As soon as Rhino rolled forward past the place where the spikes were in the road, I slowly guided her back onto the pavement. The truck gave a slight buck when each tire passed from the cornfield onto the asphalt, but after it bounced itself back onto the road, I leveled her out and drove straight forward again.
Compared to the cornfield, the Pennsylvania back road was as smooth as a goddamn airport runway.
I kept checking into the mirror to make sure that no vamps appeared in the road behind us, but everything stayed clear. I wondered if they only attacked vehicles that had been disabled by the spikes, or if they had simply taken the night off and not bothered to pick up the roadblock. Then again, maybe they had already caught some other poor bastard tonight, so they didn’t need any other prey at the moment.
When we passed an empty car on the side of the road about thirty seconds later, I thought that maybe my last guess had been the correct one.
“Everybody good?” I asked after the empty car finally disappeared from view behind us. “I think we’re safe for now.”
“Yeah, we’re okay,” Erika replied. “What happened?”
“Someone put down a row of spikes as a little welcome mat to anybody who had to detour off the highway,” I said. “It makes sense, now that I think about it. They put that barricade up on the interstate, so it forces everybody off onto this road, and then everybody runs over the spikes, and… well, you can guess the rest.”
“So they blow out their tires, and then the vampires attack the drivers?” Lily asked. “Fuckin’ hell.”
“And you’re sure nobody’s behind us?” Brianna asked as she crawled forward and then peered over my shoulder at the side view mirror.
“It looks like tonight is our lucky night,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, I’m not even sure that those spikes could have taken out Rhino’s tires. It’s possible, but I bet we still could have driven on them for a while before they totally gave out. I just didn’t want to take the risk.”
“Yeah, Rhino’s a tough girl,” Natalie said as she patted the door of the armored truck.
“It helps that she’s got one hell of a driver,” Catherine said as she climbed up to the front of the truck and perched on the edge of Natalie’s seat.
“I’m just glad that some crazy corn cult didn’t jump out of the fields and come after us,” Brianna said. “I was almost more afraid of that than anything else, because you know I watched this movie once, where--”
“I’d take crazy corn hillbillies over vampires any day,” Neko said with a smirk. “You don’t have to shoot crazy corn people straight through their brains in order to take them out, so that’s a lot less scary than a bunch of super-fast, super-strong bloodsuckers.”
“Yeah, I know,” the curvy blonde sighed. “Sometimes it’s scarier when things move slow instead of fast, you know?”
“Yeah, but then we can outrun them,” I laughed.
“Well, at least we outran whatever the fuck that was,” Catherine said. “Because I would very much prefer not to be another brick in their little fucked-up human barricade wall, please and thank you.”
“I think you’re safe from that for now,” I said, but I continued to glance back and forth between the dark road ahead of us and behind us, so I had all angles covered.
“Yeah, for now,” Erika murmured. “But, uh… that kind of brings me back to my original question. Are we really gonna get back on the interstate after all this?”
“But the alternative is to take back roads from here to fucking Charleston,” Catherine said. “That’s a long-ass way to go, and it would probably take us… I don’t know, maybe twice as long?”
“I know we’ve talked about taking back roads before,” I said, “but I think it’ll probably be fine once we get past Fredericksburg.”
“Probably?” Erika echoed.
“Well, there’s no way to know for sure,” I said, “but I don’t imagine that the vamps in charge of the barricade and the city have more than this one area of Pennsylvania under their control.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s been long enough since all this started for them to take over all of central Pennsylvania or anything,” Natalie said. “I know that’s not impossible, but it doesn’t seem super likely.”
“Even Kowalsky only took over like one street at a time,” Catherine said. “I know he started moving a little faster at the end, but still.”
“Plus, it’d be harder to take over territory out in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “There are more places for people to hide, and shit is more spread out than in the city, so places and people are harder to control.”
“So you really think it’ll be fine if we get back on the interstate?” Erika asked.
“I think it’s our best option,” I replied. “I want to get to West Virginia as soon as possible, and the back roads could easily take us another day. But if we can get back on the interstate fast enough, we might still be able to get to West Virginia by the time the sun comes up.”
“Then let’s hurry up and leave Fredericksburg in the dust,” Erika sighed.
“And these back roads, too,” Catherine added. “No offense to Pennsylvania and shit, but it’s dark as fuck out here.”
“It’s not like the interstate is much brighter,” Neko pointed out. “The electricity is still out everywhere.”
“True, but there aren’t trees on the interstate,” the auburn-haired girl replied, “or cornfields, so I’d call that a win.”
“You just don’t like the country,” Natalie laughed. “You’re too much of a city girl for all this shit.”
“Yeah, and what’s wrong with that?” Catherine dabbed at the corners of her mouth to make sure her lipstick was still in place. “It’s not like it stops me from being a total badass with a gun, thank you very much.”
“Well, as long as you have your priorities right,” my girlfriend said with a smile.
We reached I-81 in just a few more minutes, so I merged onto the southbound lanes and started in the direction of Harrisburg. We should reach the city in about half an hour, and the map made it look like the interstate went around the city instead of through it, so we shouldn’t have any problems with vamps in the city itself.
