by Jason Brant
To Pittsburgh.
To Cass.
To his unborn child.
Chapter 17
Lance weaved through the wrecked cars crisscrossing 356.
He followed the route they’d used to get to Ralph’s compound, just reversing course. Familiar sights passed by as he drove entirely too fast for the conditions of the roads.
The farm they’d spent several days at rested on the left. Lance watched it as he went by, remembering standing in the rain with Cass. He’d wanted so badly to stay there with her.
The house and barns disappeared as he descended a hill and he refocused, pushing the truck even faster. Even as he drove through the more populated areas, Lance didn’t see a single daywalker. The morning drive was quiet and calm.
Except for the fear that settled in the pit of his stomach.
The idea of Cass traipsing through the subway system alone tore at his mind.
He had to catch up to her first.
The Presbyterian church, whose parking lot they’d raided gas from, was on the left. He went past the home he’d taken the Corvette from without giving it a second glance.
The bridge crossing the Allegheny River, just north of Brackenridge, came into view a few minutes later. Lance looked at the clock on the dash and realized he’d made the trip in less than thirty minutes. If he could keep the pace up for a while longer, he might be able to catch her. He highly doubted she would drive this carelessly for no reason.
Cass wanted to exterminate the filth under the city, not die in a fiery crash by the side of a podunk town.
Because most of the bridges in the area had been destroyed, Lance felt confident that he was using the same route Cass had. If she hadn’t gone this way, it would be difficult for her to get close to the stadiums.
Unless she uses a boat.
Lance shoved the thought aside. He couldn’t dwell on such things or they would force him into a panic. He knew her objective.
Knew where she was going.
He would find her.
The Tundra’s tires slid across the pavement as Lance jerked the wheel, bringing the truck onto 28, heading south. He put his window down as the stench of burning rubber filled the cabin. The concentration of abandoned vehicles increased. He cursed as he slowed down, weaving in and out as quickly as he could.
Even as he passed Brackenridge, Lance didn’t see a daywalker.
It was only a week or two since they’d been through this same area on the Duchess and it had been crawling with the infected. Now it was a ghost town.
Cars polluted the highway less as he got a mile past the small city. He coaxed the Tundra up to ninety again, hoping nothing would wander into the road.
Though he hadn’t spent much time on this side of the city, Lance felt fairly certain that 28 ran almost the entire way to the stadiums. The pin on the map showed that the North Side Station sat between Heinz Field and PNC Park.
The memories of the massacre at the safe zone boiled to the surface, but he pushed them back down. He didn’t have time for the fear that always accompanied his recollection of that night.
As he crossed into Pittsburgh, Lance was again forced to slow down. Three cars sat across the highway ahead, parked bumper to bumper in an odd way.
Lance eased off the gas and squinted against the sun reflecting off the windshield. The cars appeared to have been placed that way intentionally. Almost like a makeshift roadblock.
He stopped in the middle of the highway.
Stuck his head out the window.
Businesses sat fifty yards from the road on the left. Homes were off to the right. Trees stood beside the shoulder, between the houses and the highway.
Lance sat there for nearly thirty seconds, scanning the area for movement of any kind.
Seeing none, he eased the Tundra toward the parked cars. He turned around, backing up to the rear end of a Dodge Neon. He climbed out and went to the tailgate, reaching for the chain.
“Don’t move.” The voice came from the other side of the cars.
Lance froze, still bent over the back of the truck. The .44 rested in his waistband. He wanted to reach for it, but he had a feeling that whoever called out to him had a gun trained at his chest.
“I just want to pass through.”
“Shut up.”
Slowly, Lance turned his head. A man of roughly forty stood beside the Neon. He held a pistol in his right hand, the barrel directed at Lance. His brown hair was long and knotted, sticking up in random places. Red splotches dotted his face.
Lance didn’t think that was paint.
“Back away from the truck.” The man slid across the hood, his eyes never wavering from Lance. “Don’t even think about going for that pistol. You ain’t that fast.”
Lance backed up, keeping his hands in plain sight. He glanced over the cars, angry at himself for getting caught in such a way. Even if he managed to get out of this unscathed, how far ahead would Cass get?
He noticed the stains when he was ten feet away from the truck.
Three dried, brown puddles collected around the parked cars. Streaks trailed away from the blotches, running to the sidewalk, stretching under the front door of a pit beef restaurant.
The stench hit him next.
Dead bodies. A reek he’d become all too familiar with.
The man followed his gaze and smiled. “Yeah, that kind of gives away the gig, don’t it? I wanted to get a hose and wash the area clean, but it’s hard to do without running water. The last fella saw the blood too. He damn near got away.”
“I don’t want to any trouble. Just let me go and we’ll pretend this meeting didn’t happen.”
“You people always say the same things. Even after seeing all of that blood. You think you can talk your way out of this?”
“What do you want?” Lance realized this man wasn’t going to let him go. He kept glancing at the business end of the pistol, hoping for a moment when it shifted in another direction. He prepared to make a play for his .44, but he had to wait for the right time.
