“Still…” I said.
“He’ll live.” Robinson loaded the dog food into the back of the SUV. Jax perked up, sniffed the bags, very interested. “See, told you he wouldn’t care. Can’t be too picky. Gotta take what he can get from now on. We all do.”
I guess if I could survive eating some of the food from Aamod’s convenience store, Jax would have no problem digesting some old kibble.
We hopped back into the cars.
“Be on the lookout,” Ted said over the radio. “Should be some larger stores to raid somewhere around here. Looks like we’re coming up on a road called Commercial Way. We’ll take that north up the coast.”
“And what’s this town called?” Robinson asked.
There was a delay before Ted answered. He might have been checking the map. “Weeki … Wachee. I think that’s the name.”
Weeki Wachee? Really?
Who got drunk and named that town?
We continued down Highway 50 until we reached Commercial Way. On the corner was a Winn-Dixie, the beef people. Unlike mom and pops up the road, the Winn-Dixie parking lot was full of cars, though not nearly as bad as the Walmart we’d raided on day one—the greatest car clusterfuck. This time, we could actually pull the vehicles pretty close to the front of the store.
We got out, walked up. The front doors must have been locked, but that didn’t stop the looters. Big chunks of dark tinted glass lay all over the ground near the entrance. Since very little of the glass remained attached to the doors, it was easy to sneak inside without being cut. Still, we took our time entering the store. If I fancied hurting myself, I’d just think back to when I first watched the Star Wars prequels. Ouch, painful.
“I’ll stay back,” Ted said. “Keep an eye on the cars.”
Robinson nodded. “We should only be a minute.”
Aamod and Naima (who now held Olivia) also elected to stay back and wait with Ted at the front entrance.
The remaining four of us soldiered on inside the store. The interior conditions of the Winn-Dixie were anything but surprising. Shopping carts, many filled to the brim, clogged up every lane. Displays lay in shambles, their contents strewn about everywhere. Broken bottles leaked their sticky innards all over the floor. Even by Winn-Dixie standards, it was a disaster zone. And that’s saying a lot.
We walked by the service desk. There wasn’t a single cigar or pack of cigarettes left behind the counter. Totally cleaned out. It was good to know that when bad times come people focus on the important stuff. The beer section was probably just as empty, but we wouldn’t waste our time finding out.
The further we walked from the front of the store, the harder it became to see the broken bits of glass or mashed up Captain Crunch at our feet. The overhead lights were off, the main downside to having no power, just barely edging out not being able to hear Michael Bolton sing How am I supposed to live without you? I feared the days of backup generators were probably in the past. Lucky for us the large windows up front let enough sunlight in to keep us from clicking on flashlights.
We checked the signs above each aisle until we found the one with the baby stuff.
“Here,” Peaches said, leading us down an aisle mid store.
“Well, there’s lots to choose from,” Robinson said. “I guess diapers weren’t most people’s number one priority.”
“I know I hadn’t really thought to get any,” I said. “Not until we found Olivia in the hospital. My grandma didn’t wear diapers. Though I’m still surprised we didn’t find any back at Sam’s house. He looked like he was carrying a load in his pants.”
Robinson laughed. “The overalls did make it look that way.”
Peaches pulled a bunch of different packs of diapers off the shelf and read the labels. After finding the correct size, the smallest size, she handed the packs off to Robinson and I. Then she loaded Bowser up with powdered formula and new bottles.
“That should be good for now,” she said.
“You sure?”
She thought for a moment, and then nodded. “I think so.”
We navigated the maze of food and carts back to the front entrance of the store, surprised to find we had extra company waiting for us when we arrived. A slender woman, upper twenties to thirties, with fair skin and fiery red hair, stood next to Ted.
“I tried getting you on the walkie,” Ted said.
“It’s in the car,” Robinson replied. “Who’s this?”
“My name’s Cathy,” the woman said. “I live close by.”
“Cathy has a bit of a problem,” Ted said.
“Don’t we all,” Bowser said. He lifted the back gate and we put the baby supplies in the back of the SUV.
“What’s the problem?” Robinson asked.
“It’s my husband Brian … he’s missing.”
“A lot of people are missing,” Robinson replied. “Most don’t want to be found. If your husband was infected, he’s probably long gone. And I’m sorry to say, he ain’t coming back.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Cathy said. “Brian wasn’t infected, at least not when he left this morning.”
“Why did he leave then?”
“He went with a neighbor of ours to get supplies. Theo needed medication. He’s an older man. Has a heart condition. There’s a Walmart about ten minutes from our house, and they have a pharmacy. But they never returned. They said they’d be back in less than an hour. That was…” She checked her wristwatch. “That was five hours ago.”
“Shouldn’t you be at the Walmart then looking for him, if that’s where he went? What are you doing here?”
“I went to the Walmart, as close as I could get to it. The parking lot is blocked off with cars, and there’s armed men walking around. So I thought that maybe they went somewhere else. But I’ve been all over town for hours now, checking a ton of stores, and haven’t seen any sign of either of them. I’m afraid something terrible might have happened.”
