Tris didn’t sleep well for the next few hours. At the first trace of sunlight, she got up, geared up, and raced to Abby’s room. The door was unlocked when she tried it. Abby looked like death warmed over. She lay with her arms at her sides under the blanket, shivering, lips blue. Emilio paced.
The girl brightened a little at the sight of Tris, and rasped, “Morning.”
“What’s wrong?” Emilio sounded choked up.
“I think the fever’s breaking… she should be getting better soon. She needs fluids. Maybe Mac has some soup?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Emilio peeled the blanket off and picked her up. “You need to get some food in you.”
Abby whined, but appeared to lack the strength to protest.
Soon, Tris sat at a table picking at eggs Denise brought over. Zara pushed food around her plate, evidently also uninterested in eating. After carrying Lauren outside hours ago, they’d doused the body in moonshine a safe distance away from the building and sent her into the next world with a match. Micah, in a dust-hopper leather tunic and sweat pants, held Olivia’s hand while he watched his grandmother ‘go to Heaven.’ Tris hadn’t quite grasped the concept, but didn’t dare breach the somberness by asking what that meant.
Even Kirsten appeared morose upon learning about Lauren. Everyone, Warren included, knew and respected her. Isla hadn’t stopped crying since she’d heard forty minutes ago. Lloyd showed the least reaction of anyone. If Tris had to hang any mood on him, she figured guilt at it not being him that had died, but he kept quiet and didn’t give off any indication he planned to do anything crazy. The man didn’t strike her as suicidal, more like he’d calculated himself as the most expendable.
Warren stared at Abby the whole time everyone ate. He had that paranoid glint in his eyes as if any second he expected the girl to go insane and throw her father across the room―and he wanted to be ready to put a bullet in her.
Micah walked out of the back, still with a shell-shocked expression, and went over to where Trisha sat with her father. He stood at the edge of their table, murmuring with them. Tricia’s eyes lit up and she looked at her father as if begging for a puppy. Micah sat beside Trisha while Sergeant Ellis went to join Warren and Zack at their table.
Some minutes later, Ellis and Zack stood and shook hands like a pair of old friends about to part ways. Ellis returned to the table where Micah and Trisha waited. The kids got up, and he brought them over to the counter, starting a conversation with Mac.
Snippets of words filtered through the fog in Tris’ mind. Micah had apparently gotten under Olivia’s skin. Mac’s wife had offered to take him in since he’d wound up an orphan. He hesitated, not wanting to lose his best friend Trisha. This led to the boy suggesting Trisha and her father stay with Mac as well since they really didn’t have anywhere specific to go.
Once everyone finished off breakfast, the group of survivors met in a cluster at the center of the room.
“Well everyone, I don’t have to say that the past month has been some of the hardest times any of us are ever likely to see.” Sergeant Ellis stood behind Trisha, a hand squeezing each of her shoulders. “By now, you all know that our dear Lauren is no longer with us.” A momentary silence lingered, during which Micah sniffled and wiped his nose. “Olivia and Mac have offered to take Micah in. Since my daughter likes the little bastard, I’ve wound up getting talked into sticking around here too.”
Murmurs and nods went around the room, as well as many sympathetic looks to Micah. Kristen stared at the floor. Cassie came out of nowhere, clinging to Tris from behind and bawling like a little girl. Tris put an arm around her.
The woman kept muttering, “I can’t believe she’s gone,” over and over.
“So you’re just going to stay here?” asked Warren.
Sergeant Ellis shrugged. “Not like any of us are in a real hurry to be somewhere… other than not in Amarillo.”
Zack looked at Tris. “Where were you planning on taking us anyway?”
“Well, I was driving back to the roadhouse I run with Kevin… but there’s a well-defended settlement on the way that we sometimes visit. I could drop you at Nederland. They’ve got a militia, gates made out of old dump trucks, a large farm… it’s nice. Highly organized. About four hundred people.” She looked off, thinking back to Ann and Bill’s house. She missed having Zoe around, and it sure had been easier to fall asleep there… even before the Code proved to be smoke and mirrors.
