It now seemed that Chaos Dawn was officially underway. And as the only person George Kettle seemed to trust, Terrence felt as if the weight of the world was quite literally on his shoulders.
Chapter 19
Olivia woke up to a soft nudging in her ribs. She sat up right away, her heart pumping madly. There was a very fleeting moment where her brain dared to believe that all of yesterday had been nothing more than a nightmare, that New York City was not currently one huge tomb. But then she saw the interior of the camper and that hope was dashed.
There was another gentle poking along her ribs, coming from her right. She turned over in the small bed and saw Joyce smiling sleepily at her. Though her mouth held a smile, her brow was scrunched in concern. Seeing the girl’s mouth, Olivia realized that her mask had come off at some point during the night. Terror flooded her heart but she kept it smashed down. She hoped that being confined in the camper might have spared her from what the man on the radio had called the Blood Fire Virus. She gathered up the mask and the blindfold, ready to put them both back on when they went back out.
“Good morning, Joyce,” Olivia said. “You okay?”
“No. I gotta pee real bad.”
“I bet you do,” Olivia said groggily. She searched back through her memories and could not recall the last time the little girl had used the restroom. She surely hadn’t gone since they’d left Little Learners, and that seemed like eons ago. “Come on…we’ll figure it out.”
Joyce sat up and looked around the camper. She gave everything a wide, curious look and asked:“Where are we?”
“We’re borrowing someone’s camper. We had to stop because we got so tired. You conked right out! Do you remember that?”
Joyce shook her head, looking around in confusion at her surroundings. “What’s a camper? Is it a tiny house?”
“Sort of,” Olivia said, sliding out of the bed. She noticed that as soon as she started moving, Paul stirred. He let out a huge exhale over on his little bench and slowly opened his eyes. When he saw Olivia and Joyce getting out of the bed, he sat up quickly, the sleep quickly draining from his face.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No. We just need to visit the little girl’s room.” She started for the door but then stopped and turned back to Joyce. “Sorry. Blindfold and facemask, please.”
“Do I have to?” Joyce moaned. But already, Olivia could see the muted excitement in her eyes. She was somewhere new and had woken up somewhere other than her house. In her young eyes, they were still in the midst of their adventure.
“Yes, for now,” Olivia answered. “But hopefully it won’t be much longer.”
Joyce picked the two items up from the foot of the bed, and Olivia helped her to slip the mask over her face and then blindfold over her eyes. “How am I s’posed to pee if I can’t see?” Joyce asked, irritated.
Olivia let out a chuckle—the first genuine laugh that had come out of her mouth since yesterday, right around the time parents had started calling about coming to withdraw their children early.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Olivia said.
“I’m going to go outside?”
It was a good question. Olivia had not looked the camper over thoroughly last night but she was pretty sure there was no restroom. “I think so,” she said.
Joyce smiled at this, adjusting the mask to her face as her rising cheeks moved it slightly.
“I’ll stand guard,” Paul said, taking the Glock from the table. He also took the lead as the three of them exited the camper and stepped outside. Morning light spilled across the bridge, highlighting the horrors the night had mostly hidden from them when they’d reached the bridge. The cars were now on full display, most carrying at least one corpse. Olivia took a moment to look to the sky, reorienting herself to the current state of New York City and, as far as she knew, the world beyond. She held Joyce’s right hand in her own as she did it, able to still anchor herself to the sense of responsibility that had gotten her there.
And now here she was, trying to find a suitable place for a four year-old girl to drop her pants to go pee while countless dead bodies sat perched in cars all around. It was almost surreal enough to seem comical. She figured she may as well keep it simple, so she led Joyce around to the other side of the RV and stopped there. Then, between the RV and an older model Ford Escape containing the bodies of what looked to be an older married couple, she assisted Joyce in hitching her pants down and taking care of business.
While she waited, she peered towards the other end of the George Washington Bridge. Compared to the trek she and Paul had made last night, it didn’t seem long at all. But it also looked like nothing more than one long stretch of traffic, bumper to bumper as they waited to slip and fall right off of the crowded horizon.
