Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord

by Brown, Richard

  I glanced over at Robinson. The look on his face said he knew. He definitely knew. And the thought of it was bringing him down.

  “He really loves Olivia, you know,” I said. “It might be better if...”

  Robinson stared across the way at his four-year-old dog, sopping wet, looking back at him. The dog he’d tried to train to be a police dog. The dog he’d named after his favorite football team, the Jacksonville Jaguars. The dog that for the last four years was probably his best friend. The dog that in two weeks time had found a new best friend. The once hardened police officer had a look of abandonment on his face, and it was a clear reminder that things were changing right before our eyes. Life would never be the same as it was. In this new world that lay before us, letting go would become as common as a cold. And becoming attached, whether to a person or place, or even a pet, was to spin in a circle of constant fear.

  “Well...” Brian pressed.

  “I think if we remove him from the boat, he’ll just jump back in the water,” Robinson replied.

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “You think you could take him with you? He obviously loves the baby.”

  Brian looked over at Cathy, but his wife offered no response. “You gonna come back for him?”

  Robinson shrugged. “I can’t guarantee it. Maybe.”

  “I guess we could take him. Yeah, no problem.”

  “He’s not much of a guard dog,” Robinson said. “But he’ll at least bark if he hears something, and he’s house trained.”

  “Sounds good. Unless Cathy has any objections.”

  Cathy peered down at the dog at her feet. “He can stay.”

  “Great. I’ll hand over his food.”

  Once all Jax’s stuff was on the boat, we said our goodbyes again and Brian began pulling away.

  “Anyone else want to go? Speak now or forever hold your peace,” Ted said.

  We all stood quietly at the edge of the dock and watched the boat sail down the river until it was out of sight around the bend.

  Chapter 84

  “How are we gonna carry all this shit?” Robinson asked. “You think maybe we brought too much?”

  I looked down at the shit (as Robinson had called it) we’d brought along. Despite the unappealing nature of the word, most of the stuff before us was essential for our continued survival, therefore not shit.

  Boxes of food and water.

  Boxes of weapons and ammo.

  Boxes of medical supplies.

  Boxes of clothing and other accessories.

  Boxes. Boxes. Boxes.

  “You can never have too much,” Ted said, smirking. “Just need a truck to haul it, that’s all.”

  “Keep in mind my shoulder still hurts like hell,” Robinson said. “I doubt I can lift much more than my pack for long periods of time. Bowser, how’s your leg?”

  Bowser shrugged. “Sore, but I’ll manage. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay, tough guy.”

  “Why don’t we scout ahead,” Ted said, “see if we can find a vehicle that’ll work?”

  Robinson nodded. “Sure.”

  The two of them headed east into the graveyard of old shipping containers and rusted metal parts. While they were gone, the rest of us used the time to chow on a morning snack.

  Prior to departing Florida, we had each stuffed a backpack full of various items that we’d want on hand. I had used every last inch of space. My bag was more bloated than Michael Moore at an all-you-can-eat buffet, though not nearly as heavy.

  The backpack brought back memories of being in high school. I had a bag that looked similar back then—filled to the max. Yep, I was one of those kids who carried every textbook or folder around with them to each class. No stopping off at the locker for me. The last few years I don’t think I used my locker once. I doubt I would have even remembered the combination to the lock, should I have needed to for some reason. I didn’t carry all my books around because I wanted to use my five minutes between class to socialize either (I could count the number of friends I had on one hand), I did it because of a kid named Dillon “Dill” Marshall. People called him Dill not just because it was short for Dillon, but also because he always smelled like pickles.

  In ninth grade, my first year of high school, I had been blessed with the locker right next to old Dillweed. I didn’t know him at the time. He had transferred from a different school, and I thought maybe I could befriend him before everyone else told him to ignore me.

  I was the king of wishful thinking.

