by Raymond Lee
“It feels weird,” Torres agreed, “but Sara does have a point about us not knowing what we’ll find in Nebraska. Maybe it just feels weird because we just came from a big city and traveled through another, and we’ve gotten used to everywhere we go being infested with those freaks.”
Sky chewed her bottom lip as Torres turned toward the road and studied the other side, the side he’d decided against trying when they’d found the area. Sara jumped up and down, hands clasped under her chin, far too excited about going to a grocery store. Sky figured she must really need those tampons and was once again happy she was too young. Finding a candy bar or Twinkies was enough to make her day. She’d found both inside the gas station and was more than ready to exit the strange little pit stop. She hadn’t been weirded out by the lack of neon lights in Vegas, but something about the tiny little patch of civilization in the Utah desert had her palms sweating. She rested one of those sweaty hands on the gun she’d been keeping at her hip since Torres had found a holster for her, afraid she might finally have to use it.
“Fine,” Torres said, turning back toward them, “but we do this the smart way.”
“Yay!” Sara clapped her hands together with joy.
“Stop doing that!” Torres scolded her. “I just said we were going to do this the smart way and there you go clapping your hands and jumping up and down like an idiot. Are you trying to attract the attention of everything in the vicinity?”
“Yeah, all none of it.” Sara opened her arms wide and turned in a circle. “Face it, Torres, we’re safe here. Hell, we could probably camp here tonight and head back out in the morning. I mean, we gotta rest sometime, right?”
“That’s why we’re driving in shifts.”
“Yeah, but you won’t sleep while I’m driving because you’re too much of a control freak.”
“If by control freak you mean I’m cautious because there are flesh eating monsters all over the place and I’m trying to keep both of you alive then yeah, I guess I’m a control freak. Sue me.” He opened Sky’s door and swept his arm toward the back seat, gesturing for her to get in before turning on Sara again. “I’m going to drive over there and take a look around but we are not getting out until and unless I say so. We definitely aren’t going inside anywhere unless I say so and if we do go in we do it my way.” He closed Sky’s door and walked around to the driver’s side. Sara was already sitting inside with her arms folded, lips plumped out in a pout, and the echo of her slamming door ringing in Sky’s ears by the time Torres slid behind the wheel and pulled his own door shut. “Slamming doors is another stupid thing to do. I shouldn’t even do this. I should just get back on the interstate and go.”
“Yeah, but I’m adorable and you like me.”
Torres grunted and hooked a thumb toward the back seat. “She’s adorable. You’re a pain. You give me a headache, and maybe a small ulcer.”
“You still like me.”
Torres’s eyes twitched again and he muttered under his breath in Spanish before starting the car.
They crept past the two gas stations on the other side of the road and a Burger King that made Sky homesick for a place and time before zombies leapt off the screen and into reality. As she pondered the thought of never having another greasy fast food cheeseburger again Sara clapped her hands together and squirmed in her seat. Torres continued muttering in Spanish and Sky didn’t need to know the language to know he used a lot of bad words. His brow knit in frustration the happier Sara got.
The gas stations on this side of the road weren’t easy to see into. They had advertisements all over the glass like the store Torres had worked at, blocking most of the view from the outside. Sky followed Torres’s lead and strained to see past the advertisements, searching for movement within the stations but could see nothing. The Burger King was brick with several windows in the front and glass doors. Sky didn’t see any shadows moving around the darkened interior. By the time they reached the grocery store they hadn’t seen a creature stirring, but the layout didn’t allow them to completely drive around the building like they had done at the gas station across the street.
“There’s nothing out here,” Sara said as Torres sat idling outside the grocery store. “What are we waiting for?”
“I don’t like it,” Torres said. “We can’t see in there.”
The grocery store was brick and had no windows. The only way to see inside was through the glass doors which only allowed a view down two aisles. If there was anything creeping around inside the store there’d be no way to see it unless it happened to wander into one of those two aisles. Torres made a U-turn and pointed the car toward the interstate. Sky released a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding, and the queasy feeling in her stomach turned into relief.
“What the hell?” Sara looked back at the grocery store. “There’s food in there, Torres!”
“We have food. And you have tampons. I saw them in the bag you filled at the gas station.”
“We don’t have enough to last.”
“We have enough to last until Nebraska. I’m not risking our lives going inside a grocery store we can’t even fully see into, especially in this kind of area.”
“This kind of area?” She barked out something similar to a laugh but nowhere near as jovial. “Yeah, because a quiet, peaceful area is so dangerous. It’s much better to wait until we’re in an area overrun by those monsters.”
“Did you not even notice the residential area up the street? All those houses packed in together?”
“Yeah? And?”
“And where the hell do you think those people are? I guess you think all those people packed up and left for the military site and just left that whole gas station across the street completely untouched. No one had a car full of kids who’d need snacks and water for the trip?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the same thing Sky’s been saying. It’s weird. This place should be completely picked over but it isn’t. I can’t see a whole town full of people packing up and heading for a military camp without grabbing something from the stores first. I also don’t see them starving if they chose to stay here. Those two aisles that I could see in the grocery? They were stocked. They were neat.”
