Jules felt embarrassed. "I thought we might be able to get some things for the trip."
"Please don't ever do that again," Addy said, on the verge of tears. "Please don't leave me alone. Can we go now?"
"Sorry, Addy. But we can't leave yet. We still have to get gas."
Jules drove around the building and parked near the Ford F-250. The truck had customized mud flaps with the name "Big John" on the flaps in silver studs.
She opened the rear door and retrieved everything she'd brought with her to get gas. She had a half-filled three-gallon gas can, two plastic dish tubs, and a battery-operated drill. She'd put the drill bit in before she'd left and brought spare bits in case the bit broke.
She placed everything on the ground between the cars and asked Addy to give her a hand. Addy shrugged and frowned but got out of the car. First, they put the gas from the can into the jeep, then Jules unscrewed the spout.
She got underneath the pickup truck with both tubs and the drill. She would swap out the tubs as each tub was filled up. She'd put the filled-up tub into the gas can, put the spout back on, and have Addy put the gas in the Cherokee while she went back underneath the truck to swap tubs again. She knew it might be messy, but it would get the job done.
In under a minute, Jules had punctured the tank. Ten minutes later the Cherokee was filled to the brim. Jules wanted to get the gas can filled up again, but the stream from the truck's tank had dwindled to a weak dribble.
"Jules," Addy said, a hint of wonder in her voice. "I think someone's coming."
Jules scrambled out from under the truck. The car was coming from the north. She guessed it to be a mile away. "Get in the car, Addy," Jules told her.
Addy got in the car while Jules dumped the gas out from the tub under the truck. She grabbed everything and tossed it hurriedly in the back of the jeep. She climbed in the front and started the Cherokee and they were off.
Jules headed north in the direction of the approaching car. She didn't want whoever was in the car to think they were frightened or were trying to get away. And they had to go north anyway.
She kept their speed at a casual fifty miles per hour. "Addy, please reach in the back for the shotgun and set it on my lap, barrel facing my door. Nice and slow. Please keep it low so they can't see it."
Addy did what Jules asked. The car drew nearer and slowed noticeably. It was a black car, long and shiny. When it cruised past, four heads turned in unison. Four men. They gave Jules and Addy long, serious looks. Jules watched the car in the rearview mirror as it moved away from them. The car was an old classic '60s Chevy Impala with a top-end paint job. It shined like a black diamond in the sun.
Not far down the road, the lengthy Impala suddenly swerved to its right and tried to make a u-turn, but the road was too narrow, and they had to back up before they could turn the car around.
"They're coming after us," Addy said. "What do they want?"
"Addy, I want you to take the steering wheel down here toward the bottom." Jules grabbed Addy's hand and guided it to where she wanted it on the steering wheel. "I'm going to need you to steer the car. Keep your eyes on the road ahead and keep the car steady. Don't worry about them. Focus on steering the car and watching the road. It's going to be all right."
Addy gave Jules a skeptical glance but turned and focused on steering the jeep. Jules kept her left hand on the upper part of the wheel to make it appear as if she were steering. She kept glancing at the side view mirror, keeping an eye on the Impala as its reflection grew bigger. Jules kept her speed steady. Without looking down, she pushed the safety button into the off position. She gripped the stock of the shotgun near the trigger and positioned the shotgun in her lap to where she could pull it up quickly if the need arose. There was still a round in the chamber from when she was at Glickman's.
The Impala closed to within a few feet of the Cherokee and rode their bumper. Jules knew it was an intimidation tactic. She ignored it and kept her speed steady as if nothing were wrong. She knew taking off would be risky. They couldn't outrun the Impala. She glanced in the rearview mirror to get a look at the driver. He wore a New York Yankees' baseball cap with a flat bill tilted low over his forehead. He had several days' worth of a thick, dark beard. He watched Jules closely with intense eyes.
The Impala swung to its left and pulled up alongside them, leaving five feet of clearance between the cars. The passenger side window of the Impala began to come down. When it was down all the way, the man in the passenger seat put his forearms on the top of the car door and leaned his head out.
