“Fuck,” I said, getting out of my car without bothering to make sure the area was clear of zombies. I did grab my knife, though.
I approached the edge and looked down at the bridge’s remains floating on top of the water below. I couldn’t even begin to figure out what had happened. Okay, I could take a few guesses, but I was tired, and the missing bridge was going to cost me nearly a day’s travel because I was going to have to find a place to sleep for the night.
The nearest bridge was a few hours south, and I had to backtrack nearly an hour to get on the road I needed to get to it.
“Fuck,” I screamed again in frustration and let loose the tears that had been threatening to fall most of the day.
A moan answered my scream.
I rushed back to my car, threw the thing into reverse, hit something I hope wasn’t human, turned around, and headed away from my son.
5.
An hour or so before I got to the next bridge, I stopped at a third gas station. That one looked worse than the last. The electricity was still working, though. I was able to pull up to the station at the end of the lot, as it was the one I could access the easiest. I prayed the pumps were on.
They were.
I knew that wouldn’t last much longer. Neither would the power.
I started to pull away once I’d finished topping off my tank, but the part of my brain that had been paying the most attention to my surroundings as I drove told me that I needed to search the area for more weapons. I’d been lucky, but just barely. I’d skirted more than one car accident, traumatized victim looking for help, who I’d felt sorry for ignoring, and a zombie that had seen me, not the car I was in and tried to eat my face through the glass while I’d stupidly stopped at a stop sign or red-light.
Bathroom breaks had been even worse. I’d chosen to pee behind trees rather than take my chances with any of the facilities I’d passed. One time I barely got my pants up before a zombie slipped in my puddle trying to get to me. I’d been glad that I’d put on a pad at my first stop because even though I had gotten toilet paper, rarely had I had a chance to use it. If worse came to worst, I could pee in the pad, change it in the car, and throw it out the window.
I couldn’t believe I was contemplating such a thing, but I didn’t want a zombie to catch me with my pants around my ankles.
As night fell, more people and creatures joined me on the road. I needed something other than a knife for protection.
Most of the bodies at the station were of people like myself who’d stopped in to get gas before escaping whatever town that was. Some were the creatures who’d eaten them. One had turned into a zombie after another had made its lower half its supper. The thing had started crawling toward someone. Possibly me, but had gotten itself caught up in a hose. I brained it with my knife.
Inside one of the cars, I found a handgun. No wonder its owner was lying dead outside the driver’s door with his brain missing.
I found a rifle inside the store under the front counter. Again, not at all helpful to the clerk who was hanging over said counter. Her head was also cracked open, and most of her brains were missing. Thank God for small favors. Apparently, the dead couldn’t come back if they didn’t have a brain.
Neither weapon had many bullets, but they would do me for the time being…I hoped.
Upon exiting the station with two bags full of stuff, which I didn’t pay for that time, I literally bumped into a teenage zombie. His left leg had been barely holding him up, so when we collided, it buckled, and he hit the ground. That bit of luck saved my life.
I stumbled backward a bit, hitting the edge of the doorframe. Shock kept me from screaming, but it didn’t stop me from kicking out when he grabbed my foot.
Chiding myself for doing exactly what I’d only minutes earlier scolded the man and cashier for doing—not having their weapon ready—I dropped the bags and grabbed the knife from the top of one.
The boy and I scuffled a bit, but I eventually managed to shove the knife through his temple. Since his shirt was fairly clean, I ripped a strip from it and used it to wipe his blood off the blade.
Keeping the knife at the ready, I grabbed the two bags and ran back to my car. I hadn’t seen any more zombies, but I wasn’t taking the chance that more weren’t coming.
I didn’t stop again until a good way after I’d crossed the bridge. My adrenalin rush had worn off, and I was too tired to keep driving. The problem was I didn’t know where to safely park to sleep for the night. My brain told me to sleep in the car, but I couldn’t. I knew I probably should, but I’d been in the damned thing most of the day, and I needed to stretch my legs. I needed a bed.
When a sign for a hotel came up, I took that exit. The name of the establishment wasn’t one I was familiar with; therefore, it wasn’t a big chain. It, a gas station, and a small diner were all that were on the exit. None of the buildings were lit up.
A glance up and down the street showed me that the streetlights were out as well, and thankfully, the area was devoid of people. I cut my lights to blend into the night.
I drove around the hotel, looking for signs of life, and saw nothing. The doors to the lobby were open, so I stepped inside. No one greeted me. I waited with my knife and handgun at the ready for a full two minutes, and when still no one came, I stepped behind the desk, thankful they still had old fashion keys and not key cards.
I snatched up a set belonging to the last room at the back of the hotel. I didn’t leave any money. I didn’t think anyone cared. Chances were that everyone who’d lived near there was at one of the quarantine zones.
As fast as I could, I unloaded the car and barricaded myself in the room. More than anything, I wanted to fall onto the lumpy mattress and crash, but I made myself clean up, eat a full meal, and take stock of the situation and my supplies before letting myself go to sleep. I needed a plan for the next day and an idea of what items I didn’t have or was running low on.
