The Long Way To Reno

by Mix, Michelle

  I maneuvered through the line of cars and waved my arms, running off the crowded freeway to catch their attention. I felt so freaking relieved when one of them in the lead vehicle waved back and signaled that they were pulling over to get me.

  Chapter Five

  There were five vehicles. These armed soldiers had other civilians with them – shell-shocked people in various states of dress, some wrapped in ugly grey blankets. Their voices were loud when they greeted me, and the vehicle that allowed me in was driven by a guy blasting rock from portable speakers. They had four other civilians in the back. As the female soldier helped me in, I immediately recognized one.

  “Oh man, how awesome, you made it!” Harley exclaimed, practically yanking me into the vehicle to make me sit by him. The soldier shut the doors, rapped on the ceiling. Told me to buckle up while at the same time helping me remove my Fubar as I struggled with it. Before I could answer Harley, I had to thank her for helping me. She looked at my weapon with some amusement before giving it back and taking a seat near the driver and passenger.

  “I was hoping you got away,” Harley continued, looking at me with wide eyes and a big grin. It looked like he’d made a trip to Walmart, too. I remembered seeing the mechanic’s jacket in the men’s section. But I saw the collar of the Halo shirt I’d given him peeking out from his flannel. He also had a gun I remembered seeing in the hunting section sitting across his lap, along with the backpack he’d loaded in the warehouse. This guy was a survivor, I guess. Just like me. I felt better, now, just seeing him.

  I removed my sunglasses, and he winced. “I did. After this happened.”

  “Ooh, ouch…oh, that looks…do you need ice?” he asked.

  Before I answered, I looked at the others. There was an older man sitting across from us, wearing flannel pjs. A high school student with scene hair, tight skinny jeans and an Elmo sweater. A portly woman in a nurse’s uniform. All of them exhausted, shocked and trying not to pay too much attention to us. The girl had been crying – her makeup streaked down her plump cheeks. I wondered if I should share my removal wipes to her, then remembered Harley asking me a question.

  “Oh, I iced it back there. I took some ibuprofen, too. Did you, like, run into those chicks anywhere?” I asked. The rock music being blasted up front was a background to the driver’s screechy voice as he sung along. Looking at the soldiers, while fully decked out in uniform, they looked cheered and upbeat. They spoke loudly over the running motor, bad music and the repeated thumps as tires rotated over railroad ties. I bounced uncomfortably in my seat and realized why the women had their arms crossed over their chests.

  “After that, I didn’t see anybody else,” he muttered. I wondered how he survived. “I thought they got to you. But when I finally got in there, they were fighting amongst each other. One of them had a gun. I left when the Rabid caught up.”

  “I was able to get that gun. But then I dropped it…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to talk about what I did. I clutched tightly onto my vest.

  “The cop, right? I wanted to get it so bad, but things were moving way too fast.” Harley looked at me again. Winced. “Is that…is that your only injury?”

  My scalp hurt. My stomach hurt. I had various aches and pains all over and my knees were hurting. My feet were sore from walking miles in new shoes. I had blisters. I was cold. I think I had to pee, now. But I didn’t want to say all that. I shrugged and nodded.

  He looked relieved. Seriously, what was he going to do if I said all that? He looked at the others, and smiled at them. The girl smiled back. The old man huffed and stared out the windshield. The bench seats were crammed so close together that my own knees pressed against the seat ahead of me. The female soldier laughed suddenly to some joke we didn’t hear, and her buddy looked as if he remembered they had other people in their vehicle. He climbed onto the seat between the old man and his comrade, lifting his sunglasses from his face so that we could look directly into his face.

  I think I fell in love at that moment. He was very handsome – and from the shape of his face and neck, very muscled and manly. My loins may have quivered, but it had to be from the constant vibration the vehicle was making with the railroad ties. Bright blue eyes, thick, high arches of eyebrow, cheeks plump with too many protein shakes and manliness – a tight smile that suggested his bulk was muscle, not fat. Jesus, I didn’t want to be obvious, but this guy made me very happy I was where I was. I quickly ran my fingers through my hair, fixing it hastily to look a little put together. Hoped nothing was smeared as I ran my fingertips around my eyes, satisfied that things were still in place. I think Harley rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t looking directly at him to be sure.

