Chapter 17
“It’s with a heavy heart that I say we must proceed without Ralph,” Clay said. “I’m sure you know what happened.”
No one looked at him. They drifted from the laboratory, leaving Brandon in the barracks, crying alone. The atmosphere had changed. During the previous days, they’d felt safe, warm, building a sense of normalcy in their fucked-up lives. But now Ralph was plastered all over the courthouse wall, and time was ticking. The crazed were beginning to return to Helen and they couldn’t wait for another one to stumble into town and catch them off guard.
In the diner, Daniels and Lane made them toast with jam, and any frozen vegetables they could find. The meat and dairy had gone bad days earlier, leaving them hungry for protein and feeling bleary-eyed and fatigued.
The survivors sat at their familiar booths, chewing sadly on soggy toast. The jam was tart and sweet, making Clay’s teeth ache.
Jacobs eyed him curiously from behind his growing beard. After several minutes of silence, he said, “What do you think we should do next, then?”
Clay sighed. “Well, we certainly can’t wait here.”
“Agreed,” Daniels said. “It’s just like in Carterville. If we stay, we die anyway. Forward motion is key.”
“You thinking we should go to the military base, then?” Marcia asked. “You said your wife might be there. And that’s the best place to take the neutralizers.” She took a bite of her toast, scattering crumbs across the table. She brushed them to the ground, knowing no one would mind the mess. Not ever again.
“That’s true. I do think one of the neutralizers should go to Earlton,” Clay said. “And I think you all should make your way up there to rejoin what’s left of our fractured society.”
“You all?” Jacobs asked.
“Yes, all of you. I don’t want to lose anyone else,” Clay said, his voice almost a whisper. Ralph’s absence left a hole. Without his raspy jokes, his general air of mischief, a grey stillness filled the room.
“Adam, you’ll lead the troop up to the base,” Clay said. “You’ll all go with him, with one of the neutralizers.” He pointed back toward the candy store, remembering Brandon, alone in the dark. “The kid, too. He’s been through enough already, and he needs to be with some people his own age. Some people who might understand what he’s feeling. I’m sure there are plenty of orphans up at the base. Unfortunately.” His eyes flashed.
No one replied. Daniels adjusted himself in his seat, seeming to hold in countless arguments. He wasn’t one to miss a fight.
Clay turned toward Alayna and cleared his throat. “Alayna, I think it would be best if you went to Earlton as well. I don’t want to endanger you, either. But of course, the decision is up to you.”
Alayna’s jaw was rigid. She looked hard. Clay knew that her only thoughts were of Megan, her girlfriend and lost love. They were both endlessly romantic, not to mention stubborn. They wouldn’t lose their loves without a fight.
“And where on this Earth are you planning to go, sheriff?” Alayna asked quietly.
“I have to go after Maia.” Saying her name out loud felt bizarre, like he was summoning a ghost. He turned quickly to Lane, who was medically trained, unlike Jacobs and Marcia. “And Lane, I’d like your help on the way there. I don’t know what we’ll find once we get to Dearing. But your medical know-how could make this expedition successful. Naturally, this is also up to you. I’ll do my best to protect you.”
Lane’s eyes flashed. She turned toward Alayna, and then decided. “I’ll do it. I worked as an EMT in grad school.”
“And I’m coming with you,” Alayna added. “One hundred percent. I won’t let my sheriff go off without me.”
“Hey, now,” Daniels broke in, rising from the booth. “I think this needs a bit more discussion before we decide. Clay, you’ve been a good leader. But you have to understand, you haven’t been doing this alone. Not by a long shot.”
“I know,” Clay said. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Especially without you guys.”
“Then let us come,” Daniels said, pounding his fist on the table. The plates and knives shook, clattering against one another.
The wind gusted outside, a reminder that the weather was a constant factor. From where he sat, Clay could see some of the blood spatter from Ralph’s suicide.
