by Sam Sisavath
One, then two, then a dozen. They seemed to be moving in the same direction.
Toward the explosion…
Tony was watching her from across the room, the golf club resting across his lap. Her roommate Tracy played on the University of Houston’s golf team, and they found her golf bag inside her closet. When they had decided to leave the city, they had armed themselves with Tracy’s golf clubs. Neither one of them knew anything about guns, and the steel clubs seemed both dangerous and innocuous enough.
They had been traveling most of the day on a dirt bike Tony had found near her apartment, stopping only to get fuel and to hunt for supplies. There was something about riding on a bike that was tiring, but with the highways so congested, it was the only way to travel through the city. They had been on it for four hours before calling it a day.
The travel agency they were hiding in now was the perfect spot to spend the night—small and hardly noticeable between two bigger buildings. There was a door and a window at the front, so they had pushed a desk against the door and covered the window.
She padded back to her bedroll on the floor. It was pitch-black inside, with just a little moonlight filtering through the curtains. They had solar-powered flashlights in their packs, along with food and bottles of water. Supplies weren’t hard to come by. There was plenty of food left behind, most of it still good, though she doubted that was going to be the case a month from now. Gasoline proved more difficult to find. Without power to pump the tanks the gas stations were useless, so Tony had siphoned gas from cars along the way using a plastic tube.
She sat back down on her sleeping bag.
“Could have been thunder,” he said.
She shook her head. “It was an explosion.”
“Okay, it was an explosion.” He sounded tired. “Get some sleep. Let’s try to start on the road earlier tomorrow. Maybe we can get out of the city by afternoon.”
She nodded and lay down.
It had been slow going at first, with the dirt bike constantly running out of gas, and roads brimming with vehicles left behind by people fleeing the city. The rest of Houston beyond the Downtown area had been exactly as she and Tony expected. Depressingly deserted in the day and terrifyingly silent at night.
Around midnight, she drifted off to sleep, waking the next morning to sunlight on her face and Tony snoring lightly in the chair next to her. She sat up and watched him for a moment, the golf club clutched tightly in his hands. They had run across plenty of other weapons along the way, but for some reason he insisted on keeping the golf club.
“It feels right,” he had told her.
“It’s a golf club,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but it’s a nine iron.”
“You don’t know what that means.”
“I know it’s better than an eight iron. It’s got an extra iron. That’s pretty good.”
They had a good laugh over that.
She glanced at her watch and then back at Tony. She thought about waking him, but he looked so peaceful, and he hadn’t really gotten a lot of sleep the last few days.
Instead, she sat back against the wall and watched him sleep for a while. For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to enjoy the loneliness.
*
“Let me teach you how to ride,” Tony said.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
She put on her sunglasses and gingerly climbed up on the bike behind him, the heavy backpack strapped to her back like a boulder threatening to topple her at any moment. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“I don’t see how it would be all that fun.”
“You’ll love it.”
“I truly doubt that.”
“Okay, can I be honest? I just wanted to be the one with my arms around your waist, at least once.”
She laughed over the dirt bike’s engine. “I knew there was an ulterior motive.”
“Think about it?”
“No.”
“You’re no fun.”
He turned back and gunned the throttle.
He aimed the bike out of the parking lot and back onto the feeder road. He turned onto the on-ramp, back up to Highway 59, sticking to the shoulder to skirt around a parked semi-truck that had clogged up the entire single lane. There was a light breeze, but the loud cough and sputter of the bike’s engine was the only unnatural sound for miles.
They progressed slowly up the highway, the glut of cars forcing them to travel anywhere from twenty to twenty-five miles per hour. Even on the dirt bike, which had maneuverability on its side, they had to travel slowly. It wasn’t just the cars, it was all the debris of humanity—clothing, boxes, electronics—that people had tried to take with them when they fled. It had never occurred to her just how much went into keeping the city clean until those services vanished overnight.
After about an hour of travel, Tony lifted his hand in the air, indicating that he needed to stop. He turned onto an off-ramp and pulled into a gas station.
The store had covered windows, so they didn’t bother to scout it out.
He parked the bike between a beat-up red pick-up truck and a black SUV that looked more expensive than all three years of her medical school tuition combined. The vehicle had chrome wheels and golden trims along the sides and front. She peered into the semi-tinted windows at the small LCD TVs dangling from the ceiling and state-of-the-art Blu-ray players embedded in the back of the front seats.
“We should take this SUV,” she said to Tony, who was already crouched next to the truck with his siphoning setup. It was really just a green garden hose that he had sliced down to five feet. It was crude, but effective.
“Too much bling. I don’t want to get carjacked,” he said.
She chuckled. “You think the Blu-ray players run on batteries?”
“They’re probably hooked up to the SUV’s battery.”
“Maybe we can use it as a battering ram. You know, just push cars out of the way.”
“Is this a joke? Is this you being funny?”
