“She’s hurt,” Freddie said. “She’ll just slow you down. And she’s pregnant.”
From the corner of his eye, just over the man’s shoulder, he saw movement in the car. Time lost all meaning as he stared down his adversary, wondering if the sudden report of gunfire would be the last thing he’d hear in this world.
Why hadn’t they fired?
The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and Freddie realized he was tiring from carrying Caroline over his shoulder. She hadn’t made a sound, and Freddie wondered if she was still conscious. A few moments later, the man crouched down and lowered Caroline to the ground; instinctively, Freddie crouched with him. It seemed terribly important to mirror his opponent’s maneuvers. She curled up in the fetal position, one arm protecting her abdomen, the second shielding her head.
A hiss from the car. It sounded like the second person was trying to communicate with his confederate.
“Huh?”
“MOVE!”
It hit Freddie like a bolt of lightning. The shooter hadn’t fired because Caroline’s captor was in his line of sight. As the man tried to process the order, Freddie made a break for them, hoping that he’d get there in time. A second later, a second too late, the man ducked out of the way, clearing the way for a barrage.
The shotgun roared, its tongue of flame bright and red in the darkness behind the sweep of the headlights. The round missed badly. As Freddie drew closer, the man pivoted just so in a vain attempt to escape Freddie’s assault. Just ahead, Freddie heard the shooter fumbling with the shotgun, the clack of the barrel as he hurried to reload.
Body on body. The heavy, violent thwack of flesh on flesh, and Freddie was reminded of the big sacks, the big tackles, the terrifying and dizzying collisions of a sporting life gone by. He wrapped his big arms around his target and drove him into the blacktop with every ounce of his 265 pounds. Freddie felt the man’s ribs break, a sensation that hit him in all the right places, lighting up his dopamine receptors.
It felt good.
The man whimpered underneath him, his body wrecked, but Freddie wasn’t done. He felt alive, free, ready to act after weeks of reacting to the ladles of shit the world had been serving. He grabbed the man’s ears, lifted his head off the asphalt and smashed it back down against the ground. The man’s skull caved in like a watermelon, and he lay still.
But Freddie wasn’t done.
No, not by a long shot.
Not at all.
These men had debts to pay now, debts owed to a society gone away, to see that even if the world lay dead in the gutter, justice would live on.
The shooter continued to struggle with the shotgun; Freddie could hear him whimpering as he seemed to grasp the collapse of their plan, wondering how things could have gotten away from them so quickly.
“Nnnnnh,” the guy was muttering.
Freddie wasn’t even rushing anymore. He felt strong, easy, fluid. Six more steps brought him to the window, where he found his erstwhile assassin, still unable to load the shotgun. He was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties, his face still bearing the scars of recently healed acne. His hair was long, tied back in a sloppy ponytail. Tendrils of hair bounced loosely like broken springs.
He looked up at Freddie with wide, terrified eyes, Freddie’s bulk and mass before him a monster from a child’s bedtime story. Freddie simply stared back at him, unfeeling and uncaring. The man’s fear had no more effect on him than a fly landing on his arm. He pulled him clear of the vehicle by the ponytail; the shotgun clattered to the ground, and his prisoner flailed his arms about as his body crashed to the ground in a heap. Freddie ripped the man’s ponytail from his head, pulling it free in a messy clump. The man howled. Freddie retrieved the shotgun and loaded in its recalcitrant shells. When he was done, he placed the barrel of the gun under the bandit’s chin.
“Please! I’m so sorry,” the guy pleaded. His breaths came in shallow, ragged gasps.
“I’m sure you are,” he said.
It wasn’t anger or fear or even hate bubbling inside Freddie just then, as he eyed the skinny waste of space before him. It was disgust. The way one might look at a clump of dogshit on a well-manicured lawn. And what did you do with dogshit? You didn’t leave it there to spoil the lawn, did you, to infect it with its parasites and bacteria? No, you got yourself a shovel and a bag and you cleaned it right up.
“Freddie.”
The voice startled him. He looked back to see Caroline, who’d pushed herself up into a seated position. She’d propped herself on one arm, the other covering her abdomen.
“You OK?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine. You?”
He didn’t reply, because he knew damn well she wasn’t asking about his physical well-being.
“Why don’t we get going?” she said. It wasn’t a question as much as an order.
The guy’s eyes swung sharply toward Caroline, so hard they could have rocketed out the side of his head, as he sensed that perhaps he had a savior.
“And let him pull this stunt on someone else?”
“I think he’s learned his lesson. Didn’t you?”
He nodded vigorously, as if to underscore the fact he had most certainly learned his lesson, that he was a very, very good student who had paid very, very close attention to the teacher.
But Freddie wasn’t even listening. He looked deep into the man’s eyes, unsure of what he was looking for, not even aware if he would recognize it if it were there. Everything, Caroline, his grief, the stickiness of the late-summer night, fell away around him, as he zeroed in on the warmth of the shotgun’s barrel in his left palm, the stiffness of the trigger under his index finger as he flexed it just so. It had felt good, killing the other guy, a scratch scratched, one that had been nagging him for so long.
