by David Rogers
“We’re going to leave him?” Candice demanded as she got the quilt bundled into a loose cylinder that would fit under her arm.
Jessica bent and picked up the second quilt – already rolled up, since it had been serving as a makeshift pillow for both mother and daughter – and her purse as well. “What did he say back in Ocala?”
“He didn’t mean that.”
Looping the purse’s strap across herself, Jessica regarded her daughter calmly. “Now that doesn’t sound like Austin at all, does it?”
Candice glanced down involuntarily, then shrugged. “No.” she mumbled.
“If he’s not there, we’ll head south like he wanted us to.”
“But—”
“Sweetie, Austin’s a tough guy. He wasn’t just a soldier, he was a Ranger. That means he’s been trained to take care of himself in the worst situations you and I could imagine. He’ll find us, even if we don’t keep waiting here.”
“They trained him to handle zombies?”
“No. Not zombies. But all kinds of bad stuff, yeah. And anyway, you’ve seen a lot of the things he’s done since we met him. He can take care of himself.”
“Who are you trying to convince?” Jessica thought moodily. “Her, or you?”
Candice looked north, her expression unhappy, but she didn’t say anything else. Jessica made sure the purse was settled properly, checked that both pistols and their magazines were still in place on her belt and in her pockets, then touched the girl on the shoulder.
“Come on sweetie, let’s go check the sign. If he’s not there, we’ll have to wait for him somewhere safer. Somewhere south, like we’ve already discussed. You don’t want to live out here on top of a trailer do you?”
“No.” Candice said again, still clearly unhappy. But she followed Jessica as her mother led the way toward the front of the trailer.
Yesterday, as night had fallen, Jessica had found an overturned beer truck a few miles north of where the Florida Turnpike split off from I-75. She couldn’t tell what had caused the wreck, since the tractor-trailer was the only vehicle there, but it wasn’t going anywhere until it got put back up on its wheels.
What she’d cared about though was the location, and the fact that it was possible to get up on top of the trailer. The location was lightly wooded beyond the shoulder’s waist-high grass, which had allowed Jessica to pull the pickup far enough off the road, through the trees, that it wasn’t readily visible from the interstate. With the truck and its supplies as safe as she could figure out a way to make them, she and Candice had slept atop the truck where nothing could sneak up on them.
At the front of the semi-truck, Jessica tossed the quilt down to the road and motioned for Candice to do the same, then clambered down onto the tractor portion. Turning, she held her hands out and was able to help her daughter come down from the trailer without falling. From there, it wasn’t that hard for her to hop lightly down to the pavement and again assist Candice.
“Come on!” the girl insisted, taking a step toward the back of the trailer.
“Wait.” Jessica said sharply, looking around as she walked over to the quilts. “Carry these for me.” Her right hand was on the Taurus, but she didn’t draw it yet. “Stay with me.”
“But—”
“Rule Two.”
Subsiding, Candice came back and picked up the quilts, and followed as Jessica walked cautiously along the trailer. She angled out well away from it, leaving plenty of room between it and the two of them, so she had good visual angles. But nothing lurked and nothing appeared to molest them. Jessica circled around further at the back, checking the far side of the truck as well, before refocusing her attention on the back of the trailer.
Big letters nearly half a foot high were written on it, using lipstick from Jessica’s purse. Finally, a use for the otherwise useless tube of makeup she hadn’t bothered to throw away yet. They spelled out ‘Austin’ in cakey red pigment, with a smaller arrow pointing downward. On the pavement, stuck under the edge of the trailer and weighted with a handful of gravel and a pen, was a folded candy bar wrapper.
Candice bent down and picked the note up and looked at it for a few moments before moving her eyes up to Jessica. The woman could tell instantly by the way Candice’s expression fell that nothing had been added to it, but she took the wrapper from her daughter and looked it over herself anyway.
“Austin, it’s Jessica. We’re nearby. Add something to this note to make me believe it’s you, then go north a couple of miles. We’ll find you tomorrow on the road.”
The words on it were the ones she’d written the previous day, with nothing else added.
“He’s okay.” Jessica said as she finished confirming her suspicion.
“I know.” Candice said, though she was starting to sound less sure than she had yesterday or the day before.
Jessica looked around again to make sure nothing was approaching, then reached into her jeans pocket. Producing another candy bar wrapper, she smoothed it out against the trailer and used the pen to write a different note.
“Austin, it’s Jessica. Going south. Planning to get past Tam/Orl and head for the lake Candy can’t say. If we don’t find a place there, I’ll leave another note on something along the road that ends up at the south edge of the lake and keeps going. Its number is three times the backup you gave me.”
She looked around, then re-read the note, then signed her name and added one more thing.
“Be careful.”
Folding the note, Jessica put it at the base of the trailer and weighted it down with the gravel again.
“Will he find it?”
“He’s got lots of middle names, remember?” Jessica said as she stuck the pen in her purse and looked around again. “Smart and tough and a bunch of other things. But we can’t keep hanging out on the road like this. Come on, let’s get going.”
