“Shouldn’t we go?” Peaches asked. “We don’t have much time, and I … I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“We’ll go in a minute.”
“Why are we waiting?”
Because I had to see, that’s why.
I had to know.
Peaches grabbed Nicole’s backpack with her free hand and sat down beside me. She pulled out some photos and flipped through them.
“This must have been her husband,” she said, flashing me one of the photos. “Not a bad looking guy.”
I didn’t look at it. I didn’t even turn my head. I continued staring at Nicole lying still, Sally in my hand, finger on the trigger, ready and waiting. Exhausted, sweating from the heat, breathing slowly to calm my heartbeat.
And waiting…
*
Everything was about to change.
Again.
I sat on a box of ammunition, my gun pointed at a dead woman named Nicole, waiting and wondering how in the hell it had come to this. A nice, caring, voluptuous former prostitute named Peaches sat next to me. In her arms was a baby, only days old, that we had named Olivia.
Not my girl. Not my baby. Both my responsibility.
How in the hell had it come to this?
I shut my eyes momentarily and dreamed of two weeks ago—dreamed I was in my quaint little home above the bookstore, lying in my bed, eating ice cream, watching television. There was no outbreak yet. No virus. No people on the television dressed in hazmat suits. No containment zone. No sleeping victims. The twenty-four hour news cycle stuck like herpes to everyone’s favorite topic, the upcoming presidential election. The talking heads talked and talked and talked—filled the airwaves with hot air. Would the president lose because of the poor economy? Did the presumptive republican nominee really wear magic underwear?
Who cares? I sure didn’t.
Days later, no one else would either, even the talking heads. It’s the ultimate cliché, but it all happened so fast.
Now, however, with my eyes shut, dreaming of better times, the world seemed as though it couldn’t turn any slower. Just when I thought I had it all figured out…
Everything was about to change.
I opened my eyes, checked the time.
5:41 p.m.
“Well…” Peaches said.
“Less than twenty minutes.”
Peaches had finished going through Nicole’s backpack and now sat rocking Olivia. “We’re never gonna make it in time. Not with the highway all jammed up like it is.”
“You’re right. But maybe they’ll wait a little longer.”
“Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Do you really want to take that chance?”
“We don’t have any choice now. Like you said, we’ll never make it in time anyway.”
“But every minute we sit here—”
I sighed. “I know. I know.”
“Jimmy, let’s go,” Peaches whispered. “Please.”
I finally took my eyes off Nicole’s dead body and looked over at Peaches. I could see the concern written on her face, and I knew it wasn’t because of what had happened with Nicole anymore. Peaches was a tough woman. She had been through a lot of hard times in her life—a lot of pain, regret, loss. If anything, she knew how to bounce back, and she was dealing with the reality of this new world better than I was. And that was the problem—that was the source of concern on her face. Me. I was all she had left, and she was afraid I was falling to pieces.
I was afraid too.
“Okay,” I finally said. I placed Sally back in her holster and stood up. “Let’s try to carry as much of this stuff as possible.” I poked my head back into the tent and grabbed the small box of food. With Nicole’s seat now open, there would be more room in the Jeep for supplies. “Do you think you can carry this with one arm?”
“I don’t know. How heavy is it?”
I shrugged. “Not heavy.”
Peaches shifted Olivia around to one side of her chest. “I’ll try. I wish I had one of those baby harness things.”
“If you can’t carry it, then we’ll just leave it behind. I don’t want to make a second trip.”
“Neither do I. Here … give it to me.” I handed over the box. She cradled it with her right arm. “Oh yeah, that’s not that heavy.”
“Good, cause now I’m gonna put this shotgun on your back.”
“Oooook.”
Now that Peaches was all loaded up like a mule, I slung the rifle Ted had left us around my back and picked up the box of ammo. It was much heavier than the box of food. “I guess that’s it.”
“Should we take Nicole’s backpack?” Peaches asked.
“Take it where?”
“I don’t know. Just seems kinda sad leaving it out here. She’s got a lifetime of memories in there.”
“All the more reason why it should stay here … with her. We all left behind stuff we cared about.”
Peaches nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
We began walking away, only to have a sudden sound from behind us stop us dead in our tracks. Peaches and I slowly turned to look at each other, and then turned to look at Nicole. She was clawing at the dirt, trying to raise herself up.
“She’s … not dead,” Peaches whispered.
I wasn’t so sure of that.
Nicole slowly raised her head. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since she passed, and yet she looked like she’d been dead much longer. Her once green eyes had turned the color of dust. The skin on her face looked frail, pulled tight, drained of all blood. Her hair looked dry and brittle, her lips blue and cracked. She opened her mouth and showed us her teeth. Her gums were red and inflamed.
Peaches dropped back behind me. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s infected.”
“But … how?”
Much harder question to answer, but I had a few ideas.
