Now the road before them was completely sealed off.
A row of military tanks, trucks, and police cars lined the street, creating a barricade that extended through the median. Cars had been abandoned on the roadside; doors and trunks left open, the owners nowhere in sight. Meredith stared into the lights, searching for signs of rescue. As she did, the lights seemed to grow brighter, more invasive.
In order to see gain visibility she’d have to move closer. She’d just started to roll forward when a voice rang into the night, sending her foot flying back to the brake.
“Drop your weapon and exit the vehicle!”
She jumped slightly and glanced over at John. He held the rifle steadfast, as if reluctant to give it up.
“Put it down, John,” she whispered. “We don’t want to get shot.”
He sighed nervously and lowered the weapon.
The voice called out again—from the sounds of it, the person was speaking through a bullhorn, perhaps the speakers of a cruiser. John rolled down the window and tossed the rifle into the street. It hit with a clatter.
“Stay here, Meredith. I’ll talk to them.”
He gave her a reassuring stare, but she could see that his hands were shaking. Before she could protest, he opened the passenger’s door and stepped out onto the pavement. She watched as he took a hesitant step toward the lights.
No sooner had he started moving than the voice returned.
“Stay where you are! Don’t come any closer!”
The person did their best to sound firm and commanding, but Meredith could hear a timbre of fear. John froze in place, awaiting instructions.
Meredith peered through the glare, but could make out only blurred shapes. She heard the distant crackle of a radio, the purr of an engine. It was impossible to discern the voice’s origin.
Something was off.
It should be obvious John wasn’t infected. He’d followed the person’s orders, after all, and he was standing in the street unarmed. Why wasn’t anyone coming to greet him?
“We need help!” John shouted.
His words echoed into the street and died. For a minute Meredith was convinced that they were alone, that the voice had been a figment of their imaginations. John took a step forward and raised his hands higher.
“We’re just looking for a doctor! For some information! Please!”
The lights pulsed brighter. The radio fizzed from afar.
And then gunshots filled the air.
Meredith screamed, clutching the side of her head. Through the windshield, she saw John dive to the ground, saw bullets searing the ground around him. He screamed something at her, but his words were muffled, and she was unable to make them out.
This can’t be happening. Not now. Not after all we’ve been through.
She reached for the door handle and flung open the door. She needed to get to John. She needed to help him.
Bullets pelted the other side of the metal, shaking it on its hinges. She cried out and ducked back into the car, bumping the steering wheel with her head. Pain coursed through her skull, and all of a sudden she was crying—shaking and crying—and the windshield was shattering above her.
Why were they doing this? Why would someone shoot without provocation?
Meredith tried to make sense of it all, but there was no sense to be had. Glass spilled against the console, and shards dug into her hair and hands.
“John!” she shrieked.
Was he still alive? Where was he?
Meredith reached for shifter and put the vehicle into drive. She poked her head up, hoping to get a glimpse of him, and saw John on the ground. It looked like he was moving.
He’s alive. I just need to get to him.
She hit the gas and rolled forward and positioned the car between the shooter and her fallen companion. The gunfire had ceased. Was the man reloading? Was he taking better aim? Knowing she didn’t have much time, she lunged over into the passenger’s seat and flung open the door, revealing John’s startled face in front of her.
“Get in!” she screamed.
John pushed himself to his knees and scrambled inside, slamming the door shut behind him. Meredith hit the gas.
Behind them, the gunfire continued in short bursts, tearing into the trunk of the vehicle. She swerved from left to right, terrified that the shooter might hit a tire, and dipped her head below the steering wheel.
Her feet and hands felt like rubber; she fought to maintain control. When she’d gained about fifty feet of distance from the barricade, she sat up.
Tears streaked her face and she struggled to breathe.
In the rearview, she watched the lights disappeared behind them, winking off one by one as if to remind them of all the people they’d lost.
20
The mountain roads were curved and worn, but a welcome reprieve from the tattered streets of St. Matthews. Given the obstacles that Dan and Quinn had encountered the past few days, the dangers of nature seemed pale in comparison, and he took the turns with the ease of someone who’d driven them many times before.
Because of his familiarity with the area, Dan had taken the shortest possible route to the town’s edge, and thus far, he’d seen no signs of being pursued. With each passing mile he was more confident that they’d lost Reginald and his group. Despite Reginald’s vendetta against him, he was pretty sure the man had given up.
The risk of attack or infection surely outweighed the need to chase them down.
While driving, he’d had Quinn turn on the overhead lights and check the backseat for their belongings. While their personal items had been left untouched, the food had been taken. His daughter had only located one box in the backseat—an errant package that had somehow escaped discovery.
Other than that, they were without food or drink.
In addition, all of their weapons had been cleared out except for a lone pistol Dan had stashed underneath the seat.
All these things were bad, but they could’ve been worse. Dan and Quinn could have been tortured, killed, or infected. And yet they were alive. Having escaped imprisonment, Dan did his best to focus on the mission at hand.
