“Come on.”
They joined Dylan and started the day’s journey down the highway. With every step they took under the warm morning sun, Shell was farther away from home than she had ever been. She had always been protected by her father, and then by Lewis later on. Anytime a group had left the town for any reason, Shell had been forbidden to go along. But by the time Lewis had died, Shell had learned all he had known to teach her, and she felt prepared to make it in the world on her own.
“Eleven years.”
They had been walking for half an hour when the words from Dylan had broken Shell out of her thoughts. She looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“What?”
“I’ve just about lost track of time, but I think I’ve been on my own for about eleven years now.”
“That’s a long time,” Shell said, still trying to pull herself away from thoughts of her family.
The drifter nodded. “I’ve had companions come and go along the way. But I’ve mostly been on my own. I prefer it that way.”
“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Shell said, licking her lips, “but how old were you when the world changed?”
Dylan remained silent for a moment. Shell felt the heat go into her cheeks, knowing she might have crossed a line by asking the question. She was about to apologize when he continued talking.
“I should have died.” Dylan looked into the horizon ahead of them. “When everything first happened, I mean.” He laughed. “It’s strange. I used to have nightmares about it, but I haven’t thought about it now in months.”
“I’m sorry I asked.”
Dylan glanced at her, then stared back out onto the open road. “I was eleven years old. My grandmother lived in Austin, Texas and I had just been visiting her. I was on a flight back to Virginia when The Fall happened.”
“A flight? Like an airplane?”
Dylan grinned. “Yeah, I guess you’re too young to remember airplanes. But yes, I was on one of those. Many of the passengers had all of a sudden blacked out, and everyone who hadn’t started to panic. The crew didn’t know how to handle the situation. Soon, all who had fallen rose, and all hell broke loose.” Dylan shook his head. “I did all that I knew to do; I got down on the ground and hid under my seat. I cried and cried, but no one heard me. There were too many screams. So many snarls.
“Not long after, the plane started for the ground. I honestly thought I was going to die. I was so young. I didn’t want to die. Then a man—he had been sitting nearby on the plane—loaded back into his seat. He saw me on the floor and picked me up. He got me strapped back into my seat. And I closed my eyes as the plane went down.
“Even though I thought I was going to die, I didn’t. And neither did the man who saved me. We were the only two survivors.”
“Jesus,” Shell said. “That’s an incredible story.”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “I suppose it is.”
Shell looked over at the boy. He’d heard Dylan’s story, but still didn’t speak. Shell took one more glance at Dylan, then looked ahead and spilled into her own story.
“My mother died giving birth to me. I was raised by my father and his best friend, Lewis. I’m only twenty-three, so I was born into this world well after The Fall. Those two men raised me to survive in it.
“Dad died when I was only six. He was out hunting food and was accidentally shot by one of the men who went with him. The guy felt so guilty that, only two weeks later, one of the other people in the town found him hanging in a closet.”
Shell lowered her head, choking back tears. When she looked back up, both Dylan and the boy were staring at her. She noticed a hint of sorrow in the drifter’s eyes that she hadn’t seen before. But he said nothing, instead only waiting for her to continue her story.
“Lewis raised me after that. He taught me how to do everything… grow food, defend myself, start a fire, perform first aid—everything.
“When I was about to turn seventeen, a strange plague hit our town. One by one, the people died. It happened so often that we became numb to burying the bodies. Near the end, we just started burning them. We used a plot of land on the other side of town to keep the stench away.”
“And you never got sick?” Dylan asked.
Shell shook her head. “To this day, I don’t know how I didn’t. Three of us made it through. Well, almost. It was me, Lewis, and this girl who was a few years older than me named Amanda. It had been nearly a month since we’d last burned a body when Amanda got ill. She only lasted a few days before she passed. That left only Lewis and me. But Lewis got sick the next week.
“He fought so hard. He lasted longer than anyone else had previously—three weeks.” Shell lowered her head again. “I felt really lonely when my dad died. But it was nothing compared to when Lewis went. Because, at that point, I actually was alone.”
Several moments passed before Dylan spoke again. “So, you’ve been at that house, by yourself, since then?”
Shell nodded as she laughed. “God, it feels like I’ve been alone forever, and yet it feels like just yesterday that I buried Lewis.”
“Time’s a strange thing when you’re all alone,” Dylan said.
Shell nodded in agreement, and then the conversation seized. She stared at the barren highway ahead, and even though Dylan and the boy were walking beside her, Shell couldn’t help but feel as if she were all alone again.
14
The following day, as they were continuing down the highway, Shell stared off into a pasture running aside the highway. A trio of Deads lumbered through the tall grass nearly a hundred yards away. In the dead silence, she could hear their faint snarling. The Deads would never catch up, not at the speed they moved and maneuvering through the overgrown grass. But they were still out there, roaming these rural landscapes, and seeing them was a reminder of that.