“Settlement sounds like a good idea.” Kristen looked up finally. “I’ll go there. I mean… Even if I gotta like be someone’s wife or something. It’s safe there, right?”
“Safe as I suppose anything can get anymore,” said Zara. “I decided to stay there awhile back and I don’t regret it.” She rambled on about the militia organization, the farms, even some holiday festivals they’d started to bring back.
Isla wandered around, uninterested in the conversation. Her brother had his tee shirt back now that her jeans had been washed, and he kept a close eye on her as she weaved among people. Mac’s shop didn’t have any shoes small enough for her, but she didn’t care. She even hovered by Abby for some time while Zara talked about Nederland.
Eventually, those who weren’t staying filtered outside to the van. Tris went to shake Mac’s hand, and got a hug instead.
Micah walked up to her, speaking to his toes. “Thanks. It ain’t your fault what happen’ ta my gran’ma. F’you didn’t come for us, we’d all be dead.”
I was slow… I… She sighed in her head. I chose to protect the kids.
Tris hugged him, and a flood of apologies spilled out of her. It took some time to pry herself away from him. “You be good, okay?”
He nodded. “‘Kay.”
She trudged outside, disconnected the power lead, and climbed in behind the wheel. Abby had resumed her perch between the front seats, only with Isla kneeling in front of her playing with a bunch of plastic dolls that hadn’t been there before. Tris assumed they came from the shop, or perhaps Denise donated them, and didn’t bother to question it. Abby humored the smaller girl while she explained all about how scared the plastic people were and that she would protect them from the ‘bad monsters.’ Abby kept glancing over the child into the rear of the van, fear plain in her stare. She too played with the dolls, but seemed to do it more out of wanting to humor Isla than amusement.
Warren muttered in the back, trying to convince Tom to pull his sister away from ‘that girl,’ but the seventeen-year-old told him to relax. Kristen whispered to herself, begging no one in particular to protect her. Cassie sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, knees to her chest, looking terrified and in desperate need of comforting. She caught Tris making eye contact, and offered a grateful smile before her fear returned.
Tris checked her map, planning to take 287 up to Route 70, and probably follow 25 around Denver before cutting west on 52. Once she got there, she felt pretty confident she’d remember the way to skirt Boulder and get into Ned. If not, she had Zara to help navigate.
An hour and forty-four minutes later, Tris found it next to impossible to resist the urge to whirl around and scream at Warren to shut up. He’d been chattering incessantly, muttering about Abby looking worse and worse, and how she’d turn at any second.
“Argh!” yelled Tris, startling everyone. “I need some air. Anyone else need to water the bushes?”
A few affirmative responses came, so she pulled over on the side of a dusty road. The area offered nothing but flatness and scrub brush, so men and women split up on different sides, using the van for cover. Jose didn’t care who saw what and let fly on the road a few steps behind the door.
Emilio carried Abby back from where they’d wandered off to pee and eased her to sit by the side of the road in the shade of the van, then forced her to drink some water. She choked and gagged on it, but swallowed some. Snot continued to stream out of her nose.
People gathered around in a semicircle, attracted by th
e heavy wheezing in her breath. Abby tried to put on an energetic smile, but her eyes appeared dull. Emilio ran his hand through her hair, long and straight to his curly. Tris wondered what had become of the girl’s mother, but didn’t want to ask. Looking at their faces left no doubt of the relation.
Abby trembled, though whether from fear or illness Tris couldn’t tell.
Amid the huddle, Kristen sniffled, covered her mouth, and looked away. Cassie glanced back and forth between Kristen and Abby, confused for a second before her blue eyes went wide.
“No… no no no no,” said Cassie. “You can’t. You just can’t!”
Zara’s expression hardened.
“I’m sorry, Emilio. It’s time.” Warren put a hand on his pistol.
“Don’t,” said Tris. “It’s a god damned cold, you paranoid fuck.”
Emilio lunged up from his knees, whirling on Warren.
Warren went to pull his gun; Abby tried to scream, but sounded like a dying frog. Emilio drew faster, and shot Warren twice. The grey-haired man careened over backward, firing three times on his way to the ground. Emilio grunted and collapsed at Abby’s feet.
