Troy squints behind us when we reach our bridge’s midpoint. “We’ll be gone before they make it.”
The trailing Lexers slip and stumble. All it takes is a toe between railroad ties to trip you up, and it’s worse for the zombies who are too dumb to work out that riddle. I think of the horror movies I’ve seen—fast zombies, smart zombies, Michael freaking Myers—and find something to be grateful for. Anything other than stupid and lumbering would be an immediate death sentence.
As we near the north end of our bridge, roadblocks appear on both vehicle bridges, in the form of police buses parked across the lanes. With my ever-present arrhythmia and breathlessness, it’s easy enough to imagine the fright and panic of the people who were trapped behind the barricades. How long did they wait, hoping for traffic to move? How long did it take before they knew it was the wrong choice? Maybe they ran, but it doesn’t look like many of them got far.
“Fuck me,” Daisy says, voice soft with sympathy.
Troy’s laugh is more sardonic than amused. “They were sitting ducks. Poor bastards.”
The bridge ends and becomes tracks that curve under the roadway. This time, we’re prepared for dropping bodies, but it’s eerily quiet with only the wind rustling the long grasses. The tracks travel alongside a highway, and a quick walk up the grass reveals a mainly empty road with few stopped cars.
“Looks like we’ll need a vehicle.” Troy points at what looks to be half industrial park and half shopping plaza below us, where a couple dozen cars sit neatly in parking spots. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
We’re thwarted by eleven locked cars before we find a sedan whose driver sits behind the wheel. She slams her leathery gray face into the glass at our approach, bucking at the confines of her seatbelt. Her fingers scratch and pound over muffled hisses. My insides still turn at the sight of living death, at the unrelenting hunger, but I’m surprised to find I’m not quite as terrified. Then again, she’s buckled in behind glass, quite possibly the least dangerous zombie in the history of zombies.
Troy opens the sedan door and swings his hatchet into her face. Unlike the others, she oozes only an ounce or two from the wound. Weeks of heat in a closed car have dried her out. Her body is unceremoniously dumped on the asphalt before Lana reaches in and turns the key. The engine starts up immediately. “Smells like ass, but there’s a half-tank of gas.”
Everyone makes quiet noises of relief. Except Francis, who breathes in through his nose, then out his mouth while he holds his right forearm to his chest. Droplets of sweat run down his cheeks. “Are you okay?” I ask.
The others turn. Francis grits his teeth and nods. “Fine.”
“I call bullshit,” Troy says. “What’s going on?”
Francis keeps his eyes on the nearby street. “That one hurt my arm. Pretty bad, I think.”
“Were you ever planning to tell us?” Lana moves for him, brow lowered in consternation. “Let me see.”
“Later,” he says. “Let’s get out of here first.”
Lana argues until Francis tips his head at forty Lexers meandering past a mini-storage two blocks down. We jump into the sedan and take off, pausing only to enter the freeway, where the buildings turn to rolling jade-green mountains a mile ahead.
Cars came this way, evidenced by the garbage that litters the road—cans and plastic bottles, food wrappers, baby diapers, and even a used maxi pad, along with a baffling number of shoes. Sneakers, dress shoes, sandals, and footwear of all sizes and types are strewn across the lanes. We can’t go more than twenty feet without at least one battered shoe. I wonder at them, and it’s only when I notice the absence of boots that I realize they’ve dropped off the feet of the dead. Boots are laced on tight. Even untied, they won’t fall off easily. It makes the next round of shoes—two of which are child-sized—more than a little depressing, and I wish The Mystery of the Shoes had remained unsolved.
Francis deflects Lana’s attempts to check his arm from the backseat. Eventually, she sits fuming with her arms crossed. “Fine, Francis. Die.”
“It’ll be time to find somewhere for the night soon,” he says. “I can wait. We don’t want to get caught out here.” Lana glares out the window, ignoring him. He reaches his good arm between the seats and pokes her knee. “Lana. Laaaaa-naaaaa.”
“No,” she says, fighting a smile.