  “Hey guys, just to let ya’ll know, “ he had to practically shout to be heard, and his breath smelled like the minty gum that was visible as he spoke, “we’re cruising it at forty miles an hour. We probably won’t reach Reno until, like, later tonight. Once the ships come out, we have to camp somewhere in Mustang. We’re probably going to take a detour through Virginia City just to get around the mess on the freeway. Creep into the city from the side.”

  “Ridiculous,” the old man cut in sharply. I managed to look away from handsome soldier boy to glare at him for the interruption. “Why not drive into Sparks? Into Wingfield Springs from the mountains? These vehicles, they are equipped for off-road, aren’t they?”

  “They are, but we’re headed to Carson,” he said, and he said it in a way that suggested he’d said this before. “There are emergency camps set up where I said we’ll hit, and we’re dropping all of you off with one of them. Once you’re situated in those camps, we’re on our way. Sparks is out of the question. It was pummeled, man. All of Reno and Sparks was pummeled. The freeways are destroyed, so we have to use the side roads.”

  I stilled. No way. Why would aliens take time out of their Earth-conquering lives to pummel a small city like Reno? Home of the thousand casinos, quickie divorces, scummy outdoor festivals? I felt panic touch me, inch its way to my throat. My parents had to be okay. They just had to be -! God…I hope they didn’t try to use the freeway.

  He looked at me, then winced. Snapped his gum. “Want some ice? Hey, Sandy, got some ice for that?” he then asked before I could answer, referring to the chick in uniform.

  “Yeah, I – girl, what the hell?” Sandy then asked, removing her sunglasses to look at me with bright hazel eyes. She had freckles all over the place, and her lips were huge – but I already decided she was a good person because she was in uniform. “You get that from an infected?”

  “Rabid,” Harley interrupted. He looked proud to have spoken up and said, “We named them Rabid. Because it’s almost as if they got rabies.”

  “You ran into them?” the nurse asked, speaking up suddenly and looking at us. I noticed that this information had grabbed everyone’s attention. “Is that why you’re…armed?”

  “Hey, what?” the driver hollered, wanting to be included. He turned his music down. We were finally nearing USA Parkway.

  “These two ran into the infected!” the passenger – I looked at his namebadge. His last name was Benson. The driver had to adjust his rearview to look at us.

  “You…you guys haven’t?” I asked, looking at them with rising trepidation. The other survivors chimed in with their encounters.

  “Nah, man, not yet!” Benson shouted over raised voices and shared stories, while Sandy recovered and bent down to rummage underneath her seat. “We only got the reports! We didn’t see anything but the footage of the bombing!”

  It didn’t make sense that alien invaders would storm Earth to destroy hickville towns like Fernley, and scummy places like Reno.

  Sandy had already snapped and activated an ice pack, and handed it to me. As I held it to my eye gingerly, Harley looked as if he were going to help in some way, so I gave him a dirty look to make him back off. Benson observed this while Sandy put the First-Aid kit away.

  “Are you guys together?” he asked curiousl
y.

  “We’re co-workers,” Harley said, before I could. “We worked at the same place when the Rabid started…eating people.”

  “How could you guys have not seen them, yet?” I asked, bewildered to that. “They were everywhere. It started from people hacking up a lung to just – tearing other people apart.”

  “The aliens were guiding them to do this,” Harley interrupted quickly. I looked at him with annoyance, but I guess I didn’t seem so threatening with an icepack over my face, because he kept talking. “They were ushering the Rabid to attack.”

  “Huh,” Benson said, Sandy hearing the last of this and snapping her own gum. “So, this place…what was this place you guys worked?”

