She looked at the broken glass again and shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
“Why do you always end up with broken truck windows?” she chided.
“Hey! It’s not me, it’s them! This whole society has gone way downhill lately, in case you haven’t noticed.”
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“And you’re the one who broke it this time!”
“I was just saying…” she said.
“I never had a broken truck window before I met you. Maybe it’s you, Anna, maybe you’re cursed, maybe—”
“Everyone okay?” Bradley asked, looking them both over.
He had to have been standing in the puddles of mutie goo and she wrinkled her nose. She was a little glad he had interrupted Jared’s divergent grumblings.
“Yeah, where’s Stewart?” Jared asked before she could answer.
She looked around but didn’t see him.
“He’s on top of the truck,” Bradley said, looking up.
“Hop in, Stew. We need to get moving,” Jared called out.
Stewart’s face appeared in Jared window, upside down. It wasn’t any less creepy that way.
“I think it’s best for me to ride on top. I can sense the risks more accurately.” His face slid up and disappeared.
Anna cocked an eyebrow at Bradley, and he shrugged.
“Okay, saddle up!” Jared said.
Another moment more and they were back on the road. Jared had slowed considerably in deference to Stewart’s position.
“You may drive the regular speed,” came a voice from the back. She whipped her head around and saw Stewart’s upper body leaning through the window.
“I didn’t want you to fall off.”
Stewart’s lips parted in an unsettling grin, and she saw the barest inkling, the merest hint, of the old Stewart. It made her feel better. She almost smiled back.
“I won’t fall. Ever.”
He disappeared and Jared sped up to the former fifty miles an hour. They rode in silence again. Jared changed speeds based on the road conditions, slowing drastically on curves and speeding up near homes and intersections.
She realized he was expecting another attack, or maybe an ambush by people. She hadn’t really thought of that. It made her feel unprepared and she did not like that feeling at all. Their previous trips had always been local, informal missions. Even in the stadium she hadn’t felt unprepared. She supposed it was because she was out of her element, or maybe she knew better now. She hoped she got used to it.
The miles passed slowly. They had all agreed to save on gas by not using the air conditioning, so the windows were cracked partially. Except Jared’s, which was just ruined. If they were going faster, Jared said they could use the air conditioning, but that was before his window had been punched through with a bullet. She didn’t know where he had gotten his information about fuel economy, but it kind of made sense.
They were traveling down a remote back road when a loud pop and shimmy interrupted her thoughts. Dust and gravel flew up into the air behind them as they swerved onto the narrow shoulder.
“What was that?!” she said, more loudly than she intended. “Did someone shoot at us?!”
Jared was fighting with the wheel and the truck was slowing considerably. She heard the telltale rhythmic thumping and groaned. The truck finally pulled to a stop. He shut on the engine and silence pervaded the air until Bradley pulled up behind them.
“Flat tire. Damn it!” Jared said, and pounded the steering wheel with his palm.
He got out and she followed. Stewart stayed put, apparently acting as a lookout and early warning system. She hoped his instincts were always trustworthy.
They met Bradley and Fletch at the irreparably damaged, driver-side tire. There was a sharp piece of metal embedded in the tread.
"You're hard on vehicles, Jared," Bradley said.
The men stood around a moment, hands on hips, and consulted each other. She wandered around the perimeter of the trucks, keeping watch and taking stock of their surroundings. Their murmurings gave her a feeling of safety, so she wasn’t too concerned about being taken by surprise by anything.
And there was always Stewart’s new abilities.
The area was very rural. On one side of the road was an overgrown corn field. The leaves hadn’t yet begun to turn brown. Weeds grew rampant between the rows. Whoever had owned this crop never got a chance to spray it.
It provided some cover from any muties that might be wandering around in it, but it also hindered their ability to see in that direction. Still, she was sure…well, hopeful, that Stewart would have sensed them in there and let them know.
The other side of the road led to thick woods. The trees were large and old, though plenty of new growth crowded the clearings between the old trees. Shrubs, weeds, and saplings provided another dense obstruction.
They were effectively boxed in on two sides and she didn’t like the feeling. She looked back at the men and Stewart to make sure things were still okay. They had located the spare and were getting it changed. It wouldn’t be much longer. She did not like sitting still in strange territory.
The cornfield felt threatening, and the deep woods menacing. The silence was complete. No birds chirped contentedly in the trees. No squirrels bounced around in the undergrowth. No cicadas hummed. Even the wind was still.
Suddenly, it didn’t feel right.
She walked backward away from the imposing walls of nature, back toward the trucks and the men. They were still working on the tire and grumbling about something. They hadn’t noticed the stillness. Her breathing shortened and she felt a wave of anxiety start in the pit of her stomach and radiate throughout her body.
She glanced back to the men. Jared was working the weird x-shaped crowbar thing. The spare looked small and odd compared to the larger tires. Even she knew that they wouldn’t be able to drive fast or far on that thing. They’d need to find a replacement.
“Guys,” she said quietly.