Isla shrieked and leapt flat to the ground.
Zara whipped her MP5 up, aimed at the survivors. “Nobody move.”
Warren growled, cradling his lower left gut. He wheezed and gasped. Emilio moaned, nearly face down on the dirt, bent legs keeping his butt in the air.
“Daddy.” Abby draped herself over him, sobbing. “Daddy, no!”
“What if he’s right?” asked Zack. “Look at her? She’s practically a damn zombie now. What if she snaps?”
“No one even suspected Lauren,” muttered Cassie. “She didn’t even look sick at all. That only took hours.”
“She,” wheezed Warren, trying to crawl backward on one elbow. “Had a large wound. A lot of it hit her system at once. The girl got a smaller dose.”
“You’re so convinced she got a dose?” asked Zara.
Cassie rushed to Emilio, rolled him on his back, and pulled at his shirt. The young blonde woman’s hands shook, but she pressed them down on a bullet wound near the center of his chest.
“Abby,” yelled Tris. “Her name is Abby. Don’t call her ‘the girl.’ You’re trying to make her seem like a thing you can kill and not a person!”
“Please stop yelling,” said Isla, cowering on the ground. “You’re scaring me.”
Jose flicked his thumb at the safety on his M-16. “She would’ve turned by now if she was gonna. Mom and Dad didn’t take this long.”
“I dunno.” Lloyd looked down. “Maybe, maybe not. Feels wrong ta just shoot her ’til she’s all the way gone.”
“Abby,” said Tris. “Are you hungry?”
“No!” she wailed.
“What’s nine times nine?”
“That asshole shot my father and you’re asking me math questions?” Abby glared for a second before doubling over with a wheezing cough. She threw up while sobbing, and nearly choked on it.
Tris ran to Abby’s side, sliding to a stop on her knees. She patted the girl on the back while glaring at Warren. “She’s not losing her mental faculties. She’s got a flu or something!”
“That’s what the Virus was designed to do,” said Zara, a hitch of guilt in her voice. “Exactly what you’re doing to each other right now. Paranoia, fear, turning on yourselves. They projected seventeen percent of the casualties would be caused by ‘fallout events’ like this.”
“She’s… infected.” Warren gave up trying to crawl and lay there breathing while clamping his hand over his gut.
Abby sat back on her heels, one arm clinging to Tris, the other reaching for her father.
Emilio raised his hand at her, unable to lift his head. “Abby… I’m… sor―”
His arm fell flat.
Abby burst into a screaming, sobbing missile launched from Tris’ shoulder. She fell on her father, pounding a fist into his chest while screaming, “Daddy, no!” over and over.
Rage boiled over in Tris’ heart. She leapt to her feet and put three rounds from the Beretta into Warren’s face in one second.
Zack swiveled; his M4 barked, and a lance of fire ripped through her chest. Tris stumbled backward, an inferno flooding her lungs. Zara’s MP5 lit up with muzzle flare, though the sound of the gunshots seemed miles away.
Both of Zack’s eyes exploded in spouts of blood, a pair of matching crimson spigots poured from the back of his head. He crumpled in place. Tris staggered two paces left and collapsed half-seated on the edge of the paving. The Beretta hit the dirt, and she held both hands over a bullet hole near her breast while rationing her breaths so it didn’t burn so damned much.
I’ll be okay… She grunted as gravity pulled her toward the road. Hurt more when Zara shot me. Tris clutched her chest, gasping for air. She tried to lift her head to examine her wound, but couldn’t move it. This is gonna itch. The world spun around and around, and drowned in black.
evin leaned his arm out the window and gave Fitch a thumbs up. This stretch of I-80 lay about forty minutes from home and he’d had enough of trundling along. He leaned on the accelerator and the Challenger pinned him to the seat. In four seconds, the speedometer hit 194 and strained to go up one more tick. The car rattled and wobbled at the limits of the frame’s aerodynamic capabilities. The Behemoth shrank into a speck and vanished.