“Hey, Olivia?” Joyce said.
“Yeah?”
“How do I wipe? I don’t have anything…”
“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t even think of that.”
Paul’s voice from the back of the RV spoke out, firm and reassuring. “I did, though. Found some under the kitchen sink. Heads up.”
Olivia watched as Paul’s arm came around the corner of the camper, tossing a roll of toilet paper in their direction. Olivia snagged it and as she did, she also caught sight of something else moving behind the blur of the flying toilet paper. Further back, right along the bridge’s entrance, she saw someone moving. It was just one person, weaving almost drunkenly between cars. So far, it didn’t appear as if they had seen the three people spread out around the camper.
“Paul,” Olivia whispered. “Paul…look at the entrance to the bridge.”
From where she stood by Joyce, still crouched and currently finishing up, she could not see Paul. But two seconds later, he whispered back. “I see her.”
Olivia’s eyes trained back on the figure and she could now see that it was indeed a her. She had short blonde hair and was carrying something in her right hand. As she got closer to them—about fifty yards or so away—Olivia saw the morning sun glimmer from whatever she was holding. It looked to be a glass bottle. Maybe she’s drunkenly weaving because she’s actually drunk, Olivia thought.
“All done,” Joyce said, blindly tugging at her pants.
As Olivia quickly worked to help Joyce, she saw the woman’s head snap straight ahead towards them. Apparently, she’d heard Joyce. This was confirmed when the woman started to chuckle. Olivia could hear it from fifty yards away. She could also hear it when the woman loudly shouted “Hey!” at them.
Olivia took Joyce’s hand and walked back to Paul. He still had his gun out and his eyes were on the approaching woman. Olivia hated to think that they had to consider anyone they met a potential threat, but she supposed it was the safest approach. After what the city had gone through yesterday, there was no telling what the few survivors would be like. Olivia had felt the lure of madness and lunacy several times yesterday; she was sure there were others that had not only felt it, but succumbed to it.
“You think she’s safe?” Olivia asked.
“Probably. Looks like she’s drinking…which, all things considered, may have been a good way to ride out yesterday.”
As they watched the woman approach, coming faster now that she had seen them, Olivia couldn’t help but feel a little territorial. The three of them had walked almost one hundred city blocks together last night. She and Paul had been threatened at gunpoint and had carried Joyce in shifts. While they weren’t by any means best of friends, she felt like they were a tribe of some sort. And she was not keen to just let anyone join that tribe.
The woman had closed the distance to about twenty feet when she hollered out: “Hot damn, am I glad to see you guys!”
She looked to be on the younger side, maybe in her early twenties. She was quite thin, wearing a high-cut tee shirt that showed her flat, flawless stomach. Her blonde hair looked slightly dirty, and the glass bottle she was carrying was a bottle of vodka. It only c
ontained about a quarter of its contents.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Paul asked.
“Ma’am?” the young woman said. “I’m twenty-two. Too young to be a ma’am. And besides, manners went the way of the T-Rex yesterday as far as I’m concerned.”
She was just two car-lengths away now and seemed to have just noticed Joyce. As the woman stared at Joyce, Olivia noticed a glaring feature about her. She was not wearing a mask. This scared her momentarily, and she pulled Joyce closer to her.
“You’re not sick?” Olivia asked.
“Nope. Healthy as a horse. So I got to watch the whole damn city die yesterday.” Her words were slurred and she had a glossy sort of look to her eyes. She was clearly drunk and wouldn’t have much of a filter to anything she said even with a child in her presence.
“Were you wearing a mask yesterday?” Paul asked.
“For a while. Some jerk ripped it off of me, though. Fat lot of good it did him…I saw him dead in the street about an hour later. Serves him right.”
“Where are you headed?” Olivia asked.
“No clue. I was just walking around, hoping to run into some living, breathing people. You three are the first ones I’ve seen since about two in the morning.” She paused here, took a sip from her bottle and eyed them skeptically. “So yeah…your call, but those masks are useless. This Blood Fire crap won’t stop for a mask. Look around at the dead folks in the cars. Dead as hell, and most of ‘em wearing masks. You can—”
“Let’s watch how you talk around the little one, okay?” Paul said.