“And?” Sara asked, brows raised. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Yeah, it means no one made it out of those houses. No one who eats food anyway.”
“What are you saying?”
“Sara, think about it. It’s a small community in the middle of nowhere. If one person was infected it wouldn’t take much to infect the rest of the town. I think the virus spread through that neighborhood back there like wildfire, leaving a lot of hungry infected milling about without a morsel to eat in months and here we are, three steak dinners, warm and ready for the taking. I am not serving our asses up on a platter.”
“Torres, there is no one around.”
Torres pressed his hand down on the horn and left it there, announcing their presence to anything within earshot. Not long after, the grocery store doors opened and a group of infected shuffled out. Another four shuffled out from the Burger King, and Sky turned in her seat to see many silhouettes moving from within the houses.
“I believe my point is made.” Torres took his hand off the horn and lifted his foot from the brake before any of the infected could reach them.
Sara’s mouth hung open until they got back on the interstate. “I just wanted to make sure we had food.”
“You just wanted to prove yourself a badass,” Torres told her, not taking his eyes off the road. “I don’t take the lead and do the things I do because I’m a control freak or because I think I’m the big man in charge. I am in charge because I’m always thinking with my head. I’m always putting Sky first, thinking of her safety and how whatever I do will affect her. I get what we need and don’t take unnecessary chances. You need to stop thinking about how much more you can get or how you can get it or what it wil
l prove to you or others. You’re going to get someone killed. Until you’ve learned enough wisdom to make the right decisions to survive this shit you do what I tell you to do. Clear?”
“Perfectly,” Sara answered, but her tone held a lot of disagreement.
Torres looked at Sky through the rear view mirror and gave her a reassuring grin. “Are you ok, pequenuela?”
“I’m good.”
“OK. It’s going to be a long stretch of desert before we hit Colorado. Maybe you should try to sleep.”
“The two of you might kill each other if I’m not awake to stop you.”
Torres and Sara looked at each other and smiled, nodding their heads.
“You’re probably right, kid. Pass me a protein bar.”
By the time the sun rose the next morning they had reached Colorado and the hostility in the car was thick enough to cut with a knife. Sky had fallen asleep shortly after nightfall but had been awakened by Torres and Sara bickering. Torres was tired, but Sara was scared to drive in the pitch black darkness with nothing but the headlights to illuminate their way. Torres ended up driving through the night, unwilling to pull over and sleep out in the open in the desert. They hadn’t seen anyone else traveling since they’d left Hollywood and the infected people they’d seen since getting back on the interstate had been few and far between, but he refused to put them in a position of vulnerability if a truckload of outlaws or a hungry zombie happened upon them. Having napped during the day and not at all during the night, Sara was having trouble keeping her eyes open once the morning came, once again leaving Torres to drive despite having no sleep at all during their trip. Sky wasn’t surprised when he pulled off the interstate the moment buildings came into view.
“Do we need more gas?”
“Yeah, and I need sleep.” He glared at Sara who was leaning against the passenger door, snoring softly. “If I don’t get any rest before Nebraska Sara isn’t going to make it. I’m going to throw her out of the car while we’re in motion.”
“Why do the two of you argue so much?” Sky asked. “You’re supposed to be the adults.”
“Yeah, she didn’t get the memo on that.”
Torres pulled off into a neighborhood that appeared to be a mix of residences and businesses. There were cars abandoned in the street but they looked as if they’d been there a long time. Gates were left swinging open, some front doors hadn’t been closed behind the people fleeing their homes. Some of the businesses had windows busted out.
“Are we staying here?” Sky asked.
“Not quite here,” Torres said. “I’d prefer an area where the houses aren’t packed together like sardines.”
“Is it more dangerous when the houses are close together?”
“It’s probably easier for the virus to spread when everyone’s all packed in like that. Then there’s the fact that the infected are going to naturally hang around wherever there’s people. I figure the more houses, the more people. Aren’t you tired?”
“Every time I go to sleep the two of you start arguing and wake me up.”
“Sorry. She just pushes my buttons.”
“You don’t like her?”
He flicked a glance at her through the rear view mirror. “I like her, Sky, we just don’t always mesh well. I guess you could say we have conflicting personalities, but she’s part of our little unit we’ve created. Part of why we argue so much is because I’m doing all I can to keep the two of you safe and taken care of, but she’s like a teenager desperate to prove she’s all grown up. I don’t want her doing something foolish and hurting herself, or all of us.”
They continued driving off the interstate until Torres found an area where the buildings were a little more spaced out due to the larger sized yards and bigger parking lots for the nearby businesses. Otherwise the area was similar to where they’d first gotten off the interstate. Cars were abandoned, some had been wrecked. Some houses had windows busted open, and some had doors open. There was a gas station and a small pizza parlor nearby and a small elementary school a block away.
