by Chris Lowry
I was afraid he was going to say bit. Tell me he had the virus.
But he reached into his closed coat
And pulled out a map.
CHAPTER SIX
I don't think anyone knows what it's like to live with a broken heart.
It's stupid, really.
A song, a part of a movie or even words from someone else could set it off, like a tear bomb explosion.
When I lived in Florida, I would drive my two older children back to Arkansas, a fifteen hour drive.
It would usually be after a great visit where lots of fun was had.
I often started out at six or seven at night, so the kids could sleep while I rolled over the dark highways to catch a sunrise in Mississippi or Tennessee.
Tired after a day of play, more tired still from driving and too much coffee, the walls would come down.
Those barriers we build to block off the pain.
Some singer would talk about driving his son home on the interstate and driving back by himself or reminisce about the memories of watching their kid grow up.
The things I missed.
Just the little things.
That would set me off.
Tears would spill, throat clogged from sobs bitten back.
I'd grip the wheel tight while the lights around me turned kaleidoscope in my eyes.
Keeping it between the lines, keeping it locked just under eighty.
I missed so much, compounded still by a third child from a second ex. Closer still for every other weekend, and some trips back to Arkansas.
But most nights I was alone, unless I found company in the arms of a stranger.
Even then that was physical, just a respite, like giving salt water to a man dying of thirst.
Nothing quenched.
Heartbroken.
I don't think I'd wish that on my worst enemy, living in a kind of hell where any sort of happiness made me feel guilty.
Those little thoughts would pop up in my mind, as if I didn't deserve to be happy because I was missing out on so much.
It didn't matter to me how many happiness gurus I read, and there were a ton.
It didn't matter that the kids had great stepfathers, men who were better matches for the women I had children with.
My dumb choices led me to be alone, and I built a prison of guilt, and misery, which made it impossible to love me.
It was no wonder I liked killing Z.
Liked isn't the right word.
I was damn good at it.
And who doesn't like being good at something. Great even.
I shuddered.
"Cold?" Anna asked and shifted the blanket over me with one arm as she snuggled against my leg.
We were in the back of the bus.
I was supposed to be sleeping, but the memories were strong tonight, made stronger still by pangs of hunger and some regret.
Maybe it was an adrenalin crash too.
Saving the Boy and getting Bem back, fighting through a monster mash of Z to get him.
I couldn't sleep.
I could watch them though. Bem snugged up between her brother and the wall of the bus.
He put himself between her and Tyler, a protective measure that made me grin.
No joy in the grin though.
Bis was still out there.
And though we had a direction and destination, we did not have her.
Brian thought she was dead.
He wouldn't say it, wouldn't call what I wanted to do a fool's errand, but he wasn't about to stay behind or split up the group.
I read it in his eyes.
The others weren't dropping out either.
They had tried a fort. They had tried community.
It didn't work.
But with me, it did.
Maybe it was the purpose.
I used to do that at work. State the mission objective, give the vision, outline how to get it done, and turn people loose to do it.
It was the same here.
We were going East to save Bis. Bis Bo Bistan. My shugga bugga, little baby girl.
She was lost in a sea of zombies, maybe trapped in a refugee camp.
I didn't know what we would find, but the mission was simple.
Search and rescue.
My mission was simpler still.
Save the kids.
Keep everyone safe.
Kill anyone who got in the way, Z or otherwise.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"What do you want to do first?" Brian asked.
I could feel all their eyes on me. Watching. Waiting.
Maybe they just wanted someone to blame when things went wrong. Except if that was the case, they wouldn't be here now.
Halfway across the country and back. Resurrected from the almost dead a couple of times. Again and again, the odds stacked up and time and again I beat them.
Then why the hell would I have any doubt at all? Why would the voices inside my head start nitpicking and Monday morning quarterbacking?
"Supplies," I told him.
It was the first thing I thought of.
"We need to get the buses ready for a long haul."