At least, not as long as we were able to avoid any more barricades of human corpses.
The interstate now was more congested than 78 had been, but none of the vehicles seemed to have their drivers, so it mostly just meant that we had to avoid other stationary objects. There were also a shit-ton more eighteen-wheelers on this highway, but they were all still and silent. A few had fallen onto their sides or run down into a ditch, but none of them blocked the interstate itself, so I just kept my eyes on the road and continued to push forward.
Once, when we passed the exit for Hershey, Pennsylvania, Catherine suddenly clapped her hands and pointed over to the left of the armored truck.
“Look!” the auburn-haired girl cried. “It’s a person!”
I immediately braced for a surprise vamp attack, but when I glanced out the window, I saw that it didn’t seem to be a bloodsucker at all. Instead, it was just a minivan headed down the exit toward Hershey, and since the driver was very careful to maintain a fast but not reckless speed, and since the van didn’t veer back and forth like it was driven by a feral vamp, I thought that maybe it really was a human, after all.
“Where do you think they’re going?” Erika murmured.
“Maybe they’re going to Hershey,” Brianna said. “You know I actually always wanted to go to Hersheypark. Not now, obviously, but before everything went crazy.”
“I doubt some soccer mom and her three kids are going to Hersheypark in the middle of the vampocalypse,” Neko said, “but maybe they’re going for one last hurrah or something.”
“They could just have family out there,” Natalie said. “I can’t believe there’s really other people on the road. Or at least, one person.”
“Should we help them?” Lily asked. “Or like, should we at leas
t offer?”
“No,” I said as the brake lights on the minivan grew further and further away. “There’s no way to know for sure that it’s a human, and plus, we’d only scare them if we tried to follow them.”
“Yeah, I guess we wouldn’t really like it either if some random car all of a sudden started to follow us,” Lily sighed. “I just feel bad for them. Like, I know we don’t know for sure if they’re human or not, but the idea that they might be some little human family… well… I hope they stay safe.”
“I know,” I said. “But try to think about it like this, that they’ve made it this far somehow, so maybe they know what they’re doing. The back of that van could be full of guns and bomb shelter supplies, and they might be on their way to a safehouse somewhere.”
“That’s true,” Lily said with a nod that made her dark curls bounce. “I like that idea.”
I didn’t know if anything I said was true, but I hoped at least some of it was. I knew it was hard for the girls to think about their own families, so the thought of anyone’s family was probably difficult, too. Nat and Brianna had never been able to get in touch with their parents, and neither had Lily, so they all just assumed the worst. Erika didn’t really have a family to check on, and even though I hadn’t asked Neko about hers, I guessed that she also hadn’t been able to contact them, either.
And given the state of New York when we had left it, it was pretty safe to guess that none of their families had made it. Just statistically, it was unlikely that they were still alive, and if they’d gotten the vaccine and been turned into vamps, then… well, it was probably better that the girls hadn’t run into their families again.
“And sorry, Bree,” I said to try to distract the girls, “but I think you’re gonna have to wait for another lifetime to visit Hersheypark. You won’t be going any time soon, anyway.”
“That’s okay,” the curvy blonde sighed. “I’d rather be alive than go to an amusement park. It’ll be there later, and I’ll just hope that it doesn’t get destroyed in the meantime.”
“I doubt that destruction of amusement parks is top on the list of vamp priorities,” Catherine snickered, “but I can’t say that for sure. Sam, was that item on the agenda at the last big bloodsucker meeting?”
“Oh, I think I must have missed that one,” I joked. “They excommunicated me when they realized I still had a conscience left.”
“Their loss,” Natalie said with a smile. “I wonder if any other vamps out there are like you.”
“Nobody’s like Sam,” Lily said.
“No, I know what you mean,” I laughed. “I’m sure there are others like me and like Hippie Hank, but I think we’re definitely the exception to the rule. And I have a feeling that a lot of the more human-like vamps probably got killed off pretty quickly by the others.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” Erika said. “It’s just crazy that vamps attack each other, not just humans.”
“It’s all about territory and power,” I said with a shrug. “After all, humans are the same way.”
“Well, I’ll just be happy to get out to Colorado so we can set up our own little territory out there,” Catherine said.
“How will your dad feel about a vamp coming in and taking over the ranch?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, he’ll hate it,” Catherine said with a smirk, “but he’ll just have to fucking get used to it.”
“Maybe let’s just try to get to West Virginia before we start to plot out Sam’s total domination of the Wild West,” Erika said.
“Fair enough,” I laughed.
When we hit the outskirts of Harrisburg a few minutes later, I was surprised to see a few lights on in the city as we drove by it. It didn’t look like whole grids were still on, so I wondered if some of the humans or vamps here had generators to give themselves a little electricity. I wouldn’t want to draw so much attention to myself, but it made for a nice distraction as we plowed ahead on the interstate.
