Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland

by Michael J. Totten

  “What,” Kyle said. “On earth. Are we doing?”

  “Look at them,” Hughes said.

  Annie moaned.

  Parker sat up in his seat and looked through the windshield. “They really can’t see us, can they?” he said.

  “Nope,” Hughes said.

  “Too bad we can’t drop a bomb on them,” Parker said.

  “Yep,” Hughes said.

  The horde shifted a little. Until now, it bulged in the middle and moved down Main Street like a wedge, but those on the edges, on the sidewalks, picked up the pace, and the horde began to take on the shape of a horseshoe.

  “We need to go,” Parker said.

  From the side, the infected would be able to see into the Suburban, and they would attack.

  “Now,” Parker said.

  Hughes sped up in reverse, first to five miles an hour, then ten. The horde sped up too. At first, those in front walked a little bit faster, and then they started to run.

  “Get us out of here,” Parker said.

  Hughes accelerated to fifteen miles an hour but didn’t dare go any faster. He couldn’t see much behind him and smashing into a parked car could get them all killed.

  “Flip a bitch,” Parker said.

  Hughes knew what he meant and cranked the wheel hard into a U-turn. The oncoming horde was three blocks away now. The Suburban was not a small vehicle. The damn thing was nearly half the length of a bus. Hughes had to make a K-turn, driving forward a couple of feet and backing up a couple of feet before he could get turned around.

  The speedometer made it up to 80 before they left town.

  43

  Annie woke with a start and had no idea where she was. She was freezing, strapped into some kind of a chair and saw a barren snow-covered landscape before her.

  Something heavy lay in her lap.

  A Glock 17.

  Her sleepy delirium evaporated. She was in the Suburban with Hughes, Parker and Kyle. They’d escaped Lander and stopped on the side of the road for some rest thirty miles or so east of town. Hughes slumped over the steering wheel in the driver’s seat and Parker and Kyle slept against the doors in the back with their seatbelts off.

  Annie was not dreaming. She’d actually made it out. Even if the horde of infected followed them out of the city, they wouldn’t catch up. Not easily, anyway. Not in this weather. Winter had returned to Wyoming. So far only a dusting of snow had fallen, but Annie took it as a shot across the bow from the universe.

  “Hey,” she said and shoved Hughes in the arm.

  He snapped to attention, rolled each shoulder and made a quick scan of the area.

  “We should get going,” Annie said. “Before we get stuck here.”

  Kyle and Parker stirred in the back.

  Hughes nodded and started the truck. Freezing air blew out of the vents.

  “Where are we?” Parker said.

  “Nowhere,” Hughes said and pulled the Suburban onto the road.

  He took it slow. Because of the snow. The landscape was mostly flat. They wouldn’t hit anything if they slid off the road, but still, this was not the time or place for their usual cruising speed of 80 miles an hour.

  Annie saw no tire tracks, no dead bodies, no wrecked cars, no sign of life or death in any direction. With the Continental Divide behind them, this was probably one of the last stretches of peace, quiet and solitude on the way to Atlanta. The population of the now former United States of America was an order of magnitude greater between Omaha and the Atlantic. Nebraska was a huge state, but they’d cross it after just one more day of driving, and they could very well encounter ten times as many survivors and ten times as many infected, especially after turning south where the weather was warmer.

  She’d seen satellite photos of the United States at night, and if she remembered correctly, you could almost draw a vertical line down the middle. The left side, the western half of the continent, was almost entirely dark at night while the right side, the entire eastern half of the continent, was lit up like a circuit-board even at 3:00 in the morning. That’s where almost everyone lived. At least it’s where they used to live. The Rocky Mountains divided the continent geographically and hydrologically, but the Missouri River divided it by population with mostly emptiness on one side and density on the other. Once they reached Omaha, everything was going to change. The roads would be jammed up with cars again just like they had been on the I-5 corridor in the Northwest. They could encounter warlords, pirates, or an army of infected the size of Rhode Island.

