Far From Home
Kate L. Mary
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Acknowledgments
Also by Kate L. Mary
Published by Twisted Press, LLC, an independently owned company.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Kate L. Mary
Cover Art by Kate L. Mary
Edited by Lori Whitwam
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
There were at least seven Internet tabs open on my computer, one of which was set to the local news station in Dayton, Ohio, WHIO. Two reporters—one female and one male—whose names I didn’t know were talking about the current crisis and how it was affecting not just the Miami Valley, but the rest of the country as well.
“…travelers are advised to display their papers at all times and to keep to approved routes. Anyone found traveling on closed highways or without papers will be arrested immediately and held until martial law has been lifted. The government and CDC are working together to do everything they can to stop the spread of this deadly virus, but they need your help. Stay inside as much as possible, and if you absolutely have to leave your home, take precautions. Wash your hands regularly and wear a mask. Avoid large crowds, especially if you’re showing any symptoms.”
Since that wasn’t the page I was currently staring at, I couldn’t see the reporters’ expressions, but it didn’t matter. Their grave tones told me everything I needed to know. It was serious.
“I want you to stay there, Rowan. Do you hear me?” Mom’s voice rose an octave on the last word, and I cringed away from the phone pressed against my ear. “It’s safer in Phoenix.”
“How can you expect me to stay where I am with things as bad as they are?”
I scrolled through my Facebook feed with the hand not holding my phone, scanning each post before moving on to the next. Nearly every one of them had something to do with this virus. Either it was a news report, a post about someone who was sick, or a shared post that had gone viral, and each one had my gut twisting tighter until I thought I was going to hurl. One of my high school friends had moved to New York to try to make it on Broadway, and her post from three weeks ago was the one that made me finally pause. It was only one line, but it was enough to fill me with dread.
Deb Williams Everyone here is sick.
There hadn’t been a single update to her page since that post, and it now had hundreds of comments from friends and family, all of them begging for information they had to know they’d never get. The reports coming out of New York were infrequent and sketchy at best, but what little I’d heard left no doubt in my mind. Deb was dead, and I couldn’t be the only one who knew that. Odds were, everyone who’d commented on the post thought the same thing. They just weren’t ready to accept it.
My gaze landed on one of the last comments, posted only a few hours ago. It was her mom.
Rachel Williams Please respond and tell us you’re OK.
The words blurred together when tears filled my eyes, and I scrolled down before blinking them away, not wanting to see them again because it made all of this too real and much, much too personal.
I had to swallow before I said, “I want to come home, Mom.”
On the other end of the line, my mom sighed, and it seemed as if something happened to the connection, making the noise sound far away. It didn’t just emphasize the distance separating us, it made it feel bigger, as if someone had pulled on an imaginary string and somehow stretched the miles out, making crossing them impossible.
“Rowan, I’m serious about this,” she said, a small quiver in her voice. “Stay. There.”
I clenched my free hand into a fist, digging my normally perfectly manicured nails into my palms. After days of gnawing on them, they were jagged. It was a bad habit from my childhood and one I’d thought I’d gotten over.
“You can’t possibly expect me to stay,” I argued. “They’ve canceled classes. Almost nothing is open. Everyone who lives even remotely close left weeks ago, and the dorms are nearly empty. I feel so trapped and alone here.”
“I spoke with the university, and they’ve assured me the dorms will stay open for the students who can’t go home. You are one of those students. It’s too far for you to travel alone, and we are much too close to New York.”
“Troy is almost ten hours from New York!” I nearly shouted into the phone.
Hysteria was creeping up on me, and I dug my nails deeper into my palm, trying to ground myself. It didn’t help, because there was nothing to hold on to.
“Ohio is closer than Phoenix, which is where you’ll be staying. I’m serious, Rowan. I won’t talk about it anymore.”
I squeezed my eyes shut when my head began to pound. Under my cheap, University of Phoenix dorm room desk, my legs were shaking, and even pressing my heels harder against the floor wasn’t helping. When was the last time I’d felt like I needed my mom? I couldn’t remember. Maybe after Doug had dumped me sophomore year of high school, but I’d been sixteen. I was twenty now and in my third year of college, I shouldn’t need my mother to wrap me in her arms and tell me everything was okay. But I did. Desperately.
“Mom—” My voice trembled. “I’ve heard rumors about people in Phoenix coming down with it. I’m scared.”
She sighed again, but this time it wasn’t from frustration. Even hundreds of miles away, I could feel her fear. “I know you are. So am I. That’s why I want you to stay there. Once they get this thing under control, you can come home. But until we know they’ve stopped it from spreading, you’re staying in Phoenix. Do you understand?” When I said nothing, she said, “Rowan, no matter what else happens, I have to know you’re okay. Please.”
