Do we care? The thought crosses my mind unbidden, and I nearly cringe at how cold it sounds, but I can’t help myself. There’s a part of me that still blames Hannah for Naomi’s death, even though I know deep down it’s not her fault in the slightest. This is a problem I need to take care of myself, not just pass the blame off to an innocent girl who did nothing wrong. I should be ashamed, and I am, but not enough to reach out to the girl and try to comfort her right now. For now, I’ll sit back and watch how she handles this pain, making sure it doesn’t transform her into someone we need to be even more wary of.
Her demeanor doesn’t change even after several hours on the open road. We stop two times to fill up our tanks by siphoning gas from cars parked in lots along the way, using the bathroom during the first of those stops, and having lunch during the second. We gather around our vehicles, sharing some fresh jerky and apple rings. There’s nowhere in this city that we’ll most likely be able to refill our water bottles, but thankfully we have jugs in the back, even if they are half frozen at the moment.
When I’m done eating—actually feeling full, unlike usual—I take a short walk around the parking lot, stretching my legs before having to get back in the car for another few hours. I see Ryder and Reese doing some stretches near the jeep. They’re in near perfect sync with one another, doing the exact same stretches to stay limber during the trip. They are definitely brothers, I think. Ryder sees me watching and gives me a sly wink, and I feel myself smile.
Soon, we’re back on the road, and I feel the boredom start to creep in. Finally, I try to engage Hannah in conversation, but she seems disinterested, and she goes back to staring out the window as soon as she answers my question. Feeling bummed, I turn and stare out my own window, watching the snowy landscape as it passes by. I’m thankful for the heat in the jeep that keeps us nice and warm, and I’m not looking forward to finding someplace to hunker down for the night that doesn’t have heat.
At least I’ll have Ryder to keep me warm…
I feel my cheeks begin to burn at the thought. Ryder looks into the rearview mirror and we lock eyes, and he smiles lazily. His eyes quickly return to the road, not wanting to risk hitting a patch of ice and sliding into a ditch. We’d never get free if that were to happen, so he has to be extra careful about his driving speed and the route he takes.
The roads aren’t as awful as I thought they’d be, however they’re only going to get worse as the winter drags on. For now, we have to deal with three to five inches of snow that blows in all directions with each huge gust of wind that I swear rocks the jeep, and the occasional patch of hidden ice. But Ryder maintains a decent speed of about fifty-five, instead of our normal sixty-five or even seventy. We sacrifice speed for safety, and it’s the way to go.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After several more hours in the jeep, it starts to get dark out, and we begin to keep our eyes open for a decent place to hole up for the night. Our normal go-to is a cheap motel—preferably one with two levels for added security—but we’ll take an abandoned two story house if we have to. Unfortunately, we don’t come across a lot of motels out in the middle of nowhere, and the last one I remember passing was about an hour back the way we came.
As we drive through a dark neighborhood with several abandoned vehicles lining the street and even blocking it off in some sections, Reese points out one house set a ways back from the road on a hill. It isn’t too close to any neighboring houses and the driveway isn’t blocked off, which makes it a pretty decent place to stay for the night. Ryder pulls us up into the driveway as far from the road as he can get, and Todd pulls in behind us.
Ryder and Todd kill the engines and everything goes silent. We wait for a minute to see if anything will come rushing at us from the area, but after a minute, Ryder gets out of the jeep and we all follow. “Be on guard. There might still be zombies in the area. It might just take them a minute to get all the way here. If they’re in the area, I guarantee they heard these engines, so nobody goes anywhere alone.”
“We know the drill,” Todd says, rolling his eyes. “Who wants to scope out the house?”
“I’ll go,” Reese volunteers. “Sam, why don’t you come with me?”
I take my weapon out of its holster on my thigh, and I can’t help the feeling of being a badass that comes with the action. Even though I’m far from an actual action hero or anything, it’s still cool to think that I look anything like the heroes I watched in movies growing up. I click off the safety and point the tip down, following along behind Reese.
