“I was born in Australia. My mother is Australian and still lives there. But my father took a job in London.”
“Are they still married?” Zuzana smiled at her and her voice held no judgment.
“Yes, they’re married. It’s complicated.” Harper paused. For some unknown reason she felt compelled to confide in Zuzana. “They are both difficult people. Things work better when they don’t live together.”
“Do you miss them?”
Harper paused again. She glanced in the rearview mirror and made eye contact with Zuzana, who tucked a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear. She nodded to Harper: go on, I’m listening. Harper returned her gaze to the road, and—trying to keep her voice even—said, “No, I don’t miss them at all. I’ve been glad to be free of them.” Her words hung in the air for a moment, and then she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I understand. Family relationships can be very complicated.”
“I can see an end to the forest,” said Harper after a few beats. “There are houses beyond the next bend.”
“This is Záhorská Bystrica. It is very… how do you say, quaint… it is a small borough of Bratislava with preserved peasants’ houses.”
Harper could see the three scooters up ahead. The others were waiting for them where the forest ended and the borough began. Harper slowed the car and pulled up next to Joe. She left the engine idling. She wound the window open and he smiled at her, a sad, melancholy smile that made her chest tighten.
“We’ll follow Lukas straight to the highway from here.”
“How long will it take to reach the border? Do we have any more information about the quarantine-processing center?”
“No, no one has any network connection at all. Everything has gone dark. But we should be there in under an hour,” Joe replied.
“All we can do is hope for the best.” She wound the window back up and waved at Sara, who fluttered her fingers in return. Lukas nodded to her and they began to drive once more.
“I’m feeling positive,” Harper said to no one in particular. “I think this is it. We are finally going to get out of the city.” She glanced at Eva who continued to stare out the window, unresponsive.
They soon found themselves in the middle of a green suburb comprising wide, lush blocks and modest homes. The fire hadn’t touched this part of the city. Thin wire fencing ringed many yards, most overgrown. Harper lost count of the number of rusted corrugated iron sheds she saw, most leaning precariously against a larger building.
“I am glad you are feeling positive. But what do we do if the processing center is closed, or the sickness has spread?” asked Zuzana. She looked at Tomas and shook her head. “I should not have said that.” She started speaking to Tomas in Slovak and Harper watched a sweet smile spread over his face.
“You are very good with him,” said Harper.
“I love children. I never had any of my own, but I wanted them desperately.” There was a note of sorrow in her voice for everything that could have been. Harper’s throat felt dry and she swallowed. It was often hard for her to imagine a woman actually wanting her children.
“The homes look more modern here than a few blocks back,” commented Harper, as she drove around a car that had crashed into an embankment on the side of the road. She could see a man’s body in the driver’s seat, his head resting on the steering wheel as though asleep. “And the fire didn’t come through here.”
She saw movement up ahead and her eyes tracked a pack of dogs as they disappeared across the road and into someone’s yard. There was a voice from beside her and Harper startled, dragging her eyes from the dogs as Eva spoke out loud for the first time since leaving the home. Her voice was thin and raspy. “The fire will come. Everything will burn. Bratislava is gone. We may as well all be dead.” In the silence that followed, Zuzana leaned forward and rubbed her sister’s shoulder gently.
No one said anything as they continued their way through the borough toward the highway. After a few minutes, they reached a long, straight road surrounded on all sides by fields. Rolling hills could be seen in the distance and the smoldering city was visible to their left. Up ahead there was a wide intersection. On the other side of the intersection, the fire had swept through and blackened the buildings and trees. Some homes had been leveled, others stood defiant, their walls scorched or smoking.
“Damn,” said Harper, slowing the Beetle. A white utility vehicle ahead blocked the road just before the intersection. The others had already stopped beside it. Harper put her foot on the brake and they slowed to a stop. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Zuzana and the others. Erik barked as she opened the door.
