But this post-plague outbreak world was all Zach and I knew. Since we had been born, we’d been surviving, and had only made it this far with the help of family and friends who loved us enough to save our lives and train us to survive. And now, as we raced to Boston to hopefully help develop a cure for the illness that turned human beings into undead monsters, things were getting worse. The zombies were not only following us, following me, but people were doing desperate things, things they would never have done in a normal world. Burning plague victims at the stake, before they had even turned: it seemed too horrible to take in. I looked out the window as we passed towns and trees on our way to the border, and I remembered what those victims had looked like, tied up, with wood piled at their feet, and some with flames already licking at their legs.
The sight of the flames at their feet would haunt me, I knew that. But worse than that was the memory of their screams of pain and terror at being faced with one of the worst ways a living being could die: being burned alive.
Looking out the window and remembering, I became aware of a strange scraping sensation at my feet. It was more of a vibration than a sound. I looked down and stomped my foot on the floor of the SUV. The scraping sound stopped. Huh, I thought, that was weird… What happened next made me completely forget the vibration.
“Oh my god,” Jonathan was looking out the back window. “Jake, STOP!”
We’d been driving on the highway for maybe 20 minutes with me just staring out the window in a daze of memories and musings. Then all hell broke loose.
We all turned to look out the back window as Dad did a U-turn, drove back 30 yards and pulled the SUV over. The sight that greeted us made us gasp almost in unison.
The van had crashed, and smoke was coming out of the buckled hood.
We all poured out and ran back to try and save as many as we could. The van had hit a light pole and careened into a parked car and was stuck up against it.
“Luke, D, try to get that door open,” Dad yelled as he pulled the key on the small fire extinguisher he’d grabbed from under our dashboard. He sprayed under the buckled hood where flames were starting to flicker.
I heard screams coming from the inside of the van. Through the window I could see Gisele’s cousin screaming and flailing at … something. Something was in the van with them. I strode up and punched a window with my elbow. The glass shattered and I reached in and opened the door. Claude, holding his portable IV pump and limping, and Vee and the two others scrambled out and ran a few dozen yards before stopping and turning to look. I grabbed the girl and pulled her out.
“What’s your name again?”
“Leia.” She scrambled away from the van. “Gisele! She is… Oh! My auntie! Please you have to go get her!” Leia ran to the SUV. Looking back at the van, a shiver ran down my spine. Gisele…
As I stuck my head into the door to get a better look, I heard a low growl. “Gisele?” I said, then grabbed both sides of the door and hoisted myself in.
“Hello?” The growl had stopped and I heard a scrambling. As my eyes adjusted to the dark interior, I could make out the little 5 year old girl Gisele, crouched in the corner, and a body at her feet. She growled again, and swung her eyes to the side window, then back to me.
“You’re looking for a way out, I know,” I began. I knew she would consider me another zombie, from my smell. I looked down at her feet. “That’s your mother.” I looked back up to Gisele’s face. “Let me have her, okay?” I slowly grabbed the arm of the unmoving form and pulled. Gisele growled at me again, looking into my face and baring her teeth. I stopped. “Give me the body, Gisele.” I pulled again. I got about a foot more before she growled again, this time loud and menacing. I saw there was blood on the face and in her mouth. Her teeth were red with it. I looked down at the body again, but it was face down and the back of the van was too dark to see any more clearly. “I’m taking this.” I said, and started pulling again.
“RAWRRR!!!!” Gisele leapt at me from her crouching position, flinging herself at me bodily and throwing me backward into the middle bench seat of the van. I shoved her back easily, and she fell against the rear door. Screaming again, she seemed to gather herself for another leap.
“RRAWRRAARRR!!!!!!” I screamed back at her in my best imitation of a primitive animal. She looked taken aback, and sat back onto her heels. Growling loudly again at her, I grabbed the corpse’s arms and retreated to the front of the van, and backed out the door.
“I’ll take her,” said DeAndre behind me. I looked into his face and his eyebrow was raised, a slight smile on his face.
“What?” He just shrugged and shook his head, trying to hide his smile. “Well, what was I supposed to do? She was like a dog guarding a bone.” I smiled myself and helped D carry the body of Gisele’s mother to the side of the street.
She was definitely dead. Her throat was ripped out. Dad stood over us, looking down at the lady who, not half an hour before, had been crying over her little girl. The thing in the van that had been Gisele was now a problem.
“I’ll handle it,” Dad said grimly, clutching his shotgun resolutely. I sighed. This was not the first, nor the tenth time this sort of thing had happened. You just never knew when they would turn. She’d been in the latter stages of the plague, then the trauma of almost getting burned alive by a mob, then the chase and the mob crashing into the van she was riding in. It had all probably contributed to the turning. I gulped and remember Mom back home and, even though it would be a close shave if we pulled off the miracle and got back to her in time, it was far better than having my own mother get traumatized in the SUV on the way to Boston, turning, and then attacking her own family in the close quarters.