Though she took it carefully and warily, nothing bothered them during the short trek through the trees to the pickup. Jessica triple checked in and around it before they got in, but everything was in order. It didn’t take her very long to get it back to the road, where she stopped and poured eight gallons from the gas cans into the tank before getting underway.
Yesterday she’d spent some time examining the map, and thinking. I-75 snaked along the western portion of the state and eventually went right into Tampa before following the coast through other areas that looked heavily settled. The Florida Turnpike was a toll road that split off from I-75 and headed directly to Orlando, to the southeast.
Jessica had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near either city; she didn’t trust they weren’t crawling with zombies. Orlando especially was a tourist city due to the multitude of amusement and theme parks that were located in and near it. It might not be Atlanta, but considering the outbreaks had started on Labor Day weekend . . . she didn’t imagine it was much of a stretch to assume there could have been hundreds of thousands of people there who were now hungry, unfussy eaters roaming around Orlando.
As she’d discussed with Austin, the ‘problem’ as she saw it was there was a line of towns and civilization that stretched between both cities; right across the state. More or less tracking along I-4, which connected them. But she’d had time and motivation to check the roads on the map carefully, and had decided on a course of action.
If she took the Turnpike, after about twenty-five miles it intersected US-27. She’d still be fifteen or twenty miles clear of even the vaguest definition of the Orlando suburbs, so that should be safe. And once she made it to US-27, assuming the route stayed clear, she could follow that right down to Lake Okeechobee.
There were several things she liked about this plan. It had been discussed with Austin, so he’d find it plausible she was headed there. The road had a convenient ‘code’ she could use to describe her route to him in a way that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone else who might find the note.
And, most importantly of all, US-27 looked to be he
r best bet for tiptoeing through the Tampa-Orlando line she was so worried about. Midway between the two cities was another one, Lakeland, that looked fairly big; but -27 would stay clear of it to the east. She wasn’t a tactical expert like Austin, but as far as she could see, -27 was the obvious choice considering her concerns.
If they got past I-4 okay, -27 only had half a dozen or so little bitty towns between the Tampa-Orlando line and Okeechobee. None of them looked large enough to be a real problem; and regardless, the map seemed to show a lot of room to detour and dodge around as needed once they were south of I-4.
Jessica wasn’t counting on no problems; but she wasn’t necessarily expecting any major ones either. Not as long as she took things carefully and kept her eyes open. She hadn’t been paying close attention to the pickup, but it didn’t seem to get terribly bad gas mileage. Better than the SUV had anyway. With what she had left in the cans liberated from the SUV, she expected to be able to drive straight through without having to fool around at a gas station.
The plan was as sound as she could think to make it. The next step was to do the drive.
It was only a couple of minutes to the Turnpike, and she took it southeast. The toll booths were all vacant, and she saw repeated signs road clearing had occurred at some point. There were disabled, wrecked, or abandoned vehicles along the way the same as she’d grown used to noticing along the major roads; but as she continued toward Orlando they’d been mostly moved off the road.
The pavement wasn’t completely clear, but there was always at least one travel lane that was available in each direction. Twice she passed a particularly messy and large accident site, one incorporating numerous and large vehicles, but even there a path through had already been created that didn’t require leaving the hard surface and chancing the shoulder.
“What’s f-e-m-a?” Candice asked after they’d gone through a couple of toll stations.
“What?” Jessica asked, reading a sign that indicated Orlando was thirty-five miles ahead.
“There are signs on the booths in the road.” Candice said, gesturing behind them. She was wearing her seatbelt, but had twisted her head and body around enough to see out the back window. It was an effort for her to do this, since she had to hitch herself up high enough to see over the seat back.
Jessica glanced in her mirrors, focusing on the toll booths. Sure enough, she saw large pieces of wood or something had been affixed to booths, on the other side of the highway. The backing and letters both looked haphazard and rushed to her – definitely not the sort of thing that usually served as a highway sign – but she could make out the first line easily enough. The others were reversed, and getting smaller as she continued southeast, but she took a guess at them from context.
“FEMA Evacuation Route.” she read slowly.
“Yeah, what’s f-e-m-a?”
“FEMA is part of the government.”
“Which government?”
“Ours.”
“No, I mean, like state or . . .” Candice said, sounding irked.
“Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Jessica elaborated. “F-E-M-A.”
“They fixed emergencies?”
Jessica laughed, a short bark of humor, but without any real emotion behind it. “Well, I don’t know about fixed, but they were supposed to help when things got bad.”
“Like zombies?”
“Like hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and stuff like that.” Jessica said. “Usually. But I guess zombies would be something they’d try to help people deal with.”
“They didn’t do a very good job.” Candice observed.
“Well, I don’t think anyone really did a very good job dealing with the zombies.”
“We did.”
Jessica shuddered briefly. “I wouldn’t say we’re dealing with them sweetie. We’ve been running and hiding ever since they showed up.”
“Yeah, but we’re alive.”
Laughing with more sincerity now, Jessica nodded in agreement. “I’d have to say you’ve got a point. When you put it like that, we’re dealing with zombies better than most.”
