“Please,” she said, clutching her belly. “We’ve asked around. Most people are packed already. But you…”
We had a bus. How do you claim no room if you have a goddamn bus?
I didn’t point my gun at her, but I shook it a bit so she’d see it. So her companion would see it.
“Lift up your shirt.”
“El…” Evan groaned.
“Look,” I said to her as much as him. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but there are a lot of people out there who only have themselves as priorities. They see this new world as a place to take advantage and get ahead. They call it survival of the fittest, but it’s really much more devious than that. Just your belly,” I said to Sally. “Just that.”
She nodded, cast a glance at the man with her and pulled her shirt up. Her belly was so big she couldn’t button her coat. Her gloves were mismatched I noted. I held my breath, hoping for a legitimate pregnant gut. The thought of a pregnant woman walking in a place we knew for a fact had hollows was too much.
It was a belly. A big, pregnant belly complete with outie belly button and stretch marks and, as I watched, a rippling of a foot or a hand from the inside out.
I exhaled.
I peeked out the windshield. “Okay. You two go by the bathhouse. The soldiers seem to have a fire and even some coffee. Let us talk. I need coffee,” I added. “Can’t think straight until I’ve had caffeine.”
She smiled; he didn’t.
“Thank you,” Sally said.
The man nodded his thanks but said nothing. “This is Taylor,” Evan said.
I nodded back, and they turned to go. He took her hand and led her away. Evan shut the bus door, and I made a beeline for the coffee. I hadn’t been kidding.
“Way to wake me up, Ev,” I said, punching him lightly on the arm.
“Hey, they knocked, then it was them pleading their case and…well, clearly I can’t make a decision like that without you.”
“Couldn’t even let me have coffee first.”
“Have two cups now,” he said, smiling. “Peanut butter toast?”
I shook my head. “Nah. I’ll have a protein bar or something in a bit” I ran a hand through my bed head. “So what do you think?”
“Christ. I have no idea. You?”
“Ditto.”
* * * *
The four of us sat at a picnic table as the cold wind swirled around us. “We’ll help. We can do…whatever.”
“Well, if we get on the road and really push it, we might only be together a day,” Evan said. “The trip isn’t that long, it’s anything that might slow us down. Wrecks, issues, checkpoints.”
“We can be dropped at the easiest place for you,” Taylor said. His mouth was tight.
“We’ll take you where you need to go,” I said, my voice much softer than it usually is.
“Okay,” Sally said, smiling. “Thanks. But seriously, anything you need, we can help. We want to help. Not be dead weight.” The whole time she spoke she stroked the baby bulge inside her sweatshirt.
“I just want to make sure you guys understand…any bullshit, and we’ll stop and put you off no matter what.” Evan said it with a lot of steel in his voice.
I hardly ever heard him sound that way. It was a little scary.
“Yeah, we got it,” Taylor said.
“Good. We’ll be pulling out in about a half an hour. It’s morning rush hour so the majority of patrols will be out now. Good time to travel.”
Sally smiled and picked at a thread on her gloves. “Can I hit the bathhouse before we go?”
“Sure.” Evan smiled.
“Why don’t you let me go with you? If you can take a speedy shower, I can spot you.”
“Spot me?”
I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to scare her, but I had to be honest. “There were some hollows in camp last night. They…took a man. I think it would be best if someone else was there to watch your back.”
She seemed to consider it, then surprised us all by bursting into tears. “Hell of a world I’m bringing my baby into, isn’t it?”
The men looked nervous and baffled, so I was the one who took her hand, smoothed her hair and led her away. “A shower will make you feel better. I bet you’re exhausted.”
“I’m okay.”
I chewed my lip. She was lying. She moved sluggishly, almost as if it was a struggle to walk. The fragile skin beneath her eyes was dark from fatigue. She looked haggard and sallow despite the extra weight from the pregnancy.
“Well, you’ll be even better after a hot shower,” I said.