“Okay,” I mumbled, my eyes still closed.
“Good,” she said, letting out a deep sigh of relief. “Dad got called in to the hospital a few hours ago, but I’ll tell him you called and you’re okay.”
“All right,” I replied automatically.
“I’ve transferred more money into your account. Be sure to get the cash now just in case—” Mom’s voice cracked, and the sound felt like it was stabbing me in the heart. I heard her swallow. “Get small bills if you can and stock up on supplies so you don’t have to go out. Whatever you do, avoid big crowds. Got it?”
“I’ll go to the bank today,” I assured her, thinking about my dad and his job, and how avoiding crowds would be impossible. He was an ER doctor, for God’s sake. I couldn’t think of a worse job right now.
“Good,” Mom said, the relief in her voice ringing through the air. “We love you, Rowan.”
“I love you,” I said.
“Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Mom let out a deep breath, and a second
later, the call cut out.
I opened my eyes, and my gaze focused on the travel papers I’d gotten the day before. The travel papers my mom knew nothing about because she’d forbidden me to come home. But I was legally an adult, wasn’t I? I was twenty. I could vote, and if I committed a crime, I’d be looked at as an adult, no questions asked. Sure, I couldn’t legally buy alcohol yet or even rent a car, and I was still considered my parents’ dependent since I was going to college full time, but those things were minor when it came to the big picture. I was twenty years old, and I should have been able to make my own decisions.
Yet I was listening to my mom when she told me to stay in Phoenix.
I picked the papers up and unfolded them.
Approved For Travel
The words screamed from the paper as if taunting me, daring me to go against my mom’s wishes, only I wasn’t sure if I was brave enough. I’d always been a pleaser, and just the process of getting the physical so I could apply for travel papers had twisted my insides into knots. Forget the fact that it had cost me five hundred dollars and I’d had to get a cash advance on my credit card—something Mom was going to freak about when she finally found out. Which she would, because my parents paid the bill. They paid for everything I did, gave me everything I needed without batting an eye. My car, my insurance, money every month for gas and anything else I needed. Right now, though, what I needed was to be home, and for the first time, my parents were denying me. It felt…wrong.
But Mom was overreacting, wasn’t she? The virus had started in New York, which was hundreds of miles from my hometown of Troy, Ohio, and six weeks had passed since martial law was declared and the government had locked down the area. Sure, a few people had gotten out, but as more cases had popped up, they’d locked down other cities as well. They were on top of this. They were determined to stop the spread. And the rumors I’d heard about people in Phoenix getting sick had to be just that. Rumors. The government and CDC were doing everything they could to stop this thing. Plus, based on what my mom had said, no one in the Dayton area was even sick at this point. We’d know if they were. Dad worked in the emergency room!
As if trying to justify my train of thought, I started scrolling through Facebook again, this time concentrating on the friends who were in or around the Dayton area. The first one I came to was Mandy Ditmar, a girl I’d graduated with who’d stayed in Dayton to attend Wright State. She’d shared the University’s official post canceling classes more than three weeks ago, and when I clicked on her profile, an image popped up of her at a restaurant in the Oregon District with a group of friends only a week later. I recognized the place as the Dublin Pub—an Irish restaurant that had live music on weekends—and it seemed as crowded as usual.
Things must not have been too bad in Dayton if people were still willing to go out and party.
I returned to my Facebook feed and scrolled some more, this time stopping on a post from one of my high school teachers. Mr. Phillips had taught French and just so happened to be the father of the guy who’d dumped me sophomore year for a cheerleader with big boobs and an even bigger personality. As far as I knew, they were still together. Unlike Mandy, Mr. Phillips’ page was full of warnings about staying inside and avoiding large crowds, but not a thing in his posts gave me any real pause. They were nothing but regurgitated warnings from local and national news stations. Then there were the official statements from the CDC. Nothing to really freak me out because I’d seen and heard the same things all the way out here in Phoenix, and I hadn’t seen a single sick person.
I clicked the small Facebook icon in the top left-hand corner so I could go back to my feed, but didn’t get far before being distracted by a YouTube video one of the girls in my hall had shared. It played automatically, but like always, there was no sound, and at first I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at because it was too shaky. Then whoever was filming it steadied their phone, and a man came into focus. He was walking weird, dragging his feet, and his arms were up and grasping at air like he was trying grab something. Even crazier was the color of his skin. It looked grayish. Washed out. It had to be the lighting, though.