We both stood back and watched Nicole gradually make it to her feet. She resembled a toddler, wobbling around on stiff legs, trying to figure out how to walk for the first time.
I dropped the box of ammo and drew Sally.
I’d seen enough.
Nicole looked over and bared her teeth again, moaning. When she started toward us, limping like a homeless guy with a bad knee, I shot her twice in the chest.
Why would I waste two bullets, knowing it probably wouldn’t stop her?
Answer: I wanted to be proven wrong. I wanted to believe there was still some chance, however small and unlikely, that Nicole hadn’t become the thing I’d once enjoyed watching on TV and in movies, and read about in numerous books. The fictional creature that had so many different names. Undead. Ghoul. Walker.
Zombie.
The two bullets tore through Nicole’s already bloodstained chest, slowing her momentum, but not her desire. She continued toward us, her mouth open unnaturally wide, her vocal chords struggling to express how much she would enjoy eating us with each guttural moan.
Sorry to disappoint you, dear.
I aimed north of Nicole’s chest, looked down Sally’s sights, and pulled the trigger one final time.
Nicole’s head snapped back as the bullet entered her brain. Her legs gave out and she fell—like the dead weight she was—hard to the ground. Her mouth lay open in a snarl, but she’d moan no more. She was dead, for the second time.
I glanced back at Peaches. She was trying to calm Olivia, who had started crying after the first two gunshots.
“Did that really just happen?” she asked over Olivia’s cries.
I nodded and secured Sally back into her holster. Then I bent down and picked back up the box of ammo. “Okay, now we can go.”
Despite having only fifteen minutes till the deadline Robinson had set, neither of us were in much of a hurry as we left the campsite. There was no way we’d make it to the Walgreens by six. Not after all the time I’d wasted sitting around waiting on Nicole to reanimate. Not eve
n if there were no cars on the highway. Too many miles. Too little time. Whether we’d see our friends again was now in the hands of fate.
“Do you have the map?” Peaches asked.
I stopped walking. “Oh shit. I think I…”
“You left it back at camp?”
“I think so. No … wait … wait a minute.” I set down the box of ammo. Opened it. The map was wedged between two boxes of shotgun shells. “It’s in here.”
“Okay, good.”
“Yeah, I forgot I put it in there.”
I lifted the box back up and we were once again on our way.
A few minutes later, we reached the highway. We loaded the stuff into the back of the Jeep and then began heading west toward Orlando, driving mostly on the shoulder.
“So … how did you know?” Peaches asked.
“How did I know what?”
“That Nicole would, you know…”
I took my eyes off the road for a moment and looked over at Peaches. “Come back?”
“Yeah.”
“The missing bodies were the first clue. The eaten bodies were the second. Then when you were inside Nicole’s house using the bathroom, I snuck into the backyard and checked on her husband. He was still locked in the shed, right where she had left him. And I could hear him in there. He was alive.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Nicole. She was already emotional enough. Plus, who knows, maybe she just thought she killed him. I still had my doubts. Once I saw the little girl … that was it. That was the final clue.”
“But how can a dead person just come back to life?”
“You saw it with your own eyes.”
“I know what I saw … but still … how?”
“You’ve never heard of zombies before?”
“Of course I have, but zombies aren’t real. There has to be some logical explanation, doesn’t there? I mean … is every dead person just gonna start coming back to life now?”
“Only the infected ones. Remember the kid Diego had killed. He wasn’t infected, which was why he stayed dead. Those other ones we killed in the street—the ones who hadn’t been shot in the head, I’m thinking they woke up, fed on the others who had been shot in the head, and then must have wandered off.”
“But how do they just … wake up?”
“I can only guess.”
Peaches waited for me to elaborate further. When I didn’t, she said, “Go ahead.”
I let my mind marinate for a second, and then cooked up my hypothesis.
“If they die, then the virus dies, right? It can’t live without the host. So what if after death, the virus mutates to save itself, gathering in the brain and rewiring it somehow, allowing the body of the dead person to be reanimated.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“Is there anything about this world now that isn’t crazy? Hundreds of millions of people in this country, maybe billions worldwide, went into a coma and then woke up changed, with no recollection of their former life. It’s like their memories have been totally wiped clean. They are violent only to those of us who are immune, while organizing with each other for some mass migration.”
“Nicole was immune though. She was like us.”
“Nicole became infected once that little girl bit her.”
“Then she wasn’t really immune?”
“Well, if what I’m saying is right, then while Nicole may have been immune to the original strand, she was not immune to the mutated version. Which means, we might not be either.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
“The new strand passed into Nicole when that little girl bit her, and it went to work immediately shutting down her body, turning her into something it could use.”
“Use? Use for what? It sounds like you’re saying the virus has a mind of its own.”
“Once it takes over the brain and reanimates them, it basically does. That’s why the only way to destroy it is to destroy the brain.”
Highway 528 was a toll road with three collection spots en route to Orlando. I slowed down as we came to the first of the three. Each lane was packed with cars. As we got closer, even the shoulder became blocked, forcing us to a complete stop.