The woman rolled her eyes and made a mocking sort of laugh. She had closed the distance between them. She was now standing so close that Olivia could smell the vodka—from her breath or the bottle, she wasn’t sure. The woman made a mocking gesture of zipping her lips and shrugging.
“Sorry,” she said, clearly not meaning it. “The blindfold is cute, by the way. Protecting the little cutie’s precious eyes from this absolute world of shi—”
“Did you need something?” Paul asked. “Because if this is your approach to making friends through this, I think we’d be best off without you.”
“Ah, jeez man, lighten up. Just trying to make the most of it, you know? It’s not like I want to be in your super cool club or anything. I figure if we’re both heading into Jersey, we can do it together. I was about to get on the pedestrian walk when I saw you.”
“That’s fine,” Paul said. “But seriously. Watch your mouth.” Olivia saw him flash his right hand just briefly, enough to show the woman that he was carrying.
“Ten-four,” she said. “What’s your name, cowboy?”
He’d dealt with her kind before. The sarcasm and forced humor was a defense mechanism of some kind. So was the morning drinking. He hated to cast stereotypes but he sensed something toxic about her. He thought she might be the sort to go out drinking and then, when the night came to a close, intentionally stirred up drama between her friends.
“Paul,” he said, finally giving her his name.
“Good to meet you, Paul. I’m Lindsay.”
Joyce piped up from beside Olivia; she’d never been a child to miss the opportunity to introduce herself to someone new. It was a trait that was apparently not hindered by a blindfold.
“I’m Joyce!”
Lindsay knelt down on wobbly knees, grinning. “Well hey, Joyce! Your mommy here is taking real good care of you by not letting you see everything that’s out here.”
“Yeah, we’re on an adventure! But…well, ‘Livia’s not my mom.”
Lindsay looked up to Olivia and even through the drunken stupor, Olivia could see that Lindsay understood what was going on here—that she and Paul were escorting a girl that had lost her mother. There was a muted sort of heartbreak in her gaze but it didn’t do much to improve her first impression.
“Let’s get going, then,” Paul said, eager to get out of the awkward situation. He picked up his pack slowly, waiting for Olivia to do the same. She did, and when he started for the entrance to the bridge, she followed that lead, too. When she did, Joyce did not move. She was frowning, and running her hands along the blindfold. “’Livia, can I see the new lady?”
“No, sweetie. We told you about that, right? It’s all part of the adventure.”
Lindsay gave Olivia an exaggerated frown, trying to mimic the disappointed look of a child. “Oh, come on ‘Livia…just a peek?”
Olivia considered herself a patient person, but she’d already lost her patience with this woman. She felt rage welling up in her, a rage catapulted by the desperation of the moment. She took a single step closer to Lindsay and, in a light whisper, said: “I think you should go. Leave us alone.”
“But Cowboy Paul said I could come,” Lindsay said. She then took another gulp of her liquid breakfast, her eyes never leaving Olivia’s. It was like she was daring her to get an attitude with her. More than that, it was quite clear that was exactly what she wanted.
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind,” Paul said. “I think Olivia is right. I think it’s best that we just split up. So why don’t you sit here and finish your drink? Give us about an hour head start before you keep heading our way.”
The expression that passed over Lindsay’s face was peculiar and, in a strange way, frightening. There was rejection there, but also a strange sort of malice that Olivia had never quite seen before. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was hiding a gun somewhere under those skimpy clothes.
“Sure, I’ll finish my breakfast,” Lindsay said. “You three go on ahead. Wouldn’t want to curse in front of the little girl. Wouldn’t want to expose any truth to her or—”
Lindsay moved so fast that, for a moment, Olivia thought she had stumbled as a result of her inebriation. When she realized what Lindsay was really doing, it was far too late to stop her. Lindsay reached out with the hand not holding the vodka bottle and snatched Joyce’s blindfold off of her head. It came away easily, tugging Joyce forward a bit at first.
“Problem solved,” Lindsay said. “Welcome to the new world, precious.”
