by B. T. Wright
“Don’t worry about it,” Bryan interrupted. “We’re a scary bunch, especially coming out of nowhere. I’m just glad you didn’t shoot me out there. That took guts walking out of the RV to meet me. Real guts.”
Jess let down her guard. “Thank you. Embarrassing that I passed out, but thank you. Though the real hero is out there right now alone running from the infected. I was just trying to be brave while he was gone.”
“Tyler told me what he did. I can’t wait to meet him. Jake, is it?”
Jess nodded.
“Yeah, sounds like a brave man.”
“You have no idea,” she said. Then realized she should probably stop saying that.
Amy came back over to Jess and handed her a plate. “Here, Bryan said you needed to eat. He said it wasn’t you being scared that made you pass out, said it was your blood sugar.”
Jess took the plate and smiled at Amy. Then smiled at Bryan.
“You okay to talk?” Bryan said. “I don’t think we should sit here on this exit much longer. Never know when those things could be coming.”
Jess nodded and took a seat at the table. The men moved around to make sure she had room.
“Tyler said that Jake knew someone in DC. Said that’s where you’ve been getting your information. Straight from the president?”
Jess was put off that Tyler had shared so much.
“Before you answer,” Bryan said, “we don’t mean to intrude. We’re just talking it all out. We had a woman with us earlier who swears when she was in the store that a radio broadcast said there was a safe zone in Columbus. About two hours from here.”
“Where is she now?” Jess said.
“She left for there immediately. We were going to go, but first we had to check and see if Mark’s family was okay, or not.”
Jess definitely understood the feeling.
“We still don’t know if it’s the best move, driving all the way to Columbus. We were hoping to find some place safe here in Cincinnati. That’s why we were hanging around the interstate. Trying to get lucky that a car with some info would come by. Didn’t expect to find someone communicating with the president.”
Jess finished chewing her bite of sandwich. Though there wasn’t much on it, it was about the best sandwich she’d ever had. “Not the president. Just someone with him.”
“Same thing to me.” Bryan smiled. “Look, I figure if we help you find Jake, maybe you’ll let us see about this professor and the helicopter? If there isn’t enough room, we stay behind.”
“It’s not up to me. But thank you for offering to find Jake. He told us to meet him at the university. I know Jake. He’ll be there. Probably already is.”
“Jess,” Tyler said. “We still haven’t heard from him. I keep trying, but . . . nothing.”
Tyler looked defeated. And Jess felt defeated, but no way was she going to let that negativity steer her. “He’ll be there.” She looked at Bryan. “You guys are welcome to follow, but I can’t make any promises on what will happen when we get there. All of this may be for nothing. There may not be a professor, and there may never be a helicopter.”
Bryan nodded. “I understand. But, if it’s all the same to you, we don’t have a better plan. At least together we have a better chance of getting there safely.”
In that moment, Jess was thankful they had run into Bryan. But there was still a part of her that wouldn’t let them all the way in. Her guard would stay up. All she cared about was seeing Jake again. Anything else would be a bonus.
36
For a moment Jake was frozen. Even though the infected man was crawling through the window, even though the fire was rising on the stove and at any moment could ignite from the gas in the oven, and even though he heard the front door burst inward, the infected surely right at his back, he couldn’t move. This thing, this former human—whatever it is now—said the name Amy. It wasn’t like back in Amy’s house when he thought her mom had said “wait” but he wasn’t exactly sure. But this was clear, and Jake’s brain couldn’t get caught back up to the moment he was so blown away.
To his left, the flames had traveled up the wall and were burning the bottom of the cabinets. That flicker, coupled with the infected man swiping at him and knocking against the end of the silencer on his Beretta, finally snapped him out of it. He wanted to try to communicate with this thing after it spoke. He wanted to understand why, and how it said Amy’s name, but he couldn’t do any of that if he were a ball of fire, or if he had infected chewing on the back of his neck.
He re-aimed his pistol, twitched his right index finger, and blew a hole in the talking zombie’s forehead. As he holstered his gun and took the AR-15 in his hand, the image of the outside of the house came to him and he sprinted toward the right side of the house, where he remembered the garage doors were. Out of the corner of his eye, on his left, he saw a couple of infected run into the kitchen. Jake had just put one foot in the adjacent dining room when the gas met the flames on the stove and a powerful blast shook the house behind him, strong enough to propel him forward onto the ground. Shattering glass and a burst of heat popped off behind him. He wanted to look back to watch the flames melting the black-eyed strangers, but he was too busy rolling to his side and aiming his gun at the line of infected that were rushing the dining room to attack him.
Jake held his finger down as he stood, a string of bullets began meeting flesh, and blood colored the white walls crimson. He continued to fire, taking down at least ten of them before his thirty-round magazine clicked empty. There was a mass of them still moving into the front door. He darted left and ran down the hallway under the balcony he had been on a minute ago. He ran past a bathroom, then a laundry room, and he tried the next closed door. It opened out into the garage, and as he slammed the door behind him his heart leapt when he saw the shiny, red Ford F-150 parked in the first bay. He removed his bag from his back as he opened the door, and as if a holy light were shining down on it, the cabin lights glowed over the set of keys that sat in the center console. He tossed his bag in the passenger seat, climbed in, and started the truck. The engine firing up was like the sweetest of songs. He pulled the lever down to reverse, but instead of going ahead and hitting the gas, his instincts told him to wait as the scene he watched from the upstairs window––the mass of infected covering the driveway––jumped into his mind.
