Chapter Sixteen
Kevin and I knew that the noise of his bike would have alerted anything with the sense of hearing around those parts, so we didn’t want to delay, but we weren’t ready to leave. Hungry and thirsty, we took a few moments to grab more apples and a can of nuts out of the pantry, stocking my backpack with a few of the water bottles we’d fetched the day before.
“My helmet’s locked in Larry’s truck. Are you okay riding without one?”
“If you think I’m going to miss a trip home because there’s no helmet, you’re crazy.”
“We’ll probably still hit some patches of snow in shadowy spots, especially going over the mountain.”
“You wanting to go the back way again?”
He nodded. “I remember the route. I’ve never been up here before till now…so I don’t want to get lost.”
“You remember the way back?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
He got on the bike and I straddled it behind him, wrapping my arms around him tightly. I hadn’t ridden on a motorcycle since I was young—pre-teen, if memory served. I remembered having a fearful reverence for the beast and—after riding on the back with one of my cousins at the helm—vowed to avoid them like the plague from then on out. I had no choice now.
And I trusted this man.
He wound down the mountain from my aunt’s house slowly and without incident. We passed by Larry’s truck for the last time and I intentionally avoided looking at the dead…woman. I still couldn’t help but think of her that way, even though it had come down to her or us and even though I’d acted without hesitation because I knew I had to. She’d still, at one point, been alive and, no doubt, meant something to someone else—and I’d ended her time here on earth.
It was slow going and, as we continued making our way toward the main road, a little unnerving as well because I just couldn’t shake my fear of being heard throughout the valley. Would Larry try to find us and stop us because we weren’t continuing to live out his survivalist scenario?
Maybe not, but something almost as bad threatened to prevent us. Once we got on the main road, we’d barely started up it when several infected jumped out of the woods at us. They had no sense of self-preservation, throwing themselves in our way, and Kevin managed to maneuver us through two of them, but a third one grabbed my coat sleeve. I should have let go of Kevin, because then he might have stayed upright, but we were moving slowly enough that he managed the skid okay so that it didn’t hurt him. However, the infected man had me in his grasp. I was on the ground, hardly able to keep up with the way my body was being flung around, and the next thing I knew, his face was above mine. My whole world at that moment was his fetid breath infusing my nostrils, as my vision clouded with emotion—his eyes, though tinged yellow and bloodshot, seemed otherwise lucid. He still seemed human somehow and I felt sympathy for one brief moment. I wanted to ask him how he felt, why he wanted to attack me, but then his head bobbed to the right as Kevin’s tire iron took its place. He then kicked the infected man off me—with two blows from his boot—and extended a hand to help me up.
He started to ask me if I was okay when the man got up again, this time with Kevin in his sights. The man knocked him down and I poised my axe, ready to strike, but Kevin got on his feet once more. Then the man lunged at him, his mouth gaping, ready to plunge his teeth into Kevin’s neck, but Kevin kicked him in the gut, sending the man reeling. The infected stayed upright, though, and lunged once more. This time, Kevin punched him, and that was when I saw that his tire iron was on the ground. I picked it up and started to hand it to him, and that was when I noticed one of the infected we’d avoided earlier coming straight for me. “Savage!” I yelled, and Kevin turned and saw that I was holding the tire iron toward him.
I felt my arm grow lighter when he took it, and then I brought my hand toward my other one to wrap it around the handle of the axe. I didn’t have time to raise the weapon, so I thrust it out in front of me like a handlebar in an effort to stop the infected woman from grabbing me. She pushed against it, her hands grabbing at my shoulders. What impressed me most was her strength.
Ah, but I’d grown much stronger over the last several months, too. Unlike Nina a year ago, this version of myself was lean—nothing on my body was fat anymore. I was trim and my muscles had grown as I’d pressed them into service for survival. I pushed back against her, letting my primeval mind take over, working on instinct instead of intellect. She stumbled backwards, and while she tried to regain her footing, I brought the axe down. No remorse. No regret.
It was her or me.
Kill or die.
I could hear Kevin’s words from months past ringing in my ears, and I knew what he’d spoken was truth. I couldn’t live my life hesitating, because it would mean my demise and, up until this point, I’d lived with the baggage of regret. That too had to go, because regretting also meant that I was questioning my choices. My choices had made me who I was, and I had to accept myself, good choices with the bad. Every decision I had made to that point had made me the woman I was, and I very well couldn’t regret that. I had raised two children who had such promise, promise to make the world a better, more loving place; I had helped my husband live the best life he could under the circumstances; I had tried to make every life I touched somehow happier or more blessed.
No more fucking regret.
I was focused on those thoughts and those thoughts alone, and it wasn’t until I realized I had killed the other undead woman farther down the road—she’d been running at us and I’d met her halfway—that I became aware that, once more, the danger had passed. Kevin asked me something, but I couldn’t register what he said. I only lost myself in his embrace and his kiss before we got back on his bike so we could make our way home.