The highway offered nothing but barren farmlands and pastures, and she wondered what it would be like when they made it to Jackson. She’d heard the stories of cities with tall buildings. Cars racing up and down the roads. People everywhere. And though she knew the population had dwindled and that no one drove vehicles anymore, she’d expected the world away from her isolated town to be something other than just more of the same. Since leaving Yazoo, though, they hadn’t even passed through another. It had been nothing but open land with the occasional deteriorated home or farm.
Staring at the Deads in the pasture, she imagined the pastures once being covered with corn, cotton, and other crops. Machines and people harvesting the fields. A normal world, as Lewis had called it. But this was her normal, seeing the three lifeless figures wandering through the fields.
They’d walked a couple of more miles down the highway when Dylan stopped.
“Let’s give our legs a break for a few minutes,” Dylan said.
There was a metal railing along the side of the road, and the three of them went over and sat on it. Shell reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of water and a couple of carrots. She took a small swig of water from the bottle, then offered it to the boy along with one of the carrots. He took the water and tipped it up to his lips.
“Go easy,” Shell said. “We have to conserve it. I’ll take a look at your injury before we move on, too.”
Dylan stood and walked ten feet away before kneeling down and staring at something on the road. Shell went to him.
“What are you doing?”
Dylan stood. “Thought I saw some fresh human tracks. We’re on the outskirt of the city limits now. We’ve got to be more cautious from here on out.”
“This isn’t exactly what I expected the city to look like.”
“Good, because it’s not. You’ll see what it really looks like soon enough.”
Shell went back to the boy and checked his wounds, removing the bandages. They looked much better, but she put new bandages on just to be cautious of infection.
“This should be the last time we have to change it out. At least for a few days.”
>
The boy smiled. It still bothered Shell that he wouldn’t talk, but she hoped he would eventually.
“Let’s get going,” Dylan said.
They started down the highway again. Gray clouds hid some of the sun’s rays, making the walk more tolerable as they moved into the afternoon.
It wasn’t long before they began seeing the remains of more buildings standing on each side of the highway. The structures became more frequent, and they soon moved onto a different highway.
This road was much wider than she’d ever seen one get, stretching across eight lanes. Rusted bodies of abandoned vehicles lined the sides of the road. Most had been stripped of anything useful and didn’t resemble automobiles at all.
Shell looked around, awestruck by all the structures surrounding her.
“So many buildings,” she said.
“We’re only now just getting into the city. Never been through here, but if I had to guess, I’d say we’ll be coming across downtown a few miles down the road. Hopefully, we can get through before nightfall.”
Shell had seen the downtowns of cities only in pictures. “We’ll see skyscrapers?” she asked.
“Don’t get too excited. This place wasn’t much less of a shithole than it is now.”
“I thought you said you’ve never been here.”
“No offense, but it’s Jackson, Mississippi. It barely qualifies as a city.”
Shell didn’t respond. All of this was a lot to take in, and it was also beginning to settle in that she was never going home.
“Now, while Jackson ain’t much, we still gotta be careful,” Dylan said. “A lot of the people left in the world have migrated into the cities. And because of that, there’s a lot more Empties, too. Keep your eyes and ears peeled.”
“All right.”
“You able to load that bow pretty fast in case you have to?”
If I can focus and not be so amazed by what I’m seeing.
And she wasn’t sure when that amazement would wear off.
15
Even though there were all these buildings, something which Shell had never seen, they still represented nothing. In the old world, they had mattered. Each structure had had a purpose, but now they served none. She wondered if there were supplies left in any of them but knew that Dylan wasn’t going to stop to find out. There was no guarantee there weren’t other people living in them who would attack anyone who tried to impede on their space. And thirty years removed from The Fall, there was unlikely to be anything of any substantial value left anyway.
The wastelands along the highway did offer her questions about what Dylan was looking for. Where was he going, and what did ht expect to find when he got there? If the rest of the world was like this, then what was the point?
She looked up and saw the sun falling in the sky, and the landscape ahead was still filled with buildings.
“Are we going to make it to the other side of the city before it gets dark?”
“That’s the plan.”
“And what if we don’t? What’s the big deal if we have to travel some at night? Can’t we just get off the main roads?”
“You’re really clueless, girl.”
“Pardon me for having lived a good, solitary life up until it was ripped away from me yesterday.”
“All I mean is that you don’t have any experience out in the world. Surviving out here isn’t the same as it was in your secluded town.”
I was doing quite well on my own before that gang showed up.
They arrived at a still standing bridge and climbed a hill. When they reached the top, Dylan pointed ahead.
“There.”
Taller buildings rose into the sky. Shell had seen photographs in books, but none of it compared to seeing these man-made structures in real life.
“That’s the heart of the city?” she asked.
Dylan nodded. “Downtowns are always where I run into the most gangs and bandits. Stay alert.”
“I will,” Shell said, still taken back by the scene in front of her eyes.
Dylan’s brow furrowed. “Is this really the first time you’ve seen buildings like this?”
