I feel like I’m on a carnival ride. The kind you know isn’t safe but your friends talk you into it and you spend the whole time mad at them because you know this is where you’re going to die. Only, I can’t be mad at my friends because I’m the friend who convinced us to get on this ride in the first place. Jump the ditch, really? We would have been better off burrowing underground and popping out on the other side like gophers.
Oh man, there’s the scrolling sign turned monster truck ramp. It’s propped right up against a couple of hoods, couldn’t have landed any more precisely if we placed it there ourselves. If we live through this, remind me to give Maxwell a hug. Doesn’t matter, we’re not living through this.
My butt cheeks clench so tight I’m pretty sure they’ve folded in on themselves. It’s official, they’ve swallowed my entire ass. I don’t even know what I’m sitting on anymore. I’m not, I’m just floating in a pool of nervous sweat. Judging by the look on Felecia’s face, her seating situation is in a similar predicament.
Neither of us are used to this, to leaving our destiny in someone else’s hands. We’ve been relying on ourselves for so long now, I don’t think either one of us knows how to handle this foreign feeling. Marty driving. Maxwell flying. It isn’t up to us. There aren’t many people I trust with our safety, but these are two of them.
I take a breath, nodding at Felecia. We did our part. We got us further than anyone thought was possible, ourselves included.
We’re going to have to get used to trusting other people with our safety. By the sounds of it, when we hit the UK, we’re not fighting anymore. We’ll be training them to fight this war, which just seems ludicrous because we almost die in every battle we find ourselves embroiled in. But I guess that’s the trick, the almost part.
If we’re going to start putting our lives in other people’s hands, might as well start with Marty and Maxwell. And Marty might be taking this trust thing to heart a little too much.
His foot slams down on the accelerator. I can see the intensity in his eyes through the rearview mirror, the determination, the fear, but above all else, the compassion. He’s doing this not for him, but for all of us. I don’t think he cares if he makes it to that new life awaiting us in England, this is about him making sure we all get there safely.
“Hold on,” he whispers, but I’m pretty sure he meant to yell it.
The front tires hit the edge of the fallen sign, sending shockwaves through the nervous energy inside our vehicle. It rattles us around for a split second before the back tires make their way onto the ramp. There’s no turning back now.
We go airborne.
CHAPTER 30
It’s not until all four tires leave the ramp, and there’s nothing but air around us, that I realize I’m holding Felecia’s hand. I don’t know who initiated it, but my palm is intertwined with hers, suspended over Sami’s lap, and she’s holding onto both of our wrists. If she squeezes any tighter, she’ll be turning us into amputees.
Everything stops.
The rumble of the wheels goes silent. The bodies getting dragged behind the bumper have nothing to bounce off. The engine isn’t revving. There are no screams. No words. No breathing.
I don’t know what sticking this landing entails, but I know that if we don’t, this is the end. There’s no military aircraft waiting for us on the runway outside of Yuma. There’s no cabin in the UK. There won’t be another chance. This was it. We rolled the dice, we’re in the hands of fate now.
No, scratch that, we’re in the hands of Marty, and he’s not letting us down.
A collective gasp fogs the windows as we hit the grass on the other side of the drainage ditch.
He did it, that crazy son of a bitch did it! The seatbelts may be locking up and knocking the wind out of everyone who’s still alive, but the important part is, we’re still alive.
Or, wait, are we? Everything’s fuzzy. Or black. I can’t tell. My head hit the back of the seat pretty hard.
The darkness is interrupted by small bursts of light, perfectly timed with my rapid fire heartbeat. I’m not sure if they’re really there or if this is my concussion talking. Not that it’s actually saying anything, it’s just throbbing, and man is it painful. What were we talking about?
We swerve from left to right as Marty corrects the wheel, keeping us on all fours, bumping around on the front lawn. My seatbelt has yet to release its death grip on my sternum, which is fine by me, it lets me rest my head for a second. The fuzziness in my eyes feels like I just woke up, when your eyes are still crusted over and it feels like your eyelashes are too tangled to let go of one another.