Chapter Seventeen
The trip was slow. Not only did we have more snow on the road to contend with as we hit the highest elevations of the mountain before making a long descent, but then we had lots of mud and slush before we reached a paved county road, the first of many as we wound our way toward Winchester.
Once we were on pavement, I relaxed some. The road was no longer bumpy and the air wasn’t as cool, but the breeze against my cheeks was welcome. I began to relish the feel of the bike’s purr underneath my body and the sensation of holding onto my man firmly. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we’d had no coats on, because then I would be able to appreciate the hardness of his body and the closeness between us.
We were taking the backroads just as we had when we’d driven up all those months ago. We saw a car here and there by the side of the road, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Things felt strangely normal, as though time hadn’t paused for winter here like it had with us.
But things were different, and I could feel that, too. It was odd, because I started sensing the old and something new. I began to feel disoriented.
Kevin pulled over when, at the rate he was driving, we were about an hour out of Winchester. I appreciated that he was taking his time, still scoping the landscape like we’d trained ourselves to do all those months in the mountains. It helped me get used to the idea of riding on a bike and it also helped me adjust to the foreignness of what should have been familiar to me.
He asked me to take the backpack off so we could drink some water. He was looking down the mountain and, in the distance, just past the side of a hill, we could see the great plains of eastern Colorado in the distance. It was breathtaking, particularly after being trapped in a bowl made of mountains for so long. The sun was bright and warm, and Kevin unzipped his coat before chugging half the bottle. “Know what’s weird?”
I smiled. “You mean besides everything?”
“Yeah.” He began scanning the landscape again and pointed to first one house and then another, both far enough that we could monitor them and escape from any potential danger before it caught us. “Did you notice that all these places look abandoned?”
&nbs
p; I scrutinized them, but I knew in the back of my mind exactly what he meant. There were no signs of life—no movement, no people, nothing that would make us think someone were alive in any of these buildings that we were now convinced were deserted.
“What do you suppose it means?”
“I don’t know…but I’m curious as hell what Winchester looks like.”
So was I, so it didn’t take much to talk me into getting back on the bike. As we reached the outer edge of the city, there were more and more homes with less distance between them. The sun was low in the sky by then, but we still had at least another hour of daylight. It was hard getting used to the sun’s movement here, because at my aunt’s house, the sun would have already been dipping behind the mountain. Here, where there were mountains but they weren’t on all sides, the sun had more sky to move through before disappearing behind the horizon.
Kevin saw it before I did and slowed his bike. Just before the official city limits of Winchester, the place we’d sped away from last fall, was a huge blockade. There were two armed guards in front, and, as we approached, I saw that they were wearing military uniforms. A tank blocked the road, and I almost laughed, because it seemed like overkill.
But why were they there?
I might have been afraid if I hadn’t been so grateful to see signs of life. These two people were the first living beings we’d seen in months that weren’t infected.
Kevin parked the bike just a few feet away from the guards who had moved into a more defensive posture. They were holding automatic weapons, too, and the sight of them sent chills down my spine. Shutting off the engine, he knocked the kickstand with his boot and stood in one swift motion. Something about the way he did it screamed bad ass at me and my heart started thumping.
This man, Kevin Savage—somehow, he had become my man, my lover. And he was protecting me, caring for me on a level I’d never experienced before. I felt my heart swell in my chest as he turned to me and held out his hand to help me off the bike.
This time, I felt the fatigue in my thighs, as I realized my muscles were adjusting to something they weren’t used to. One of the guards, a tall black man, peered at us from under his hat. “What’s your business here, folks?”
Kevin somehow seemed stronger, more forceful, but his voice was low and solid. “She lives here.”
It was then that I saw the other guard step forward to stand beside the first one. I felt some pride that it was a woman under that uniform, and she appeared to be no nonsense. She eyed me coolly but said nothing.
The man looked at me as though to affirm Kevin’s statement that I corroborated. “I live on Lake Drive—north Winchester.”
“How long have you been gone?”
“Since November.”
He nodded and walked into the building—one that hadn’t been there when we’d left all those months ago. It blocked the two lanes of traffic that previously had been going in. When he came back, he held a clipboard and pen and handed it to me, asking me to fill it out. Then he looked at Kevin, “You from here, too?”
“A long time ago. We’re traveling together.”
“No address here?”
“Just mine,” I said, wondering what the hell was going on.
The soldier handed Kevin another clipboard and told him, “You can either put down her address or say that you’re visiting, and you can do it at that table over there or I can take you inside.”
We sat at the picnic table just beside the building. I hadn’t noticed it until the soldier had pointed it out. Kevin just stared at the paper scowling. I whispered, “What do you think that’s all about?”
“No fuckin’ idea—but I’m gonna want answers.”
I hadn’t registered that his voice was normal, not whispered, until the soldier said, “You’ll get them soon—as soon as you finish the paperwork.”