He didn’t want to floor it and run into too many of them. If he could hold out until they started coming into the garage from the same door he’d just used, maybe enough of them would have moved into the house to give him an easier, less risky route to the street. It was a fairly new truck, and it might be able to handle it, but if it couldn’t, he was out of the frying pan and into the fryer.
Waiting wasn’t an easy thing to do. Everything inside of him, except for that small voice telling him to wait, was screaming at him to punch the gas and roll out. It was like having the worst of itches and not scratching it. Like starving and not eating. But he waited. As he did, he took his AR-15 from around his neck, reached into his bag for his last loaded magazine, and locked it in place. He put both hands on the steering wheel, ten and two, and stared without blinking at the door from the house into the garage. Though it had only been seconds since he started the truck, it felt like hours.
Seconds were long enough for him to think of Jess and Tyler. There was so much chaos surrounding him that it was crazy to be worried about anything other than himself. But he was. Tyler was like his brother. And if he lost Jess, he didn’t know what he would do. She was the only woman he’s ever loved. He remembered the first time he’d kissed her. A forever fourteen years ago. As he continued to stare at the door, waiting for the infected, he could see Jess’s nervous face, her wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans as he leaned in on the bleachers at the football game. It wasn’t the best kiss, but it was the most memorable. It had changed both of their lives forever. From that moment on she was like a magnet. No matter what was going on in his life, she always drew h
im back in.
The door to the garage flung open and banged against the wall. Reality set back in when a train of infected rushed through, the first flinging itself onto the hood of the truck as Jake switched his foot from the brake to the gas. He stomped on it, and the tires screamed as they spun atop the slick poured concrete below. When they caught traction, the back of the truck bed smashed through the garage door behind him, and, before he knew it he had run over at least four infected that had been moving outside. It wasn’t the horde it had been earlier. The waiting had paid off.
He continued backward, bouncing and rumbling over the bodies. The truck continued out into the street where it struck a couple more when he turned the wheel to the left, slammed the shifter down into drive, and pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The tires spun again and the truck shot forward, running over two more infected that were moving toward the house. With a look to his left he saw flames licking the sky at the back of the house, and a throng of infected running from the busted garage door like ants from a flooding hill.
They were too late.
Jake was already three houses away by the time they reached the street. The streetlights glowed over them as they raced to catch up, but they couldn’t, Jake had managed to escape them again. He made a quick right, then a left. Once he found his way out of the neighborhood, he was going to drive away from the bridge that Tyler and Jess crossed earlier. He didn’t want to take the chance that some of the infected were still waiting there. If they could coordinate an attack at the house and say the name of the girl in the RV with Jess, they were capable of leaving some there for him at the bridge.
He pulled out of the neighborhood. He knew there were multiple bridges across into different parts of downtown Cincinnati. He was going to find the next one over and cross there. Jake’s mind shifted as he drove––he had to see if Jess and Tyler were okay. He reached down to his left pocket where he’d stashed the radio when he was hiding in the hotel parking lot.
But the pocket was empty.
Panic shot through him like a bolt of lightning.
He felt in the other pocket and found nothing. He frantically dug inside his bag, but there was no sign of the radio. His mind replayed the blast in the kitchen that had knocked him to the floor. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but it must have fallen out there. He slammed his fist against the truck’s dashboard. Not once, but three times. He’d been by himself for a while now since he jumped from the top of the RV to draw the infected away from the bridge, but being in that truck with no way to reach out to Jess was the first time he truly felt alone.
37
After a few wrong turns, Jake finally found the road that led to the second bridge over to Cincinnati. Traffic was a little more jammed on that route because it was more residential. He was still recovering from the anguish of losing his radio. More so because Jess and Tyler had no way of knowing if he was okay than it was that he didn’t know if they were. He couldn’t imagine the worry Jess would have after watching him jump right into the middle of the fray. Seemed surreal even to himself. Amazing what you can talk yourself into doing to save the people you loved. And Jake was willing to go much further than that.
He weaved around some cars, but made it onto the bridge. The shoulder was fairly clear, giving him a path to finally cross over into Ohio and be on his way to the university. Though by that time, with all the detours that he had to make, he doubted there would be anything there waiting for them. He still needed to try. His worst nightmare would be that he did make it, but Tyler and Jess weren’t there. He had no idea what he would do then. Backtracking their route would be the most obvious start, but they might have had to detour a dozen times to make it there. They could be on one of a hundred different roads.
