by Mark Lukens
She was close to the corner of the building, closer to the white Toyota. There was a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye through the rain, which was beginning to fall harder now. Rippers coming from the woods. They would be across the parking lot in seconds.
There wasn’t enough time. Even if she got into the car and started it (hopefully it would start, but she was going to have to leave that in God’s hands right now), the rippers would surround her car.
Kate couldn’t make it to the car in time, and this was her last chance to ditch the box. She didn’t want to look at the rippers coming her way, but she did. She saw three of them, two women and a man. They seemed to be coming for her, but then she realized that they were being drawn to Messed-up Nose’s curses and yells of rage. He hadn’t stopped threatening Kate, he hadn’t stopped promising her that the Dragon would never stop looking for her and the others.
The others?
Again, she couldn’t think about that.
There wasn’t enough time.
When Kate looked back at the car she saw white puffs of exhaust drifting up from the tailpipe. The car was running. Brooke had started the car. And the driver’s door was wide open, and the back door on that side.
It might just be enough.
Kate tossed the box into the back seat and slammed the door shut. She plopped down into the driver’s seat, bumping her leg hard against the steering wheel. She closed the door and didn’t even bother locking it. She jammed her foot down onto the brake pedal and shifted into drive. The front of the car was pointed toward a small side road that led back out to the narrow, two-lane road through the woods.
At least a dozen rippers were coming that way.
Kate didn’t hesitate; she shifted into reverse. The last time she had looked at the three rippers, they had been heading for Messed-up Nose, but when she turned around to look out the rear window, she saw a man and a woman rushing toward the car.
She stomped down on the gas pedal. The tires spun on the wet pavement for a moment, and then the car sped back, gaining speed quickly, making that sound small cars make when they back up, a high-pitched whining sound.
Was this car big enough to knock the two rippers out of the way?
Maybe not, but maybe she had built up enough speed. She hit at least one of them, a blur of motion as the ripper was knocked to the side.
Kate turned back around and jammed on the brake, turning the steering wheel at the same time, the car sliding easily on the wet pavement. The world outside the windshield was a blur, and then everything came to a stop. She shifted into drive and punched the gas again.
They drove past the van, past the woman who was already down on the ground next to Messed-up Nose, lapping at the blood and tearing at the wound in his neck. He was screaming and thrashing, still alive. Kate hated herself for it, but she was glad he had hung on long enough to be eaten, to feel the pain of it.
A few other rippers were by the lobby doors, but there were none coming from across the street. Kate raced toward the road, turning the wheel when she got onto the road, the car sliding again. She felt like a stunt driver in the movies, but she was sure what she was doing didn’t look pretty—but at least it was working so far.
They might be okay as long as the horde of rippers from beyond the motel office didn’t change direction and pour into the street, heading them off before they got down the road.
I’ll turn around. If that happens, I’ll turn around and find another way.
But the rippers hadn’t come yet, and she kept on driving, the car gaining speed quickly. She had to be careful—the road curved to the left right after the motel; she couldn’t lose control now; she couldn’t wreck the car when they were so close to getting away. As much as she didn’t want to, she took her foot off the gas pedal and eased it down onto the brake, slowing the car a little as they approached the curve in the road.
The rippers had stopped. They were so close now, halfway between the edge of the road and the motel office. But they were still too far away. They hadn’t changed direction in enough time, and now they couldn’t catch them.
But there could be others in the woods.
Kate didn’t think about that; she concentrated on the road, her hands gripping the steering wheel. And then they were around the curve of the road as the rain fell harder.
She finally had a chance to look at Brooke. The girl was staring back at her. The gun she had used to kill a man moments ago was on the floorboard like she had dropped it there, like she didn’t want to touch it again.
“You okay?” she asked Brooke.
No answer; she just looked at her.
Kate didn’t say anything either. She looked at the road again. The rain was falling harder, the woods denser, but at least there weren’t any other houses or buildings right now, less of a chance for a horde of rippers to rush out into the street.
Now that they were safe, or as safe as they could be for now, Kate began trembling. She couldn’t stop her body from shaking, and she gripped the steering wheel tighter to control the car as they sped down the winding road through the woods. Her body was suddenly weak and she was lightheaded. She was afraid she might pass out.
Get it together, Kate. Hold on. Be strong. God helps those who help themselves.
Her eyes were suddenly blurry with tears, and that wasn’t helping her see in the pouring rain.
She knew she should probably pull over, but she didn’t dare take the chance. She wiped at her eyes, focusing on the windshield. It was raining harder now and she could barely see out the windshield. She turned the wiper blades up to the highest setting, the wipers thumping back and forth.
She glanced at Brooke again. She was still staring right at her.