  Annie still wanted to see her native South Carolina again, but she’d been kidding herself when she’d started this journey. If the CDC was still standing, they wouldn’t let her see the light of day ever again.

  A sign on the side of the road said a town named Belt was just 12 miles ahead.

  “Let’s stop there,” Kyle said. “See if we can stock up on food.”

  Hughes nodded as he drove. Parker didn’t say anything, and stopping in Belt was just fine with Annie.

  Scattered houses appeared as they approached. To Annie’s astonishment, she saw a couple of cows. Hardy animals. Somehow they hadn’t frozen to death or starved.

  There wasn’t much to Belt, Wyoming. The highway went right through the middle of it. They passed a church and a tow yard, then downtown appeared, such as it was. A few blocks of modest and slightly decrepit-looking shops along the main street, which in Belt was presumptuously named Broadway.

  “There’s nobody here,” Kyle said.

  “Of course not,” Parker said.

  Annie saw what Kyle meant, though. There were hardly any cars. Nothing was boarded up and nothing seemed damaged. Belt hadn’t died. Belt had been abandoned.

  “Looks like everyone left,” Kyle said.

  “Seems so,” Hughes said.

  The residents might have instinctively headed east, Annie thought, away from the spreading infection, but that was foolish if so. Their best bet would have been to hunker down in a place without any cell phone coverage. Maybe they had. She didn’t know. Perhaps they went north toward the center of Canada where even fewer people lived than in the Dakotas.

  Hughes slowed the Suburban almost to jogging speed and Annie scanned the storefronts. A barbershop. An Assembly of God church. A diner called Ma and Pa’s Corner.

  Then Annie thought she saw a truck a quarter-mile away through the falling snow, almost on the other side of Belt, moving, heading their way.

  Hughes tensed. “Truck coming,” he said. “Everybody get ready.”

  Annie held the Glock 17 tight and flicked off the safety. She felt powerful for the first time in a long time. She hadn’t held a weapon of any kind within Lander’s city limits, not even a rock or a stick. She vowed to never—ever—let this baby more than 18 inches away from her body for the rest of her life.

  The truck ahead slowed. It was either a black SUV or a pickup. Hard to tell, straight on. It might have stopped. Annie couldn’t be sure. Hughes slowed the Suburban to a crawl and powered down all the windows. Freezing air that smelled like winter filled the vehicle. Annie heard nothing but the icy wind and the idling engine.

  “What do we do?” Kyle said.

  “Wave,” Hughes said. He stuck his hand out the window and made a big quarter circle with his arm a couple of times. The driver in the SUV up ahead did the same.

  “We have to warn whoever that is,” Parker said, “to stay the hell out of Lander.”

  “There are probably signs,” Annie said, “like the ones we saw saying that Lander is civilization.”

  The black SUV was three blocks in front of them now. It stopped and the driver’s side door opened. A guy got out.

  Annie couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Hughes said.

  The driver was Joseph Steele, mayor of Lander, Wyoming.

  “Is that the mayor?” Parker said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Annie said.

  Steele walked
toward the Suburban with a big grin on his face, his eyes squinted half shut in the blowing snow. He couldn’t see very well.

  “He has no idea who we are,” Hughes said.

  “The hell’s he even doing out here?” Kyle said.

  “Dying,” Annie said. “That’s what.”

  She cracked open the passenger side door. The dashboard made a nagging dinging sound.

  “Hold up, Annie,” Hughes said and grabbed Annie’s arm. His hands were huge, big enough to palm a basketball, his arms as strong as a gorilla’s. Annie wasn’t going anywhere if Hughes didn’t want her to.

  Hughes couldn’t stop her from shooting the mayor through the windshield, though. Steele was less than 100 feet away now, still walking stupidly toward the Suburban, and he was unarmed.

  “What do we do?” Kyle said.

  Hughes shook his head and shrugged.

