by Jack Flacco
Matty wondered if he could have done anything to save her life, but then realized that once the crowd had her in their claws no one could have helped her.
“Even today I blame myself for her and Mark’s deaths.”
“What happened to Mark could have happened to anyone. I thought you had gotten over it.”
“I thought so, too. I don’t think I’ll ever get over their deaths.”
Matty nodded her head and pinched the bridge of her nose while closing her eyes. She knew Silver was right and couldn’t convince him otherwise. No one could ever forget the death of a friend. She said, “You can forgive yourself. You know that, right? If anything is true about anything, forgiveness can go a long way.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
Matty tuned to him and gazed at him wanting to make her point clear, “Forgiveness is not what you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forgiveness frees you from the burden of having to think about it ever again. It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not really about those who did you wrong, but it’s about releasing yourself from the bondage of holding a grudge on the other person. In this case, it’s about you.”
“Is that why you forgave Randy?”
“Now you hold on there.” She poked him in the arm. “What’s going on between me and Randy is my business. He’s the one who’s acting like a jerk. He’s the one who’s holding a grudge. I’ve forgiven him, but he hasn’t forgiven me.”
“Okay, hold on a second.” He pointed his finger at her. “Don’t get angry, but I’m gonna tell you something. I’ll give you the male perspective, because I spoke to him last night when you came down from your little undead adventure in the pool. And I seem to think he’s right.”
“Really.” She crossed her arms.
“Yeah, really.” He waited until she uncrossed her arm, driving and glaring at them hoping she got the message.
She did. She uncrossed her arms, and said, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Randy has some pretty strong feelings for you. He thinks you’re amazing and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I think you know that already. What’s bothering him though is your reaction. You don’t want to hear about his affection for you and you shut him down every time he brings it up. How’s he supposed to react? It’s as if you’ve put a muzzle on him. He can talk to you about anything except you and him? That’s crazy. You’re not giving him a choice.”
Matty bit the inside of her bottom lip thinking about his words.
“This is what he said to me, ‘If I can’t talk to her about us, then I don’t want to talk her at all. If we can’t be more than friends, then I don’t want to be her friend.’” He paused wanting his words to have an impact on her. “He’s not mad at you, Matty. He’s mad about you, and he’s given up.”
Matty sank in her seat and sighed. She thought no one understood her. It was the same story again and again. No matter how many times she tried to explain it, Randy could never understand. She didn’t want anything with Randy because she didn’t want to hurt for losing him. He still didn’t get it, she thought.
* * *
When the two vehicles arrived at the mouth of Yosemite National Park, Ranger stopped his truck on the highway and hopped on the road. Sunglow and Randy soon followed. Jon stayed in the truck eating peanut butter and crackers, and washing it down with a cola he had found in the pantry of the hotel they had stayed overnight.
Pulling the map and laying it flat on the hood of his truck, Ranger calculated the route and the amount of gas needed to get through the park to the other side. The pencil’s tip had snapped on the space he’d written his numbers and it forced Ranger to pull his knife to sharpen it.
Jon peeked from the back passenger window and asked, “How much longer?”
“Won’t be long.” Ranger answered, his gaze lingered on the road ahead.
“What’s bothering you, Ranger?” Matty said, strolling toward him.
“Nothin’.”
“Well, something’s got you thinking? What is it?”
He put his knife away and went back to staring at the map. “I don’t know why we have to go through Yosemite. It doesn’t feel right.”
“What are you talking about? I thought you planned this through, thinking we would be okay. Have you changed your mind?”
“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m feelin’ there’s more to this trip than what we’ve planned for. I don’t know what it is, and I can’t say why.”
“Were the directions on the map?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what’s the problem. Could be if we went any other way we’d have to deal with other things.”
“I thought about that. I’m wonderin’ now how true that is. We’re here and we should be through this area in a few hours. It won’t take long.”
“So what’s the problem?” Sunglow asked.
“The problem? That’s just it. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
“We could always go around.” Randy said. “There are other roads, right? We don’t have to take this one.”
With his pencil, Ranger measured around the area of Yosemite and through it. It didn’t take long for him to admit, “We won’t have enough gas to go around. We’ll have enough to get there. I’d be afraid of what would happen if we ran out of gas a few miles from where we’re supposed to be.”
Silver walked to the back of the pickup and checked the gas canisters Ranger had packed before leaving Las Vegas. He counted six altogether. They must have had enough gas to go around the park twenty times over. Ranger wasn’t telling the whole story.
“All right, everyone take a few minutes. I’ll let y’all know when we’re leaving.” Ranger said, and hiked to the mouth of the entrance to the park.
Randy joined Silver and inspected the gas canisters in the pickup. He thought the same thing, “That’s a hell of a lot of gas for a few hours journey.”
“What do you think he has in mind?” Silver asked making sure the ties around the canisters hadn’t loosened.
“With Ranger? He always has something planned. This could be a backup in case Paradise turns out to be a dud.”
“Does he do that a lot?”
“What?”
“Plan for contingency?”
“You’re kidding. Right?”
