She tried the truck’s radio, quickly cycling through the static to the three lonely stations still broadcasting. One DJ was reading the Bible, but he was only up to Exodus. The second was broadcasting the same horror stories and conspiracy theories that had dominated TV, her phone, and the radio since the nightmare began. The third station was more promising, in that it was playing music bracketed by a message that listeners should stay tuned for a government message. After hearing the instruction for the third time, but no government missive, she turned it off.
Ahead, a decrepit sedan was stalled in the middle of an intersection. She slowed, stopping fifty feet further back, just behind a battered sign that pointed north, to Bangor.
“Towns and highways,” she said, watching the abandoned car in front. “That’s where you find gas stations. Along highways and inside towns. Not in the middle of absolutely nowhere. So, north to Bangor, south to Highway 94, or… or where?”
Her eyes settled on the abandoned car, a grey four-door with mud covering the licence plate and a good portion of the windows. There didn’t appear to be any movement inside. Slowly, she climbed out, bringing the pry-bar and the tasselled bag containing the gun. Ten feet from the car, she realised she didn’t need the weapon.
The car was occupied by a man her own age, shot in the head. He sprawled on the back seat, still wearing his seatbelt. His hands were tied with rope, secured to the above-door strap with a figure-of-eight knot. She walked around the car, but couldn’t find a bullet hole. On a hunch, she tried the passenger door, and found it unlocked. She found the bullet hole in the empty passenger seat next to the corpse. Someone had stood where she was, firing through the open door, killing this man.
“You were infected, weren’t you?” she said, turning her head this way and that, looking for a bandage, a wound, but unable to find it. “Must have been. If you’d wanted, you could have untied that rope. Ah, who am I kidding?” She closed the door. “I want you to have been infected, because the alternative is too hideous, but either explanation is still horrific.”
She crossed to the driver’s door. The keys were still in the ignition. When she tried the engine, it came on. The fuel-needle jumped almost to the halfway mark.
“Bingo.”
She switched off the engine. The trunk was empty, except for a bag containing soft toys and board games. That told her a lot about who the car’s other occupants had been. Kicking the mud off the licence plates told her they’d come from Ohio, while the maps of Michigan and Ontario told her they’d probably been heading to the bridge, the border, and Canada. She pocketed the keys, but then changed her mind, walked over to the dense row of pines, and hung them on the first high, broken branch she could find.
“Canada? Maybe.”
This was how she’d find fuel if she couldn’t buy it. And how she’d have to find it after spending all her money buying whatever little it was worth. She walked back to the truck, debating Canada. Debating the border. Debating whether to return to the cabin, load up the truck, and simply drive. No, not yet. Better to stick with the plan and work through the alternatives later.
She paused, foot raised. Slowly, she turned back to face the car.
“Of course.”
The bag of games and toys had to have been packed by a child. In which case, the dead man was probably the father. His hands were tied. Who tied up a zombie? If he’d been infected, he’d not turned immediately. Some of the radio reports had said as much, that people could be bitten, but not be symptomatic for hours. Since the first symptom was death, she’d ignored it as another piece of speculation. Perhaps there was some truth in it. And if there was, perhaps there was some truth in some of the other wild rumours.
“Not that it helps you now,” she said, getting back in the truck. “Right, next stop… Bangor, I guess. Let’s see how friendly the neighbours are.”
As she drove north towards Bangor, she left the radio on. When she lost the station to static, and as she looked down to retune it, she almost didn’t see the white-tailed stag bound across the road. She swerved, but the deer had already bounded into the trees.
Bangor was closed. The houses were dark. Boarded. Not a soul was on the streets. But there were cars in some driveways, and barriers across those yards. Barricades of plank and hoarding, barbed wire and chain link had been strung across doorways and ground floor windows. But where were the people?