“I am funny.”
“Not really, no.”
She made a face, and he grinned back.
He stuck his end of the hose into the dirt bike’s gas tank and stood back, spitting out the taste of gasoline. “You know, there’s an easier way to do this.”
“How?”
“My dad used to have a cheap hand pump—probably about ten bucks. It had a plastic pump that you attached two hoses to and all you had to do was pump it to get the gas flowing from tank to tank. Hardware stores sell them.”
“Maybe we should try to find one.”
He seemed to think about it, then shook his head. “Nah. The disgusting taste of gasoline aside, it’s not worth the effort. And those stores are huge. Who knows how many of them are inside.”
She nodded. The idea of going into a big, sprawling warehouse store left her feeling queasy.
The gas pumped slowly between the two vehicles, and the slurp-slurp of the gas sloshing through the hose reminding her of something else.
She pushed the thought away. “I guess I should learn how to drive it. The dirt bike, I mean.”
“Ride it,” he said.
“What?”
“You don’t drive a dirt bike, you ride one.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Once we get to the countryside, I can teach you.”
“I assumed you wanted to teach me before that. You know, so you can put your hands around my waist and all.”
“That’s true, but I don’t feel like swallowing more gasoline until I absolutely have to.”
“Your loss.”
She picked up the backpack and slipped it on. She felt him looking at her, and she glanced over her shoulder and caught his eyes.
He smiled, and she smiled back.
*
It took them a couple
more days, but they finally made it out into the countryside by the end of the second day. Once they cleared Humble, a small city just outside Houston, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way, with the highway opening up and a startling drop in the number of cars. Tony was able to crank the throttle up to thirty and, at some spots, forty miles per hour.
They finally stopped in the city of Cleveland, which had no resemblance whatsoever to the Ohio city. This one was smaller by a few million residents. They took shelter along the highway in a small mom-and-pop diner called Teddy’s, parking the dirt bike outside, squeezed between two trucks.
There was no couch, so they slept on the hard floor, but they were used to that.
When she woke in the morning, he was already outside in the parking lot siphoning gas from one of the trucks. She spent some time looking over Teddy’s, hoping to find food that hadn’t gone bad.
She stocked up on chips from the racks, warm bottled water, a couple of Gatorade bottles, and some soft drinks from the warm freezers in the back. On her way out, she grabbed some Cheetos and Baked Lays chips.
Outside, Tony was watching the gas squirting from the truck into the dirt bike’s tank. He looked up as she came out of the store. She tossed him one of the Cheetos and a Gatorade.
He attacked them with a big satisfied grin on his face. “My favorite,” he beamed, showing stained orange teeth.
“I can see that.”
She walked to the edge of the parking lot and glanced briefly at the highway to her left, then looked northward toward their destination. Unlike in Houston, Highway 59 eventually leveled out until it was almost flat with the ground.
“What’s out there?” she asked.
“Hunting, fishing, farming.”
“You know how to do any of those things?”
“Fishing. And maybe a little hunting.” He slid the golf club out of a sheath he had made and attached to the side of the dirt bike, then took some swings. “You haven’t seen real hunting until you’ve seen it with golf clubs.”
“Nine iron, right?”
“Yup.”
“Your expansive golf knowledge continues to impress me.”
“I know, right?” He grinned. “Anyone can hunt with rifles. With golf clubs? Now that takes some serious skills.”
“I could probably do some farming,” she mused.
“Yeah?”
“Probably.” She shrugged. “It can’t be harder than medicine, right?”
He chuckled. “We’ll see.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you believe you can do it.”
“Smart ass,” she smirked.
*
They continued up Highway 59, her arms around his waist, face turned into the wind. Far from the city, she felt free, as if they were getting a second chance out here in the wide-open spaces. There were walls of trees on both sides of the road, and she wondered what lay beyond.
Farms? Houses? Sanctuary? The possibilities were endless.
She enjoyed these moments, riding on the road with Tony, just the two of them in a world that didn’t seem alive anymore. She tightened her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back. He turned his head slightly, probably curious by the extra show of physical contact.
They rode in silence for a long while, the only sound coming from the steady grunt of the engine underneath them and the wind in her ears, like soothing music. It was a comfortable feeling, something she hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in for days. A part of her had thought they wouldn’t make it out of the city, that as soon as they chose the wrong place to hide for the night, the creatures would discover them and it would be over.
Out here in the countryside, things seemed possible again. She didn’t delude herself, though. It wouldn’t be easy, but she did accept that it would be possible. That was new and exciting and exhilarating.
After a while, she sensed the bike starting to slow and looked up. Tony hadn’t lifted his hand, so they weren’t running low on gas. And besides, they had just filled up at Teddy’s parking lot, so gas wasn’t the issue.
She leaned to one side, far enough to see around him.
