by Rudolph, J.
The Highway
Book 2 of The Reanimates Series
a novel by
J. Rudolph
The Highway
Book 2 of The Reanimates Series
First Edition, E-Book – published 2013
Rudforce Intragalactic, Publishing Division
Copyright © 2013 by Julie Rudolph
Cover Art Copyright © 2013 by Sandra Giles
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Connor-- May you always know what to fight for.
Hitting the Road
It felt like the end of the world all over again to lose our home. We thought we were going to be okay after the zombies hit. We had set up our perimeter, had drawn our lines in the sand with a backhoe and started to rebuild.
Now it was over. Now we were bouncing down interstate 15 in a semi-truck on our way to Idaho. It was the only course of action we could come up with. I felt exhausted. I felt like my soul had been ground into a fine powder. I found myself grateful for the total darkness; if there had been any streetlights at that point, my head would have melted in over stimulation.
The only sound that accompanied my thoughts were that of the engine rumbling along. There were no radio stations anymore to tune into. If the silence had mattered to anyone we would have turned on an iPod or something, but I think I wasn't the only one relieved by the silence. Trent's jaw was just now losing those hard lines that were formed by his clenched teeth, revealing just how stressed he had been. My head buzzed and ears still rang echoes from all the noise of the nightmare we just escaped from.
When the marauders came and we were fighting for our lives I didn't really have time to process everything that had happened. I acknowledged each death but I had my emotional walls up to protect myself. I filtered everything through the nurse hat I was so fond of wearing as protection. Now, sitting in the silence of the night, everything was sinking in. Every lost person was a hard hit.
It all started off so easily. I was Cali Anglin, mom to Drew, wife to Trent, and a nurse who loved her job. I went to work one night and before I was done with that shift the world had decided to come to an end. That was the day that Shelton's virus had hit threshold, the day that a virus that was born from a rat exposed to too much radiation mutated from a slow killer with reanimation to a much faster killer with reanimation. The CDC didn't know what to do, a virus that was turning its victims into cannibalistic killers was so beyond the scope of anything they believed possible. They had spent so long denying that zombies could exist that when they suddenly did they were lost. It was so surreal, something right out of some Hollywood screenplay. It felt like the old world was several lifetimes ago and just yesterday all at once.
People panicked. Most everyone evacuated to a different place, holding to the belief that anywhere was better than where they were. My family decided that there was no place better to go, so we stayed in the apartment complex we lived in. Seven other units stayed occupied as well. Together we worked to secure the complex and create a safe zone for us to thrive, and we did. We were doing so well. We fortified the grounds of the complex to make zombie access a no passing zone. We raided grocery stores, got an excellent source of water, we even acquired a solar array set up to keep the lights on so we could feel like we had a chance of maintaining a normal life for ourselves.
This isn't to say that we were without our losses early on. Eric died while trying to secure food for the people that stayed. Steven died trying to protect the gardens that we hoped would sustain us. We tried to honor their memory by being a beacon of hope to those that were still out there. Anna found us with her two children. We offered her safety. Daniel's ex-girlfriend Alexus came to reunite with her family. We took her in. We believed in what we were doing, that we could rebuild.
Others came too. They came to take what we worked hard to make. They came to steal from us. At first we tried to hold to the ideals that there was enough destruction, enough death, and we were not going to be party to making it worse. We held them off, turned them away. They left and that was when we were betrayed.
Alexus had been working with the thieves. When we finally figured out what had been happening it was too late. We took her in on good faith, as the mother of two of the children in the complex. She fed all of our security secrets to the marauders. We kicked her out of the complex where she rejoined her group. At first, after we threw her out, we were on high alert. The marauders had promised us that there would be retaliation and we were ready for them to attack us. We set up enhanced security; we made escape plans. For a while nothing happened. The more time passed, the more our guard had come back down. That was when we were attacked.
DaWayne was on watch the night that they attacked. They saw him standing on the roof that night and they shot him. He got lucky that the bullet hit him in the shoulder and that he hadn't been killed. I preformed a makeshift surgery to remove the bullet and sewed him up the best I could.
Many good people died as a result of their actions. Alexus came with the marauders when the attack happened. She shot Daniel down in cold blood in full view of everyone. Joey took her out. Martha had been killed trying to defend our home. The marauders sought to destroy everything we had. They knew what units held supplies and ransacked and destroyed them. When Martha had been killed, she knocked over an oil lamp and the unit she called home turned into a raging inferno. With so many losses of people, destroyed supplies, and a fire we had no way of managing, we decided to evacuate. There was nothing left to defend. We had conceded the fight to them. We got to where the kids were hiding out and were moving everyone to our semi-truck, which was what we had modified to be our escape vehicle. When the guys had acquired the Spring Forth water truck, I had never imagined that it would be our bug-out plan, but it was perfect for moving so many people all at once. Joey had been helping everyone into the truck's trailer, including his wife who was now in labor, doing everything that he could to make sure everyone was safe. This was who Joey was, the kind of person that would protect everyone else until his last breath. As he went for the handle of the roll up door to close us in, one of the marauders shot him. I was with him when he exhaled his last breath and died. Joey was my friend. He taught me how to use a gun, he taught me how to think along different lines in order to survive, and he taught me to still find hope, even when all hope was seemingly lost. My friend was dead and we still weren't in the clear.
