“Yeah, we caught it early,” he said, hoping that the faux hope in his voice was good enough to fool her.
“We caught it early,” she agreed with manic eagerness. She was fixating on this one slim hope because without it, she would fall apart. Grey could see the emotions in her eyes, raging back and forth: anger, sadness, frustration, fear…and the one tiny hope. “Right Neil? We caught it, right?” In the back seat, Neil’s face resembled curdled milk and his nod was a tiny movement.
Grey tried not to look his friend in the eyes as he flung an arm over the back of Deanna’s seat so that he could reverse out of the ambush site. When he was clear, he faced forward and couldn’t help seeing the clock on the dashboard—2:26 a.m. How long did that give him? Until ten in the morning? Maybe eleven if he was lucky. And would that really be lucky? He had seen too many men die, raving in madness from the zombie disease.
“But that…” He had started to say: But that won’t be me, only he had stopped. Why couldn’t that be him? What made him special? He’s been lucky so far and that luck had turned him complacent. When he had heard the zombie, he hadn’t rushed into the vehicle or hurriedly drawn his gun. He had thought: It’s just another zombie, just another headache.
It was no wonder he’d been scratched with that attitude. “Is this how Steinman bought it?” he mumbled under his breath. Had Steinman been thinking the same thing? Just another zombie? What about DiGadio?
“Uh, how long until we get to Sprague?” he asked, suddenly. It was a stupid question, a useless one, a question a child would ask when they were bored. Neil had no idea what sort of obstacles lay ahead, he could only tell Grey the distance as the crow flies—forty-four miles. “Okay, good,” Grey said. “That’s good.”
He began to pick up the pace, pushing the boundary of common sense. They were still high up in the rugged country that made up the border between Washington and Idaho, and the road was exceedingly dangerous even at slow speeds. He didn’t care.
Grey had one thing left driving him: a need to see his daughter again before he died. Neither Deanna or Neil said a word to him concerning his inexplicably aggressive speeding. Deanna buckled her seat belt and held onto the “oh shit” bar, while Neil strove to keep the drone ahead of them.
As skilled of a driver as Grey was, he could do nothing about the condition of the road, which gradually worsened as they went on, or the zombies that were attracted to the vehicles. The undead would come stumbling down from the hills and although they were usually too slow to catch Grey’s truck, they would impede the others, slowing them down.
Soon, the fourteen vehicles were strung out over two miles and the CB was alight with pleas to slow the pace. Grey picked up the microphone and barked, “Quit the chatter, damn it!”
“Maybe you should slow down just a little,” Neil suggested. “It’s dangerous going this fast, and besides, we might miss a clue or something.”
“No,” Grey said, unwilling to take his eyes from the road to look back. “She is close. Jillybean had an eight hour head start when we left Colton. She had to stop to knock down that tree and she had to stop to set up that ambush, and who knows how many times Emily had to be fed or had a diaper change. She has got to be close, close, close.”
Deanna swallowed hard, tightened her grip on the bar and said, “The others should be fine, Neil. Just work that drone properly and everything should be just fine.” Grey flashed her a smile, not realizing that he had tears in his eyes. She smiled back, but it slipped away quickly. “They should be fine,” she said again.
Grey knew he was being reckless, but he had the energy and the desire, and what was more, he knew that neither would last much longer. The headache would kick in sometime after seven and the fever would be next and the…
Neil cut in on his morbid thoughts. “Zombies in the road ahead!” For a brief flash, Grey had the insane desire to gun the engine even faster and go out in a fiery blaze. His foot went heavy on the gas, but a sharp intake of breath from the backseat cooled his head. He slowed, coasting with the engine idling until he saw a mob of the walking corpses lurking in the dark.
“Let’s get the blankets up,” he said, bringing the truck to a halt. Normally, he wasn’t so quick to hide, but just then he didn’t even have a window for protection. “Why weren’t the trucks armored?” he muttered.
