Get to Meredith Tilly’s, no matter what the cost.
After Quinn had finished checking the vehicle, he had her climb up into the front seat and buckle herself in. While searching in the backseat, she’d located her teddy bear, and she squeezed the animal with both arms, as if afraid to let it go again.
The two rode in relative quiet, breaking the silence only a few times to inquire on each other’s comfort. Within a few hours of traveling, Dan glanced over to find his daughter asleep.
Before long the sun had poked through the trees, providing whispers of safety and freedom. Dan picked up the pace as the roads leveled out, carrying them one step closer to their destination.
I-40 sprawled out in the distance, intersecting with the mountain road, and he felt a shiver creep through his veins. He could already see the detritus and debris that lined both sides of the highway, and he had a sinking feeling that their journey would soon be stalled.
At the base of the road was a single stop sign. He pulled to a stop to gauge the safest route of travel. The interstate reminded him of the town they’d come from, only compressed and contained—cars piled against one another, RV’s overturned, and belongings smashed and scattered, all trapped within a space too small to hold them.
Unless he was to drive over the wreckage, Dan could see no way around it. The only other option was to drive off the road and into the desert; by the looks of it, several had tried and failed.
He glanced down at the shifter, which sported the option of four-wheel-drive. Then he studied his daughter’s sleeping form next to him. If the station wagon were to get stuck, they’d be stranded on the open road with no access to shelter. On the other hand, they’d already come this far, and he doubted things would get any easier. Regardless of the risks, he had an obligation to get his daughter to safety.
He engaged the lever and rolled forward into the desert, trading the hum of the pavement for the crunch of compacted sand.
The tires of the Subaru Outback groaned in protest as they propelled the vehicle over the bristled underbrush. Although Dan did his best to create a clear path, avoiding nature was impossible. Every few feet, small shrubs and bushes scraped the exterior, and rocks pummeled the undercarriage.
If he’d been driving a truck or an SUV, navigation would have been easier, but he’d make do with what he had.
After a few minutes, the rumble awakened his daughter, and Quinn stared at him with wide eyes, frightened by the noise.
“It’s OK,” he said, reassuring her.
He returned his hands to the wheel, steering clear of a fallen motorcycle. The rider still clung to the handlebars, his legs missing below the knees.
Dan kept as close to the highway as he could. To lose sight of it would be to lose track of their whereabouts. Even with their bearings intact, the journey would be difficult enough.
After several miles of rocky terrain the desert leveled and smoothed, and Dan was able to focus on the interstate, looking for a way back on. Quinn had been keeping watch as well. She pointed to an open area beside two overturned sedans.
“Daddy, maybe we can get back on there!”
Dan concurred. A few seconds later, he drove the car over the lip of the asphalt and back onto the interstate. Although there were still some obstacles, the driving was manageable, and Dan appreciated the return to pavement.
Having traversed the White Mountains, the remainder of their journey was flat and straight. From memory, Dan recalled that I-40 ran adjacent to Settler’s Creek; they would just need to travel the two hundred miles to get there.
The sun was still inching up the horizon, revealing more and more of its form, and bands of light penetrated the vehicle’s interior. Dan squinted from the glare, doing his best to make out the road ahead. By his guess it was about six in the morning.
He’d just lowered the sun visor when he saw something ahead; something moving several hundred feet away. Quinn had noticed it too, and she shot up straight in her seat, pointing at the source.
“What’s that?” she asked.
From what Dan could tell, it was a passenger van; two figures were moving on the rooftop. As the station wagon crept closer, the occupants had hunkered down, doing their best to remain unnoticed.
“It looks like people,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
He gave her a sideways glance, noting the fear in her eyes. On their current course they’d be passing within several feet of the stopped vehicle. Although it didn’t appear the figures on top were infected, he couldn’t be certain, and he didn’t want to take any chances.
He shot a look off the highway, contemplating taking to the desert once again. It wasn’t his preferred method of travel, but it would be better to be safe than sorry. He moved the vehicle into the slow lane, approaching the edge of the highway, and prepared to leave the road.
No sooner did he make the maneuver than he saw something gleaming from the rooftop of the van. It looked like the two figures were holding something.
Was it a gun?
“Get down, Quinn!” he yelled.
He wrenched the car to the right, peeling off the road and into the dirt beside the highway. The car kicked up a barrage of silt and stone, and Dan cursed himself for the noise. The people remained in place. No gunshots sounded.
He continued to drive the vehicle forward, running in tandem with the highway, but keeping a fifty-foot buffer zone from the road and the people on it. When they passed the van, the two figures took to their feet and waved their hands. He saw that it was an older man and a woman, and their clothes were dirty and disheveled.
Dan slowed the vehicle to a halt in the desert.
Quinn was still holding her head between her knees. When the car stopped, she leaned up to peek over the dashboard.