“Freddie,” she said again, this time with a little more heft in her voice.
“It’s a shitty world out there.”
The sound of his voice startled him.
“This will just make it shittier,” she said.
He pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They made good time after Walkertown, first cutting along Highway 66 and then continuing along Route 52 through the heart of northwest North Carolina. These roads, undoubtedly just as clear after the plague as they’d been before, made things seem almost normal. They passed through Mt. Airy, the sign at the town limits touting its heritage as the birthplace of Andy Griffith. Then they were in Virginia again, the extreme southwest tip that he had never visited. Adam couldn’t help but laugh a little, that after all that time on the road, he was back in Virginia. A bit farther north, they looped onto I-77, and that was when they really started chewing up the miles.
Interstate 77 took them past Hillsville, Austinville, and Max Meadows, all lovely little towns, each as quiet and empty as the others. In Hillsville, they’d stopped and looked around, but they saw no one and heard nothing but the birds. A pack of dogs, looking mighty thin and hungry, had rolled up on them there on Main Street, sending them scurrying for the safety of the car. Then they were in the Jefferson National Forest, and it was here, for the first time since the plague had swept the globe, that Adam felt that his heart rate had dipped back below a hundred beats per minute.
He felt his ears pop a little as the Jeep climbed into the pass. Around them rose up every conceivable species of tree, pines and oaks and maples, thick green fingers reaching up into the sky. Adam rolled down his window, taking in the fresh air. He pulled onto one of the scenic overlooks carved out of the highway and got out of the car. To the north was a spectacular vista, a shimmering lake and a copse of enormous trees that appeared to have taken the passing of mankind in stride.
“Been a while since the world smelled this good,” he said.
They spent the night there, opting to sleep in the car because Adam knew that black bears and bobcats roamed these woods. Adam slept deeply, as soundly as he’d slept since it all went down. The quiet was almo
st otherworldly, as though even the forest itself was paying mankind its last respects.
“How are we on gas?” she asked as they prepared to set off that morning, a warm fog lining the edges of the road.
“Not bad,” Adam said. “I think we’ve got enough to make it to Lexington.”
She laughed. “You’re dreaming.”
“Oh, really?” Adam said. “Care to make it interesting?”
“Fifty bucks says we don’t make it to Lexington.”
Another eight hours on the road left them running on fumes on the late afternoon of September 5. The Jeep ran dry on the outskirts of Lexington, Kentucky, hitching once, then twice, before quitting for good.
“You owe me fifty bucks,” Sarah said as they began unloading their gear from the back of the Jeep. Most of the food and all the water was gone, a victim of the long trek through the wilderness of North Carolina and Virginia.
“No way,” Adam said. “The bet was that we had enough gas to make it to Lexington. We are in Lexington.”
“Oh, I beg to differ,” she said. “We haven’t reached the city limits. We may be near Lexington, but we are most certainly not in Lexington. And this Jeep is out of gas.”
“Whoa, we never said anything about the city limits.”
“You welching on a bet, Fisher?”
He dropped his jaw in mock horror. “I never welch on a bet. But I’m a little short on cash. You think you can give me until next Friday?”
“Have it tomorrow,” she said. “Or I’ll have your legs broken.”
Adam laughed at the absurdity of it all, at the way the world was now, the way that fifty dollars in cash would be better used as kindling for a campfire. He was still laughing as they made their way into town on foot.
It was becoming routine now; as they approached a new town or city, they tied bandannas around their mouths and noses to block the smell, even if just a little bit. The smell was what reminded them how deeply and how widely Medusa had cut them. It was what reminded them that in all those houses and apartment complexes and hospitals and nursing homes were the rotting bodies of countless millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Americans. Someone’s daughter or boyfriend or Nana. Now just a smell.
It was this thought occupying his mind as they trekked west along Interstate 64 into the city proper. There was a decent amount of stalled traffic in the eastbound lanes, headed out of the city, but the inbound lanes were mostly empty. That didn’t surprise him, since there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot behind them. They followed the exit off I-64 down to the main artery through town.
There was a new shopping development at the edge of town, anchored by a series of big box stores. A Kroger, a Home Depot and a Target, all lined up like sentries. The parking lot was mostly deserted, but there were a few cars scattered about like a giant’s forgotten toys.
“Hopefully this place hasn’t been too badly picked over,” Sarah said. “I’m hungry.”
She checked her clip as they approached the entrance of the grocery store, always vigilant, as was her wont. Nothing escaped her, Adam had learned, and nothing rattled her. Either that or she had one hell of a poker face.
The doors had been shattered, leaving a puddle of glass bits on the sidewalk. A pungent smell wafted from inside, but it was different than the stench of human decay they’d become so used to. It was chokingly humid, pressing down on them like molten lead. He followed Sarah inside; it was a big store, and there was no way to know if anyone else was inside. They went aisle by aisle, starting in the produce section. The sight of hundreds of pounds of fruits and vegetables decaying in the bright and cheery produce bins was nearly as repulsive as any rotting corpse they’d seen on the road. Rancid juices from the burst skins had puddled on the floor and dried to a sticky residue. Adam had to stifle his gag reflex as they continued through the store.
