Steph sobscreamed, her hands still flat on the window. At least she wasn’t banging on it, they didn’t need broken glass what with the rain coming down.
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Duncan moaned, hitting the gas and coughing. The four-by lurched, cutting a wide arc around the RV, and the walkie-talkie crackled. Lee, checking in, and now Juju knew why he’d kept pulling the trigger.
Shitty way to die, he kept thinking. Christ Jesus, I hope he got em. I hope he got em both. Juju heard himself, calmly enough, giving callsign and relaying their heading. A man didn’t rise to the occasion, he sank to the level of his training, and Juju should have taught the kid better. Should have suggested putting a watch on that shattered front door. Should have done something, anything.
Too late now. What a shitty, shitty way to die.
Duncan palmed at his wet cheeks and coughed again, taking the turn out of the Bargain Zone parking lot a little too fast. “Son of a bitch,” he kept whispering. “Son of a bitch.”
Steph rested her forehead on the window, and her gulping sobs punctuated the passionless recital, back and forth, of the living on the walkie-talkies.
Just Get Me
The rain turned thickened as they drove south unchained, switching off point every hour. Creeping through clots of abandoned cars at major interchanges, plenty with doors hanging slackjaw-open, they made good time, and when they stopped on the outskirts of Bridgewater for more fuel, Steph was silent and red-eyed. The girl didn’t bother looking over her shoulder or jumping when a stray roll of thunder sounded in the distance as they hurried into a closed, pristine mom-and-pop gas station with a sign proclaiming BEER CIGARETTES MAGAZINES and an ice machine hanging open near the front door.
Ginny was doing enough jumping for the both of them. Lee had sat for a long time, silent and staring out the passenger window, his rifle clasped loosely, not even pushing Traveller’s nose away when the dog tried vainly to comfort him.
Steph, her hair a wild mess since she kept scrubbing her hands through, tugging at the braids, and the humidity was skyrocketing, refused to go into the bathroom stall alone. She just shook her head and stared mutely, pleadingly at Ginny.
“All right.” Ginny leaned against the door with her gaze averted, her flashlight beam bouncing off tiles and casting crazy reflections on ceiling tiles already swelling with dampness.
It took so little time for everything to begin to rot. Buildings. People. Ginny’s head ached, and she didn’t dare meet her reflection’s wild, wounded gaze.
Steph sniffled and blew her nose while she peed. Ginny couldn’t decide if it was time-sharing or multitasking, and closed her eyes for a moment. The darkness behind her lids was worse than seeing the flyspotted mirror and the spreading yellow stain on the ceiling tiles, so she opened them again.
The old Ginny wouldn’t have wanted anyone in the bathroom while she took her turn at the commode. The old Ginny would have been still been screaming, or would have tried to keep Lee from doing…what he’d done. The old Ginny would have flat-out refused to sit on the toilet seat, forcing herself to hover.
That woman, however, was long gone. Maybe she’d died back in that hotel room when Ginny thought she had the zombie flu, or maybe she’d vanished gently, eroding bit by bit. It didn’t matter.
At least the pipes hadn’t frozen down here; what a difference a few hundred miles could make. She washed her hands with the harsh pink soap clinging to the bottom of the dispenser, and didn’t tell Steph to wash hers. What was the point? The icy faucet-trickle made her fingers ache, and she dabbed some of it onto her forehead.
She was sweating inside her jacket. Fever, or just stress? If there wasn’t anything in Atlanta but zombies, what on earth were they going to do?
None of us are going to survive this. It’s impossible. We’ll be picked off one by one. She shivered, avoiding her own gaze in the cheap mirror, and motioned Steph out.
When they came out of the bathroom, a glitter-eyed, stiff-walking Duncan went in. Lee and Juju were conferring near the glass front door, Juju leaning forward and pushing his index finger into his opposite palm, Lee shaking his head slightly, his eyes narrowed.
“Let’s look at the candy aisle,” Ginny said, and Steph made no demur, just put her head down and followed. “Maybe they have Pop Tarts.”
Steph just shook her head, a little. She ran her hands through her hair again, scratching at her scalp, turning thin fine hair into a nest. He coat, unzipped, flapped loosely. One of her boots was untied, the laces making little whipping sounds as she moved.
