by Barry Napier
For just a moment, I thought about following him. What if there was some place on this wrecked world that had been unscathed by the hell that had been unleashed? Wouldn’t it be worth traveling around these decimated landscapes to find such a place? The idea of the baby growing up somewhere he could see the ocean and put his feet in the sand was enticing.
“Well good luck to you,” I said before the idea could take root.
“You as well. I’d stick to the interstates if you can. Probably less threats there. Less blockages, too.”
“Thanks.”
With that, Riley gave a bored sort of nod and then threw his bags into the back of his GMC. He got inside and pulled out slowly, like he had no particular place to go. I guess he really didn’t.
But as I got into the Nissan and watched him drive down the street in front of the garage, I thought about the two Gatorades he had in one of his bags. For some reason I could not quite place, I got a very strong feeling that he wouldn’t survive long enough to finish them both.
27
Leaving Athens was so simple it made me uneasy. We stopped once to look over our reclaimed map. The lines I’d drawn up in the Dunn’s kitchen were beautiful as far as I was concerned—a symbol of progress, of somewhere to go.
Before heading out, I did something I had not dine in a very long time. I prayed. As a born and raised Christian, prayer was nothing new or unusual. But when you see creatures that seem to dwarf any idea of what is supposed to be normal and then watch men wipe out the very world they are supposed to cherish and protect, the idea of prayer starts to feel a little flimsy. Though, from time to time, I think of my father’s big dirty hands clasped in prayer at the dinner table and it makes me hopeful. Even if God did allow all of this misery to occur, I found some sort of hope and ease in the idea that He might have had a reason I’ll never understand—a reason bigger than myself and even the monsters.
Yet as I prayed for our safety before heading away from the parking garage, I thought of the darkness in the nest and the words I offered up to God felt miniscule.
We were able to get on the interstate with relatively little trouble. There was a single car sitting abandoned along our exit but the Nissan was easily able to navigate through the grassy incline along the ramp to get around it.
Driving on the interstate was beyond creepy. It looked like the abandoned set to one of those really bad zombie movies. Despite this, hearing the faultless hum of the engine as the baby slept in Kendra’s arms was bliss. Even driving towards a horizon that looked like nothing more than a graphite smudge against a sheet of slate, it was the most hopeful I had felt since leaving the Dunn’s house.
There were overturned cars here and there, to the point where it looked like some kid’s bedroom floor, matchbox cars strewn about. The occasional sight of a mangled and rotting body sort of killed the comparison, though.
“How are you?” Kendra asked at some point.
“Good. Why?”
“I didn’t know if that nest or whatever it was maybe got to you. You know...the same way it apparently got to Vance.”
I thought about it for a few seconds and then shook my head. “No. I mean, it’s nothing I’d want to relive anytime soon, but I’m good. How about you?”
She chewed at her bottom lip and looked away from me when she answered.
“When I was lying in that ditch with the baby, I was sure we were going to die. I saw that first thing come out of the nest and was sure I was losing my mind. But then the men all started shooting at it and I knew it was real. And when I was in the ditch, I was sure that whatever was in that darkness was going to wrap around us and kill us. Or even if the men managed to kill it, they’d come after me and the baby. I was seriously not expecting to see life outside of that ditch. I was sure I was going to die...and a small part of me wanted it.”
I reached over and took her hand. She interlaced her fingers with my own and I was again reminded of the kiss she had given me before heading into the nest.
“What was it?” she asked. “Inside...what was it?”
“I don’t know. The tentacles or whatever they were...I think they were connected to something.”
“Like one single body?”
“Yeah.”
“My God, Eric...how big would something like that have to be?”
“Big.”
The conversation sat heavy between us as I drove on. I had stopped trying to fathom the size of such a thing the moment I stepped out of the nest. I didn’t want to think about it. Things like that weren’t supposed to exist.
That, of course, was an invalid point given what our world had endured over the past sixteen months or so.
When it started getting dark outside, we opted not to switch on the headlights. We had no idea how many other people were out there, lurking the highways for food or supplies. Headlights slicing through the darkness would be like an inviting an attack. So we slowed down and rolled along with the interstate unspooling beneath us like a ragged black ribbon.
Without the aid of headlights, I drove slowly. On occasion, road signs and wrecked cars would surface out of the darkness, murky and indistinct. The way they seemed to blend with the night made me think of the shifting objects within the nest. The memory of those shapes made my guts clench.
At some point somewhere in the black hole that was the center of South Carolina, we came to an eighteen wheeler that had been overturned. It blocked three of the four lanes, and the several cars it had careened into blocked the other lane. I maneuvered the truck across the median and, because of the clogged mess of ruined cars on the other side, had to ride the median for about a quarter of a mile.
Time seemed to crawl along slower in the truck. Maybe it was because we were more aware of our motion with wheels beneath us. Without the headlights, I didn’t dare go more than thirty miles per hour. At one point, I struck something that might have been a rogue corpse in the center of the interstate, but that was the worst of it.