I have a flashlight in one hand and my weapon in the other, and we split up once we set foot inside the house. Reese takes his flashlight and heads up the nearby stairs to scour the second floor, while I take the ground one. This way, if anything bad does happen while we’re searching the house, the people still waiting outside can rush in and help me if Reese can’t get to me in time, since I’m the one most likely to need the help.
The first room I check is the kitchen, closest to the front door. My first step into the room and my feet slide out from under me, and I have to catch the counter to steady myself. Looking down, I find a large puddle of blood in front of the doorway that spreads across the floor. There’s a body in front of the kitchen sink. It’s a man with long hair and a thick beard, and there’s a knife imbedded in his forehead. Someone else was here first, meaning there won’t be many supplies to scavenge, if there are any at all.
The rest of the kitchen is clear, and I head around to the living room nearby. The curtains have all been drawn closed, and the darkness in the room gives off an eerie vibe that has me clutching my flashlight even tighter as I swing it left and right, searching for any signs of movement. I pause at the doorway, listening for footsteps or breathing. When nothing jumps out at me, I make my way through the room, looking behind the chair and in the linen closet in the nearby hallway just to make sure the area is totally empty.
The hallway is clear, as is the master bedroom on the first floor. There’s a large fish tank against the wall with murky water and algae growing along the sides of the glass. Several brightly colored fish float near the bottom, decomposed into nothing more than bones and tattered fins. The smell in the room is enough to make anyone sick, and I cover my nose as I back out, meeting Reese at the bottom of the stairs again.
“All clear upstairs.”
“Same here,” I say, wrinkling my nose at the horrid smell that just won’t leave. “There’s a dead body in the kitchen, probably been there awhile. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was a zombie when it died. So someone came through here and most likely picked the supplies clean.”
“Yeah, there’s a bathroom upstairs and the medicine cabinet was open and all the useless stuff was thrown on the floor. Toothbrush, makeup, tweezers, stuff like that. If there were any bandages or meds, those got picked clean a long time ago. But the house is secure for now. I doubt anyone has been here in quite some time. Go tell Ryder to come help me get rid of that body, and you guys can start unpacking all of our supplies before it gets pitch black out.”
“Better him than me,” I say gratefully, heading back out the door. The others are gathered around the vehicles, weapons raised and on the lookout while they wait for confirmation the place is safe. “It’s all clear, except for the dead body on the floor of the kitchen. Reese needs help moving it. He said to get you while we start unpacking,” I say to Ryder.
He sighs. “You two are lucky I love you,” he says with a smirk.
Aaron helps me unload the supplies from the jeep, while Madison and Todd unload the truck. Hannah hangs back, but when I offer her two jugs of half-frozen water, she takes them from me, looking uncertain. “Just set them inside any of the rooms upstairs except the bathroom. It’s alright,” I say when she hesitates. “The house is clear. There’s nobody inside except for Ryder and Reese.”
She turns without a word and ducks inside, and I shake my head, grabbing a box of food. Aaron handles the heavier bags of ammuni
tion, and we get most of it upstairs by the time the guys are done with moving that body. Ryder grabs the last bag of our ammunition and Reese shuts the back of the jeep, locking the doors behind him. Once everyone is safely inside, we shut and lock the front door and gather upstairs.
Todd and I move a dresser out of the spare bedroom and block off the stairway, just for that added bit of security. It might be kind of a hindrance in the event of a fire, but I’d rather risk that than any zombies being able to climb the stairs if they do somehow manage to get inside. While we move the dresser, Ryder takes a look at what the upstairs has to offer us in the way of comfort, and it isn’t the best.
“There’s one bedroom with a full-sized bed, and an office that has a leather couch. A lot of us will be sleeping on the floor tonight. Good thing we have our sleeping bags. Now to decide how we split off for the night.”