“Hot?” she asked, perking up.
“Well,” I laughed. “Hot at first.”
“I’ll take it,” Sally said.
“Yeah, that’s how I felt.” I winked.
Miraculously, we had the cavernous bathhouse to ourselves. I wasn’t too fond of it. It felt open and creepy—ready to ingest us as if it were a truly haunted house.
I flicked all the lights on and realized that was only about fifty percent of them. The rest were either burnt out or busted. “Not exactly luxurious,” I muttered, “But it’ll do.”
For some reason, the structure was way more imposing when I was looking over her than keeping an eye out for Evan or him for me. Maybe it was because she seemed pretty much helpless as far as protecting herself. Maybe it was because she was pregnant and that added a whole new layer of pressure to the scenario.
She walked into the changing room and shut the wooden door. I leaned against the wall, waiting. It only took a minute for the water to cut on and then her head and shoulder to appear over the shower stall. “Wow. I haven’t showered in a place like this since summer camp when I was a kid.”
I laughed. “Come to think of it, neither have I. Man, summer camp was the worst.”
“See, I liked it.” She used some of the shampoo from the campground dispenser. Neither of us had thought to bring a bag or toiletries or even clean clothes from the bus. We had been in too much of a hurry.
“It was hot, and there were bugs and…Christ,” I rolled my eyes,” When I think back the counselors were just kids themselves!”
Sally tilted her head back and giggled, but I heard it swiftly turn to a sob.
“You okay?” I didn’t move. This was emotional, not danger.
“I just can’t help but think my baby will never get to experience summer camp. Good or bad. Not with people running around eating…each other.”
“You don’t know that, Sally. These things are finite. If we can eventually kill them all…life could resume. They’re not the undead.” A bark of laughter slipped out of me. It made me uncomfortable—that I could make that sound. It was a defeated sound.
“But if we don’t…if more get infected?”
Since the cause had never been definitively pinpointed—only the main source—it was a fear most people lived with.
“You and your husband will give this baby everything it needs. Maybe not the childhood we had—”
She cut me off. “Husband?”
“Taylor?”
Uh-oh, I’d stepped in it.
She snorted. “Taylor is not my husband. My hus—Brad—was killed in the first wave of infection. A co-worker…” She shook her head. “He died,” she finished weakly.
“So Taylor is…?” I left the sentence open ended.
“He’s Brad’s cousin. He came to find Brad and instead found me barricaded in the house. We’re trying to get to Connecticut to his other cousin—my brother-in-law David.”
“Why on foot?”
I saw her shiver. The water must have turned cold. I smelled that horrible pink soap that seemed to be universal to public restrooms and bathhouses and knew she’d be done soon.
“We had a vehicle. Then it died. We stole another, and that one went up. The transmission dropped. That was just a few miles from here, and Taylor had heard folks used this as a waylay station. We couldn’t find anything that wasn’t abandoned because it
was broke down so we just walked.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. It made me nervous, having two people with us. One of them pregnant. I wanted to believe one hundred percent neither of them would ever try to pull anything, but I didn’t really believe that about anyone anymore.
With the exception of Evan.
“…some time to sleep.”
I’d zoned out. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I’m just looking forward to Connecticut,” she said, smiling wanly and turning off the spray. “I really could use some time to sleep.”
I nodded. “Get dressed and we’ll get back to the bus. You can sleep as much as you want while we drive.”
She looked so grateful. And yet my worry continued to gnaw at me.
Chapter Twelve
The bus pulled out two hours later. Evan was pissed. His jaw tense with repressed frustration. The line to get out of the campground seemed to go on forever.
“Mass Exodus,” Evan said. “From last night’s attack. Folks are too paranoid to stay.”
And since there was only one unpaved road with soldiers at the end to check folks out, it was a long process.
“We’re going to be on the road later than I like,” he whispered to me when we were finally within eyeshot of the exit.
