Christopher felt his eyes grow heavy. Begin to droop. He hadn't understood how Buck could possibly sleep. Not with all that was happening, and all that might happen. Now, though, he realized that sleep was not only coming – it was absolutely going to overtake him. The wobble of the car, the whistle of wind through the hole in the floor ceased to be an assault and somehow shifted to a lullaby.
He slept.
He dreamed.
The dreams were short and sharp – shocks of pain and fear that came as pure feeling more than image. Despair as he saw a tiny child with a face grown strange and alien. Then blood and pink and black as he cut through the face with an axe. The axe shifted to something that wriggled and struggled in his hands. A many-legged creature who wanted to be free be free –
(let me GO!)
– and pushed thoughts of rage and hatred into his mind.
Another flash, another shift. Holding Buck's bloody body in his arms. Buck's head gone, but still somehow speaking. Saying, "Don't let her take me," over and over. And Christopher could do nothing to give him respite, because how do you let something rest that never ceases to live?
More flashes. Growing queens. Dying friends. Blood running down the handle of the axe, staining his hands forever red.
"What now?" asked Buck.
Christopher jerked awake, catching hold of the words and following them to consciousness.
The Marauder had slowed; he had a fuzzy half-sleep memory of feeling it shudder as Amulek let up on the gas and the tempo of asphalt slabs passing below the tires changed slightly.
"What's going on?" he asked.
Then he saw.
68
Two cars had crashed into each other in the middle of the highway. Whether because one of the drivers had Changed and veered into the other vehicle as understanding fled, or because both had Changed and slammed into each other, Christopher could not say. He saw the cars, saw the hoods crumpled. A bright flower of red blood had been drawn across the inside of one of the front windows. A vague smear as of a hand clawing at the side window.
No bodies.
And then he realized he was looking at the wrong thing. He had prepared internally for cars, so when he saw them that was the logical thing his mind jumped to as being the cause for the slowdown. But Amulek wove the Marauder around them, and barely seemed even to notice them.
It was then that Christopher – still throwing off the drunken effect of a dream too vivid to be real, too real-seeming to be easily cast aside – saw the snow.
Snow?
Drifts of white floated down around the car. Bits of gray flitting across the front windshield of the Marauder, flowing over the top as the wind took them, then disappearing in the wake of the vehicle's passage.
Snow? It's spring. How could –
The answer came to him as the last bits of dream finally loosed their grip on his mind.
Not snow.
Ash.
And then he saw – finally realized he saw – the light as well. He remembered the glow he had thought he saw in the darkness of the night before. A strange, flickering aura vaguely visible on the horizon to the north, but so dim it might be nothing more than a dream.
Now he saw. Saw a dream made real, one more nightmare close by and waiting to envelope the survivors.
He had no idea what started the forest fire. Perhaps another crash like the one he had just seen on the freeway. Perhaps lightning from the storm they had weathered only a day –
(Is that all it's been? Just one day?)
– ago.
He wondered if it might have been started by the zombies. Perhaps intentionally for some deep purpose he could only guess at?
That made him shiver.
No matter the cause, the fire had grown, had become huge. It flowed over the trees near the north side of the freeway. The flames looked like a cresting wave, falling forward, driven before the wind, but never finding a shore that would stop their momentum. This wave would go until it had been stopped by something greater than itself. Perhaps only time, since first responders and firemen were a thing of the past.
Embers began to float around the Marauder. Flitting through the air like the ash had done, caught in the draft of the vehicle, flung about the windshield like fireflies in a hurricane, then flitting past on their way across the highway.
The flames to the right were enormous. And it might have been his imagination, but it seemed hotter in the Marauder.
Just then Aaron reached forward. He adjusted something on the dash, and the sound of the air conditioning that had been blowing on them all shifted tone just slightly.
"What are you doing?" said Buck. He was staring out the window at the fire, looking almost hypnotized by the dancing flames.
"Turning the outside air off," said Aaron. "We don't want to be sucking ash into the car, breathing the fire."
"Can we even keep going?" asked Theresa. She was looking at the fire, too. But unlike Buck she didn't appear hypnotized. She looked scared. Her hands clenched on her black pants, white fists standing out in stark contrast against the dark fabric.
"We don't have a choice," said Maggie. Her voice slid from her lips. Like Buck, she sounded almost hypnotized. Christopher wondered if the impossible commands of the queens nestled in Lizzy and Hope were starting to bleed into the safety bubble his cell jammer had created.
Were they getting stronger?
Theresa looked at Christopher, an eyebrow raised. Even in her fear, she had noticed the change in Buck and Maggie as well.
After a short silence, Aaron spoke. "We should turn around. Find another way past. We don't want to get completely caught in this."
Amulek nodded. Before he could turn the wheel, though, Christopher spoke.
"Keep going."
Aaron turned his head to look at him. "What are you talking –"
His voice stopped as he turned to look at what Christopher had seen.
The fire was large here, to the side of the highway. Behind them, it was a firestorm that blew long tongues of flame all the way across the freeway.