With any luck, Tris will have been home already as Amarillo presented a there-and-back route as opposed to his ‘running around all over the place pointless waste of time.’ He pounded the center of the steering wheel.
“Dumbass.” He made a grand gesture with his right hand. “Yes. That’s me. John Q. Dumbass.” Fingers drummed on the wheel. “Why do those names always have a Q for a middle initial?”
The need to grab the real Tris and hold her drew forth a howl of anticipation. He bounced in his seat like a child before a birthday party. It didn’t take long at that speed for his roadhouse to come up… and shoot right by. He slowed, cursing his excessive enthusiasm, and pulled a U-turn across the middle of the interstate. A moment later, he skidded down the approach ramp to the rest stop he called home.
Kevin rolled to a halt in one of the front parking spaces; driving around to the garage where the Challenger belonged would add two minutes. He swiped his finger across the rocker switches to shut down; bright azure went dark with each click.
He leapt out and ran to the door, flinging it open.
Three men and two women, all in their mid-to-late-twenties sat around as if they owned the place. Bee, or at least an inert chassis that used to be her, draped over the counter with several new bullet holes in her back.
“’Sup,” said a bald pudgy guy with a curly black goatee that resembled pubic hair.
He blinked at Bee before glancing at the people off to the right. “Who shot my android?”
“Your android?” asked a skinny, tanned, shirtless woman in a denim skirt and pink flip-flops.
“Yeah.” Kevin hardened his stare. “My android. This is my roadhouse.”
“Ain’t no one here when we found the place,” said Pube.
The other woman, clad in a patchwork of leather armor that covered everything but her head, glanced at Pube. “Yo, you sure? Shit’s gonna come down if this guy’s legit.”
“I said, Place was fuckin empty.” Pube stood and spat a half-eaten fried potato disc to the side.
She backed away, avoiding eye contact with Pube.
Kevin glanced at the floor, tapping his boot. Anger flew straight past the point where any showed on the outside. As soon as the rumble of the Behemoth approached outside, he yanked the 1911 from its holster and drilled Pube twice in the chest. The heavyset man managed to pull his gun before his life fled, but couldn’t raise it high enough to fire.
The topless woman drew a pair of thick, squat swords with spike-studded guards over the handles. A small man in one of the booths let out a shriek of terror and slithered under the table. The other male squatter
made the mistake of going for a shotgun, which took too long to come around.
Kevin rushed against a low tile-covered wall while firing two more rounds. One struck shotgun-boy in the teeth on pure luck, the other caught him high and right on the chest; the corpse fell backward over a bench seat and landed with legs up.
Swordswoman stared for a split second before deciding it stupid to risk a twenty-foot sprint at a man with a gun, and dove out of sight under a table. Leather girl had frozen where she sat, hand under her coat, eyes on the window.
Kevin glanced to his right; Neeley had popped up out of the Behemoth’s roof and had his Dragunov aimed at her. Fitch rushed the door with his shotgun at the ready. The cowering man let out a shriek when the doors slammed open.
“What the fuck is this?” bellowed Fitch.
Kevin stood from behind his cover, keeping the gun trained on the woman in the leather jacket. “Pull your hand out real slow. I don’t need to say what’ll happen if it ain’t empty. And you with the knives, come on out.”
Leather woman complied. Once her hands rose over her head, Neeley ducked into the enormous black pickup truck, emerging from the door a few seconds later. The woman with the swords crawled out and stood, her bare chest smudged with dirt from the floor.
Kevin eyed the back hallway. Where the hell is she? “Answer this question real careful. Did you see a woman with white hair?”
Fitch stifled a laugh.
“No,” said the woman in leather.
“What did you do to Sang?”
Sword-woman showed a little guilt. “He tried to pull a gun on Bob. They beat him up pretty bad, but I don’t think he’s dead.”
Kevin pointed at the still-hiding man. “You. Out.”
The guy dragged himself into the open and stood. He reminded Kevin of one of those ‘computer geeks’ from some of the old movies. Despite having a pistol on his belt, he’d made no move for it or even seemed to remember he had it.
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