Looking down at Gisele’s mother once more, I went over to the van. Dad was looking in the rear door window, contemplating how he was going to get the zombie girl out. “Let me,” I said. Reaching and quickly opening the door, I caught the zombie by surprise and it turned and almost fell out onto the street. With lightning speed, I grabbed it and wrenched it out, and, nodding at Dad, flung it off to the side where it landed on its back, looking up at me. Baring its teeth and growling, it started to get to its feet, but it never made it. I took a step back as Dad stepped up and leveled the shotgun at the thing’s head and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, and black zombie blood and tissue sprayed out onto the asphalt as the thing gently fell back down, almost in slow motion. Most of its head was gone; there was just the neck and the brain stem left. It was dead.
I heard gasps from behind me and turned to see the two adult victims we’d rescued standing there with shocked looks on their faces. Beside them I saw Leia. She had a scowl on her face as she looked down at what used to be her cousin. Then she slowly turned away and went to go sit next to our SUV, resting her back against it as she slumped to the ground. I stared at her thoughtfully. That kid had seen some shit and lived through it.
There wasn’t much to do afterward, except calm everyone down and sort things out. After looking under the hood and fiddling with it, DeAndre declared the van unsafe to drive, so we took everything out and piled it all into the SUV. It took us only 20 minutes to drive to Claude’s house. He said he had a tripped-out Humvee with flame-proof tires and it would work great. Being packed like sardines in the SUV for those 20 minutes with four more plague-infected victims was not fun, especially with two of them burn victims, but we got through it. Within an hour we were all back into two vehicles, driving east and then south again toward Boston. When we got to Claude’s I took Leia aside while the others settled in his Humvee.
“Hey, Leia,” she looked at me. I could still see the scowl on her face. I handed her a bottle of water and sat down next to her. “Kid, sometimes bad things happen, especially nowadays…”
She stopped me right there.
“My parents were infected and turned last year. They hunted me at my house for two days while I hid in the attic before they finally decided to leave the house and go find something to ea
t elsewhere. I had no toilet, no food, no water. Nothing. I was ten years old.” She stopped for a minute and took a swallow of water, then continued. “After I saw them leave, I waited another hour, then got food and water from our kitchen. Then I got my bike and went to my aunt’s house three miles away.”
“You’re a crazy brave young lady,” I said, and I meant it. Not everyone had shown that kind of resolve in this crisis.
“My auntie Chloe and my cousin Gisele were my last relatives,” she finished. The scowl had turned into a hardened look. “You said you were going to Boston to help find a cure?”
I nodded.
“Then I want to help. I want to join you. I don’t have anything left anymore. I want to join the Sanctuary Team.”
I just looked at her. She was eleven years old, but she sounded like an adult. She’d been through so much. She looked back at me with a hardened, resolute expression and reminded me strongly of someone … I just stared at her, taking this person in. She was incredible.
“You want to tell her ‘no’?” DeAndre said behind me. I turned and looked at him; he had a smile on his face and unshed tears in his eyes. I turned back to Leia and stuck out my hand.
“Welcome to the team.” She shook my hand solemnly and then I saw a slight smile on her face and finally realized who she reminded me of.
“She’s got Risa’s attitude,” said D, taking the words out of my mouth.
Dad and Jonathan walked up just then, and I turned to them, smiling. “Meet Leia, Sanctuary’s newest member.”
Jonathan smiled, and Dad went down on one knee in front of Leia. “I’m so sorry about your family, sweetie.” He spoke to her seriously, and she had that take-no-prisoners look on her face again. Dad continued. “My name is Jacob Hill, and I’m happy to welcome you to the Sanctuary Team.” She nodded solemnly and shook his hand. I knew we’d gained a valued member who, after being trained, would fight to the death for us. To the Sanctuary Team, age wasn’t so much a factor as resolve, bravery, and training. Our youngest member before today had been a young man of 13 who held his own in skirmishes.
“Leia, you’re almost the same age my sister was when we made the trip to Winnipeg 15 years ago,” I said as we all walked back to the SUV. “Her name is Risa, and she’s sick right now, but I hope she’ll be better soon and then you can meet her.”
From then on, Leia traveled with us.
EIGHTEEN
The drive through the rest of Québec went smoothly, partly because we drove like the fires of hell were chasing us. In truth we just wanted to get to Boston without any more trouble. For one thing, we were running out of time. Mom lay dying back home in Winnipeg and we needed a miracle to save her. Actually a series of miracles. Getting to Boston without any more interruptions, the doc using my blood, fast, to make a cure, testing it, fast, then somehow getting this cure back to Winnipeg in time to save Mom. It seemed like an impossible sequence of events needed to fall into place. I tried not to think about it, and thought about it anyway, worrying myself into a stomachache.
“You okay, Luke?” Zach rubbed my arm as we sped south toward the Canada-U.S. border. We were about 15 miles away, and everyone was getting excited.
“Yeah. I was just thinking …”
“And worrying,” he smiled. “There’s nothing worrying will do to make this happen any faster. Jake will get us to Boston in time, I have faith in him.”
I looked into his eyes, eyes that I had grown quite fond of in the past few days. “You sound so sure of yourself,” I said.
“That’s because I know we will beat this plague. I know you’ll save the world.”