I had not checked my watch in a while. Still, because time had become a thing that I could almost sense in the same way people with arthritis can sense an approaching rainstorm, I figured we had been driving for five hours or so.
That meant we had been driving for about six and a half hours when we passed the grisly scene on Interstate 85, just after passing into North Carolina.
At first, driving slowly towards the obstruction, I thought we were seeing sandbags. But as we neared the shape stretched across most of the four lanes, I saw the shapes for what they really were.
Bodies.
There had to be at least one hundred bodies stacked two and three high. They made up a barricade that nearly went from one edge of the interstate to the other. On the other side of the line of corpses were the burned out shapes of several vehicles. A few other bodies were scattered here and there around the cars.
“My God,” Kendra breathed.
I weaved the Nissan to the far side of the road into the oncoming lanes, hoping for enough room to pass. I found that other vehicles had been this same way since the macabre roadblock had been constructed. A few bodies along the far end had been knocked from the pile and crumpled into peculiar angles on the pavement.
There was a slight thump as I was forced to drive over one. Kendra made a sound in her throat that made me incredibly sad for her. I looked over to her and the baby and was glad to see he was still sleeping.
“Oh God, Eric...,” Kendra said.
“What?”
But I saw what she was talking about when I turned my attention back to the road.
A man had been crucified upside down from one of the large green interstate signs that told me Charlotte was somewhere ahead in the looming darkness. The man had been stripped naked and then gutted. His legs were bound together and his arms were stretched perfectly downwards. In the murky dark, it looked almost like the shape of a fisherman’s trophy.
Kendra looked away from the mock crucifixion and placed her head softly agai
nst the window. The baby stirred in her arms and I knew it was one of his signs; he was going to wake up soon and he’d be hungry.
I drove on. The baby did stir awake about five minutes later and Kendra nursed him.
“Are things any better?” I asked her, assuming she knew what I meant without having to get too personal.
“I think so. Just the little bit of consistent fluid we’ve had since we got to Athens has seemed to help.”
“Good.”
“I guess we also need to figure out what to do about diapers,” she said. “This one he’s in is soaked and I think there are only two left in our bags.”
I was out of shirts to tear to make diapers and had no idea what to do. So I just nodded.
“We’ll figure something out, I guess,” she said.
“Yeah, somehow.”
“You know...I don’t thank you enough, Eric. You’ve been a great father for him. I couldn’t have asked for more. You’ve done so much to make sure we were okay...or as okay as we could be. Thank you.”
The tears hit my eyes before I was even aware they were coming. I wiped them away quickly, even though I knew it would be evidence that her words had moved me. But I didn’t care. I could deny it to myself all I wanted, but I loved her. I know she knew it. This was just further proof.
“Of course,” I said.
We ended up holding hands again. Our fingers did not separate until we saw headlights approaching from the oncoming lane. There was a median between the south and north-bound lanes, but there was nothing there that would hide us.
I pulled the Nissan all the way into the breakdown lane and parked it. My hand instantly went to the rifle beside me.
“They were too far away to have seen us, right?” Kendra asked.
“I think so. Probably.”
We watched the headlights approach. Staring at them across the darkened lanes, it was like peering at fabled ghost lights across a swamp. I just hoped that even if they did see us, the driver would assume that the Nissan was just another of the several stranded vehicles along the side of the road.
The headlights approached and I was sure the vehicle slowed a bit as it came even with us. There were five or six lanes between us as it approached. Kendra and I both lay down as much as we could and I let out a sigh of relief when the white glare of the headlights flickered through the Nissan and continued down the interstate. The vehicle was moving fast—easily seventy miles per hour or so. Apparently, they were in too much of a hurry to have spotted us.
I counted to twenty and then sat back up. I looked into the rearview and the headlights were already a very distant speck of light.
I pulled the truck back out onto the highway and continued on.
“Is it bad that we always assume anyone else we see is bad news?” Kendra asked.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Not after Vance. Now, I think it’s the smartest approach.”
She nodded and looked ahead into the darkness.
I estimated that we had another two hours before dawn would once again uselessly try to retain its former glory within the sky. I was tired beyond comprehension and didn’t know how much longer I could drive. I looked at the gas gauge and saw that we had gone through three quarters of a tank.
I looked ahead and tried to prepare myself for the trek we’d have ahead of us once it hit E.
28
The Nissan started to buckle and sputter three and a half hours later. Daybreak had come and shed some light on the road, so I managed to get the truck up to forty-five without feeling too dangerous. Kendra had been sleeping, the baby cradled in her arms. When the truck let out its first sputter, she jerked slowly awake.
“What’s that?”
“We’re out of gas,” I said. “We might make it another half mile.”
“Where are we?”
“We passed Greensboro about four miles back. There are some other smaller towns coming up.”
“Greensboro is what? A little over one hundred miles from the Safe Zone?”