“I think this might do,” Torres said, pulling into the pizza parlor parking lot so that the car faced a row of small houses. “Maybe we’ll get to sleep in beds.”
“You’re going to go inside a house?” Sky’s heart rate picked up. “I thought the houses were more dangerous?”
“They definitely were when the outbreak first hit and for a while after. We know that the infected stay hungry so they are always looking for food. Their food is people so they’re not going to eat a family and then chill in their crib waiting to rot, if they rot. I hope they rot.” He studied the houses across the street from them and pointed to a blue one with the front door open. “Most likely, that one is safe. If a family was in the house they’d be keeping that door locked.”
“What if zombies got in and are eating the family?” Sky asked, knowing all too well that a group of zombies could get inside to attack people. And sometimes they started inside. “What if the family turned into zombies?”
“Again, the door is open. If the family was infected and there’s an open door they would have left through it to eat more people. If zombies got in to kill a family, they would have most likely left once done.”
“There were still zombies in that little town in Utah.”
“There may have been a few well-stocked families hiding out still, keeping them around, or they might have been milling about because where did they have to go? They were in the middle of nothing but desert. We did see some stragglers along the interstate and off walking through the desert in search of food. Who knows how they think? They might not understand traveling long distances, but I have yet to see one not looking for a bite to eat. When I honked my horn back there I rang a dinner bell and you see how they reacted.” He turned toward her. “I’d go straight to Nebraska, Sky, but I’m beat, honey. I have to get some for real sleep. I hadn’t even slept much the day before we left.”
Sky looked at the house he’d been casing. There was an upstairs and from what she could tell, it had at least two or three bedrooms depending if any were on the bottom floor. There may have been kids there about her size. “Do you think there could be coats inside?”
“Yeah, I do, and that’s another reason why I want to try a house. It’s getting cold, especially the closer we get to Nebraska. Sweatshirts and coats weren’t really in stock in California, and I don’t know if stores around here would have them either since the outbreak started in August, but this is Colorado and I’m pretty sure it gets real cold here. I’m sure closets will be full of them. We need some, especially if it turns out that the base is a bust and we have to go farther than Nebraska in search of somewhere safe to stay.”
Both Torres and Sara had mentioned the possibility of the base in Nebraska being blown up, but that was a thought Sky couldn’t bring herself to entertain. She’d thought she came to grips with the fact she’d probably never see Raven again, but when they’d mentioned the possibility of the base in Nebraska not being there, she’d felt like she’d lost her all over again. It turned out there was still hope and every ounce of that hope was in finding Raven at the base, or if not that base, another like it. If all the bases were gone, if even the military couldn’t remain standing, she couldn’t imagine how she’d find Raven, especially if they were traveling in different directions. Or if Raven hadn’t made it. As horrible as it would be to find out her sister was dead, she imagined living the rest of her life not knowing would be just as terrible, maybe more so.
“You’re thinking deep there, kid.”
Sky blinked, realizing she’d been staring off into space, completely consumed by her thoughts of Raven and the bases. “I keep thinking that I think I will never see Raven again, but sometimes I realize I still believe I will, but if the bases are gone… she’s gone. I’ll never find her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I might be a kid, Torres, but I know the country is a really big place and without the in
ternet or phones, or the military, there’s no way we’d be able to find each other.”
He stared at her for a moment, thinking. “If this all ended and the zombies were wiped out, where would she go?”
Sky thought about it and shrugged. “I’d say home, but she did always talk about seeing the world. I don’t know if she’d go back home if she didn’t have me to take care of anymore.”
“Do you have pictures at home?”
“Of course.” Sky nodded. “We have a lot.”
“I’m betting she’d go home for those, or even just because it was a home you shared together. If the base isn’t in Nebraska we’ll stick it out together and I’ll get you home.” He looked back at the house. “But first, I have to get you through the winter and for that we need coats, and I need a freaking nap.” He grabbed Sara’s shoulder and gave her a hard shake.
“Wha— what’s happening?” she asked, groggy as she came out of sleep. She wiped the corner of her mouth and looked out the window. “Where are we?”
“Colorado, and I’m exhausted,” Torres answered. “I have just enough energy to find a place to hole up in and I’m liking that blue house right there.”
“You think a house would be the safest bet?” She scanned the area. “The door is open. Anything could be in there. It could be like walking into a trap.”
“Could be. It could be completely empty. I’m going to jog over, check out the perimeter, stick my head in and take a peek. If nothing stumbles out to get me I’ll wave the two of you over. Come with guns pointed and ready to fire, but only if necessary. We don’t want to make a ton of noise if there are infected in the area. Do not even think about opening your doors let alone taking a single step away from this car unless I wave you over. I mean it, Sara.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I got it. We won’t make a move until you give us the sign.”
Torres did another quick scan of the area and got out of the car. He quietly closed his door, opened the back door and grabbed the bat he’d tossed onto the floorboard earlier. “Make sure you bring some of the food if I wave you over,” he told Sky before kissing her forehead and closing the door.