“I know. We’ll just do the best we can.”
“Between traffic and checkpoints and…” he shook his head. “I don’t want to be traveling past rush hour. You know that’s when a lot of stuff happens. Better to just pull over and hunker down if it comes to that.”
It was beyond frustrating, to be honest, because once upon a time a trip from St. Mary’s, Maryland to Vermont would have taken eleven to fourteen hours with stops for food and to allow for traffic.
“We’ll just do the best we can. If we…” I took a deep breath. Anxiety crawled in my stomach, and I felt sick. I had left my home for this? “If we need to hunker down, we’ll take turns keeping watch. The bus has the built-in perk of one entrance. The emergency door is barred and locked and will stay that way. Nothing’s getting through that.”
His jaw had not softened. I was worried for him. “I hear you,” he said.
We inched forward again, and I could clearly see impatience in his posture. It made me even more tense. Not a good way to start the day.
I glanced back and found Sally had fallen asleep sitting in one of the recliners. She’d refused our bed, smiling, saying it would make her feel weird. More intrusive than she already felt.
Taylor was in one of the matching recliners. Sitting there, looking frazzled, he cradled his shotgun in his arms as if it were a child.
He made me nervous.
* * * *
Taylor watched Sally like a hawk. And true to her claims of being tired, she slept through our eventful trip. We witnessed a car, speeding at least eighty miles per hour, blow a tire and cause an accident. Traffic slowed, and I watched, heart in my throat, as the people got out to deal with the situation. All of them looked nervous—no, terrified. These days, any time you were exposed you ran the risk of running into a hollow. No matter where you were.
I only drew a deep breath when I saw a highway patrol car pull in behind the accident.
Evan’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. Seeing them spotlighted that way, I noticed how dark the skin beneath his eyes had gotten. Did he even sleep the night before?
I climbed into the bench seat directly behind Evan. “How we doing?”
“It’s past lunch time. We’d made some good time then we hit a snafu. I think we’re going to have to pull off the road for some time. We’ll do as long as we can, but when the troopers and cops and sheriffs cars call it a night, I say we do, too. Don’t want to have a problem and be stuck out there as if we’re wild game.”
I swallowed hard. Wild game. That’s what we are now.
“Another hour? Two?”
He shrugged. “No clue. Just keep clocking law enforcement cars for me. When you notice the numbers start dropping off, let me know.”
We were slowing again. A military checkpoint. Evan let out a sigh and said, “Everyone dig out your identification.”
I went to the back of the bus, dreading having to wake up Sally and talk to Taylor who was still staring out the back window.
“We’re going to need our ID,” I said softly. “I’ll just—”
He shook his head, digging in his army coat. “I have hers. Let her sleep. Unless they make us wake her up.”
I nodded.
He handed me her driver’s license and his ID. It wasn’t driver’s license; it was a city jail temporary ID. My face went hot as my stomach plummeted.
“I—okay, thanks…”
His dark eyes found mine, and he said softly, “I did my time. Now I’m trying to make things right by getting my cousin’s wife and unborn baby to the rest of our family. Please don’t judge me.”
He looked away and continued to stare out the window.
I felt bad, but I also felt paranoid. I wanted to believe he’d done his time for…whatever it was, and he was now doing exactly what he’d just said he was doing. Trying to make things right. Start anew. Even if our world was a bit shittier than it once had been.
“Were there a lot? In jail?” I asked. I’d heard horror stories about the ones who’d gotten infected in jails. It had been a full-on massacre until the jails were able to segregate those infected from those not.
He gave me a brisk nod. “About half the prison population. It was…ugly until they figured it out.”
“Ugly,” I echoed.
“Lucky me, I hate beef. I usually just ate the sides on beef nights.” He gave me a grimace that was meant to be a smile. “A man who hates beef, all my life I’ve gotten shit for that. It ended up saving my life.”