Robinson had Cathy get in the passenger seat, and upon her direction, drove us south down Commercial Way. It was just the three of us and Jax, who now without Peaches hogging the other half of the seat, could sit right beside me. The others stayed back. Not by choice. Robinson’s orders. For some reason, he let me come along. I certainly wasn’t the best shot out of all of us, should something happen and we run into trouble, perhaps with the armed guards Cathy spoke of. Ted was easily the best shot. He had taught me, after all. I think Robinson just trusted me the most. He saw me as his partner in training—his Barney Fife, only he let me keep bullets in my gun.
We stopped five miles down at the entrance to the Walmart parking lot. There was a blockade of cars, just as Cathy had said, but not of the usual variety we were used to seeing—the cars whose drivers had fallen into sudden comas. These cars were deliberately lined end to end to prevent anyone from driving on to the property, like a fence line of motor vehicles.
“You weren’t kidding,” Robinson said. “Somebody went through a lot of work to block this off.”
“From what I could tell, it goes all the way around back too,” Cathy said.
“Where were these guards you saw?”
“The guys I saw were hanging out near the entrance. You can’t see it from here. There’s just too many trees and stuff in the way. I didn’t even notice them at first. I came in from Osowaw at the last light we passed. It’s the quickest way from my house.”
Robinson did a U-turn and headed back north, taking a left at the first intersection. Osowaw. It led us to a side entrance, which was blocked off just like the main entrance, though it did get us closer to the actual building. We got out of the car, ducked behind a white Toyota, and cautiously scanned the parking lot.
“There,” I said, pointing to someone walking around the tire and lube area toward the back of the store. They walked slowly, taking in their surroundings. It was too far away to tell how old they were, or even if they were male or female. But I could see they had light skin, a solid blue shirt on, and bl
each blond hair. In their hands was either a long gun or some sort of wooden club.
“Is that one of the people you saw?” Robinson asked.
“No, I don’t think so. That one looks new. The guys I saw were bigger, rougher looking.”
“Is this the same spot you were standing when you saw them?”
“This is where I parked, but I didn’t see them until I got closer to the front entrance. See, I climbed over one of the cars and headed across the parking lot. I was just gonna go in and see if Brian and Theo were still in there. This was maybe three hours after they said they’d be back. About two hours ago.”
“Why’d you wait so long to go look for them?”
“Brian told me not to,” Cathy replied. “He said if they didn’t come back after a few hours then they must have run into trouble, and for me to … for me to stay at home.” Her voice started to crack, emotion flooding out. “He didn’t want me leaving the house to look for him. He said it was too dangerous. But what was I supposed to do … just sit there by myself and wonder what happened? I had to go looking for him. I love him. He’s my husband. I tried to stay positive, thinking maybe they just had trouble finding the meds in the pharmacy or something. But I got about halfway to the entrance when I saw the guys with guns come outside, and then I got really worried. Brian and Theo both had guns too, but only to protect themselves from the crazy infected people. These guys I saw looked like they were guarding the store. I was scared they’d see me, so I hid for a little while, and then slowly made my way back to my car. I wasn’t gonna confront them. Who knows what they’d do with me.”
Robinson sighed. “Well, this one definitely looks like he’s patrolling.” The person with the blond hair and blue shirt disappeared around the back of the building. “Where did you go after you left here?”
“Um, first I went back home, just to make sure they hadn’t come back. Then I left again, drove around for a while. There’s a Publix across the street. I was pretty sure it had a pharmacy too. I thought maybe they’d gone there instead. Nope. I checked another Publix further north. Still no sign of them. I kept going back home, hoping they’d returned. I was driving around to do another check of the area when I saw you pull into the Winn-Dixie parking lot. I had just been there maybe thirty minutes earlier.”
We sat in silence, hunched behind the white Toyota, waiting to see if blondie would come back around the corner.
He didn’t.
“Can you help me?” Cathy whispered. “Without Brian, I’ve got nothing. Nobody.”
“You realize…” I started to say and then stopped myself. I was going to tell her the bad news. That he was probably dead. Who am I kidding? He was dead. There was no probably about it. And I had my doubts that the armed men patrolling the Walmart had anything to do with his disappearance—his death. My guess was Brian and Theo got a little too close to a pack of infected and—bada bing, bada boom—that was the end of the story. Either way, what did Cathy really expect us to do about it?
“Let’s get back to the others,” Robinson said.
We got in the car and headed north to the Winn-Dixie. The rest of the group had piled into the other SUV, awaiting our return. Peaches, holding Olivia in her arms, immediately hopped out when we pulled up beside them. Bowser stayed in the passenger seat opposite Ted.
“I’ll have to talk with the others before we make any decisions,” Robinson said to Cathy.
“I understand. Please come to my house and think about it. I promise it’s not far. You can follow me there.”
Robinson thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, that’ll be fine.”
Cathy jumped out of the car and got into a gray pickup truck. Peaches hopped into the backseat with me.
“What’s going on?” Ted asked over the radio.
“We’re gonna follow Cathy to her house,” Robinson said back. “It’s not far.”
Ted: “Why?”
“I’ll fill you in when we get there.”
Ted: “Okey dokey.”