They saw no one in the first eight aisles. On the ninth aisle, Chips/Peanuts/Snacks, Sarah held up a fist and motioned around a rack of potato chips, stopping Adam in his tracks. He peeked around the end cap and saw a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the aisle, eating from a bag of Cheetos. He either hadn’t heard them or didn’t care that he had visitors. His hands and face were caked in orange dust. He was shirtless, wearing mesh shorts and flip-flops. His chest and arms were pockmarked with mosquito bites.
“Hi,” Sarah said.
The boy glanced up at them. Then he went back to eating his Cheetos.
“You OK?” Adam asked, worried that they were about to repeat the scene from the Jeep dealership back in Kernersville.
The boy looked up at them again. Then he started crying. As Adam knelt next to him, the boy threw his arms around Adam’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. He cried for fifteen minutes, never stopping, not once, never letting go while Adam soothed him. Finally, the crying began to subside, replaced by a series of long, deep breaths.
“What’s your name?” Adam asked.
“Max,” the boy said. “Max Gilmartin.”
The boy’s story was his own but not terribly dissimilar to theirs. Tales of surviving the plague were like snowflakes - no two exactly the same, but take just a step back, and they all looked identical: the news stories from the East Coast, and the virus crashing into Lexington like a runaway freight train, then the scenes from your average Saturday afternoon disaster flick playing out ad nauseam. He told his tale in one fell swoop, there in the chip aisle, his hand clamped around Adam’s elbow as though afraid they might leave him there.
Max and his mom, who’d cleaned rooms at a local motel, had been living in a crumbling apartment complex on the south side of town when the outbreak began. Things had gone downhill in a hurry in Lexington’s lower income areas, where people were packed together like rats, where it was hard enough to get medical treatment in summer, when cold and flu season had bottomed out for the year. His mom had died on August 20, and he had no other family nearby, leaving Max to fend for himself for the last two weeks. Since then, he’d been wandering about town, raiding grocery stores and residences for food, sleeping here and there, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do.
When Adam asked him if he wanted to join them, he started crying again.
“Can I bring my Cheetos?” he asked.
Adam smiled.
“Of course,” Adam said.
He looked to Sarah for her approval.
She nodded.
“I like Cheetos, too,” she said. “But you know what I really like?”
Max shook his head.
“Bubble gum,” she said. “You grab the Cheetos, and I’ll grab the gum.”
#
It took them four days and a trying combination of walking and driving, but the trio finally hit the outskirts of St. Louis shortly after noon on September 9. They’d managed the last hundred miles in an Explorer, similar to the one Adam had left back in Holden Beach. The city’s skyscrapers were foreboding monoliths, silent giants in the noonday glare. Quilts of middle-class neighborhoods stretched away to the north and south, looking perfectly ordinary on this September day.
They’d been on the road since first light, all of them anxious, perhaps even a little hopeful that the rally point was really there. There had been traffic, even a few pileups to negotiate, but each time, they’d been able to work their way around them. Karma, baby, Adam thought. But as they got closer to St. Louis, the absence of any human activity had him worried that they weren’t going to find anything here either.
He and Sarah exchanged glances, their eyebrows raised.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked breathlessly from the backseat. “Is something wrong?”
Adam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had to remind himself that the kid was lost, adrift, looking for meaning in every word, every look. It was important to him that Adam and Sarah know the score.
“No,” he said as gently as he could.
These empty lanes told him no one else was headed
for the supposed rally point, that this centerpiece of the Midwest, the gateway to the western states, was as dead as everything they’d seen to the east. The city’s residents had tried to flee while they could, for all the good it had done them, and this was the residue left behind. Now Adam had all the information, all the pieces of the puzzle he needed to know that the disaster had been as complete as he had feared. Rachel’s report from the West Coast, combined with his own observations on his westward trek gave him the nationwide perspective he’d been simultaneously hoping for and dreading. He realized he’d been hoping that the virus had mutated along the way to a less virulent form, something to help it keep moving and sparing certain parts of the country. But, to steal an analogy from the now defunct world of sports, the Medusa virus had elected to run up the score.
Not very sportsmanlike.
“Where’s the rally point?” Adam asked.
“Supposed to be at Busch Stadium.”
“Any idea where that is?”
“Not really.”
“Think the GPS still works?” Max asked, pointing at the in-dash navigation screen.
“You know what? I bet it would.”
Since the GPS wouldn’t operate while the car was in motion, Adam drew to a stop in the breakdown lane and punched in the information into the touch screen. They sat silently as the computer processed the request, and when the female voice asked if she could program a route for them to Busch Stadium from their current location just as sweet and pleasant and unoffensive as could be, Sarah burst out laughing. Adam quickly followed, and before you knew it, the three of them were rolling.
“She seems chipper,” Sarah said.
“No skin off her back, I guess,” Adam said.
They laughed as they continued toward the city proper, through the slums in the east, once notorious in the magazines and Sunday newspaper features as one of the worst neighborhoods in the country but now on the same footing with all the rest. The buildings and cars looked small from this far away, like child’s toys left behind on a playground.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 21