Get to Meredith Tilly’s, no matter what the cost.
After Quinn had finished checking the vehicle, he had her climb up into the front seat and buckle herself in. While searching in the backseat, she’d located her teddy bear, and she squeezed the animal with both arms, as if afraid to let it go again.
The two rode in relative quiet, breaking the silence only a few times to inquire on each other’s comfort. Within a few hours of traveling, Dan glanced over to find his daughter asleep.
Before long the sun had poked through the trees, providing whispers of safety and freedom. Dan picked up the pace as the roads leveled out, carrying them one step closer to their destination.
I-40 sprawled out in the distance, intersecting with the mountain road, and he felt a shiver creep through his veins. He could already see the detritus and debris that lined both sides of the highway, and he had a sinking feeling that their journey would soon be stalled.
At the base of the road was a single stop sign. He pulled to a stop to gauge the safest route of travel. The interstate reminded him of the town they’d come from, only compressed and contained—cars piled against one another, RV’s overturned, and belongings smashed and scattered, all trapped within a space too small to hold them.
Unless he was to drive over the wreckage, Dan could see no way around it. The only other option was to drive off the road and into the desert; by the looks of it, several had tried and failed.
He glanced down at the shifter, which sported the option of four-wheel-drive. Then he studied his daughter’s sleeping form next to him. If the station wagon were to get stuck, they’d be stranded on the open road with no access to shelter. On the other hand, they’d already come this far, and he doubted things would get any easier. Regardless of the risks, he had an obligation to get his daughter to safety.
He engag
ed the lever and rolled forward into the desert, trading the hum of the pavement for the crunch of compacted sand.
The tires of the Subaru Outback groaned in protest as they propelled the vehicle over the bristled underbrush. Although Dan did his best to create a clear path, avoiding nature was impossible. Every few feet, small shrubs and bushes scraped the exterior, and rocks pummeled the undercarriage.
If he’d been driving a truck or an SUV, navigation would have been easier, but he’d make do with what he had.
After a few minutes, the rumble awakened his daughter, and Quinn stared at him with wide eyes, frightened by the noise.
“It’s OK,” he said, reassuring her.
He returned his hands to the wheel, steering clear of a fallen motorcycle. The rider still clung to the handlebars, his legs missing below the knees.
Dan kept as close to the highway as he could. To lose sight of it would be to lose track of their whereabouts. Even with their bearings intact, the journey would be difficult enough.
After several miles of rocky terrain the desert leveled and smoothed, and Dan was able to focus on the interstate, looking for a way back on. Quinn had been keeping watch as well. She pointed to an open area beside two overturned sedans.
“Daddy, maybe we can get back on there!”
Dan concurred. A few seconds later, he drove the car over the lip of the asphalt and back onto the interstate. Although there were still some obstacles, the driving was manageable, and Dan appreciated the return to pavement.
Having traversed the White Mountains, the remainder of their journey was flat and straight. From memory, Dan recalled that I-40 ran adjacent to Settler’s Creek; they would just need to travel the two hundred miles to get there.
The sun was still inching up the horizon, revealing more and more of its form, and bands of light penetrated the vehicle’s interior. Dan squinted from the glare, doing his best to make out the road ahead. By his guess it was about six in the morning.
He’d just lowered the sun visor when he saw something ahead; something moving several hundred feet away. Quinn had noticed it too, and she shot up straight in her seat, pointing at the source.
“What’s that?” she asked.
From what Dan could tell it was a passenger van; two figures were moving on the rooftop. As the station wagon crept closer, the occupants had hunkered down, doing their best to remain unnoticed.
“It looks like people,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
He gave her a sideways glance, noting the fear in her eyes. On their current course they’d be passing within several feet of the stopped vehicle. Although it didn’t appear the figures on top were infected, he couldn’t be certain, and he didn’t want to take any chances.
He shot a look off the highway, contemplating taking to the desert once again. It wasn’t his preferred method of travel, but it would be better to be safe than sorry. He moved the vehicle into the slow lane, approaching the edge of the highway, and prepared to leave the road.
No sooner did he make the maneuver than he saw something gleaming from the rooftop of the van. It looked like the two figures were holding something.
Was it a gun?
“Get down, Quinn!” he yelled.
He wrenched the car to the right, peeling off the road and into the dirt beside the highway. The car kicked up a barrage of silt and stone, and Dan cursed himself for the noise. The people remained in place. No gunshots sounded.
He continued to drive the vehicle forward, running in tandem with the highway, but keeping a fifty-foot buffer zone from the road and the people on it. When they passed the van, the two figures took to their feet and waved their hands. He saw that it was an older man and a woman, and their clothes were dirty and disheveled.
Dan slowed the vehicle to a halt in the desert.
Quinn was still holding her head between her knees. When the car stopped, she leaned up to peek over the dashboard.