“I can’t do that,” Clay said. “And there’s no time for arguments. Literally every second that ticks by, my daughter is out there alone. Needing me.” He shook his head.
“Daniels, I suggest you be ready to go tomorrow morning. There will be no further discussion. Our separate teams leave at first light.”
Chapter 18
Clay woke before the others the next morning; fitful dreams prevented him from getting a full night’s rest. Despite the lack of sleep, he again felt fierce, his muscles strong and veiny from the work of the nanites. His mind was constantly rolling, making contingency plans.
This was the end of an era. He felt like he’d been leading these people for years.
He walked to the diner as the rest of the crew packed necessities. Items that resembled a rough camping excursion rather than normal travel items of more modern time. Once in the kitchen, he fixed a large stack of toast and put it next to the last of the peanut butter and jam on an old-fashioned serving cart. He found a small flask in the drawer. He sniffed the liquid then sipped it, allowing the whiskey to flow over his tongue. It had been a long time since he’d had a drink—not since Carterville. But now, it turned his stomach, twisted his mind. He needed to stay alert, sharp. He threw the flask into a cabinet.
He pushed the cart back to the others, and watched them eat silently with their packs at their feet. Brandon hadn’t said a word since the previous day.
Alayna appeared beside him. She’d braided her hair, exposing her bright, tanned face. She dropped her pack and grabbed the peanut butter. “Strange, eating something so ordinary on such a weird day.”
The others nodded silently. Jacobs and Marcia ate the last of their toast and returned to their neutralizer, packing it with bubble wrap and blankets, making sure it didn’t get knocked around on their journey. The other one was already packed and tucked close to Lane’s things. Lane’s face gave away no emotion. Perhaps she was too practical for it.
Above all, Clay sensed that they were centered on a singular goal, perhaps for the first time since they’d left Carterville. This was the way forward, their only option.
They left the plates, not bothering to wash up. Lane had stretched body bags over the two crazed in the laboratory, knowing they didn’t have time to give them a proper burial. A few fingers dangled below one of the covers, like alien appendages.
They stepped out one by one into the sunlight. Maybe because the world was indifferent to their emotions, the sun seemed friendly and beaming. They lined up with Clay in the lead, his head bowed. He felt like a pastor on the last day of church.
“Thank you for following me here,” he said, his words somber. He looked each of them in the eye. “I want to remind you that the reason we’re still alive is because we have hope. And I want you to hold onto that, no matter which direction you’re going today.”
His words hung in the air. Daniels stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Clay, patting him on the back with incredible strength, making Clay’s back sting. He didn’t cry, he didn’t speak. He gave Alayna a tentative wave, alluding to those days when he’d flirted with her to the point of exhaustion—once telling her she should be so lucky to receive him.
Those were days long gone.
But Alayna hugged him anyway, tears in her eyes. There wasn’t time for hard feelings. Everyone knew that now.
Daniels gestured to the others, who, one by one, hugged Alayna, Clay, and Lane, before mounting their mopeds. Brandon held onto Clay for an extra moment, his thin arms childlike.
“You’re going to be okay, kid,” Clay said, borrowing Ralph’s nickname for the boy. “Just trust me on this one. You’re
so much stronger than you even know.”
Clay, Lane, and Alayna stood in the middle of the empty street, watching the others roar away toward Earlton. As they dwindled into the distance, Clay feared for their safety. They were out of his purview now. And he didn’t know if he’d ever learn their fate.
Alayna touched his arm, grounding him in their ever-changing reality. Her dark eyes seemed to bore into his soul. “It’s going to be okay, Clay,” she said, sounding almost motherly. “We have our path, and they have theirs. As you said. Sticking together would not only be dangerous, it would be a waste of time.”
Clay nodded. He heard Lane whisk her keys from her pocket, jangling them in the air. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said, her voice light in contrast to the somberness of the difficult farewell.
The three of them walked around the corner from the candy shop, where the scientist’s Jeep was parked. It was orange, sturdy, confident. The very vehicle for this post-apocalyptic world. As Clay reached for the driver’s door handle, Lane cut in front of him.