And it was coming closer.
"Don't turn, Amulek," said Christopher. Then he added, "Hurry."
"Can we outrun it?" asked Theresa.
Christopher watched the fire pull closer behind them. Not just the flames on the side of the road, but the ones that seemed to close that road behind them. Driving them forward.
"I hope so," he said.
69
They managed to outpace the fire, but only barely. Cars were growing more frequent as they traveled east along Highway 20-26, and Amulek started swerving back and forth to avoid their crashed and crushed remains. Many of them had spun completely off the highway – into ditches on the north side, into fields of alfalfa that stretched along the south side of the highway. But enough had come to rest on the highway itself that Christopher started to feel carsick with the swaying motion of the Marauder's zigzag pattern.
And every time Amulek turned the wheel, it ate up speed. Every time he slowed to make his way around a stopped car, the flames behind them came a bit closer.
The fields caught fire as the flames to the north spat glowing embers across the freeway.
Something boomed behind them. Theresa jerked and looked at Christopher.
"One of the cars went up," he said.
"Yuh," said Aaron. He sounded calm.
How does he do that?
Christopher started to sweat. He looked at Theresa, saw droplets beading on her forehead. Saw Buck wipe his arm across his brow, and watched as Maggie blinked away droplets that fell into her eyes.
Getting hotter.
He suddenly wondered if burning alive might be a worse option even than being Changed.
Does it hurt? Would being Changed hurt as bad as burning to death?
But he knew it would. Remembered the ones he had seen after being bitten – screaming, muscles spasming in agony. Blood bursting from the pores of their skin, coating faces and arms in
red that came from no wound whatever. Just the body's own vessels rupturing under the pure agony of the Change.
No, the fire had to be easier. And if the flame did catch them, at least they would die as themselves. The fire would destroy their brains. No receptors for the Change to take hold.
That doesn't mean I want to die here, either.
Amulek slapped the dashboard. A quick hit that sounded like boards clapping together. Christopher looked forward.
Saw what the teen was warning about; what was coming.
"Everyone hold on!" shouted Aaron.
70
What was ahead was an inevitability. Something that had to happen sooner or later.
But not now. Not now.
A line of four cars stretched across the highway. Head to tail, they completely blocked passage across this stretch of road. The southernmost car hung askew, its rear hanging over empty space. An irrigation canal was below it. The northernmost car was aflame, half immersed in the fires that spanned that side of the road as far ahead as Christopher could see.
Trying to go around to the south – impossible. The Marauder would crash into the canal, stranding them at the worst possible place.
To the north – madness. Driving into the fire would mean a painful death. The Marauder might be good against mines, but even if it could make it through a forest fire unscathed, the people inside it would cook like so many slabs of beef in a smoker.
The sane thing to do would be to stop. To use the Marauder's weight to push one of the cars out of the way. To make a hole, then to proceed forward with ease.
There was no time for sanity.
"Slow down!" screamed Buck.
"Hold on!" Aaron repeated.
The Marauder leaped forward as Amulek somehow coaxed a bit more power out of the beast.
They hit.
Short of an actual tank, the Marauder was bigger than any other vehicle Christopher had ever seen. Still, even tanks crunched their way over cars at a slow pace. Hitting them at top speed would not, he suspected, be the recommended way to do it.
No choice.
He had time to grab the metal frame of his seat. To jam one hand against the ceiling and press down so hard he thought he might push himself right through the floor below him.
Then he pitched forward. A bright flare of pain raced from his elbow to his wrist as he simultaneously crashed upward hard enough that it felt like the hand and arm he had braced himself with were shortened a good six inches. He bounced off the ceiling, then bounced off something soft in front of him.
His hand flew out, reflex acting in a futile effort to stop himself from bouncing around anymore. He felt something soft. And realized in that strange moment of time that felt like both forever and far too short that he had somehow managed to get his hand on Theresa's chest again.
It flitted through his brain that if he survived this moment, she would probably kill him.
Then the distinctive sounds of metal on metal, of glass shattering, drove thought from his mind. The Marauder jounced again. Leaned to the side far enough that he thought they might tip.
Then the front thudded down, putting the vehicle at a steep angle. A moment later the back wheels slammed down as well, dropping the seat out from under him. His stomach lurched in an instant of no gravity, a strong enough feeling that he worried he would lose whatever food was still in his body.
He slammed back into his seat. Still, he realized, holding onto Theresa.
He heard Buck cursing. For some reason that drove home the fact that they had survived a full-speed crash into a blockade of metal, plastic, and glass.
He almost grinned. Settled for letting go of Theresa – she didn't even glare at him, just looked around with a white face. Her throat was bleeding again where Ken had cut her, red streaming into her collar, staining it an even filthier color than it had already been.
Maggie had tumbled into the center of the cargo space. At first Christopher worried that she'd been injured. But she looked up, caught his eyes. He realized she had thrown herself forward to cover up the girls. To protect them.
Good mama.