They either didn’t hear her, or they were more concerned with their task. Fletch was roving in the front of the stopped trucks, providing security. She called to him.
“Fletch,” she called out louder.
She looked back and noticed she had his attention.
“Something doesn’t feel right. It’s too quiet. The air…it doesn’t feel right.”
She watched his face for understanding as he frowned and glanced around again. They listened beyond the mutterings of Jared and Bradley, and indeed, it was still too quiet.
“You’re right,” he said softly.
His face lost its usual youthful countenance, and it went hard and cold. The look in his eyes was startling, and she imagined this was the real Fletch. This was the one who had been to combat overseas. The young man she had come to know, the youthful contempt for his elders and the mocking disrespect at their cautiousness in other matters…she saw it for what it had been. It was all an act. A front. It was what he thought he should be, not who he really was.
It was comforting, but alarming at the same time. If he had noticed something was wrong, then she wasn’t just exaggerating the situation.
There really was something bad going on.
“The air feels heavy, like before a storm,” he said. “But there are no clouds. I don’t smell rain. The leaves aren’t flipped.”
“Stew?” he called out.
Stew looked down at them and she couldn’t make out his expression very well. He was an enigma now. Perhaps in time she would learn his new tells, his new expressions, but now she saw nothing.
“There are some out there. They aren’t moving,” he informed, tilting his face up and closing his eyes.
He started to go into camouflage mode, and she realized that he was marshaling his resources by dropping his control over his skin. One day, she’d like to ask him how he did that. Was he actually controlling his cells?
“As far as I can sense, they’ve stopped.
They are still. Waiting,” he finally said.
“For what?” she asked.
Fletch went to have a word with the men, and they all looked up at Stewart.
“I do not know.”
“We need to go,” she said. “We need to go now.”
Jared came toward her, concerned. He looked around as Bradley studied their surroundings. She grasped his hands and pulled him back toward the vehicle. “We’ve got to go somewhere else. I don’t like this feeling.”
“It’ll be slow going. We’ve got to find a town or some kind of mechanic shop and see if we can’t match these tires,” he said, giving a skeptical look at the specialty tires.
“Let’s go then. Right now.”
She hurried and got in the cab. Stewart remained on top in his sentry position, though she wanted to tell him to get in the cab. She supposed that he could take care of himself.
“Load up!” she heard Bradley say aloud, and they rolled out.
The feeling of moving on allayed some of her anxiety and fear, but it did not go away completely. They were moving very slowly. She wanted to tell him to speed up, to move faster and damn the tires, but she didn’t. She took deep breaths to calm herself and it worked a little. She saw Jared’s worried glance out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t speak and neither did she.
She checked the map as they came to an intersection. The road straight ahead was the one they needed to take to get them closer to Colorado. The closest town on the map was to the right, and so they turned right. She hoped it was more than a little cluster of houses. Going door to door checking for tires would eat up a lot of their time, not to mention the dangers. She thought back to the farmhouse and shuddered. She wasn’t anxious to repeat that experience.
“Should be about two miles up this road. It won’t be very big, but maybe they’ll have a mechanic shop. Worst case scenario, we’ll just find a new truck,” she said.
“And give up Betsy? Never!” he said, patting the dashboard affectionately.
“Betsy? Should I be jealous?” she asked and rolled her eyes.
His teasing had banished some of the snakes that seemed to have been writhing in her gut, but the edge of panic was still there.
“Of course not!” he said automatically. “Well, maybe a little. I’m very fond of her.”
“Well, anyway. I think we need to—”
“Shit” he called, slamming on the brakes.
She braced herself as the truck skidded to the right a little. Bradley’s heavier SUV was slower to stop and whooshed past them and into the crowd of muties that had come out from behind a nearby fence.
“Son of a bitch!” Jared cried out as the muties swarmed Bradley’s SUV.
Anna rolled down her window and took a chance. She sat on the edge and pulled her pistol. The small crowd was attempting to smash through the glass of the armored vehicle but wasn’t making much of a dent. She lined up her shot and fired. The mutie went down under the feet of the others.
The sifting colors and masses of bodies made it a little difficult to find targets, headshots, but they tried. On the other side of the truck, she heard Jared’s rifle give its booming report as he fired off rounds into the group.
“Reloading!” she called out during a break in his firing.
She quickly dropped her empty magazine down into the truck and pulled the full one from the holder on her belt. She had two full ones left. She would save one mag for emergencies.
Jared kept firing and she started back up as well. Some were going down. They were making a little dent in the group, but she was worried that they would run out of ammo before they ran out of targets.
“Hold on!” Jared shouted as Bradley’s brake lights lit up.
Jared whipped the truck in reverse and backed quickly down the road the way they had come.
“What are you doing?! We can’t leave!” She watched Bradley’s vehicle as it rocked under the force of the muties pushing on it. It was an extremely heavy vehicle. Their strength alarmed her.
The SUV accelerated quickly backward, then she saw it almost pivot and she was facing the front. She could make out Bradley’s face through the front windshield. He gave her a quick thumbs up.