Just shy of the train tracks, she found them, guarding the gas station. Ahead, the road crossed a railroad. The crossing was down, but no train was passing. In front, six-foot-high corrugated steel sheets had been run across the gas station forecourt, with No Fuel Left painted across them. Behind, and opposite the gas station, on the roof of a three-storey above-store apartment block, stood an obvious sniper holding a rifle. So obvious, Olivia wondered how many better concealed sentries there might be. Her eyes paused on an open window on the top-floor, corner apartment. Was that movement?
Outside the gas station’s barricaded perimeter were three more guards. Two men and a woman, all armed with rifles. Or was that a shotgun in the tall woman’s hands? They weren’t holding them threateningly, except that holding a firearm was a threat all by itself. Stopped near them was an RV. A man and woman had climbed out and were talking with the trio of guards.
Olivia had stopped her truck fifty yards from the RV, too far away to hear what was being said, so she sat, watching, keeping both hands on the wheel. The couple were in their thirties. Late rather than early. He was balding, she gym-thin. Both wore multiple layers beneath coats definitely not thick enough for the weather. If the RV was theirs, they usually vacationed much further south.
The trio with whom they were arguing were a generation apart. A young woman, a middle-aged man, an older man. Three generations of the same family? Maybe. And presumably the same family that owned the gas station. Or perhaps not. She glanced out the window, up at the apartment block. There were two people on the roof now, and a third on the roof of the low-rise bar behind. Whoever these people had been, this was their town, their gas station. From the look of it, they weren’t selling. At least not for cash.
She watched the couple argue with the trio, drumming her hands on the wheel, an idea circling her brain. Finally, the couple retreated back to their vehicle.
Olivia waited until the RV had turned a slow circle and driven off before picking up the tasselled shoulder bag, and slowly getting out of her truck. She raised her empty hands, then lowered them as she approached the trio by the gas station.
“Howdy. Guess you’re not open,” she said in her brightest of friendly tones.
“Nope,” the oldest of the two men said. “Town’s closed.”
“If you’re not selling, how about trading?” Olivia asked.
“Nope,” the older man said.
“Trading what?” the woman asked. She was younger than Olivia. Out of high school, but only by a couple years. Her hair was short, but styled in that pseudo-scruffy look that had made a comeback over Christmas. She’d even added a little lipstick and a little too much eyeliner. It was the first hint of normality Olivia had seen in days.
“I’ll trade anything,” Olivia said. “I’ve got a cabin a day’s walk away. And in about a day, I’ll be walking everywhere. But if you’re not interested in selling anything, I won’t use the last of my gas to come back here. I’ll look elsewhere.”
“Maybe you should,” the older man said.
The middle-aged of the trio shook his head. “We don’t have much. And we have no gas.”
“A radio? Batteries?” Olivia asked. “What about a hand pump and some plastic tubing?”
The middle-aged man nodded. “Maybe. But money’s worth nothing.”
Olivia nodded. “What about fresh deer?”
The older man grinned. “Now that’s always worth something,” he said, his icy facade instantly melting.
“Good to know,” Olivia said. “A radio, some batteries, a hand pump. Some tubing. Some nails. And a bi
cycle.”
“A bicycle?” the woman asked.
“Like I said, I’ll be out of gas soon,” Olivia said.
“For a deer?” the older man asked.
“Yep. Fresh killed.”
“Sounds like a deal,” the older man said.
“I’ll be back when I’ve got it,” Olivia said, and returned to her truck.
Driving slowly, eyes on the woodland, and occasionally on the rear view mirror, she headed south. Realistically, she stood more chance of hitting a deer with the truck than with a handgun. Plus, having killed it, she’d need the truck to drive it back to the town. On the other hand, they hadn’t been hostile. They’d not tried to rob her. No, she wasn’t going to have a deer to trade with them. She did have a cabin full of canned goods. Perhaps they’d accept those. Not for a bicycle, but for a roof. Of course, just because they didn’t rob her today didn’t mean they wouldn’t tomorrow when she returned with a truck full of long-life food.
It was a risk. But it was also an alternative to syphoning what fuel she could find in stalled cars on a drive north, and an alternative to struggling along, alone, in the cabin.
“Yep, this really isn’t what we thought it was going to be like, is it, Pete?”
