looked over the people. As others helped the newcomers out of their cold, icy clothing, Cassandra pressed her eyebrows together and glanced at Lewis, who was staring at the newcomers just as intently.
It seemed suddenly that nearly everyone in the crammed hallway knew what was wrong with the new arrivals. They were not appalled by their bluish tinted skin, nor were they taken back by the frozen blood that covered their clothes, or the acid burns that some were suffering from.
It was the noticeable gashes in every man's head, and the black and blue throats that they bared that caused the concern amongst the group in the hallway.
The ten people seemed to stare uncertainly at those around them. Carlos took a closer look at one of the newcomer's injuries to his head and throat and then the others seemed to begin to understand what was going on.
They complained that they had blacked out during the attack they had been through or perhaps just from the cold, but as they looked to one another and saw the marks dug into their heads, they began to realize what they had been unconscious through.
"How long have you been out there?" Tanner asked with a gritty, unsympathetic voice.
"I...I d...don't know." One man answered softly, stuttering against his own frozen jaws.
Cassandra noticed how Tanner was gripping his hand pistol at his side, ticking it angrily with his fingertips. One member of the new group noticed this as well as his eyes dropped to focus in on Tanner's hand.
The newcomers seemed to be suddenly coming to grips with the reality of what was about to happen to them. One man began to sob. Carlos tried to calm him as he and some others helped the group to their feet to get them to the hospital area.
A man in the middle of the pack began to breathe heavily, joining his crying friend. He too began to act as though he just realized he was on death's door.
He pleaded for his own life and begged not to die such a way. Within a moment his words were cut off as he began to cough and gag as he tried to continue to cry and plead. He shook his head and grabbed his chest.
Before anyone could even attempt to stop him, Tanner lifted his weapon and shot the man two times quickly. The group in the hallway jumped back, and those alongside the coughing man fell to the sides, trying to avoid being shot themselves.
One bullet landed squarely into the man's head, putting him immediately out of the misery he begged not to be in, and the other seared through the hatchling creature that was trying to begin its gruesome path to the outside world.
Tanner looked to the next man with a determined look in his eyes. Lewis jumped over to him shouting for him to stop. The two men argued loudly.
"It has to be done!" Tanner shouted. "We've all been here before, every one of us in here! It has to be done!"
No one else in the corridor seemed to disagree with Tanner.
"You have no right to be their executioner!" Lewis howled, trying to wrestle Tanner's arm away from the cold and scared hosts.
"We can't allow any more of those creatures to be born!" Tanner yelled back.
"He's right!" A raspy voice called out through frozen lungs.
The hallway fell silent and all heads turned to one of the infected visitors. The man stood up, tears in his eyes, and walked towards Tanner as Lewis released his grip. His eyes were focused intently on the gun in the man's grip.
"We're all dead anyway. I don't want to die like that, and I sure as hell don't want another one of those things running around because of me." He said in a forced whisper as he stood squarely and nervously in front of Tanner and his gun.
"Wait! Wait!" Carlos called out pleadingly. "Just wait!"
All heads turned towards him. The tension in the hallway was thicker than the falling snow in the streets outside.
"Maybe there is another way for this to end," Carlos added once he had the group's attention.
"What are you saying?" The infected man asked.
"I'm a doctor, I... I.. was...asked, a long time ago by the military to try to surgically remove the embryo from the chests of those infected." He explained quickly and pleadingly.
The new group seemed enthused by this news and the first man turned to him.
"Did it work?" He asked hopefully.
Carlos shifted his eyes to the man trying to pull himself off the ground.
"I never got the chance," he said solemnly.
"Let me try."
A contemplative silence fell in the hallway.
"That will be a huge drain on our resources," someone calculated aloud.
"It's worth it to try," Carlos insisted, staring at the infected newcomer intently.
After a delay, Tanner nodded, and Carlos ushered one of the nine remaining new comers through the hallway towards the designated hospital apartment.
