by Wood, J N
Jack traced a line with his finger across the map.
‘Yeah, but it’s still part of the same mountain region that the Rockies are in. It’ll still be hilly, and snowy, and shit,’ I replied. ‘Anyway, I’m not saying we can’t go that way. I’m just telling you so when it all goes tits up, I can say it was your fault.’
Jack sighed and looked like he was considering things. ‘Fuck it. We’ve got this super truck now, what’s a bit of snow to the Raptor?’
‘Okay, let’s die in the mountains. It’s Blue by the way.’
‘What is?’ Jack asked.
‘The name of the truck, it’s Blue.’
‘It’s red.’ Jack leaned forward and looked through the windscreen, presumably to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. He sat back and then realised. ‘Oh hang on, Jurassic World.’
‘Yep,’ I said, and turned Blue’s engine back on.
‘Nowhere near as good as Jurassic Park though is it?’
‘True, but I don’t think they named any of the raptors in the first one,’ I pointed out.
‘Clever girl,’ Jack said, in his poshest English accent.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘That’s what the English game keeper guy says, before one of the raptors eats him. What was he called? Pete Postlethwaite?’
‘No that wasn’t him,’ I said. ‘Postlethwaite was in the second or the third film, one of the shit ones. I can’t remember what the English guy in the first one was called.’
‘I’m sure it’s Postlethwaite.’ Jack picked up his phone and shook it in front of his face. ‘Aaarrrggghhh! Come back google.’
We set off along the West Country Road heading towards Masonville. The roads were mostly clear, with only the occasional car parked up on the side of the road. We did see some human shapes in the cars, but we weren’t prepared to stop and have a proper look.
Masonville was a strange little place, it looked like it hadn’t changed in a hundred years, or maybe it was created to look like that in order to attract tourists. I like these kinds of places, so I slowed down to get a better look as we drove through.
A building with a sign saying Masonville Mercantile was on our left, it looked like a souvenir shop. Just as we were passing by, the front door swung open and smashed into a large glass fronted fridge on the porch, shattering the glass in the door and showering the shop front with broken shards. I slammed onto the brake pedal, slowing us almost to a stop.
A woman appeared in the open doorway. I assumed it was a woman because she was wearing a dress. The skin and hair on her head were gone, as though she had been attacked by someone with a blow torch. The amount of blood was shocking. Her dress was badly torn in places, so a lot of red, and raw looking skin was visible underneath.
The creature started to stagger towards us, her bare feet crunching on the broken glass.
‘I really don’t think we should stop here Chris,’ Jack gasped. ‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’
It only took me a couple of seconds to wholeheartedly agree with him. I pressed down on the accelerator, and we rapidly drove away from the unsightly creature. About thirty seconds later, we drove around a slight bend, and I glanced in the rear view mirror.
I was sure there had been something running behind us on the road. It was there for a split second before we turned the corner, and it slipped out of view.
‘What the fuck?’ I said, instinctively taking my foot off the accelerator.
‘What’s the matter, don’t slow down, that sick person or whatever the fuck it was has really freaked me out,’ Jack said.
‘I thought I saw something behind us, someone chasing us maybe.’
I must have imagined it. Surely it was just a dog, or an elk, or at least some kind of animal. It can’t have been that woman.
Jack twisted around to look out the back window. ‘Well, nothing there now, it’s hardly going to catch us on foot is it?’
It was just a big dog, not a crazy person chasing us, nothing to worry about.
I hope.
We didn’t speak for a few minutes, until Jack decided to break the silence. ‘So, that’s what the end of the virus looks like, it doesn’t look like a pleasant way to die.’
‘Was that the virus?’ I replied. ‘It looked like her head had melted, like the guys at the end of Raiders of The Last Ark.’
Jack screwed his face up. ‘I really want to try and forget it.’
He started to scroll through something on his phone, he pressed on the screen and the Wolf Alice song, Silk, started playing through the Raptor’s speakers.