“Great,” I said, looking for a way around.
Orange road cones had been put out in an effort to keep the traffic orderly. Many of the cones lay on their side, clear evidence that a lot of drivers hadn’t paid much attention to them.
I turned off into the grass and drove along the edge of the trees, but soon had to stop again. The toll plaza was still a good fifty yards ahead.
“Well, there’s no way through,” I said, putting the Jeep in park. “Forgot about the tolls.”
“What should we do?”
I stood up on the seat and looked around. Only a few infected heading west. None an immediate threat.
“Hey,” Peaches said. “Isn’t that Robinson’s car? I think I recognize the number.”
Parked crossways to our position was a police car, though I had no idea if it was Robinson’s or not. There were police cars all over the place. We’d passed dozens on the short drive from the campsite. The number on the back bumper also meant nothing to me. I wasn’t particularly good at remembering numbers.
“I’ll check,” I said, hopping out of the Jeep to get a closer look. I couldn’t see much through the dark tinted windows, but as I moved around to the front, it became instantly obvious Peaches was right. Not only was the front end bloodied up and dented from all the people Robinson had plowed over, there was writing on the hood in black marker.
Take white SUV on other side.
Robinson.
Once again, I loaded Peaches up with all she could carry and we set off on foot, leaving Ted’s Jeep behind for good. Instead of squeezing between the cars at the toll booths, we walked behind the faculty building. Parked on the other side was a white SUV. Further out, a line of police and military vehicles.
“Wow,” I said. “They weren’t letting anyone through.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Good for us, though. Look at the highway.”
Beyond the barrier was nothing but empty lanes as far as we could see.
“That should save us some time,” Peaches said.
“A lot of time,” I agreed. I checked my watch. 6:09 p.m. “Even though we’re already late.”
The keys to the white SUV were on the seat. It started without a problem, and had plenty of gas. Back on the now empty highway, I cruised along at a comfortable fifty miles per hour until we reached the second toll plaza. I dropped down to thirty and drove through the spacious pre-paid lanes. There were a few police and maintenance vehicles parked on the other side, but no military this time. I accelerated back up to fifty. I wanted to go faster but the number of infected on the highway had steadily begun to grow since the last toll station. Most heard us coming and knew to get out of the way, but it would only take one to screw things up.
Soon, we came upon exit 13.
Narcoossee Road.
I stopped at the end of the off ramp. “Which way?”
Peaches had the map open in her lap. Olivia helped her study it. “Turn right.”
I maneuvered around a number of police cars and headed northwest down Narcoossee. The road was mostly clear of vehicles. The police had done an admirable job shutting down the area, not allowing anyone access to the highway.
“What side of the road is it on?”
“Looks like the right,” Peaches replied. “Should be coming up soon. You think they’ll still be there?”
The clock on the dash read: 6:18 p.m.
“I don’t know. I hope. The area is surprisingly clear of infected.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve only seen a few since we exited the highway.”
So had I, and then we passed the Aldi Food Market, and we suddenly knew why.
“Oh my God,” I said, slowing down as the Walgreens s
ign came into view between some trees. “Tell me that’s not the one we’re going to.”
Peaches didn’t answer. The look on her face answered for her.
I slowed to a stop. Both of us looked on in silence.
Amazed.
Hundreds of people surrounded the Walgreens, packed shoulder to shoulder covering every corner of the parking lot, and blocking every entrance and exit. They faced the building like a crowd of restless concertgoers waiting for the show to begin.
And in short time, it would.
“Well, I think we made it in time,” I said. “That’s the good news.”
The hundreds of infected people keeping watch on the Walgreens, waiting patiently for our friends to greet them outside, was the bad news.
“We have to get their attention somehow,” Peaches said. “Lure them away.”
“Should I drive by with the music up really loud?”
“That’s one way of going about it. But then again, do we really want all those people chasing after us?”
“It’s not like they’ll be able to catch us. If we can lead them far enough away, it might give the others the chance they need to escape. Then we circle back around and follow them.”
I took my foot off the break and coasted by the building. Not one of the infected turned to acknowledge us. I turned around at an intersection of Lee Vista Blvd and drove back by again, slower this time, revving the engine. I put down the window, yelled at them. Still, they paid us no attention.
“They’re awfully committed,” I said. “We may have to start shooting.”
Between the Walgreens and Lee Vista was a retention pond. I pulled the white SUV up and over the curb and parked in the grass. Then I got out and walked around to the other side. I shielded my eyes from the harsh setting sun to the west as I peered across the pond at the infected. There was no time to waste. In another hour or so, it would be dark.
Peaches opened up the passenger door and leaned out. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“You can help be my eyes,” I said. I opened up the back door and began readying one of the rifles.
“You got binoculars in one of those boxes?”
Dead Highways (Book 2): Passage Page 6