“Shit, hang on!” he shouts, bracing himself for impact.
What’s happening? I can’t quite make it out, all I see are black dots floating around in Marty’s high beams. I can’t tell what’s beyond them. Why’s he telling us to hang on?
A metal on metal explosion rocks the SUV before the screeching of tires. What the hell just happened? Are we back on pavement? We have to be. Tires wouldn’t squeal on grass.
Some sort of collision jolts me into the door. If we’re going by what I’m pretty sure I saw, then we definitely just crashed into a big black circle with a bright light surrounding it. We definitely slammed into something. The sun? A black hole perhaps? A giant glowing butthole?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to break the glass. My door’s dented in, I can feel it pressing against my knee, but nothing shattered. What the hell is going on? I need subtitles. That wouldn’t help, I can’t see. I need audio commentary.
It’s all blurry but I know I just saw Marty’s head bounce off the window, I can literally hear his skull bump the glass. If we come out of this alive, we’ll both be talking like retired boxers in their sixties that took one too many hits to the face.
He shakes it off with a grunt and hits the gas. Dammit, he’s bleeding, there’s blood on his window. I don’t know if it’s a fresh injury or if yesterday’s wound from Sami’s brother opened. Yesterday? Technically today, I guess. I don’t even know anymore.
I can see, kinda sorta, through the specks of light. Are those headlights? Streetlights? Is there still power here or are those just in my head? I feel like they’re real because they’re staying in one place, the other lights are floating around.
Those are definitely streetlights. It’s a highway of some sort, three lanes. We must have busted through the guardrail onto the road. I can see the broken barricade we crashed through, bent and mangled, a shredded body dangling from it, trying to wiggle himself free. Every movement sends his insides spilling out, cannonballing into the pool of blood collecting on the pavement.
Marty’s shaking his head, trying to see straight after the jolt he took. I hope he’s not seeing as many lights as I am because there’s no way he’d be able to drive. He must have hit the brakes right after going through the guardrail, spinning us sideways so we wouldn’t crash head on into the divider. Six lane highway, three in each direction. It’s a main road. It’ll probably take us south, and chances are, the infects already moved on, searching for more people to eat.
We peel out from a dead stop without the least bit of warning, sideview mirror flapping in the breeze, cracks spiderwebbing across the windshield, and a sickly rattle we weren’t making before. Plus, I have a little less room with my door being dented in. My cupholder, son of a bitch, it’s too broken to use now, I was hoping we could stop for Slurpees. I’ve been craving one for days now, ever since I saw this one guy’s brain splat– never mind, too gross, I’ll shut up now. Doesn’t matter anyway, my cupholder’s gone and my wussy fingers can’t hold a cold Slurpee cup for longer than a slurp or two.
“You weren’t lying,” Maxwell says with a winded laugh. “You drove monster trucks. That, was fucking insane! So glad I let you drive. So glad! I could not have done that. How’d you know we could blow through the guardrail?”
“They uh,” he starts, shaking his head, taking one hand off the wheel to hold it above his
ear. “Shit, I’m bleeding again. They design the railings for sideswipes, not head-ons. Stuff you learn driving buses. Everyone okay?”
“I think so,” Felecia says, opening her other eye after squinching it tight for so long, only peeking on occasion.
“Noah, you good?” he asks, glancing in the rearview. “Sorry brother, I swerved this way so we’d hit the divider instead of the girls, figured you’d want it that way. You alright?”
“Just kinda, my brain, you know, my brain’s been rattled a lot. Seeing spots again, but I think I’m okay. They go away eventually. How about you? You hit your head pretty hard on the window.”
“I’m fine, just a little blood. Noah man, I don’t mean to worry you, but it sounds like you got a concussion.”
“I’ve been doing nothing but worrying for days now, it’s fine. I’ve kinda hit my head a few times.”
“A few,” Felecia says skeptically, squeezing my hand.
I hadn’t even realized she was still holding it. Oh hey, Sami’s still holding onto us as well. She’s gonna grow up to be that guy who shakes your hand really hard just to see how manly you are. You could probably read her fingerprints off my wrist.