Food and water would always be a need. Clothes were next. At the last station, I’d grabbed a blanket, a few t-shirts and some sweats, each with the local football team’s emblem on them, but that had been about all the place had.
Ammunition was a priority, but I didn’t know enough about the guns I had, or guns period for that matter, to know where to start, and the thought of going to a gun shop right then scared the crap out of me. Chances were everyone, and their brother would be there, and the place would be sold out despite the waiting list and restrictions.
More weapons might sound like overkill, but I thought I would feel safer if I had a wider variety of weapons at my disposal. The knife had done me well, but it was starting to dull, and I’d had a bit of time pulling it from the boy’s head. Also, I wanted something that I didn’t have to wait for the creatures to be so close to me to use.
Wet wipes, more pads, maybe even adult diapers. Bathing was going to be an issue, as was going to the bathroom, especially while I was on the move.
I continued with my list until I fell asleep with my pen in my hand.
Naturally, I overslept the following morning. Stress and fear had worn my body down until it shut off on its own. Every part of me wanted to rush out of the room, but I knew I had to be cautious. I didn’t live in a world where I could make too much noise and where I could take the chance that someone hadn’t tampered with my car. Also, where there wasn’t the possibility of a horde bearing down on me.
As quietly as I could, I freshened up, made sure I was ready for the day’s drive, packed my bags, and watched out the double windows for a good five minutes trying to see if anyone was moving around outside.
Just like the night before, I saw no one. I’d pulled the car almost to the door. I didn’t have to go far to pop open the hatch and begin reloading it.
A dog barked somewhere in the distance. Every once in a while, I thought I heard other movements, but no one came at me while I moved from the car to the room. I left the keys on the dresser and the door unlocked. Maybe someone els
e could use the room.
I passed two zombies heading toward the hotel as I exited the parking lot and started back to the highway. I don’t know if I was their target, but I was glad I’d left when I did.
Apparently, I was not the only person on the move. Traffic was heavier that morning when I pulled onto the highway than it had been the day before. I had a feeling that those who hadn’t evacuated yesterday were now doing so.
6.
The extra traffic that day slowed my pace to the base. Every few minutes, there was a new wreck. Too many people died while driving. Either they were too sick to be on the road and died, or someone in their car turned and killed them. Some had managed to pull off the road before dying. In half of those cases, though, the dumbass got out of the car to do so, letting their zombieself run into traffic and cause more chaos.
I did my best to keep at least three car’s length of space all around me so that I could swerve out of the way when needed. That wasn’t always possible, but since I kept my speed to slightly above a crawl, most people sped past me. That didn’t mean my car made it to the base in one piece. It had more than a few bumps and scratches from bushes I’d driven through, mailboxes I’d sideswiped, and cars I’d pushed my way past.
When I finally made it to the guard station at the base, I had to wait for what felt like an eternity to speak to someone.
For nearly an hour, I watched military personnel turn away person after person or shoot them and push their car into a nearby field without even removing the bodies. In the soldiers’ defense, most of the people were sick and turning, and others had pulled their weapons on them like idiots.
By the time I made it to the front of the line, all the man had said when I had rolled down my window was, “Go back to your home. We don’t have any more room.”
“I don’t want inside,” I said, shocking him.
“Then what do you want?” he asked, giving me his full attention.
“My son and his father are from Bridgeton. They should have arrived here yesterday with a bus full of other people. I want to get them and take them with me,” I said, handing him the papers I’d found at the school and the photo I had of Jeremiah and Carl.
The man didn’t take the items.
“The buses did arrive yesterday, but we were already full,” he said instead.
“Where would they go next?” I asked.
“Possibly into the Alabama Territories. I’ve heard there are a few quarantine zones down there taking in people. Fort Collins is full, and so is New Norfolk. The only place they could go was south unless they find something else. That’s why we’re sending everyone away.”
“I see. Thank you.”
The man merely nodded. Before I could drive away, a soldier shot the driver and passenger in the car behind me. I sat frozen, looking into my rearview mirror as the soldier slid the driver over and maneuvered the car out of line.
“You should go, ma’am. It’s too dangerous out here,” the soldier at my window said, causing me to jump.
“Yes. Okay,” I said, putting my car in drive and pulling away.
Ten minutes from the base, I pulled over to throw up.
An hour or so later, I saw a school bus overturned in the middle of the highway. Big, black letters on the side of it read: Bridgeton City Schools. I nearly rammed into the back of it; I swerved off the road so quickly to get to it. Traffic had thinned some, but my movements had startled a few people, and they’d blown their horns at me to let me know it.
I sat in my car for a long time looking at the back doors to the bus. The crash had busted out the windows, and two zombie teenage girls were impaled on the frame. What parts of their bodies they could flail they did in an attempt to get out of the bus and to anyone.
I didn’t know what I would do if my son were on that bus. It was obvious to anyone driving by that everyone on it was dead. I had to know, though. The not knowing was driving me insane.
