We were all silent for a while, each of us lost in thought.
“You know what was weirder than that first group of zombies chasing us and wanting Luke?” asked Zach. “The weird zombies not chasing us, but instead wanting our help.”
“Oh my god, tell me about it,” I said. “That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. Good freaky, but freaky nonetheless.”
“I have a theory about that,” Dad said.
“You said that earlier,” Jonathan said.
“Well, Jake, spit it out, we’d all like to know,” DeAndre said, laughing.
“I am not too sure about things, but this latest encounter has made it all a little clearer.” Dad half turned to us. “Why would the zombies try to kidnap you, Luke?”
“I don’t know,” I said, puzzled.
“Why did this other group of zombies ask for our help?” DeAndre said. “They’ve been turned, infected and completely turned. How could we help them?”
“I don’t know, but they sounded desperate,” said Jonathan.
I noticed Zach beside me, lost in thought. “You okay?” I asked.
He looked up at me and smiled. “The zombies that overran our town seemed hell bent on destroying us all,” he said. “I remember my dad wondering on it. ’Cause before, the monsters had just attacked randomly, if they got close to us, or humans wandered too close to them. But now…”
I nodded. “They’ve organized. It’s like they have an actual battle plan or something.”
“Or something,” mused Dad.
I looked off into the distance, at the dark countryside. This part of Québec was all farmland, with a few small towns along the way, all clustered around the highway. Looking out the window, my eyes rose to the starry night as I stared out the window. Everything looked so deceptively peaceful. Dropping my eyes down to the countryside once more, I sighed. At this point, I had no doubt that, should we stop again, we’d have a very good chance of being set upon by murderous hordes again. I turned to the front seat again.
“Dad, how much longer to Boston?”
“I think we should hit the border in about seven to eight hours. We just went through Rouyn-Noranda, and next up is Val-d’Or. Boston should be another six to seven hours after we cross the border.”
“I hope the border doesn’t delay us too much,” DeAndre said, looking at the map.
I looked behind me. “How is Risa doing?” I asked Jonathan.
“Slightly better,” he said, looking down at her and checked her vitals again. Risa’s color was slowly returning.
“She looks better,” I said.
“I’ve given her something to stave off most infection, and the I.V. really helps,” he adjusted the cord and checked the intravenous line going into her arm. Looking up, he smiled at me. Hope rose in my chest for my big sister, hope that she would survive the horrible wounds that had been inflicted upon her. Hope that we would get back home to my mother with the antidote in time to save her. Hope.
___
We all settled down as the night grew longer, and Jonathan and DeAndre dozed off. Zach soon fell asleep against my shoulder, and it made me smile. I looked down at his face in the shadows and studied him. He was totally relaxed in sleep, dark lashes brushing against tanned cheekbones. Full lips slightly parted, goshdarnit but I wanted to kiss those lips.
We drove on into the inky blackness of midnight. After fighting it for a few hours, yawning, I finally fell asleep to the sound of our heavy tires on the asphalt highway.
Dozing for several hours felt good, helped me get a second wind for the last leg of our journey.
My sleepy brain slowly came awake to the whispering conversation coming from the front seat. DeAndre and Dad talking quietly in the front seat.
“I don’t care what we come across, what kind of scene or strange occurrence, I want to drive right past it and on through to Boston as fast as we can,” Dad was saying.
“Hey, you’ll get no complaint from me,” D replied softly. “I can’t stop thinking about Alyssa and Risa. I want to get to that doctor as fast as possible. And I tell ya, after everything we’ve been through, the hell Alyssa and Risa have experienced, I am expecting no less than a miracle from this Doctor Carroway.”
“I don’t know what to expect, but I’m hoping for a cure in time to save them both,” Dad whispered.
“I’m worried we’re running out of time,” DeAndre said. “I mean, look how much trouble we’re having just getting to Boston, we’re going to need a fast, trouble-free trip back home if we’re to get back to Alyssa in time.”