She’d picked a different route back, partly to make sure she wasn’t being followed, partly on the lookout for more abandoned cars. Instead, she found the RV. The couple stood outside it. They had been inspecting a tree which had partially fallen across the road, but now they were watching her truck, as were the two other faces peering through the RV’s curtained rear window.
As Olivia stopped the truck, the man walked back towards the RV. She could guess what for, so kept a smile on her face as she got out.
“Hiya,” she said brightly. “Looks like we’re heading the same way. You guys were trying to buy fuel in Bangor, too, right?”
“No one seems to be selling it,” the woman said, while the man took another step closer to what was almost certainly a concealed weapon.
“I’m not trying to rob you,” Olivia said. “Which, now I hear it, is probably what a road bandit would say. Look, a few days ago, I sold carpets in South Bend. Then I sort of got dragooned into helping out in the hospital until it burned down. Now I’m… I guess I’m trying to decide whether to stay put or drive as far as I can. Olivia,” she added. “Olivia Preston.”
The woman gave a slow nod. “Naomi Clarke. That’s Conrad. You’re from South Bend? That’s near here, right?”
“About fifty miles south, across the state line. You’re from Virginia?” she asked, pointing at the vanity plate.
Naomi nodded. “We wanted to go south, but the traffic on the highway was all going north. Since then—”
“We’re keeping to ourselves,” Conrad cut in. “We were trying to cross the border. Get to Canada. They said it was shut. Someone blew up the bridge.”
“They did? You mean the people in Bangor told you that?” she asked. “I don’t know anything about it. I was…” She paused, then smiled at RV’s twitching curtain. “We can’t do this on our own,” she said. “Yesterday, I tried. I’ve got a cabin near here. My old boss gave it to me. It’s secluded, but it’s got no power. I spent all of yesterday chopping firewood and hauling water out of the well. Today I’m driving around looking for I don’t know what, but I found you. Alone, we won’t make it. Together, we might. Why don’t we pool resources?”
“You don’t know us,” Naomi said. “We don’t know you.”
“Right, but I don’t know anyone,” Olivia said. “My boss is down in Florida. My boyfriend, well, sort-of-boyfriend, is down in Hawaii, and my best friend was shot, killed, by one of her co-workers the day this all started. I have enough food for me for a couple of months. Between us, I guess it’ll stretch a few weeks. We can split the work, share standing watch, or we can share the drive north or west.”
“You’re offering us a place to stay?” Conrad asked, clearly still suspicious.
“Sure, if you want,” Olivia said. “But I’m really suggesting we pool resources and get far away from here. I don’t think these woods are going to be remote enough. Canada sounds like a good idea. If we help each other, the journey would be a lot safer.” She glanced at the window, where the two children had now pulled the curtain back completely. “Sweet kids.”
“Tyler and Robyn,” Naomi said.
“What do you get out of this?” Conrad asked, suspicion dripping from every syllable.
“Ultimately, the same as you,” Olivia said. “I get to live.”
“She’s right,” Naomi said. “No, Con, she’s right. You were saying the same thing yesterday. We need to find people we can trust.”
“Cool,” Olivia said. She pointed at the tree partially blocking the road. “Since we won’t get the RV through there, we’ll go back the way we came. Do you have some tubing and an empty container? There’s a car not far from here. Abandoned. But there’s fuel in it. We can syphon the gas, then go to the cabin. We can eat. Talk. Plan how to get to Canada.”
“You lead the way,” Conrad said. “We’ll follow.”
As she reversed, Olivia wondered whether they would follow, and for how far. Conrad was clearly suspicious. She suspected Naomi was, too, but less inclined to show it. For that matter, Olivia was suspicious, but the reality of the last two days was that she wouldn’t survive long on her own.
By the time they reached the abandoned car, it appeared as if Conrad had come around to her way of thinking. He climbed out with a fuel can and crowbar in hand. Naomi followed, a length of bright blue plastic hose in hers.
“Stay in the RV, kids,” she said, following her husband over to the RV.
