Quarantined (Book 2): In the End

by Tracey Ward

  There’s another bang. Hands are grasping at the windows, covering the glass in grime and black blood. I can hear bodies pressing against the sides, grasping at them. Clawing.

  “Go,” I tell Syd.

  “I told you guys, I am going.”

  “No, I mean go fast. Now.” I watch as an infected starts to climb on the hood of the RV, heading for the windshield. “Our cover is blown, stealth is dead. Just go.”

  He hesitates.

  This is the sort of thing that is going to get us killed.

  “Syd, we don’t have time to argue about this,” I tell him, my voice tight with anger.

  He shakes his head but puts down his foot. Our speed increases. “Brace yourself. It’s going to get bumpy.”

  I hurry on my knees to the bench seat in the back. From here I can see out part of Ali’s window and half the windshield. It makes me wish I was driving. I don’t like not being in control.

  Syd hits the gas hard. We hit the infected harder. Bodies make thumping sounds as they bounce off the front bumper, tossed to the side and into their brothers only to be bounced back by them into the side of the RV again as it passes. Some aren’t so lucky. Some end up falling under the vehicle to either pass harmlessly beneath the undercarriage or to act as a speed bump under our wheels. The zombie on the hood that was coming for the windshield gets its wish. I watch as her face flies toward the glass, makes sharp contact and disappears to the right. Her nose broke on contact leaving a large spray of blood and tissue on the surface. Alissa, to her credit, doesn’t make a sound.

  As for me, I almost weep. The impact caused a crack in the glass. It’s small, but how big does it really need to be? Another hit like that anywhere on the windshield will cause it to spider web and then we can’t trust it at all. It’s a chink in our already shoddy armor. My shaking hands have suddenly stilled. I think that’s a worse sign than the shaking was.

  Syd plows ahead, bodies banging off the side of the RV as we move at what feels like breakneck speed but is probably 20 mph. We wouldn’t even get a ticket in a school zone and yet I feel like we’re flying. So much damage is going to be done by this. The windshield is already a liability and it’s only a matter of time—

  A tire blows. Luckily we’re not going as fast as it felt like, but the sound of the exploding tire and the subsequent veering of the vehicle sends us all into an instant panic. Hands, feet and faces stream by, every one of them threatening to crack the soft eggshell hull of our RV as we continue to hobble past them as fast as we can. I don’t believe this is how it will end for us, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to end well either.

  “We keep going!” Syd shouts. “We’ll deal with it later. When it’s clear.”

  Before I go into what’s wrong with that logic, I’ll preface it with this; he’s right. We keep going, no question, no complaint. Nothing is to be gained by stopping other than teeth in your flesh and that’s if you’re lucky enough to be eaten by this crowd and not pulled apart like a gingerbread man tossed into a crowd of Santa’s starving elves. It’s a no brainer (zombie pun!) and I totally agree with it.

  That being said, what the hell?! We’ll deal with what later? The fractured windshield? The mangled tire that is beyond repair? The wheel now meeting pavement and crying in sparking agony?

  It’s like the insanely slow speed at which we have to do almost everything. I understand it, I agree with it on some level, but that doesn’t mean a huge part of me is not absolutely rage stroking over it.

  Eventually we clear the bridge which means we’ve cleared the majority of the infected but it by no means actually puts us in the clear. I don’t think that exists anymore. It’s like the land of OZ or Narnia at this point – it’s a fairy tale. We can all feel it where the tire is blown and the wheel is becoming a hot, mangled mess, but we keep going, even after the bridge. There’s still no safe place to pull over and fix it, not yet. Maybe not ever. I’m starting to wonder if we aren’t going to have to abandon this thing.

  It’s then that I realize that’s exactly what we need to do.

  “Stop!” I shout. “Syd, stop, now!”

  “What? No,” he argues. “We’re still surrounded!”

  I’m hardly listening. I’m already grabbing my pack, tossing Alissa’s at her and heading for the side door.

