A Matter of Days (7 page)

Rab lowered the map with a frown. “Dia?”

“Yeah?” I didn’t take my eyes from the road as I steered with one hand and took a drink from my water bottle.

“Did you notice that we’re on the road that passes by Fairchild Air Force Base?”

“Oh.” I slowed down until the Jeep idled. Military bases were designated evacuation sites early on in the rampage. But the dead weren’t what caused my hesitation.

Rabbit didn’t really have to continue. “If I were a crazy person looking for guns and tanks …”

He trailed off, but I picked it up and ran. “You’d go to military bases looking for caches of firepower?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Me too.” I nodded. “What’re our options?” He was navigator, and if I was being honest, I wasn’t all that good at reading and understanding maps. Give me step-by-step GPS software directions and I called it good.

“Right, let’s cut south at Harrington and catch 90 that way.”

I agreed and we drove on. Running alongside the road, packs of dogs resembled an old National Geographic special.

“Are those wolves?” Rab asked as I slowed down to get a better look.

A bloodhound, a couple of silver Weimaraners, and white and black cocker spaniels ran with mutts of every kind. All were muddy, matted, skinny, and no longer resembled anyone’s beloved pets. “No, I don’t think so.”

They circled a cow and calf who bawled for rescue. I hit the accelerator knowing what was coming. “Turn up this song, I love it.”

“You like this song?” Rab quizzed me, as if not even he liked this particular tune.

I hit the volume as Rab turned in his seat to watch the dogs. “Rab, turn around.”
I sound like Mom
. But he ignored me. “Turn around.” I raised my voice until I shouted on this side of hysteria. I didn’t want him to see the scene playing out in the rearview mirror.

“Dia, I’m not a baby. They’re hungry. They’re going to kill the cow and eat it.”

I blinked. “I know. We don’t have to watch, though.”
We’ve seen so much worse in the past two months, why does this bother me?

“How are you going to hunt for us if you can’t handle watching animals hunt?”

“I can do it.” Dad taught me. “I don’t know. It’s different.” I wasn’t sure how, but it was.

The cow and dogs left long behind, Rabbit couldn’t let it go. “I’m not a baby,” he declared.

“I know. I know.” Maybe, but I didn’t know how to see him as an equal. The last two years my world had narrowed to taking care of him. Competent non-babies didn’t require that level of care.

The miles slid by. Abandoned cars and the occasional human skeleton.

Rabbit’s stomach growled. “My ass hurts, Dia.”

“Mine too.” With over two hundred miles behind us, I finally felt hungry. My stamina wasn’t what it once was. Rabbit had also been sick, but he’d bounced back much faster. The lingering effects of the virus, or the shot, didn’t seem to weigh him down like anchors. Maybe I was feeling that last sleepless week taking care of Mom, or the continual nightmares, but I wanted a nap. Sleep without the sound track of Mom’s screams or the Smell-O-Vision of this rank new world.

Rab held up the map. “There’s a wildlife refuge—mostly birds—up ahead. I think it’s one of the small sites, not useful for the crazies. Can we camp there tonight? Then go into that town tomorrow?”

“Why not? Can you get us there?” I wasn’t looking forward to seeing what was left, or not left, of the next medium-size town on the map. Not as large as Seattle, but far larger than anything we’d passed through so far, it even had a couple of college campuses.

Did kids die in their dorms or did they get home to say goodbye?

Not for the first time I wished I could search online or turn on cable news for numbers—how many people survived this
thing? Would we run into crowds? Did all military personnel have the shot, or just a few select people like Bean said? Did everyone evacuate to the cities along the coasts like they were supposed to?

What if there were people with planes and information about the rest of the world? What if we could just hop a jet and be in West Virginia by tomorrow? Not bloody likely, and if anything, Dad would have screamed in frustration that I was willing to trust my life and that of my brother to someone else, someone I didn’t know.
“Seize your destiny, Nadia. It’s yours and yours alone.”

“Nadia, turn here.” Rabbit grabbed at the wheel.

“Don’t!” I slammed on the brakes. “Don’t touch the wheel while I’m driving.”

“Sorry, but you weren’t listening.” Rabbit shrugged.

Survive BluStar and die in a car crash. Brilliant
.