And saw what he was seeing: cars, including a big 18-wheel truck, strewn about the road ahead of them. The obstacle came out of nowhere and caught her off guard, like a wall sprouting from the ground.
Tony came to a complete stop on the road. He flipped the kickstand and climbed off, Lara doing the same. She still had the backpack on, so she had to move slowly, wary of quick or sudden movements that would topple her like a top.
He glanced back at her worried eyes. “Stay here for a moment.”
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He hesitated. “I don’t know. Just stay here for a moment.”
“Be careful.”
He nodded and flashed that boyish smile she had become increasingly fond on in recent days.
He slid the golf club from the dirt bike and took a few tentative steps up the road. She wondered how useful the golf club really was, and how absurd it was that he still clung to it like a favorite toy.
There were more than a dozen vehicles altogether, with the big 18-wheeler—‘Kroger’ was written on its side—taking up most of the space, the head of its tractor unit spilling onto the grass divider between the north and southbound lanes. The trailer part of the massive vehicle alone took up the entire northbound lane. Smaller cars and trucks were scattered about, taking up the rest of the space.
This isn’t right. A pileup doesn’t look like this.
The only way past the pileup was to go around, which meant driving off the main road and onto the grass. But there was a problem there, too. The flat highway was flanked by five-foot ditches on both sides. Even on a dirt bike, it would be rough going.
Tony was walking back toward her now. “I guess we’ll have to go around it.”
“You can’t see a way through?”
He shook his head. “Too many cars. I don’t know what the hell happened, but they somehow managed to block both lanes.”
She thought about what he had just said and tried to wrap her mind around the pileup and why there were suddenly cars all over the road when previously there’d only been the occasional vehicle ever since they’d left Humble behind. She was just thinking how it didn’t make sense when she heard a loud crack! shatter the morning air.
She glanced to her right, where she thought the sound had come from.
The woods. It had come from the woods.
“Tony, what was that?”
He didn’t answer her.
She looked back at him, but he wasn’t there. At first she thought he had run off and left her behind, scared away by the noise, but then realized how silly that was. Not Tony. He wouldn’t leave her. Not after all they had been through.
Something flickered in the sun, drawing her eyes. Tony’s golf club was lying on the road, the sunlight glinting off the long, steel length. He had wrapped black duct tape around the handle to get a better grip, and a piece of the tape looked as if it had come loose.
She saw bright red liquid flowing toward the golf club. Horrified, she traced it to its source…
…and found Tony on the road.
He was lying on his side, a pool of blood growing, widening underneath his head. He stared back up at her with hollow, lifeless eyes.
BOOK TWO
‡
THE ROAD
CHAPTER 19
KATE
Kate watched the ghoul through the rifle’s sight, lining the bright red dot directly on the creature’s forehead, which looked like a lump of mashed potatoes left out in the sun too long…then painted black.
Not that she needed to shoot it in the forehead to kill it, but it was more challenging than going for the chest. That was the easy shot, and she had taken too many easy shots already.
She felt Will’s breath against the back of her neck. He was close enough that she could smell his scent, a combination
of dust, dirt, and sweat. Baths had been hard to come by the last few weeks. She had learned to get used to a lot of things these days, like shooting an M4A1 rifle without feeling as if someone was hitting her in the shoulder blade with a sledgehammer.
A month ago the M4A1 would have been just a “rifle.” Now it was an “M4A1.”
Oh, how times have changed.
This particular M4A1 was one of a half-dozen Will and Danny liberated that first day. There was a suppressor at the end of the barrel, making the rifle a foot longer. It also added extra weight, but they only used suppressors at night to keep the sound down. Not that it really made things completely silent. Kate discovered, much to her chagrin, that real gun suppressors didn’t magically silence weapons the way movies had led her to believe.
She continued watching the ghoul, its shifting dark black eyes oblivious to the red dot she had placed on its forehead. The ghoul was a scout, one of many scouring the land for signs of survivors. Maybe even for them. Will had theories.
From the size of the ghoul, she guessed it was once a teenage boy. Or a girl. It could once have been a full-grown adult. It was hard to tell with them, even up close. They all looked the same, with dark, wrinkled skin, hairless bodies, black eyes, and rotted, yellow and brown crooked teeth.
She slowed down her breathing. It wasn’t a particularly hard shot, but from her vantage point—perched on the metal walkway of the water tower in the darkness, the big globe-shaped water container behind her—it was going to be a bit tricky. Next to her, Will sat silently; the only sound coming from him was his soft, unhurried breathing.
Softly, ever so softly, she tightened her forefinger against the trigger and squeezed. The M4A1 leaped slightly in her hands as expected. The bullet was away, the shot marked by a muffled noise—not completely inaudible, but hard to locate in wide-open country.
There was a slight wind, but not enough to deter the bullet’s trajectory. The silver and lead projectile hit the ghoul just below its forehead, almost exactly between its eyes, and it simply fell over into the grass.