  “We’ll have to run from them at high speeds to get far enough ahead to fix that tire. Can the wheel last that long without becoming useless? A tire is one, but the actual wheel is another. Do you know how to fix it? How to replace it?”

  His silence tells me the answer.

  “We’re ditching the RV for now. We’ll take what we can and come back for it when the swarm has passed it by. It’ll take a day, maybe two.”

  “Where are we going in the meantime?” Alissa asks. She climbs out of her seat to head to the back with me, her pack already on.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Syd pulls over abruptly. “Al, grab the small tent. Jordan, secure that door behind you.”

  “It won’t keep looters out,” Alissa warns.

  “We’re not worried about other people, Al.”

  “Not yet,” she whispers.

  Is it wrong for me to be proud of the cynicism there?

  Syd slams the car into park before glancing back at us. “Everybody have water in their pack?”

  “Got it.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  “Good. They’re coming so let’s do this fast. We’ll run into the trees here on the left, start heading north. Ready?”

  We nod, perched and ready to pounce.

  “Go!”

  We burst through the door, Alissa running ahead of me while I carefully lock the door before chasing after her. I’m with Syd, the door needs to be locked so the infected can’t sneak in and surprise us when we come back. If it keeps other people out too, so much the better, though I doubt it will. I fall in line behind Syd running across the highway after Alissa. To the right, I can see infected that were already heading east. They’ve caught wind of us. They’re turning, recalculating and honing in. I take a quick look at what’s at my left out on the bridge and wish I hadn’t. There aren’t that many close by, none that I immediately need to worry about, but there are so just many of them in general. We can’t run straight out into the woods and hope they’ll lose us. That’s their thing – they don’t lose you. They don’t forget you, they don’t lose interest in you. They’ll hunt us forever and our only hope of evading this swarm is outsmarting them. Shouldn’t be hard, right?

  Yeah, we’ll see. Dumb can be deceptively tricky.

  In the distance, I can see black smoke faintly rising into the sky and I wonder if it’s a town or another blown out airport. Could be both. Crabtree is supposed to be in that direction, out to the east on our route to the mountains. I briefly hope there are still people there. That there’s a human scent for the infected to pick up on to pull them away from us. Maybe it’s a messed up hope to have but it’s too late to take it back now.

  Alissa darts into the trees, Syd following close behind. I could almost kiss her when I see what she’s doing. She’s not heading straight into the trees. She’s not even heading toward what could be a town. What she’s doing is running us straight toward the riverbank.

  “Al, where are you going?!” Syd exclaims.

  “The river!” she shouts back.

  “We don’t have a boat. What the hell good is the river going to do us?”

  “We’re going in!” I shout, stumbling on a log hidden in the underbrush. I nearly crash forward onto my face, but luckily I slam into a small tree, spin off it and keep running. It’s not graceful but I’m still standing. Still running.

  “We are?” Alissa cries, glancing back at me. “Oh no.”

  I slow so I can look behind me to see what she’s seeing. They’re coming. Lots of them. They’re diving off the bridge the way they did in Portland, they’re stumbling down the embankment behind me and they’re slowly making their way
through the trees. We can outrun them for sure, but for how long? If we hide in a building they’ll find us and surround us. If we go to higher ground they’ll surround us. We have to lose them somehow. We have to lose these things that will not be lost.

  Up north a ways on the river I can see an island. A small sandy area with trees for cover and hopefully deep enough water to work as a barrier. That’s where we’re going. That’s home base. But how do we shake them so they don’t see or smell us go there?

  “There, that island!” I shout to Alissa. “That’s where we’re going.”

  “We’ll have to go into the water to get there,” she warns, but she doesn’t question it.

  “I know. It’ll kill our scent. They’ll lose our trail.”

  “But our trail will stop right there next to us,” Syd reminds me.

  He’s puffing and panting as he runs. He’s an older guy and pretty out of shape, not still an athlete in training like I am or a young woman in her prime like Alissa, but he’s still holding his own.