* * *
Matty drifted to the side of the highway overlooking an embankment where Sunglow was sitting. With Ranger staring into the woods and the boys talking near the pickup, she thought it a good idea to relax before getting back into the truck. When she saw Sunglow tossing rocks, deep in thought, she decided to join her.
She carefully descended the embankment, sidestepping all the way to plop next to Sunglow. She grabbed a handful of rocks lying on the ground.
Sunglow didn’t say much, if anything at all.
“What are you thinking about?” Matty asked.
“Nothing really.” Sunglow said then caught herself in her own lie, “Sorry, that’s not true. I’m thinking about my parents. You know, they did everything for me, protecting me. In the end, they couldn’t even protect themselves.”
Looking at her, Matty asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
The breeze caught Sunglow’s hair and tossed it aside and over her shoulders. She said, “My parents loved the countryside. They grew up in the city and didn’t want the same thing to happen to my brothers, my sisters and me. We were a big family. My parents homeschooled us. I remember the days when we’d sit down, like we’re doing now, to talk about nature and the order of things. The food chain was a topic we all loved because we were always trying to impress each other with how well we knew the animals.”
Matty gazed at the spot where her rocks landed on the hill.
“This whole world is one gigantic food chain. Ants eat grasshoppers. Spiders eat ants. Birds eat spiders. Cats eat birds, and so on. I never doubted we were at the top. We ate cows and pretty much anything e
lse that made contact with our mouth.”
“I know we also eat locusts. That’s what Jon said once.”
“Right. But I wouldn’t have imagined zombies eating us, or for zombies to even exist for that matter.”
“It gives a whole new meaning to the food chain.”
Sunglow nodded as she let her thoughts wander.
“What happened to you? How did you end up here?”
“One night, my mom was saying good night to everyone. We lived in a farmhouse and the closest neighbor was forty-five miles due west of us. She heard the chicken coop rattle and shake. She thought for sure that nasty fox had come back to make a mess of things. My dad heard it, too. He grabbed his shotgun and a flashlight, and headed to where we had kept the animals. I wasn’t sleepy, so I sneaked to the window to see what was going on.”
Matty sat listening but knew what would come next. She’d heard stories like this before.
“When my dad shined his light in the direction of the coop, its face popped out of nowhere. White eyes. Pasty green skin. Clothes torn to pieces. It was awful. When it sprinted for an attack, my dad shot it in the chest, throwing its body against the coop. I thought it was over and so did my dad. My mom, hearing the gunshot, ran outside with a knife.” Sunglow stopped for a bit and wiped her cheeks of the water.
Staring at the embankment below, Matty tried to appear calm. Yet her anger began to boil in the pit of her stomach, which caused her to tear chunks of grass next to her with one hand.
“They were all over the place. Days later, I found that a passenger bus had broken down on the highway near the farmhouse. I thought that was where they must have come from. That night both my parents died, and so did my brothers and sisters. After having seen what the undead had done to my family, I had hid in the basement. I stayed there for a few days eating canned meat and beans. Do you know what it’s like eating that for days straight?”
“Don’t tell me about it. I already know.”
“When I finally walked outside, the zombies were all gone, and so was everyone else. I later found my mother’s knife in the body of one of the undead. This was before we knew killing the brain was the only way to stop them. I later found my mom.”
Matty shook her head then asked. “How did you hook up with Mark and Silver?”
“They were driving and spotted me in the bus from where the chewers had come. I needed to know where everyone went. I didn’t know how to drive, but I wanted to see if I could get that bus to the next town. At that point, I didn’t know the whole country had fallen into the end-times. When the boys stopped next to the bus, I wasn’t sure if they were there to help or to hurt me. I kept the knife close by in case of anything. The boys offered me a ride to the next town. They were running, too.”
Matty asked, “Crazy isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Your family was living off the grid, trying to avoid the world, and the world came looking for them instead.”
“I never quite looked at it that way before, but yeah. I suppose that’s how it went.”
From the top of the hill, Ranger called to the girls and waved them in. He then slipped into the driver’s seat of his truck and looked out the windshield to watch Matty and Sunglow approach the vehicle. He also noticed Silver and Randy in the rearview mirror getting into the pickup behind him, which was something he didn’t expect. That meant he had a truckload of girls and a kid. He shook his head wondering how he ended up that way.
Ranger started the engine to his SUV, shifted it into drive and entered the Yosemite trail. He was able to calculate that it would take a few hours before they reached San Francisco. The afternoon began to fade and what Ranger didn’t want was to get caught in the woods after sunset. He didn’t know what he’d find there and didn’t want to find out either.
Shortly after passing mountains, rivers and lakes, Ranger arrived at a bridge. His eyes bulged, as did the eyes of the rest of the passengers in his truck. When Randy pulled the pickup behind them, he was thinking what Ranger was thinking.
Ranger stopped the engine and under his breath he said, “What the hell?”
Sunglow heard him, as did Matty and Jon. They said the same thing and wondered how they’d ended up in such a situation.
In neat piles across the bridge, sandbags blocked the road. Beyond that, they couldn’t see where the road went since it curved into the woods.