“I think Madison, Sam, and Hannah could probably share that bed,” Aaron says. “It’d be a tight fit, but it would leave the couch for one of us, while someone else was on watch all night. Meaning only one person would have to sleep on the floor.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I say. “I don’t think Hannah is comfortable sharing a bed with any of us,” I add, looking at her. “I think Madison and Todd should share the bed, and Hannah should take the couch. Ryder and I can zip our sleeping bags together and be decently warm on the floor. We can even keep watch together while the rest of you get some sleep. Then we’ll wake someone up and sleep on the floor of the office.”
“Alright,” Aaron says. “Then I’ll spread out my sleeping bag on the floor of the office for now, and we can trade later in the night. When I’m done with my watch, I’ll wake Reese, and I’ll get some sleep on the floor of the spare bedroom.” He looks at Todd and Madison, smirking. “No hanky panky for you guys tonight.”
Madison blushes, but she smiles, which makes me feel extremely grateful towards Aaron.
We sort through our food supplies, looking for anything that sounds good tonight. We have more food right now than we’ve ever had while on the road before, and that’s a really good thing. We can splurge and have a feast tonight, giving us strength and energy for our trip into Chicago tomorrow. I grab a can of mini ravioli and dig in with a semi-clean fork, practically inhaling the food. Tonight, everyone gets their own can of food, along with the a handful of apple rings—finishing off the bag for good—as well as a handful of beef jerky and some stale crackers.
We drain the rest of our water bottles and refill them from the jugs. We’ll need to find a place to refill the jugs pretty soon, but we should have enough to get us to the safe haven. Hopefully they have a source of clean water they’ll let us take from.
After we’re done eating, we put the rest of our supplies away and get out our sleeping gear. Madison and Todd disappear into the spare bedroom, with Reese following along behind them with his sleeping bag. Ryder and I take our gear out to the landing by the stairs, and we unroll our sleeping bags, zipping them together so we can conserve body heat in this freezing cold house. We shimmy inside and then sit against the nearby wall, staring out at the front door and the first floor below us. Nothing is going to get in, but if it does, it certainly won’t get past us.
“So, tomorrow is gonna be fun,” I say, glancing over at him. “And the day after…it’ll finally be the day. The one we’ve been waiting for before we even knew about the cure.”
Ryder nods. “I know. It’s weird, but I’d gotten to the point where I just accepted that this was what our life was going to be like. Always looking over our shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I never thought we’d have a chance to actually make things better, and yet here we are. About to make history in the next day or two. I wonder what will go wrong.”
“You can’t think like that,” I say quietly.
“It’s hard not to. We’ve already lost two of our own, and that was before the truly dangerous part of our journey. Once we’re inside Chicago and then Detroit, all bets are off, Sam. There’s no telling what we’re getting ourselves into. Such densely populated areas could have hundreds of thousands of zombies, and we can’t outrun them all. We’ve got ammunition, but not enough to take out that many. I just can’t stop thinking about who we’re going to lose tomorrow, or the day after.”
“I know it’s hard, but try to find a bright side to focus on. At least there’s a chance they’ll come back to us. If we succeed, it can’t bring back Daisy, Naomi, or Tobe, but it might save anyone we lose tomorrow. I know that probably doesn’t help much, but don’t lose all hope, Ryder. If one of us gets bitten or turned, the others can find us once we’re brought back. It won’t be the end of the world.”
“Unless they die like Naomi and Daisy did, torn to pieces or getting shot in the head,” he says darkly. “I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but it’s not really helping. We can’t just assume it will be the zombies that get them, and even if it is, the odds of running into a small group aren’t good. It’ll be a horde, probably the largest we’ve ever seen, and if someone gets hurt or left behind—they’re dead. For good. Simple as that.”
I sigh. “Then we’ll just have to be extra careful and watch out for one another, just like we always do. Nobody will be getting left behind while we’re still alive. Not again.”