Without thinking, I clicked on the video, turning the sound on.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” a guy in the background called.
“Don’t know, man,” another guy, maybe the one recording, responded. “He looks dead, though.”
“Right.” The first guy chuckled. “Hey, dude, you okay? You need me to call someone?”
The man walking toward them—no, it was more like he was stumbling toward them—let out a groan.
“Sounds like a fucking zombie,” the guy recording muttered.
“Shut the fuck up. The dude’s sick,” the first guy said. “I’m out of here. I’m not catching that shit.”
The video shifted, and suddenly only the street was visible, but the recording continued.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here before—”
There was a grunt, and the phone hit the ground, landing facedown. It didn’t stop recording though, and a second later, screams and shouting rang through the air. One guy—the one in the background—was yelling, begging someone to stop, and scraping sounds followed, telling me there was some kind of struggle. Another shout sounded, only it was different than before. It was a painful cry, a scream of agony that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Then there was a grunt, and the video ended.
I blinked and shook my head. Had the sick man attacked them? That was what it had sounded like, but it didn’t make any sense. It had to be fake. Some assholes had staged the thing and put the recording on YouTube to gain followers. That was all. The world was full of people like that, and a national emergency didn’t change things.
“Assholes,” I muttered before going back to my feed.
Every profile I clicked on after that felt like a repeat of the first two. Shared posts full of warnings, but no real stories from anyone in the Dayton area that made it seem like there was anything serious happening. It confirmed what I’d already suspected. Mom was overreacting, being overly cautious. She had to be. What was more, it was just like her. I was, after all, her only child, and she’d always been overly protective. It made sense, too. She and dad had unsuccessfully tried to have a child for ten years. Even fertility drugs and in vitro hadn’t worked, which was why they’d finally settled on adoption. My mom had been thirty-six by the time they finally brought me home, my dad forty-two. After all that time of waiting and trying, they’d finally had the family they’d always wanted, and Mom had been terrified something would swoop in and steal it.
Which was why she was being so cautious now.
I exhaled and sat back, thinking.
A good twenty-seven hours of driving separated me from home, and that was taking the normal route, which wasn’t possible. With martial law in place, most major highways had been shut down, forcing the few people approved for travel to take very specific routes. I’d been given a map—a paper one, which I’d never used in my life—when I got my travel papers, so I knew most of my drive home would be on Route 66. I couldn’t even imagine how much of it would be through the middle of nowhere or through old, rundown towns. Not exactly ideal, considering I was a twenty-year-old chick and would be traveling alone.
Which brought up another issue. I had my car since I’d insisted on driving out to Phoenix this year—much to my mother’s dismay—but did I have enough money to get home? Mom said she sent more, but since martial law had been issued a few weeks ago and travel had been cut off, the price of nearly everything had gone up. Getting home would be expensive, and it wasn’t like I could ask my parents to send more money when I wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere, and I’d maxed out my one credit card so I could get the physical and papers required for travel.
I needed a travel companion.
Shoving my chair away from the desk, I got to my feet, pausing long enough to stretch before heading out.
The hall was
quieter than a library and had an empty feeling to it. It was eerie, like something from a horror movie, and I couldn’t stop from looking over my shoulder as I walked, half expecting some masked killer with a knife to be standing behind me. No one was there, of course. Not a murderer and not any students, either. Everyone on my hall had packed up and headed home except me and one other person, and I only knew she was around because I’d seen her coming out of her room yesterday. Until then, I’d thought I was alone. She was all the way at the other end, which was a different hall than the one I lived in, and we’d never spoken. I was pretty sure her name was Vanessa, although I could have been wrong. I was notoriously bad with names.
The stairs and a small lobby sat at the center of the building, separating the two halls. Stiff, stained chairs and couches were positioned in front of the community television, and a handful of small tables sat off to the side as well. There was even a bookcase, which was stuffed with old, dog-eared paperbacks and board games someone had donated probably two decades ago—most of the games were missing pieces.
It was the bulletin board above the bookcase that I was interested in, though. Usually it was bursting with fliers for clubs or volunteer opportunities, the occasional job opening, and even postings for used textbooks—there was a website where you could buy or sell them, but some people still preferred to do it old school. Now, though, the bulletin board was covered with inquiries from students who were desperate to get home but had no means of transportation. Nearly all of them were from people who had already left, but I was willing to bet one or two were still hanging around, either because they hadn’t decided to leave until more recently or because they hadn’t located someone who lived close enough to their destination to find a ride.
Far Series (Book 1): Far From Home Page 1