A few more Wolf Alice songs later, and we hit the snow, a lot of snow. Coming from England means I’m not that adept at driving in heavy snow, it never really gets that bad. Jack’s relocation to California has meant he now has even less experience.
We had been steadily climbing for the last twenty minutes, and it looked like we would be continuing to climb for a while.
‘Does this thing have winter tyres on?’ I asked.
Jack snapped his head around to look at me. ‘Shit, I didn’t check, what do winter tyres look like?’
I laughed at our incompetence. ‘No fucking idea, we can’t do anything about it now, just gotta hope we’ll be okay. Blue will get us through.’ I leaned forward and patted the dashboard.
The driving was slow going, even slower than driving through thousands of abandoned cars. The weather forecast would have classed it as blizzard conditions. The extra washer fluid we picked up did come in handy though.
Thank you very much Alex.
The snow was falling really heavily, most of the time I couldn’t even tell where the road ended. All I could see was white. Luckily, there were trees lining the road most of the time, so I had a general idea which direction to turn the steering wheel. Jack told me he would have offered to drive, but his eyes were irritating him because his contact lenses had been in for too long.
Great fucking timing mate.
About an hour and a half later, we reached the end of Stove Prairie Road, and turned left onto Poudre Canyon Road. The clock on the dashboard read, 16:30. My eyes were hurting from concentrating on the whiteness, and my hands were aching from gripping onto the steering wheel too tightly. And I needed a shit. I wasn’t happy.
‘How much longer are we gonna keep on going before we either crash into a tree or I shit myself?’ I asked, bringing the truck to a complete stop.
I don’t think Jack realised I meant I would literally shit myself.
He looked down at the map. ‘Let’s try and get to Kinikinik.’
‘Kinikinik?’ I asked. ‘How are you spelling that?’
‘I’d spell it like it’s written on this map. Anyway, it’s about half way across this green hilly bit.’ He pointed it out to me on the page.
‘Oh yeah, Kinikinik,’ I said.
‘It’s probably not that far away but it’s going to take us two or three hours at the speed we’ve been going, is that okay with you?’
I reluctantly agreed to carry on, resigned to another couple of hours of nightmare driving.
I wasn’t sure if I got more comfortable with the snow, or if maybe delirium set in, but either way I started to enjoy myself. A major factor was the Raptors capabilities. I was skidding around bends and having a great time.
About an hour and a half later, we were approaching Kinikinik. A collection of houses dotted along the side of the road would be the best way to describe it. I spotted some buildings through the trees on our left, and pulled the Raptor over to the side of the road. At least I think I did, I still wasn’t sure where the road ended.
‘Kerrrrrnikinik,’ I sang.
Jack just stared at me.
‘What? What’s up with you?’ I asked, only just realising he hadn’t said a single word for the last ninety minutes.
“Thank fuck that’s over, I was pretty sure you were going to kill us. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to distract you. You were going way too
fucking fast. We really need to find somewhere to stay the night around here,’ he quickly said. A nervous sounding laugh escaped from his mouth. ‘I can’t handle any more of your driving tonight.’
‘We’re here and we’re not dead. What more do you want?’
‘Don’t know. How about not feeling like I’m going to die all the time?’
‘Don’t think I can help with that at the moment. It’s the end of the world. I don’t really fancy sleeping in Blue tonight.’
‘We can just try a house. Hopefully we’ll find an empty one,’ Jack said, peering out through the snow at the scattering of buildings. ‘Although we don’t have much choice. You never know, maybe someone will take us in for the night.’
I didn’t really want to stay with potentially sick people, but I agreed we needed somewhere to sleep. We chose to investigate the three buildings closest to us. So after putting on a new set of gloves and our masks, we climbed out of the truck. It was truly freezing after the being in the warmth of the Raptor.