“What was FEMA doing?”
Jessica considered. “Orlando is ahead of us on the road; and there are other big cities and towns beyond it, toward the east coast of the state. I’d have to guess it had something to do with what that woman told us about; how they were trying to use Ocala for a refugee center.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Nope.”
Candice’s tone brightened somewhat. “Since that was where people were going, and we’re headed away from it, and we already know there are a lot of zombies back there . . . does that mean we’re going somewhere that’ll have less zombies?”
“I hope so. That’s the plan.”
“Your plans have been pretty good so far Mom.”
“Thanks sweetie. Let’s hope our luck holds out.”
US-27 was well marked, both at the turn itself as well as ahead of time on the highway signs, so Jessica didn’t have to stop to consult her map. The road sort of wandered back and forth on a parallel course to the Turnpike for a while, but then turned and stayed almost exclusively due south.
Most of the surroundings as she followed it were fairly rural. There was a section shortly after veering away from the Turnpike that was somewhat built up, but only in a small town manner. The businesses and roads astride US-27 were set well back – both from it and each other – and never closed up in the press of urban construction she was so used to back in Atlanta.
She tensed some for a while during that portion of the trip, because the zombie number went from occasional and isolated to more frequent and clustered; but nothing like the hordes that were rampaging through Ocala. Once she had to detour off the highway through a couple of surface streets when she came across a group of several tens of zombies, but that and some weaving was the worst of it.
By mid-morning she’d reached I-4. The intersection there had more of the hastily made FEMA signs, and Jessica was able to get a good look at them. Definitely wood and paint, and they weren’t weathering the Florida rain and sun very well at all. She figured in another couple of months some of them might be too badly degraded to reliably read.
But that didn’t concern Jessica. What did was I-4 could have been a place where wrecked and traffic-jammed cars might’ve supplied a fresh source of zombies to obstruct her path. There were some wandering around, but nothing that really bothered her as long as the truck held up. So far, it was doing just fine. In fact, it was burning fuel a lot better than she’d hoped for; way better than the SUV had. She guessed that was as good of a trade off as she was going to get for having lost the SUV’s armored safety.
They’d passed a number of lakes, but south of I-4 Jessica started seeing a lot more water. According to the map, this area of Florida was generally very well supplied with surface water. It was heartening to see evidence of that obvious plethora of abundant water. Somewhere in south-central or south Florida was a safe place. She just knew it.
There was some additional detouring and back-tracking that came up, but the miles rolled by without a problem. Shortly after noon she started seeing signs marked with Okeechobee. Some of them indicated the lake itself was a certain number of miles ahead, but most merely referenced it and proclaimed some business that was related to it. Motels, boating docks, fishing guide services; it was obviously the big draw in this area.
Jessica finally stopped in the middle of the road and consulted the map to get her bearings. They were very close. Now it was time to find it.
Chapter Twelve – Moving on up
“Why are those houses on poles?” Candice asked as the truck slowed.
Jessica shrugged as she studied them. “Probably flooding.” she guessed.
“There are floods here?”
“We’re either in or right next to one of the largest swamps in the world honey.”
“The lake is a swamp?”
“No, the lake is a lake
. I’m talking about the Everglades.”
“We’re going to live in a swamp?”
“Candice, please.” Jessica said, forcing herself to keep from sounding frustrated. The trip had gone well, but driving for hours on end always worked out to be harder than it seemed like it should be. And the zombie problems didn’t help make it any easier. “I’m trying to think.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Jessica smiled briefly, but she didn’t take her eyes off the scene ahead. It was getting late in the afternoon, and she was starting to worry about finding somewhere – even temporarily – to stay. She’d put most of the last gas in the cans into the truck’s tank, and spent the past two hours investigating, and so far hadn’t liked anything enough to look closer.
On the map, there was a town or something at the northern edge of Okeechobee. Oddly enough, it was the one that got to name itself after the lake; she’d stayed well clear of it. It looked to be somewhat large. Also from the map, she saw the eastern edge had a lot of development that ran right along the very lake edge itself; so she assumed that was going to be dominated by tourist-styled facilities, and saved that for last.
Circling around the western edge, she’d found small numbers of zombies – only a few here and there – but also no houses or structures she considered usable. Primarily, the problem was everything was small, low to the ground, and often flimsy.
Since the beginning of the nightmare, she’d learned height was a saving grace. It’d allowed her and Candice to survive the zombies that closed in after the car wreck back in Atlanta, as well as the one in Ocala a few days ago. It had protected those stragglers Austin had rescued on I-75 when traveling to Knoxville. One of the good things about zombies was they didn’t climb, jump, or fly. They might make it up an incline, like a hill or stairs; but a wall or even a ladder shut them down cold.
The easiest way to be safe was to be out of reach. And with just her to keep an eye on Candice, she needed that measure of security. It was impossible – literally impossible – for her to stand guard all the time. No matter how dedicated Jessica was to keeping Candice safe, sooner or later even mothers had to sleep.