  “You’re right. We’ll have to overshoot it. Run upriver, enter the water and swim down to the island.”

  “How far upriver do you want to go?” Alissa asks.

  I glance over my shoulder again, do a quick headcount. It doesn’t take me long to give up.

  “Quite a ways.”

  Chapter Seven

  We go two miles. For me the run feels great. Putting distance between us and the infected is always a high but running also clears my head. I feel alert and alive as we move through the trees. Alissa and Syd, however, soon start to fade. They don’t complain though.

  “Here, we’ll stop here.” I tell them, pulling up sharply beside the river.

  We’re out in open fields again. I can see pretty far in every direction and the fact that I don’t see any infected should be comforting, but it’s not. I’d rather be able to see them coming than be taken by surprise.

  “We’ll have to stay low in the water,” Syd says, eyeing the current.

  I nod in agreement. “Our packs will get wet. No way around it. We’ll have to lay things out to dry on the island.”

  “It’s going to be cold,” Alissa muses.

  “Especially without your shirt.”

  Both Alissa and Syd look at me sharply. I’m already shrugging out of my pack and pulling my shirt up.

  Syd shakes his head. His scowl has returned.

  “You just can’t keep your clothes on lately, can you?” Alissa asks, grinning.

  I chuckle. “I’d like nothing better than to stay clothed for the rest of the day, but we have to leave a strong scent behind to keep them from following us. We’ve all been sweating in these clothes. They’re perfect to leave behind, to send them off further on a dead trail.”

  “You and I will do it,” Syd says, pulling his coat off and tearing his shirt off over his head. “Al stays fully clothed.”

  “Fine by me,” I agree.

  “Me too,” Alissa says.

  I look at her in surprise, amazed this isn’t turning into an argument about fairness and equal treatment or at least a rant about my sexist nature.

  She shrugs. “Call me crazy, but given the opportunity to keep my clothes on, I will.”

  I want to make a joke about liking a challenge but one glance at Syd reminds me to hold my tongue.

  Syd and I jog away from the water and head out into the fields. I tell him to toss his shirt and return to Alissa while I run a little farther out before tossing my own. If all goes to plan, this should send them wandering north east.

  “Jordan,” Syd says, staring at the water, “about this brilliant plan of yours...”

  “I know,” I reply grimly.

  Alissa comes to stand beside me at the water’s edge. “What’s up? What are we looking at?”

  “The current.”

  She groans. “We’ll have to swim against it.”

  “Yep.”

  “I miss our boat.”

  “You and me both.”

  We tread into the water. The coldness creeps up my pant leg, licking my skin and sending shivers through my body. This is going to be a long, exhausting ordeal. One made even longer by the fact that we all just ran two miles and will now be swimming those miles into the current of a freezing cold river, some of it underwater.

  No one complains as we sink into the current. Nothing beyond the involuntary gasp at the sudden coldness. Then we’re moving. They follow my lead as I swim us upstream, trying to remain as perfectly centered in the water as I can. I don’t know how many infected are on the other bank, but I imagine quite a few. I can hear them now and then moaning in the trees but I haven’t seen any yet. Doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat.

  “Ali,” I whisper, over my shoulder, “keep an eye on the west bank. Quietly and calmly let us know if you see anything.”

  Silence is my answer.

  “Al,” Syd breathes behind me.

  “No, I heard you guys,” she whispers back, sounding annoyed.

  “Then what’s with the silent treatment?” I ask quietly.

  More silence. Just when I’m about to snap at her, she finally answers me.

  “I’m all turned around,” she grumbles. “I was trying to figure out which bank is west.”

  “On the right,” Syd and I say together.

  “Shhh!”

  I look over my shoulder at her incredulously. “Are you shushing us?”

  She rolls her eyes. “If you would use normal directions like left and right, this wouldn’t be an issue. But you have to go all tactical Rambo. What’s next? Is there an infected at my 20?”