Oh, honey. Ginny’s heart squeezed down on itself. How much more of this could the girl take? How much more could any of them take? “Let’s look, anyway.”
“He told me to go on out.” Steph stopped in the middle of the aisle, her gaze fixed on her toes. Rainy sunshine filtered through the windows, glass painted with soapy color—a turkey, an ear of corn, a certain percentage off cigarettes. “Said I was good at organizin the truck.”
Ginny’s throat filled up. “You certainly are.” She realized, staring at the painted window, that they’d missed Thanksgiving while traveling. It was a colonialist holiday, sure…but oh, God.
“Why’d he have to stay inside?” Steph finally turned, looked directly at Ginny, and her reddened eyes glowed with tears. “Why? Why they have to get him and Miz Phyllis, too? She was nice.”
“Yes. She was.” There was nothing else to say. It was all a crapshoot, all of adulthood was and this just made it official. How did you tell a teenage girl that when she’d just seen two people…well, eaten, right in front of her? “They both were.”
Steph stared like Ginny was speaking classical Greek. “Why it ha’to be him, huh?” Her accent thickened, and both her eyes overflowed. She wiped angrily at her already raw cheeks, and stamped her foot. The laces whipped again. “Why?”
“It doesn’t make sense.” God, please, I wish I knew what to say. Ginny bent her knees, and began to work on Steph’s untied boot. It only took a moment to double-knot. “None of this does. I know.”
“But why him? He wa’nt mean. He punched Carty, yeah, but he…he didn’t even try anything funny after my mama…my mama…” Steph ran out of words. Her mouth worked for a moment, and Ginny straightened, reached for her shoulder.
She meant to hug Steph, but the girl shied violently away, her hand hitting a box of Reese’s and scattering orange-wrapped ersatz peanut butter onto the floor.
“Why din’t they get me?” Steph tipped her chin back and yelled at the ceiling. “I wish they’d just get me!”
“Honey. No.” Ginny stepped forward, tried again to catch and hug her. “No, you don’t.”
Steph flung her arms out. This time, it was M&Ms from one side of the aisle and a bag of circus peanuts from the other, fleeing sudden violence. They plopped onto the floor, tiny dispirited packages. “The hell I don’t!”
Oh, honey. Ginny searched for something to say. “That’s a normal response, Steph—”
“What about this is gatdamn normal?” the girl wailed, and her hands were fists now, swinging in short, angry arcs. “I wish they’d take me! I wish they’d come right now and take me!”
“Jesus Christ, girl.” Duncan appeared at the other end of the aisle, his face damp and his eyes reddened. His hair was a mess, too; looked like he’d ducked under the faucet. “I heard you all the way in the bathroom. You want us to have visitors, huh?”
Steph yelped and spun, and Ginny winced.
“Keep it down,” Juju whisper-yelled from the door. “For God’s sake.”
“I ain’t gonna!” Steph’s fists dropped to her sides, and her cheeks gleamed slick-wet. “I ain’t gonna keep it down, I hope they come and eat every last one o’us! I hope we all die!”
“Yes, well, this is a democracy.” Ginny put her palms on her hips, searching for the right words. None sprang to mind. “And your vote has been registered. Come on, kiddo. Let’s get something to snack on.”
“That’s b
est.” Lee stepped into the aisle behind Ginny, and his tone was businesslike. Calm. “We ain’t stoppin until Atlanta less’n it’s to get fuel.”
Great. Ginny suppressed a sigh. Did they suffer? Phyllis went down pretty hard. She hoped they were both unconscious, and God knew Lee was probably feeling awful right now, too. But they had to get going. “Okay? Come on, sweetie. I know it’s hard, I really—”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Steph turned in a full circle, and Duncan folded his arms behind her. He looked over Ginny’s shoulder at Lee, and God how Ginny hated that little eyebrow-quirk. Women, his expression said, plainly.
“I’d like to,” Ginny tried again, grimly. “I really would. But we’re alive right now, Steph, and we’ve got to stay that way. We can’t let them win.” They’re going to anyway. The sudden certainty turned her insides cold and loose, but there was no way she was going back into that bathroom.