“We’ll need to shift it,” said Sara, stepping off the scooter and assessing the car. “The rest of the road seems to be clear, but you won’t be able to get the car around this.” Harper surveyed the low metal barrier on one side of the road and the steep embankment on the other.
“Sara, you steer and the rest of us will push,” suggested Joe. Sara eyed the dead body in the driver’s seat. The woman’s face was frozen in a mask of horror, blood rivulets—now dried a familiar rust-brown—running from her nose.
“No way,” said Sara. She pushed her glasses up her nose with one finger and grimaced.
“I’ll do it,” Harper said. She walked around to the driver’s door and opened it. A foul smell wafted out of the cabin and bile rose in Harper’s throat. The woman’s eyes were closed, her skin pale with red splotches. Harper saw that the key was in the engine.
An imagined replay of the woman’s final moments flashed through Harper’s mind. Was she going home after work? Did she have a family? The woman was wearing a long-sleeved blue coverall, like something a gardener might wear. Harper glanced in the back of the utility vehicle and saw a large silver toolbox and various lengths of wood. A deep sadness roll through her.
She dropped down and saw the woman’s phone on the passenger seat. She had stopped her car when the sickness struck. The engine was off, the handbrake on. She had her phone out. She would have been trying to call someone to let them know she was in trouble. But there was no one left to help.
“I’ll try to start the engine,” called Harper. She turned the key in the ignition and after a few hiccups the engine began to run. She leaned across the woman to reach the hand brake. The smell was terrible and the woman’s body unnaturally stiff. Harper grasped the hand brake, released it, and then jumped backwards and began to retch until she was spitting out acidic bile. Her stomach clenched painfully.
She sensed Joe behind her. He put his hand on her back and helped her straighten. He had a bottle of water in his hand, which she took gratefully. “Looks like you don’t need to push the car,” she said to him. “Someone just needs to press the accelerator.”
Joe’s went to the utility vehicle and balanced an arm on the roof of the car. He reached his leg in and put one foot on the accelerator. It sprang to life and Joe jumped back as the vehicle rocketed toward the embankment, hitting the bottom with a loud crunch.
Lukas had lit a cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. “Good work. We are at the highway now. It will not take long to get to the border.” His voice was deadpan and Harper searched his face.
“Are you okay, Lukas?” she asked. “It’s been a pretty hard time for everyone. If you need…” her voice trailed off. What do I offer him? A hug?
He stared at her while he took a long drag of his cigarette, and she began to feel uncomfortable. “Of course I am not fucking okay. Please do not psychoanalyze me. I want to get away from this place. Can we get going?” Harper nodded and averted her eyes. She could see Sara glaring at Lukas in her periphery.
“It wouldn’t kill you to be polite,” said Sara.
“Your non-stop whining is what will kill me,” replied Lukas, his eyes flashing. “So keep your voice down, American.”
“Hey!” said Joe sharply. He took a step closer to Lukas, and the two men glowered at each other.
Harper stepped between them. “Everyone is stressed. Let’s go. Joe, come on.”
Joe exhaled, his jaw clenched tightly, and climbed onto his scooter. “You guys go first, we’ll follow,” said Harper over her shoulder as she headed back to the Beetle. She peered inside and Erik greeted her with a cheerful bark. She slid into the seat and, with the engine going, eased into the intersection and put on her indicator.
“There is no one here to indicate for,” commented Zuzana. But her voice was without malice, and she smiled at Harper.
“Old habits die hard. There are still a few cars on the road but we can easily drive around them,” said Harper. “I just pray the quarantine-processing center is open.”
“What do we do if they are all gone?” asked Tomas in a small voice.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Harper. “We’ll just keep driving until we find help. We’re going to be okay.” She winked at him in the rearview mirror and his big brown eyes blinked back at her. “I’ll keep you safe, Tomas,” she said softly under her breath.
“What is the problem with Lukas?” asked Zuzana.
“He is a hard guy to get to know. He saved my life, though. I think he’s okay. Everyone deals with stress differently, I guess.”