  “Are you serious? What about ‘stage left’?” I whisper back sharply.

  Alissa narrows her eyes at me. “It made perfect sense.”

  “To who? The cast of Cats? Who uses that as a direction?”

  “It worked didn’t it?”

  “I have no idea. Did I turn the right way?”

  “Did I put an arrow in your heart?”

  “No,” I reply, feeling instantly annoyed that that was a possibility.

  “Then yeah, you got it right.”

  “I have an idea,” Syd whispers, drifting in the current between us.

  “What?”

  “Shut up,” Syd replies at full volume, making me cringe. “Both of you.”

  “How ‘bout all of us shut up.” I hiss, staring at him.

  I’m shocked when the old guy grins a little then mimes zipping his lips.

  We continue our trek upstream, fighting against the current, the cold and the weight of our packs filled with water on our backs. I worry about what will happen on the island. We’ll need to start a fire, but how? I told Alissa when we met that I was an Eagle Scout and I was, but I never finished. I certainly never learned wilderness survival and we’ll need some kind of skills to survive on that island for the day or so it’s going to take for these zombies to clear the area.

  I hear them coming through the brush up ahead. I throw up my hand to halt the other two, signaling silently to swim for the opposite shore. It’s a risk considering the number of infected we saw on the bridge. Several could easily be coming down the west bank as well, but I can’t see or hear anything so we’re taking that chance. We all lay low in the shallow water, digging our fingers into the smooth pebbles and sand on the riverbed to hold ourselves in place as we wait. I see at least six infected walking by through the trees. They stumble clumsily, making impossibly slow progress as they trip over rocks, branches and probably ferns. They’re not a coordinated bunch, it doesn’t take much.

  There’s a gurgling up stream on my left, then a thrashing that causes splashes in the water. An infected is floating down the river, being taken by the current and run right beside me. He spins in the water uncontrollably, but when he sees me he doesn’t hesitate. His grappling, gnarled hands reach out brokenly for me. Most of his fingers are bent at odd angles with the skin flayed off in horrible patterns. He was pounding or digging at something relentle
ssly at one point. Now he wants me.

  I keep my cool. I don’t move other my uncontrollable shivers as the river pulls him in close to me, then spins him and rolls him back out toward the center. He’s only near me for an instant, but it was time enough to see him up close. To take in the death and rot pouring out of every orifice. The horrible gray sheen of his drooping skin. I hear a grunt of surprise from behind me and I know it’s Syd.

  The river pulls my close encounter away from me. The sound of his mournful, wanting groans are morphed into a bubbling gurgle as his open mouth goes underwater. Then he disappears. Hopefully to never be seen again, at least not by me.

  We wait patiently as the mass of zombies trudging through the trees passes. There will be more I’m sure, but for now we have a small break so we take full advantage. I signal for Syd and Alissa to follow me, then I resume my smooth, even strokes swimming upriver.

  By the time we reach the island we’re all panting and shaking with exhaustion, nerves and cold. Alissa drags herself up on the bank beside me where she shrugs out of her pack and collapses on her back.

  “Well that sucked,” she pants. “What should we do now?”

  “I know some PX-90 moves,” I offer.

  She looks up at me with a weak smile that’s more about her eyes than her mouth.

  “You start. I’ll join in.”

  “I’ll—“

  “We need to make camp, that’s what we do now,” Syd interrupts. He’s standing a little inland, scouting the terrain. He points toward a small grouping of bushes and trees. “There. That’s where we bunker down to wait this out. Let’s move.”

  He walks away without a glance in our direction. I feel myself bristle.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I mutter.

  Alissa frowns up at me. “What isn’t? The island?”

  “No, him and I. This back and forth crap.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I look at her impatiently. “Come on, you know what I’m talking about. He defers to me one minute, then he’s in charge again the next? Barking out orders and expecting us to jump to for him.”

  “It’s just how he is. Don’t take it too seriously and don’t be afraid to tell him no.”