red hill - jamie mcguire

“I’ve gotta get Zoe out of here.”
“I know.”
Skeeter crawled back inside carefully with Connor still in his arms. He walked past Eric and
Gary, but stopped in the doorway. “Board up the door.”
“But,” Eric said, pointing to the sheet, “they can’t climb, and Annabelle’s dead.”
“In case she comes back as one of them,” I said, nodding to the window.
Gary frowned. “Maybe we should roll her off the roof. She’ll start stinkin’ before long.”
“No!” Connor cried.
Skeeter patted his back. “The smell might help cover ours. Leave her be. Board the door.”
Gary and Eric nodded, and Skeeter and I walked back downstairs to the kitchen, joining Bob and
Evan, Reverend Mathis, and Doris. They had made Jill a pallet on the floor with a rolled-up dish
towel for a pillow.
“Oh my Lord in Heaven! Connor Nicholson! Are you all right, sweetheart” Doris said, taking him
from Skeeter.
Connor hugged Doris tight, wildly sobbing all over again. They obviously knew each other, but I
wasn’t sure how.
Doris blanched, looking up at Skeeter. “Where is Amy”
“She’s outside. Annabelle Stephens helped him up to the roof.”
“Well . . . ” she said, looking past Skeeter. “Where is she”
Skeeter shook his head. “Upstairs. She didn’t make it.”
About that time the hammering began. Doris held Connor while he cried. Reverend Mathis went to
the sanctuary to check on Barb and Ms. Kay, and Skeeter sat on the floor next to his wife. Jill was
unconscious, her bloodshot eyes barely visible between the two thin slits of her eyelids. She was
nearly panting, and a thin sheen of sweat covered her paling skin.
Zoe was standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed on her aunt Jill. I kneeled beside my daughter and
pulled her against my side. There wasn’t really anything I could say; no point in asking if she was all
right. None of us were.
Skeeter bent down to speak soft, comforting words to Jill. Unable to watch, I walked into the
sanctuary. Broken glass lined the carpet next to all three walls. The townspeople of Fairview were
clawing and batting at the boards Eric and Gary had nailed across the windows. The boards wouldn’t
last forever, just like the small amounts of food Skeeter and a few others had thought to bring along
with them.
Reverend Mathis was praying with Barb and Ms. Kay, but paused to watch me approach the
windows. I peeked through, trying to gauge how far my car was from the church. I didn’t see any of
the sick around Skeeter’s house, or even between there and the church, but that didn’t mean there
weren’t any. Still, the hardest part would be walking out the door.
I walked into the kitchen, pulling my car keys from my pocket. “I’m going to make a run for it with
Zoe. I have a car down the block. We’ve got two, maybe three empty seats, but we’re going to need a
diversion to get outside.”
“But I don’t wanna leave Aunt Jill, Daddy,” Zoe said.