As time passed, the woods grew dark. Stepping from his truck, Ranger pulled his shotgun and held it with both hands as he walked toward the blockade. He had instructed everyone else to stay in the trucks. Matty, of course, followed Ranger, as did Jon. Sunglow and the rest stayed behind.
When he came to the barricade, he didn’t notice anything unusual. He didn’t see bodies. He didn’t see spent shells. In fact, he didn’t see much of anything. The obstruction stood there almost as a warning to those wanting to go further that they’d be better off not entering the woods.
Ranger leaped over the sandbags to the other side and told the kids to stay behind. If he didn’t come back soon, they were to take the trucks and leave. This time, Matty and Jon listened, backtracking into their truck, locking the door.
On the other side of the impasse, Ranger searched the trees as the light of the afternoon disappeared over the horizon. He pulled his map and saw the circle on the map over the bridge, just as he had expected. He didn’t know what it meant, but after seeing the sandbags, he knew he had to deal with something else. He wondered if the military or someone else had raised the blockade.
He didn’t have to wait long. He stood at the precipice of the bridge. Once he stepped forward a few feet, guns appeared from the woods pointed at Ranger. Now he understood what the circle on the map meant.
Chapter 14
“God, no.” Matty said under her breath as her eyes met the guns protruding from the foliage in the woods pointed at Ranger. She sat in the passenger seat of the truck not knowing what to do.
“This is not happening.” Jon said placing his hand on his knife he carried with him tied around his waist.
Sunglow, who hadn’t seen so much movement since the silo, couldn’t keep her mouth from dropping on her lap. The boys in the pickup behind them scrambled to find their guns. It was as if they had lost their weapons and couldn’t remember where they stashed them.
A voice from the woods barked orders, “Toss your gun ahead of you, slowly.”
Ranger had his hands pointed in the air. He didn’t want to argue with all the weapons staring at him, so he reached for the shotgun and threw it a couple of feet forward, close to the edge of the woods. He went back to keeping his hands in the air.
“Look, we’re not here to hurt you.” Ranger said as he stared at the gun aimed at him from the trees. He counted twenty of them. “We’re on our way to the West Coast. We’ve got plenty of food to share if you’d give us safe passage.”
The words meant nothing. The voice squawked, “Get on your knees.”
He got on his knees but not without an annoyed scowl twisting his face.
“All right, now,” the voice said, “everyone from the trucks. Get out, drop your weapons and join your friend here.”
The desperation in Randy’s gaze made him do something he wouldn’t have done had he not had anger festering in his soul about Matty’s rejection. He slipped his knife he carried in his pocket into the small of his back, same as Matty had done on many occasions with her gun.
When the kids flooded the bridge from their vehicles, they did what the voice said. They dropped their guns and their knives, and walked with their hands in the air toward the blockade. Watching the woods, they hopped the sandbags then kneeled next to Ranger.
The gravel under Jon’s knees hurt and he fidgeted attempting to get into a better position. Soon, he grimaced and dropped his hands to his legs, removing the rocks and pebbles.
“Keep your hands up.” The voice said.
“The rocks hurt. Let me remove them from my knees then I’ll
do what you want.”
There was no answer from the woods. The other kids fell in a straight line with Ranger in the middle, but Jon did his own thing. He removed the rocks and the pebbles, throwing them in front then went back to kneeling with his hands on his head.
“Is there anyone in there who can help?” Ranger asked, “All we want is to leave you alone and have safe passage so we can continue on our way. We don’t want to cause any trouble.”
Matty heard someone laugh in the bushes from where the guns were pointing, and she turned to Silver. Silver caught Matty’s glance from the corner of his eye. He also wondered what the laugh meant. But she knew. They were laughing at them because the ones hiding in the woods didn’t consider the kids a threat. Obviously, they didn’t know with whom they were dealing with.
Then from the brown foliage, an unkempt man with long hair in a ponytail appeared carrying an assault rifle pointed directly at Ranger’s head. He sported a red bandana on his arm.
Ranger recognized the bandana. He knew the man was once part of the army within the army that had formed the Resistance against the invasion—something Ranger wanted to forget.
“Y’all keep your arms up. Hear?” The man said, waving the rifle around.
“Like I said,” Ranger repeated. “We just want to be on our way. We don’t want to cause any trouble.”
The man laughed and the others hidden in the woods laughed, too.
“What’s so funny?” Randy asked.
“Y’all think you’re so high and mighty that you can cause us trouble. That’s what’s so funny. Do you know who we are?”
“Idiots.” Matty said.
The man marched and pointed the gun to Matty’s head. “What did you call me?”
“Matty, don’t.” Randy said.
Matty smiled. Finally, Randy talked to her. Too bad it was because someone had to hold a gun to her head for him to do it. She said, “You’re idiots. We’re on the same team. The real enemy is the chewers. All we want is to leave you alone. If you can’t figure that out, then what Ranger said, about us causing trouble, will come true.”
“Whoo-hoo. The little lady gots herself a set of balls on her. Don’t ya, hon?”