The fields and trees passed by quickly and they made good time up the highway. They passed a handful of solitary cars, their drivers dead at the steering wheel. Some drivers had simply stopped their vehicles on the road, others had continued to drive, crashing into trees or plowing through fields. They passed an overturned truck with its contents splayed across the highway and Harper slowed, driving carefully through the cardboard boxes.
But once they cleared the outskirts of Bratislava, the roads were eerily quiet. There were no cars, no trucks. No sign of life whatsoever. “It looks like the sickness hasn’t spread here yet.”
“Yes, there are no bodies, no abandoned or crashed cars,” replied Zuzana.
“Maybe everyone beyond the city got out alive.” Harper was hopeful, and she and Zuzana shared a smile in the rearview mirror.
They’d been driving for twenty minutes on a quiet stretch of road when Harper glanced at the time on the dashboard. It was approaching nine o’clock in the morning. She noticed the petrol gauge was empty and cursed loudly.
“What is wrong?” asked Zuzana.
“The petrol tank is practically empty. I don’t know how much farther we can drive.”
“We could get another car,” suggested Zuzana. She smoothed her yellow dress nervously. There were no other cars in sight. They managed another minute or two before the car began to splutter and rolled to a stop. Harper jumped out and waved to the others. Joe stopped first and circled back around to them.
“What’s wrong,” he called out. He switched off the engine and jogged over.
“The car is out of petrol.”
“You’re kidding me. This is a bad joke.”
“You’re telling me.”
Joe looked around hopelessly. “There aren’t any other cars, no petrol station. Even if there was a petrol station, it wouldn’t work with the power out unless they had a generator. That seems unlikely.”
Lukas and Sara arrived and Harper filled them in. “We’ll need another vehicle,” she said. “There might be some houses farther along the road. If two of us go on a scooter, they could bring a car back. What do you think?”
“I’ll go,” said Joe.
“I’ll go with you,” added Sara quickly. She glanced sideways at Lukas.
“Okay, we’ll wait here then,” said Harper, forcing a smile. The last thing she wanted was for Joe and Sara to be out of her sight. “Thanks guys. Hurry.” The twins climbed on the silver scooter. Sara lifted her hand and waved, and Harper watched them disappear around a bend up ahead, a growing feeling of dread in her gut.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Harper tried to shake herself out of her despondency. She opened and closed her hands a few times, tensing her arms and releasing, before exhaling deeply. It’s going to be okay. They’ll be back soon.
With another deep breath, she opened the back door for Erik and Tomas. The dog bounded out eagerly and the boy followed close behind. She reached for her bag and a bottle of water, before perching on the bonnet of the car. The sun was warm on her arms and the smell of smoke lingered on the breeze. She watched a raven circling overhead before diving for the ground in a smooth, graceful arc.
Then she heard a noise that set her nerves on edge. It was the faint sound of an engine. “Do you hear that?” she called to Lukas. “It sounds like a car engine.” They both paused and listened intently. The sound was gone.
Lukas shrugged. “I do not hear anything.”
Harper listened once more, but the engine sound was gone. “Tomas, come and have some water, and give some to Erik too.” Erik bounded over on hearing his name and propped his front legs next to hers. She scratched him behind the ears and he licked her hand gratefully. She poured a little water into her cupped hand and the dog drank, before flopping at her feet.
Harper unzipped her bag and pulled out her phone. It was almost completely out of battery. She held it up and tried to open an internet browser. When that failed, she attempted to call her father. As before, there was no network connection, and she dropped the phone back in her bag, watching the screen go black as the battery finally drained of the last of its power.
“What is that thing?” asked Tomas, peering into her bag. She looked past his mess of dark hair and saw the object they pulled from the cave what felt like a lifetime ago. She closed her eyes, seeing Wolf’s face illuminated by the torch light on his mobile phone, like an angel surrounded by darkness. When she opened them, Tomas was looking at her curiously. She took a long sip of water and extracted the object from her bag. She passed it to him.
