The Long Way To Reno

by Mix, Michelle

  I winced at the taste in my mouth, and realized that I was sweaty. But it felt so good to be warm again. I removed my gloves, setting them neatly on my lap and finally wiggled around as I removed my Fubar from between my back and seat. When I settled that between my knees, pry-side down on the floor and wrench on my thigh, I exhaled low again. I was starving, so I wiggled around to find one of my protein bars – dug out a bottle of water from my bag. So much stuff on me, so little room. But I was unwilling to part with any of it, considering the mess we’d just been in.

  “Got any gum?” the driver asked me, sounding hopeful.

  I dug around in my bag until I produced a set of convenient Colgate Wisps. I passed one to him so he could brush his teeth, and I ate my protein bar hurriedly, in case I didn’t have a chance to. After washing that down, and using the other Wisp, I felt loads better. The driver was content as well, re-focused on the road while someone snored loudly. To occupy myself, I rummaged into my bag again, and pulled out my makeup pouch.

  I wanted a hot shower, I wanted a change of clothes, I wanted to wash what hair I had left. But at least I had my makeup. I had removed some of the dirt and grime from my face and neck and replaced what essentials I needed to look presentable. The driver saw what I was doing and laughed.

  “Are you serious?” he asked the rearview mirror. I finished applying my blush and frowned at him.

  “I’m going to be good-looking when I die,” I declared. “None of this looking like a bedraggled survivor when I have the chance to touch things up.”

  “The human race is being slaughtered by infected and aliens, and you’re worried about your looks?”

  “Priorities are different for everyone,” I said, carefully applying a coat of pink lipgloss.

  He snorted, said some disgusted things, and I ignored him while I curled my eyelashes and fretted over the length of my dirty bangs. I snapped my blush compact mirror shut and replaced everything, carefully, back into my messenger bag.

  “Where are we?” I then asked, trying to orient myself with my surroundings. I needed to map out places to go when things failed again.

  The driver looked as if he weren’t going to answer, then looked around. “Uh, looks like Mustang. We had to pull over and separate because a few ships were spotted in the area. Trying to lay low.”

  Okay. We’re in the Mustang Ranch area. I thought of Benson’s words, before we were attacked.

  “I thought we were heading to Virginia City?”

  The driver said nothing for a while. The more time passed, the more I realized this fool didn’t know what he was doing. Sandy spoke up groggily.

  “We’re lost,” she stated.

  “I didn’t know where we were going!” he exclaimed angrily. “When I lost sight of Flaunders, I stayed on this road!”

  “We were supposed to go around the fire! I knew I shouldn’t have been- ! You need to turn around!”

  “Stop freaking out on me! Let me find somewhere where we can,” he replied, searching for a turn-off.

  I exhaled low, sat back in my seat. Looked at the grungy town of Mustang from a different angle.

  Sandy turned in her seat to look at me. She looked as tired as I felt, her gingery hair was visible in wisps around her helmet. “How you doing? Found your boyfriend, huh?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I insisted, glancing at Harley to make sure he was still sleeping.

  “Yeah, right…” she studied me for a few moments. “Are you wearing makeup?”

  “She was putting makeup on earlier. Said she’d rather die ‘pretty’,” the driver supplied, heavily offended with my personal choices.

  Sandy stared at me, then rolled her eyes, turning back in her seat. She then had to dig her arm out and away from the man leaning on her, holding her hand out to me. “Gimme some chapstick.”

  The driver gave her a look of disgust while I rummaged for the tube.

  An hour later, Sandy was trying to get a hold of somebody on her handheld, and the driver was taking a leak in the bushes. I don’t even know where we were, but we’d found a dirt road that promised us Dayton if we continued driving. Harley was finishing off a box of cheesy crackers and a warm bottle of soda. The other guys were eating what we’d had in our bags, but I was hoarding a bag of chocolates to myself. Oh, and I shared some with Sandy once she discovered what I was hiding – she’d asked kindly with a punch to my shoulder.

  She shook the radio with frustration, saying, “This only works if we’re within ten miles of each other. So it’s not working. You know what that means, Jordan?”

  The driver scowled in her direction. He’d returned, looking annoyed once he scanned the desert around us. The brush fire that started at USA Parkway had spread – the skies were blanketed with smoke. But it was the least of everyone’s worries, for the wind was pushing it away from us. There were bigger things to think about, like the aliens and Rabid. There were more words exchanged between them, and I used the opportunity to pull the dually’s bed door down, to sit atop of it and scan the desert with a hand over my eyes. I’d lost my sunglasses somewhere.

  Harley joined me, looking up at me with that squinty look of his. His boring brown hair was all ruffly, and kept blowing over his eyes.