Jake shook the stream of negative thoughts from mind. However, there was no running from the negative that happened when he reached the middle of the bridge. All the glowing lights of downtown in front of him, from the Great American Tower to the Scripps Center building, all at once––they all went black. Jake hit the brakes and slowed to a stop. It was as if a black cloud had suddenly swallowed Cincinnati whole. All he could do was stare into the darkness. Other than a few blazing fires, his headlights were the only lights he could see. It was a haunting sight as he idled above the river.
He thought back to his conversation on the phone with Colt. He remembered either he or Colt had said something about how the power could go out at any moment. But in between conversations with Tyler on the interstate, it occurred to him that the power should stay on for quite some time. Jake was no expert on power sources, but even if no one was manning the stations, there should be enough coal loaded to last a few days at worst. And the nuclear plants could run autonomously in a lot of situations.
Amy.
That infected man hissing her name came back to him. The infected evolving quickly enough to set a trap came back to him. And when they’d gathered each other instead of bull-rushing the house when he was waiting for them came back to him, all telling him that this was more than a virus. Now that he was staring at a blacked-out Cincinnati, it seemed to only further prove something much larger was going on.
“Aliens,” Tyler had said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Jake let the thought wash over him. If, in fact, someone had shut off the power manually––which was what Jake figured to be the case since this entire thing was only about a day old––aliens, no matter how absurd, couldn’t be ruled out. Of course in most everyone’s mind, the thought of an alien invasion most likely brought visions of spaceships and weird-looking creatures. But that didn’t have to be the case. It also could be the other idea Jake had been tossing around: a terrorist attack. None of what happened really added up to that, but there had to be something from those two options. A virus, considering the speed of which the power and technology had been shutting down, actually seemed more unrealistic than aliens and terrorists. All he knew for sure was that there was someone––or some thing––to blame for this. And if that was the case, though hard to imagine, things could still get even worse.
Before he moved ahead toward downtown, he turned on the radio and began shuffling through the stations. Static continued as he scrolled through them, until finally he found a continuous beeping. Then a man’s voice came over the airwaves.
“This is the Emergency Alert System. If you are hearing this message, please either return to, or remain in your home until further notice. Lock all doors and windows, and if you have a room without a window, stay there and listen for an update. There is a serious threat to all that remain outdoors. Please adhere to this message. Your life could depend on it.”
The beep came again, then the same message. It was such a surreal and creepy thing to hear. America truly was a completely different place now. Jake wondered how long the message had been on loop. Though it didn’t offer much information, there really wasn’t much else to be said. He supposed if there were safe zones being reported, they would update the message, so apparently there either wasn’t any, or more likely there was just no way to report it. Things had happened so fast that there had been no time to set up a safe zone and then report it before everything went down. There had only been time to survive.
Jake switched off the radio and moved forward on the shoulder of the bridge. He didn’t like the darkness he was driving toward, and he hated the silence that was accompanying him. He reached over and unzipped the front pocket on his bag where he had put his phone.
“Just because the cell service is useless doesn’t mean you can’t be useful.”
He unlocked the phone and tapped on the music app. He had a decent collection. When he’d been deployed in Afghanistan, there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of entertainment, so music had been something of a daily, if not hourly ritual. Especially when heading into a mission. He glanced up at the dark city as he rolled off the bridge onto land. This was just as much of a war as anything he’d ever experienced before. So
he put on the song he always listened to when going into battle and made his way toward the University of Cincinnati, visions of helicopters dancing in his head, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” in his ears. Since the light had literally just exited the city, he couldn’t think of any song that could be any more fitting.
38
Emily finished removing her makeup, brushed her teeth, and flossed. As she sat in the chair in her new cubbyhole of a bedroom, she began to brush her hair while she stared into the mirror. For the foreseeable future, this was her home. With none of her things, none of her surroundings, and––worst of all––none of her people. And she wouldn’t be seeing any of her people ever again. Because in a matter of only a few days––they had all died.
At first it was just one tear that squeezed out of the corner of her eye. But feeling the tear run down her cheek triggered what she had been holding back for a long time and she began to sob. In her adult life, Emily hadn’t been much of a cryer. She’d never really had reason after her parents died. She had a solid upbringing, good family, never went hungry. Like everyone else, her life had its ups and downs, but never anything that could emotionally prepare her for this. Not that anything could. Humans weren’t supposed to experience what was going on out there. But it was happening, and everything she’d ever loved was gone.
Tears flooded her face. She was red with grief. She reached for a tissue, trying to dam up the waterway, but it was no use. Finally, she moved over to the bed and let it out. Really let it out. She had never cried like that before. At least not since her parents died in the plane crash. But even then, she’d been so numb that she never really had this kind of moment.
The thought of her parents reminded her of Jake. It was the reason they had connected on such a deep level so quickly. She had been performing a physical exam on him when Emily had awkwardly asked where his parents lived. When he’d told her they were both dead, Emily had told her story and it led to more and more communication. He’d told her things that he said he had never told anyone. Not even his high school sweetheart. Said there was something easy about Emily, he felt he could truly be himself. That was the night they’d made love. The night Jake had called a mistake. However, the things Emily felt, and the things she could see in Jake’s eyes that he felt, there was no possibility that what they’d shared was a mistake.