by Tracey Ward
He glances at me, then quickly does a double take. “Probably for the best. I don’t want you coming in the RV like that.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s too risky. I need to ditch these clothes too. The jeans are toast.”
“Gonna be going through a lot of clothes if that’s true.”
“Do you trust washing them?”
He shrugs. “You’re the expert. What do you think?”
I think on it, surprised by his ‘expert’ comment. He seems to be hell bent on taking charge here, but apparently laundry can be my domain.
“I don’t know. Maybe if we soak things in bleach first.”
“Sounds good.”
“Our clothes are going to get ugly fast,” Alissa says behind me.
I sit up to look at her. “Yeah, but we’ll still have clothes. Supplies are going to be limited. We can’t go throwing things away with every wear.”
“Too bad we can’t cover them somehow. Protect them. Like with painter’s suits.”
I grin, picturing it. “You want to wear a painter’s suit all the time.”
“Not all the time, but maybe when we know we’ll be around infected.”
I lift my hands to gesture to our surroundings. “We’re always going to be around zombies. When have we not been among them lately?”
“The sporting goods store.”
“But we’re not doing that again.”
“Because of the walls?”
Partially. “Because that place was destined to be overrun.”
“They had a good system. I don’t think the zombies were a huge threat to them.”
“No but humans were. They had something good, something worth protecting which means someone was inevitably going to take it from them. If they still have control of that building, it won’t be for long. You saw what happened with the truckers. When we left, that wasn’t over yet. We just bailed at half-time.”
Alissa nods her head, looking away. “I still feel bad about that. About leaving them.”
“Me too,” I agree, thinking of Taylor and Mitch. Evey and Meredith.
And then, without wanting to, I think of Snickers. I think of her blond hair and innocent, agonized eyes. Of the way she clung to Ali. How she trusted her entirely and how it felt to see them together, protecting each other. How much it made me respect Ali. Then I snowball and think of Beth. Of how I failed her. How I let her die. How Alissa did the same to Snickers, and before I can stop it I’m angry. Angry at me and angry at Alissa. I’m angry at us for failing. Angry at us for surviving.
“Jordan?” Alissa asks, frowning at me. She must read it in my expression. The anger, the annoyance.
I lean down to Syd, ignoring her. “Where are we on the cleaning thing?”
“There’s a field just up ahead. Looks like it has a pond.”
“Perfect.” I turn to Alissa. “When we stop, will you go inside into my bag and get me a change of clothes? And a plastic garbage bag if you can find one. I need something to stow these jeans in until we get our hands on some bleach.”
“Yeah, of course. Anything in particular you want?”
I shake my head, looking toward the field and pond. There are zombies in the distance following larger, main roads but the immediate area is pretty clear. A pond at the tail end of winter, though. This is going to be cold.
“Grab me something warm.”
***
I’m able to strip down and dive into the pond without incident. Alissa hands me a bottle of body wash (Pomegranate something or other which means I’ll smell like a fruit salad) before I go and I scrub my skin raw in the chilled water. She and Syd stand watch while I get cleaned up but I’m grateful to get back inside the RV and on the move quickly. Zombies are starting to close in on the area and it’s hard to enjoy a frigid bath in the open when you’re surrounded by groaning and gunfire.
We drive for hours in relative silence. Alissa turns on the radio for a bit but it’s silent as well. All static all the time on every channel. She keeps searching through them anyway and the sound begins to grate on my nerves. I’m just about to tell her to stop when we hear something.
“Fe—dead and dy—“
“Stop there!” I shout, throwing off my blanket and coming to kneel between the seats up front. “What did he say? Was it about The Fever?”
Alissa rolls the knob back slightly but the sound doesn’t get any better. It might get worse. I can still hear a man’s voice talking faintly through the static but it’s nearly impossible to understand.
“No pass—no exceptions. The qua—areas confir—so far are…”
“Ali, hand me that marker from the glove box,” I tell her urgently.
She hands it to me as I lay the map out on the ground in front of me. I strain my ears trying to hear the announcer through the static. I wish that Syd would pull over to let me hear this but after what happened when we stopped at the highway, I get why he doesn’t.
“Quarun—down throu—Eugene and Springfi—“
“Yeah, we know,” I say impatiently. “Come one. What else have you got?”
“On the coast—tine south of Lin—City.”
“South of Lincoln City,” Alissa mutters, squinting her eyes as though it will help her listen.
I mark Lincoln City and Eugene with big red Xs on the map.
“Stopped just s—oma.”
“Stopped south of Tacoma?” Alissa asks.
Syd nods. “We already knew that. There are two military bases up there. They were trying to stop it in Olympia.”
“Shhh!” I say adamantly. Who knows if this will repeat or not? I see Syd glance back at me in the rearview with annoyance but he stays quiet. He knows I’m right. He’s just mad he got shushed by kiddo.
“To the ea—Maupin.”
The radio goes back to full static. I’m not sure if it was the end of the broadcast or our entrance into the trees, but it’s gone.