  “The sergeant said that the Rabid were caused by a virus,” he said, slinging his rifle behind him. It seemed like he staggered under the action – I hope from exhaustion, rather than the effort. I tried not to be embarrassed for him.

  We were the only ones armed, aside from the two now yelling at each other. Since it seemed like a personal thing between them, I focused on the dorky guy who caught my attention. He was so painful to look at – his clothes overwhelmed him. “Released first, weeks before the attack – the government had known an infection was spreading, and only attributed it to an annual flu virus. Then, when the ships came in, it was activated. Turned those people into mindless hordes of infected.”

  My face scrunched with thought. “He said that to you? When did you have time to talk to this guy?”

  “Hours. We were hiding in the wreckage.” He trailed off. He gave a slight shake of his head as I combed my hair, struggling to look presentable. I reapplied my lipgloss, glancing at the soldiers to see if they had their shit together. Realizing he didn’t have my full attention, Harley’s voice had taken on a sullen tone. “He only told me because he thought he wasn’t going to survive.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah, he’s in another truck. I’d asked. Y’know, just to see if he knew anything about it.”

  I thought about what he just said. Brushed hair from my face. My neck and back of head ached so badly, but there wasn’t anything I could do for it, but take more ibuprofen. I had a headache a mile wide.

  “Of all the cities, the areas in the world, this one gets hit, too,” I muttered, utterly disgusted.

  “They’d pretty much conquered much of the East and West coast before coming this way,” Harley then said. “Much of the forces were pulling civilians to safety by then. Hiding people. They found me in Fernley – I was trying to get a truck out from the Pilot parking lot. Oh, and that girl….her name’s Emmy, she’s with that guy Benson and a few other girls in the other truck, the last one – “

  I somehow managed to repress the look of joy on my face to know that Benson was still alive.

  “ – her entire family was turned. She had to kill them all. I found her over by the state yard. She didn’t say an entire word that whole time, until we, well, found you.”

  Harley then frowned. I think he saw my expression of joy over Benson being alive and was offended by the powerful effect the stud had over me. I tossed my hair strong enough to hit him in the face to show that his opinion didn’t matter to me, so he had to bat it away from him. By this time, I noticed Sandy was ignoring Jordan. He was trying to get somebody on the radio. I pulled my hood up against a sudden gust of wind that had tumbleweeds blowing by. The smell of smoke tasted awful. That was when one of the guys dumbly pointed
out a fresh fire to the west of us, traveling towards us.

  We all climbed into the truck and Jordan continued on the road we were on, while Sandy continued trying to reach somebody on the radio.

  Chapter Seven

  It was dark, and the moon was high by the time we met with the others in Lockwood. Driving in that dually was really uncomfortable by then, but I was brimming with anticipation and dread. Because just over those hills was Sparks. But from Lockwood’s point, the cities were still in flames. Smoke billowed over like an abnormally fast-moving fog, and explosions boomed in the distance. Those ships occasionally zipped about in the sky, moving so quickly that their maneuvers were impossible. The roadways were blackened, destroyed –it didn’t look like a freeway, anymore. The river below was crammed with debris – cars, people, animals…

  I wanted us to keep moving, but their commanding officer told us we were to hole up here. Until they could find another route to Virginia City – there were enough dirt roads to use, but with the way the ships kept patrolling the city, he was reluctant to continue until the place was checked out.

  I was so close to home that I just wanted to go – but the guy wasn’t letting anybody leave. The evacuation centers – he called them Camp 1 through 7 – were taking in whoever made it to them, and they were protected by as much military force as they were able to spread them. The thing was, because of the combined invaders, people that were found by the military had to be escorted in by the same military group. Which puzzled a few of us – who cares about an escort?

  We were holed up in a doublewide, in a neighborhood named after a French worded color. The dump nearby was on fire, and so the guys in charge were worried about that. Rabid were stalked and destroyed by what soldiers were left. While they traipsed around the neighborhoods, killing the Rabid, the rest of us civilians set up camp. Sandy, Benson and this other guy named Allen were there to ‘help’ us, but I think they were really there to make sure we didn’t escape.

  There were twelve civilians in all. The three guys, Harley and I, Emmy the teenager, four ladies, and two other men in that looked as if they’d been chased from the basketball court. The ladies were attempting to make suitable bedspaces for everyone in the living room, wanting to break us into girls here, boys there, but I didn’t want to be included in their plans. Too wary of things that had happened, I lingered near an exit I found suitable – the garage door, which would lead me out into a yard and into a narrow alleyway created by wooden fences.

  Emmy looked surprised that I was there. I don’t think she expected me to have survived, and gave me an expression that said so. I didn’t know whether to be offended or flattered. While the women chatted and found blankets from the bedrooms, with Allen going next door to search for more bedding, she wandered over to where I was sitting and sat next to me.

