The Reanimates (Book 2): The Highway (6 page)

We were just about done when the squeal of tires broke the ambient silence. It was Lucas. He had a herd of zombies tailing him, making that horrible moan. I thought the moan was reflex from the all encompassing hunger they felt but it seemed the moan doubled as an alert to others because more and more poured out everywhere. Every time that it looked like he was going to get away more took the place of the ones he had left. The strip was swarming with the herd as more came from the parking garages and side streets. I didn't imagine that there would be so many zombies in one place. I thought for sure that with threshold happening on a Tuesday there would be fewer tourists in Vegas and that there would be less victims of Shelton's. They moved in pulsing waves, and they moved in our direction. If I had any question that Vegas was lost, I got over it.

"Trent!" I yelled out, "There a ton of zombies following Lucas here. Let's go!" Trent surveyed the scene as well and muttered something under his breath. We ran back to the truck. My heart pounded with the dramatic scene of several hundred zombies on the hunt. We shouted to the rest of the group that we needed to go, that they needed to stay behind the semi. Everyone climbed into their cars, just like we had discussed, and started down the off ramp. Lacey looked at us with wide, horror filled eyes before she pushed Raine into Matt's car and climbed in herself. After we exited the off ramp Trent jumped out of the truck, ran back up the ramp, pulled a lighter from his pocket, and lit a fire in one of the remaining cars. As he got back to the truck the car was burning well and was starting to catch the next car on fire as well. We all hoped that this would work as a zombie detour for just long enough to get away. With the sky lit up from the fires burning we drove away from the freeway. Lucas caught up with our convoy and followed us as we wove through the streets. It was time to leave Las Vegas.

Trent and I were talking about how it would have been handy to have had a bit of warning before this last run for the hills moment. Some sort of CB would be handy. While running parallel to the freeway, we noticed an electronic parts store. Trent gave the horn two quick honks and turned on his left turn signal. He pulled over on the street and pointed to the store. The rest of the convoy pulled over as well and followed us into the deserted strip mall, though I did notice that there was a little reunion with Lucas and Lacey as they kissed passionately next to the Hummer.  Trent and I spread the word of what our intent was, then we popped in and found the CB section. I was rather surprised that they were still here. I figured that the electronics stores would have been over run by looters, though maybe the interest was lessened since it sold mostly replacement parts. We made plans to get out of the city, into a stretch of nothing and pull over. The sun was fading fast so we would set up camp there while we figure out how to use the radios. Drew begged to ride in the back with Kyle and Liam and we gave in. I checked on DaWayne who was in rather high spirits, though extremely bored.

We drove past the city streets and through residential neighborhoods. Empty houses lined the streets. Yards that used to be perfectly maintained were overgrown with weeds. Doors hung open on many homes, windows were broken. Parks were abandoned, the streets empty. My overactive imagination was at work, picturing the last days of this neighborhood. I could see the families that lived here running to their cars. After seeing the strip, I imagined that most didn't make it out.

We drove by an elementary school. Nothing prepared me for the school. At first glance the school seemed to be normal. The red brick building was framed by trees, no doubt placed there to try to provide shade for when the heat waves were in full force. When we pulled past the building and saw the playground my heart broke. Wandering around aimlessly in the fenced area were about 50 children. They were all zombies, all damaged by various bite marks. I couldn't breathe. Those were children! There were little girls with hair tucked into braids and pig tails. There were boys wearing shirts that said their video game was the best game. They were children, torn, broken, snarling children. I couldn't stop thinking about how scared they had to have been at the end, wondering where their parents were. I could picture them sitting in a classroom huddled together, crying when the zombie came in. I wondered if it was a stranger that got them, was it their teacher, or was it another classmate? All these images invaded my brain on a loop and I started to hyperventilate. I couldn't imagine how different this would have played out if threshold was just a day earlier. If Drew had been in school, I wouldn't have checked the forums or turned on the news until after I had taken him to school. Trent would have gone to work. The world would have ended with Drew being the kid scared in the corner wanting his mom and dad, wondering if we were going to save him. I pulled my knees to my chest, and sobbed. I was so grateful that the kids hadn't seen this; I could hear rolling laughter coming from inside the trailer, but the grief that rolled though me in great waves for these other children, children that I had never met. Trent reminded me to keep breathing and reached over to hold my hand. He murmured close your eyes over and over. I slid off the bucket seat into the middle space that we made for Drew, and Trent put his arm around my shoulders.

