Periodically, she looks back toward the farmhouse, which grows smaller each time. She’s back on the road, this time with colder weather and only bridges to sleep under. Although she felt a certain peace at times during her initial ride south, Emily isn’t sure that she’ll find that again. At the moment, she feels extremely lonely.
She comes upon a rise, having to push her bike up the final part. Turning for a last look back, she sees the house in the far distance, merely a speck of white showing on the otherwise empty plain.
She continues to gaze at the house, the sadness in her heart increasing with every second she looks at what she had come to think of as her second home. Her vision blurs as tears form in her eyes.
Why did they have to come there?
She’s once again the last person alive, the hope she felt gone in an instant of terror. Wanting to keep the hope that there are others, the pain she feels deep in her chest tells her otherwise. With a sniffle, and wiping away the tears flowing down her cheeks, Emily turns and pushes off, coasting down the other side of the hill. The house disappears over the rise, her new home forever gone.
Chapter Five
Farmhouse, miles south of Pineville
October 13
With the hills drawing ever closer now as her most prominent view, Emily pedals her bike down the center of the highway, weaving in between the white stripes separating the lanes. Although she feels all alone, there’s also a certain comfort. She’s scared to be out on her own again, but she doesn’t have the fear that she’s come to associate with being around others.
They all turn into bad people.
Her thoughts turn to the soldiers who helped her get out of Pineville, wondering if they made it or if they were now also bad people. However hard she tries, she can’t imagine the big one who led them being one of the creatures.
He must have made it somehow, the thought giving her a measure of comfort.
She can see the others who were with him possibly turning, but not the sergeant. To her, he seemed able to survive anything thrown at him; she wishes she were more like him. A brisk wind flows out of the pass ahead of her, the gusts flinging her hair back. Emily feels the cold on her cheeks each time a strong draft blows, but overall, she feels warm wrapped in her coat, with the exertion of pedaling.
As the ridges grow larger, the sun sinks lower into the west. It won’t be long until she needs to find some kind of protective shelter to spend the night, but nothing is directly visible; the plains are empty and stretch wide to either side. A short time later, with the hills shadowed by the lowering sun, Emily stops at a blue sign posted by the side of the road.
REST AREA: 2 Miles.
They’ll have buildings there, Emily thinks, but she is wary that there might also be people, bad or not.
The wheels begin turning as she starts off, eager, but also hesitant. Her journey has been a rollercoaster of emotions. Terribly missing her parents, alone and scared, then finding a measure of peace. The horrific encounters with the bad people, even though they seem to leave her alone. The fear, then the reassurance of finding other survivors. Finally, the letdown of having to flee the house and be on the road again.
Emily pushes her bike over the crest of a long climb, having had to walk her bike up the incline. It wouldn’t be so difficult if the bike had any sort of gears, but it’s a single sprocket definitely not made for any long-distance travel. At the top, she sees stands of trees lining both sides of the road. Roads lead to and from the freeway, vanishing behind the trunks. Taking out a pair of binoculars, she focuses and searches for any movement within the trees. Although she can’t see very far past the tree line, she is able to observe parts of tan buildings. Watching for a long moment, she doesn’t witness any movement.
Stowing the glasses, she pushes slowly onward, her anxiety increasing with each turn of the pedals. As she draws closer to the rest area, Emily cranes her neck this way and that, attempting to get different angles in order to see if there are any cars or people. The shadows cast by the trees in the lowering sun makes it difficult to see much of anything other than vague shapes within the gloom. The tan buildings stand out like beacons, the only objects other than the treetops being subjected to direct sunlight.
Taking the off-ramp, Emily pedals between the tall trees. The tops sway in the wind making swishes that are almost roars. Even though most of the rest stop is in shadow, it’s easier to see through the trees once she’s out of the direct light. The chill blasts of wind are stopped by the thick trunks, but the still air feels colder. Fearfully, Emily rides further, her head turning in every direction, the squeak of the chain across the sprockets reverberating off the trees.
Emily stops at the entrance to the parking lots, larger lanes on one side of the restrooms for the big trucks, smaller ones on the other side for cars. There are no vehicles in sight, giving her a small measure of relief. With the light beginning to fail, she pedals toward the buildings, riding up a handicap ramp to get onto the sidewalk.
She parks the bike near several vending machines, their lights glowing.
I should have grabbed some money out of the tills in the stores, she thinks, wanting to raid the cookies, sandwiches, and sodas.
The last bit of direct sunlight vanished minutes ago, leaving everything gloomy with a bluish tint. She anxiously looks around the area, expecting to see bad people running out of the woods surrounding the parking lots. Seeing nothing, she eyes the large concrete brick restrooms. Night is setting in and she needs to find cover, but the buildings look sinister in the dim light.
Ready to scamper to her bike and flee, Emily cracks open the door to the women’s restroom. Light seeps through the opening. She listens, but only hears the swish of the wind as it blows across the tops of the trees.
“Hello,” Emily calls, her voice echoing against the brick walls.
