He felt sick, but he managed to keep going, managed to keep his mind focused on what mattered most: survival. He tried not to splash the blood as he rode through it, tried not to get too close to the remains. Kyle didn’t know if he had to be bitten to become infected. He wasn’t sure if the blood was as potent as the saliva when it came to transmission of the virus, but he wanted none of it. No part. He just wanted to get somewhere safe.
He wanted to move on with his life.
When they got to the semi, the cars bunched up. Two cars were squashed into the side of the truck. Those people hadn’t escaped. The blood on the windshields made that clear enough, and Kyle looked away. The cars behind those looked to have minimal damage, but were empty.
Mark slowed as he reached the semi. He got off his bike and motioned for Kyle and Alice to do the same. This was the hard part. They couldn’t see around the overturned truck. They didn’t want to simply ride their bikes around it and find they were walking into some sort of sick trap.
Or, you know, a huge group of the undead who happened to be loitering.
No, they needed to be cautious, so they would check the area on foot first, then ride their bikes to freedom.
They were so fucking close.
He heard Alice stop her bike and climb off. They had used WD-40 on all the bikes and both trailers, but Alice’s was starting to squeak again. It was fine, he told himself. The noise wasn’t so loud it would draw extreme amounts of attention to them. Yeah, there were some Infected wandering behind them now, but they were a ways off.
Their little group was going to be fine.
They were all going to be fine.
Mark raised his rifle and headed around the semi first. Kyle followed close behind and Alice brought up the rear. When they got around the front, they could see there was nothing to be afraid of. The driver was dead. His body hung out of the cab at a strange angle.
“Shouldn’t the Infected have gotten him by now?” Alice asked.
“Maybe they only like live ones,” Kyle said.
“Gross.”
“Never know.”
“Let’s go,” Mark said. “Back to the bikes. Road’s clear. We need to get out of here.”
Kyle agreed. Being this close to the cars and the bodies made him uncomfortable. They got their bikes, rode around the semi, and continued down K-29.
It was open space now. Open air. He couldn’t quite believe they had made it this far. Kyle thought leaving town should have been harder than it was, but it wasn’t. That’s what living in a small town got you. Holbrook was big enough to have a university, but small enough that there wasn’t really anything else there. The only reason to move to Holbrook was to go to college or to get a fresh start.
He didn’t know Alice’s entire story, nor did he know Mark’s, but he bet they were both in the latter category. He sure as fuck was. Now, as they rode away from town, he glanced over his shoulder at the buildings receding from his view. The red and brick library stood out from the rest, and he thought of how he would never again set foot in it. He would never again go to classes there or hang out with friends or study. He would never again go learn about a new topic or just relax with a new release he’d discovered. He would never again go chat up the librarians, and besides, they were probably dead.
They kept riding. The road curved and sometimes they’d see a car abandoned on the side of the highway. He assumed those were the ones that had run out of gas. That made him nervous because he thought the people may have turned into zombies, that they might be wandering around out here.
Kyle wondered if he should be worried about cannibals or raiders or anything bad like that, but this was Kansas. This was small town Kansas and it had only been a few days. He bet most people were still holed up inside their homes, thinking they’d get out of town if only they waited long enough.
Isn’t that the way these things always worked?
When Mom found out about her brother dying, she didn’t talk about it for a long time. She kept it bottled up. She thought if she didn’t admit he had passed, if she didn’t bring it up, if she didn’t think about it, then maybe it would stop hurting.
Only pain never really works that way.
You can’t simply bottle grief or anxiety and expect it to go away. The only thing that happens is that you explode.
This was different than emotional grief, though. This was like the whole of the universe was grieving. Everyone was dead or dying and as far as Kyle knew, there was no way to stop it short of bombing all the infected cities.
Even that was no guarantee.
He’d seen enough horror flicks to agree with Mark’s desire to get out of Holbrook. It wasn’t a big town by any means, but it was big enough to be on the map, and in Kyle’s mind, that was too big. What happened when the government started working again? What happened when the world went back online? What happened when it was time to start decontaminating?
Would everyone simply be bombed?
He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He just wanted to find somewhere he could rest, he could unwind, and he could build a new life.
Was that too much to ask?
Mark slowed and motioned for Alice to pull forward so they were riding side-by-side again.
“We should stop for lunch soon,” he said.
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “I’m starving.”
“Should we look for a spot?” Alice asked. “Should we get off the road a bit?”
K-29 was a country highway. It led directly to another city, but that wasn’t for 40 miles. Every mile or so, there would be a side road that led off to smaller towns. Some were so small they didn’t even have their own post offices. Other roads led to farms or houses.
“We should go a bit further, then take a side road,” Mark said. They’d probably gone five miles already. Another five or ten and they’d be able to start looking seriously for a place to stay, for a place to make their own.
Kyle wondered what their options were going to be. Maybe they’d end up living in someone’s barn or an abandoned building. He wasn’t sure. They still didn’t know how widespread the virus was, how many people had gotten out of Holbrook and infected others.