Jules could see him out of the corner of her eye but didn't turn toward him.
"Hey, you!" the man shouted. "We need to talk. Roll down that window."
Jules ignored him.
"Hey, I'm talking to you," the man yelled. "Lower your fucking window!"
Jules glanced over and the man gestured to her to roll her window down. She stared at him a few seconds before lowering the window. The channeled air between the cars was blustery. The man had a lean face with a sparse mustache like a teenager. The channeled wind whipped his bushy blond hair wildly. Despite the adolescent facial hair, Jules thought the man looked to be in his mid-thirties.
"What do you want?" she hollered through the whistling air.
"Just pull the fuck over. Be easier to talk that way."
Jules gave him a steady look. "That's not happening."
The man turned and said something to the driver who said something back to him. Jules suspected the driver was in charge. While the other three occupants leered like drunks at Jules and Addy, the driver maintained a serious countenance. He was leaning forward against the steering wheel, alternately keeping his eye on the road and turning to watch Jules.
The man with the long face pulled a large Magnum revolver out of nowhere and placed it casually on the top of the door, but he didn't point the gun at them. Jules suspected the gun was for show, at least for now. The man in the back seat on the passenger side rolled down his window and held up the barrel of a shotgun.
"Hey!" the man across from Jules said, a lopsided grin breaking out on his face. "Oh, and by the way, my name's Brad. Listen, we're trying to be friendly here. I think it's time you pulled over so we can have ourselves a little chat, get acquainted."
They all laughed except the driver.
Jules looked at the road ahead and didn't say anything for a moment. She slipped her finger inside the trigger guard and raised the shotgun slightly, ready to pull it up. She turned and looked at Brad. "That's not happening," she repeated.
Brad looked confused for a moment, then angry. "What?" he asked. He gestured with his gun impatiently. "You better pull over now."
Jules kept her eyes on the road ahead of them.
"And by the way, what the hell have you got in those boxes back there?" He pointed at the boxes on the back seat.
"That's none of your business," Jules told him.
"Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what is our business, Missy. Big John," he said. "He's our business. Big John's a friend of ours, and we take care of our friends. So, what the hell were you doing with Big John's truck?" he asked. "We saw you back there. You're not fooling anybody."
Jules glanced at Addy. "Keep it steady. You're doing great."
She turned back to Brad. "We took his gas," she said flatly.
Brad's face squinted into a quizzical look, but before he could say anything, Jules raised the shotgun and pointed it at him. He jumped in his seat and shrank back from the window. The gun slipped from his hand and bounced off the side of the car and then the asphalt. Jules pointed the shotgun at the front tire and fired. The tire exploded. She slammed her foot on the gas at the same time, and they shot past the Impala.
Jules brought the Remington back in the car and grabbed the steering wheel. She straightened the car out. Addy had let go of it the moment Jules had fired the shotgun, and the jeep had drifted to its right.
"You did great, Addy," Jules told her.
&
nbsp; Addy's eyes were wide, and she looked back at the scene behind them.
Jules looked in the rear-view mirror. The Impala fishtailed as the driver tried to bring the car under control. It slid sideways as it slowed down and came to a stop off the side of the road. Behind the Impala, the freeway was littered with tire debris and skid marks.
Jules continued to speed up. She checked the time on the dashboard and marked it in her mind. One thirty-seven. She thought it would take them at least fifteen minutes to change the tire. She wanted to put as much distance between them as she possibly could. She hoped the wheel or the axle was damaged but wouldn't count on it. If they had a small spare tire, she doubted they'd have any chance to catch up. But Jules would assume they had a regular-sized tire and that there'd been no damage to the car.
The road was straight as far ahead as she could see, and she let the Cherokee climb to ninety-five miles per hour.
"Aren't you going too fast?" Addy asked.
"We need to make sure we put plenty of distance between us and the car back there," Jules explained. She made no reference to the men in the car.