“No one drives my car,” she said firmly. “Not even you, fearless leader.”
Clay laughed, grabbing her supplies and organizing them in the back. He popped into the passenger seat, watching Alayna ease into the back. This was forward motion. This was one step closer to his daughter.
This was the open road.
Chapter 19
Twenty minutes outside of Helen, Clay twisted the radio knob, searching for a signal.
“You really think you’ll find something out there?” Alayna asked, half-laughing. “It’s not like radio will go on when the world ends.”
“Maybe somebody’s out there, broadcasting what’s going on.” Clay shrugged.
He turned the knob a bit further, landing on an oldies station that seemed to be playing tapes from a few years before. “Today is September 25, 2014, and we’ve got the oldies for you,” the DJ said in a zippy voice. “Here’s Paul Anka.”
Alayna groaned in the back seat, tossing her head back. She was surrounded by supplies, with several sacks on her lap, and her face was strained. “This is what my mother used to listen to,” she grumbled.
“Well, this is all we have,” Clay said. “And I, for one, would rather listen to music than the thoughts in my own head.”
“Agreed,” Lane said. “But we can turn it down just a little bit. I feel like Paul Anka’s trying to wake the dead.”
Alayna snickered, not unkindly, and Clay reduced the volume. Lane drove swiftly down the abandoned highway, gorgeous scenery on all sides. The sun crept close to the brown and green flecked mountains.
“You never really see it when you live here,” Clay observed. “You don’t notice the beauty. I wish I could see it all the time.”
“All the more terrifying, thinking of these mountains as places for the crazed to hide out in,” Lane murmured. “Perfect little canyons for them. We don’t yet know if they can breed. But they certainly learn from one another. And they don’t die of natural causes.”
“That gives me the creeps,” Alayna said. “Maybe turn up Paul Anka again.”
“Ha,” Lane said, gripping the steering wheel with tight fingers. “Anyway, Clay. I haven’t asked you for a few days. How are you feeling since our last round of tests?”
“Physically, I feel amazing,” Clay said. “Stronger than ever. I should start measuring my muscles to see how much they grow over a week’s time. I can feel them filling out.”
“You do look amazing,” Alayna said from the back. After a pause, she corrected herself. “I mean, when you had your shirt off the other day, I could see, um, the definition . . .”
Clay didn’t speak. Neither did Lane. The sudden, slight, sexual energy sparked in the air between Clay and Alayna, making it difficult for Clay to breathe. An image of her bouncing breasts above him as they made love went through his mind. He gulped.
“Oh shit,” Lane said. They had crested a hill, revealing a scattering of abandoned cars in front of them. She slowed to a crawl, taking her time to weave through them, driving from shoulder to median. “They just left them out here. Do you think they were attacked?”
“Maybe someone in their car turned while they were driving,” Alayna said softly. “What would you do if you were trying to get your family to safety, and then someone in the car suddenly became what you were running from?”
“Jesus,” Lane said. “Hard to think about.”
“Where’s your family, Lane?” Clay asked in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Have you been able to contact them?”
“They live in England, actually,” Lane replied. “I’m an only child, and my dad’s been a professor over there for about ten years now. They up and moved. Tired of American politics.”
“And you haven’t talked to them since the outbreak?” Clay said.
Lane shook her head, her eyebrows lowering as she came up on another batch of cars. “Marcia and I have been cut off from communication, and we’ve hardly thought past the epidemic. Our radio signal couldn’t reach beyond Helen, and it wasn’t connecting with the military base. So I didn’t even try my parents, knowing I would probably be disappointed.”
No one spoke, recognizing that this kind of talk would just make them feel more desolate.
Clay turned up the oldies channel, allowing the crooning of Frank Sinatra to fill their ears like cotton balls. The day was just beginning.