Francis grins and sends the map into the backseat for our inspection. The plan is to travel north somewhere between Napa and Sacramento, where fewer people might mean fewer obstructions. There are towns on the way, though I have no idea how large they are. How obstructive. And forget finding the smallest local roads on a simple folding map like this.
“You need a good atlas,” I mumble, half to myself.
“We had an atlas,” Daisy says. “Troy lost it.”
“I did n—” Troy begins. “Oh right, I did.”
The four break into laughter. I smile, my chest filled with longing for that easy jokiness among friends. I hope it waits for me five hundred miles away—perhaps four-sixty by now—but it’s possible Rose, Mitch, and the kids are gone the way most of the world is. Their empty shoes might be sitting on the shoulder of I-5 or by a curb in downtown Eugene.
I banish that thought. They’re smart, they’re strong, and they have Rose’s dad. Sam was a father figure to me all those years ago, and he loves Rose and the kids beyond reason. If he has anything to say about it, they’re fine. Ten years ago, I would’ve added Ethan to that list, but I know from Rose’s evasive answers to my recent questions that all is not well in Ethanville. I planned to corner her drunk ass during the party weekend and demand the truth. One look at her face would’ve told me all I needed to know.
After a few minutes of discussion, we circumvent Fairfield on a small northern road lined with a few vineyards. This isn’t the touristy part of Napa Valley, more the eastern edge going into the mountains, but it’s lovely all the same. The grape leaves are unfurling, jewel-green against the bright yellow mustard that still blooms. One field is a sea of delicate purple flowers, another orange with the first of the poppies, and another frosty with small white blooms.
Usually, spring fills me with life and promise, but there’s a distinct lack of life and promise this year. Death is everywhere. It lies with the bodies out front of a small blue house. It stomps in a distant field of mustard in the form of three Lexers. It soaks a once-white, now brown, sneaker that sits on the center yellow line like roadkill.
The two-lane road grows more rural, passing the occasional gated driveway that meanders up to houses screened by trees. There have to be people here, alive and waiting for this to end. The last anyone heard was sixty to ninety days for the zombies to die. Lana said they were told this by a soldier they met somewhere south of San Francisco. He was bitten, and he blew his brains out promptly thereafter. If that timeframe is supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t—when the world can change this much in a month, who knows what three months will bring?
We’re in the hills now. Troy gives a mobile home park full of zombies a wide berth and then turns east for a road that will deposit us far to the west of what’s surely a zombie-filled Sacramento. The question of where we’ll spend the night weighs on me. I thought I’d slip out tonight or in early morning, but I can’t leave in the middle of nowhere. Though I’m not as gung-ho on the idea as earlier, it’s only a matter of time before this mostly zombie-free ride ends and I make a fool of myself again.
The car climbs higher into the mountains, surrounded by woods except where it opens to a vista of green peaks and valleys. No houses, cars, or zombies until a large gray ranch house appears on the left. The sign out front says MARINA-BOAT RENTALS-LAKESIDE CABINS, and the small parking lot holds at least a dozen zombies, with more down at the narrow cove of blue-green water. Maybe zombies don’t hike uphill for fun, but all it takes is one infected person to show up.
“If it were only the parking lot, I’d say we try it,” Troy says. “But we can’t take them al
l, definitely not with Francis out of commission.”
Francis grunts in displeasure, and Daisy pats his good shoulder. “We still love you, Franny.”
I absorb this reminder of my uselessness while I watch passing trees, through which I catch glimpses of blue water below. Our next point of interest is an RV park with small motel that caught fire and burned until black. Across the road, a long building is unburned. A campground office takes up one end, with a small store on the other. Troy slows until the store door opens and a shotgun waves us along. The person wielding the shotgun stays in the shadows, barrel tracking us until we’re out of sight.
“Warm welcome,” Francis says.
“Can you blame them?” Troy asks. “Zombies are stupid. People are crafty. Mark my words, the biggest threat will be people eventually.”
He’s probably right. If things get back to normal, or some vestige of normal, people will likely fight over something—anything. It’s a discouraging thought.
