“I’m really okay with the back.”
“So am I.” She lifted her eyebrows and jerked her head toward Devon, who saw it in the rearview mirror.
He chuckled and grabbed my hand, pulling me inside. “Let’s go before more of the dead figure out how to open doors.”
Grudgingly, I pulled the door shut.
The first thing I did was plug my phone in, and the little lightning bolt telling me it was charging was a welcome relief. Mom would call. She had to.
We were silent as Devon pulled out of the parking lot. Finally being on the road was a relief, but it wasn’t totally stress free. We had no idea what was next. What dangers we would face or what would greet us when we reached our destination. The fact that I hadn’t been able to get through to my mom weighed on me, and no matter how much I told myself it was downed cell towers or something like that, there were no guarantees. I could get home to find her dead from the virus. Or worse, from the zombies.
The town of Vega, Texas flew by, ghostly in its silence. We passed dark houses, and I didn’t miss that more than a few had doors hanging open. Each time I saw one, I searched the surrounding area, expecting to see one of the dead, but there was nothing. In fact, we’d almost reached the edge of town before I saw one. The zombie was small—a kid, maybe—and far away, ambling down the road with its arms raised. Possibly it was headed toward us, drawn by the sound of the car, but it wouldn’t reach us. It was too slow and too far off. Still, dread built in my stomach as it stumbled down the road, moving faster at the sight of the car. In seconds, it was out of sight, but the unease inside me didn’t disappear.
When Devon continued on Route 66, I turned to face him. “We can probably take a different route now. I mean, I doubt anyone is out patrolling anymore.”
“I think sticking to Route 66 would be the smartest thing to do.” He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance my way. “The other roads will take us through major cities, but Route 66 is more scenic. We’d be driving through small towns, most of which were probably sparsely populated. It will mean a lower chance of running into trouble.”
He had a point.
“Okay,” I said, nodding as I thought about it. “That sounds smart.”
Unfortunately for us, Route 66 and Interstate 40 happened to be the same thing, which meant driving right through Amarillo.
We came upon it less than thirty minutes after leaving Vega, but I didn’t see it coming since my eyes were closed, and I was only alerted to the possibility of trouble when Devon started swearing.
I sat up, my eyes flying open, and looked around. “What is it?”
“Amarillo.” His hands were wringing the steering wheel and his gaze was focused on the road in front of us. “Shit. This could be bad.”
I followed his gaze, and my stomach flipped when I caught sight of the city in the distance.
“We’re going to drive right through it?” Kiaya asked from the back.
“Looks that way.” Devon glanced at the rearview mirror, and since the road was totally deserted, I knew he was looking at her. “It could be fine. Most people probably died inside, and just because that one zombie was able to open doors doesn’t mean they all can.”
I thought about the houses we’d passed on our way out of Vega and all the front doors that had been hanging open.
“There were others,” I told him.
Devon shot me a look. “What do you mean?”
“As we were leaving Vega, I saw a lot of front doors open. I think other zombies figured out how to get out.”
“We didn’t see any,” Kiaya said.
“I saw one.” I looked between them. “It was far away, but it was walking around. There were probably others, too. We only went down that one street, and we were gone so fast. It makes sense why we didn’t see more.”
“Shit,” Devon said again.
“We’ll just drive,” Kiaya said. “I mean, we’re in a car and they’re just people, after all.”
“Undead people,” I reminded her.
“But they’re still flesh and bone. They’re no match for a car.”
“That’s true.” Devon nodded a few times, and I got the feeling he was trying to convince himself. “Okay. We’ll drive through and not stop, and it will be okay.”
“Yeah,” I said, but like him I was trying to make myself believe it.
One or two zombies weren’t a match for a car, but hundreds? Thousands? I had no idea how many people had lived in Amarillo, but if all of them had figured out how to open doors and had crowded the streets looking for a meal, getting through would be tough. If not impossible.
Not that I said this to Kiaya and Devon. Part of me didn’t want them to be as scared as I was, but another part of me felt like voicing the words might give them more validity. That was the last thing I wanted to do.
We reached the city, and I leaned forward, scanning the street in front of us as well as the areas surrounding it. Stores were dark, and many had broken front windows like they’d been looted. Glass littered the ground, shimmering in the sunlight, and for the first time the chaos of what had happened became real. Cars were half on sidewalks, their doors hanging open like the occupants had fled in a hurry. We passed a body lying on the side of the road outside a Mexican restaurant. It was bloated from the sun, but even worse were the bites on the arms and legs and the bloody mess that had once been its face.
I turned away when my stomach convulsed, but the next thing I saw was no less grotesque. A zombie stumbled toward us, practically dragging one of its legs behind him. The ankle was bent almost at a ninety-degree angle, but that didn’t stop the creature from trying to use it. Except every time he tried, the ankle bent even more.
“Oh, my God,” Kiaya said, covering her mouth with her hands when she saw the creature.
I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and looked away. “Keep driving.”