"You think they'll come after us?"
"If we can put enough distance between us and the car, it won't matter. Not to worry. The jeep can handle ninety-five."
Addy curled up in the seat again and lay her head against the window.
The car fell into silence as they hurtled down Highway 89. Distant mountains and plateaus faded behind them as they sped north. Jules fought against a feeling of melancholy. She felt beleaguered by the day's drama. She wished she were alone and wondered if Addy was thinking the same thing.
The landscape wasn't helping. Jules found the mountain and dessert terrain depressing. It was bland and barren. The only real color came from the pale green scrub brush that littered the desert floor. The mountains were a drab montage of grays and browns with an occasional sprinkling of red rock.
Jules kept checking the rearview mirror for the Impala, but it was nowhere in sight. She'd already decided if the car ever showed up in her rearview mirror, she would find a spot to go off-road. Somewhere down the road there would be a curve and once past it they would disappear into the countryside. The Cherokee would have a distinct advantage off-road. The Impala wasn't built for off-road maneuvering, especially in this terrain.
After another hour, they approached Page, Arizona. Jules slowed to seventy as they entered the outskirts of the town. She couldn't see anything ahead on the road that would cause them a problem. The town of Page was located on the southern shore of Lake Powell. Page was normally a quiet, picturesque community. Jules could see a smattering of grays wandering the streets. She kept the Cherokee's speed at seventy and they passed through Page in no time.
The red rocks were more prominent as they traveled across southern Utah. Jules kept her speed around ninety in order to make good time. They were nearing Kanab, the last town they'd pass through before reaching Gideon.
According to a road sign, Kanab was home to 2,237 residents. After Kanab, they would take a circuitous route using back roads to get to Gideon. Jules had calculated it would take up to two hours, but by taking the back roads, they'd be able to avoid any more towns or small cities.
Jules decided to wait till morning before going to Gideon. She wanted to be fresh and alert when they arrived. Once they'd passed Kanab, they'd look for a spot off the highway that would provide them with adequate cover and shade. That way if the group in the Impala were still in pursuit, Jules and Addy would be safe.
The town of Kanab came into view and Jules noticed that the highway ran straight through the middle of town. She slowed as they approached. She could see a handful of grays plodding aimlessly down the street. Addy straightened and gripped the edges of her seat.
"Can we go a different way?" she asked.
"I wouldn't even know how to begin. We could get lost if we turned off 89. We need to stay on the highway. We'll be fine. We'll get past them," Jules told her.
Jules entered Kanab doing forty, fast enough to do damage if they hit one of them. The grays were scattered and Jules didn't think they'd have a problem. In the first block, she had to drive around an infected woman in a dusty summer dress standing in the middle of the road. The woman's shoulders sagged and her arms hung like dead weights at her sides. The woman watched them with empty eyes as they drove past her. She stared bewilderingly at them as if they were the curiosity.
After turning right at an intersection following 89's route through Kanab, they came upon a group of grays stumbling around someone's front yard as well as the street in front of it. At least fifty of them. From what Jules could see, the group had broken into several consecutive homes on the same side of the street. Jules backed up and went around the block to avoid them.
Once they'd circumvented the grays, it was clear sailing. As they drove out of Kanab, Jules couldn't get over the eeriness of the presence of grays seemingly everywhere. It felt as if she were waiting to wake from a dream.
The infected had appeared overnight—at least it seemed that way to Jules. Two days after the virus' release at international airports on the Fourth, the infected were everywhere. The spread of the virus had been breathtaking in its scope, and the world was transformed before they knew what had hit them.
Twenty minutes outside of Kanab, they found a spot to pull off the road. There was a collection of large, dome-shaped red rocks fifty yards off the highway. They looked like home-sized beehives huddled together. Jules drove around the end of them and found a spot to park in the early evening shade. They would be perfectly hidden behind the rocks. No one would find them.
It was past five o'clock and Jules was ready to call it a day. She was physically and emotionally exhausted. She suspected Addy was too.