They still didn’t know if the other survivors were crazy bastards who were so scared they’d shoot anyone who wandered onto their land.
That was one of the problems with Kansas, Kyle thought. In Colorado, people had guns, but not everyone. Not everyone liked guns. Even in the mountains, a lot of people just left the bears and deer and mountain lions roam on their own. They didn’t worry about that stuff. They certainly didn’t shoot them.
In Kansas, people would do anything to protect their herd. If that meant shooting a coyote, so be it. If they had to take on a bobcat, they’d do it. Kansas farmers were their own brand of people.
Kyle just hoped he and his friends wouldn’t get caught in the crosshairs.
Chapter 6
They sat under a big tree and ate beef jerky. Alice opened a box of cereal and munched on that, too. Mark didn’t care. He wasn’t going to bitch at them about rationing food. Not right now. Not after how he saw Alice kill that Infected.
To be honest, he hadn’t thought she’d enjoy it as much as she did. He could tell by the guilt on her face when she turned around that she had felt the rush. She had felt the excitement. She had felt the high people got from killing someone else, and it had changed something in her. Maybe it just made her feel conflicted. Maybe it made her sad. He wasn’t sure.
All he knew was that at some point, he was going to have to talk with her about it and make sure she could handle this because murder was part of the world now and Alice was going to have to do it again.
Mark was worried that if she liked it as much as she seemed to that she was going to get addicted. It wouldn’t even be hard. Most people might never know. “Alice the zombie-slayer,” they’d call her, but he would know the truth about her. He’d know the truth about Alice and why she was so good at killing the undead.
<
br /> Now, as she slowly ate her whole-grain-super-good-for-you-and-not-at-all-gross cereal, he wondered how the hell they were going to do this.
He’d been running on adrenaline for days, but Mark was getting tired and weary. He didn’t know Kansas as well as the others did, but he knew people. He knew there were going to be other survivors who had the same idea they did. He knew there were going to be others who were trying to get out of town.
That was part of the reason he wanted to go another 10 miles before they found a place to stay. That would put them nearly halfway between Holbrook and Larson. Chances were that most survivors wouldn’t go that far on foot and he doubted anyone else was going to be getting cars out of either town. Anyone who was going to escape via vehicle had likely already done it.
No, what they had to worry about now was actually finding a place that was empty.
Mark hadn’t been in the military for a couple of years, but he’d been good at his job. He’d been good at what he did. He’d also been good at understanding people and predicting their movements. The military had taught him that: reading people, figuring out what they were going to do. From what he knew of people and their response to a wide-scale disaster, he suspected the survivors they encountered in the next few days would be unfriendly, hostile even.
He suspected that they’d need to be very careful not to be mistaken for Infected or worse: killed for their supplies.
They finished their meal in silence. When they finished, they grudgingly climbed back onto their bikes to continue the ride. None of them wanted to.
It was hot. Mark was in pretty good shape, but his trailer was heavy and his back was beginning to hurt. By the time they figured they were halfway to Larson, he was more than ready to stop.
“Left or right?” He asked Kyle and Alice. There were dirt roads on both sides of the highway. They looked the same: long, gravel roads surrounded by soybean fields. After awhile, maybe about 500 yards, the fields ended and turned to woods.
Each side looked exactly the same.
It was going to be hit or miss with this one.
“Left,” Alice said.
Mark looked at Kyle, who simply nodded. Kyle was a man of few words. Mark didn’t mind that one bit. As long as Kyle kept his breathing on track and took his inhaler when he needed it, they wouldn’t have any issues. Mark knew that their group would never be completely even or balanced when it came to distribution of chores. He was bigger than Kyle, and stronger. He had better lungs and a better heart. Years in the military had given him not only size, but endurance.
He knew he’d be doing most of the heavy lifting.
Mark didn’t mind though because he liked his companions. He liked knowing he had two people he could trust, who wouldn’t betray him or fuck him over when things got hard. He’d known them long enough to know they were both loyal and even though they weren’t as survival-centered as he would have liked, they were good enough. They could make this thing work.
They turned down the country road to the left. As soon as they started riding on the gravel, Mark realized it was going to be a long ride. The highway’s pavement had made for smooth sailing, but gravel was bumpy to ride on with a bike. The attached trailer bounced along behind him, but as long as it stayed hitched, he didn’t care.
He looked out over the fields as they moved, wondering how close the farmhouses were, wondering if these fields were going to be overflowing with Infected soon, wondering how many other people were going to pass by here on their quest for a place to stay.
Then they were in the forest.
The trees came on suddenly, as Kansas forests do. Mark didn’t mind because the trees offered shade from the incessant heat. He had already stripped his shirt off and shoved it in the trailer. It wasn’t smart, he knew. He should be wearing a shirt, especially if he had to fight an Infected. They still didn’t know if the virus was airborne or not, but he suspected it was only through blood contact.
He knew that if something scratched him, cut him, he would probably get infected, but right now, he was too fucking hot to care. Sweat poured off his body and he slowed down to have a drink of water. Alice was right beside him, also sweating. She stopped for a second and pulled her shirt off, too. Then she shoved it in her trailer. Kyle’s eyes widened and she rolled hers.