I stretched and yawned, looking out my window. It was light outside, maybe an hour past dawn. How long had I been asleep?
“Uh…” I said, rubbing my eyes awake.
“Oh! Didn’t know you were awake, Luke,” DeAndre smiled back at me. “Sleep well?”
“Yes, how long has it been?”
“We’re almost to Ottawa; you’ve been asleep almost six hours,” Dad said.
“That would explain the sunshine and my need to pee,” I mumbled.
Laughing, Dad said, “Well, we’re due for a pit stop anyway.” He pulled the big SUV to the side of the road. The barren countryside looked deserted as far as I could see. Unbuckling my seatbelt, I nudged Zach beside me. DeAndre and Dad grabbed their shotguns, hopped out, and scanned the area.
“Hey, wake up, sleepyhead.”
Yawning and rubbing his eyes, he sat up and looked around, blinking. “Whaatzerpening?”
I chuckled and hopped out of the vehicle, dropping to the ground. I was soon around the backside of the SUV and had my pants unzipped and felt that relief feeling of emptying my bladder after a long night. My eyes scanned the highway in the morning light, taking in the fields and nearby trees. Man, I thought. Desolate. Abandoned. Not so much as a birdsong. No squirrels ran around, no insects hummed. It was lifeless. It was like the planet was slowly dying. I finished and zipped up as Dad and Zach came to stand beside me.
“It’s like being on the moon. Nothing is alive here.” I shook my head.
“The zombies are multiplying. And for a while now, they’ve been eating anything and everything, even dead carcasses and roadkill. Insect nests, birds, rodents, anything, really,” Dad said.
Zach stood silently beside me and took my hand in his. I squeezed it lightly, and we all just stood there a few minutes, just looking at the dying landscape. It was depressing - if things could get any more depressing after twenty years of zombie plague infestation.
We were soon back on the road again. The highway ran alongside a river to the east, and beyond were more hills, with trees peppering the countryside. Looking out the window at the land go by, I noticed the first signs of civilization as we neared Ottawa. A few farms, a small gas station. Several bars. All looked deserted. We drove on, and after a while saw a few people in cars go by. They looked at us with unfriendly eyes. It made me shiver with foreboding.
I was daydreaming, half aware, looking out the window. We had been on Route 105, and had come to an intersection and were turning right onto a road called Chemin Maclaren. There were homes on our left and in front of us on either side of the street. The trees were thinning out on our right, and there was a wide, grassy field beyond where … Wait a minute. Something caught my eye through the trees. It looked like fire, and movement. I sat up, looking harder. As the road went alongside the large field of grass, I saw something - something I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.
FIFTEEN
“Dad …”
“I see it,” Dad said, his voice grim. The road was gently curving to the right, and there in a grassy area, surrounded on three sides with trees, a huge crowd had gathered, with more people running out of the trees. They were dragging… what? I pressed my face to the glass, trying to make out what I was seeing. “What??!”
“Good god,” I heard Jonathan in the back say, in a low voice. He could see more clearly out the rear window from his vantage point.
“I�
��ll be damned…” Dad pulled over to the side of the road bordering on the action. A crowd of people stood in the way; we couldn’t see through them clearly. It looked like the mob was dragging wood into the crowd. I craned my neck to look, but couldn’t see clearly. We all grabbed our guns, Jonathan grabbed his med kit, and we opened the doors. Suddenly, the air was pierced by several screams.
“AAIIEEEE!!!!!!”
“AHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
“Non! NON!!! NOOOOON!!!!!!” (No!! NO!!!! NOOOOO!!!!!!)
“A L'AIDE!!!!!!!!!” (Help!!!!!!!!)
The crowd numbered around 30 or so people. They looked to be locals mostly, although a few were in suits - they’d probably had been on their way into the city and stopped to watch or join in, it was hard to tell. Some were pulling large branches of fallen wood from the wooded areas over to a series of bonfires. They had what looked like six people, at least one looked to be a child, tied up to charred posts buried in the ground. The bonfires we’d seen through the trees were at the base of each post. As we piled out of the vehicle, we could see that two of the people were already on fire and screaming.