The engine idled. A plume of dust surrounded the car on all sides, wafting into the air and obscuring their view of the interstate. Dan retrieved the pistol and cracked the window.
About fifty feet away, the two people were making their dismount from the van. The man was watching them from the rooftop while the woman climbed down a metal ladder at the back. Dan eyed them with caution. Although they seemed well intentioned, he knew better than to trust anyone.
He’d already learned that the hard way.
The two people departed the van and walked toward the station wagon. Instead of getting out of the vehicle to greet them, Dan remained in his seat, gun cocked out the window, ready to transfer his foot from brake to gas at the slightest hint of trouble.
As the dust cleared, he got a better look at them. Both were in their mid-fifties and had gray hair and weathered, lined faces. The man was wearing a button-up shirt and long pants; the woman was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Even from ten feet away, it was impossible to demarcate the colors—both travelers were covered in a residue of dust and dirt that seemed to penetrate both clothes and skin. In fact, the more he glared at them, the harder it was to tell where garments ended and flesh began. The man had a pair of binoculars around his neck.
When the two had come within ten feet of the vehicle, they stopped abruptly, noticing the gun pointed at them through the window.
“Please…” the man said, holding his hands in the air. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Are you armed?” Dan asked.
The two of them shook their heads in unison. He looked them up and down but saw no sign that they were lying. He instructed them to back away from the vehicle, then stepped out to join them, keeping his pistol ready.
“Where are you headed?” he asked them.
The man and woman exchanged a worried glance, then pointed west, the way Dan and Quinn had come from.
“We’re trying to reach our son,” the woman said, blinking back tears.
The man reached
over and took the woman’s hand, squeezing it tight.
“We’ve been on the road for days. Our son lives in Phoenix, and we’ve been doing our best to reach him.”
“We’re from Oklahoma,” the man explained. “At first we stayed put and watched the news, but after a while we couldn’t take it anymore. We haven’t heard from Isaac in over a week, and we needed to do something.”
Dan nodded, feeling a wave of sympathy. He glanced back at his daughter, once again grateful that they were together.
“Where are you from?” the man asked.
“St. Matthews,” Dan said, pointing behind him. “A little town over the mountains.”
“How are things there?”
“Not good.”
The man looked at his wife again, then cleared his throat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photo of a young man in his twenties with short dark hair.
“I know this is a long shot, but have you seen my son?”
The couple paused, both of them biting their lips in anticipation. Dan’s eyes wandered to the interstate behind them, where a pair of bodies lined the road.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t,” he said.
The man and woman exhaled and pulled each other close. In this world of carnage, sometimes the best news was no news at all. The man let go of his wife’s hand and pointed back at the van.
“Are either of you hungry?”
Dan furrowed his brow. In the last few hours, he and his daughter had already consumed the last bit of food that had been left in the station wagon. Even though he didn’t feel like eating, his stomach felt hollow and empty, and he imagined his daughter probably felt the same way.
“Yes, but—”
“The food we have is safe,” the man said. “It’s wrapped up in red packages. You don’t have to worry.”
“We stole it from the men in white coats,” the woman explained.
For the first time all day, Dan felt a surge of hope. He motioned for his daughter to join him, and when she exited the vehicle, the two of them followed the couple back to the van.
21
“My name’s Roberta Smith,” the woman said. “And this is my husband Ken.”
The woman sat cross-legged in the back of the van, and she smiled at Dan and Quinn with warmth they hadn’t seen in a while. The man was digging through a backpack he had stashed there, and he pulled out several packages of dried fruits and passed them out to the group.
“When I saw you two driving up the road, I hid all our things,” the man explained.
He stuck out a grimy hand, and Dan took it. Dan introduced him and his daughter.
“I’m Dan, and this is my daughter Quinn.”
“Quinn! What a pretty name!” Roberta said.
The little girl blushed as she dug into her apple slices. Dan surveyed the back of the van. At one time it’d contained several rows of seats, but it appeared they’d been removed. A sleeping bag lined the floor, and several items of clothes had been scattered across the interior.
“Is this your vehicle?” Dan asked.
“No, we found it here. We’ve mostly been traveling on foot. We lost our vehicle back in Texas when we got a flat tire. Within minutes we were swarmed by the infected, and we barely made it out alive. Since then we’ve been camping out during the day and making our progress at night.”
“It’s been dangerous with those men in white coats out there,” Roberta added. “We came across one of their vans when they weren’t around. That’s how we got this food.”
Ken held up the backpack he’d been rifling through.
“It didn’t take us long to figure out what was going on. We’re pretty sure the infection is spread through the food and water supply.”