He screwed up his eyebrows.
"What do you mean?"
I meant Anna had a good idea transporting them all here in them.
And sleeping in them overnight gave me an idea.
A mobile campsite, protected, safe.
We wouldn't have to look for a new house to break into and clean out each night.
"We're going glamping," I said.
"What the hell is glamping?"
"Glamorous camping," Peg explained.
He turned an eye toward the bus.
"In that?"
"You've got to have vision, Bri," I said and ushered him up the three steps inside.
The long yellow school bus had green seats on both sides, stretching back for forty feet to the emergency exit back door. There was a hatch in the roof at the halfway mark, a second exit in case something went wrong.
"We need food," I said. "And water. We're going to take out half the seats, find camping gear and stay in here."
"Tools," he said and he couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. "You're going to build a rolling fort."
"A piece at a time," I clapped him on the shoulder. "It won't give us much privacy, but we can lock it up tight at night."
"We'll have to hunt for gas too," said Peg.
"We can siphon as we go," I said.
I liked the gleam in their eyes.
Forward motion was progress, and now that we had the Boy back and a map, we had a destination to motion toward.
“You get tough because you have to.
That's what surviving is all about.”
“Even if you didn't know how before the fall, it's all about learning now," I told them.
"We're going to fight. We have to. We always will. Wherever there are people like us, there are others who want to take what is ours. They want to hurt us."
I glanced around at them, locking eyes with as many as I could. I say Tyler nodding in the back, Brian glaring with fierce determination.
Best of all, I saw pride.
Pride in Bem and the Boy's eyes as they watched me.
Their old man may not have been much before, just a manager in a cube farm, spending his weekends doing stuff they had no idea about.
Running for long distances that most people wouldn't drive.
Playing at the shooting range. Learning to fight for exercise.
Just reading about a ton of subjects and following wherever the interest may lead.
All for nothing in a normal world.
But hard currency now.
And I could teach them all of it.
"We will fail," I told them. "We can't let that stop us. You fall down, you get up."
"Like that song," said Brian.
"Exactly. We don't stop."
I pointed at the bus behind them.
"We have
shelter we can take with us. Is it going to be tight? Sure. But we can pitch tents on the top and camp under the stars for extra room. We hunt for essentials. Food. Weapons. Gas. Water."
"In that order?"
Brian again, making a joke.
I laughed and let the others know it was okay so they did too.
"The only water I know that would work on the bus was Sparky's firewater back at that compound," I shot back.
That got a few more chuckles.
"We need to study too," that earned a few groans.
Before the scars, before the welts on my head and neck, the brushes with death that left me looking a little warmed over, I could have passed for a college professor I'd been told.
Maybe that's why I read so much, between sixty and a hundred books a year for decades.
A man who stopped learning started dying.
So I told them that.
"We need to learn. Medicine. Mechanics. Farming. Anything that can help us survive. So when we hunt, we look for books too. Brian's going to find out your interests, and we double up, triple up so there's more than one person who knows it."
"I am?" he acted mock offended.
"We're probably going to need three or four medics," he added. "Just for you."
That got more laughs and I couldn't help but grin.
"Yeah, so make it six."
The laughter felt good.
The planning felt good.
All that was missing was Bis. And we had a map to go find her.
It felt like everything was coming together. Finally.
And all it took was living the vanlife to make it happen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Once upon a time, back before the world had zombies, I worked in a cube farm.
We called it a sales organization and dressed it up in a bunch of different ways, but it didn't change the fact.
I spent ten hours a day in a glass walled fishbowl looking out over rows of cubes manned by people who hated what they did.
After my ten hour day, I'd drive home, slip into shorts and go for a run.
Sometimes on my way home, I'd stop at a Krav Maga class, or an MMA class.
But if I wasn't at work, I was alone, except for every other weekend and once a month.
Even when I went on dates, I was alone.
Sure, I played the part well enough. Performed for the crowd as it were.