  “Just run him over,” Parker said. “It’ll only take a second.”

  Annie wouldn’t complain. Better than shooting out the windshield and blowing out everyone’s ear drums. Parker had plenty of reasons of his own to want to turn Steele into a grease stain in the snow. Still, Annie wanted to get out and shoot him, and she wanted to look him in the eye as she did it.

  Steele was 50 feet away now and still couldn’t see well with blowing snow in his eyes. He had no idea what he was in for.

  Hughes still gripped Annie’s arm tight. “Let me go,” she said and squirmed.

  “You’d regret shooting him for the rest of your life,” Hughes said.

  “No, I won’t,” Annie said.

  “You will,” Hughes said.

  He was wrong. He didn’t know her half as well as he thought he did. She’d tried to shoot that creep Roland in the grocery store back in Washington. She only regretted that she missed, not that she tried to kill him, and Roland hadn’t wronged her half as much as Steele did.

  “Hand me your gun, Annie,” Hughes said.

  “The bastard deserves to die,” she said. “Why are you protecting him?”

  “I’m about to step out of this truck,” Hughes said, “and I’m not going to do it unarmed.” He reached across her body and snatched the Glock from her hands.

  Steele was just ten feet away now. He still had no idea what he was walking into. It couldn’t just be the snow in his eyes. There must have been glare on the windshield.

  “Everybody else stay in the vehicle,” Hughes said and climbed out of the Suburban.

  Steele’s face went white even in the snow. “You,” he said.

  “Me,” Hughes said. “Us.”

  “You fucker!” Annie shouted. She knew the mayor could hear her.

  “How did you—”

  Hughes pointed the Glock at Steele’s face.

  The mayor raised his hands. “Take it easy.”

  “You’re dead,” Hughes said.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Steele said.

  Why, Annie wondered, did people always say that? At least it’s what they always said in the movies.

  “You’re right,” Hughes said. “I don’t.”

  Steele took a step back. Hughes took a step forward.

  “Doesn’t matter if I shoot you or not,” Hughes said. “You’re still dead.”

  Steele looked confused.

  Annie opened the door and the dashboard dinged again.

  “Annie, don’t,” Kyle said.

  She felt light-headed as she eased herself out. Her body couldn’t make more red blood cells fast enough.

  “I can barely move,” she said to Steele as she eased the door closed. The dinging sound on the dashboard stopped. “You took so much of my blood that you just about killed me.”

  Steele snapped his head back and forth like he was trying to shake his hair dry. “How did you—”

  “You have no idea what’s happening,” Annie said. “Do you?”

  Steele opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “Where the fuck have you been, man?” Hughes said.

  “My wife,” Steele said. “She—”

  “Oh, just shut up,” Hughes said. “None of us gives a shit.”

  “Shoot him,” Annie said. “Or give me the gun and I’ll do it.”

  Steele looked at Annie. “I tried to do the right thing.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Hughes said.

  “What am I supposed to do,” he said, “when an immune woman shows up at the hospital? Let her go?”

  “We were on our way to the CDC in Atlanta,” Hughes said, “where they might actually be able to cure this thing. We’re on our way again now, no thanks to you.”

  Steele said nothing and took a few more steps back.

  “Shoot him,” Annie said.

  “I tried to do the right thing,” Steele said.

  “You threw me in prison,” Parker said and stepped out of the Suburban. “Alongside hundreds of other people who didn’t do anything.”

  “How did you get out?” Steele said and shook his head again, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  Annie understood now why Steele got out of his own truck unarmed. Somehow, incredibly, he had no idea that Lander had fallen apart. He’d been fucking off somewhere in the desert. When he saw their Suburban, he thought he came across his own crew, out there in the wilds of Belt, Wyoming.

  “Lander’s gone, man,” Hughes said.

  Steele twisted up his face. “What do you mean it’s gone?” As if Hughes had told him the town had been wiped out by a giant asteroid.

  “Everyone’s dead,” Annie said. “Except you.”