“I was never allowed to leave Yazoo City. Others would make trips into the city now and then, but it was rare. The population of our town had declined so much that we were able to live off stuff we already had. I’ve only ever seen anything like this in pictures in books.”
Dylan pursed his lips and then looked ahead into the city. “It’s a different world out here, that’s for sure. Your loved ones were right for keeping you out of it.”
“I lived on my own for a long time. I can handle myself, you know.”
Looking at Shell again, Dylan shook his head. “I don’t doubt that. But you’ve got to learn what it’s like to live out here. Especially if you plan on being responsible for that boy. So, for now, just keep your eyes and ears open.”
The downtown area was on their right when they approached it with less than half an hour of sunlight left. Shell did as Dylan asked, keeping her eyes and ears alert for dangers. She kept the boy close to her as well, periodically looking down at him. His expression was mostly blank as he looked around the ruined city.
Snarls sounded from nearby, but there were no Deads in their path on the highway. They were coming from the right, but when Shell looked around, she couldn’t locate the creatures.
“Stay alert,” Dylan said, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword.
They had made it down the road a few more minutes when six Deads emerged from behind a toppled semi-truck, twenty yards ahead. There were another four on the other side of the concrete barrier which split the highway, bringing the total count to ten. The creatures started towards Shell and the others, moving at their usual slow pace.
“We’ve got to turn around,” Shell said.
“We can’t afford to backtrack. We’ll lose too much time.”
“You want to fight them?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Of course we have a choice. We can turn—”
“No,” Dylan said. “That’s not what we’re going to do. You told me you were good with that bow, so prove it.”
He drew his sword and took a few steps toward the creatures. Then he shifted into a fighting stance.
Shell grabbed her bow and arrows then said to the boy, “Stay back.”
The boy moved behind the remains of a nearby vehicle, kneeling down and peeking over the trunk to watch Shell and Dylan fight with the Deads.
Shell set her quiver next to her and got down on one knee with the Deads ten yards away now. She drew a single arrow and nocked it, pulling the string back taut. Aiming at one of the Deads, she drew in a deep breath.
The male creature wore no shirt, its pale gray chest and stomach exposed. Its shoulder slumped, and its head was cocked to the side as it stared at her. Even though the Dead looked human, it wasn’t—that’s what she’d long ago been taught by Lewis. This had been one of his many lessons when he’d taught her archery.
With deep breaths, she recited the words he had said to her when he’d first taught her how to shoot.
“Aim true and vanquish the past. End the pains of a life once lost.”
The Dead opened its mouth wide as it snarled. Shell exhaled and let go of the bowstring.
The arrow soared through the air, hitting its target. It pierced the back of the Dead’s throat and came out the rear of its head. The creature fell back onto the ground.
Dylan looked back at her, his face not showing he was impressed.
“Hell of a shot. But aim for the brain. Only way you’ll take ‘em out for good.”
She drew another arrow and aimed again. This time, she aimed for the forehead of her target. And, like before, she wouldn’t miss.
The arrow entered above the creature’s right eye, spraying blood into the air. The Dead hit the pavement with a thud and Shell drew another arrow.
The creatures had advanced close enough for Dylan to
attack. He raised the sword above his head and lunged at one of the Deads, burying the blade in its skull. He had little trouble getting it out, which surprised Shell. She wondered how many times he would get that lucky, especially without a second hand to use as leverage for wedging it back out after a strike. But he’d made it this long by himself, so Shell worried about herself and focused on nocking another arrow.
She was about to exhale and let loose when she heard a screeching snarl come from her right. She looked over to see four more Deads spilling over the concrete barrier, each falling on their faces but unfazed.
“We’ve got more company!”
Dylan lopped the head off another creature and looked back briefly before one of the other creatures lunged at him. He barely jumped back in time.
“Stay focused,” Shell said.
She turned to aim at the new creatures which had come over the barrier, firing an arrow at the nearest one.
She missed.
Damn it.
Her hand shook as she nocked another arrow. She breathed steadily, telling herself that she had to calm down.
She aimed at one of the Deads that had made it over the barrier. It got to its feet as she exhaled and fired. The arrow landed at the top of its forehead, sending the creature back and onto the ground.
“No!”
Shell followed the scream to see Dylan lying on the highway, a Dead lying on top of him. The creature chomped at his face while the drifter struggled to hold it back with his only arm.
Nocking another arrow, Shell left the Deads she’d been fighting and moved to help Dylan. She had the Dead’s temple in her sights, but she couldn’t fire. Dylan’s head was only inches away, and one miscalculation could kill him. He looked over at her, gritting his teeth.
“Shoot!”
Another Dead was down by Dylan’s legs, and he kicked to fight the creature off. Shell couldn’t delay any longer.
She exhaled, her sights set on the creature trying to bite off Dylan’s face. Sweat collected on her brow. Her hands shook slightly. She still couldn’t bring herself to let go.
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