Broken World (25 page)

“So you know all about that kind of
stuff then?” Mitchell asks. “You could say, run the surveillance if you had
to?”

“I don’t know for sure until I see it,
but I’d guess I could.”

Why the hell is Mitchell suddenly so
interested in Al? I’m about to ask when the others come out of the house.

Anne tosses her bag into the back of the
Nissan and nods. “We’re all set.”

When I turn back, Mitchell has already
climbed into the Explorer. I have no idea what he’s thinking, but I’m sure I’m
not going to like it.

Anne and Jake end up in the minivan with
Mike, Sophia, and Ava. She seems nice. Guess we’ll have years ahead of us to
get to know one another.

27

ANGUS
IS ASLEEP LESS THAN TEN minutes into the drive. The silence hanging between Axl
and me is unnerving. Does he blame me for Emily or is he just upset? I want
things to be okay between us.

“Thank you, Axl. For taking care of me.”
I have to blink back the tears that fill my eyes.

He his hands tighten on the steering
wheel. “You snapped out of it mighty fast.”

He does blame me. Or maybe he’s just
disappointed in me. Not that I can blame him, but I don’t want him to think I
don’t care. That Emily’s death meant nothing. “I just couldn’t let someone else
die. When I saw those things attacking Anne, I knew I couldn’t let my own
tragedy take over. It’s not just me anymore. We need to look out for each other
if we want to survive this.”

“Not somethin’ I’m used to.”

“Me neither, believe me.”

Axl takes a slow, deep breath. “None of
this was your fault. You did the best you could. Not many people woulda thought
to go check on her like you did. You tried. All you can do sometimes.”

He won’t look at me, but his words mean
more than he can possibly know. I have no idea exactly when it happened, but
Axl’s opinion of me has become almost as important to my survival as air.

“You know, just yesterday I was thinking
about how sad my life was,” I say. “Everyone had lost someone except me,
because I didn’t have anyone to lose. Now here I am.”

“Does it make you feel better?”

I laugh, but it’s a short, bitter sound
that almost chokes me. “Not even a little.”

“It’s better to have loved and lost,
than to never love at all,” Axl mutters. I twist in my seat so I’m facing him.
He shrugs and his cheeks get red. “Had me a girlfriend in high school that
liked poetry and shit. Knew right away it wasn’t gonna last, but she was hot.
She had big dreams ‘bout goin’ to college and gettin’ outta the trailer park.
Not like I could compete.”

“Did you ever have any dreams?”

“Naw, guess I always thought the trailer
park and construction was my only option. Don’t think a guy like me can hope
for much more.”

“You sell yourself short.”

“It ain’t like I got brains like the Doc
or Trey. They’re smart. They had big lives ‘head of ‘em. I was goin’ nowhere.”

“You’re smart in a different way. You’re
every bit as good as those guys,” I say. “You’ve really been a leader here,
helped to keep us all safe. You should be proud.”

“This whole thing ain’t natural for me.
Watchin’ out for somebody else. Weren’t how I was raised.”

“You think it is for me? You think my
dad was out there in the trailer park helping others? No way. He only thought
of himself.”

Axl looks at me with narrowed eyes.
“How’d you do it then? How do you only think of somebody else when you hear a
man on the street callin’ for help? Risk your life without a moment’s
hesitation?”

“Because I don’t want to live the way my
dad did. Even if it means I may die trying to help someone else. I spent the
last two years of my life pushing people away, thinking that everyone was like
my parents. That I wasn’t worth being loved. This group we have here, it’s a
good thing. I don’t want to screw that up.”

Axl purses his lips. He looks so much
like Angus when he does that, but he’s so different than his brother. So much
better.

* * *

We stop in Bakersfield. It’s not quite
the halfway point, but Axl refuses to go any further without getting the code.
There’s a small shopping center just off the interstate. He pulls into the
parking lot. The dead are everywhere, so he pulls up next to the Explorer and
rolls down the window. The air is thick with the scent of decay. I gag and
cover my nose.