Deanna glanced back at Neil before answering, “We didn’t have much in the way of gas, remember? And uh, Neil said that if we weighed down the trucks even more, the fuel mileage…”
“I know about fuel mileage,” Grey snapped. He immediately felt like a jerk. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We never would have gotten half this far.”
“But you would still be…” she started to say and then clamped her lips shut. Her focus was slipping. She had almost said aloud what they were all desperately trying to pretend wasn’t happening.
Neil cleared his throat. “We should warn the others, about the zombies I mean. Here, I’ll do it.” Deanna wouldn’t be able to do it. She was sitting in the front seat, shaking, looking as though she were about to crumble away. Grey wasn’t any better off. He was staring down at his right knee and trying to look into a future and couldn’t picture anything beyond hanging the blanket over the window.
Getting stuck in a horde of zombies was currently his biggest fear. It was usually only an annoyance, but now it was terrifying. If there were too many of them and they sat too long, he would have to put a bullet in his head right in front of two of the people he cared about the most. It seemed like a coward’s way out and the thought of it had him cursing under his breath.
“Do you want me to drive?” Deanna asked without looking away from the green army blanket she had shut into the window.
“No. I-I need to be doing something.” If he couldn’t focus on getting to Emily, he knew he’d dwell on the inevitable and that would make him crazy and he didn’t want the last few hours with Deanna to be spent in a surly mood. He forced a smile onto his face. “Let’s cover up the front and get going.”
He shifted to his left and felt a sting in his neck. And now that he thought about it, his neck didn’t just sting, it throbbed and it itched. He couldn’t get the scratches out of his mind and, as he taped the blanket in place, his shoulders twitched and his skin crawled. Deanna saw, and the fear that she was unsuccessfully trying to hide, ramped up.
“Neil, clean it again. I got this, Grey. No, I got this.” She pushed his hands away and took the duct tape from him.
Grey knew that cleaning the wound a second time after so long was a futile gesture unless of course the gesture was designed to placate Deanna. “Yeah, let’s get those scratches cleaned again. Maybe use some iodine, if you have it.”
“Iodine? Iodine?” Neil asked, his voice high and creaky. “You want iodine? Shouldn’t we be doing something more? You know, something more than…than this?”
For just a moment, Grey forgot the feel of the disease crawling through his blood. “Just clean the scratches!” he barked. “Remember, there’s still a chance.” He shifted his eyes towards Deanna.
“Yeah,” Neil said and for a few seconds he looked just as weak and lost as Deanna. And it was no wonder, Neil had lost more and suffered worse than anyone Grey had ever known.
“Thanks, I’m sure it will help.” Grey knew it couldn’t make anything worse. As Neil leaned across the console to dab a tincture of iodine onto his neck, Grey eased the truck forward into the crowd of zombies. The only way he could see was to peek from the blankets with just an eye showing.
For the most part, the zombies ignored the truck and the following vehicles, but every once in a while, one would pound a window or a fender. There were hundreds of them lining the road and for some time Grey was so focused on getting through that things had a “normal” feel to it.
It wasn’t until he saw how Jillybean had collected the crowd: a battery-operated CD player hanging from a tree limb which was blasting out the audiobook version of Moby Dick that he remembe
red his “focus.”
He had to see Emily—only the need wasn’t as strong as it had been. Emily would never remember him. He didn’t even have a picture of himself to give to her. He would be forgotten.
Grey cleared the zombies and drove with a growing depression out of the mountains and down through the foothills. The same depression had rendered Deanna and Neil silent. They stared out at the empty land before them, but their eyes were vacant and their faces blank. They saw nothing.
Just as dawn was breaking behind them, they came upon the desolate town of Sprague. It was the saddest excuse for a town that Grey had yet seen in his travels. He was sure that when the remnants of humanity finally realized that their’s was a doomed species and the earth reclaimed the land, the town of Sprague would be one of the first to fold—literally. The walls of its buildings were already sagging into each other like drunks trying to hold themselves up.