With both firearms strapped to me and my knife in my hand, I got out of the car. I wasted a few of the bullets from the handgun shooting at the girls, but eventually, I killed them. I climbed the back of the bus and dragged their bodies from the window. I splattered myself in stuff I’d rather not think about in the process. I had not thought that through.
To my surprise, there weren’t that many people inside the bus and most were really dead, not zombie-dead. I’d expected it to be brimming with passengers.
After a few jerks, pushes, and kicks, the back doors came open, and I maneuvered myself inside. A zombie I thought was pinned down rushed me when I did, and I used up the rest of the bullets shooting him. The other three I killed with the knife. That hadn’t been easy.
None of the bodies were Jeremiah or Carl as far as I could tell. Some were beyond recognition, but I told myself I would know my son when I saw him. I had to believe he was alive. I just had to.
Only feeling slightly guilty, I ransacked the bus for supplies. What I needed most was a change of clothes.
In the old world, I would have never stood on the side of the road with cars passing by and stripped, but I did it that day without thinking about what I was doing.
Not a single person stopped to catcall or chide me or to give me a ticket. I left my dirty clothes where they dropped—littering the furthest thing from my mind.
What I needed next was a gun. I searched every inch of the bus for one, and the only weapon I found was a pocketknife. I took it, of course, but I really needed another gun.
The thought didn’t occur to me until I was back on the road, but I was surprised no one had stopped to scavenge the bus or steal my things. I guess the world wasn’t that bad off yet or everyone else on the road had better prepared for a road trip than I did. All I’d planned to do was go to my ex-husband’s house, not drive down the east coast.
Gas was a bit harder to find when I needed it next, and when I did find a pump that wasn’t empty, I had to push the car in front of it out of the way. Thankfully, the car’s owner had died elsewhere.
Pumping the gas seemed to take forever. I jumped at every noise, every passing car, and every bird chirp. I just knew that at any second someone desperate was going to come out of the shadows and take my car or kill me or worse—a horde of those creatures would come running around a corner and take me down before I could get the nozzle out of the tank.
Nothing happened.
What felt like weeks later, I was back in my car and heading south.
I’d never been to the Alabama Territories. A part of me expected to enter an entirely different world when I crossed the bridge based on the stories I’d heard about the territories my entire life. The way people talked about the place, I half expected to leave earth and enter a new planet where a war was constantly waging when I crossed the bridge, but the area didn’t look any different from the rest of the world.
The base, Fort Williams, was almost right on the other side of the bridge. The soldiers there were a bit nicer, but they didn’t have miles of traffic backed up trying to get onto the base either. The woman at the guard station listened to my story before telling me that they had taken in some refugees in school buses. She said they couldn’t let me stay, but that they would allow me an hour or so to search for my family since I planned to take them with me if they wanted to go.
I could’ve kissed the woman.
A different soldier directed me where to park and escorted me onto the base. The group of people he led me to were not what I expected, and they were all the people that had made it from Bridgeton. I nearly fell to my knees, crying.
I didn’t know any of the people before me, and none of them knew Carl.
An older woman, named Sandra, told me that some of their people died along the way from the sickness. Others left during stops for gas and food. She told me about the overturned bus, which I already knew.
I showed her the picture of Jeremiah and Carl, but she didn’t recognize them. No one in the group did.
In the end, I got
a list of all the stops the group could remember making, where they’d left buses they no longer needed, and where they could remember people saying they were going. That last bit did me no good because it was mostly to relatives’ homes. No one mentioned any other quarantine zones or military bases, though one or two had said something about Shore Haven on Liberty Island being built for just this scenario. I didn’t think my ex would try to travel that far in our current world with our son.
“I’m sorry,” the female soldier said when I left the base, echoing Sandra’s words when I’d left her.
I couldn’t respond.
Numbly, I left the base, crossed the bridge, and headed north again. I headed home. If my son was alive, maybe he and his father had gotten off the bus and gone looking for me as I had them.
7.
I stopped at the places the group named hoping to find clues as to where my son and ex-husband were but found nothing. Or, well, no signs of them. I saw zombies, dead bodies, blood, body parts, destruction, but not my family.
By the time I made it back to Bridgeton, I was feeling hopeless. The school was more trashed than it was before. Someone or someones had broken out windows, set fire to certain areas where most of the bodies were, and raided the food stores. We were only a few days into the new apocalypse. People shouldn’t be starving, but I guess those who had sense were probably stockpiling.
Both Carl’s and my house had been broken into just as most of the homes in our neighborhoods. Oddly enough, our cabinets were full, but a safe Carl had in his closet was open and whatever had been inside was gone along with other valuables, as was all of my jewelry.
I loaded my car down with our food and necessities. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I didn’t want to fight anyone for those items if and when they became scarce.
Kim and Wayne’s house was next stop. I knew they were sick. They’d probably turned already or were about to, but the twins hadn’t shown any signs getting sick. I was leery about caring for two small children in our new world. I also wasn’t sure how I was going to pry them away from their sick parents, but I knew I couldn’t leave them. I shouldn’t have left them to begin with.
Shore Haven (Short Story 3): Nowhere Page 3