There’s no answer. She steps inside, uncomfortable with the knowledge that there’s only one exit. If someone comes in, she won’t be able to escape. The interior is lit with the stark light from the wire-covered lamps on the ceiling. Emily wrinkles her nose at the smell of stale urine. The room is warmer than the outside, a small heater in one of the upper corners taking some of the edge off. It’s still chilly, but not nearly as cold as the parking lot.
Going from stall to stall, she flushes two toilets that have yellow water in their bowls, relieved to find that the water is still working. Walking back outside, she tries to wheel her bike through the door, but can’t fit it no matter how she angles it. Giving up, she unloads the supplies in the basket, attempting to hide the bike while keeping it close. Emily doesn’t want to leave a sign outside to show that she’s here, but at the same time she wants the bike close in case she has to flee in a hurry.
Reentering, she unrolls the sleeping bag on the concrete floor, looking to make sure she isn’t about to put it in some stain left by another. In the bright light, she sits on the bag, the fluffy layers providing little in the way of softening the hard floor, and digs through her pack. Finding a can of ravioli, she opens it and begins spooning the cold contents into her mouth. The food tastes both good and bad. She likes the stuffed pasta squares, but the hardened grease in the sauce is almost too much to take.
Washing her spoon clean in the sink, she tosses the empty can in the trash. As the can thumps against something else in the bin, Emily thinks how there’s no one left that will be coming to take the garbage away. For some reason, that deepens her sadness. Along with her carefree days running through the neighborhood after school, that’s just another thing that is gone forever.
Feeling down, Emily slumps to the floor and climbs inside of her sleeping bag. Placing her bag behind her as a pillow, she lies down, staring at the starkly lit ceiling. She looks around, contemplating whether this could be her new home.
It has shelter, and there’s some food in the machines outside. The water works and the trees will have wood for fires. And, there’s a bathroom.
It has every
thing she needs, but in no way does it feel like the house she left.
That felt like a home. This feels like…well, only a shelter. But, maybe that’s all I need.
Emily ponders whether she will be able to survive in the rest area. Winter is coming and that will bring cold worse than that already outside. If she finds that this place isn’t good enough once the snows hit, she won’t be able to travel to search for a better one.
The house is less than a day’s ride away, but that is filled with bad people, so that’s out.
She feels like she’s barely made it this far, and needs to find other survivors.
If there are any.
She can’t continue to spend the nights in culverts or roadside bathrooms. At some point, she needs to find a home where she can stay. There needs to be food, water, and heat. She ponders how much wood she’d be able to store at the rest stop. Once the snows and rains come, she won’t be able to use the wood on the ground. If she works hard enough, she may be able to get enough, but staying just doesn’t feel right. It might just be a mental thing, but she wants a house. Emily’s thoughts go back and forth, not finding a solution, until sleep overcomes her and she enters troubled dreams.
* * * * * * *
South of Pineville
October 14
Light slowly intrudes through Emily’s eyelids. Realizing that she’s awake and where she is, she sits upright. Her back feels like someone hit it with a hammer after sleeping on the concrete floor. It’s chilly as she crawls out of the bag, wipes the sleep from her eyes, and uses the room for its intended purpose. Her back aches so much that it makes the decision about whether to stay or go for her. She thinks about laying some of the needle-lined boughs from the trees on the floor to make it more comfortable, but decides that she needs to keep searching for a better place.
Cracking the entrance door open a notch, she peeks outside. The sun’s rays poke through the trees in streams of light, chilled air sweeping through the opening. Seeing no one in the lots, she closes the door and eats a cold breakfast. Her sadness is still with her, but it feels subdued, almost numb.
Stowing everything and putting her goods in the bike, she grabs the hand axe she brought from the house and hits the back of blade on the Plexiglas of one of the food vending machines. The axe bounces off the clear shield, repelling the attack as if it were nothing. Emily tries again with the same result.
“Crap on a stick!”
Frustrated, she reverses the axe, swinging hard blade first. The axe penetrates the Plexiglas, embedding itself, but the vending machine refuses to let go. Emily pulls and tugs on the handle, eventually able to remove it by working it back and forth. Hitting the cut with the hammer-like back, the Plexiglas breaks. Widening the hole, she reaches in and begins taking the cookies, chips, and sandwiches. The soda vending machine takes considerably longer, but she manages to bash a hole in it. Remembering the last experience when she gorged on sweets and soda, she grabs the water bottles, but desperately wants to take the Dr. Pepper bottles lying enticingly in their slots.
One…I’ll have just one, she thinks, grabbing a bottle.
In the end, she downs two, emitting continuous soda burps. Emily grabs a third, and then a fourth, putting them with her other supplies.
In case I want to treat myself.
With the sun rising higher in the sky, Emily pedals out of the parking lot and to the highway. The gray ribbon of pavement stretches up and over the hill in the direction she came from. It does the same in the other direction as it heads toward the rising hills.
Keep on going on, she thinks, not sure where she had heard that quote before.
Clouds race across an otherwise blue sky driven by strong winds overhead. There’s still a brisk breeze that flows down the highway, tossing her hair in her face as it gusts. Entering the highway, Emily continues her search for others or a place where she can survive the coming winter months.