His volunteer nurses joined him quickly as he rushed through his list of what he wanted. Lewis and Cassandra followed him into the apartment, offering to help if they could as the rest of the group watched in wonder from the area near the door.
Cassandra was quickly put to use to make a clean surface area on the coffee table and the floor in the middle of the living room as the others scrambled to get the needed equipment ready.
Carlos turned away from the group for a moment, washing his hands thoroughly as he prepared himself to attempt something so desperately drastic.
He was not convinced that this procedure would even work in the most sterile and controlled hospital environments, but it was all that they had left to try at that point before another person died. As the boiled surgical instruments were pulled out of their pots and placed onto a cookie pan that had been cleaned and heated over a fire, the first volunteer for surgery laid himself warily on the floor.
"This will make you sleep. You won't feel anything." Carlos said softly as he injected the man with a medication.
"If this works," Carlos said to the silent group around him, "it will give us a fighting chance to save infected people and stop this war."
In just a few minutes the man's eyes rolled back into his head. Despite the frigid air in the room, Cassandra could see sweat beading up on Carlos's forehead.
He pulled himself together and cleared his throat, fully aware of the watchful eyes that filled the room around him before he made his incision into the man's bare, clean chest. A thin line of blood oozed out of the fresh cut skin and Carlos glanced up to one assistant, who reading his mind, brought over the cookie tray upon which rested an instrument that looked like some kind of torture device.
Cassandra gritted her teeth and turned her head partially away as the instrument cut through the man's rib cage down the massive incision in his chest.
Carlos's face was unreadable behind the mask that covered most of his face, but his eyes were wide and as he placed the bloody instrument on another tray, he stared into the man's chest.
"Jesus," he whispered softly.
Lewis and Cassandra, along with many others, crept forward and craned their necks to see inside the man's chest.
"What is it?" Tanner asked as he approached hesitantly.
Carlos dabbed away some pooling blood and shook his head, glancing around at the people that were drawing nearer.
Cassandra leaned close enough to see, though at first glance, she did not quite understand what she was looking at. She stared for a moment and then realized that just next to and under the grayish pink mass in the man's chest that were his lungs was a moving, twitching tail.
Carlos reached into the cavity of the man's chest with a pair of forceps and delicately peeled back a flap of the man's lungs, revealing part of his beating heart and even more of the monstrous fetus.
The thing was laying in a crescent shape inside the man's chest, between the lobes of his lungs, and next to and around his heart.
The thing's eyeless, curved head, which was capped off with a mouth full of sharp, almost metallic looking teeth, rested firmly under what Carlos identified as the man's aorta.
"It's so intertwined around the organs and vessels. The second this thing's head moves, the aorta snaps and the thing pushes through the heart, the lungs, and out through the ribcage." Carlos said quietly, as though instructing a class. "I don't see how this animal can be removed safely."
Carlos stared wide eyed at the group around him as though looking for the answer.
"All right, that's enough," Tanner whispered.
"What, what are you saying, you can't help us?" Another of the infected victims cried and pleaded as though Carlos could change his mind just for him.
Carlos stayed quiet and stared back in stunned contemplation at the thing in the man's chest. Tanner stepped forward, gun in hand and ready to be used.
Suddenly, the wretched beast inside the unconscious man's chest snapped to life, rupturing the aorta just as Carlos said. With no skin over it to contain the blood, a massive spray of fresh warm blood shot up like it was being forced through a high pressure nozzle.
It sprayed several people as they jumped aside shouting and the monster, animated into life, sat up out of the open hole and hissed its way into the world.
Without hesitation, and howling like a mad man, Tanner fired his hand pistol until it was empty. Several people in the room shouted and bolted out of sight, fearing they might be hit by a stray bullet.
Cassandra dropped to the ground and stared at the now dead man on the floor. The creature was on the ground next to his body, its acidic blood burning a hole through the fake wood panels below it.