"It's all fucked isn't it?" I asked in great gulping sobs. "It's all gone to hell and this is the world now. How do we live in this world with zombie children forever wandering around a playground that they will never play on again? How do we accept a world that leaves babies as nothing but a brown stain and a pile of discarded bones? How do we live in the world that has been so totally destroyed?" He didn't have an answer for me. He knew that there was no answer for something like this. He just held his arm around me as he kept driving. I breathed deep panic driven gulps of air. It felt like there wasn't enough air left in the world.

It was dark when we got to an open space and pulled over. I walked away from everyone and fell to my knees. I ran my hands through the dirt and cried. Trent came over to where I had collapsed to my knees, lifted my face up in his hands, and kissed me. He kissed me like it was the first time and the last time we would ever kiss. I held to him while we kissed then peeled off his shirt. Under a moonless, star filled sky he whispered to me, "Its not all fucked. We go on. We are together, Drew is not one of those children. We survived and we go on." I pressed my lips against his again and we made love in the dark.

One of us

We rejoined the group where Matt and Lucas were putting together the fire while telling stories of their life pre-zombie. They were Irish twins, born just ten months apart. This was a great source of confusion to a great deal of teachers that there were these two boys in the same class that were brothers but had different birthdays. They liked to play tricks on their teachers as much as possible and were partners in crime to a great number of practical jokes on their poor mother. Liam was listening with great interest when they talked about setting up water buckets over doors and having people chase a dollar on fishing line. Justin leaned over and whispered something into Liam's ear which earned a great big smile. Something told me we were all in for some trouble of the joke sort.

We put together the radios and sent the boys off in different directions to test them out while we put together dinner. Lacey and Merideth added some of their canned goods to the dinner pile and we all ate together. Jody seemed to be doing better than the last time we sat together for dinner, I think being with her family helped, but she wasn't very talkative.

Merideth and Lacey were easy going people and it was nice to get to know them. Lacey was a little more girly than I prefer to hang out with, fussing about hair and make up and how dirty they all were, but Erin took to her in an instant. She answered questions that Erin asked about how to make the best smokey eye and how to get her hair to lift behind headbands. Merideth, on the other hand, was more of an outdoors girl. She was just as comfortable sitting on the dirt and messing with the campfire as her boys were, and I imagined she had spent a lot of time with her boys out in the forest.

Raine sat by herself, reading on her Kindle while she ate. Jackson held tight to a well-worn paperback with a twig as a bookmark that saved his place until he was done eating. They both said little, but when they did they were polite and friendly. Justin and Erin sat together making teenage flirts towards one another. Jody watched her daughter with a twinge of sadness in her eyes, but said nothing.

After dinner, Lucas found a soccer ball and got the kids together for a little game. Justin and Jackson played the role of opposing team captains and seemed to be having fun doing the sibling rivalry thing. Erin and Lacey played cheerleader for both sides and I applauded whoever made a goal. It was easy to imagine that we were all just hanging out on a camping trip together. They seemed to be integrating with our group well.

I looked over and saw that Matt, Merideth, and Trent were having a conversation and I wandered over to them when Trent waved me over. I sat down next to Trent while Matt continued to talk. "I just don't know what to do. My entire game plan rested on staying in Las Vegas, but it was so much more overrun than I could possibly imagine. I can't put my family there. I couldn't put Lucas' family there. We'd be snacks. I have no idea what I'm doing anymore." He rested his head on his hands and sighed. Merideth put her hand on his back and rubbed it. She didn't say anything, but it was pretty clear that she was worried about what was going to happen as well.

"So stick it out with us." Trent invited. Matt's head lifted up sharply and he looked at Trent in disbelief, almost expecting that there would be a retraction of the offer. "We're rolling up to Idaho via the 15. If you end up wanting to pull out of this and set down roots along the path then cool, but man, it looks like you need us and we need you. So join us." Trent held his breath in a hopeful pause. We did need them. We needed more men in our group, and these guys were a great fit. They knew enough to stay alive this far. Maybe they had tips on what worked for them. Matt looked into Merideth's eyes looking for her opinion on the whole thing. She smiled at him with a look that this was an answer to her prayers.

"Yeah, alright. Let's do it." Matt said, a little more confident that his world wasn't going to end. He called Lucas and Lacey over. Trent offered the same invite to them as well. Matt told Lucas that joining us was what he wanted to do. Lucas paused for a bit, weighing his options, and agreed to joining us as well.