“I hid the keys earlier,” Olivia said, pointing at the crowbar. “Although I guess I should have realised that wouldn’t stop anyone.” She retrieved the keys from where she’d hung them on the tree, opened the car, then the fuel cap.
“We need a rag to create a seal around the hose,” Naomi said.
“You’ve done this before?” Olivia asked.
“On the road,” Naomi said. “But I learned how during my very-well spent youth in Tennessee. I’ll tell you about it later, as long as you promise not to tell the kids.”
Olivia smiled. She was going to get on well with these people. As Naomi went back to the RV, Conrad opened the car’s door, looking at the dead man before walking a little way towards the trees.
“If this works, I think we should head down to the highway,” Olivia said, when Naomi returned. “We’re more likely to find abandoned cars there.”
“How much fuel would we burn looking?” Naomi asked. “If we’re aiming for Canada, better we gather all we need to carry and collect fuel along the way.”
“But take the truck and the RV?” Olivia asked.
“A convoy looks more dangerous than a single vehicle,” Naomi said.
“Right, yes. Is that another tip from your youth in Tennessee?”
“From—”
But she was interrupted by Conrad. “Did you hear that?” he hissed. “There’s something moving in the trees.”
“It’s the deer,” Olivia said. “I saw it earlier.” She reached into her bag, drawing her gun. “I might be able to shoot it. Maybe we can trade it with Bangor for a little gas.”
“I’ll get the shotgun,” Naomi said, and hurried back to the RV.
Olivia kept the handgun pointing low as she watched the treeline. Was it worth wasting the fuel to take a dead deer up to Bangor on the off chance they could trade it? Was it worth the bullet?
“It’s coming this way,” Conrad called. “No, it’s not a deer. It’s a… hey, are you okay?”
He took a step towards the trees as a blood-soaked figure stepped out. Under five feet tall, it was a boy, not a man. A child. Covered in blood from knee to nose.
“No, Conrad!” Olivia called, but it was too late. The undead child staggered forward and Conrad had automatically reached out to catch him. The zombie tore at the man’s arm. I
ts hands curled around Conrad as the man turned and shook, blood pouring from a vivid gash in his arm, trying to keep the zombie at bay.
Naomi ran forward, shotgun in hand, and so did Olivia, gun raised, but she couldn’t get a clear shot. Not until Naomi slammed the stock of her weapon into the zombie-boy’s neck. Its mouth lolled open, and Conrad grabbed him, hurling the undead child into the woods. The zombie-child hit a tree with a sodden snap and spray of viscous gore, falling to a heap at its base.
“No,” Naomi whispered.
Jagged flashes of white bone stabbed through its clothing as the undead child stretched its broken and twisted limbs. He should have cried. He should have screamed. But the only sound to emerge was a low, whispered hiss.
Olivia raised the gun, and squeezed the trigger. The pistol bucked. Miss. She fired again as the zombie rolled through the mud, squirming to its knees. This time, her bullet found its chest, spraying gore across the trees.
“Sorry,” she whispered as the child crawled towards them, teeth snapping, broken arm waving. The third shot was much louder, and came from Naomi’s shotgun. The slug smashed into the zombie’s head. The remains of the undead child crumpled, finally unmoving.
“Damn it,” Conrad hissed.
“Let me see,” Naomi said. “Oh, it’s not too bad. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
“You were bitten,” Olivia said, turning to face the man. He clutched his arm, down which blood streamed towards his hand.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not deep.”
“It isn’t fine,” Olivia said, raising her gun. “I’m sorry. I really am. But it isn’t fine.”
“Relax,” Conrad said. “Two days ago, I had to tear a zombie off a guy who wasn’t so lucky. Damn thing spat in my face. Didn’t get infected then. Won’t now.”
“Everyone gets infected,” Olivia said.
“Not everyone,” Naomi said, coming over with a small and half-empty first-aid kit. “Some people are immune. You must have heard them talking about it online, on the radio.”
“I… no,” she said. “People are really immune?”
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 8