A couple dozen steps later he called out, “What’s the matter Gus, you throw another blade? Or are you just laying down on the job?” Another twenty feet and the trail did a quick dogleg to the left. Travis froze. Gus was on the ground and two gray-skinned teenagers were bent over him, ripping, tearing, and shredding his clothes. And skin. And muscle. With a sickening snap, Travis added bones to the list. One of the boys looked up; eyes that were the color of Travis's “arrest me red” Mustang GT that he had lost to his first wife in the divorce locked on to him. Travis began backing away. Two steps, three . . . four. Spinning away from the horrific scene, Travis ran smack into two small, brown-haired girls wearing Hannah Montana pajamas. With a smile they looked up at him. Their eyes were the same color as the urine stream running down the inside of Travis’s Carhartts.
Chapter 19
It was almost 3:00 PM by the time they made it back out to the highway. They turned right onto 704 and headed west—the sun riding low in the sky made Michelle wish for her shades, but they were back in the Tahoe. Five minutes of uneventful travel went by before they saw the first person walking down the road about a quarter mile in front of them.
“Andy, stop,” Michelle said.
He eased off the gas and gradually braked, slowing them to a bare crawl.
Michelle said, “I’m just wondering what our plan is for when we meet people. Do we swerve and avoid, do we stop and talk? If they won’t move out of the way do we run them down? We need some kind of a plan on how to handle that situation, because we’ve only been on the road five minutes and it’s already in front of us.”
Andy thought about it for while, still creeping slowly forward along the road. Finally he said, “I think we need to err on the side of caution. I don’t know how many people we’re going to run into—maybe just a few, maybe hundreds, or thousands. Most of them are probably gonna be honest folks just looking for a little help—and I’ve nothing against helping them—but sometimes things that are started with the best of intentions end up snowballing out of control. The only things in the bed of the truck are spare tires and the fuel transfer tank, and it’s bolted to the sides and locked. So if it’s just people needing a ride between here and where we turn off this road, I don’t have a problem with that as long as they ride in the back. If we run into infected people, I think our best bet is to avoid conflict except as a last resort. What about you, any thoughts?”
They talked it over for a few more minutes as the figure ahead of them got further away. Michelle agreed with Andy’s assessment of being cautious, but was a little more on the fuzzy side of how they were going to determine whether somebody was infected or not short of looking into their eyes.
“Let’s just try and do the best we can,” Andy said.
Michelle agreed and reached into her pack that was laying on the bench seat behind them. She grabbed her old pair of Nikon 7-15 zoom binoculars and focused them up ahead. Andy pulled back onto the road and accelerated. About one hundred yards from the figure, he slowed as she tried for a better look. The low magnification showed a male dressed in some type of workout clothing or jogging suit, still walking away from them. Andy hit the horn and the figure slowed as he looked back over his shoulder. Then he stopped, turned around, and started walking towards the truck. Michelle cranked it the binoculars to the maximum magnification, but his head was slightly down and she couldn’t tell anything else. She didn’t see any obvious blood or wounds though.
“Andy, you just be ready to get us out of here if this goes wrong, OK?” He acknowledged with a grunt and nod.
The man got closer and closer, walking steadily down the center of the road. When he was about twenty yards away, Michelle opened the door halfway and yelled for him to stop. He did.
“So far, so good,” Andy quipped.
“Stay where you are, don’t come any closer—not even one step—do you understand me?” she shouted.
“Yes, I understand.” The guy answered in a raspy voice.
Michelle slowly edged out of the truck, racked a shell into the chamber of the shotgun, and put the bead on the man’s forehead.
“You move, I shoot . . . do you understand?” she said.
“If I move, you’re going to shoot me . . . I got it,” he answered.
Michelle approached slowly, studying him. Mid-thirties, Reebok windbreaker, three-day-old beard, glasses.
“Take off your glasses and show me your eyes, open them wide, got it?”
He nodded his head and took off his glasses, then used his thumb and pointer finger to manually widen his eyes. They were clear.
Michelle relaxed a little bit, but still kept the gun pointed at him. “I don’t know what your name is and I don’t care. We have nothing to offer you except a ride along this road in the direction we’re going. The ride will be in the bed of the truck, not inside. The ride will end in about thirty miles when we reach our turnoff, or if you decide you want out earlier, or . . . if you cause any trouble. There may be other passengers we pick up along the way, they will be treated the same as you provided they’re not infected. If you interfere, or even interrupt while I’m deciding whether to offer them a ride, your ride will end. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
He shook his head vigorously up and down, but then stopped and tentatively raised his left hand.
“What is it?” she asked.
His hoarse voice scratched out, “I know you said you couldn’t offer anything except a ride, and I’m very much appreciative for it, but I’m wondering if you might know where I could get some water?”
“I can provide that for you. Stand by the side of the road and when the truck stops next to you, climb in over the tailgate and take a seat. I’ll leave a jug of water back there.”