Dan nodded, surprised at their astuteness. While he ate his food, he ran through the events in St. Matthews: the start of the infection, their run-ins with the agents, and their escape from town. He did his best to narrate the story without rehashing the violence, and he left out the part about Julie. Quinn had been through enough. The last thing he wanted to do was reopen the wound.
While he was talking, the Smiths shook their heads in disbelief. From the sounds of it, they’d left Oklahoma before things got bad; most of the troubles they’d encountered had been on the road.
“I just hope we find Isaac soon.” Roberta lowered her eyes.
“We’ll find him, honey,” Ken said. “No matter how long it takes.”
The couple held hands again. In spite of what was happening, it was obvious they’d drawn strength from each other, and Dan couldn’t help but think of his own wife. What would it have been like if they’d survived together? He could only imagine that Julie would be as strong as Roberta. He felt a pang of sorrow, and he did his best to swallow it with the last of his fruit.
Ken finished his meal and wandered to the front of the vehicle. Dan watched as the man pressed the binoculars to his eyes, rotating the lenses back and forth over the ruined road.
“I haven’t seen any of the infected in a while,” Ken said. “It’s probably been a day since we ran into one of them.”
“I wonder if they’re dying out,” Dan suggested. “Maybe the infection is running its course.”
“We can only hope.”
The two exchanged a wry smile.
“So where are you headed?” Ken asked.
“We’re headed to Oklahoma to find my sister-in-law. She lives in Settler’s Creek, just over the Texas border. We’re hoping nothing’s hit there yet.”
“Well, everything seemed OK when we left. But we’ve run into a few people on the road since, and it sounds like it’s spreading.”
Dan swallowed the lump in his throat. Ever since leaving the salvage yard, he’d clung steadfast to the goal of reaching Meredith, hoping to find safe haven. If the virus had truly spread into Oklahoma—and more specifically, Settler’s Creek—then their travels would be for naught.
Sensing his anxiety, Ken put a hand on his shoulder.
“Everything will work out, Dan. Have faith.”
The older man had put down his binoculars and smiled. Despite his tattered clothes and dirt-stained face, his eyes radiated a sense of hope. Dan did his best to smile back.
“We should probably get going soon. We’ve troubled you folks enough.”
“Nonsense. You’re not leaving until we give you some food for the road.”
Dan wrinkled his brow. “There’s no way I could take anything from you.”
“I insist. You have a daughter to feed, Dan, and the last thing I’d want is for the two of you to starve.”
Ken walked past Dan and to the back of the van. He picked up his backpack and tossed it to his wife. She picked it up without hesitation.
“Roberta, would you mind packing up some food for these folks? I’m going to keep my eyes peeled out front.”
“Sure thing.”
Ken gave her a loving smile before returning to his post.
The older woman sifted through the contents of the bag, pulling out several tightly wrapped packages and placing them on the floor. On the floor behind her was another backpack. She dumped out the contents and began to fill it with the things she’d sorted for Dan and Quinn.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s the least we can do. You’ve given us a lot of insight on what’s in store for us on the road ahead, and for that we are grateful. Anything that helps us to find Isaac is a huge help.”
When the woman was finished, she handed the packed bag to Quinn. The little girl hefted it in her hands and gave her a smile.
“Are we leaving, Daddy?”
“Yes, we should really get going.”
Dan patted his pocket, ensuring he had his keys, and then looked toward one of
the side windows. He peeked around one of the drawn shades, spotting the station wagon in the distance. Everything looked as it did before.
No sooner had he let down the shade than Ken’s voice rang from the driver’s seat.
“I wouldn’t leave just yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s trouble headed our way.”
Even before he took sight of it, Dan could hear the rumble of a vehicle in the desert. The noise was loud and undeniable, and it made his heart hammer in his chest. For the past half an hour, he’d been given a subtle reprieve from the dangers of the road, but now his survival instincts were knocking louder than ever.
“Stay down!” he hissed to Quinn and Roberta.
The two huddled behind the passenger’s seat, their eyes roaming the vehicle. Ken had stooped below the dashboard. Dan crawled up to meet him.
“Who is it?” he whispered.
Ken looked over at him. The shine in his eyes had long since faded; in its place was an expression of worry.
“I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s the agents, and it certainly isn’t the creatures. Whoever it is doesn’t look friendly.”
Dan had already withdrawn his weapon. He snuck a glance over the dashboard, keeping his head as low as possible.
The vehicle was approaching from the west. By the shape and size, he was unable to get a read on the make and model.
“Can I borrow the binoculars?”
Ken handed them to him and he held the lenses to his face. With the vehicle magnified, he was able to make out more of the structure. It appeared to be an SUV—similar to the ones used by the agents—but the sides had been reinforced with metal brackets, and knives and pieces of sharp metal had been attached to the exterior. The hood had been spray-painted with graffiti.
Contamination Box Set [Books 0-7] Page 53