He felt a twinge of jealousy. Ridiculous to feel such a thing in this moment, but he couldn't help it. He was seeing more proper parenting in the apocalypse than he had ever witnessed when life was "good."
His eyes flitted behind them. Saw the wreckage of the cars they had just slammed over and through. The two cars on the ends were almost untouched. The two in the middle had been crushed to half their height, the Marauder riding right over them without pause.
"Everyone okay?" shouted Aaron.
Grunts rose from everyone but Maggie. She was trying her best to check on the girls – no small feat considering the bouncing they were all enduring. The wobble that had originated from the damaged right rear wheel seemed to have worsened significantly in the moment of slamming over and through the roadblock. The Marauder was shimmying nonstop now, weaving drunkenly back and forth across the road.
Maggie looked up. Christopher locked eyes with her. Saw anguish in her gaze. He didn't know what to do, what to say. Nothing was right – how did you comfort a mother whose children won't wake up? Whose children may already have lost what made them hers?
She smiled. Not a happy smile – far from it – but a smile that made him feel like she registered his anguish on her behalf… and made him feel that perhaps it had helped, if only a little.
Sometimes pain isn't nearly as bad as the thought that we are suffering alone. Sometimes just knowing someone understands is enough to ease the agony.
He looked at Theresa. "You okay?" he asked.
"Fi-i-i-ine." The Marauder slid sideways as she spoke, half driving, half skidding at an angle perpendicular to the one most people preferred to steer.
He had to stifle a laugh. Now wasn't the time. Still, she glared at him as though he had brayed in her face.
"You grabbed my boob again."
"I'll make it up to you. D-d-d-d-inner at my p-p-p-place?"
Her face was pinched, and the attempt at humor didn't seem to make it through her sweat-drenched expression.
"It's getting real hot in here," said Buck. He looked at Maggie. Opened his mouth to speak. The Marauder took one of its power slides again, Aaron cursing as Amulek struggled to bring the vehicle under control. Buck's mouth slammed closed. He braced against his seat. Managed to keep from flying off and right on top of the girls in the aisle between the seats.
"They o-o-o-kay?" he managed when the power slide ended – at least for the most part.
"How should I know?" Maggie almost snarled the words. Fear turned to anger in the moment. Christopher put a hand on her shoulder.
She sagged. "They're as-s-s-sleep."
Another skid, and this time Theresa held onto Christopher. He looked away from her as she did, afraid that if he caught her gaze he might say something totally out of bounds – make some joke or perhaps propose marriage.
He looked out the back window.
The fire was licking at their back bumper. Flames leaping up on either side of the road, fiery fingers reaching across the road, trying to grab the Marauder – to clasp hands around it and crush it in blazing fists.
"Hurry!" he shouted.
Aaron cursed again. And for some reason Christopher didn't think the cowboy was complaining about the fire. Christopher looked to the front seat. Aaron was looking out his window, to the south.
Christopher followed his gaze.
"No," he whispered.
71
A horde.
The zombies were loping toward them, coming from the southeast – just ahead and off the right side of the Marauder. It wasn't the size of the horde that had scaled the Wells Fargo Center – easily a hundred thousand of the creatures all gathered together as one writhing, teeming mass. But it was enough that Christopher couldn't tell where they ended. They spread in a broad line across the fields ahead.
Rushing toward the fire.
Toward the
Marauder.
Toward the people inside.
"How did they find us?" said Buck. "I thought we were jamming their signal."
"Not important right now!" shouted Christopher. "What are we going to do?"
He looked back again. The fire that had been so close behind had managed to draw so near that flame licked up the back of the Marauder. There was another explosion as one of the cars they had passed – perhaps one of the ones they had plowed right through – lost itself to the fire.
Christopher looked away. No help there, no escape. He turned to the sides. Right, left – it was all the same: fire. Fire covering the fields to the right of them, flames tearing through the forest and igniting the trunks of the trees whipping past on the left.
And the zombies – coming from ahead and to the right – the only place that wasn't covered in fire.
Fire in three directions. Zombies in the fourth. Too many to break through, even if the Marauder had been at top form.
Nowhere to run but straight into the clutches of the creatures streaming toward them.
His question kept echoing in his mind: "What are we going to do?"
And no one answered.
Nothing could be done.
72
The Marauder spun into another skid. This one was worse than any of the others had been – a jouncing, skittering sideways leap across the road. Maggie screamed. Buck tossed himself on top of her and the girls, using his own bulk to help pin them all down, to keep them in place.
Theresa's hand found his. Clutched it.
In that moment, stupid as it was, her holding onto him actually made everything seem worth it.
Then the moment of irrational happiness passed and he settled back into the previous status quo – which basically consisted of alternating between thoughts of What now what now? and We're going to die.
He glanced out the side window. Expected to see flame in the fields south of the road. Instead he saw the road itself. Saw zombies running toward them, thousands of them, operating in that weirdly concerted way. None crashing, none falling into each other. Just a perfectly-coordinated unit.
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