The road continues its gradual slope downward, the rocky soil changing to tall grass and bushy trees. Late afternoon sunlight hits the car windshield and blinds all inside. It’s hard to believe we started out from the solar house just this morning. My tired body and blistered foot insist they’ve run a marathon, though in reality they’ve walked maybe six miles. Francis’ map reader says we’ve traveled fifty miles. Which, when you work it out with time spent traveling, has us moving at a breakneck five miles per hour. At this rate, we’ll reach Eugene half past never.
“We’re getting closer to the next town,” Lana warns. “Maybe four miles. Either we need to find a place to stop for the night or plan our route north. I vote for stopping. We need to check Francis.”
“I’m fine to keep going,” Francis argues.
“Fine enough that you wince at every bump?” Troy asks. “We’re stopping. And first order of business in the morning, we get an atlas to replace the one Lana lost.” Lana smacks the side of his head while he cracks himself up, and I can’t help but laugh along.
Six mailboxes on the roadside guarantee houses are tucked up a hill, and Troy swings that way. The first three houses are spaced far apart. A travel trailer sits outside one, a pickup truck and boat outside another, and nothing by the third. The next three homes are down the road, and there isn’t a zombie to be seen.
The pickup truck house is a ranch style painted a dull brown, and based on its cleared lot and views of surrounding land, it’s designated our home for the night. After a minute of waiting, we open our doors to cool, grass-scented air. It was pushing seventy degrees earlier; it’s now closer to high fifties.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Troy says, holding his pistol. The others have their weapons, too. Even Francis, who carries his pistol in his left hand while keeping his right firmly tucked to his side like a winged bird. In contrast to their guns, I grip my screwdriver, feeling like the biggest moron on Earth.
Troy knocks. Nothing answers, and he shouts victoriously when the door opens easily in his hand. The living room just past the foyer is tan carpet and overstuffed brown leather furniture centered around a big television. Sliding glass doors look out over a vista of grassy fields and hills in the distance. The kitchen is wrecked; someone came looking for food, took it all, and they weren’t neat about it. But all else is clean. It even smells good due to the baskets of potpourri set here and there. The walls hold pictures of generations of people, from old-fashioned sepia-toned prints to modern professional baby pictures.
“Come with me to find the water heater?” Lana asks Daisy, and they head down the hallway. Like the solar house, the water heater tank will provide drinking and washing water.
“You, sit.” Troy points at Francis, then motions me toward the door. “Give me a hand out there?”
When we come inside with the gear, Francis stands in the center of the living room while Lana removes his coat. His left shoulder is firm and well-shaped. His right pitches down, and where rounded deltoids should be, the skin stretches tight over a lump shaped remarkably like the end of a chicken drumstick. The others exclaim over the sight while I swallow the excess saliva it brings on.
“Looking a bit off-kilter,” Troy says.
Francis’ smile is tired. “Feeling a bit off-kilter.”
“I think it’s dislocated.” Lana turns to Troy. “Will you get your book?”
He pulls a thick sheaf of papers from his pack. I catch a glimpse of the words Austere Medicine before Lana flips through. She grimaces and holds up a black and white photo of a man with a shoulder eerily similar to Francis’. “Oh, yeah. That’s what it is.” She scans a few pages. “How long do you think it’s been since you hurt it?”
“Maybe four or five hours now?” Francis says, sucking in his breath when Lana palpates his injury.
“It says that if it’s been a while, the muscles might’ve swelled too much for it to pop back easily. I knew we should’ve stopped.” She seems about to go into a diatribe before she reins herself in. “Okay, it says to lay the patient face-down on a table with their arm hanging off. Attach a weight to their arm or put gentle downward traction on their wrist, and it usually pops into place. If that doesn’t work, they have another method to try.”
Francis is ordered onto the dining table in the corner. Lana kneels on the floor, grips the wrist of his injured arm, and applies gentle traction. Gentle or not, Francis’ forehead beads with sweat and he whimpers in a way that makes me woozy.