Nothing would impede their collapse, except perhaps competing cross-breezes of which there were many. As he stepped out of the Ford, his hair swept hard left. A second later, it went hard right. I need a haircut, he thought and then nearly broke into hysterical laughter.
He fought to keep a straight face. Laughing now would be insensitive—Deanna had that crumbly look again. She was barely holding things together and he suspected that she was trying to be strong for him. “Find the note, Neil,” Grey commanded.
Neil looked down the main road that ran through the town. He then turned in a little circle, making a noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t really, uh know where to, uh…” He paused to climb up into the bed of the truck where he again went in a little circle. “There’s not much here.”
“No shit,” Grey said. The town had a dozen east-west running streets and thirteen north-south ones. It was a dinky, crap-hole of a town in Grey’s now surly opinion. He joined Neil on the truck, where he too looked around, thinking that they would be able to find the note in no time at all. There was only a single gas station, one church, a “family” food store, whatever that meant, an elementary school, and a motel with an extended parking lot for RVs.
And not much else.
As they were standing there, the other trucks and SUVs pulled around them. Everyone got out and began to stretch and yawn in their usual way, up until they saw Deanna’s face. She was cracking. Grey’s impending death, coupled with the loss of her child was eroding the wall she had erected. Veronica and Kay came forward, questions on their lips.
Grey didn’t want it known what had happened just yet. The group was tired and worn, stuck in the middle of nowhere with the most dangerous part of their journey still ahead of them. He worried that if they knew about him, doubt and fear would rob them of the desire to go on. The town of Colton had seemed like a dream to them. If one turned back, how many would follow? Grey suspected that all of them except Neil and Veronica would leave. Even if he had to kill himself in the backseat of the truck, he wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
“Deanna’s fine,” Grey said. “She’s just tired. We all are, that’s why we’re going to find the next note and move on as quickly as possible. Neil?”
As the consummate leader, Neil swept aside his grief. “Okay, I say we split up. One car per street. There can’t be too many places to check. Look for the mailbox thing like she did before, or really anything that looks out of place. I will check the elementary school.” He assigned streets to each driver and the group broke up, confident that the note would be found in no time.
After an hour of searching, the enthusiasm waned and Grey was the first to give up. “She’s close, Neil. I can feel her. Maybe we should just go on.”
They were in the school’s library. With the furnishings designed for children, Grey felt huge, clumsy and out of place. Deanna and Neil were going through the books, searching titles and, every few feet, stopping to crack a spine and leaf through the pages.
“Go where, Grey?” Neil asked. “Wenatchee? There are three main routes across the state; which should we take? And if we miss her?” He paused with a book in hand, facing in Grey’s direction, but not looking at him. “What then? There’s nothing out there. You don’t want to…”
“Die on the side of the road?” Grey asked. “How is that any better than dying here? Are the rooms down at that shitty motel heavenly?” He had meant for it to be a joke but it had come out too softly and lacked any punch. His head was starting to hurt. “Sorry, it was a joke. I’m going to get a drink.”
He left the school and went to the truck, where the dash clock showed 7:13. “Headache, right on time.” The medbag held a number of painkillers. He went with morphine, swallowing two pills, and then a second later, two more. “Why not?” he asked himself. “It won’t hurt.”
The idea of downing the entire bottle came to him, but it seemed wasteful. What if someone else got hurt and there was no morphine? Besides, there were other ways to numb the pain. Although the liquor store was not even a hundred yards away, he drove, wanting to get there as fast as possible. A minute later, he was walking through broken glass and browsing the depleted selection available on the two shelves that were still upright. There were only a few bottles left. “Warm champagne or gone over cabernet?” Neither sounded appealing in truth, but then again both were better than facing the madness that was coming sober.
He chose the champagne. What he saw beneath the bottle caused him to jerk and he nearly dropped the bottle. It was Jillybean’s note.
Sorry that I had to leeve this here, but I figgered this would be the last place you would look. Emily is fine but getting tired of the car and so am I. 23—28—2 Wenatchee.