She looked up and saw the rest of the group of walking hosts trying to escape their doom. Tanner had killed two more before the rest jumped on him and started beating him relentlessly.
Lewis tried to intervene, but was thrown sideways by two of the host men. One fell to his knees before Carlos and pleaded with him to save him from the bitter end he faced, to carve the creature out of his chest.
Carlos shook his head and tried to make the man understand that he could not do as he was asked. Unwilling to hear denial, the man grabbed hold of Carlos's throat and wrestled him to the ground, screaming to him to save his life.
Cassandra pulled herself up and thundered over to Carlos's side, screaming at the terrified man to release his grip on Carlos. She drew a loaded pistol and aimed, howling at the man to stop.
The man looked up and did as she insisted. He released his grip from Carlos, who pulled back, massaging his throat and gasping for air.
Without any word, the panicked man darted at Cassandra. Perhaps he had hoped to get the gun from her hands for himself, or perhaps he was counting on being shot, she never stopped to consider.
With a flash of anger raging in her eyes, and a remorseful sorrow at the same time for the fate of the hosts, she pulled the trigger repeatedly until the bloody heap of a corpse fell backwards and collapsed into the double sliding doors on the other end of the living room.
Carlos glanced at her gratefully and she quickly cast him a concerned look before turning her head towards Lewis. She saw him pulling himself up to his feet and glancing at Tanner, who was lying in a bloody heap on the ground, not moving.
All at once, the seven other hosts that remained began to display the now familiar signs of the end of their infants' gestations. Each man and woman gasped for air and dropped to the ground.
Some grabbed their chest with looks of amazement on their faces, as though they did not believe it would actually happen to them, or they could not have prepared themselves for the amount of pain they were feeling. Others cried out with teary eyes and looked to the ones staring at them for relief from their agony.
Cassandra looked to Lewis who cast her a determined glance. They both readied their handguns and the stunned crowd of survivors piled in the hallway watched and stared in silence, heads lowered. They said and did nothing besides accept the inevitable.
The host group, writhing and crying with pain with only seconds left to their agonizing life, knelt or dropped to the ground and did the best they could to face Lewis and Cassandra, who both aimed their weapons in regretful silence.
Their guns fired in unison, two bullets for each of the nine suffering people at their feet; one in the head first, and one through the chest next. The room quickly filled with gunpowder and acid.
The stench of cooking flesh and internal organs and boiling blood seeped into every orifice Cassandra had. She trembled with disgust and left the room in a hurry, keeling over a toilet in the next apartment out of sight. Lewis stood shaking on the spot, overlooking nine dead souls, pale and shaking.
Silent from a great loss of life and hope, the people in the apartment building remained awake through most of the night, each dealing in their own ways with the events that had taken place that evening. Cassandra and Lewis changed clothes and cleaned the blood from their faces and hands. Cassandra stared at the white basin of the sink she cleaned herself over as it turned pink from the blood.
"I feel like Lady Macbeth," she whispered.
"What?" Lewis questioned.
"'Out, out damned spot," she quoted. "What have we done?"
Lewis sighed and gripped her shoulder.
"What we had to do. Those people were dead already. You know that. Not even Carlos could have helped them. We can't afford not one more of those creatures."
"But there always will be one more," Cassandra sighed. "Until we're all gone. We're all going to die. Everyone, everything, everywhere, it's just all going to become one great big hive. What's the point, Lewis, why even try?"
She broke down sobbing and Lewis cradled her on the floor of the washroom. It was not until morning that the pair returned to the main group reluctantly, both wiping tears from their reddened eyes.
The people in the hallways and the apartment units were silent and saddened. Only a few looked up as Cassandra and Carlos walked through the hallway and found Carlos. Some acknowledged them, while others ignored them all together.
Cassandra was quite sure she could feel her soul being burned by the glares she was cast. As they rounded the hallway corner, they saw a train of people carrying the cadavers out into the street and down the blocks to the massive burn pile that was still smoldering.