DeAndre, shotgun in hand, began sprinting across the grass, and Dad was right behind him. We all began running in a tight group toward the mob. I could see several people coming out of the thick trees with branches in their arms, which they piled up against the posts the other people were tied up to. The child who was tied up started to cry.
“Wait just a damn minute!” Dad yelled as we all ran up to the edge of the crowd.
Two men with tire irons came out of the mob to meet us. They looked like they were going to try and stop us. The joke was on them. As we approached them, we all lowered our shotguns and pointed them at the mob. Mine in particular was pointed at one of the men with tire irons. He was the bigger of the two, and he barely came up to my shoulder. Québécois were not generally big people. I would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious. This was a kid they were going to kill, and five other innocent people, as well. I put on my best ‘Make my day’ face, and they immediately backed off. They all started talking at once in French.
“Quoi?” (What?)
“Ne nous dérangez pas!” (Do not bother us!)
“C'est des monstres, ils vont sûrement tous nous tuer!” (They are monsters, they are sure to kill us all!)
“Ils nous infecteront tous!” (They will infect us!)
“La semaine dernière deux autres transformés et nous n'avons rien fait sauf essayer de les remettre en santé puis pendant la nuit ils ont transformé et tué cinq hommes!” (Last week two others turned and we did nothing but try to nurse them back to health and they turned in the night and killed five men!)
“Nous devons le faire!” (We have to do this!)
“Ils doivent être détruits!” (They must be destroyed!)
DeAndre sprinted up to, and past, the mob of people. He ran up to the first burning victim, whose legs were already aflame and who was screaming the most hideous cries I have ever heard. D whipped out his knife in a second and was hacking at the ropes that bound this first victim, all the while kicking at the logs and branches that made up the bonfire at the base of the post he was tied to. I ran up and began to help him, and together we had the fire kicked away in no time. The mob, in its haste, hadn’t seemed to build a very large pile of wood and brush there, and in fact had been lugging more from the forest to the fires as we ran up.
“Grab him as I get the ropes cut,” DeAndre said to me, and just in time, I caught the man as he crumpled from the post into my arms. He was moaning as I pulled him away from the fire and over to the grass several yards away. I whipped off my jacket and beat the fire out with it. Jonathan immediately went to work on him, and I leapt up and ran to the next victim, who was nearly free, courtesy of Dad and Zach. She looked unconscious, but not burned very badly, so she might have fainted from the trauma and fear of her ordeal. The third victim hadn’t caught fire yet, but the branches at his feet were flaming up. DeAndre was already there, kicking away the burning wood and reaching up to cut the fellow down. He thanked D as he came free from the ropes, and hopped down off the post of his own accord.
The fourth and fifth victims had not yet been set aflame, but were crying from fright. The first, a young woman of about my own age, had tears streaking down her dirty face, making wet lines through the dirt and dust on her cheeks. Dad was just getting to her to untie her. I made my way to the last victim. She looked to be about five years old.
“Hold still,” I said as I cut away her bindings. Her chest heaved with sobs. As the last rope came free, she jumped into my arms, put her hands behind my neck and locked them there. As I picked her up and carried her to where the others lay, she went limp.
Jonathan was going from one victim to the next, applying what treatments he could.
“Here you go little one,” I said as I laid her down gently onto the grass next to the others. She clutched at me, crying harder.
“It’s okay. Jonathan here is a doctor,” I peeled her arms from around my neck and sat next to her, patting her hands. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “Are you hurt, sweetie?” I looked into her face. She mutely shook her head. “What’s your name?” I tried again: “C'est quoi ton nom?”
“Gisele,” she said in a quiet voice. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and started sucking it, and closed her eyes. A minute later she lost consciousness.
“Hey, this little girl isn’t burned, but she just passed out,” I said. I felt her neck. She was burning up with fever.