“I want everything you got. The hell do you think I want?”
“Take it. Just let me go. I have no beef with you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone says that shit too. If I let you go, you’ll just come back and try to take out ol’ Travis here. Next, you’ll start begging me.” He whistled, the sound echoing off the empty streets. “Come on in, boys.”
Lance tensed, ready to dive to the side. If more men were coming, he had little time to do something.
“Don’t do it. I’m telling you.” He gestured at Lance’s waist with his pistol. “Empty your pockets. How much cash you got?”
“None. I haven’t carried a wallet since the virus hit.” Lance couldn’t believe he was being mugged for what was now little more than paper with a dead man’s face printed on it.
“Bullshit. Empty ‘em.”
Lance pulled his pockets inside out. Lint fell to the street. “I left my gold bars in my other pants.”
The man frowned. “Aren’t you just a smart ass? Let’s see how funny you think—”
Something whistled past their shoulders, making both of them wince.
The front, passenger window of the Neon shattered behind the man.
Lance prepared to grab his pistol, but the man didn’t turn around to look at the damage.
“You son of a bitch! You shot at me!”
“What? How could I do that?” Lance looked at the broken window, confused.
The man raised the gun in front of him, sighting Lance’s chest. “Don’t matter. I’m gonna—”
Another whistle zipped past Lance’s ear.
An arrow stuck in the man’s chest, knocking him back a step.
The gun lowered to his side, his finger jerking the trigger in a spasm. The barrel belched fire. Concrete chipped by his feet as the bullet ricocheted away.
His free hand reached for the arrow, but he collapsed before his fingers could wrap around it. The gun clattered on
the street.
Lance spun around, pulling his pistol free and aiming it blindly at a row of buildings behind him. His pulse thrummed in his ears as he scanned the street.
Cass stood up from behind a post office box thirty yards away, her bow held out in front of her.
“Cassie!” Lance broke into a sprint.
She stepped away from the mailbox, lowering the bow to her side. The axe was strapped to her back, the quiver slung over her shoulder. Sorrowful eyes followed Lance’s progress as he crossed the street at a full tilt.
“Lance, I—”
He cut her off by wrapping his arms around her waist and picking her up from the sidewalk. Their lips locked in a rough, passionate kiss. He pushed against her back with his hand, pressing her tight against him.
She moaned as she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, feverishly running her fingers through his hair.
They finally broke apart, their breathing heavy. He lowered her to the sidewalk and held her at arm’s length, gazing into her eyes.
“If you ever leave me again, I’ll beat your skinny ass.”
“I knew you would try to stop me if I told you what I was going to do.”
“You got so pissed at me because I didn’t tell you about my arm. How is this any better?”
Cass looked away. “It’s not. But I have to do this. Don’t you understand?”
“Of course I do. But—”
“I won’t go back with you.”
Lance leaned forward, placing his forehead against hers. “I didn’t come here to take you back. I came here to help you.”
Cass peered into his eyes. “Really?”
“Really. You’re stuck with me. Especially now that I managed to put a bun in your oven.”
“Doc told you.”
“Yeah. I’m pissed that you didn’t, but we’ll deal with that later. That dickwad back there called out for some of his friends. We need to get off the street.”
“I already took care of them.”
“What?”
Cass pointed toward a street down the block. “I found two of them hiding back there. Got both of them with arrows. I’m surprised the guy by the roadblock didn’t hear the second one screaming. I clipped him in the arm before the second shot finished him off.”
Lance grinned at her. Of course, he had run headlong into harm’s way while she managed to sneak up on the danger and dispose of it. If there were any women’s lib groups left, they would hold her up as a god.
He looked back at the body by his truck. “You whiffed on the first shot. He damn near put a bullet in my chest.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I got him though.”
“How did you even know these guys were here?” Lance searched the street for her truck, but didn’t see it.
“I spotted the roadblock from way back there.” She bobbed her head behind her. “I took a side road, but it was cut off as well. I figured someone was trying to trap travelers so I backtracked and left my truck about a half a mile back there. I’ve been sneaking through the side streets ever since, trying to ferret those assholes out. It wasn’t too hard—their hiding places were terrible.”
“And my dumb ass drove right up to the trap.” He smirked at his own stupidity.
“You continue to earn your nickname.”
They looked at each other for a few seconds, both smiling.
“I can’t believe you got me knocked up,” Cass said. She lowered her voice an octave. “‘You don’t need birth control—my guys can’t swim.’ Good call.”
“How was I supposed to know that one of the boys was a little Michael Phelps?”
They walked back to the barricade, poking at each other and grinning. Lance reflected on how quickly they moved past the fact that she had just killed three men. In a matter of weeks, human life had ceased to be a primary concern.
Two months ago, Lance would have flipped out if he’d seen a man shot in the chest by an arrow. Now he was relieved, happy even.