Olivia reacted before she was aware of what she was doing. She brought her arm back and delivered a vicious open-handed slap across Lindsay’s face. Lindsay let out a shriek and dropped the bottle. It shattered on the pavement as Lindsay stumbled back against the car that was stopped behind her. Its single deceased occupant moved slightly behind the wheel from the impact.
Lindsay roared and came rushing for Olivia. There was fire and hate and sadness in her eyes and Olivia hated that she’d slapped her. The red welt was already raising up along her cheek and the corner of her mouth. Before Lindsay could retaliate, Paul stepped forward with his gun up. Lindsay saw it and came to an unsteady halt. She was now swaying on her feet, looking to the gun as if almost daring Paul to shoot.
“Seriously?” she barked. “You’d shoot me?”
“I will, yes. But I don’t want to. If you want to go to Jersey, I won’t stop you. But you will not be coming along with us.”
She took a moment to look at each one of them and then shook her head. “I can’t do this…I can’t handle this. My father was fine and then he was dead. It took less than an hour and I…I wish I’d died, too. This is Hell, you know? Not just an analogy or whatever, but the actual place. It doesn’t make sense….”
She then looked to Joyce, tears glistening in her eyes. And then, with the same speed in which she’d removed Joyce’s blindfold, Lindsay turned around and went running back towards the bridge’s New York entrance. She bounced off a few cars before she gathered her bearings. She was weeping and screaming within seconds. It stung to know that they’d cast her out but really, what choice did they have? This was what Olivia kept telling herself so that the stinging in her hands from the slap seemed justified.
But Olivia did not pay her much attention. Instead, she looked down to Joyce and took her little hands. The girl was looking all around, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her head was cocked inquisitively, as if
she were trying to figure out a complex math problem. She started to speak, not looking to Olivia or Paul. Olivia was terrified to see that she was looking at the same car Lindsay had stumbled into after Olivia slapped her. She was looking directly at the dead driver.
“That lady said there were dead people everywhere,” Joyce said.
“That’s right,” Olivia said.
“Are there dead people in all of these cars?”
“Yes.”
Joyce slowly turned, her hands still in Olivia’s soft grip. She looked behind them, towards the Jersey side of the bridge. When she turned back around, there was a depth of confusion in her eyes that overwhelmed Olivia.
“Is my mommy in one of those cars?”
“Not these cars, no…”
“But is she...”
Even at four years of age, it seemed that Joyce knew finishing the question would make it real. And, in that same way, it also seemed that she knew the answer. She started to nod and then, without being prompted to do so, she stepped towards Olivia and hugged her.
Olivia hugged her back and her tears sprang up right away. She looked up to Paul and saw that he looked devastated—wanting to help but not sure what to do. So, for the moment, he stood with her and rested one hand on her shoulder while the other continued to hold his gun out on a world that had just broken a four year-old girl’s heart.
Chapter 20
While the pedestrian and cycling walkways along the side of the bridge were much easier to traverse than the actual bridge itself, there was still scattered evidence that others had tried the same idea. There were a few bodies here and there, sprawled out and mostly face down. About halfway across the bridge, they came upon the body of a man that appeared to have come from off of the lanes, presumably the victim of a car accident. His right arm was badly mangled and the right side of his face was covered in blood. Little bits of shattered glass speckled his hair.
Olivia did her best to keep Joyce from looking at such things, but it did no good. On two occasions, both she and Paul tried to convince her to put the blindfold back on, but she vehemently refused. She still wore her mask, but Olivia assumed this was only because she and Paul still had theirs on. And while Olivia had been trained in how to deal with a problematic and stubborn child, this was one case where she did not think asserting her authority was necessary. If they were only going to be on the road for a day or two, it might be different—maybe then they could somehow protect Joyce’s little eyes from the horrors all around them. But she had no clue how long they’d be journeying…had no real idea, actually, of how they were going to get Joyce to her father. It was for this reason that Olivia decided to stop pushing the blindfold. It would be almost like torture to make the girl wear it for an extended period of time in a world she now knew had taken her mother from her.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 17