  Harley told him. Then he added, “It was pretty crazy.”

  “I was expecting to be laid off, soon, not eaten,” I muttered. Benson looked at me, then down at the Fubar on my lap.

  “That’s a wicked weapon, girl,” he said with a grin, amused at the thought of me wielding it. “But you’re way too beautiful to have gone through all that trouble, so it looks like I’ll be watching over you personally from now on…”

  I fought the urge to blush and preen. Harley shifted beside me with an impatient wiggle and said, “So am I coming to understand that she and I are the only ones that encountered them? What’d you mean by bombing?”

  “The cities were bombed last night, early morning, by these ships. By the time the space agencies caught wind of their arrival, they’d already broken through the atmosphere,” Sandy supplied. She was a ginger-blonde – it was all tucked underneath her helmet. I had no idea what branch these guys hailed from, their various colored badges bright against decorations of black and blue. From the naval base? But wouldn’t that mean they’re sailors? How did that work on land bases? “They shut down all communications satellites. No cellphones, no Internet. Countries couldn’t contact each other to warn each other. They started from both coasts and worked their way in. Millions were either killed or missing by the time we headed out from base.”

  “What ba –“ I tried to ask, but Harley interrupted again. Probably if I elbowed him, I’d cause some serious internal injury, so I resisted.

  “So then how are you people handling this?”

  “Evacuating civilians, for one. We’re to rendezvous in previously designated areas here in Northern Nevada, camps set up for statewide disasters following this year’s terrorist attacks,” Benson supplied.

  “Do you guys know how to defeat them?” he asked, and all of us waited for the answer.

  Benson looked uncomfortable, looking at Sandy. She didn’t know what to say either, and I hope that the powers beyond these two had a better answer than a shrug.

  Harley sat back, a heavy exhale leaving him. The old guy started to complain over a lack of answer, so the two turned to answer him and each other. The driver had finally turned his bad music off and was straining to pay attention to the tracks and to us. He looked as young as they did. A bad feeling hit me, then, and I lowered the ice pack to my lap and tried to calm myself down.

  “We’ll be okay with these guys, at least they have the bigger guns,” Harley said to me, and his breath smelled of gummy bears. He squinted at me, and I wondered if this was a normal thing for him. “You can get to your parents’ faster. Maybe they were evacuated into one of the stations they’re going to drop us off at. Where did you say you lived?”

  I told him.

  His eyes searched my face, apparently noticing that I’d cleaned myself up. He smiled in amusement – I had to admit, he did have this goofy sweet smile. One that made me smile back, and it grew awkward once I realized that the examination had turned into something else. I made myself look away at that time, feeling it weird that there was a Moment between us. I just barely got to know the guy’s name.

  I played with my bangs while he looked away quickly, examining his rifle in a way that told me he was already familiar with it. I glanced over, wondering where he kept his ammo. Just looking at the gun made me sick all of a sudden, recalling vividly what had happened earlier. I felt so insecure of myself handling another gun. After all that had happened with that 9mm, I knew I wasn’t going to feel good with another one in my hands. I could ‘feel’ the recoil and weight of the gun in my hands, something that made me wipe my hands hastily on my jeans legs.

  “Are you okay?” Harley then asked, ever so helpful. He shifted to pull his backpack up onto his lap. “I have some food, here.”

  “Hey, I’m really hungry,” the girl finally spoke up, making us both look at her. She escaped her seat next to the nurse, wiggled in front of me to sit on the other side of Harley. She smiled up at him while he rummaged in his pack for something to give to her. He got all friendly with her – asking her her name, how she was doing, yadda, yadda, yadda. I grew bored with the interaction and looked out the windshield. We were approaching USA Parkway. The other vehicles in front of us were rumbling, jumping all over the place on the tracks.

  Seeing the freeway on the hill above us was a different site. But I saw flashes of color, reflections of glass, and knew that it was just as abandoned as it was back there. I was never going to make it to Reno in that car. And it would have taken me hours, days on foot to negotiate. I wondered if there were more people wandering up there, trying to flag us down.