I turned and followed Rabbit’s directions to Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.

“What if we meet some anarchists?” Rab’s voice trembled.

“Some what?” I followed the signs toward the outlook area. “Did you say anarchists?”

“What if?”

“That’s why Bean made sure we had guns and could use them.”

“Video games aren’t the same.” Rabbit shook his head.

They’ll have to be
. Dad’s lessons were abbreviated at best.

R
eally loud frogs and some animal that sounded like the Loch Ness monster had a baby with Lady Gaga were the only overnight sounds. No people, dead or living.

“Nadia?” Rab asked.

“Yeah?” The gas gauge was under half-full and heading south faster than I felt comfortable with. We needed gas.

“I have a bad feeling.”

“I told you not to eat that candy bar for breakfast.” I shook my head.

“Not that kind of bad feeling.”

I pulled my foot off the accelerator. “About what?”

“I don’t think we should go into this town.”

“It’s called Cheney. You said it was the next nearest place
on the map and there was a college, so there might be kids still alive, supplies.”

“I don’t know. Let’s go into Spokane instead.”

“But I thought we agreed to stay out of big cities?”

“We did.”

“This isn’t that big. It’s more like a town, right?”

“Still.”

“Are you psychic?” My frustration bubbled over.

“No.”

“Then we check it out. We need gas.”

Rabbit nodded, but the clouds on his brow didn’t lift and he turned off the music.

We drove across Front Street and railroad tracks. Burned husks of cars and strange signs were spray-painted on the sides of buildings. As we drew alongside a road that edged the town, there were roadblocks. Military-style vehicles.
Maybe Rab’s right?

“Dia?” He sat up straighter and locked the Jeep’s doors. “Let’s use the AC.” He hit the buttons to raise our windows. I wanted to tell him he was overreacting, but I was ready to hit the buttons too.

Cars, trucks, wood, and wires cobbled together a fence of trash. I continued along the street.

“Look for any signs of life. People,” I instructed.

There were bleached bones poking out of shoes and jeans littering both sides of the mound.

“There were people.” Rabbit pointed.

“What the hell happened here?” I gazed around, trying to imagine what drove people to such lengths. It looked like a war zone. Houses were trashed or burned-out shells; skeletons sat in cars as if they’d died protecting stuff.

Barricades of tires and furniture, bags of rotting garbage, razor wire, mattresses covered in stains, windows and doors, chicken wire were piled. Bricks of concrete that seemed to come from sidewalks or homes’ foundations were mixed in, as if when someone died, the contents of their home were puked into the fence in front of it.

Sidewalks were obliterated under piles of people’s useless junk, like electronics, and heirloom desks.

“This was on the news,” Rabbit said. “Towns doing this. Trying to shield themselves safe against the virus.”

In theory it made sense. Band together to keep the outside out and healthy people in. But by the time anyone realized they needed something like it, there was already at least one sick person. The idea only worked when the invader was visible—viruses were smarter than humans in many ways. Invisible to the eye and skilled at adapting, they hitched rides on carriers before ever making them sick.

A stench weaseled its way through the ventilation system, its fingers tickling our noses and closing our throats. After a few days of not smelling this, it was almost overpowering to be reacquainted with it.

“I’m going to throw up.” Rabbit gagged.

“If you do, I do, so you can’t. You can’t!” I hollered, fighting my own upwardly mobile stomach. The high heat of May in Eastern Washington wasn’t helpful. Or maybe it was helpful in that it sped up the process.

“Eventually the smell will get better,” I repeated.

“You keep saying that.”

“I mean it.” Uncle Bean had assured me that nature would take care of the mess as quickly as it could.

Rabbit grabbed the air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror and sniffed it crazily. “I’m not smelling buttercream. I can’t smell anything but dead shit.”

“Don’t swear,” I chastised him.

“Seriously? You’re gonna nag me for swearing?”

A sign sprayed with red paint leaned against the fence.
TURN BACK. THERE IS NO ONE AND NOTHING HERE FOR YOU
.

“What’s that mean?”

“I think they got the zombie memo.”

Rabbit cracked a smile. “Look at that one.” He pointed to another sign.