We drove over a wide river and around one hell of a curve, and then we just kept going along 81. The girls all settled into the back of the armored truck again, and they drifted in and out of sleep as I drove through more of rural Pennsylvania.
I decided to just stick to 81 and follow it all the way down into Maryland, and then I would hop onto 70 and then 68 to get across the border into West Virginia. There was no road that led directly to Charleston from here, and since I wanted to stay on the interstate, that meant I would have to go slightly out of my way in one direction or another, so I might as well go down to Maryland and then cut across west.
On the map, it looked like it might be a little shorter than the alternative, but since there was no way to know exactly what waited up ahead, it was all a little bit of a gamble.
Of course, when we finally crossed the border into Maryland, I started to question my decision to go south and then west. There were still the usual trucks and cars abandoned all along the highway, but the interstate in Maryland was a goddamn nightmare of construction, so every obstacle seemed ten times worse than it actually was.
I didn’t have to stay on 81 for more than a few minutes in Maryland, just long enough to get through Hagerstown and then hop onto 70, but between the vehicles and the construction zones, I had to grit my teeth and lean forward to keep myself focused.
Then, just as a huge line of orange construction barrels lined the highway up ahead and made only one lane actually driveable, Rhino’s gas light dinged and then blinked on.
Chapter 5
Natalie was the first to wake up at the sound of the gas light. She instantly sat up straight in the passenger’s seat and reached for the shotgun that she had propped up beside her. But as soon as my girlfriend looked over at me, she released her grip on the gun and relaxed back into her seat.
“Was that the fuel light?” Nat asked and then glanced up ahead at the single narrow construction lane. “Oh, shit.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We won’t immediately run out of gas.”
“Do you know how many miles we have left?” my girlfriend whispered, so she wouldn’t wake up the rest of the girls in the back.
“Before West Virginia?” I asked. “I’m not really sure, but I think--”
“No, I meant before we run out of gas,” Natalie said. “How many miles do we have left in the tank?”
“Oh, I don’t have an exact number,” I said, “but we should have enough to get past this construction.”
“I know this isn’t the best place to stop and fill up or anything,” my girlfriend said, “but, um… couldn’t we just stop for a second to refuel? We already have diesel in the back, so it’s not like we have to get to an actual gas station before we can fill up.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to run out of gas, either,” I replied, “but like you said, we already have the fuel in the back, so even if we ended up on empty, we could still just stop and refuel.”
“But you don’t want to do that now?” Natalie asked.
“There’s too many unknown factors,” I said as I started to navigate Rhino across a single-lane bridge. “I know I could just plow through all these barrels, but the road on the other side looks a little too unfinished, and since we don’t know the area at all, I don’t want to do anything that’ll cause more noise than necessary.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” she said. “It would be bad if we were in the middle of refueling, and all of a sudden, somebody came up on us either on foot or in a vehicle.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “There are only so many directions that I could go to get away from somebody, and that would all be a lot harder if we were trying to fill Rhino up when we needed to be getting away.”
“So what kind of place do you want to stop?” Natalie asked.
“Just somewhere that I can see all my surroundings more clearly,” I said. “So if somebody does try to surprise us, I’d be able to drive off in any direction. Ideally, I’d like to find a gas station, so we can fill up our f
uel cans at the same time we fill up Rhino.”
“Plus, if you wait a few more minutes, Catherine will probably wake up and tell us she has to pee again,” Natalie laughed.
“That’s also true,” I said with a smile, “but it’s not a bad idea. I want to make as few stops as possible between here and her uncle’s cabin, so if we have to stop to refuel, then we might as well use the bathroom and stretch at the same time.”
“We could always go into the woods off the side of the highway somewhere,” my girlfriend pointed out.
“Try telling that to Catherine,” I said, “or to Brianna. I don’t think they’d be big fans of going to the bathroom in the great outdoors.”
“They might have to be, before this is all over with,” Natalie sighed, “but I guess we’re not quite that desperate yet.”
“To be fair, it also wouldn’t be the best idea to run into the woods in the middle of the night,” I said, “especially since you’d be in a very, uh… vulnerable position.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” Natalie said. “I was just thinking about how we would tell Catherine that there was no toilet paper for her to use.”
“I don’t know which situation she would find worse,” I snickered. “To be caught in the woods by vamps or not to have any toilet paper.”
“I think it’d be a pretty equal toss-up,” my girlfriend said, “so maybe it’ll be safer for now to just stop at a gas station, like you said.”
“We’ll definitely be safer, anyway,” I said, “since I wouldn’t trust Catherine not to try to push us out of the truck if we told her she had to pee in the woods.”
“Somebody say something?” Catherine murmured from the back of Rhino.
“Nah, you should go back to sleep,” I said. “We’ll wake you up when we stop somewhere.”
“Okay,” the auburn-haired girl said with a yawn, “but I’m gonna need to stop again sometime soon. Just… so you… know.”
Catherine’s head rocked back down onto her chest as she fell asleep again, so Nat and I just laughed. For a few seconds, everything seemed almost normal, like we were just on a road trip and had decided to drive all night to avoid the worst traffic.
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 7