We trudged over to the first house, barely visible through the trees and the snow. When we got closer, I could see that the house looked a bit like a log cabin, but it was huge. Four steps led up to the front porch and the rest of the decking.
Through the blistering wind I tried shouting over to Jack, ‘Smell test!’
‘What?’ he shouted back.
‘Let’s have a little sniff. See if we can smell dead bodies?’
Jack shrugged his shoulders and gave me a thumb’s up. He climbed the front porch steps, and lowered his face mask. His nose crinkled up, like a bloodhound sniffing the air. He turned back to me and shrugged his shoulders again.
I lowered my mask and had a sniff, all I could smell was freshly chopped logs.
‘I can’t smell anything!’ I shouted.
‘What?’
‘I can’t smell anything dead!’
Jack said something I couldn’t hear, and walked to the front door. He tried the handle but it was locked. I joined him on the porch and knocked on the door with my freezing cold knuckles. We stood and waited a few moments. I knocked again but there was still no answer.
There was a small black box on the wall next to the door, like a security box where you would leave a key. I pulled down the front of it and looked at the combination lock. We obviously didn’t know the code, so I headed into the trees, and came back with a large rock, about the size of my head. Probably too big for the job but it was freezing, and I couldn’t be bothered to search for a more suitable one. I lifted the rock above my head and brought it down on the top of the little box. It disintegrated into tiny plastic fragments. A shiny bit of metal flashed past me, just millimetres from my face.
‘Shit, did you see where the key went?’ I shouted.
Luckily Jack had been following the key’s trajectory, and was already heading over to where he thought it had landed. A few moments later, he climbed back up the porch steps, proudly holding the key aloft.
He placed the key into the lock and turned it, the squeaky door opened into the house. The rancid odour hit us almost instantly. My mask wasn’t doing anything to disguise it, definitely the smell of death.
‘Nope, run away!’ I shouted, and jumped down the porch steps in one go.
I didn’t look back, and started running towards the next house, Jack was close behind me. The neighbouring building was just visible through the snow and the trees, probably only thirty or forty feet away.
We got to the next home and stopped outside. I looked it up and down whilst trying to regain my composure.
Jack shouted, ‘I’m not really enjoying this!’
He pulled his mask back over his face.
The house was tiny. The wood panelling on the outside had been painted a shade of dark blue.
We approached the little house, and I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again and waited, still there was no answer. I very carefully pushed the handle down. It was unlocked, so I opened the door just an inch, moving my face closer to the gap.
The smell coming from inside wasn’t very pleasant at all, like cheese that was long past its expiry date. However, mouldy pungent cheese was a lot better than the smell of decaying bodies, so I twisted slightly and gave Jack a thumb’s up. I turned on my phone’s torch, then slowly opened the door the rest of the way, and crept into the house.
I stood in the living area and looked around. Just off to the left was the kitchen, opposite me was a set of stairs leading to a mezzanine level, with a door just next to the stairs. Jack followed me in and closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the storm raging outside.
‘Hello,’ I said.
My greeting was answered with silence, so I walked to the other door opposite. I knocked once and then opened it. The bathroom beyond was disgusting, it was entirely peach coloured, with seashells adorning everything. The basin, the bath, the tiles on the wall, everything was shaped like a shell, or had shells printed on it.
I turned and looked into the living room. ‘The bathroom is fucking horrible. Shall we have a look upstairs?’ I pointed to the open wooden staircase.
Jack led the way with his gun in his hand, and started up the stairs. I’d completely forgotten about my gun and left it in the truck. Hopefully Jack hadn’t noticed. I’d have to get used to carrying it around with me.
When the top of Jack’s head reached the same height as the mezzanine, he signalled me to stop. He then slowly climbed another step so he could only just see over the ledge. After a very brief glimpse, he turned back to me and whispered, ‘There’s a bed up here.’
‘An empty one I hope?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know, wait a second,’ Jack whispered.