The engine idled. A plume of dust surrounded the car on all sides, wafting into the air and obscuring their view of the interstate. Dan retrieved the pistol and cracked the window.
About fifty feet away, the two people were making their dismount from the van. The man was watching them from the rooftop while the woman climbed down a metal ladder at the back. Dan eyed them with caution. Although they seemed well intentioned, he knew better than to trust anyone.
He’d already learned that the hard way.
The two people departed the van and walked toward the station wagon. Instead of getting out of the vehicle to greet them, Dan remained in his seat, gun cocked out the window, ready to transfer his foot from brake to gas at the slightest hint of trouble.
As the dust cleared, he got a better look at them. Both were in their mid-fifties and had gray hair and weathered, lined faces. The man was wearing a button-up shirt and long pants; the woman was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Even from ten feet away, it was impossible to demarcate the colors—both travelers were covered in a residue of dust and dirt that seemed to penetrate both clothes and skin. In fact, the more he glared at them, the harder it was to tell where garments ended and flesh began. The man had a pair of binoculars around his neck.
When they two had come within ten feet of the vehicle, they stopped abruptly, noticing the gun pointed at them through the window.
“Please…” the man said, holding his hands in the air. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Are you armed?” Dan asked.
The two of them shook their heads in unison. He looked them up and down but saw no sign that they were lying. He instructed them to back away from the vehicle, then stepped out to join them, keeping his pistol ready.
“Where are you headed?” he asked them.
The man and woman exchanged a worried glance, then pointed west, the way Dan and Quinn had come from.
“We’re trying to reach our son,” the woman said, blinking back tears.
The man reached over and took the woman’s hand, squeezing it tight.
“We’ve been on the road for days. Our son lives in Phoenix, and we’ve been doing our best to reach him.”
“We’re from Oklahoma,” the man explained. “At first we stayed put and watched the news, but after a while we couldn’t take it anymore. We haven’t heard from Isaac in over a week, and we needed to do something.”
Dan nodded, feeling a wave of sympathy. He glanced back at his daughter, once again grateful that they were together.
“Where are you from?” the man asked.
“St. Matthews,” Dan said, pointing behind him. “A little town over the mountains.”
“How are things there?”
“Not good.”
The man looked at his wife again, then cleared his throat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photo of a young man in his twenties with short dark hair.
“I know this is a long shot, but have you seen my son?”
The couple paused, both of them biting their lips in anticipation. Dan’s eyes wandered to the interstate behind them, where a pair of bodies lined the road.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t,” he said.
The man and woman exhaled and pulled each other close. In this world of carnage, sometimes the best news was no news at all. The man let go of his wife’s hand and pointed back at the van.
“Are either of you hungry?”
Dan furrowed his brow. In the last few hours, he and his daughter had already consumed the last bit of food that had been left in the station wagon. Even though he didn’t feel like eating, his stomach felt hollow and empty, and he imagined his daughter probably felt the same way.
“Yes, but—“
“The food we have is safe,” the man said. “It’s wrapped up in red packages. You don’t have to worry.”
“We stole it from the men in white coats,” the woman explained.
For the first time all day, Dan felt a surge of hope. He motioned for his daughter to join him, and when she exited the vehicle, the two
of them followed the couple back to the van.
21
“My name’s Roberta Smith,” the woman said. “And this is my husband Ken.”
The woman sat cross-legged in the back of the van, and she smiled at Dan and Quinn with warmth they hadn’t seen in a while. The man was digging through a backpack he had stashed there, and he pulled out several packages of dried fruits and passed them out to the group.
“When I saw you two driving up the road, I hid all our things,” the man explained.
He stuck out a grimy hand and Dan took it. Dan introduced him and his daughter.
“I’m Dan, and this is my daughter Quinn.”
“Quinn! What a pretty name!” Roberta said.
The little girl blushed as she dug into her apple slices. Dan surveyed the back of the van. At one time it’d contained several rows of seats, but it appeared they’d been removed. A sleeping bag lined the floor, and several items of clothes had been scattered across the interior.
“Is this your vehicle?” Dan asked.
“No, we found it here. We’ve mostly been traveling on foot. We lost our vehicle back in Texas when we got a flat tire. Within minutes we were swarmed by the infected, and we barely made it out alive. Since then we’ve been camping out during the day and making our progress at night.”
“It’s been dangerous with those men in white coats out there,” Roberta added. “We came across one of their vans when they weren’t around. That’s how we got this food.”
Ken held up the backpack he’d been rifling through.
“It didn’t take us long to figure out what was going on. We’re pretty sure the infection is spread through the food and water supply.”
Dan nodded, surprised at their astuteness. While he ate his food, he ran through the events in St. Matthews: the start of the infection, their run-ins with the agents, and their escape from town. He did his best to narrate the story without rehashing the violence, and he left out the part about Julie. Quinn had been through enough. The last thing he wanted to do was reopen the wound.
Contamination (Book 4): Escape Page 12