Without a word he stepped to the edge of the road. Michelle backpedaled until she got to the truck, then grabbed a one gallon water jug and a Styrofoam cup and set them inside the bed before getting back in the cab. She told Andy almost verbatim what she’d told the guy on the road. He approved and pulled slowly forward. Like a well choreographed dance, the passenger followed through with his part and they were on the way again. The next ten miles saw three repeats of the same scenario. They were starting to pass a lot of vehicles that were pulled off the side of the road. Out of gas, out of time or out of hope—Michelle couldn’t say which. And truth be told, her heart was aching as she thought about what might be taking place in a million different spots across the country. Plus, she was worried about Eric. There was a little rise up ahead, and Michelle saw several RV’s pulled off along the south side of the road. One of the four passengers in the truck bed knocked on the back window and pointed in that direction. Michelle nodded as Andy started slowing down. Two people came out from between the line of RV’s and walked toward them. Andy stopped about fifty yards away and let the passenger get out. He said thank you through the window and walked toward the two figures. About twenty feet away from them he stopped. He waved his hand in greeting, and then he paused for a second in confusion. A few seconds later he started backpedaling. It quickly became a full fledged sprint.
Andy rolled down his window and shouted, “Get back in the truck.” The man didn’t need any further encouragement. Andy threw it in reverse and backed about one hundred yards down the road. The two figures were following slowly. Michelle turned around and slid over the front seat into the back; unlocked the sliding glass window and said, “What happened?”
“I don’t know, my RV is the furthest one up there on the left, those other ones weren’t there when I ran out of gas. Those people on the road, there’s something wrong with them . . . oh man, we are so screwed . . .”
He kept babbling and wouldn’t answer anything else, so she slid back into the front seat and grabbed the binoculars again, focusing on the two approaching. The one in front was a female, the one behind was male. He was outpacing her by about double, probably due to the compound fracture she had on her left leg below the knee. Michelle focused on their ey
es as best as she could. Twenty yards away they converged and she could tell their eyes were solid red.
“Andy, they’re both infected, get us out of here.”
Andy gave it gas and shot forward, swerving around them. Both of the walkers made what looked like halfhearted attempts to swipe at the truck as it moved past. About one hundred yards beyond the RV’s the same passenger thumped the side of the truck again. Andy looked in the rearview mirror to make sure he was clear of the infected before slowing a bit. Another one hundred yards and he pulled off. The RV owner slid off the back of the tailgate and stood there, hand raised in the air. Apparently, Michelle thought, passenger number one had given them the rundown on how to talk to us. She rolled her eyes toward Andy, shaking her head to try and dissuade the migraine that she could foresee in her future. He shrugged his shoulders saying, “Your call.”
Michelle closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, consciously letting the stress and aggravation seep out and away before she answered, “Mr. Question.”
“What?”
He looked back over his shoulders to judge the distance between himself and the approaching infected. Apparently satisfied that he had several minutes at least, he said, “Um, first off, thank you for giving me a ride. I really appreciate it, and I know you said you didn’t want to hear our names, but I’m Charles. So like I said, thanks for the lift.” He took another look over his shoulder and then back at us before continuing. “I . . . well I was hoping that . . . you see it’s like . . . OK, I’m just gonna say it. I’ve got nowhere to go. I don’t want to be dropped off on this road when you turn off to wherever you’re going, and you’ve made it clear to all of us that we can’t go with you. My RV is out of diesel, but at least it’s a place where I can sleep in basic comfort until somebody else comes along. However, there seems to be an issue with a couple of sick people who may disagree with my return to the RV.”
He stopped talking, almost looking like he was afraid that he had already said too much. Michelle grimaced—unsure of what to do—there were already too many things fighting for space inside her head as it was. Thank God for Andy, who cut in with the voice of wisdom and said, “This may be the perfect opportunity to try out the little silenced 22.”
He was right of course, Michelle thought, and they had Charles get back in the truck. He was only too happy to oblige. Andy pulled away again, giving them a little more room to come up with a plan. They ended up having Andy turn around and quarter the truck slightly across the road with Michelle’s window on the approach side. That way, she was able to lean out and use the side view mirror as a rest. At twenty-five yards away Michelle cut loose with the first shot, swearing in frustration as she learned how difficult it was to keep a laser beam on the forehead of a moving target, even a slowly moving target. A quick thought passed through her head, recalling every action movie she’d ever seen. Like when the bad guy is standing there with a little red dot on his chest and the camera pans away so you can see the shooter 250 yards away . . . and the shooter is just standing upright with no support . . . no bipod—nothing—yet the red dot stays rock steady on the other guys chest. Verisimilitude, she thought it was called. “Willing suspension of disbelief,” or something like that. Kind of like when you were a kid and you knew that Godzilla was just some guy in a rubber lizard suit, but for the length of the movie you let your mind convince you that it really was a 500 foot tall reptile stomping on Japan. Verisimilitude or not, at twenty yards she fired again. Missed again. Breathe in—breathe out halfway . . . She pulled the trigger at fifteen yards, missing again.
“Andy, get ready to take us out of here,” she said.
“Easy girl, just relax and squeeze the trigger.” He made the word “squeeze” last about three seconds.