Cassandra had no appetite to eat that morning. She stared out a window with Lewis next to her and no one else around them.
The snowstorm had passed and only a few small flakes danced in the wind, adding to the six inch blanket that covered the ground. It was a white Christmas; the first Cassandra could remember having in years.
It never snowed in California, and if New York City was ever blanketed in the fluffy white stuff, the heat of the city melted it before school could even be delayed. The cold, empty streets outside the apartment window now, allowed for snow from the last snowfall to remain while even more fell overnight.
She glanced off to the side and saw the caravan of bodies being carried down the street and dropped her eyes to the ground, feeling a surge of emotions running through her. She sat by the window most of the day and as the late afternoon fell, Carlos joined them, and the three sipped delicately from their cups of hot chocolate when all of a sudden, singing rang out.
The voices were lovely and eerie at the same time, as though they did not belong in Cassandra's world. Her world was a place of great sin, horrible death, and necessary evil. The singers on the upper floor rang out with songs of peace, love, happiness, angels, and Christ, none of which she felt she would know ever again.
Carlos and Lewis tipped their heads towards the ceiling and listened to voices ringing out throughout most of the evening. Their sweet hymns sank deep into their hearts, and must have struck into the rest of the people in the building, for others joined in the singing too.
Cassandra had no songs in her heart, but she shut her eyes and listened to voices begin to fill with hope once more until the hour grew late and the need for silence overtook all the people in the building.
Several days passed and a New Year was rung in, in a less than traditional, mostly silent fashion.
With the passing of one year and the start of a new one, brought a fleeting moment of hope to all of the people in the little apartment world.
For at least a few more hours, they fantasized about a new retaliation, a new dawning of the human race. But as dawn broke through the cloudy sky, so did the calls of the black monsters, the bugs, the bringers of misery, suffering, and death.
Cassandra's anger grew in a flash. She despised them more than ever.
Their screeching shrieks as they drew nearer to the human hideout seemed to taunt and torment the people behind the building's walls.
It was as though the creatures were calling out their imminent victory, bragging about it, being sure that the people within knew that their deaths were on the horizon.
Cassandra clenched her jaws and prepared herself for battle, grabbing extra weapons and as much ammunition as she could carry.
In just a few minutes, every gun-wielding member of the hold out group was poised and ready for action, silently preparing themselves for the attack as they watched the streets and listened to the shrill voices rising up through the air.
Peering out windows, they watched and anxiously awaited the first sign of the black bodies that clashed with the white untouched snow in the streets. Suddenly, shouting and gunshots and stomping feet echoed through the building.
The noises were so muffled and distant it was hard hear, but with every door along the stairwell open, the sounds echoed down sure enough. It did not take long to realize that creatures had changed their attack plan and had begun their strike from the rooftop first.
All that the people on the lower floors could do was listen and wait. Cassandra listened attentively to the sounds of gunfire echoing down through the upstairs hallways and the satanic screeching of the creatures growing ever louder as they descended the levels in mass.
Suddenly, gunfire rang out from an apartment at the end of the hallway. All heads turned in that direction as the building floor filled with a deafening variety of weapon fire and screaming people.
The creatures, Cassandra realized, had planned their assault well, distracting everyone with the top floor attack, they were able to overtake those on the first floor nearly unaware, and press on quickly with a two prong attack.
Severely outnumbered, the people on the first floor were forced to fall back as they tried to avoid the acid spray of the creatures they managed to kill.
Cassandra kept close to Lewis and Carlos and they swarmed with the rest of the people in the corridors back to the rear entrance of the building as they did their best to kill the creatures that overtook them. The creatures zipped over the tops of peoples' heads, galloping along the ceiling in utter defiance of gravity and leaping down onto their panicked prey.
The monsters killed very few people; instead, they used their tails to strike and subdue their attackers, or clawed and bit their legs and bodies so severely to incapacitate their victims.
As Cassandra backed off with a large group, she watched a small army of face huggers enter the corridor and leap in every direction, nearly never missing their intended victim.
