The words repeated as she spotted another target which she quickly brought down with a pair of shots that split its ossified skull. Ellen’s silly voice filled her head as she continued forward alongside Neil and Jerry.
She had never felt so much an equal as she did at that moment. The real difference that she could sense in the moment is that she felt justified in judging her peers as equal to herself rather than the other way around. She had never before possessed the confidence to find herself in that position. And so with her chest filled with a swagger and her head brimming with a Disney fish’s voice, Emma set about clearing a path through which they could pass to...
To where? To what really? To safety? Was it even possible to find such a lofty possibility? Emma would just be happy to not be on her feet any longer. She was really going to miss that truck.
It was then, as they stepped from the bridge onto the main roadway, that Jess said curiously, “I think I have an idea. We need to head straight up this road.”
“What’s up there?” Neil asked.
Jess was still a little guarded and didn’t want to reveal her secret, so she only said, “At the main intersection. Right before the Fred Meyer.”
Neil remembered that a fuel truck was parked at the intersection. Did Jess know something about that truck that perhaps they didn’t? And why the hell wouldn’t she just say? He wanted to ask her, but there were other pressing concerns at hand.
The more they fired their weapons and the more noise they made, the more attention they drew to themselves. The numbers of flesh eaters beginning to shuffle hungrily in the shadows was beginning to grow. They moved slowly but their sheer numbers were beginning to worry all of them.
Neil forgot his pains and Jerry forgot his suffering. They worked like the team that they had become. When Jerry had fired all the rounds from his rifle, he and Emma switched places so that Jerry was in the middle. He could reload while they moved forward and had Emma and Neil to protect him. They went through the same process when Neil needed to reload his shotgun.
In this way, they were able to cover the ground behind them and their goal some distance away. Using the path in reverse that Jess had used to return to the fortified school on her last excursion, they moved behind the Aspen Hotel and several other businesses. A small drainage ditch combined with their speed and stealthy movements to deliver them without further incident to their destination.
Soon, they were within reach of the intersection and Jess’ surprise. Neil looked at the fuel truck and wondered what she had in mind. Was this some kind of revenge ploy? Did she want to drive that truck into the school in some grand suicidal gesture?
Jess, of course, was only using the tanker truck as a point of reference. She was more interested in her car which had been left all those days ago. When she caught sight of its silhouette in the scant light, she almost began to laugh. Not much had worked out for her recently. Jess had suffered separation’s sting and death’s remorse far too much.
Jess’ daughter and the man she loved were worlds away and hopefully safe and waiting for her. Hell stood between her and them. Finding her car was the one bright spot of hope she’d had in quite some time. These people might be one more. Only time would tell.
She looked at Neil and pointed. Realizing he wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees, she said, “That’s my car and it’s got gas in it.”
“Will it start?”
Jess nodded. “That car’s a champ. It’s never let me down. We just have to get out to it.”
Neil nodded his understanding and looked over at Emma and Jerry. “You heard the lady. We got a ride out of here...”
Emma was in the process of loading another thirty-round magazine into her assault rifle and Jerry was checking the load on his hunting rifle. Jess didn’t appear nearly as experienced with her own assault rifle, but she followed Emma’s lead and prepared her own firearm.
As ready as they would ever be, the group of seven hopeful people stepped from their cover and into a side parking lot of a long dormant business. At first, they neither saw nor heard any of the undead. Jerry stopped abruptly and pointed to the gas station across the street. There were three or four zombies loitering between the pumps and the station building. Jerry raised his rifle to shoot but was interrupted with a swat to his shoulder. Emma was pointing toward the road leading toward the school. There were dozens of rambling specters marching toward the continuing ruckus of the battle. It appeared as if all of the creatures were thankfully moving away from the seven of them.
Emma shook her head from side to side and then put her finger to her lips in the universal Shhhh gesture. Jerry nodded and noticed that Neil and Jess were already moving across the street. Danny was doing his part keeping the other kids and himself tight to Neil’s tail.
Reaching the car without mishap, Neil found himself standing at the driver side door. Jess whispered, “The keys are on the seat.”
Neil started to come around to her side, but Jess chided him with, “Just get in and drive for God’s sake.”
Neil did as he was told, getting in and putting the keys into the ignition. Unfortunately, when he did so, his door was still open which triggered a series of beeps warning a forgetful motorist the keys were still in the ignition. He cringed and quickly shut the door, which also created more noise than he wanted.
The cluster of sound did alert the zombies in the gas station and a handful of others from the road to their presence. Jerry and Emma slid into the back seat, each placing one of the smaller children upon their laps.
“Okay, let’s go,” Emma pled from the back seat.
Neil turned the key and to everyone’s gleeful surprise, the car started. He flipped on the lights to see a gathering mob coming at them from multiple angles. Neil squealed the tires as he punched the car forward and swung around. He drove them back out toward Sterling and the Seward Highway beyond.