Kate slowed the car down to twenty miles an hour, creeping toward the side of the road, the car’s tires splashing through puddles, a wave of water splashing up onto the side of the car, obscuring the windows on that side for a moment. She had the headlights off so her vehicle wouldn’t be noticeable to any rippers or any other people—like the DAs, whoever they were. She didn’t want to be lit up on the road like a carnival ride. She guessed if they did run into any other traffic, they would have their headlights off too, and she wanted to stay as far from the middle of the road as she could until she could see better.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. She could feel the tears wanting to come again, but the tears weren’t brimming up in her eyes. Maybe she had cried herself out already. Maybe she was too dehydrated to cry. “I’m sorry I fell asleep. I was supposed to stay awake and watch over us. But I was so tired and I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”
Brooke reached out and touched Kate’s hand, holding it gently.
Kate looked at Brooke. That lost look wasn’t in her eyes anymore. She smiled at Kate, a real smile now.
And that brought the tears.
“We’re going to your home,” Brooke said. “We’ll be safe there.”
Kate felt like confessing right then as she drove. She felt like telling Brooke the truth. Why keep lying to her? What good was that going to do? How was that protecting her?
But she didn’t. She just nodded. “We’ll be safe soon,” she said.
Brooke’s smile widened, and that was good enough for Kate.
PART 3
CHAPTER 28
When the afternoon came, the pouring rain let up, becoming a drizzle, and then it was gone. The sky was still overcast, but there were a few patches of blue beginning to show through the quickly-moving clouds, a few rays of sunshine beaming down onto the road for a few seconds as they drove.
By two o’clock, Kate and Brooke found a large trailer park on the edge of the next town. The park was spread out down in a wide valley with the mountains rising up in the distance. Her hometown lay somewhere in those mountains. They were close now, maybe a day’s drive away if things went well. Maybe two days.
They needed to stop for the night. They needed to rest, to sleep, to eat. Kate stopped at the clubhouse of the trailer
park. Even though the clubhouse was situated near the front of the park, it was still set back far from the road, partially hidden by a stucco wall that ran alongside the road, and overgrown landscaping.
Kate parked the Toyota on the grass behind the back door, out of view from the road. Their little white Toyota had gotten them this far, but now it was nearly out of gas. They were going to have to find some gas soon. Or another vehicle. There were probably plenty of vehicles in the trailer park, but Kate didn’t feel like venturing into the park just yet.
Like at the motel, Kate and Brooke waited in the car for fifteen minutes with the windows rolled down, listening for the call of rippers and watching for any movement. But there was nothing so far. The streets of the trailer park down in the gently descending land below them, were littered with trash and debris, abandoned vehicles, and the remnants of dead bodies, mostly just picked-clean bones and lengths of bloodstained tattered clothing now. What the rippers hadn’t eaten, the birds, rodents, and insects had feasted on. Buzzards were perched on some of the trailer roofs, waiting in the silence, much like Kate and Brooke were doing. The smell of rot and decay hung in the cold, humid air—that smell was always there now.
Kate was hungry, but she didn’t feel like eating with the smell drifting in through the window. Neither did Brooke. They had the stash Kate had taken from the DA gang’s van; and they could wait a few more minutes to search through it and discover what treasures they’d ran off with, what luck had brought them, what God had given those who had helped themselves, what numbers the cosmic dice had turned up.
Finally, when Kate felt reasonably sure things were safe, she and Brooke got out of the car and tried the back door of the clubhouse. It wasn’t locked because the door jamb was broken from the door being smashed in—like so many other doors they came across.
The inside of the clubhouse was bigger than it looked from the outside. There were a lot of rooms. It took them nearly half an hour to inspect all of the rooms, the windows, and the four doors that led outside. There were two bathrooms (a men’s and a women’s) and a kitchen, but no running water or food. Of course the clubhouse had been ransacked, like every other building Kate had come across since leaving her home. Some of the furniture was broken. There was trash everywhere, a few holes in the walls, some broken windows.
But at least the place was empty. Kate did her best to barricade the doors, but she couldn’t make the place a fortress. She did the best she could do.
They made their bed in a corner behind some furniture Kate piled up like a wall in front of them, trying to make the pile of furniture look as natural as possible. They were in the largest room in the clubhouse, a room where parties had been thrown at some point in the past, maybe some Bingo games played, neighborhood meetings held, maybe even church services and a community garage sale. From their corner they had access to two of the four doors that led outside and a few of the windows. It was the best she could do—she was no survival expert and she was learning on the fly.
“Home for the night,” Kate told Brooke.
Brooke just nodded and showed a small smile.
They were better off here than they had been at the motel office. This time they’d had plenty of daylight to barricade the doors and inspect the place, get the layout down. They had the cardboard box she had taken from the van, and they finally inspected the stuff inside: a half-gallon of water, four cans of soda, eight cans of food (two of them had the wrappers torn off, and Kate decided they would save these “surprise” dinners until last), a sleeve of club crackers, two tins of sardines, a can opener, a plastic baggy of various plastic and metal silverware, an old plastic cup, and a pack of gum.
Brooke had been upset about leaving her drawing tablet behind in the motel office, but at least they had left the plastic basket of supplies they’d gotten from the dollar store in their back seat, and the new drawing tablet and pack of pencils were in there. She had brought those inside with her to the clubhouse. It seemed important for Brooke to draw. As soon as they had finished eating, Brooke had settled against the wall, her back to it, her knees drawn up to her, the tablet balanced there as she drew.