“They done already won.” But Steph’s birdlike shoulders deflated. She hunched, small and very young, and her chapped nose glistened as well as her cheeks. “Why’d he hafta do that, Ginny? Why?”
Why the fuck are you asking me? “Sometimes things just happen.” Oh, she could lie, maybe, but Ginny was too tired. Her throat was full of a suspicious, heavy weight, and if she slowed down to think about any of this she was going to start sobbing, too, and that was the last thing Steph needed. So she drove her fingernails, two of them broken, into her bare palms, glad she wasn’t wearing gloves for once. “None of it should, but it does.”
“We’ve gotta go.” Juju, near the door, had no patience for philosophical debate. He stood, tense and jaw-clenched, and there was a terrible emptiness to his dark gaze. “Come on, my back teeth’re floatin.”
“You don’t even care.” All the fire had gone out of Steph. “None of you do.”
“That’s not so.” Soothing, quiet, careful, Ginny shook out her right hand. Held it out, open and cupped. Please, Steph. Come on. “You know that’s not true.”
“It is so.” The girl pushed past her, and ran her shoulder into Lee. He didn’t stagger, but he did let her squeeze past, and she stalked for the glass door, her wet boots making little slippery sounds. Ginny followed, her stomach a knot, but at least Steph didn’t do anything silly like run.
Instead, the girl stalked to Juju’s 4x4, opened the back door, and flung herself mutinously inside. Ginny let out a long, soft breath.
“Does she gotta ride with us?” Duncan rasped, and Ginny almost rounded on him before she realized his nerves were probably frayed down to nothing too. Dull, pointless anger filled the pit of her belly, roiling uneasily.
“Ayuh, she does.” Juju headed for the bathroom. “Unless you want the dog, and he’s been eatin Slim Jims again, I just betcha.”
“Let’s get Traveller settled,” Lee said. “Come on, Ginny. Move it up, boys.”
Ginny blinked furiously, denying her own tears, and had to swallow several times. The window paintings stared vacantly at the almost deserted parking lot, the gas island, and the highway beyond.
“Just a minute,” she said, when Lee made a come on motion. She scanned the shelves until she found what she wanted, and cleaned out the entire stock of strawberry Pop-Tarts. Sooner or later Steph would want them again.
Or someone else would take them from the wreckage when their little group’s luck ran out the rest of the way.
Ginny caught a single dry, barking sob behind her teeth. Her mother was right. God was a monster not fit to be worshipped, and they were on their own.
Best Route
Lee’s guts were a mass of snakes. He shouldn’t have let Phyllis and Mark stay inside that damn store alone. He should have been with them, for God’s sake. It was too late, and he was sick all the way through. He gripped the wheel hard, and the back of his neck was tight as bridge cables. The road wasn’t a problem, it was clear sailing for a while.
No, the problems lay elsewhere. “So, uh. I figger we should talk.”
“Hm?” Ginny, pale but composed, spun the radio dial, searching through soft static. If there was anyone home in Atlanta, maybe they’d hear something on a frequency soon. Traveller was snoring softly, all right with his world. Would the damn dog look for Phyllis or Mark at the next stop? Or would he just assume the pack had shrunk because the humans wanted it that way, and put it out of his mind?
Finally, Ginny stole a glance at him. “She’s just upset. Who wouldn’t be?”
She thought he was going to say somethin’ about Steph. “It ain’t that.” Lee wished it was, though the Lord knew Juju had taken the news well. Just figured you had your reasons, Loot. The man hadn’t even asked if Lee would have used one of the nasty-green syringes on him if he’d come down with the sweats and convulsions.
The longer Lee sat on the goddamn secret, the worse it was gonna get. There was no good time to explain this, but he was tired of keepin’ it locked up.
He was tired of everything except Ginny, Christ knew.
“What?” She spun the dial a little more, hunting. He wanted to tell her to give it a goddamn rest for a few minutes, but that wasn’t any sort of decent thing to say. They all coped in different ways, dammit, and…Jesus.
He still felt the recoil against his shoulder, and Mark’s hand raised like he was saying hallelujah in a church pew. The bitter, utterly familiar taste filled Lee’s mouth, the taste of doing what had to be done, since nobody else would.