“It’s almost too much to think about, saving the world,” I felt tears welling in my eyes. “At this point I just want to save Mom.” I smiled and felt the tears run down my cheeks.
Zach put his arms around me, and I lay my head on his chest and he was rubbing my shoulders and humming to me and I finally let loose and cried. I felt the tears come, and I couldn’t stop them, and I hid my face in his shirt and he held me as I proceeded to make it soggy. It felt like a relief, a weight off my chest, to cry like that. Silently but copiously I let myself cry. I realized I had grown to trust Zach enough to be vulnerable like this in front of him, and he was such a caring, tender man. While I cried, I held on to him for dear life and just let go. I cried myself out and then fell asleep, and he held me. For the first time in days, I felt peaceful.
I think I slept lightly on Zach for maybe ten minutes and then we were at the border. Dad had stopped the SUV in the side parking lot and had gotten out and was talking to the border guard. Arguing more than likely. The Humvee was parked next to us, and we all waited while Dad sorted things out. After he’d been talking with one guy for five minutes, another guy came rushing out of the border crossing building to talk to both of them. It took Dad about ten minutes, and then he came back and got in the driver’s seat again.
“Well, that was weird,” he said as we pulled out and slowly made our way through the border crossing, waved on by several guards and policemen, and followed by the Humvee. I looked on in mild astonishment, realizing that we hadn’t shown our passports at all.
“What happened, Jake?” asked DeAndre.
“Well, it was weird. The first fellow absolutely did not want to even acknowledge the Sanctuary Team’s border pass, even though we’ve had zero problems with it at the Minnesota crossings. Then his supervisor came out and said, ‘Let them pass, we have our orders.’ When I asked him what orders, he seemed to just ignore me. He almost seemed a little scared.”
We all looked out at them as we crossed from Canada into the United States; six guards were lined up along the building, watching us go by. I looked at the supervisor there with them, but I couldn’t decipher the look on his face. Still, I could tell something was up.
“Well, we’re through, and that’s what matters,” Dad said, driving on into New York state. I felt relieved and, turning to Zach, I saw he was smiling broadly. Spontaneously, I grabbed his face in my hands and gave him a kiss.
“Whoop! Jonathan let out, and started laughing. “Wondered when that would happen.”
I let Zach go, and we both smiled. Zach took hold of my hand and wouldn’t let it go. I looked at Dad’s face in the front rear-view mirror and saw he was chuckling to himself as he drove.
Just inside the border was a small town. We stopped there to get gas and load up on junk food. Looking out the window, I could see several police cars parked alongside the road, and a half a dozen customers inside a little store.
“Looks safe,” DeAndre said.
“Good thing, too. We need gas badly,” Dad said as he pulled up to the pumps. We all got ready to hop out and get drinks when a most amazing voice filled the SUV.
“God Almighty, how long have I been out?” Risa said in a groggy, grouchy voice.
“Babe!” Jonathan exclaimed. He began taking her vital signs as we all began talking at once.
“Oh my god, Risa, you missed everything.”
“What d’ya mean I missed everything? Wasn’t I in that cave system with you?”
“That was two days ago. You completely missed us being chase by the horde!”
“What?”
“And the weird other horde thingummy with the zombie ambassador woman who asked for help!”
“WHAT???”
“And jeebus, you missed the freakin’ locals trying to burn people at the stake!”
“WHAT THE HELL?” Risa was sitting up now and looking around.
“Shit, I missed everything,” She turned toward us and her eyes settled on Leia. “Hello. Who are you?”
NINETEEN
It was a good half hour before Risa was satisfied with all we were telling her. She asked more questions and talked with Leia. With Risa awake, it was more evident to the others that they had pretty much the same personality, and they bonded quickly. We all got snacks and brought back stuff for Risa, who stayed in the SUV on orders from Jonathan. He stayed wi
th her, and they had some alone time in there without the close quarters of other people intruding, something I was looking forward to enjoying with Zach, if he was interested.
The more time I spent sitting next to Zach, talking with him, whispering, leaning on each other while sleeping, and general silly grins and smiles and stolen glances, the more I felt not only comfortable with him but bonding with him as well. He seemed to really like me, too. We held hands all the time now, and his hand in mine felt familiar and good.
Back on the road again, DeAndre was driving while Dad got some sleep in the back. Risa sat up front with us, feeling a little better after sleeping for nearly two days, and with her wounds all dressed. Jonathan let her know that she was infected, and she became somber as she absorbed this information, but Risa quickly decided to look on the bright side and began grinning and cracking jokes.
“Well, at least I’m in the same vehicle as the hope for humanity,” she said, laughing. At this, I mimicked punching her in the arm. “Hey, if you’re able to be the cure, I’m going to probably be the first one cured. Cool!” She looked at me sideways. “I always knew you were destined to save the whole world, Lukey.” At this I made strangling noises and she started giggling. Leia was sitting beside Risa and was actually grinning at this exchange. It was good to have Risa back. I made a silent vow that she would be saved, if I had to give every last drop of my blood to do it. I loved my sister very, very much.
Mad World (Book 3): Desperation Page 12