It didn’t matter how fast Devon drove or where I looked, though. The farther into the city we got, the more zombies came crawling from the woodwork. Our car was like a dinner bell in the silent city, and they must have been able to hear us from really far away, because more and more converged on the street in front and behind us the farther we drove, so that soon we were on the verge of being surrounded.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Devon muttered.
“What do we do?” Kiaya cried.
I inhaled slowly then blew the breath out, concentrating as I repeated the process over and over, trying to maintain control. But even the simple act of breathing wasn’t easy at the moment. Not with what we were facing. This was what I’d been afraid of. The worst case scenario at the top of a long list of bad scenarios.
Devon’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror, but this time he wasn’t looking at Kiaya. He was looking at the road behind us.
His hands, firmly positioned at ten and two, tightened on the steering wheel. “I have to keep going. It’s our only option.”
Kiaya’s head bobbed in silent agreement, but her wide eyes didn’t stray from the road in front of us.
So that was what we did. We powered through even as the throng of rotten bodies grew thicker, but like I’d feared, it wasn’t long before Devon was forced to slow. A little at first and then more and more as the horde grew thicker. It was too dense to maintain our speed, and only getting worse by the moment.
A creature slammed itself against the side of the car, right outside my window, and I let out a yelp of surprise. When a chorus of moans followed my scream, more zombies followed the first one’s lead and banged against the car. I clamped my hands over my mouth to stop any other sounds from coming out, but it did nothing to keep the tears at bay.
Until that moment, the zombies had been satisfied to simply surround us. It was like they hadn’t known what to do, only that the sound of the car was too alluring to resist. But with that first bang, followed by my scream, more of them seemed to wake up. Thud after thud sounded as the undead hurled themselves against us,
and Devon had to slow more. We were only going fifteen miles an hour now, and there was no end in sight. It was like we were driving through a sea of rotting bodies, and deep inside, I knew we were going to drown.
A constant stream of curse words flowed from Devon’s mouth, but behind me, Kiaya was silent. My hands were still over my mouth when I twisted to look at her, and like me, tears were streaming down her face. Her already huge eyes looked bigger than ever when she turned them on me, but she still said nothing. Really, there wasn’t anything to say. Goodbye? Goodbyes were for the living, something they could cling to after the person they cared about was gone. Soon, we’d both be dead, so there was no point. No reason to make this any worse than it already was by acknowledging the truth to one another.
The car rocked as the zombies became more desperate. Something banged against the hood, and I turned back to the front. A rotting man in striped pajamas had climbed on the hood and was clawing at the window, his mouth open and pressed against the glass, his black, rotting tongue jutting out. My stomach convulsed, and I looked away, but no matter where I turned, I was greeted by the decaying faces and hands of the zombies.
I chose to focus on Devon.
He hadn’t stopped trying, hadn’t stopped the car completely even though we were barely making progress at this point, and his hands were still gripping the wheel. His jaw was tight, exaggerating his already square jawline, and his Adam’s apple bobbed over and over again, giving off the impression that he was trying to swallow his fear. As if sensing me staring at him, he tore his gaze from the horde in front of us and focused on me, and when our eyes met, something in me tightened.
“Thank you,” I said, having to talk louder than normal so he could hear me over the pounding.
“For what?” He shook his head. “I drove us straight to our deaths.”
Hearing the words acknowledged out loud brought a fresh wave of tears, and I had to swallow so I could say, “For saving me earlier. I don’t remember if I thanked you.”
“You saved me, too,” he said. “When you warned me about the zombie sneaking up on me.”
“You would have been able to take care of yourself.” I managed a smile through the tears. “You know, since you’re such a big, strong man.”
He returned my smile with a shaky one of his own.
When his gaze moved from me, it was only so he could turn and focus on Kiaya. “I’m sorry you won’t make it to your sister.”
She swiped her hand across her right cheek then her left. “Me, too.”
I let out a deep breath, trying to gather all the strength inside me. With the constant banging of the dead against the car, it wasn’t easy to think, but I had to. We were barely moving now, not even two miles an hour, and Devon would soon be forced to stop completely. After that it wouldn’t be long before the dead managed to break the windows. Then they’d have us.
The thought of being eaten alive made me shudder.
I couldn’t think of a worse way to die.
“How many bullets do you have?” I asked Devon, having to talk even louder this time.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise, but I could tell he knew what I was getting at. “Enough.”
I nodded.
Plenty of bullets, but only two guns.
We could each kill ourselves, but one of us would be left alive after the other two were gone. It was horrible to even think about, having to wait for a gun so you could end your own life, but it was our only option. And it was still better than being ripped apart by the dead.
I looked from Devon to Kiaya. “Who goes last?”
Devon swallowed before finally stopping the car and putting it in park. “I will.”
The pounding increased tenfold, and I had the urge to cover my ears again, but when Devon pulled his gun, I found I couldn’t move.
“You know how to use it?” he asked me.
“Point and shoot,” I said, the last word distorted by a sob.
He held it out to me. “That’s pretty much all there is to it.”