  Dillon “the villain,” as I later thought of him, had introduced himself by writing a gay slur on my locker in black permanent marker. I don’t know how many kids read what he had written or how many had heard it second hand, but it was enough. The only thing that can travel faster than the speed of light is high school gossip, and for the next four years, I was the gay kid (not that there was anything wrong with that). But I had a hard enough time getting girls to notice me. From that incident on, I didn’t use my locker anymore.

  Thanks a million, Dillon, I thought. I hope you’re still the same as you were back in high school. A foul-smelling zombie.

  I unzipped my backpack (my bug-out bag, as Ted called it) and rummaged through my stuff. Flashlight. Tissues. Roll of toilet paper. Toothbrush. Lighter. Gloves. Spare shirt. One pair of socks. One pair of shoes. A couple of spare magazines for my gun, Sally, already loaded. A box of extra ammo. A bowie knife Ted had given me. And crushed at the very bottom were my snacks (crackers, peanuts, candy). Circus food. I pulled out a pack of peanut butter crackers and a bottle of water, and then closed my pack.

  “Starting to warm up,” Peaches said. She was ripping into a granola bar.

  Ted had said granola was a good choice. Nutritious. Filling. Decent shelf life. I’m sure all of that was true. My grandma liked it, but I never did. I hate how it got stuck in my teeth. Unlike my grandma, I couldn’t take out my teeth to clean them. However, I was most concerned about all that fiber. Out there on the road, I figured it was best to keep my bathroom trips to a minimum, even if eating that stuff would likely produce a solid.

  The cop and the redneck showed up five minutes later, on foot.

  “There they are,” Bowser said. “Looks like they didn’t find anything.”

  “What happened to finding us a truck?” I yelled as they approached.

  Both Ted and Robinson motioned for me to keep my voice down.

  Whoops. Sorry.

  “Don’t yell,” Robinson said. “There’s infected close by.”

  “Infected…how close?” Aamod asked, tightening his grip on the shotgun.

  “Up on the road,” Ted replied. He had something folded up underneath one of his armpits. “Maybe a hundred yards or so. We saw them but they didn’t see us.”

  It was amazing how just the mention of the word infected had put everyone in the group on notice. We scanned the surroundings nervously, making sure no one had followed Robinson and Ted back to the dock.

  It had been almost a week since we really had to worry about any infected. Cathy and Brian’s home had proved a safe place to rest and recover from the ordeal with Charlie and his crazy gang of followers. We rarely left the house that week, unless it was to the Walmart up the road for a supply run, and even then, as long as we stuck to the back entrances, we never ran into much trouble. Unless of course you count the run where Aamod and I had picked out clothing for the two girls. That was brutal.

  “What is that under your arm?” I asked.

  “Oh, a map,” Ted said, taking the map out and beginning to unwrap it.

  “Thought we already had a map?”

  “We did. But I accidently left it on the boat. It’s Brian’s now.” Ted knelt down and smoothed out the open map on one of the supply boxes. “Found this one in a little shipping office around the bend.”

  “And what about a car?” Aamod asked.

  Ted cleared his throat. “Saw lots of those too. Unfortunately, none in
the general vicinity. Looks like everyone who worked here didn’t stick around once the shit hit the fan. Can’t really blame them. Thought maybe there’d be a truck good for hauling close by, what with all this junk just lying around. But nope, nada.”

  Aamod frowned, unsatisfied with that answer. “And how far are these cars you did see?”

  “Not far. Out on the road,” Robinson said. “Problem is the infected nearby.”

  Ted examined the map. “The road we saw is probably this one here. Leake Avenue.”

  “Which way are the infected going?” I asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “Still west?”

  Robinson nodded. “And there are quite a lot of them, though they’re not coming in packs like we saw back on Highway 528 in Orlando. They’re just scattered about. One here. Two there.”

  “I reckon we’re gonna have to sneak by on foot,” Ted said. “We could leave most of our supplies in the shipping office until we can find a vehicle. Then we’ll come back for them. That’ll at least keep them out of the sun or rain.” Ted pointed at a spot on the map. “Looks like there is a golf course near here, due east of our position. I say we head there. Taking the golf course north will hopefully help us avoid trouble for a little bit. Keep us off the roads. Still, we have to cross this Leake Avenue to reach the golf course.”