“Maupin?” Alissa asks, coming back to sit beside the map with me. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Here it is on the map. It’s almost a straight shot east of Salem and right on the river running north and south. I bet they used the water to help build the quarantine. It would be a natural barrier. All they’d have to do is blow bridges. Which means,” I draw a large irregular oval connecting the cities mentioned on the radio. “This is our quarantine zone. This is where we live now.”
Alissa stares at the map for a long time. “It’s not very big.”
“No,” I agree, shaking my head. “It’s not very big at all. And considering all the infected inside this bubble with us, it’s smaller than it looks. Not a lot of places to hide.”
“Makes you feel kind of claustrophobic, doesn’t it?” Alissa chuckles faintly. I look over at her, surprised by her tone. She’s pulling at a strand of her hair lightly, worrying it between her fingers over and over again.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” she mutters, still staring at the map.
“Al?” Syd calls.
“I said I’m good.”
“Ok.”
“So where do we go?” she asks me.
“We—“
“We get over the mountains,” Syd answers, talking right over me. I clench my jaw in annoyance. “We head as far east as we possibly can and we bunker down. Maybe team up with some other people, some that aren’t acting crazy. This is going to make the wackjobs wackier and trigger happy.”
“Like on 34.” I mutter.
“We need to steer clear of them,” he continues, ignoring me. “There’s safety in numbers as long as we can find like-minded people.”
“Actually, that’s where you’re wrong,” I interrupt because I simply can’t stand it anymore. “If we only had to worry about other people then, yes, there is safety in numbers. But when you’re dealing with zombies the opposite is true. Every person you get close to is another possible infected. They’re another chance for The Fever to find footing and kill us all. We need to he
ad into the mountains, get as high as we can and as far away from other people as possible.”
“Why high up?” Alissa asks, settling in with her back against her dad’s seat.
“Because zombies can’t climb. They rolled down I-5 because it’s mostly surrounded by farmland. It was a level plain to cross. Mountains are going to slow them down and higher elevations, preferably with rocky terrain, that’s going to all but keep them out.”
“We should really make camp with other people,” Syd grumbles.
“Shush,” Alissa tells him, smacking the back of his chair with her palm. “Jordan says we shouldn’t so we won’t. He knows about this stuff, just let him do his thing.”
I can’t help but smile at her. “Where was this blind faith when we were coming down the river?”
“I listened to you,” she protests.
“Barely.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You fought me a lot.”
“Yeah, on looting. We needed stuff!”
“And bathrooms. And walls.”
“You have such a weird phobia.”
“It’s not a phobia, it’s common sense. And while we’re on the subject, you have an unhealthy obsession with showers.”
She puts her hand up. “Don’t start. Syd will actually agree with you on that one and I have no interest in being ganged up on.”
“It’s bad for your skin to shower every single day,” Syd says.
“What’d I just say?!”
“I’m not starting in on you. Just stating facts.”
“What are you? A Snapple cap? Sorry I like to be clean.”
“Do you have Wet Ones in this RV?” I ask her.
She purses her lips at me as Syd bursts out laughing.
“Bulk pack!” he shouts, pointing over his shoulder. “Top cupboard over the sink. Will not go camping without them.”
I smile at her. “Rigid.”
“Racist,” she fires back, also smiling.
“What?” Syd asks.
“Nothing, never mind. No one uses my wet naps but me, understood? Haters be warned.”
“Uh oh,” Syd mutters.
I can tell from his tone he’s not lamenting the Wet Ones.
Alissa and I both leap up so that we’re kneeling on the floor together to get a view out the windshield. We’re cruising through a small town, one that was barely alive before death came knocking on its door. I see a small, ancient gas station, an even smaller grocery store that’s really a glorified convenience store and a few scattered houses. It’s hard to notice much of anything else through the thick swarm of infected shambling through the streets. They’re everywhere. They’re moving in and out of houses, up and down the highway, bumping into each other and stumbling in every direction. But there are no cars parked at weird angles or crashed into anything. This place was taken by surprise, probably in the night. From looks of things I doubt anyone got out.
“This is what it’s going to be like,” I say quietly, my heart in my throat at the sight of so many infected again. “Any pockets of humanity they can find, they will swarm. They will devour it. This is what comes of teaming up with other people. You practically call them to you.”
Syd drives slowly in silence, digesting that. I hope he’s listening because if they choose to join with a group, I’m probably not going with them. I gave Alissa walls, I looted when she asked, but there are limits to how far I will stretch on the rules. I will not die to see her happy.
The infected bounce and bump off the sides of the RV, blissfully unaware of our presence inside. They haven’t smelled or spotted us yet. Their brains are so far melted and gone that they can’t remember a car means people. We’re just another building to shamble past. We’re lucky in that respect. They’re mindlessness means blind determination combined with the total absence of fear or pain response, but it also means they’re just plain stupid. It’s a lucky break in this complete and utter shitstorm we’re living in.
“What do we do?” Syd finally asks solemnly. I notice his knuckles are white on the wheel.