At twelve yards Michelle drilled him. He didn’t blow backwards twenty-five feet, again, like in some of those movies. His head didn’t explode either. He just kind of . . . “locked up” for a second, then his knees buckled and he fell down face forward, smacking into the asphalt with a sickening crunch as the cartilage in his nose crumpled. She took aim and dropped another round through the top of his head. The second target was both easier and harder. Easier because she was even slower, harder because her broken leg gave her gait more of a “hop along” motion. Michelle dropped her around seventeen yards away. Andy locked the truck and they did a quick sweep through the RV’s, finding nothing alive, or “unalive” as the case may be. They did find several bodies; it looked like they died from the infection, not by “zombiecide” as Charles put it. In the end, all four of the passengers elected to stay here rather than be put out along the side of the road when Andy and Michelle turned off. Probably a smart choice. They kept the goodbyes short and were on the road again by 4:30 PM. They passed several more stalled vehicles, swerved or dodged around about a dozen people, many of which they assumed were infected by the way they acted. They were wrong about one though, figuring it out when he threw an empty beer bottle at the side of the truck as they drove by. About a mile from their turnoff Andy pointed to a lady up ahead waving a stick with a bright yellow shirt tied onto it. She was standing next to an orange minivan that had some type of trailer hitch platform attached. Andy coasted to a stop far enough away to let Michelle use the binoculars. From that distance she looked normal. Andy drove up and Michelle gave her the standard speech. Her shoulders slumped and she leaned on the stick for support, shaking her head and fighting back tears.
“Please, can you just help us out with some gas. I’ve got my kids with me and we’re all tired and cold. I can pay you, please . . . just a gallon or two,” she was sobbing by the end.
Andy stepped out of the truck, gun ready but not pointed yet. “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be forward, but before I get any closer you need to have your kids come out where we can see ‘em.”
She looked up, something between hope and desperation crossing onto her face. Michelle guessed that she was in her late twenties; auburn hair framed an attractive face with high cheekbones. Manicured fingernails painted dark cinnamon were visible as she chased a descending tear off her cheek. Desperation won out and she said, “It’s OK kids, come out here for a minute.” Stepping around the minivan was a young boy, probably no more than eight years old. He was dressed in a green windbreaker covered with pictures of robots, and his right arm was protectively around the shoulders of a toddler. Michelle guessed the child was maybe three years old, but was bundled up so heavily in a brown parka she couldn’t determine if it was a boy or a girl. In the boy’s left hand was a steak knife. Their eyes looked OK.
Andy said, “Is there anybody else in the van, anybody . . . alive or otherwise?”
“No, there’s no one else,” she said.
“Stay right there while I check, OK ma’am . . . I don’t want to scare you or your kids, but I need to know we’re safe,” Andy said as he sidestepped around them and readied the shotgun. She stood on the road quietly sobbing as Andy checked the minivan, giving an “all clear” a minute later.
He got back in his truck and pulled alongside, leaving it running as he got out and unlocked the pump handle. Her eyes were wide with shock and gratitude as he filled her tank.
“We have company Andy,” Michelle said, indicating further down the road where one of those jacked up pickup trucks was heading their way. Andy finished fueling up the minivan, replaced the hose and relocked it just as the truck pulled alongside. It was a banana yellow F-250 with dark tinted windows, a matching camper top over the bed and giant, knobby tires easily three and a half feet tall. It sat there idling for a few seconds before the passenger side window powered downward.
“Afternoon.” Camouflage hat, sunglasses, white t-shirt, cigarette held between the fingers. “Are you folks OK? . . . nobody sick or nothing?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” Andy said, “just helping out a stranded lady.”
“That’s mighty nice of you, especially considering all the shit that’s been happening everywhere. Is there a
nything we can do to help you?” He tapped the ashes off his cigarette as he asked.
“Nope, we’re good to go, but thanks for the offer,” Andy said.
“All right, you take care now.” The window hummed upwards, pausing with just enough space for a final flick of the cigarette before closing entirely as the truck pulled away, heading east.
Andy and Michelle exchanged glances, both of them trying to listen their gut—both of them interrupted by the lady trying to thank them over and over again. She tried to give Andy money—several hundred dollars—but he wouldn’t hear of it. Andy dug into the coolers and pulled out sandwiches and drinks for her and the kids, packing several more into a plastic grocery bag and handing it to the boy, who put both it and his tiny sibling in the minivan before coming over and hugging Michelle. Michelle’s heart melted as the little boy wrapped his arms around her neck in a tight squeeze. The lady gave Andy a business card that matched the printing on the van. It said, “Catering by Melissa” and had small decals of glittery cupcakes and chef hats on it.
“I promise I’ll pay you back when all this blows over . . . I promise.”
Andy exchanged glances with Michelle as a dark cloud fought for a place in their minds. Neither of them wanted to ruin her day further—maybe somewhere inside they both hoped she was right. It took a jumpstart to get the minivan started and on the way. The little boy’s gloved hand thrust out the window and waved to Michelle as they left. A few minutes later, Michelle and Andy were heading west again. By the time they reached the turnoff heading toward Crossbow Lakes, it was dark enough to use headlights.
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