Kate wondered if Brooke was drawing the man and woman again; the people that might be her parents.
As Brooke drew, her pencil scratching lightly at the paper, Kate laid their damp coats and jackets out over the stack of furniture to dry. She found some blankets and small throw pillows in a linen closet off of the kitchen.
They still had both of their flashlights, the small one and the larger one. Kate still had the folded map with her route drawn on it—she always kept that in her jacket pocket.
And they had the gun. Kate kept the gun close, but she hated touching it. She’d never used a gun before. This one seemed ready to fire because Brooke had used it to kill the man in the dirty baseball cap. Kate had handled the gun carefully after she’d sat down on the blankets in the corner of the large room, inspecting it. She saw where the magazine went into the handle, but she was too afraid to check it for bullets. There was a button on the side and she pushed it, revealing a red dot. She figured this was the safety, but she wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t like she could test out the weapon right now.
“Are you tired?” Kate asked Brooke.
Brooke didn’t look up from the drawing she was focused on, but she shook her head no.
Kate stared at Brooke for a moment in the late afternoon light. She looked almost like a normal kid drawing in her tablet.
“I think one of us should try to stay awake while the other one sleeps,” Kate suggested.
Brooke glanced at her and nodded.
“You think you can stay awake for a few hours until it gets dark?” Kate hated to ask, but she needed a few hours of sleep. She wanted to protect Brooke, but it wasn’t realistic to think that she could stay awake for the next forty-eight hours. Eventually she would just pass out if she didn’t get a little sleep.
“Yes,” Brooke said and then looked back at her drawing, the pencil in her hand moving quickly across the paper, shading something in.
“You just keep drawing for a while,” Kate told her. “And when it gets dark you wake me up, okay?”
Brooke nodded.
Kate made the blankets and pillows as comfortable as she could, but she could still tell that she was sleeping on a floor. She closed her eyes, not sure if she would be able to go to sleep or not. She was still nervous, not only imagining a pack of rippers sneaking up to the clubhouse now, but also another gang. The man with the baseball cap had said something about taking them to see someone called the Dragon, obviously their leader. Maybe the D in DA stood for dragon.
She wondered how many of them there were. There had to be more because the man with the messed-up nose had promised that the Dragon would never stop looking for her. But how many more were there? Those men she’d seen in her neighborhood spray-painting that DA symbol on her front door and other doors had to be part of this group. How were they this organized right after the Collapse?
Maybe these men had already been a group, some kind of doomsday cult or militia or preppers. Maybe they had been ready for the Collapse. They had trained for it. They had the proper equipment to ride out the plague. They couldn’t all be immune like her, Brooke, and Ted, could they?
Yes, all of that seemed possible. But it still didn’t answer the question of why those two men at the motel had been looking for her and Brooke. They seemed to know who they were right away. How?
Within a few minutes, Kate was drifting off to sleep. And then, in her dreams, she saw the two men in the motel parking lot again.
CHAPTER 29
In her dream Kate was back in the motel parking lot. It was morning, the sky a ceiling of rainclouds, a mist all around them, fog everywhere in the distance.
She was alone. Brooke wasn’t with her. Their little white Toyota wasn’t parked behind the office anymore. But the black van was there, the DA symbol on the side of it in white paint. The man Brooke had shot was
still right where he had fallen beside the van. He was just a skeleton now with bits of meat and gristle clinging to his bones, his skull detached from his body, some of his arm and leg bones long gone, carried off by rippers or even animals. His clothes were torn bits of cloth and rags stretched out along the pavement, matted to the ground with blood and rain. Flies hovered over the bones. Maggots crawled among the bits of flesh, crawling in and out of the eye sockets, pouring out through the open mouth. A few rats scurried from under the van up to the man’s skull, sniffing at it, inspecting it. One rat waited under the van next to the man’s sneaker.
The van’s back doors were wide open, cardboard boxes spilled out; shredded and wet pieces of cardboard were now bits of mush in the puddles along the pavement. Anything edible was long gone, only paper and bits of trash left behind for the rodents to pick at.
“He won’t stop looking for you.”
Kate jumped at the sound of the man’s voice, turning around and backing up a step. She knew that voice—it was the man with the messed-up nose, the man who had woken her up by slapping her. He lay on the pavement, the puddle of rain-diluted blood under what was left of his body, bones stripped of meat, clothing in tatters, another cloud of flies buzzing around.
Like his partner, the man’s head was detached from his torso. But unlike his partner, his head was untouched, all the flesh still there. Even the sharp piece of wood Kate had used to kill the man still poked out of the stub of his neck. His head was on its side, his face staring at her, the stick of wood jutting up into the air. He stared at her with his narrowed eyes underneath the carved D and A on his forehead. “He’ll never stop looking.”
“Who?” Kate breathed out.
“You know who.”
“Why does he want us? I don’t know who this person is.”
Kate backed away another step even though there was no chance of him coming after her. In a way, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she was dreaming. Yet part of her felt like she was really at the motel parking lot again, seeing this in real time. It was like she’d been teleported to that spot in her sleep.