Suddenly, she saw him put on a pair of…earmuffs? What the hell? She realized those must be the Peltor things.
Jared started chuckling and nodding.
She was confused until she heard the loud thumps of the machine gun. Suddenly, the muties they could see started dropping like flies. They were crowding the back of the SUV, but Bradley leaned out his window and started to pick off the ones who managed to get too close or out of range of the machine gun.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah wow. That’s awesome,” Jared said.
He was obviously enjoying himself, and probably itching to give it a try. Good for him, but she was still anxious to find somewhere that she felt safe. She had a bad feeling that their time was running out, and she didn’t know why or how or even what to do about it.
After a moment, it was quiet again. The echoes of the machine gun fire died out, and the corpses of the dead muties lay in the road among splatters of black gore.
Jared gave a hand signal and Bradley nodded and motioned for them to pass. She watched her side of the vehicle with her pistol ready. She would need to reload the used magazines soon.
The white fence that had shielded the muties from their view was actually part of an entrance to a very small, dilapidated-looking nursing home. It looked horrifying, actually. Jared slowed and whistled as he took it in.
“Whew. Take me out back and shoot me when I get old. Don’t ever send me to that place,” he commented.
“Don’t worry, J-dog. I don’t think we’ll actually make it to old age,” she muttered.
“We have to Sweet Corn. How else will we have thirty-six grandchildren?” he said matter-of-factly.
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“Our children should each have six children,” he said, as if that made all the sense in the world.
“We don’t have children,” she pointed out.
“Not yet, you mean. We had better start on that as soon as we get back. I want our kids to start a settlement. They’ll call it…Jaredsted.”
“Jared—” she was about to tell him he was being stupid and more than a little weird, but a sudden movement caught her eye.
“There’s something in there!” she said, turning fully toward the nursing home and squinting.
She had seen purposeful movement in an upstairs window, she would have sworn it. She quieted her breathing and held still, as if that would help her see better.
The ominous façade remained still.
Jared looked around quickly, then put the truck in park. The small town, more of a crossroads really, was silent. Tense. Waiting. He leaned toward her and looked out the window. They both watched.
She glanced in the side view mirror. Bradley waited a few car lengths behind them. She saw him tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and knew they needed to get moving, but something held her back.
“Stewart,” she said quietly. “It’s Stewart. That’s why they aren’t showing themselves.”
Stewart suddenly poured himself into the backseat through his window in the back.
“They are in there,” he confirmed.
“Who?” Jared asked.
“The uninfected. Undefiled. I can sense their mass, but not their numbers.”
“Okie dokie then,” Jared said. “Maybe next time you mutate, you’ll learn to count,” Jared said under his breath.
“Jared! Apologize!” Anna said. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but it wasn’t a good idea to tease Stew just yet.
“The Stewart will not be mocked,” Stewart returned in a voice that could have been straight from the pits of Hell.
Anna shivered and clutched her pistol grip. If Stewart went off the rails, she would kill him. She would hate doing it, but she would. Then she’d co
nsider pistol-whipping Jared for making her do it.
They both glanced back at Stewart.
He slowly turned his gaze toward Jared and cocked his head. His eyes gleamed blackly at Jared before his mouth widened into a grin.
Stewart was joking?
“The Jared will consider your request,” Jared said, returning his gaze to the building.
“The Jared really should shut his mouth before The Anna shuts it for him,” she said sharply. “Besides, I think The Bradley is getting anxious. We’re sitting ducks out here.”
“An accurate description,” Stewart droned.
She winced. She didn’t want to know what he meant by that. She hoped he would warn them if there were more muties in the area.
“Okay, let’s end this little standoff.” Jared threw open his door and gestured to Bradley to stay there. She watched him cross the front of the truck and walk toward the gate of the nursing home.
“Is it clear?” she asked Stewart.
“For now.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Spring Creek
Jared
Jared was relieved and anxious. Relieved that Stewart hadn’t ripped his face off for cracking jokes at his expense, and anxious because he felt tension in the air. It rivaled the level of unease he had felt that night on the roof when the nuclear attack sirens had gone off. It was ten times worse than the disquieting feelings he had in the days leading up to the outbreak.
He just couldn’t put his finger on it. It felt like an instinctual reaction. He would be prepared though. They needed to find a place to change the tire, then probably find a sheltered place to spend the night before moving on in the morning. As much as he wanted to drive through the night, it was unwise. There were any number of dangers driving in the dark. No, they’d be staying put around here.
But before they could do any of that, he needed to check this place out, because no matter how much he had changed since the end of the world, he couldn’t leave people that needed help. He just hoped his altruism didn’t get them all killed, or worse.
He went to the gate and held his hands up in a show of surrender. He glanced around nervously, relying on the others to watch his back and warn him of potential dangers. His only concern at this point was being taken out by a sniper from inside the nursing home.
The Salvation Plague | Book 2 | The Mutation Page 19