“We’re going to have to backtrack a mile, maybe more,” Cass said as she stared down at the body. “They have all the other roads blocked off for at least that far.”
“Nope.” Lance reached into the bed of his truck and lifted the chain out. “I’ll just pull one of these out of the way.”
“Wow, good idea to bring that with you.” She pulled the arrow out of the dead man’s chest and wiped the blood on his shirt.
“It was Brown’s idea.”
“Of course it was.”
“Kiss my ass. I found you, didn’t I?”
“Actually, I found you. Saved your ass too.”
Lance turned around to flip her off, but she was already walking up the road.
“I’m going to get my truck; I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.” She waved over her head without looking back.
After hooking up the chain to the ball hitch on the back of his truck, Lance found a sturdy spot on the Neon’s frame. He put the truck into four-wheel drive and eased off the brake, tightening the chain. The truck hitched as it began to drag the car sideways, but it kept moving.
As he tossed the chain back into the bed, Cass pulled up. She stuck her head out of her window.
“Let’s take both trucks, just in case something happens. Follow me.”
Lance gave her a thumbs up. He climbed behind the wheel and turned around, letting Cass drive through the opening in the barricade first.
She stopped on the other side of the cars. Lance pulled up beside her.
“We need to move quickly,” Cass said through her open window. “We need to get this done before the sun goes down, or my plan won’t work.”
“What is the plan?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there. We’re going to park a few blocks away from the station and walk in. I don’t want to make any noise when we get that close.”
They followed 28 for another fifteen minutes, moving at a brisk pace, but much slower than Lance had when trying to catch up to Cass. Only a handful of daywalkers stumbled around the streets, even as they drove past the suburbs.
Lance marveled at how quiet the city had become. Screams and gunshots and wails of the infected had filled the air when they’d left. Now, the revving of their engines were the only sounds in the streets.
As they maneuvered through an intersection filled with abandoned police cars, Lance saw a helicopter fly overhead. It banked left and disappeared a moment later, but the sight made Lance question who was still out there.
Was that a lone bird, flown by someone who was merely going from city to city, looking for survivors and supplies? Or was there still a contingent of the military or government holed up in a cave built into a mountain somewhere?
Would he ever find out?
Cass exited 28, heading west onto Ohio Street. Lance followed, keeping thirty yards between the trucks. They drove through a tightly packed residential area. Townhomes rested on either side of the street, their rundown, brick exteriors reminding Lance of how old certain parts of the city still were.
Pittsburgh had been in the middle of a renaissance when the world collapsed, and many areas hadn’t been rebuilt yet. The roads were tighter here. Burned-out cars clogged the way, slowing their progress. Twice, they drove onto the sidewalk, pushing knocked-over garbage cans and mangled shopping carts aside with their bumpers.
They passed into a commercial section of the city. A massive church loomed on the right. The stones on the outside were blackened from fire. The roof had fallen in. Trash covered the front steps and overgrown lawn.
Someone had rearranged the letters on a signboard out front. It now read THE END IS HERE.
Cass drove for another half a mile before stopping in a mostly empty parking lot. Lance parked behind her, grabbed the M4 from the seat beside him, and got out. He shut his door as quietly as possible, just in case there were a few daywalkers roaming around.
He met her by the driver’s side door of her truck.
The city was i
mpossibly quiet. A few birds sang overhead, but everything else was silent.
Cass slid from her seat and peered around. “This is so eerie.”
“Yeah.”
She opened the back door of the truck and reached inside. “You get to carry this.” She handed him a large duffle bag.
The weight of it caught him off guard and he almost dropped it.
“What did you put in this, dumbbells?”
“Explosives, ammunition—”
“Flares and night-vision goggles. I was being facetious.”
“Big word. Does your head hurt?”
Lance threw the strap of the duffle bag over his head, letting the weight hang diagonally. “If you don’t start being nicer to me, I’m going to withhold sex.”
Cass snorted. “Oh, the horror.”
“So what exactly is the plan here? There’s no way we can just blow up all the Vladdies.”
“The subway runs under the river. If we can blow the ceiling out, the water will drown them. Any who manage to escape will be forced outside, directly into the sun.”
“That’s a pretty good plan, actually.” Lance frowned. “Except for the part where we go down into their lair as if they won’t mind.”
“We’ll make do.”
“How do we know all of them are even down there? They could be hiding all over the place.”
“I’m sure there are stragglers in different places. But do you remember when we saw them at the stadium? They came from the grates in the road and down the street on the other side of the parking lot. That’s where the Station is. They also moved in waves, attacking together like they were one large pack. I think they might live in some kind of pack-like structure.”
“Like wolves?”
“Maybe. Hopefully. I have a feeling we’re going to get a huge portion of them with this move.”
She pulled her bow from the backseat and looped it over her shoulder. Grabbing a rifle from the floor, she quietly eased the door shut.
As she situated all of her weapons, Lance looked her up and down.
“What?” she asked when she caught him staring at her.
“You look like a psychopath.”
“What are you babbling about?”