Chapter 20
Lane continued to drive swiftly down the road, encountering the occasional cluster of vehicles. They didn’t speak for nearly an hour, each of them lost in their own thoughts. The cars they saw were empty. Clay peeked into their windows as they passed, catching sight of the occasional abandoned purse, or an empty snack wrapper. He imagined the families that belonged to these vehicles. With a jolt, he spotted a car seat in the back of a bright red car, a reminder that young children were a part of this horrible reality too.
In the next five miles, they came upon twelve cars, all slanted in various directions, and even going into the median. Lane stopped short, smacking her hands against the steering wheel. “Well, shit,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get around this.”
Clay leaned forward, eyeing the tight gaps between the cars. “How weird. So many of them stopping at once. It’s hard to imagine what happened.”
He turned down the radio and Lane veered off to the right taking the Jeep off the shoulder. The tires rolled into the dust and grass, spitting rocks onto the pavement. With a sudden lurch, Alayna was jarred into the window. She moaned loudly, but the others were too focused on the off-roading ahead to notice.
The Jeep bounced side to side as they navigated the ditch. The tires barreled over a bit of debris, making a loud crunching noise. Lane cried out in surprise. “Shit. I’m sorry!” she said, coming to a halt. “What was that? Jesus, that was loud.”
“We have to keep moving,” Clay said to her. “If we stop, we won’t have the momentum to climb out of the ditch. It won’t matter what we hit.”
Lane set her jaw and stepped on the gas pedal, driving recklessly through the dried grass. With a final jolt, the wheels squealed and spun, and then pushed them back onto the pavement. She sighed with relief, turning her eyes toward the horizon.
“Wow. A bit of excitement,” Alayna joked, rubbing her cheek, which was beginning to bruise.
“I’m pretty inexperienced at off-roading,” Lane admitted. Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “You know, I haven’t seen a single sign of life since we started. Just desolation. And the empty cars.”
She picked up speed. Clay looked back, watching the sunlight glinting off the cars. “So, what are your thoughts about why these clusters keep happening?” he asked.
“Surely they just all break down at the same time,” Alayna said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “Everyone forgot to fill up at the gas station, at the same time. Isn’t that always it?”
“Ha,” Clay said. “If only. What do you think, Lane?”
/> Lane pressed her lips together tightly, looking pensive. “I’m not sure I want to imagine,” she said.
Silence.
Clay leaned his head back. He was getting hungry. With the nanites strengthening his muscles, he seemed to require more food than normal. He closed his eyes, imagining he was driving home to Valerie’s cooking. What a blessing that had been. He hadn’t known to be thankful for it.
“I do have a theory.” Alayna said, breaking the silence. “I think the first car was the problematic one. Especially back there. It was a shitty car, a late 90s model. How do you expect something like that to take you so far out of town?”
“So it starts with the first car?” Clay asked, assessing her theory. “And then what?”
“The second one probably stops to check in on the first one,” she continued, speaking as if she were telling Clay about a perp—just like old times. “The second one begins speaking to the first one. Light chitchat, maybe. Talking about what they’re going to do. And, especially, talking about how ridiculous this apocalypse is. Ha.” A small wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “And then something horrible happens. Say, a pack of crazed attack. The second driver doesn’t have time to get back to his car. The third and fourth and fifth cars don’t recognize initially what the situation is. But soon enough, the first few drivers become crazed themselves. And it continues, like some kind of fucked up string of horror that feeds itself.”
“Shit,” Lane murmured. “I told you I didn’t want to think about it.”
“You haven’t been out here long enough,” Alayna said. “You were safe inside your lab. You’ll need to think about it soon. This shit haunts you after a while. Doesn’t it, Clay?”
As Clay searched for an answer that wouldn’t terrify Lane, they heard a bang beneath them. Lane shrieked as the Jeep began to swerve, pulling them off to the side of the roadway. She slammed on the brakes. Alayna was thrown forward, and struck her head against the top of the Jeep.
Humanity's Edge- The Complete Trilogy Page 28