I grinned at her. She had studied the map studiously whenever she’d had the chance during our journey. “Yeah,” I answered. “Something like that.”
The truck died uneventfully. I didn’t even bother pulling it off of the road. Kendra and I sat there for a moment as the baby woke up again. Kendra fed him as I started taking things out of the back of the truck.
We had a light breakfast standing by the back of the truck—dry Cheerios and a stick of beef jerky, which we shared. We had gone through half of the first bottle of Gatorade and even that little bit made me nervous. We then shared one of the bottles of water. Knowing that we had plenty remaining almost made me feel like a glutton. Our bellies weren’t nearly full when we started walking again, but it was the best breakfast I could remember having in several weeks.
We walked for about an hour, passing signs that told us several small towns were up ahead. I was beyond tired; surprisingly, driving slowly through the night had seemed just as exhausting as walking. I suggested we get off of the interstate at the next exit and Kendra agreed. Staying on the open road was dangerous. It left nowhere to hide should another car come by like last night. So we took the next exit, which took us into a little burg-like North Carolina town called Rudduck.
The tiny town was an oddity of sorts. It looked to be mostly untouched by looting, riots, the army, and the bombs. Still, the place was a ghost town. It was odd. I was sure there would be some travesties to discover if we actually looked for them, but the idea made me feel even more exhausted.
Five blocks into Rudduck, we came to a Hotel 6 that looked to be as relatively unmarked as the rest of the town.
“A bed,” I said tiredly. “A real, actual bed. You think we’re that lucky?”
“I don’t kn—”
The sound of a distant car engine interrupted her. It was a good distance away, but it was enough to shatter our hopes that we had discovered the perfect little untouched and deserted town. The engine noise let us know that we did not have Rudduck, North Carolina all to ourselves.
The scream we heard next backed this up.
It came from somewhere on the other side of town, but chilled us all the same. It may as well have been right behind us. We wasted no time and hurried for the hotel.
The door to the lobby and office was locked, but I shattered the glass as quietly as I could, using my shirt and the stock of the rifle. We made our way inside and took a key for a first floor room from behind the check-in desk. The place was so quiet and we had gotten in so easily that it made me wonder if this was some sort of trap—just like the one we had stepped in back in Georgia. Even as I took the room key, I looked around the lobby expectantly, just waiting for someone to jump out at us.
Holding the key as we walked towards the first floor hallway was beyond surreal. It made me think of getting home from work and unlocking my front door. I felt terribly displaced for a moment when I slid the key into the door of Room 115. We had chosen 115 because we figured being on the first floor would make escaping easier if we needed to. And since 115 was in the center of the hall, we would have time to prepare for an attack if we heard intruders, but would only have to run half the length of the hallway to escape if the attack went badly.
The room smelled stale and felt thick, a small square space that had gone unoccupied for more than a year. But none of that mattered. Two beds sat to our left, untouched and perfectly preserved like items in a museum.
“Unreal,” I breathed, letting out a chuckle.
Kendra laughed behind me. The baby, whom had been quiet and lethargic all morning, let out a pleasant garbled noise.
“Yeah,” Kendra said. “The beds are nice and all, but I bet the WiFi is a joke.”
We both laughed hard at the joke. The baby let out one of his little cackles as he usually did whenever he heard his mother laugh.
I sat our bags down in the floor and then flopped enthusiastically onto the bed like a child on vacation.
29
>
I only slept for a handful of hours. It was just after one in the afternoon when I woke up. Kendra was playing with the baby on the other bed. Feeling the give and softness of the mattress beneath me was enough to make me want to go immediately back to sleep, but I wanted to check out the rest of the hotel. Surely there would be supplies here.
I walked into the bathroom and went for the sink.
“Not that lucky,” Kendra said. “I tried it already. No water, no electricity. I thought it was weird, seeing as how this town seems like it’s in perfectly good shape.”
“That is sort of odd.”
“I was going to go looking for supplies but thought we should do it together just in case.”
I knew she was referring to the car engine and the scream from earlier in the morning. No matter how quiet Rudduck seemed and how empty the hotel felt, we couldn’t know for sure what was going on outside.
I took the baby and placed him in his little sling. He grabbed my nose as I set him in place and we left Room 115 in search of supplies.
We found a single granola bar in the main office, in the bottom drawer of what we assumed was a cashier’s desk. There was also a poorly stocked first-aid kit and a flashlight in the same drawer. I took the flashlight out and tested it instinctively. My jaw nearly dropped when a yellow beam of light glowed from the bulb. While we already had a small mechanic’s light, another could never hurt.
Pleased with finding the flashlight, we checked the rest of the first floor. At the end of the first floor hall, there was a little nook to the right that contained an ice maker. While the power meant there was obviously no ice, I tinkered with the tubing along the back of it, hoping to find some sort of reservoir where water was stored before it became ice. The tiny bit of water I did find was stagnant and tasted like plastic.