  Benson returned to looking at us, asked for one of Harley’s oatmeal cakes. He ate it cheerfully, and I admired the thickness of his throat. I had to look away from this man-boy to control my deviant urges to jump his bones in front of everybody.

  “SHIPS!” the driver screamed above all the noise, and the Humvee shifted suddenly. After I was able to regain my balance, grabbing onto the back of the bench seat, I saw multiple flying objects zooming over our heads. I couldn’t exactly see what they were, but something rattled underneath the vehicle so violently that most of us bumped our heads against the ceiling. The soldiers were scrambling to arm themselves – the vehicle in front of us had swerved off the tracks and was taking a frantic chance to make it across the river – water splashed and mud spewed, and we were suddenly taking the same route.

  The girl screamed as gunfire exploded loudly over our heads – I couldn’t even see who was shooting and where at, because Benson was shoving my head down onto the seat, Harley doing the same to the girl. My ears went momentarily deaf as we bounced in our seats, and gunshots continued to fire in this automatic way. Like someone was just holding that trigger in with both hands.

  Since I couldn’t see anything, hearing the soldiers screaming at each other to take some sort of evasive action, I really really wanted out of the vehicle. I fell to the floor as we hit a particularly hard something, and something clattered and bounced next to my head. I looked at it and wondered where the gun came from. The old man grabbed it as he fell to the floor. We exchanged looks, but his was demonic. I’m sure mine just looked terrified. He rose up, pushed a window open, and started shooting – upward.

  Trying to keep myself from vibrating underneath the seat, I clutched the metal supports of the seat in front of me, my Fubar bouncing against me and the floor. I looked up to see the roof being torn back – it looked like some sort of cloth material, and it was making this really wicked sound.

  Cloth doesn’t sound like that, and the roof really wasn’t cloth. Something was tearing it open like it was a sardine can of sorts. Sandy was firing up through the opening, and whatever it was screamed as loudly as she did when she caught sight of it. The vehicle lurched, and for a moment, we were airborne. We all slammed to the side, and I rolled underneath the seat in front of me, my already bruised face slamming off someone’s boot. They almost stepped on me, too, as they shifted position, so I hastily pushed myself back. Only this peculiar situation caused me great discomfort, with my head bouncing off the floor and the seat above me. I hollered because I couldn’t do anything else.

  My Fubar slid past me, and I captured it with one hand, gunfire spraying the open air – it was really cold out. I man
aged to push myself back to the back seat, just in time to see the creature as it revealed itself – a leaner, longer version of the aliens I’d seen in the parking lot. Long arms, with longer claws, with glowing yellow eyes and what looked to be antennae atop of its tubular shaped head. It screeched, shifted aside the roof it had just finished prying open, and tossed it aside like it was some ruined toy. It reached in after balancing itself – its hide, some desert-colored display, was bouncing and vibrating. The soldiers were shooting at it, and nothing was happening to it. I couldn’t see who it’d grabbed, someone giving a maddened shout. It was the old man with the gun and he was shooting at the creature with these unintelligible words. Might’ve been another language, but I was so scared I couldn’t even concentrate properly. The alien tossed the man through the air like a toy, and then reached in again with a maniacal screech. This time it was pulling at the nurse, but both Sandy and Benson grabbed and held tightly onto her.

  She shrieked, clutching Sandy’s arms, desperate to escape the same fate as the old man had. Harley pushed up from his seat and used the butt of his rifle against the crook of the alien’s arm. As hard as he hit it, it still didn’t release her, and before I knew it, the girl was cramming herself next to me on the floor, sobbing huge tears of terror. More things rattled past me, and I realized that they were some supplies from my bag. My hairspray, deodorant, extra gloves…dammit, I needed my Secret! I tried to catch them, but people were stepping everywhere, and I retreated my hand in time, watching my stuff roll and bounce around our heads.