CROSSING THIS LINE WILL GET YOU SHOT
.
DON’T MAKE US SHOOT YOU
.

“Are there people here?”

“If there are, they aren’t selling Girl Scout Cookies or lemonade to folks going by, are they?”

I slowed the car and rolled down my window.

“What are you doing?” Panic gripped Rab’s tone and he caught my arm.

“I’m going to yell.”

“And get shot?”

“I’m staying on this side of the stuff.”

“That doesn’t really matter.”

“Says who?”

“Dark Forces 6: Humanity’s Last Hope.”

“I’m taking advice from a video game?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah, I’m going to see if there’s anything alive.”

“Bad idea.”

“Thanks, Monsieur Mario Brothers, for that prediction. Can you do something useful, please, and find us water in the back?”

Rabbit shook his head. “I’m not getting out of this car.”

“Climb over.” I sighed. Unhooked my seat belt.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting out so they can see I’m not sick.”

“Tastier with ketchup that way.” Rabbit grabbed my shirt. “I will leave you here if they drag you away. I am
not
brave.”

“I’m not going to be eaten by zombies.”

“Just consider it a warning.”

“Fine. Let go of me.” I opened the car door and stepped into the heat. The sun baked everything under her rays. I saw heat rippling and felt my scalp prickle. I smelled putrefying flesh and warm sewage. “Hello?” I called at the top of my voice. “Anyone alive?”

I felt like an idiot. But I didn’t like this place. There was something wrong. Something off.

“Come on, Dia.”

“In a minute, I said.”

“I don’t like it.” Rabbit held out a bottle of water over the car door. “We can make it to the next place to get gas—let’s just go on. Someone didn’t want people going in there—I think we should respect that and get the hell out of here.”

A pop sounded, like a car backfiring. The crash of breaking glass forced my feet back.

“Nadia, they’re shooting at us!”

I jumped back into the Jeep and floored it.

For miles neither of us spoke. Breaking the silence, Rab said in a small voice, “I guess we’re not the only survivors.”

For the first time I wondered if that was really a good thing.
Maybe there are worse things than zombies to worry about?

We passed through Four Lakes, and it was clearly close enough that anything of value had been ransacked and
collected by the Cheney crazies. There were no cars visible. The gas gauge dipped slowly lower. Driving through neighborhoods that looked trashed would only waste gas.
What if we run out? What then?

“We keep going.” I nodded, speaking aloud.

“I don’t know that I want to go into Spokane.” Rabbit studied the map in his lap.

“I don’t either, but I’m not sure what choice we have. We have to find gas or we’re going to be walking.” I sped up, hoping that we’d come across an answer if I went fast enough.

“Take the next exit!” Rabbit yelled in excitement.

“Spokane International Airport? We can’t take a plane.” I rolled my eyes.

“No, but lots of people went to airports, right? And left their cars? Isn’t there a parking lot or something we can raid?”

“That’s brilliant.” I grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

“Thank you!” Rab smiled.

Besides, there’s not a lot of supplies and stuff to guard there—low crazy-low corpse factor, right?

I was beginning to understand that assumptions were a bad idea in this world.

I bypassed the parking garage and instead took the exit toward outdoor parking. Fewer places to get trapped. And we could go to the parking garage if we needed to. Monster trucks—the kind with chipped paint, gun racks, and hay in the back—were the vehicle du jour. The good thing was they were easy to siphon gas from, and we were able to fill the Jeep and the extra gas cans.

“Nadia, that’s the same Jeep.” Rab pointed.

I shrugged, not paying any attention.

“They have a rack on top and a bike rack on the back.”

I glanced up. “So?”

“So we can put more gas cans on top, maybe other stuff, too? Right?”

“That’s really smart,” I said. “Any idea how to get them off there and onto ours? Or I guess we could just load our stuff into that Jeep?”

“Oh, please. Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll be ready to roll.” Rabbit crossed over four lanes of parked cars and sure enough, even though he had to break the windows, he got the racks off and onto ours in under a half hour. I just did what I was told.

Back on the road we couldn’t decide if we should go into Spokane or avoid it. Now that we knew there might be people, and they couldn’t all be shooters, there was a huge temptation to find others. A black cloud ahead of us looked like millions of birds swarming.