Our exit had a drawbridge. We had assigned Anna the task of lowering the bridge for us at the last moment of bug out so at least there would be that one last defense against people and things that were there to harm us. She was supposed to jump into the truck right after she lowered it. When the bridge came down and the zombies started to come in, she saw her husband in the crowd of zombies. The hoard of zombies had swarmed on us from all around the area, driven by the noise and attention catching activities we were doing trying to fight off the marauders. She let the bridge drop and ran to him, not acknowledging that he was a zombie. Her husband ate her as her children listened from the trailer.
We drove over the zombies and out the gate, and kept driving. Jody delivered the baby in the trailer as we drove out of the chaos, bouncing down the abandoned freeway. Th
e only hope we had left was in getting to Idaho. We hoped to meet up with Trent's sister Kristen, her husband Mike, their son, Nathan, and Trent's parents, Louise and Derek. I didn't want to think of what could happen if we failed. Failure was not an option here; we had nowhere left to go.
It's so hard to believe that that fight was less than 24 hours ago. Everything changes so quickly.
After about 30 minutes of driving, we were in a fairly quiet area, open spaces all around. There aren't very many spaces in southern California that are wide open and flat, but there are a few. It was a perk to living in the desert. Under the light of the moon we saw that we were alone in a zombie free paradise. We decided it was time to pull over for a minute and check on everyone.
We rolled open the door to the trailer to let everyone out for a bit. The kids were the first to bounce out, having felt confined for too long. The youngest kids, Annali, Dalynn, and Tomisha giggled as they ran in a circle at the opening of the trailer. It seemed that the changes hadn't effected them at all. Drew, Liam, Kyle, and Abigail were not as animated as the littlest ones. They walked around in a group, kicking at dirt clods, tossing occasional rocks, but didn't build up the full head of steam that they had been able to in the past. They were old enough to understand the world had changed in front of them for the second time, but this time was more traumatic as they all lost the familiarity they had by at least being home. Kyle was the most closed off of the four. He and his sister were orphans now and had no one. I watched them poke around for a bit before I climbed into the trailer to check on Jody.
Jody's world had been rocked heavily. She held JJ in her arms trying to get him to nurse as tears fell silently down her cheeks. When he finally latched on she looked up at me. Her bright red hair was a mess and her green eyes seemed to stand out even brighter with the red contrast from all the tears. I didn't think it possible for her to look more pale, but in the aftermath of delivering her son and losing her husband, she was. This was not how having the baby was supposed to go.
“He looks like his dad.” She dropped her head back down to stare at her son's face after she whispered her observation. The tears fell faster. I didn't say anything in response. All I could do is sit next to her. We sat quiet for the next couple minutes looking at this tiny peanut of a baby.
“How is the bleeding?” I asked, breaking the silence. Jody shrugged her shoulders. I asked if I could check, and she nodded her head. I couldn't imagine how she was feeling, not only was she mourning the loss of her husband, she was going through a major hormonal shift and the day that was supposed to be among the happiest in her life, the birth of her son, was marred by all the loss. I pulled out a pair of bright blue disposable gloves from the box that I had left nearby when the delivery was happening and lifted up the blanket that was covering her legs. The bleeding wasn't very heavy, and that looked pretty good to me. I pulled off the gloves and covered her back up. I asked her if I could push on her stomach a bit to make sure was still contracting well. She nodded again. While I palpated her lower abdomen she said nothing. Physically she was checking out just fine. I was more than a little worried about her emotional state. She was withdrawn and in pain and I couldn't do anything about it.
“Are you doing the abdominal rubs that I showed you?” I asked. She nodded.
“I've done this before.” Jody said with a heavy tone. I nodded.
“Yeah.” I replied quietly. JJ was her fourth kid; she probably knew more about all of the post-delivery stuff than I did.
“I've done this before. Babies, widow. Hell, might as well as well do it at the same time. Saves time, right?” She roughly wiped a tear off her face that had started to trickle down her nose, tickling at her right nostril. I leaned in to hug her. She let her face fall on my shoulder and sobbed.
After a moment Jody lifted her face off my shoulder and sat back on the pillows. She sighed heavily, looked at her son who had fallen asleep after he was full, and decided that she too needed a nap.
When she was as comfortable as I could make her I went over to where Tanya was sitting on the floor next to the bunk bed where she watched over DaWayne as he slept. “How is he doing?” I asked in a whisper.