“Don’t make it weird. I’m hot. I’m sweaty. Sorry you have to see me in my bra.”
“No,” Kyle said. “It’s not that, it’s just that-”
“Don’t even,” Mark said. “Do not finish that fucking sentence. Let’s go.”
He kept riding. He chuckled inwardly at Kyle’s awkward behavior. The poor kid was in his early 20s, but he acted like he’d never been around girls before. Oh well. They’d be spending plenty of time together in the coming months, Mark suspected. He could teach Kyle all about women.
They started riding harder. Part of the road was uphill, then back down again. Despite his asthma, Kyle didn’t complain. Mark was impressed. He liked Kyle’s good attitude. Fuck, they both had good attitudes, and that was important to Mark.
Nothing was worse than trying to make it through a tough situation without some sort of backup. Nothing was worse than trying to survive when you were on your own. Nothing was worse than trying to survive with someone who wouldn’t have your back or who just bitched constantly.
They rode past their first farmhouse, but they didn’t even slow down. Mark saw the farmer’s face in the window, saw the glare in the old man’s eyes. If they had even slowed their pace, even appeared to be lingering, they would be shot on sight.
No questions asked.
Another house came a few yards later, followed by a third. All of them looked to be occupied, but zombie-free. Faces peered out, blinking quietly from inside the homes. No one was outside, but people were alive. People were living. They were hiding, but they were alive.
That was something, right? It gave Mark hope that maybe, if they established some sort of home base, maybe they could develop some sense of normalcy. They might not be part of a community. Maybe people would be too scared to get close to other humans. He wasn’t sure. They could at least have a routine, a home, some land. They could at least do things other than just trying to survive.
They could have lives again.
It had only been a couple of days and already he missed the normalcy of things like video games and reading books. He missed kicking off his clothes and chilling in his apartment. He missed it.
Mark knew it was only going to get worse, and that gnawed at him. Things would get worse before they got better. That was how these things worked. That was how it always happened. They would get a little settled, a little hopeful, a little comfortable, and then everything would change.
Everything would be different.
He only hoped they would be ready.
Chapter 7
They passed more and more houses, then none. The road continued to be surrounded by trees, and after awhile, the trio stopped trying to be quiet.
“What do you think caused it?” Alice asked. She’d thought about it a lot over the last couple of days. It seemed like an important question. They might never be able to answer it, but it felt important that she say it out loud.
“Vaccines,” Kyle said.
“Terrorists,” Mark answered.
“What if it was an accident?” Alice asked. “It could have been an accident.” Maybe a science experiment had gone terribly wrong. Maybe someone had accidentally mixed the wrong chemicals. Maybe there had been a toxic waste spill.
It could have been anything, right?
“This wasn’t an accident,” Mark sounded sure of himself. He’d been in the military, but Alice didn’t know exactly what he did while he was enlisted. Maybe he was a secret agent. Maybe he was a biologist, but she doubted it. Mark seemed too in control of himself to be a science geek. Her guess was that he was some sort of spy or hit man, maybe.
“If all the cities in the world were hit at once, or even ju
st all the cities in America, it definitely wasn’t an accident,” Kyle agreed.
“I guess it doesn’t matter. Not like we can do anything, anyway.” She hated knowing they were fucked. She had her phone, and she had closed her apartment door when they left. Had she locked the door? She couldn’t remember, but she didn’t think so. Maybe squatters would get in. If the world came back online, if this disease got under control, she’d have her phone, but would she have a home to go back to?
If squatters got in, they could ruin everything, and she hated that.
Alice got off her bike and started walking it.
“What are you doing?” Mark slowed.
“My ass is sore.”
He rolled his eyes, but both Mark and Kyle got off their bikes, too, and started to walk with her. None of them knew where they were going. None of them had any goals aside from finding a place to stay, a place to survive.
“What are we looking for?” She asked.
“A place that looks abandoned. Maybe a place that’s been empty for awhile.” Mark was certain.
“There are a lot of those in Kansas,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t take us too long to find a place.”
“For a place with lots of abandoned houses, most of these seem to be occupied.”
They passed another driveway. Alice peeked at the ramshackle house, peered at the cars in the driveway. There were two. They were covered in leaves and dust. Maybe they’d been there awhile.
She wanted to step forward, to peek. Even if they didn’t stay here at this house, maybe they could take one of the cars. Maybe they could ditch the damn bikes. Her legs hurt, her feet hurt, and her butt hurt. They’d been riding all day, and Alice was out of shape.
She didn’t like to think about that. She was decidedly average when it came to her physical appearance. Her brown hair hung just past her shoulders, which weren’t unusually wide or narrow. Her skin was paler than she would have liked it to be. She didn’t look exotic or tan the way some of the other paralegals did. Even Alice’s clothes were normal. She didn’t do anything crazy or weird when it came to her appearance, and now?
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 2) Page 3