“Be careful,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, her throat aching from a deep pain of all that had been lost. The pain started in her chest and grew upwards, blooming into razor wire. “We found it in a cave. It was hidden there by people a long time ago.”
A shadow fell over Tomas, and Harper looked up. Lukas was standing behind him, towering over the small boy, his lumberjack frame silhouetted against the low sun. With his perfect beard and broad shoulders, Harper couldn’t imagine him as a teacher. “Let me hold it,” Lukas said. Tomas looked up over his shoulder and passed it to Lukas wordlessly. “I have never seen anything like it. Look how it reflects the sun.” Harper stared at the object. She could see her own face, the bonnet of the car, and behind that… something moving.
“What on earth—” Harper spun around in time to see a man duck behind a tree three hundred feet down the road. In an instant, she was on her feet. Her heart was pounding like crazy, her chest tightening like a vice. “Did you see that?” she yelled at Lukas. “I saw someone behind that tree.”
They ducked down low behind the car. Eva turned her head and looked at them curiously through the front windscreen. Zuzana leaned forward and said something, but they couldn’t make out her words through the thick glass. Harper gestured urgently for them to get down, and a look of fright crossed Zuzana’s face.
“Are you sure?” asked Lukas. He dropped the object in Harper’s bag and she zipped it up, keeping her eyes on the tree. It was a large spruce with a dense canopy and a broad trunk. Behind it was a thicket of trees that lay between the road and a field of golden crops. Erik, sensing the tension, was growling softly.
Harper scanned the surrounds. They were parked in the middle of two lanes, next to them was a narrow grassy strip with two metal barriers, and then another two-lane road meant for traffic traveling in the opposite direction. A footbridge spanned the road about a quarter of a mile away, in the direction Joe and Sara disappeared, where the road curved away gently. Barbed-wire fences on both sides of the road blocked off sporadic patches of forest and cultivated fields.
“I definitely saw someone. He was dressed in black and he ducked behind that tree,” said Harper in a low voice. “We need
to get Eva and Zuzana out of the car. Tomas, stay here with Lukas. Stay low!”
Harper turned and crawled to the open driver’s side door. She lifted her head above the seat. “Come out of the car. I’ve seen someone by those trees behind us. No, don’t look!” Zuzana was craning backwards to look out of the rear window.
“Who is it?” Zuzana asked, a petrified look on her face. “Why do we need to hide from them?”
“They might be friendly, but I don’t want to hang around to find out. Eva, can you make it out this door?”
Eva looked at her with a blank, exhausted look on her face. “Come on, Eva,” said Harper, losing her patience.
“You go,” Eva said after a few moments. “There is no reason for me to run.” Zuzana began to speak in urgent, clipped tones. Eva shook her head and stared out the window. Harper felt anxiety roil her stomach. She clenched her fists tightly and tried to speak in a calm, even voice.
“Eva, we will not leave without you. If you don’t come, you put all of us at risk, including Tomas.” Eva straightened and glanced out the front window. The brown top of Tomas’ head was just visible over the bonnet and his hair rustled in the breeze. Zuzana spoke in Slovak again, and Eva finally nodded. Harper watched her shift and shuffle into the driver’s seat. Her progress was agonizingly slow.
Harper ducked and crawled to the back of the car. She lay low and looked under the car toward the trees. There was no movement. She crawled back to the driver’s seat and found Eva swinging her legs onto the road. Harper reached up and helped her slide out. Eva sat on the road, leaning against the side of the Beetle.
“Come on, Zuzana,” urged Harper. Zuzana crawled between the two front seats and reached the driver’s seat.
“This seems like an overreaction,” said Zuzana. Just as her foot touched the road, there was a loud bang of gunfire, and a crack as something thudded into the car. Zuzana began screaming, and Harper grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the road. They pressed themselves to the ground. Harper could see Erik’s furry body and Tomas’ scared face looking at her from under the car.
Death City: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (Dark Resistance Book 1) Page 15