  “Any objections?” Robinson asked of the group. No one spoke up. Not even Aamod, which was a damn miracle. “Okay then. I guess everyone grab a box.”

  Chapter 85

  We carried all the boxes of supplies to the small shipping office Ted had mentioned. The place was a mess. Papers scattered everywhere. Spilt coffee on the floor, dried into a sticky black sludge. The sun beating through the east window illuminated the fine particles of dust floating in the air. It felt dangerous to breathe. The office smelled like cardboard—or maybe that was just the box in my hands.

  After stacking the boxes in a corner, we left the office and huddled in the shade outside.

  “Everyone loaded and ready?” Ted asked.

  I inspected each member of the group.

  Everyone was armed except Naima, who had refused the gun Ted offered her. Aamod had made it clear he didn’t want her having a gun anyway. Not so much that he didn’t trust her with a weapon, as I remembered he had left her the shotgun back at the convenience store on day one; he wanted the responsibility of protecting her. He wanted the sole weight of her safety on his shoulders. Perhaps because last time he’d left her to fend for herself she’d hitched a ride with me and wound up in the hands of a sexual predator.

  Without a baby to tote around anymore, Peaches could now safely pack heat. She had been complaining about wanting more responsibility, the whole just because I have a vagina doesn’t mean I can’t be tough thing. She’d get her chance. She was from Kentucky, after all, where gun ownership was practically required by law. Clenched in her hands was the 1911 pistol I lifted from Ted’s place weeks ago—the one Nicole had used to help free us from Ted’s garage after she had led a pack of infected to our doorstep.

  Here’s a shocker. Ted was the only one of us carrying multiple guns. Three in all. Slung on his back was a fully accessorized AR-15 with thirty round mag. Strapped to his thigh, a pistol fitted with a silencer. He had another smaller pistol tucked away in his pack. I had seen it when he put the street map away.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Ted went on. “We need to be as quiet as possible. Keep your movements soft but swift. Everyone stay behind me. Follow my lead. And don’t pull the trigger unless you have no other choice. Our guns should only be used as a last resort. Everyone got knives?”

  I flipped my backpack around and pulled out the bowie knife Ted had given me. “I got mine.”

  Robinson and Bowser had similar knives.

  Ted turned to Aamod and his daughter. “What about you two?”

  “Don’t need a knife,” Aamod said sternly.

  “Okay, that’s fine. Just keep your finger off the trigger of that shotgun please.” Ted turned to acknowledge Peaches. “Do you have one?”

  “No,” Peaches replied.

  “Do you want one?”

  “I guess.”

  Ted headed back into the shipping office and returned a minute later with another bowie knife strapped into a brown leather sheath. He handed it to Peaches, who shoved it into her jean shorts.

  “The knives are for stealth kills,” Ted said, smiling.

  Stealth kills? I felt like I was playing some virtual reality version of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. I wondered who would be the first to snap somebody’s neck, Sam Fisher style. My money was on freckle face.

  Peaches looked horrified, as though Ted’s comment had left her reconsidering whether she wanted the knife. “Are you serious?”

  Ted shrugged. “Let’s hope we don’t have to do anything like that. But I try to prepare mentally for any possible scenario, that way nothing takes me by surprise. If we act smart, I’m sure we can get to that golf course without incident.”

  We headed off, slow and careful and ready for anything. Knife in his left hand, pistol in his right, Ted led the way, with Aamod trailing at the tail end. We walked crouched down, slipping in between cars to stay hidden from the dozens of infected lumbering around. As Robinson had confirmed, the infected were still heading west, though certainly not at the same pace as in the early days of this mess. Over the weeks, they had lost more than their quick step—they had lost their lives.

  Lost their lives and had been reborn.

  Somehow, reborn.