“We ain’t going ‘nother inch till you
tell us the code,” Axl says.

Mitchell’s in the backseat. The corners
of his mouth turn down and he crosses his arms over his chest. He reminds me of
a kid, pouting because he didn’t get his way. It makes my skin crawl.

“That’s fine,” Axl says. “We can let you
out here. Ain’t that right, Winston?”

Winston nods. “That was the agreement.”

Mitchell’s eyes get as big as golf balls
and he sits up straighter, frantically looking around the parking lot. The dead
lumber toward the cars from all directions. There are at least twenty of them
coming at us, with more off in the distance.

“You wouldn’t leave me here!”

“Why not? You wanted to leave Emily,” I
spit at him. “You didn’t have any way of knowing for sure that she’d turn, but
you were willing to just toss her aside. You’re better equipped to take care of
yourself than she was.” I’m shaking, and I cram my nails back into my palms,
digging them even deeper.

“But she was infected!”

“You didn’t know that!”

Axl puts his hand on my leg, and I turn
away from Mitchell. He disgusts me, but I need to shut up so he and Axl can
talk about the code.

“What’d you say?” Axl asks.

Mitchell shakes his head, but droops
back against his seat. “Rose. You could pick any alpha or numeric code you
wanted, so I chose Rose. It was my mom’s name.”

Axl nods. His hand is still on my leg.
“Alright, then.”

He moves his hand and rolls the window
up, then heads back out onto the interstate.

My leg tingles where his hand was. “You
think we can trust him?”

“Nope. But we got no choice.”

“I think that chick was right,” Angus
says from the backseat.

The sound of his voice makes me jump and
I spin around to face him. I didn’t even know he was awake.

“I was lookin’ at them zombies we killed
at the mini mall. They was a lot more rotted out than the ones we saw in the
garage. Seems like they start off kinda slow and get more aggressive.”

“Just our luck,” Axl mutters. “If this
prick don’t let us in we’ll have to find a place to hole up in Vegas, right
when these bastards get feisty.”

* * *

The swerve of the car jerks me awake and
I squint from the bright sun. Axl is turning around.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“What’s wrong,” I ask, looking around.
We’re on the highway and the landscape is even more brown and sandy then when I
went to sleep. We must be getting close.

“Don’t know. Mike pulled over back
there.”

“Car trouble, maybe,” Angus says from
the back.

I look down the street as we head back
to the others. They’re all climbing out. Angus must be right, there’s no reason
to stop in the middle of the road, and they had plenty of gas to make it into
the desert.

“How much further do we have to go?” I
ask as Axl pulls over next to the others.

“We still got ‘bout three hours.”

He turns the car off and we all hop out.
By the time we make it over everyone is talking at once. I do my best to sort
through the individual conversations and figure out what’s going on, but it
isn’t easy.

“Check engine light just came on and the
damn thing wouldn’t accelerate,” Mike grumbles.

“Let’s just leave the stuff behind. I
don’t like being out here in the open,” Sophia pleads. She’s holding Ava in her
arms and her eyes don’t stop moving for a second.

There isn’t much around, but we’re right
off an exit and there are a few signs in the distance. A gas station, a
restaurant, stores. There’s a small wooded area to our right and a huge housing
development beyond that. It makes me squirm. All those houses so close to us.
If Anne’s right and these things really have learned how to open doors, we
could be in trouble.

“We ain’t leavin’ our stuff.” Axl walks
to the back of the van, jerks open the door and start pulling boxes out. “We
got guns and other stuff we need.”

I run over to the Nissan and open the
back so he can put it in, but it’s pretty full.

“Shit.” He puts the box on the ground.
“We gotta rearrange all this shit. We gotta pull the third row up so more
people can fit in and we gotta fit more of this gear in there.”

He starts pulling boxes out and I help.
We need to get it done as fast as possible. I glance over my shoulder. Everyone
except Mitchell is unloading the van. Winston, Mike, and Trey are all busy
moving things around in the other vehicles, trying to make room for more stuff
and more people.