“They’ll check you out on the flight to New York,” Maxwell says, digging through the glovebox. “They’ve got a couple medics there, at the airfield. Hannigan’s the best, the things I’ve seen him do, in the line of fire at that, I’d go to him over a hospital any day. In fact, I have. We’re almost there, you just gotta hang in a little longer. Bingo,” she shouts, pulling out a map. “I was hoping they still put these in here.”
“Oh thank god,” Marty groans, weaving between abandoned vehicles while randomly pressing buttons on the dash. “Because I have no idea where we’re going and the GPS… holy shit, it’s working. Go to Yuma,” he shouts, annunciating every syllable.
Nothing.
“Yuma,” Maxwell repeats, after a few seconds of silence.
Sami shakes her head, smiling. “You know it can’t hear you, right? You have to wake it up first.”
“Oh, yeah. I knew that. Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Marty sings, tapping the dashboard. And then again a little harder when it still doesn’t work.
“Oh Maribel,” Felecia shouts. “How do we get to Yuma, Arizona?”
“Hang on,” the robotic voice answers back.
“How the fuck?” Marty shakes his head, flustered. “This bitch ignores me but’ll talk to you? How the hell did you know her name?”
“It’s a Pathways system, you gotta say oh Maribel first, that way she knows you’re talking to her.”
“Well I don’t like her,” he grumbles, the same way my grandfather did when they made him upgrade his flip phone to a touchscreen. “I’ll let someone else do the talking.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” the electronic voice says calmly.
“No shit, you didn’t tell me which way to go yet.”
“I think she means we’re going against traffic,” I say, watching as we pass all the backwards cars. We shouldn’t be coming up on their windshields, unless every single one of them spun around before coming to a stop. But that’s not very likely.
“You’re still going the wrong way,” the voice reiterates.
“Max,” Marty shouts, slamming his fist off the dash, “can you deal with her?”
“Oh fuck that bitch,” Maxwell scoffs. “I didn’t like her attitude from the start. I’m looking at the map right now. Looks like we got about…” She stops talking to measure distance with her fingers. “Yeah, like 400 miles.”
“Two hundred and seventy four,” Sami says, looking at the GPS screen between the front seats.
“Shut up,” Maxwell barks, shushing her backseat driver. “We gotta go east from here. I don’t even know where we are. What’s that highway there, that’s going in the other direction?”
“That’s the 405,” Sami says, reading off the screen again.
“Okay, it looks like that’ll take us in the right direction.” Max slides her finger along the map, trying to read by the little light beside her visor. “I think 91 to 10, we gotta go through Anaheim, then maybe 86, past some lake, it looks like, that might be the quickest route.”
“Four hours and eight minutes.”
“Alright Miss Smarty Pants,” Maxwell says, half turning in her seat, “not another word out of you or you’re going to bed.”
“I think for the first time in my life, I would actually enjoy that.”
“Well then no bed for you. You just read off that screen there and whisper the answers to me so I can say them out loud.”
“How the hell do I get there? That’s the one I want, that’s the one!” Marty shouts, trying to figure out which exit to take. “I see the damn road, I just can’t get to it.”
“One mile,” Sami sighs, leaning forward to whisper in Maxwell’s ear.
“We’re gonna wanna exit in one mile,” Max repeats, assertively poking her map that she’s never going to be able to fold back up. Those things are impossible. “Thanks.”
“All you have to do is press a few buttons and she’ll tell you where to go out loud. My dad’s horrible with directions, he had to use his GPS just to get us to the lake house, and we go there a few times a year. Are those cars moving?” she asks, pointing ahead.
But it’s not the cars that are moving, it’s the people between them. At least, they used to be people.
The expressway is filled with them. Not just infects, but cars. They’re bumper to bumper, crashed into each other in multi car pileups. They’re flipped over and hanging off the edge of the overpass. Tractor trailer trucks and buses, a convoy of military vehicles.