After a time, the kinks in her back fade. Trees begin lining the road as she climbs into the hills. She has to push her bike most of the way up each rise. At times, the road slopes down the backside and she’s able to coast. Slowly, she leaves the plains behind and the hills close in, the highway condensing down into two lanes with a yellow divider separating opposite directions of travel.
After a while, the road flattens out and begins following a river with water flowing rapidly around embedded rocks. Emily wonders if she’s headed into more mountainous terrain, which is the exact opposite of what she wants with the coming colder weather. However, she doesn’t find that she can actually turn around. There’s nothing behind her that she wants to be a part of. Behind is the known. As much as the unknown scares her, she feels that it’s really her only option…her only hope.
Emily passes a few houses and cabins that line the riverbank. She sees a few bad people through the trees where the buildings are close together. Each time she sees them, hope flares that she’s found other survivors, but vanishes quickly when she notes their erratic behavior. Each time, she rides away in disappointment.
Standing astride her three-wheeler, Emily looks into a small town ahead. Wooden buildings line the highway: two cafes, a gas station, one motel, and a couple of fast food restaurants.
Oh man, what I wouldn’t do to have everything in that Dairy Queen.
As much as she’d like to go into the parlor and devour ice cream, the bad people roaming the streets halt any further thoughts in that direction. Not wanting to again ride into the midst of bad people, she looks for an alternate route. The rapids of the river on one side and steeply rising hills on the other limit her options.
The only way around would be through the trees skirting the town near the hills. She could just go through town and hope that the place is like the others where she was left alone. Even though she hasn’t been hurt, or even chased, the thought of being among them still terrifies her.
Climbing completely off her bike, she removes her pack and places it in the basket where it’s reasonably stable if she holds it with one hand. Emily starts down an embankment covered with large loose stones. The steep angle makes it difficult to hold onto the bike and keep her balance, her feet sliding on the rocks. The front wheel catches the stones wrong and turns sharply. Trying to hold onto the handlebars and straighten the wheel, her feet again slip. Letting go of the bike, she tries to catch herself, but still falls on her elbows and knees. In a clatter of noise, the bike tumbles the rest of the way down the slope.
Sharp pain lances up her arm as her elbow hits hard on one of the stones, scraping the skin. Emily’s slide comes to a stop and she sits up, cradling her elbow with tears forming from the pain. Rocking back and forth, everything else forgotten, she tries to push the pain away. The hurting fades and she pulls her hand away to find a blood oozing from a deep cut.
In a moment of panic, Emily thinks she’s done it this time. She’ll bleed to death on the side of the road because she was stupid! Staring at the wound, expecting a gush of blood to run down her arm, she calms a little seeing that very little is actually coming out of the gash. It still hurts, but she doesn’t think she’ll bleed to death.
Cradling her elbow again, she looks down at the bike lying on its side, her stuff scattered around it.
Well, that’s one way to get it down, she thinks, carefully sliding the rest to the bottom.
Righting the bike and putting her gear back in place, Emily begins pushing it across a field of tall grass. Her thoughts focus on how she needs to think more about her decisions. She could have been seriously hurt.
What if I had fallen on my head? I could have cracked it open.
However, the bike becomes harder to push through the field. The tall weeds keep catching in the spokes and wrapping around the axles. Every few steps, Emily has to reach down and remove the thick stems. Her frustration grows each time until she about ready to either punch the bike or the grass. The fact that neither will alleviate her anger only increases it.
The bike catche
s again. Emily stands in the field, staring at the stalled bike, feeling like she’s going to explode. She angrily yanks on the bike, trying to pull it free. After a couple of pulls, the yanks become more about being mad than actually accomplishing anything. The bike upends, spilling everything to the ground. Emily screams out of frustration, kicking at the grass. Answering screams come from the nearby town.
“Oh crap…oh crap…oh crap,” Emily mutters, her anger instantly turning to fear.
She looks back toward the road and then to the trees. She’s only managed to make it barely a third of the way across the field. The grass is flattened to a large degree along the path she’s taken. With panic rising, Emily quickly uprights the bike and puts her belongings in the baskets. With a pounding heartbeat, she turns the three-wheeler around and frantically begins pushing it back toward the highway.
Adrenaline courses through Emily as she pushes the bike up the steep incline, her feet slipping most of the way. No matter how much she slips, she keeps her legs pumping. Arriving on the pavement, she dons her backpack and hops on, madly pedaling away from the town.
Looking over her shoulder, she sees that several bad people have gathered near the edge of the town, although they are just standing still. Some of them turn around and make their way back into the township, only a couple remaining. Emily stops and turns the bike around to watch.
None of them are chasing her, which her imagination had guaranteed was happening as she pushed her way back to the road. As a matter of fact, nothing at all appears to be happening. It’s as if the creatures were curious about the scream, but then thought nothing more of it and went back to whatever it is that bad people do.
Emily pedals slowly toward the town, the two remaining bad people turning around and leaving. At the place where she left the road, she stops. The trail through the grass is clearly defined and shows that she didn’t progress very far through the field.
Why can’t anything go right? I can’t even push a bike through grass!
ARES Virus (Book 3): Phoenix Rising Page 5