He slowly crept up the remaining steps, and pointed his illuminated phone at the bed.
‘It’s empty but it smells really musty up here, like mothballs or something.’ His voice had returned to a normal volume.
‘Hopefully that just means nobody is planning on coming home any time soon,’ I said, before starting back down the stairs. ‘Gonna go for a shit, and then I’ll get Blue.’
After using the toilet in the disgusting bathroom, I walked towards the front door. Jack was investigating the chimney in the corner of the room.
It felt like it was even colder outside after my short stint indoors. I picked up my pace and ran to the truck, almost losing my footing a few times. I drove right up to the front of the house, grabbed a bag of food and the cleaning products, and then very briefly braved the storm again.
Jack had turned on the lights, and was now crouched over the wood burning stove in the living room.
‘Electricity is still on here. I found some logs and firelighters. It’s freezing.’ Jack’s teeth were chattering as he spoke.
‘Not as cold as outside.’ I replied.
I fished around in the cleaning supplies bag for the anti-bacterial wipes, and then went to the kitchen to find some saucepans, plates and cutlery. After cleaning everything we’d need for our dinner, I put some new gloves on and had a look at our options.
‘Do you want the macaroni and cheese? I’m having the chilli con carne,’ I asked Jack.
He stood up and pointed at the stove. ‘Fire,’ he declared proudly, with a smug looking smile on his face.
‘Yes, well done, you started a fire. Mac and cheese?’ I held up the tin, showing him the label.
‘Yep, that’ll do me fine,’ he replied.
I ran back out to the truck, whilst the food was heating on the electric hobs. I’d forgotten the cans of pale ale.
After giving the cans a quick wipe, we sat huddled around the fire sipping our beers.
‘I’m really worried about Beth. I was hoping we would be at least half way home by now,’ Jack said, staring at the can in his hand. ‘At this rate it’s going to take us a week.’
‘You just have to believe she’s fine, Sarah and…’ I tried to remember the guy’s name. ‘Bill?’
‘Roy,’ Jack corrected me.
‘Yeah that’s him, I’m sure they’re all taking care of each other. It’ll drive you crazy if you think the worst all the time. She is hidden away from all the virus shit, and they’re doing fine. That’s just the way it is. Where is their house by the way?’
‘It’s not far from ours, maybe a couple of blocks away. It’s a really nice house, must be worth millions.’
‘Well there you go, if it’s worth millions it’ll probably have a shitload of security,’ I suggested.
Jack leaned back into his seat. ‘I’ve never been in, just seen it from the outside when I’ve been to pick Beth up. It has got high walls around it though.’
‘There you go then, she’s gonna be fine. No point in thinking otherwise.’ I got up and walked to the kitchen to check on the food, and to escape from the heat of the fire for a moment.
‘Beth is pregnant,’ Jack said, sounding despondent.
I quickly plated up the food, and walked back to the fire carrying our dinner.
I handed Jack his plate. ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting you to say that.’
Jack looked at his food. ‘Yep, she’s only two months along, so we’re not telling anyone yet.’
I swallowed my first mouthful of chilli, it was entirely unremarkable. ‘Well you know, congratulations and all that but…’ I paused to consider my next words, placing another forkful of blandness into my mouth.
‘What, shit timing?’ Jack asked soberly.
‘Well yeah, fucking terrible timing, the end of the world is not the best time to have a baby’.
‘Tell me about it.’ Jack looked down at his food for a long moment. ‘Thanks for cooking, but this tastes like shit.’
‘Yeah mine does too, I’m still gonna eat it though, I’m starving.’
We both quickly ate the rest of our food. I passed Jack another beer, before opening one for myself. We agreed it was probably safest to sleep in the living room. We would just keep our gloves and masks on.
Jack took the sofa and I was on the recliner armchair, it was surprisingly comfortable. Not long after we’d finished all the beers I must have nodded off.
DAY FOUR
A noise from outside woke me up.