Human bodies fell on top of one another and shot bug bodies fell on top of those and soon, the corridor reeked of gunpowder, burning acid, and seared human flesh.
The escaping mob of people slammed into the back door so hard, the door sprung open and sent people falling backwards over one another. Trying to avoid being stampeded herself, Cassandra curled up into a ball and tried to roll out of the way.
She felt a set of hands grab her arm and yank her hard to her feet. Lewis had pulled her out of immediate stampede danger and Carlos leaped off to the other side of the crowd as panicked people pulled themselves to their feet and bolted away.
Carlos shouted, but over the screaming and continued gunfire from inside the building, his words drowned out, so he pointed.
Lewis and Cassandra both whipped around with haste in just enough time to point their weapons towards the rush of bugs that was about to overtake them. Skillfully jumping off to the side to avoid the acid back splash while they fired, Cassandra and Lewis were parted by dozens of the monstrous black creatures.
Cassandra bolted away, screaming to Lewis, though she could not see him through the onslaught of the massive black creatures. Carlos ran over to her and the pair was quickly joined by dozens of others who united their weapons to form a large line of gunfire against the attacking creatures.
Slowly, the defensive line was able to eat away at the numbers of their attackers, while the battle raged on inside the building. Cassandra scanned the thick pile of sizzling corpses searching for any sign of Lewis, but she did not see any hint of him along the battle field.
Carlos tipped his head to her right and she turned to see Lewis speeding up to her from the other end of the block. He cast her a quick smile, but wasted no time in hurrying the large group of people clear of the area.
They instantly bolted off down the street, trying to double back to the front of the apartment building to try to help whomever they could inside.
As Cassandra raced down the block and toward the street that the massive burn pile was on, she found herself glancing off to each side.
To her right, she saw what remained of hundreds of human bodies that had been ignited weeks ago, and to her left still remained the cardboard signs about the end of the world and the tank in the middle of the road with its massive acid burn through the front of the machine.
The man in the fur coat was still there as well, although he was splayed across the top of the tank with his chest split in two.
Without further consideration, Cassandra concentrated all of her efforts on running. Gunfire began to ring out from the very back of the group and everyone halted and spun around.
They were being pursued by dozens of the angry monsters. In a moment, the group of survivors scattered and prepared for a last stand against their attackers.
Cassandra, Lewis, and Carlos piled behind a set of stairs at the front of one nearby building and shot non stop, reloading as quickly as they possibly could.
Cassandra glanced across the street and saw a dozen more people huddled around the corner of one building, each craning their head and weapons around just enough to fire.
Scattered throughout the street, small pockets of people fired their guns dry for what seemed like hours. While it had only been several minutes until the street fell quiet, Cassandra felt as though the battle had raged on endlessly.
She shivered from the cold air and the surge of adrenaline and fear coursing through her veins as she and the others stood and stared at the street they had littered with bodies of the torturous creatures.
A few straggling people from inside the apartment building made their way slowly out of the door. The gunfire quieted and for a moment, the world was still as people stifled tears and sobs and tried to regroup in the snowy street.
It took hours for the effects of adrenaline to wear off. The group ran and walked and jogged and walked more, trying to put as much distance between them and their last battlefield as possible.
But as the afternoon passed and their bodies wore down, the group began to slow. Darkness was quickly approaching and the temperature was increasingly colder as the time passed.
Lewis spotted a fairly good shelter prospect just a few blocks ahead and the group headed towards it promptly.
Cassandra tried to keep up with Lewis as they crossed through a snow covered parking lot. She was exhausted and shivering from cold and fear.
She glanced off across the street beyond another large parking lot with an untouched layer of snow on it and thought she saw in the distance, just at the edge of the tree line that bordered the parking lot in front of the grocery store, something shimmering, moving across the snow.
She thought she saw a flicker of blue against a clear ripple. She thought she saw the shape of a man. She frowned and glanced back but it was gone.