  Whether they were dead, alive, or simply existed somewhere in between, it didn’t much matter now, and I wouldn’t bother trying to wrap my brain around it anymore. My disbelief was suspended, and would likely remain so for a very long time. The world had been flipped on its head—the rules of nature scratched out and rewritten. Like the popularity of Kim Kardashian, it didn’t make much sense. It just was.

  After crossing Leake Avenue, we stopped in a parking lot and took cover behind a blue pickup truck.

  Ted pulled on the driver side door handle. “Locked,” he whispered, and then moved around to the other side of the truck to check the passenger door. “Oh well, it was worth a shot. This truck would’ve worked good. Stay close. The golf course should be right up ahead.”

  After waiting on a few infected to slowly pass out of sight, we left the cover of the blue pickup and scooted north across the parking lot.

  It didn’t take long being hunched over for my back to start aching. Being the second youngest, I’m sure it was worse for many of the others in the group; Robinson and Bowser especially, given they were still recovering from some pretty serious injuries like—I don’t know—getting shot. However, if they were in any pain at all, they didn’t show it. I guess what I had always secretly suspected was true. Black people are tougher. That and the backpack I had on weighed almost as much as me. It was such a drag.

  We left the parking lot, traversed a large patch of ankle high grass, and then quickly crossed a narrow road that ran along the southern end of the golf course. We took shelter under a large tree and looked out at the open stretch of green where people had once practiced their best Tiger Woods impersonation. I mean golfing, of course, not infidelity.

  Robinson was next to me, sweating and breathing heavy. He could handle pain better than most, confirmed by the beating he took from Charlie the racist. But physical activity…not so much.

  “Are you having a heart attack?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Just gotta...catch my breath...is all.”

  “Take a moment. We can rest here for a sec,” Ted said, glancing around. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Except Bowser, everyone else in the group knelt down and took a knee like a bunch of football players. I stuck my knife into the grass and slipped off my backpack. It had only been fifteen minutes or so since we left the dock, yet my shoulders were already sore, the skin red and chafed, as the straps from the bac
kpack had been rubbing me raw. It felt good to give my muscles a quick break.

  “Good news is I’ll probably lose some weight with all this exercise,” Robinson said. “It’s been on my list of things to do for some time.”

  Bowser chuckled. “Yeah, we can tell.”

  “Fuck you. I used to be skinny, remember?”

  “I remember. That was a long time ago,” Bowser said. “Before you became a cop.”

  “No offense, but why is it that so many cops are fat anyway?” Ted asked. “Just seen quite a few over the years.”

  “I don’t know,” Robinson said. “Why do most people get fatter as they age? You just get into a routine, I guess. Or a rut. Plus the nature of the work fucks with your head. It really does. I’ve seen a lot of guys lose it on the job. Plenty of suicides too. With the shit we have to go through, if you don’t become depressed or a total psychopath, then there’s cause for concern.”

  “Which are you?” Aamod asked.

  “Psychopath, of course. Same as you,” Robinson said, smiling. “I’m only kidding. It’s just...not easy. The job wears on you. People don’t see that. I’ve seen things no one should have to see. Things that stick with you, keep you up at night. Things that…” Robinson swallowed hard and bowed his head. “Don’t go away.”

  A prolonged moment of silence filled the air as we all stared at Robinson, wondering if he was going to continue the train of thought.

  “What is the worst thing?” I asked.

  Robinson looked up. “Huh?”

  Thank God, he hadn’t heard the question, and I certainly wasn’t about to repeat myself. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have asked that. The words had seeped from my mouth without a second of thoughtful consideration. It’s a problem I had sometimes—runny diarrhea mouth.

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s not important.”

  Ted continued to scope out our surroundings. “It’s a hot damn day, that’s for sure.”

  Good going, Ted. Change the subject. Make small talk. Mention the weather.

  When no one responded, Ted stood up and gazed back out at the golf course. “Don’t see a lot of infected. A few over there.” He pointed at a building to our right, roughly two hundred yards away. “And another there,” he said, indicating the large pond straight north of our position.