My hands were shaking when I took it, and with as small as the thing was, I was surprised by how heavy it felt. Not that I should have been. Something that could do so much damage should be heavy. You should be able to feel the responsibility of holding a weapon the second you picked it up.
Kiaya had the other gun out, and she held it in her hands, staring down at it wordlessly. When she looked up and her gaze met mine, I lifted my eyebrows, silently asking if she was on board with this because I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud.
She swallowed but nodded.
This was it. We were choosing our own end, which was horrible and scary, but at least it was ours.
Between the banging and the moans, loud enough now to penetrate the glass and metal encasing us, it had gotten too noisy to even try to talk. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
I swallowed twice before I managed to raise the gun. The barrel pressed against my temple, the metal cold and biting, and I turned to face Kiaya. I didn’t want to look at her as she died, but I wanted to know we were on the same page, and since we were no longer able to talk, this was my only option. She nodded again and copied me. Watching her lift the gun brought on a fresh round of tears, but this time I didn’t try to blink them away. I wanted them to blur her face, wanted them to block out everything around me, if I was being honest, but since that wouldn’t happen, I was happy to settle for not being able to see Kiaya as she died.
I moved my finger to the trigger as I silently began to count down, starting at twenty. It was cowardly, but I needed time to prepare myself. To gather the courage. To convince myself this was the only way.
Although I wasn’t sure twenty seconds would be enough.
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…
I sucked in a deep breath.
Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen…
I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on my finger as I forced it to move, positioning it over the trigger.
Fourteen, thirteen, twelve…
You can do this, Rowan. You know you have to.
Eleven, ten, nine…
My brain was focused on counting, but a part of me registered that something had changed even before Devon grabbed my hand and pulled the gun away from my head.
The pounding had lessened.
My eyes flew open and met his, then I spun to face Kiaya, letting out a sigh of relief when I saw she no longer had the gun pointed at her head. Her eyes were wide and full of questions, and she seemed to be listening. With each passing second, the thuds grew fewer and fewer, and before long, another noise became audible. It was distant and hard to distinguish at first, but eventually I registered what it was.
A car alarm.
It had to be several streets over, because even now that the pounding had stopped completely, the siren was faint. Still, it was loud enough to draw the dead. I didn’t know if it had gone off by accident—it was possible a zombie had bumped a car and set it off—or a person could have done it, but either way, I would be eternally thankful. Even if I died later today, at least I got a little more time to try to get home.
We sat in silence as the road began to clear. Devon had turned the car off at some point—when, I wasn’t sure—and with the engine no longer running, there was nothing to keep the zombies interested in us. The windows were smeared with black, reminding me of Kyle’s smashed skull. The blood had looked so dark, but I’d assumed it was the lighting. Now I could tell I’d been wrong; it made total sense when I really thought about it. When a person died, their heart stopped pumping blood, and it stood to reason that the blood trapped inside the body would rot just like the rest of the corpse.
After maybe ten minutes of waiting, Devon finally moved. Wordlessly, he pressed a button, and streams of fluid shot up, hitting the windshield and cutting through the layers of black gunk. He kept it going as he flipped on the wipers. At first, all they seemed to do was smear the stuff around, making it more
difficult to see out, but Devon kept it up, and things soon got clearer as the layers of black gunk were wiped away.
Once he was able to see, he shut the wipers off and turned the key. When the engine roared to life, I let out a sigh and slumped back, feeling suddenly more exhausted than I ever had.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Devon said before throwing the car into drive.
Kiaya and I said nothing, but I did look back. When our eyes met, she gave me a shaky and relieved smile, and I returned it.
13
Devon drove faster than he had coming into town, and I watched as the speedometer ticked higher and higher, soon reaching sixty. Occasionally, something in the road made him swerve. An abandoned car with its doors hanging open, a sixty-inch television still in the box like it had been looted and cast aside when the thieves were forced to run, a bicycle. A body.
Despite how fast he was driving, Devon maneuvered around them effortlessly, not even having to slow. But he was so intent on what he was doing, so focused on getting us away from Amarillo, that when the person ran out into the road maybe a hundred yards in front of us, Devon didn’t react at first.
The guy waved his arms, signaling to us, and almost on instinct Devon veered the car to the left like he was planning on going around him.
“Stop,” Kiaya called out, and I shouted, “Devon!”
As if our words had snapped him out of it, he slammed his foot on the brake. Kiaya, who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, lurched forward, and the tires squealed against the pavement as we skidded and slowed. I had buckled up, but my body was still thrown forward from the sudden change in momentum. In front of us, the guy who’d rushed into the road dove out of the way even though we weren’t headed for him, and the way he rolled toward the sidewalk made my body throb with sympathy pains.
I’d thrown my hands out to brace myself on the dashboard, and my hands were still there, palms down and fingers splayed, when we came to a complete stop. Devon was gripping the wheel, and behind me Kiaya had her hand on her head, which must have slammed into the back of Devon’s seat.
Far Series (Book 1): Far From Home Page 16