This is what happened when the outbreak hit. Everyone tried to flee at once. The roads are too congested on a good day. No one got anywhere. And now their vehicles are stuck here, entombed forever in time.
“Fuck me with a rusty screwdriver,” Marty drones, staring at the devastation as he slows to a stop on the ramp. “It’s gridlocked. Ain’t no way in hell we’re getting through that.”
Felecia grabs the night vision scope from the bag and opens her door, climbing to the roof before we’ve even completely stopped. “It’s all directions. If we keep going on the road we were just on, we hit a pileup. Wait, hold on, I can see another expressway… Shit, that one’s jammed too. It looks like even the ramp onto it is deadlocked. Uh oh, cut the lights. Marty, the lights! I think they see us. Shit, they do. Guys, we’ve got runners.”
CHAPTER 31
“God dammit.” Marty blasts his fist off the wheel a couple times, clearly racking his brain for a solution, that or the steering wheel made some sort of unwelcomed sexual advance I was too distracted by my miniature panic attack to hear.
“It’s just too populated,” Maxwell groans, raking her fingers down her face. “Morning commute. It’s nothing but cities and suburbs from here to San Bernardino. We gotta get away from civilization.”
“How?” Marty hits the wheel again, this time it was definitely personal. “It’s fuckin’ southern California, all it is, is civilization!”
“Where are we?” Felecia shouts from the roof as the three or four running corpses begin to multiply. “Sami, hurry, where’s the nearest marina? Punch it in, quick. Guys, there’s no way out of the city, the roads are jammed everywhere I look. It’s like there was a mass exodus.”
“There was,” Maxwell says, still clawing at her face. “They tried to evacuate, but the infection spread like wildfire. It hit Los Angeles by 8:45, hour and a half after it all started. The evacuation didn’t begin until 8:15. They had half an hour, this is what happened.”
“It was too late by then.” I peer between the seats where Sami’s leaned over, fiddling with the screen. “So that’s when the evacuation centers started popping up?”
“Except they were falling quicker than they could set them up. By 10:00 AM, California was considered a dead zone. They weren’t saying it, but, they put their resources elsewhere.”
/> “Felecia, five miles south,” Sami shouts towards the roof. “Twelve minute drive, there’s a whole bunch of marinas.”
“Perfect! What way’s south?”
“Straight ahead, we’re pointed south right now.”
Felecia hops down, slamming the door behind her. “Marty, we gotta get off the ramp. There’s a neighborhood that way. The city streets are clear, everyone’s on the highways. We got a few stragglers but no traffic jams.”
“Ain’t gotta tell me twice.” He slams it in reverse just as the first few runners turn their sprint into a long jump, narrowly missing the frontend. “Eat pavement ya ass clowns. And Jesus woman, could you have cut it any closer?”
“I could,” she sneers. “I could also shove this nighttime telescope up your wrinkly ass.”
“Point taken,” he mumbles. “What’s at the marina anyway? Why we going there? Shouldn’t we be aiming for an airport?”
“Probably,” she sighs. “But I don’t see us getting to one alive, not with all the major roads gridlocked.”
“We’re going to the ocean,” Sami says cautiously. “Where they can’t get us? Are we gonna have to swim? Because I can only doggy paddle, and it’s not pretty. Anything else and I just sink.”
“Not exactly,” Felecia says with a grin. “We’re taking a boat.”
“Helicopters I’ve done before, only a little but sure, I can fly a chopper if need be. But I’ve never driven a god damn boat.” Maxwell throws her hands up in defeat. “Except those little ones you pedal around ponds. I’m black, remember, we don’t really do water.”
I smile when she looks back at us, never noticing before now how pretty she is when her eyes aren’t shooting daggers in every direction. “Have your white half tell your black half not to worry. We’ve got Felecia freakin’ Harmon on our side.”
“Oh no,” Marty groans, readjusting in his seat as we exit the ramp and hit a deserted residential street, and by residential I mean apartment buildings bigger than the biggest buildings in Leyland. “When they add freakin’ in her name, it typically means some crazy shit is about to go down. What the hell are we getting ourselves into?”
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 19