He puts his arm around my waist and pulls me closer, letting me lean my head on his shoulder. We sit together in silence, neither of us needing to say anything else on the matter. We both know how dangerous things will be tomorrow, and worrying about it ahead of time isn’t going to help matters any. We’ll just have to try and get as much rest as we can now, and hope everything works out.
*****
Nobody does much talking in the morning. We eat a rushed breakfast, pack up our supplies, use the bathroom, and pile into our vehicles. We’re back on the road before the sun has even fully risen, and as we speed towards Chicago, I feel the atmosphere in the car go from uncertain to outright tense. Ryder’s hands clench the steering wheel as if he’s holding on for dear life, and the rest of us sit together in an uncomfortable silence while we race towards our possibly deaths.
We stop once to refuel from an abandoned mall parking lot, and again two hours later to eat lunch. Nobody has any real appetite, but Ryder forces us to eat a little, saying that we have to keep up our strength. I manage to choke down some jerky, but it settles in the pit of my stomach like a lead weight, and I fight the urge to be sick as we get back into the vehicles and on the road again.
All too soon, we’re reaching Chicago city limits. There are abandoned cars everywhere. They fill up parking lots and the roads, some overturned or burned out shells, probably from looters during the early days of the apocalypse. Ryder has to switch to an ungodly slow crawl to maneuver our vehicles safety around the abandoned cars that line the roads everywhere we look. Hundreds of them, all left behind when things got too bad and people tried to flee on foot, probably taking what they could carry, urging their families to stay together.
And I bet most of them never made it off these roads alive…
The only thing that outnumbers the cars is the zombies. We see them milling around, meandering through the streets and parking lots. Many of them aren’t even moving. They’re just standing in one place and looking around at nothing, their dead eyes not really registering anything around them if it’s not fresh prey. They line the road as we drive by, turning to watch us as we slip past them, well out of their reach by the time they decide to act.
Hannah starts to breathe harshly, her pants filling the car and growing louder by the second. Her nails dig into the seats, tearing through the fibers and leaving jagged lines. Her head whips from side to side, her eyes wide and nearly rolled back in her head, showing the whites and not much more. She twists and turns in her seat, jumping around as the zombie mass gets thicker and harder to wade through. When one thumps against her window, she releases an ear splitting shriek.
Startled, Ryder jerks the wheel,
running over a zombie and throwing us to the side. I slam into Hannah and she violently shoves me away, her nails digging into my wrist. “Don’t touch me!” she screams.
I back away from her, trying to give her some space, but I doubt it will help. “Hannah, calm down. We’re going to be alright, I promise.”
“No, you’re lying!” she screams, pulling even farther away from me. “There’s too many of them. We’re all going to die!” She pounds on the door, kicking the back of Reese’s seat as hard as she can. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here!”
“Hannah, stop!” Reese shouts. “You’re okay. We’re fine as long as we’re in the car. Nothing is going to get you. Nobody is going to die.”
“Hannah, listen to us. You’re gonna be just fine. You have to calm down or you’re gonna hurt yourself. Trust us.”
She turns on me, nostrils flaring and chest heaving with each breath. “They’re everywhere. You’re crazy!” She lunges past me before I can even react, and she flies into the front seat, punching Ryder with her closed fist. She’s screaming over and over, not even actual words, just shrieks of terror. Reese puts his arms around her waist and tries to yank her off, but she brings her elbow back directly into his face, catching the outside of his left eye.
Ryder tries to fight her off and keep control of the vehicle, but Hannah reaches around and grips the steering wheel. “Let me out!” She gives the wheel a sharp yank, and the car rams into a nearby guardrail. We drive up and over it, reaching the midpoint of the rail before the jeep catches and flips, sending us rolling across the road. Glass shatters and supplies are thrown into the backseat with me, but the impact of the car forces me against the side so hard my back cracks before dropping me to the roof when we stop upside down.
Zombie World (Zombie Apocalypse #3) Page 37