I made sure my date had a good time, had a story to tell with romantic gestures, and sometimes I even got lucky.
Either with a second date or with breakfast the next morning.
I hated my life too.
No one expects to be twice divorced with kids living in other states and across town.
That isn't a dream anyone has growing up.
It made me good at logistics and being flexible with my time.
It made me good at learning how to fight the loneliness.
And for a short while, it made me good at making money.
People called me a leader, because I could say pretty words that made them feel better about our sales job.
We worked with the military and veterans, so my words got me invited into the C-suite, which put me on assignments to bases for presentations.
It put a lot of good men and women in my circles and network, and those hard chargers thought it was fun to take a civilian to the range, or on a driving course, or even once on the obstacle course in the pine forest of Georgia.
The first time they saw me shoot, I always looked for the surprise in their eyes.
I don't sound like a boy from the country, but I had my first rifle almost at the same time I was off a bottle.
I was practically toddling with a pistol and toted one around the woods I grew up in for years.
It was just a tool to me.
An effective tool.
But a necessary one in this new world.
And we needed ammunition.
"A supply run," I said to Brian.
"I'm not arguing against it," he said back. "I'm just reminding you that you were the one who said we keep the group together."
I hate it when people use my own words against me.
The plan was for a couple of us to go off in search of supplies.
In the past, it'd been handled by Byron and his boys, or by Tyler or by me.
Now with the half dozen we had remaining, living in cramped quarters on the yellow school bus, I had made the vow that we all do things together.
Because the last couple of times I let people out of my sight, they ended up disappearing and getting wrapped up in megalomaniac drama.
Or caught by militias.
Or run out of safe spaces because their ex-husbands showed up.
Or maybe not even ex, maybe just some guy who though the Moon married them and served green cheese for the reception.
Whacko.
I rolled my eyes at Brian.
He rolled his even harder right back at me.
"Alright," I sighed. "How do you want to do this."
"Hey this ain't my rodeo cowboy. You're in charge of this here outfit."
He made a voice as he said it, a character actor I couldn't place off the top of my head.
"I keep trying to put you in control."
"And look where that's gotten us," he pointed at the bus.
I didn't need to look.
We were crammed in pretty tight. I had the bright idea to take out some of the seats, which gave us more room to lay down at night, and we carried tents for the roof.
But it was still twelve people living the van life in a school bus on the verge of breaking down.
There was a book I'd seen in a store about a guy who jammed a bunch of hippies into a bus and took off on a cross country road trip, but I'd never read it.
I wondered how he dealt with so many free spirts.
Like herding cats, I imagined.
The same was true here.
Even though Brian was deferential, Peg whispered in his ear, a doubting Thomas if there ever was one.
At first, I thought they were being reason to my ego, the yin to my yang, but that didn't stop it from being annoying.
I don't like being second guessed. At least not constantly.
Byron missed having boys to boss around. Tyler had always been an introverted loner. My kids and Anna were just quiet.
I dropped my head and let the weight of the world drag me down a little bit.
I could feel time slipping past, each second one moment too long, too much distance, too much to hunt to find my youngest.
The odds were beyond astronomical, they were impossible. It was a fool's quest, something more akin to tilting at windmills.
I was putting these people at risk to satisfy a curiosity.
Except for one thing.
We had a starting point.
The Boy found a map of the refugee camps, and rosters of occupants.
He'd almost died for it, sent to Nashville for the knowledge he had in his head. I took care of the woman who tried to kill him by proxy.
But he was safe, and he had the information we needed to get started.
Her name on a list.
Her location.
At least it had been months ago.
But if she did what I told her, if she did like Bem and The Boy, I could find her.
I felt like she was still alive, in my heart. And I'd follow my heart to the end of the earth to make sure she was safe.
"Supplies," Brian interrupted me.
"Right," I said. "Round everyone up and let's make a plan."
He went to get them, and I stared into the woods we were camping beside.