For just a second or so, Jess was tormented to scream at Neil to drive them back south. South was where Syd was...where she might be. South was where Bob was...where he was supposed to be. South was where she needed to be. She reached over and lowered the driver’s side visor. Syd smiled back at her from last year’s high school photograph. Seeing her daughter’s face surprisingly calmed Jess’ nerves. She pulled the photograph from the visor clip and said coolly, “The road is blocked to the south. North. Take us north.”
Neil nodded and did as he was told, which was his plan all along. The car was already moving, so he pulled hard on the wheel and got them moving back along the Sterling Highway and to the Seward Highway further on.
64.
Anyone who has ever suggested that silence was empty couldn’t have been more wrong. The silence in Jess’ car as they headed north on the Seward Highway was spilling over and splitting at the seams with emotion and tears. Tears of sorrow. Tears of relief. Tears of exhaustion and hunger. And tears of disbelief about all that had happened.
It wasn’t bad enough that the world was being overrun by flesh-eating monsters who had once been neighbors and friends. In the midst of that horror, some men continued to prey upon other men, women, and even children.
Neil was feeling very conflicted. They had gotten away...well, most of them. What about Claire? Della? Alec? He felt guilty about inviting disaster upon everyone at the school. There was no pleasure in having wrought destruction upon a bastion such as that. And yet, having safely retrieved Danny and Jules meant more to him than he had imagined.
He thought he had been motivated by a sense of duty to the children, but he now understood that it went much deeper for him. He’d not been granted the opportunity to be a father. In point of fact, he had always doubted his own abilities at parenthood, as had his ex-wife, which was why they never had children.
When Danny wrapped his arms around Neil’s legs at the school, Neil had never felt more gratified or paternal in his entire life. Being an uncle was completely different; not that he ever saw his niece or nephew.
; It was that sense of responsibility which encouraged him to put his foot to the brake and bring the car to a stop. With the high beam lights of the car, there was little that they couldn’t see on the highway, so he felt secure in stopping.
No one asked, so Neil asked calmly, “What are we doing?”
The silence persisted. There was more than one answer to that question. Emma thought that perhaps she understood the nature of Neil’s query but she also wanted to avoid the futility of the answers it might generate.
The simple answer was that they were driving north on the Seward Highway looking for sanctuary. They were surviving and little else. They hadn’t eaten in two days and the last meal they did have consisted of a partial container of fish food Della found which was poured into a warm pot of water and some green grass; not exactly a feast. They were struggling with little to no hope of reward.
Emma realized all of this but was hesitant to acknowledge it. Instead, she simply said, “We’re gettin’ by.”
Neil asked, “Is that enough?”
To which, Emma responded, “There’s not much else we can do. We just have to keep moving. That’s what you used to say.”
Nodding his head, Neil still couldn’t lift his thoughts from his foreboding doubts. Emma didn’t hesitate. She said to all of them, “Do we prefer the alternative? Do we just want to give up?”
Emma’s question hung heavily in the air of the car’s dark interior. It was Danny who first responded, “My dad told me to never give up. When I wanted to quit playing soccer ‘cause I didn’t like not playing with my friends, he told me that I had to honor my commitments.” Danny emphasized the words honor my commitments as if he was channeling his father.
Jerry said from behind Jules’ blond head, “Your dad was a smart man.” Realizing his gaffe, Jerry quickly corrected by saying, “Sorry. Your dad is a smart man. Didn’t mean anything by that.” The distinction was apparently lost on Danny who simply nodded to Jerry.
Jess asked, “Where were you taking us?”
“Before we headed down to Soldotna, we were trying to go to Whittier. We thought that maybe Whittier was free of all of this. I guess we hoped that we could find a place where we could go to be able to escape,” Neil admitted.
Without missing a beat, Jess asked, “Escape to where?”
Neil looked over at Jess to ask for clarification, to which Jess continued, “This infection or whatever it is has spread everywhere. At least that’s what we heard before the Colonel’s satellite phone stopped working. That was the last outside contact any of us had with the Lower Forty-Eight. I don’t know about the rest of the planet, but our side of the globe is pretty quiet.”
Emma asked, “But how?”
Jess looked away from them and stared out the window into the dark.
65.
“It started on that first day,” Jess said in a hushed voice filled with surrender. People all over Anchorage were just trying to get away, or that’s what we heard at least. Nobody knew for sure what was happening or what was causing all the chaos. It just seemed like Hell had opened its mouth and was trying to swallow Anchorage whole. Down in Soldotna, all we knew was what CNN or whoever was telling us. The most accepted theory was that it was a terrorist attack. Maybe biological weapons or something. Maybe they were right. Some mad scientist’s experiment finding its way out of the lab. I don’t know.
“Anyway, people were getting onto planes and boats and whatever was available. Some bribed their way on and others fought their way. Some of the last things I saw online were people at the airport or port or wherever all standing in long lines hoping that maybe they’d be granted passage out. Scared faces, young and old, men and women. And then, on one of the reports, there was some screaming and then a bunch of commotion just outside of the frame. I thought that maybe whatever was happening everywhere else had finally made it to them. And I guess that’s kind of what happened. Some folks decided that maybe guns were their ticket out. They started shooting everyone in their path. Policemen, airline people, and just people standing in line. The person with the video camera just kept recording as the massacre unfolded. Kids, women, men, and even dogs...no one was safe from those people. I wonder if it worked for them? I wonder if they got a ride out of town like they wanted?” The last two comments created a pause for Jess, in which she allowed her curiosity to wander a bit.