Two hours later they were eating tuna fish out of cans when they heard it—the smooth low grumbling of a powerful engine. Jules put a finger up to her lips to let Addy know to be quiet. Jules scrambled up one of the red rocks and found a crevice offering a view of the highway. She hid in the shadows and watched. The black Impala came into view. It crept along at around thirty miles per hour. They'd replaced the shot-up tire with a regular-sized tire, but the wheel itself was wobbling. She knew the four men in the Impala wouldn't be looking for them any longer. They were limping home.
Jules wondered where their home was. If it had been Page, they would have stopped there. There would have been no point in continuing their pursuit. From what Jules could recall, the two most likely destinations would be Cedar City or St. George, both off I-15, Cedar to the north, St. George to the south. But Jules had to acknowledge Gideon as a possibility too.
Chapter 4
Gideon
They were headed south on I-15 in the northbound lane, approaching Gideon. The back roads' route they'd followed had taken them to the I-15 freeway north of Gideon, allowing them to avoid Cedar City to the south. Though she'd slept poorly, Jules felt energized. A wave of excitement swept over her. She couldn't wait to get to Gideon and begin to check out George Albrecht. The GPS in the jeep still worked and would guide her to Albrecht's doorstep, though she hadn't decided how she would approach him. She knew he'd remember her from the interrogation. Jules would have to get a feel for what was going on in Gideon before formulating any kind of plan.
The sun had emerged above a mountain range east of the freeway, spilling sunlight into a plush green valley. Jules guessed the mountains were the same Tushar Mountains that bordered Gideon. On the other side of the freeway, a sign indicated Gideon was only two miles away.
They'd been on the road for an hour and a half and Addy hadn't spoken a word. She was in her usual posture curled up in the seat with her head resting against the window. She was in the same somber mood she'd been in for most of the trip. Jules suspected Addy was suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Addy's state didn't prevent Jules from feeling a mounting level of excitement.
Jules slowed and rolled down her window. A blast of c
risp morning air funneled through the window. Jules felt invigorated. They'd left the deserts of Arizona and Southern Utah behind and were at a much higher elevation now. Jules squinted from the bright sun as she looked east toward the range of dusty brown mountains. Undulating stretches of pine trees layered the upper elevations of the Tushar Mountains.
Ahead of them on the freeway, Jules noticed dried-mud tire tracks coming off the side of the road and onto the freeway. She slowed to a stop. The tracks overlapped each other and it was impossible to tell how many tracks there actually were. The tracks hadn't come from a road. They'd come from a field of wild grass and shrubs.
Not too far ahead and well off the freeway, Jules could see the sun-drenched community of Gideon. She drove till they were directly across from the small town. Gideon was two miles or so off the freeway at the base of the mountains. There were trees everywhere. Jules grabbed her binoculars and stepped outside the jeep. She focused in on the nearest track of homes but couldn't see any infected. She couldn't see any people either. The streets were virtually empty. Everywhere she looked, it was the same. There wasn't a soul anywhere in sight.
Jules drove to the northbound freeway entrance. Halfway down the ramp, more than a dozen cars blocked the entrance down to the street. From what she could see, there was a pattern to the blockade—three cars parked at angles with two pickup trucks parked horizontally behind them. The pattern was repeated three times. Jules drove down to the blockade to get a better look. Four lines of cars stretched across the street to the freeway exit on the other side of the street. Entrances and exits on both sides of the freeway were blocked. Guardrails on the entrances and exits would keep people from going around the blockade. The people of Gideon weren't welcoming any visitors.
Jules got out of the jeep with her binoculars. The street coming off the freeway seemed to be the only route in or out of Gideon. She couldn't find another road anywhere that would work, and she still couldn't see anyone anywhere. She decided the best option would be to go back and find the best off-road route, but there were guardrails along the freeway too. The area with the tire tracks might be the best spot to enter Gideon.
Apocalypse Journeys (Book 2): Finding AJ Page 4