Jilybean
Grey sat drinking the warm champagne, reading and re-reading the note. She was tired. Yes, the note said it, but so did her handwriting. The letters were sloppy and ran at an angle down the page. She was tired and yet she wasn’t stopping. Maybe like Grey, she knew the group wouldn’t go on if they didn’t have to.
“But I guess I don’t have to worry about that,” he said and took a long pull, burping up the carbonation seconds later; the full, manly burp echoed in the near empty building. The bottle was drained in three minutes and a second begun when he happily realized that his headache was gone. “Flinally good news,” he said. “No, not flinally, it’s fi-nally.”
His exhaustion, coupled with the booze and the morphine was hitting hard and fast and for that he was eternally grateful. When he took his next swig, light shot into his eyes as Deanna came rushing in, scattering glass across the floor. She said something about cars or stars. “No, not stars, I founded the goat…I mean da nope. I mean da nooote. You shhe what I mean?”
“You’re drunk?” she asked. He started to argue, but she put a finger to his lips. “It’s okay. I’m not mad. It’s just, it’s kind of funny, I’ve never seen you drunk before. How’s your head? Is the alcohol doing anything for you? Is it helping?” He mumbled what he thought was a “yes,” but for some reason this made her cry and her chest began to hitch. “Did you say you found the note?”
“Da nope,” he corrected and took another swig. The champagne seemed to leap out of the bottle at him and before he knew it, his shirt was soaking. “Oops,” he said, before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and the world went perfectly black.
When he woke again, he was halfway to becoming a zombie. The light streaming in from the west window was harsh enough to cause him to cringe and that little move sent a bolt of pain racing through his skull. “Oh, God,” he whispered across a swollen, parched tongue. And of course that hurt, as well, both speaking the words and hearing them.
Grey had never felt so awful. His head hurt so badly that his senses were in rebellion. The light had the intensity of a laser, the rustle of his pillow was amplified so that it sounded like a thousand decibels, and the smell of Rachael Woods’ leftover fried chicken made him want to puke.
Slowly, achingly, and with a long groan, Grey rolled over, away from the light and saw Neil and Dea
nna sleeping. They were propped up against one of the shelves, leaning on each. Next to Deanna’s left leg was the remains of the meal that had been given to her in Colton, and next to that was a half-finished bottle of champagne.
When he pulled his bleary, bloodshot eyes up from the bottle, he found Neil looking at him. “You look like crap. How are you feeling?” Neil asked.
“It won’t be much longer,” Grey answered. “Can I have more of that morphine? Just a few pills; my head is splitting.”
Deanna woke and ran her fingers though her mane of blonde hair, somehow looking stunning despite the surroundings. She reached out a hand and felt Grey’s forehead. “No morphine,” she said, smiling. “You can have Tylenol and lots of water, and some food when you can stomach it.”
Grey didn’t know if he was hearing her correctly. “Tylenol won’t do anything, you know that.”
Neil laughed suddenly, causing the braincells in Grey’s head to scream in pain. Grey wanted to punch the smile right off his face. “Trust me, Tylenol will help,” Neil said, holding out his wrist. “Look.”
“Look at wh…” Grey did a double take. Neil wore a cheap digital watch and the time—5:06 p.m. jumped out at Grey. “It’s after five?” He turned back to the western window and cringed again at the sun. It had been nearly fifteen hours since he’d been scratched. “No fever,” he whispered in awe.
“No fever,” Deanna agreed. “Either Neil cleaned the scratches out in time or you hadn’t been scratched by the zombie at all. The window might have cut you. What you’re feeling is a morphine-champagne hangover and I don’t envy you one bit.” She leaned forward and kissed his lips and then threw her head back and laughed. Her laughter pealed upwards and wafted the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling back and forth.
He was happy to be alive and yet he couldn’t take anymore laughter without medication. As Deanna sat with Grey, holding his hand and smiling into his eyes, Neil took charge of the Tylenol as well as pretty much everything else. He gathered the vehicles, made sure they were topped off, assigned the order of march and drove the lead vehicle.
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 49