Since nobody else could.
And now he was gonna confess. Lay it all out, because he couldn’t carry it no more. Not this one thing. “They’s somethin under the seat,” he said, finally. “Bend on down, see if you can fish it out.”
“Your gun-box?”
He wished that was the only danger. “No ma’am. Plastic. Hard black plastic, shoebox-size.”
“Oh. Okay.” She bent and dug, Traveller’s snores halting as he dimly realized something was occurring without his supervision. The dog was gonna slide right off the bench seat, for Godsake, he stretched out like he owned the entire damn cab. “This?”
There it was, the hardpac with its cargo of secrets. He could tell her just to slide it back on under the seat, that it was some kind of gear she shouldn’t be touching and he just wanted to warn her.
That might’ve been the best route, but he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Not now. He kept his gaze on the road. Ditches were full and lakes swirled over gutters, full of plant and other trash. At least the highway was built to stay clear. “Yeah. That. You gonna listen to me?”
“Of course.” She didn’t roll her eyes, but it was probably close. “What’s in it?”
I’m trying to tell you. Combat nerves, ramping him up with no letdown in sight. Lee exhaled softly, his knuckles creaking. “Just…hear me out, okay?”
“I said I would.” She settled the box in her lap, touching one of her braids with her fingertips to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere. Traveller shifted again, his ear pricking, then settled too. God, Lee envied the hound’s calm. Some sleep would do him a power of good right now.
Or if not sleep, just rest. A few hours without some-damn-thing-else going wrong, or likely to go wrong. All he could see was Mark’s hand, spread wide.
He’d put a round in the boy’s head, and in Phyllis’s too. They wouldn’t stand up and shuffle around chewin’. That was all he could do for them, but it wasn’t enough.
“About a week before everything went bad,” he began, “a fellow came to see me. His name was Grandon. Was my CO back in the service.”
Her right hand twitched a little as if she wanted to raise it, a good little student with a question. “CO?”
“Commanding officer.”
“Oh, of course.” All her attention on him, now. It felt good, but at the same time…Christ.
Well, he was in it now. There was no way out. Never had been, even if he’d stolen a little sweetness. “Anyway, he came and left that. I put it in my closet and didn’t think about it, because…I don�
�t know. I was out, and I wanted to be that way. Army was good to me, but also gave me bad dreams. You know?”
“I gather it does that a lot.” She folded her hands on the hardpac’s top. Pretty hands, those thin gold bracelets glowing, her unpainted nails now a little ragged. They were all getting frayed. “So what’s in here, Lee?”
Oh, man. He kept his eyes on the road. “Open it up. There’s a catch there…yeah.”
A long silence filled the truck cab. Static brushed softly through the speakers, and the walkie-talkie was dead until the next check-in. He knew what she was seeing—two sturdy, old-fashioned syringes full of that violently green goo.
And the empty cradle for one more.
He told her what it was, quietly, while the rain intensified and the wipers beat their steady time. Abandoned cars began to clot the road again, and Ginny said nothing while he stumbled over words, trailed off, started once more.
He hated talking. It only led to trouble, and this time was no exception.
Not Immune
“Say something,” Lee said, almost pleading.
What on earth was there to say? Ginny closed the case, carefully. You could pinch your fingers in one of these, the top was heavy and reinforced.
Of course, you couldn’t have the syringes cracking. A safe little cargo, nestled in stuff like florist’s foam, but harder. And what syringes, glass and somewhat old-fashioned, their needle-guards barely keeping huge, wicked sharps contained.
It was the missing one she kept looking at. Or more precisely, where the missing one had rested. “Not immune,” she finally murmured, glancing out the window. Another clot of abandoned cars, pulled neatly over to the weedy shoulder, one a charred, dripping skeleton.
“What?” Lee leaned sideways a little, cocking his head. His hair was mussed, damp, and dark with a few days’ worth of nothing but sponge-baths. He looked…anxious.
He’d better be. God, it was barely three p.m., winter darkness beginning to gather, and she had a feeling this day wasn’t ever going to end. First Phyllis and Mark, then Steph, and now… “I’m not immune,” she repeated, a little more loudly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Atlanta Bound Page 15