We pulled out behind Cathy, Ted behind us.
“You’re not really thinking about helping her, are you?” I asked. “You know her husband’s dead.”
“I know.”
“Then why are we going to her house?”
“Because we gotta do something, Jimmy. We can’t just leave her all alone.”
“What then? What’re we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“You have a nice house,” Peaches said.
I couldn’t agree more. Cathy’s house was nice and spacious, two stories, and judging by the number of empty lots in the neighborhood, it couldn’t have been built more than a few years ago. It still had that new house smell. Ooh. Ahh. New paint. New carpet. Everything was ultra clean and organized. The furniture was modern, with bold colors and sharp lines. The art on the walls was abstract and full of wonder and life. Big windows along the rear of the living room let in lots of sunlight, and provided a good view of the canal that led off into the Gulf of Mexico. Somebody had a good job. Cathy, Brian, or both.
“Thanks,” Cathy said. “We just moved in a little over a year ago. It was our fresh start.”
Peaches sat next to me on a black leather couch, holding Olivia. Cathy sat across from us. “I’d say you did pretty well,” Peaches said.
Did being the key word. These days doing pretty well meant you were still alive, with a functioning brain.
Behind us, Robinson was chatting with the others in the kitchen, finding out where they stood on helping Cathy find her deceased husband. He already knew where Peaches and I stood on the issue. We’d made our case to him in the car on the way over. I thought it was highly unlikely that Ted or Bowser would think it was a good idea, and damn near impossible that Aamod would. What Naima thought, of course, didn’t matter. Her father made all the decisions for her.
“She’s so young,” Cathy said. “The baby. How old is she?”
“A few days old,” Peaches replied.
“Oh my God. You’re kidding. How … how did you have a baby just days ago?”
“No, she’s not mine. We found her at a hospital. We’ve been taking care of her ever since.”
“That’s incredible. She’s so lucky.”
“She is,” Peaches replied. “And I think we are too.” Peaches looked over at me and smiled.
“What’s her name?”
“We named her Olivia,” I said.
“Aww, you mind if I hold her?”
“Not at all.”
Peaches carefully handed the baby to Cathy.
“Brian and I had a baby girl. We named her Gwen, but…” Cathy began, looking down as she gently rocked Olivia. “But she was born with a severe immune system disorder. It was like her body was constantly fighting her … wouldn’t give her a chance. She’d get sick all the time…”
Somehow, I had a feeling this story wasn’t going to end well. By the front door, there were photos of Cathy and what I assumed was her husband Brian. In many of the photos was a baby.
“Finally, she got a lung infection, and she had to be hospitalized,” Cathy continued. “She lasted a week before … before she left us.”
The sadness permeated every note of Cathy’s story, yet she was smiling down at Olivia. Smiling through the pain of having to retell the tragic loss she’d suffered. Like just seeing Olivia, holding her, rocking her, was bringing back good and bad memories.
“I’m sorry,” Peaches said. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like to go through something like that.”
“It was tough. Even today, it still is. I think about her all the time, wonder what she’d be like if she was still here.”
“How long ago did this happen?” I asked.
“Almost two years ago now. Gwen would be turning four next month. That’s what I meant by me and Brian getting a fresh start. After she left us, went off to be in heaven, we moved here. We had this house built, relocated jobs, all to try and
forget. To try and put it behind us.” Cathy wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “As you can tell it didn’t really work. And now everything, the whole damn world has gone to hell. Makes my little story seem insignificant.”
“I don’t think so,” Peaches said. “It’s significant to you. That’s all that really matters.”
Cathy finally looked up from Olivia. “Now you see why I have to find Brian. I … I can’t go on without him. I would have never made it this long.”
Peaches and I both nodded, glanced at each other. I suddenly felt like a huge selfish jerk for not wanting to help her. I think Peaches felt the same. However, Cathy’s hopes of finding Brian would come crashing down mere moments later.
The others joined us in the living room, and Robinson delivered the bad news.
No.
The answer was no.
Cathy had only a one word response. “Why?”
“Basically, from our experience in the last few days,” Robinson began, “the likelihood of your husband still being alive is slim to none. He said he’d be back in an hour. And like you said, that was at least five hours ago. If there was something to find, I don’t know where we would even begin. We’re not from this area, and you already spent the last few hours searching for him yourself. I know it might be hard to admit, but I’m really sorry, I think your husband is gone.”
“So you can’t do anything for me?” Cathy asked, glancing around at each of us. All silent. All letting Robinson be the bad guy. “You’re right. He may be gone. It’s not something I want to think about, but I know it’s a possibility.” Cathy finally lost it. Her voice shook as tears began running down her cheeks. The verdict was probably made worse, made more emotional, given she’d just finished talking about the child she’d lost. She bowed her head. Her long, wavy red hair fell forward and shielded much of her face. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what more I can do.”
We all remained silent, let her cry it out. It was the first step toward healing, shedding off denial and accepting that it was what it was and there was no way to change it. We all knew what she was going through, because we we’re all going through it too. This new world was not a place for happiness to bloom, and I think we all anticipated more sorrow to come.
Dead Highways (Book 2): Passage Page 15