I opened my mouth to reply. Maybe to say “You were lucky”, but Evan called out: “Eleanor. I need those IDs.”
“Coming.” I hurried away, grateful I didn’t have to keep talking to Taylor. I didn’t know what to say.
“Here,” I said, thrusting my passport and the stuff Taylor had given me into Evan’s hand.
He glanced at them, and his eyebrows went up. “We’ll talk,” I muttered.
One of the soldiers rapped on the bus door and Evan pushed it open. The man boarded, did a quick visual sweep and nodded to me and Evan.
“Folks, ID, please.”
Evan handed them over, and the soldier checked it out. His eyebrows went up too, and he shot a glance to the back to Taylor who was still looking out the window. Despite it being a prison ID, everything must have been in order because he handed everything back to Evan.
“The stop is to inform folks up ahead there were two attacks. Hollows coming out of a nearby abandoned apartment development. They came down the hills from the town above and ambushed a car. They usually shy away from the freeway because of the noise, but people still tend to be afraid because they feel exposed. Chances are it was a fluke. Chances are nothing else will happen, but we want everyone to be aware.”
Evan nodded. “Let me ask you, sir. If we want to get off the road for the night, is there a best place to go?”
“If you’re looking to get off the road around the same time patrols drop off…”
Evan nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The soldier, whose tag read Macpherson, rubbed his chin. “There’s a truck stop about an hour or so up the road. Big Rig something or other. They usually turn it into an impromptu stop over. Since it’s an actual truck stop, it’s on local patrol, state patrol and a lot of us roll in to have a meal. That would be a good place to circle the wagons.”
Evan exhaled. “Good to know. Thanks sir.”
Another round of glances and Macpherson disembarked. I gave him a wave and went back to Taylor, turning over the IDs.
“I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “People are going to be twitchy after this stop. Every little thing is going to rile them up.”
I agreed but said nothing. He took his ID a
nd shoved it in his pack.
I didn’t know what to say so I simply said, “Obviously we’re rationing but if you’re hungry or if Sally wakes hungry, there’s some food in that plastic container. Protein bars, noodle packs, tuna pouches. You know…shit.”
That made him smile. “Much obliged.”
The bus pulled forward, and I headed toward the front, toward Evan.
* * * *
Big Rig Stop and Sip was huge. I hadn’t been at a truck stop since I was a kid and on a road trip with my grandparents. I had visions of a greasy spoon, big bathrooms with attached shower rooms, rows of lockers and a gift shop stuffed full of candy I’d never seen anywhere else again. And I planned to buy a bunch of it.
“We going in?”
Evan’s eyes went wide. “Seriously?” he asked.
It dawned on me then. We’d have to leave the bus. We didn’t know these people—not really. And we did know more about Taylor Brown now. Like his last name. That was printed on his prison ID. Unless Sally had kept her maiden name, she’d be Brown too.
“Oh.”
“We can all go in,” Taylor said from the back.
I turned to him, trying not to let him see the worry on my face. “I can just run in and get some food—”
Taylor nudged Sally. “Sal? Wake up. We made a stop.”
She roused and blinked, hands going to her face as she stretched and yawned. “My god. Did I sleep the whole time?” Then she sat up straight. “I’m sorry!”
I laughed. “Why? You’re pregnant and riding in a bus. Why wouldn’t you take advantage and sleep?”
“I just feel bad…”
“Stop,” I said.
“Yeah, stop. Now come on. I bet you could use a bathroom.” Taylor stood and offered her a hand.
“Why are we stopping.”
“For the night. The roads are…the roads are better traveled earlier in the day. We went about three hours. Good start.”
“Three hours?” She looked confused.
“Three hours in about six,” I said. Slow traffic, accidents. We had a stop. So now we’re hunkering down for the night.”
“We’re going in,” Taylor said. “All of us.”
I caught the accent on all. I wasn’t sure if Sally had.
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