“He's doing okay I think.” she said softly. I put a hand to his forehead to make sure he hadn't developed a fever. Infection was the first thing on my mind having been the one to do his 'surgery' only hours before. DaWayne, a big football playing tough guy, was lying there in a fitful sleep. I had to wake him up to make sure he was okay which I wished I didn't have to do. His mom started to gently wake him up.
“Pookie? Ms. Cali is here to check on you. Wake up, baby.” Tanya whispered into her son's ear. I smiled a bit at the pet name of Pookie being assigned to this kid, though kid might not be the most apt description. DaWayne was 18 years old, pushing 19. He was a man by societal standards, but when it comes to your own kid, I suppose they are never a full grown being. DaWayne began to open his eyes groggily. Poor guy, sleep was at least a break from what had to hurt like hell.
“How you feeling hon?” I asked softly.
“Hurts like a mother fu... Hey mom. Didn't see you sitting there.” He smiled a little. Good to see him have some humor. Definitely a good sign. He still didn't have a shirt on since I cut off the last one, so it was easy to lift a corner of the gauze I had taped down. The swelling had set in from the trauma, but it didn't look like it was excessive. I gave him a warning that I needed to start an IV on him to get some antibiotics running through him. He groaned.
“Aww, man! I hate needles. Really hate needles. Can't you just shoot me if it gets infected?” I rolled my eyes at him.
“I'll be right back. I need to get the stuff.” I patted him on his good shoulder.
I riffled through the medical supply section of the bench seat storage and found a powdered vial of vancomycin and spiked it onto a small IV bag. After the powder mixed with the liquid I connected it to the larger IV bag of saline. I ran the saline through the tubing to get rid of all the air bubbles. Then I gathered the IV start kit and the needle. I got the little tubing of the kit set up and went over to look at the veins in his arm. I sat down on the bed, put on the tourniquet, found a good vein, and wiped down the area with rubbing alcohol. He whimpered a bit when I came towards him with the needle. He squeezed his eyes shut. I got the needle in on the first try.
“All done.” I said when the last tube was connected.
“Huh?” DaWayne asked, confused. He was so busy being worried that he didn't even realize I was done. I laughed at him. It occurred to me that I didn't have anything to hang the bags of fluids up on. It was an easy solution, for once. I put a couple nails into the bunk above DaWayne's and bent the heads up to make little hooks. The saline was started first and before I started the flow of antibiotics I pushed a dose of morphine in the line. He looked like he was in less pain immediately. The antibiotics were started as DaWayne went to sleep. Tanya looked at me and smiled.
“You’re a good kid, Cali. Thank you for taking care of my son. I'll never be able to repay you for patching him up.”
I smiled and said that I'd check on him in a little bit.
I stepped outside the trailer and stretched my arms above my head. It was definitely going to be a cold night. Trisha was talking with her dad as she watched Daniel's girls play. I walked over to them to see how they were doing. She was talking about how they were going to need someone to take care of them now.
“Dad,” she began, “I want to adopt them.” Tyreese rolled his eyes.
“Baby girl, these are kids, not stray puppies. You're too young to adopt them.”
“Dad, I'm almost 18. Besides, before all this stuff happened, I knew a few girls my age with kids. Tomisha is the same age as Sasha's son. I could totally take care of them. And next month is Tomisha's birthday; she should have a family before then.” She could tell her dad was not yet swayed. “Dad,” she continued, “It's not really like it makes any difference who adopts them here anyway. We're all in this
together. I just want them to know I love them and want to be a real momma to them. They never had a momma that loved them. Alexus was just a bitch that used them as a pawn in a game. I want them to know that momma's aren't really like that. Momma's are supposed to love them.”
Tanya came out now that DaWayne was resting comfortably. She had heard the last bit of Trisha's argument. She agreed.
“You know hon, she has a point.” Tanya said to her husband. “It doesn't really matter who it is that takes them on as their own because we are all in this together. We'd obviously be right here to help her out when she has questions. I'm fine with it if she wants to be their mom. It's not like there is social services to take them or to argue what makes a parent anymore.” She smiled at Trisha.
Tyreese sighed with a dramatic flourish, knowing he had lost the argument. “You got your mom on board. Alright. You have my blessing on taking them on.”
Mercedes had been sitting on the trailer edge and had overheard all this. She had been rocking Annali who had been glued to her side since her mom died. Mercedes had become a serious attachment person to her. Annali had been on the edge of sleep when she shook herself awake.
“Ms. Mercedes, if Tomisha and Dalynn can get a new mommy I want one too. Will you be my new mommy? Even if it's make-believe?” My heart broke to hear her ask this.
Mercedes continued to rock Annali and said “Sure, baby. If that’s what you want, I'll be your mommy.” Kyle was standing near enough to be hearing all of this talk about parents. “Kyle, if you want I'll take care of you too.”
Kyle weighed what was being presented to him. “Yeah, I guess that would be all right. You aren't my mom though. My mom died. She's my mom. I don't know what to call you.”
“You can call me whatever you want.” Mercedes said.
“Auntie Mercedes? Maybe just auntie?” Kyle asked.