  “I like your knife,” she said.

  “You want it? I haven’t used it since I found it,” I said, unstrapping it from my thigh. She took it with a quiet ‘yey!’, and strapped it onto her own limb.

  I played with the ends of my hair and watched as Harley chatted the ear off one frazzled looking lady. He looked so dorky with his flannel, my Halo shirt visible as it hung open. The woman was in a nightdress with black sweats – her grey streaked blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and one could tell she was a smoker. I hoped she didn’t smoke around us. It was bad enough this place stunk enough of smoke and mold.

  “Do you like him?” Emmy asked me, and I blinked away my thoughts of disgust to focus on what she meant.

  “Oh, I barely know him.”

  “He likes you.”

  I thought about that for a few moments, then had to shrug. “Whatever. I’m not interested.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m more focused on surviving this chaos than I am falling in love?”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “I think he looks like JGL.”

  I scrunched my face, and she gave an impatient noise, and said the name of the actor whose name I couldn’t think of.

  “So I think he’s cute. And soooo nice.”

  “I’m more attracted to men types,” I said distractedly. She plucked at her checkered Vans slip-ons.

  “Like Benson? You had this super dorky smile on your face when you talked to him,” she stated, and I turned away from the shaky laughter and low conversations to frown at her. She blinked makeup heavy eyes at me.

  “Sure,” I said, looking around and finding tall, blond and gorgeous chatting with a couple of younger ladies that were fawning over him. “What’s not to like about that hunk of man meat?”

  “Seriously, huh?” Emmy said with some relief.

  We watched other people for awhile. The only things they had running in this dump was the heater, so I started to feel warm. Despite what had happened recently, I felt myself start to relax. I started to remove my vest – my blanket fell out, and after that, I removed my hooded jacket. I was down to my crewneck sweater and jeans when I decided I couldn’t part with my Fubar and messenger bag. They stayed slung on me by the time I settled back down on the floor.

  Emmy stared at me for a few moments, then shifted. “Can I use your makeup?”

  I was annoyed at the request. Sharing makeup with others encouraged pinkeye infections. How inconvienent to have when one was trying to survive zombies. “Ew, really?”

  “You want to know what’s ‘ew’ about this situation? The fact that you have makeup in the first place,” she said with heavy teenage disgust. “We’re fighting for our lives, starving, and lost people we love – and you have makeup and won’t even share it. You’re just as bad as the things that killed us!”

  “It’s too bad I don’t give a shit,” I told her. “Trying to make me feel guilty won’t make me share anything with you.”

  She frowned at me for a few seconds, then tried to ignore me while she considered my attitude. Finally she muttered, “Okay, fine, I’m sorry.”

  I handed her some wipes and my makeup pouch, and instructed her to use the stuff still in containers. She said something insulting about my supply, but took the items she wanted and went in search of the bathroom.

  A few minutes later, Harley came over, lightly kicking my shoe to get my attention, as I was busy fretting over the kid giving me pinkeye. “Are you hungry? Lydia and the others are going to make sandwiches.”

  “No,” I replied, pulling my shoe in to avoid another kick.

  “You should eat something other than Snickers and protein bars.”

  “I don’t want to. I want to be able to run away when stuff happens,” I said, rummaging in my vest for another bar.

  “We’re fine, now,” Harley then said, snatching my vest. He walked off with it while I gave his back an irritated look. How dare he behave so comfortably with me? Like we even know each other that well to be, like, taking stuff from each other.

  “There you go, kiddo,” Benson said, smiling that perfect smile of his. He appeared in my line of vision, holding out a bottle of water. Oh, I just loved the way his jaw bunched up like that – like he seriously had muscles under muscles. One of the girls he’d been chatting with earlier hung close to his side, looking at me with an expression I knew well; that territorial Back-Off-He’s-Mine look that girls always gave me.

  Hey, I’ll work my charms on anybody if it meant giving me an advantage. I’ve stolen best friends’ boyfriends just because I could; usually for stupid reasons, like getting them to buy me video games or comic books, or some new MAC collection. I’d feel bad, but not too bad when I had products in hand. Now that I think about it, I feel pretty bad for breaking their hearts.

  “Thanks,” I said in reply, stuffing the bottle into my bag.

  “It got a little sticky back there,” he said with a slight nod. “I admit, I was ready for anything – I was in Afghanistan just last year, so I thought I saw it all. Then this happened. I watched all these movies, man, about alien invasions and stuff? The good guys always
win, and they always come out on top. They got it. Then it’s like, back there, actually looking at them? It’s so totally different. They don’t play by Hollywood rules. Then you come in with your can of hairspray…hell, that makes you bad-ass.”