His answer didn’t make Kevin stop glaring, but he did pick up the pen and fill out his name. I was already working on mine. It asked for my name, address, phone number, reason for leaving the area, what date I left, and how recently I’d had contact with someone infected. For all I knew, I had infected blood on my pants or hands or some other part of my body that had barely dried over the past two hours. But I filled it out. I glanced over at Kevin’s. His was slightly different. Instead of asking his reason for leaving the area, it instead asked for his reason for visiting the area now and how long he planned to stay. He left the length-of-stay line blank but said he was here with me.
When we finished, the soldier collected the clipboards. “I’ll be back shortly.” Kevin and I had begun looking around again, but it was hard to see inside Winchester proper because of the buildings. I glanced to the north, past the tank, where rows of homes neatly announced the beginning of the city. I noticed a soldier walking the perimeter, a rifle hanging from his back. I lifted a finger off the table and pointed in that direction, but I tried not to make it obvious. I didn’t know what or who the hell we were dealing with yet, and I didn’t want to make any enemies right off the bat. I whispered, “See that?”
“Yep.” Even though his voice was also quiet, I could hear the tension.
My eyes continued watching that lone soldier until Kevin said, “Look at that.” He was looking in the other direction, the road we’d been on and had intended to enter town on. He nodded his head in the direction of the tank, only he was looking farther down the road. “Signal light’s not working. I wonder if the power’s off here, too.” I shrugged. We were definitely equipped to handle it nowadays, but that revelation was disheartening. I wouldn’t know for sure until we were inside, but I was beginning to suspect that the folks here weren’t having any better time of it than we had, isolated in the hills.
Finally, the man who’d taken our paperwork came back out. “So you’ve both recently had contact with infected people?” We nodded. “If you want in the city, we have to quarantine you for the standard seventy-two hours.” I raised my eyebrows while Kevin’s brows furrowed. He was pissed but he kept his mouth shut. “You don’t have to. You can turn around and leave, but if you want in, we have to hold you. It’s the standard protocol.” He looked us both in the eyes. “You don’t know any of this, do you?”
Kevin spoke for both of us before I could. “We’ve been trapped in the mountains for months and just left today. What’s going on?”
While the soldier hadn’t been smiling before, his frown became more evident. “I wouldn’t even know where to start, sir.” He paused. “In an effort to contain the virus, the United States mobilized the National Guard to set up stations, first around all major cities and then other cities and towns with populations over ten thousand. Unfortunately, we don’t have the manpower to go to every town or remote areas, but those citizens are instead coming to us. We’re containing the infected and separating them from the healthy population until the vaccine is ready for use.”
“Vaccine?” Maybe the idea of military rule should have given me cause for comment before asking about a potential way to prevent the disease, but I couldn’t help but focus on the one thing that had really captured my attention.
“How long have you been gone?”
Kevin, though, was all business. “Since November.”
The soldier glanced down at the papers we’d filled out as though to confirm what Kevin was saying, and then he gave us a curt nod. “It’s up to you, but if you want access to the city, you’ll undergo mandatory quarantine for the requisite seventy-two hours. If, after that time, you show no signs of infection, we’ll let you out to roam about the city as you choose and to come and go as you please.”
Kevin looked at me, scanning my eyes, asking an unspoken question. Three days should have seemed like nothing after the months we’d spent away, but now that I was free, I wanted to see my kids, and three days seemed intolerable. “Is there any way you can check and see if my son and daughter are here in town?”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed before he answered. “That might be possible
.”
“Good. Because if they’re not here, I need to keep looking.”
“If it helps, you won’t be able to enter any major city without undergoing quarantine.”
Kevin said, “So if we do this, you’re saying we could turn around and get into Colorado Springs if we wanted?”
“Within a reasonable amount of time and proper documentation. For instance, if you left on Friday, your band would say so. If you arrived in Colorado Springs within twenty-four hours and declared no contact with infected individuals, you’d be able to stay or pass through without quarantine.”
“Band?”
In response, the soldier lifted his left sleeve to reveal what looked like a hospital band, only wider. I couldn’t see much information on it, but he didn’t wait for me to examine it. “It serves as identification for now, but—more importantly—it keeps infected individuals out of the cities, keeps them from spreading infection to the general population. Cities have become safe havens as we’ve progressed in the fight.”
It was too much for my mind to wrap around, and I wanted to ask more questions, but the soldier seemed impatient. He wanted our decision so he’d know what to do with us—except I was at odds. If my kids weren’t in Winchester, then I wanted to go straight north where I could begin searching for them. I saw a few problems with that, though—if things were as the soldier said, I might have to find a back route north, avoiding the Colorado Springs and Denver metro areas, but I would have to, at some point along the way, pay the piper. There was no getting into any place to see my kids without an isolation period. I looked at Kevin. “Should we just get it over with now?”
“Up to you.”
I had so many questions. The world we were returning to seemed colder and harsher, and yet it seemed to have every reason to be. As I nodded to the soldier and he stood, I wondered just what exactly we had agreed to.
Wilder (Savage #2) Page 12