“Mmm hmm,” said Jonathan absentmindly. His face was strained in concentration as he worked, and his brow was furrowed in concern.
“Something’s not right here...,” he said.
Dad and DeAndre had the mob backed up halfway across the small meadow and held their shotguns at the ready, should the crowd make a move. A few in the crowd yelled out.
“AILLE!” (HEY!)
“ARRÊTE!” (STOP!)
The crowd surged forward again.
“All right, BACK OFF!!!” Dad yelled, punctuating his words with a shotgun blast into the air. “NO ONE’S GETTING BURNED ALIVE TODAY!” DeAndre, Zach and I flanked Dad and pointed our shotguns at the mob.
Jonathan worked beside us on the victims. He sat back on his heels after a minute and turned to us.
“Jake…”
“What’s up?” Dad answered. “Will they live?” Referring to the two burned people we’d rescued from certain death.
“No, actually. None of them will.” Jonathan turned again to examine the little girl I’d rescued, then looked up at us again. “They’re all infected.”
I had figured as much from the way the mob had been acting. “But they aren’t turned yet. Some don’t even look close.” I looked down at the little girl. She was still unconscious.
Jonathan looked her over. “This one is close. She’s burning up with the fever. She’s probably going to turn within a day or less.
Suddenly a woman ran up to us.
“Gisele! Ma petite Gisele!” (Gisele! My little Gisele!) She ran up and knelt on the ground next to the little girl. Her upper body covered the little face and she wrapped her arms around the small body. Looking up at us, she asked, “Est-ce quelle est morte?” (Is she dead?)
“Maman?” (Mama?)
Little Gisele seemed to be coming to, and Jonathan bent down to examine her.
I looked at the victims lying on the grass, and the two of them standing nearby. Those who hadn’t been burned seemed to want to stay near the others on the ground, so I looked down and studied the people lying there. There were three of them.
The first was a man who looked to be about thirty years old, clean cut, and wearing a business suit. He was about 6 feet tall, had recently had a haircut, and, as I looked closer, had a manicure. His suit looked expensive. Below the knee, though, it was charred and his shoes were partially burned. They looked like they’d been Italian loafers before the mob had gotten hold of him. Those s
hoes had cost a bundle. My eyes moved back to his face. He was moaning quietly, and Jonathan was fitting an I.V. to his arm.
“He’s the worst off,” Jonathan said, seeing me study his new patient, “but I think we got to him just in time. All of them, really. Another few minutes and ...”
The man opened his eyes and looked at me. I found myself staring into thoughtful, intelligent grey eyes that studied me quietly. I crouched down beside him.
“Hey there. How’re you feeling?” I asked.
“Much better than I was. Thank you for helping us.” He studied me silently for a minute. His accent sounded like it came from New England.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Claude. I was on my way to work this morning when they jumped me in my driveway.”
“Out of the blue?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I was sick over the weekend, but this morning I felt fine, so I thought ...”
Jonathan turned to us. “Claude? Okay if I give you something to help your blood pressure? Your burns are more severe than the others, and I’m concerned.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I turned to the second victim, a woman. She was sitting up, sipping on a bottle of water. Her face was quite pale. She looked up toward me briefly as I turned to face her, then lowered her eyes again.
“Hi,” she whispered.
I got down on one knee and checked her wounds. She was wearing a long skirt whose hemline was now partially burned and ragged, so her legs were bare and had been scorched in the fire. Jonathan had spread salve on them, and they were now wrapped neatly in gauze. It looked very painful.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She shrugged and didn’t answer.
I studied her face. She looked like she was about to pass out. I reached out to touch her hand, and she flinched, but didn’t pull back.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “Jumpy I guess.” She snuck a look off to the side at the mob halfway across the hill. Dad, Zach, and DeAndre had them contained there, and Dad seemed to be talking to some guy off to the side.
Mad World (Book 3): Desperation Page 10