“Shit, Francis,” Troy says, wiping his own brow. “Hey, Daisy Duke, wanna check out those houses across the way?”
Daisy, watching Francis with slight horror, says, “Hell, yes.”
They’re out the door in seconds. I couldn’t foresee a time when the outside would be preferable to inside, but here I am, wishing I’d been invited to go up against a few zombies.
“Relax,” Lana says to Francis. “You have to relax your arm muscles.”
“I’m trying,” he growls.
I attempt to speak with my parched mouth, fail, and swig from my water bottle. “I have Xanax. Would that help?”
Lana looks up from where she sits cross-legged, relief plain in her nod. “God, yes,” Francis groans.
I unzip my pack and find my bottle, then dump two into my hand and break them in half. Francis opens his mouth for me to drop them in, then swallows with his eyes closed. “Thanks.”
I nod and return the pill bottle to my bag. There aren’t many left, a fact that constricts my chest. In normal life, I take one or two a week. Three or four, if I’m super stressed. But just having them makes me feel better. Without them on hand, it’s possible I’ll lose my mind entirely.
After fifteen minutes, Francis’ grimace has become a slight smile. Lana grins at me before she tries traction again. After a few more minutes, she says, “I think we have to try the other way. Craig, I need your help.”
The blood drains from my face and hits my feet, and I set my hand on the couch for support. “Maybe I should get Troy and—”
“We don’t need them. Grab that blanket off the couch over there.”
I do it while I try to think of an excuse, then go with the truth. “Lana, I can supply the controlled substances, but I’m not cut out for this.”
Lana’s gaze is firm. “Yes, you are. All you have to do is loop that around his waist and pull toward yourself while I pull his arm. But we have to turn him over. Francis, get on your back.”
Francis cracks open an eye. “This’s comferble,” he says, slurring in a way that makes me nervous I’ve accidentally killed him with my dosage.
“It won’t be when those meds wear off. Turn over.” Lana pokes his back. Francis flips with a beleaguered huff and settles himself on the table. She positions the blanket around his waist and hands the ends to me, then takes hold of his bad arm. “Okay, here we go. Relax.”
“You got it, bosh.” Francis almost giggles. “I mean bosssh.”
I laugh and take hold of the blanket ends. If Francis is goi
ng out, at least it’s on a wave of good cheer. “Okay,” Lana says, peering at the papers on the table above Francis’ head. “I straighten the elbow and ease it out at an angle. You apply counter-tension.”
While Lana pulls Francis’ arm, I hold my breath and resist her traction. A full minute later, I hear a faint thump. Francis groans, and Lana gasps, her cheeks ruddy. “Is it in?”
“Think so,” Francis whispers, close to lucid from the pain. He moves his shoulder a little, then lifts his arm with a wince. “Still hurts, but I can use it. Oh, thank Jesus.”
“Thank who?” Lana asks.
“Thank Lana.” Francis’ grin practically splits his face in two before he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re unfocused. “I love you, Lana.”
“Same here. C’mon, big boy, let’s get you to the couch.”
“Comfortable,” he mumbles, eyelids sinking. “On the table. Comfort-table. Get it? Comfort-taaaaable.” And with that, he’s out.
Lana comes around and puts a hand on my arm. “Thanks, hon.”
I nod. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, once I stopped freaking out. “Let’s not do that again, though.”
“Seriously.” Lana walks for her bag. “I need to eat something and read over what we do once he’s out of his Xanax coma.”
Two hours later, the sun is almost down. Francis’ right arm is in a sling we fashioned from a bedsheet, and it has to stay there for at least three days or he risks dislocating it again. He sits at the table eating with his left hand, which provides the evening’s entertainment both because it’s his non-dominant hand and he’s still loopy. Every third cracker misses his mouth, which never fails to make him giggle like a teenager who’s smoked weed for the first time.
Troy and Daisy returned with news that two of the houses are occupied by zombies and the pickup truck out front not only works, but it also has a full tank of gas and a California road atlas. We’ll take it and leave the sedan when we move on.
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 30