Finding her way back to her story, Jess continued, “It was like watching some horrible movie. Regardless of how they made it happen, some people found their way out of Anchorage. The problem was that no one knew it was in the bites and that anyone who’d been bitten had been infected.
“I saw more than a few folks pushing their way through who had bloody wounds and dangling bandages. I didn’t know what was going on. No one knew. I was as scared for those people as they were for themselves. Christ, they should’ve left all of them behind, but, like I said, nobody knew.
“The first plane to land was in Fairbanks. Someone on board had been bitten and must’ve died en route and then you know what happened. Could you imagine dealing with one or some of those things at thirty thousand feet? Talk about a fucking nightmare. Jesus, that must’ve been awful.” Jess visibly shuddered as that possibility played out in her mind.
“Well, the plane landed but the pilots didn’t know what was happening in the cabin. Their door was bolted and so they were protected from whatever they’d heard was happening on the other side. When they came to a stop on the tarmac, police and firefighters were waiting, but they didn’t know what to expect either. And when the doors opened, dozens of those things came spilling out, killing everything in their paths. And then the cycle started all over again. Some of that was caught by independent reporters at the airport too. When I saw that happen on the television, I thought...maybe I hoped that I was dreaming, but it was too real.
“Fairbanks only lasted a few hours...less than a day. I guess a lot of people got out of town and headed to the Bush, but most of the population was stuck just like in Anchorage. Eielson and Wainwright held out for a bit, but pretty soon connections were lost with the military up there too. It was like a light going out suddenly. The reporting from up there just stopped.
“That was about the time that I left my house. When I got to the school back there, some other folks told me that planes loaded with those things landed in Seattle and Vancouver and a coupla’ other places too. It was like we were invading ourselves or something; our own worst enemies.” Again Jess paused. She seemed to be lost in a swirl of memories
No one in the car could have known she was thinking about her daughter, though they could all sense her concern and her drifting thoughts. She had been operating under the, now she suspected false, assumptions that Syd was somewhere safe and removed from this tragedy. Hearing her own voice recount those early days and the quick spread of the cataclysm was rekindling her doubts. She tried to picture her daughter’s face but couldn’t dispel the visions of a hundred snarling, decomposing, ghouls which wouldn’t allow her to have peace. She closed her eyes tight but they could never feel as tight as the growing lump in her throat and chest. Tears, scorching her from the inside out, found their way through the tiny cracks between her eyelids. She held the picture of Syd to her chest and cuddled it as if it were a baby.
Not wanting to acknowledge but unable to ignore the probable truth, Jess said in disgust, “I don’t think there is anywhere to run. As soon as this thing got out of Anchorage, I don’t think there was any way to stop it. Nobody’s comin’ for us because there’s no one left able to. We’re on our own whether we like it or not.”
Neil asked, “Are you sure?”
Jess held up her daughter’s picture. “She has been the only reason why I found the courage to wake up most days and go to a job that was slowly killing me from the inside out. She was my world. I had hoped to get away from all of this and find her. I wanted to get to her and make sure that she was safe and...” Jess’ emotion caused her to bite back a sob and stop
speaking or lose all control. She breathed deeply, trying to hold back the tsunami of emotion. “Like I said, the same thing that happened in Fairbanks happened in Seattle and Vancouver. Maybe in other cities too. Everywhere a plane went, that plague went with it. There were boats and ships and yachts and who knows what else on the sea too. A whole fleet of death set to sea. Some of them started to make landfall a few days later and the problem just got worse. Sure enough though, most people wanted the military to sink the drifting cruise ships and tankers still on the ocean, but corporate lobbyists forced a discussion in Congress that delayed action until it was too late.” Jess paused again, this time in anger, and continued more sarcastically, “Those big ships represent a huge investment in capital after all.”
Quieter, with a funeral voice, Jess finished with, “The last thing I heard was them talking about bombing our own cities and using whatever force necessary to contain the threat. The voice reporting the plan...reporter...general...spokesperson...whatever...was, I don’t know, a little less than convincing. Probably because he was a little less than convinced. I don’t think they got this thing figured out and I don’t know that they will.”
Jerry, quiet up to this point, asked, “So what does that mean?”
Jess didn’t have an answer to that question. She both wished to have one and dreaded what it might be. Instead, she said, “That means that I need to find a way to find my daughter. We gotta find a place where we can rest tonight and eat tomorrow.” She took a deep breath and summed up for them, “I guess it means we go to Whittier.”
Neil repeated, “Whittier. That’s where we’ve been headin’ all along. It’s seems so far away.”
Still looking at the picture of her daughter, Jess said softly, “Everything does. We just gotta keep on trying.”
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) Page 33