My heart pounds and I don’t stop looking
around while I work. Sophia was right. Being out here in the open sucks.

Once Axl has the back cleaned out, we
both climb in and pull up the third row. It only takes a few minutes, but I’m
on edge. We still have to load up before we can get out of here.

Angus and Axl start loading boxes and I
stand back. They’re faster than I would be and I want it done. From the looks
of it, the others are getting close to having their cars packed up too. Just a
few more minutes.

I tap my toe nervously and a soft breeze
blows, bringing with it the scent of decay. My shoulders tense and my heart
beats faster. I search the area around us. The road is clear and the exit ramp
is clear. I don’t see
anything
.

“You smell that?” I call to the brothers
and pull my gun out.

“Yup,” Axl says. “We’re hurryin’.”

I chew on my bottom lip and rush to the
other car to see if there’s anything I can do to help. They’re almost done.

Sophia screams and my stomach clenches.
I spin around. There’s nothing by her, but she’s pointing toward the woods. I
turn just as two of the dead step out of the trees. They head right for us.
Only two.

“Get in the car!” I tell her, aiming at
their heads.

I pull the trigger and hit the first one
between the eyes before turning to the second. He meets with an identical end.
I exhale in relief just as dozens of bodies come racing from the woods.

Everything explodes. People yell, guns
go off, the dead run toward us with their arms raised and their hands reaching
out. Moans and unearthly screams come out of their rotting mouths. The stink of
decomposing flesh is so overwhelming I have to hold my breath while I shoot
into the horde.

Others fire and I lower my gun, running
for Sophia. I grab her arm and yank her toward the Explorer. “Get in!”

Anne shoots at the bodies with Jake
clinging to her legs. “Anne! Take Jake to the Nissan,” I yell as a body
stumbles toward me with raised arms.

She’s fast. So much faster than any of
the others we’ve encountered, and so much more decomposed. Her skin is gray and
ripped in places. Black ooze seeps out of the wounds, giving off the putrid
smell of decay. Her hands grab my arm and yank me toward her, but before she
can sink her teeth into my flesh I put the barrel of my gun to her temple and
pull the trigger. Instinctively I close my eyes and mouth, turning my face away
as black goo explodes out of her skull, covering me in the stinking liquid.

“Vivian!” Axl yells.

I run, glancing over my shoulder to make
sure everyone else is okay. Most people have climbed into the cars, but Mike is
still firing his gun. There are too many of them. Bodies converge on him. They
grab his limbs and pull him forward. He continues to fire, even as teeth sink
into his skin and he screams in agony.

“Mike!” I stop in my tracks. My legs
won’t work.

But Axl is next to me. He pulls me
toward the Nissan. I try to resist, but he’s too strong.

“We have to help him!” I sob.

“Too late.”

Axl pushes me behind him, back toward
the car, and lifts his gun. He pulls the trigger. The bullet hits Mike in the
head and he goes down, lost in a mass of dead bodies.

I stumble to the car and jump into the
passenger seat, shutting the door just as Axl climbs in. The engine is already
running and he hits the gas.

“Did everyone get out?” Anne asks anxiously
from the back.

I clench my hands to stop them from
shaking. “We lost Mike.”

“Shit,” Angus mutters. “Dead bastards.”

We’re all silent. I gasp and my heart
pounds. I squeeze my eyes shut while I work hard to slow my breathing. But I
can’t stop shaking. Not with Mike’s screams still ringing in my ears.

“Don’t wanna be an ass,” Axl says. “But
you stink.”

I open my eyes. What’s he talking about?
He nods toward my shirt and I look down. My clothes are covered in black goo.

I pull my shirt over my head and roll
down window to toss it outside. Axl raises an eyebrow and Angus actually leans
forward so he can get a better look. I give him the finger, then pull a fresh
shirt out of my bag. Pervert.

When I have a clean shirt on I lean my
head back and close my eyes. “What are we going to do if Mitchell doesn’t let
us in that shelter?”