For the rest of the night we sat together and got to know one another. Lacey pulled out a bag of marshmallows she had stashed so we all had a super neat dessert in the desert. Jody seemed relieved that the new women wanted to take JJ off her hands and she retreated into a quiet bubble after she fed the baby, grateful for the down time.

As the fire died and the cold settled in and the adrenalin that the day's events had given us fully wore off, we all decided that a good night sleep was in order. Watch was assigned across several people and we all tucked in for the night. I fell asleep with hope dancing in the back of my brain. There were still good people out there.

Utah

The next morning we woke with the sunrise. Ice formed crystals all around, blanketing the ground in sparkles. We made a quick breakfast and packed it all up. We all couldn't wait to get in our vehicles and on the road so we could run a heater.

Given the risk of ice on the roads we drove slowly despite the lack of cars. After all, no one wanted to get into a car wreck in the middle of the end of the world. It took us 4 hours to get into St. George which we figured would be a good break spot. The air was crisp and storm clouds loomed in the sky. We pulled down a side road and set up base camp there. We decided it would be much easier to scout out the town if we were only using the littler cars. We set up 2 different teams for the scout. Trent, Matt, and I were in one team while Tyreese, Lucas, and Lacey were in the other. We decided that getting supplies at every stop would serve us well, we didn't know what would come up later and how well Kristen was doing. For our first stop, we found a grocery store to pick through. Before we went inside, we loaded up on crossbows and arrows and made sure that the guns were loaded. Someone else had this idea as well, the windows were broken out and the goods were very picked over. There were a few random cans, but nothing significant. We battled icy sidewalks and stopped at a mom and pop style pharmacy to rummage through. There were a few prescriptions left on the counters and some over the counter things like vitamins, which I reminded myself to look at as a positive thing, there was at least something to get. I was able to get the iron for Jody. We were just about out of the store when we found our first group of Utah zombies. They were thin and behaved as though food wasn't abundant in this town. They stumbled and fell on the ice giving us plenty of time to dispatch them. We used our crossbows and took them out quickly. We found a gas station, refueled the SUV, and found more gas cans to fill. We would hit the gas station on our way out to get everything else filled.

We came back to the group just before Tyreese's group did. We weren't feeling too optimistic at this point that there would be a lot that they were going to be coming back with given that our big score was vitamins. We were wrong. They found a stash of arrows that had been neglected for bullets. That was so awesome. We tried to retrieve our arrows whenever possible, but that only worked in perfect circumstances ,and as a result there were a lot of lost arrows out there.

St. George had never been a large town, but even so, I wasn't expecting the ghost town that was here. I expected that with the Mormon temple here that more people would have come here to pray. There were just a handful of zombies. We ate lunch in relative peace and saddled back up. We had Drew ride up front with us.

We drove deeper into Utah, the elevation changes playing havoc on our ears. There was very little on our route, which brought mixed emotions to me. Nothing on our chunk of road meant no zombies, but it also meant there was no help if something went wrong. Snow sparkled like glittered sand.

It was almost five PM when the storm clouds blocked out the sun. We were just outside a small town by the name of Scipio when the snow began to fall.

"Damn. I was afraid of this." Trent sighed heavily, grabbed the CB walkie, pressed the button and began to speak.

"Hey guys. I think we need to pull off. Snow driving isn't something I've got a lot of experience with, not to mention, I don't know hard this is going to hit. Let's take the next off ramp and drive through town until we find a place that we can flip the semi around. We on the same page?"

The CB came alive with a chorus of people spouting their agreements with the plan.

The snow fell harder as we reached the off ramp and visibility was poor. We wound through the small town until we hit the last home on the street. It was a large single level farmhouse style home with a detached barn. It was old looking and welcoming with its wrap around porch and warm neutral paint shades. We bumped along the long drive to the house.

The CB cracked to life. "Trent, come in?" Tyreese's voice called out through the tinny speaker.

"Go for Trent." He replied, somewhat officially. I stifled a giggle.

"Take the back door. I'll take the front. We'll clear the place fast." Tyreese suggested.

Trent called back in agreement. Matt called in and offered to join us. Tyreese said that he couldn't see why not.

Trent killed the engine and coasted to the farthest end of the drive. "Drew, lay down flat. Don't open the truck door until we tell you." Trent told Drew. Drew nodded seriously. I pulled out my gun and slid quietly out of the truck.  Trent and I closed the doors to the truck at the same time.  Snow crunched under my feet as we crept up the walk. The back door was open a crack. I had mixed emotions over that slightly open door. It could be a good thing, if the occupant was already a zombie then they could have wandered off, but at the same time, anything could have wandered in.