“We keep rolling nice and slow. Windows stay up, no sudden movements inside, no loud noises. They’ll never know we were here,” I tell him calmly, my voice low and even. I wonder if they’re buying it or can they hear my heart hammering in my chest?
We all sit perfectly still, exquisitely silent as the RV presses through the throng. Alissa is pressed against my side, her arm running the length of mine. I can feel her jump every time there’s a bang or bump against the outside of the vehicle. I look at her slowly as I reach over to gently link my pinky finger with hers where it sits on her thigh. When she smiles at me it’s tight and strained but she stops jumping.
It takes us almost ten minutes to go half a mile. That’s walking speed, though there’s no way in hell I’d get out and walk that distance right now. It’s still grueling and it still hurts to be moving that slowly surrounded by that many zombies. By the time we clear the edges of the swarm, my palms are sweating and my pinky hurts from where Alissa is squeezing it around hers.
“Well that was fun,” she mutters, releasing me and rubbing her hands over her jeans to clear the sweat.
I reach for the map. “It will get worse before it gets better. A lot of towns are going to be like that so close to civilization. Once we cross the river it won’t be so bad. They’ll bottle neck on the bridges or try to cross the water and get swept away.”
“Swept away where? They’ll still end up somewhere inside the quarantine zone.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be more spread out. It’ll help thin the herd. Think about it, what’s better? Fifty infected coming at you at all at once in a huge group like back there? Or one to two every now and then spread out over time?”
“You mean over eternity.”
I haven’t thought about it in those terms, not really, but she’s right. We have to see it that way. We have to acknowledge that this is how it is now. And it sucks.
“Yeah,” I agree, nodding my head. “Forever.”
“I still think they could find a cure,” she replies adamantly. I don’t know if it’s stubbornness or hope. She’s loaded with both. “They would have just fire bombed us all by now if they weren’t going to bother trying to save us, right?”
“Would you be behind the President, Congress or the Senate if they voted to bomb an entire section of our own country, killing thousands of American citizens?” Syd asks.
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, whatever keeps them from killing us, I guess.”
“For now,” I mumble.
“What?”
I should have kept my mouth shut. I don’t want to kill her hope if she actually has it, but I won’t lie to her either. I’m not going to treat her like she can’t handle it, not when I know she can.
“It’s early,” I say reluctantly. “Give it time. Wait until the doctors and scientists go on TV to say there is no cure. Then what? People on the inside like us are still going to live despite the infected. Babies are going to be born, it’s going to happen, and the population here will never die out completely on its own. Meanwhile, we’re no longer contributing to the country as a whole. How much money and how many resources will be spent containing us? The military presence along the quarantine borders alone is probably huge. There will be drones monitoring the perimeter. They’re probably watching the area with satellites. The coast is being guarded by the US, Japan and Russia. How long can that go on? Not forever. Eventually, people on the outside are going to get tired of funding all this and they’re going to start coming to terms with an absolution.”
Alissa stares at me for a long time, her face blank. Then she sighs as she moves to sit up front with Syd.
“This is depressing,” she grumbles.
“Apocalypses generally are.”
Chapter Five
“Stop!”
Syd slams on the breaks. We all fly forward in the cab, me more than them since
I’m seatbeltless. My face nearly connects with the console but it’s my own dumb fault. I’m the fool who yelled.
“What?” Syd demands. His voice is tight, his eyes roving our surroundings for the threat.
We’re passing through a small town with a surprisingly large grocery store just off the main road. There aren’t a lot of people here and minimal infected, as far as I can see. There are cars whizzing by at dangerous speeds, most heading south into the thick of the fray. I only count four cars in the parking lot of this store. The windows are already busted out, the automatic doors jammed open.
“We need to loot.”
“What? No, we need to run.”
“To the mountains where’s there nothing?”
He shakes his head. “We’ll survive. Al and I know how to live in the woods for a while.”
“How long is a while?” I challenge him.
“Not forever,” Alissa mumbles.
“Exactly. We don’t know how long we’ll be in hiding. We need supplies.”
“Like what?” Syd asks.
“Bottled water, non-perishables, canned goods, first aid supplies,” I rattle off.
Syd scowls at me, then at the building. “There are people in there.”
“Smart people who propped the door open and bashed the windows out,” I point out. “People looking to have an exit. My kind of people.”
“You aren’t worried you’re kind will shoot us over a bunch of Evian?” Alissa asks me skeptically.
I shrug. “They were here first. We won’t challenge them. We’ll make it clear we’re not here for a fight, just for supplies.”
“It’s risky,” Syd complains. He looks toward the road leading north, empty and inviting.
“We need this,” I insist. “Who knows what we’ll find later? The towns will get smaller, the resources scarcer. This is our chance.”
Syd debates the decision for a long time. Longer than I’d like. It’s the Highway 34 crossing all over again which makes my blood boil in my veins. Finally he pulls the RV slowly into the parking lot, turning us around sharply so we’re facing the exit. If we need to bail quickly we can be on the road again in seconds.