  “You’re still here,” Steele said. He clearly didn’t believe them.

  “How do you think we got out?” Hughes said.

  Steele’s face changed a bit then. He still didn’t understand, but he had the look of a man experiencing a dawning realization. “What happened?” His voice was different. More fearful than before but strangely devoid of hostility, as if they were all on the same side now.

  “It was the water, wasn’t it,” Steele said.

  “That was part of it,” Hughes said.

  “My men,” Steele said. “My staff injected more than a dozen of them with Annie’s blood.”

  “It didn’t do any good,” Annie said. “They’re all dead.”

  Horror on Steele’s face now.

  “Annie wants me to shoot you,” Hughes said.

  “Please don’t,” Steele said.

  “Do you understand why?” Hughes said.

  “I tried to do the right thing,” Steele said.

  “Do you understand why!” Hughes shouted.

  “Y-yes,” Steele said.

  “Tell me,” Hughes said.

  Steele clamped his mouth shut and looked at Annie. Genuine fright on his face now. Annie couldn’t see her own face, but she knew she must have looked like a feral harridan who would disembowel Steele with her teeth if she had to.

  Steele looked away from Annie, opened his mouth, then shut it again without saying anything.

  “Tell me,” Hughes said. “Get it right and you’ll live long enough to see for yourself what happened in Lander.”

  Steele’s eyes darted in all directions. He was trying, Annie presumed, to figure out if he could run for it, if he could hide somewhere or make it back to his truck before Hughes shot him. He had no chance.

  He looked at Annie again and did his best to comport himself with some dignity. “I held you against your will,” he said. “I took your blood without permission. I didn’t ask you permission for anything. If I had, you probably would have told me you were on your way to Atlanta. I should have asked. I should have sent you on your way with bodyguards and supplies. I’m sorry.”

  He had it about right—Annie gave him credit for that much, at least—but she still wanted to shoot him.

  “And what about Parker?” Hughes said. “And everyone else you threw into prison.”

  Steele exhaled loudly. His shoulders drooped. His face sagged too. Like he was giving up. Like he
was almost resigned to not getting out of Belt, Wyoming, alive. “I’m sorry. Just shoot me if you have to.”

  Hughes lowered the Glock.

  “Shoot him,” Annie said.

  “I’m not going to shoot him,” Hughes said. “What’s the point? He’s dead anyway.”

  Steele didn’t react to this. Didn’t seem remotely grateful or even relieved that he wasn’t going to die on that spot. He believed Hughes now that everyone in Lander was dead.

  The snow fell more heavily now. Steele’s hair was covered in the stuff. Even his eyebrows were turning white. Even so, Annie did not feel the cold.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Steele said.

  “Go find out for yourself,” Hughes said and waved the Glock in Lander’s direction.

  “Can I make it up to you?” Steele said.

  “I don’t know,” Hughes said. “Can you?”

  “I could go with you.” Steele said. “To Atlanta.”

  Hughes took his eyes off Steele for a moment and looked at Annie.

  Annie couldn’t help it. She laughed. She laughed like Steele had cracked the funniest joke she had ever heard in her life.

  Go with them? To Atlanta? Was he serious? Kyle and Parker were supposed to make room for him in the back?

  Annie would slit his throat before he got comfortable.

  Hughes laughed, too, a little. It wasn’t a real laugh. More of a can you believe this guy kind of a chuckle. Steele joined in with some nervous laughter of his own. All three of them were laughing now at the mayor’s ludicrous suggestion.

  Hughes stopped and put the Glock back in Steele’s face.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Hughes said, like he was giving an order.

  Steele raised his hands and took a couple of steps backward.

  “You might want to wait for the infected to freeze to death before going back into town,” Hughes said. “Last we saw, there were at least 200 of them on Main. Almost half of them turned in your prison.”

  Hughes should shut up, Annie thought. It would serve Steele right if his own infected prisoners ate him to death.