by Schow, Ryan
The occasional whips of wind from the blown-out back window teased strands of her blond hair. Colt found this both sexy and sad. This once-free woman had willingly shouldered the burden of being a California girl living in the South. By comparison, that struggle would be easier and more preferential than this struggle. Still, about Faith, this had him asking himself questions he thought he’d never ask. Would the weight of having taken a person’s life tear at Faith’s soul? Would it rip away the once carefree side of her, the side that was playful and fun? It would definitely change her, but to what degree, he didn’t know. Only time would tell. One thing was for sure, war changed people. It changed everyone just as it had changed him.
“These incels, psychos, and criminals are all one gigantic pestilence,” he said. “They are people, but they only deserve to live up until the point that they don’t.”
“I’m starting to agree,” she said.
“If they act like those idiots we just escaped from, they won’t live, not while I’m around. So, we can’t feel bad about that, Faith. Not when they’d gut us if they got the chance.”
“Don’t talk like that, please,” she said. “It scares me to even think about that.”
“But it’s the truth and you need to know it. You need to let that reality sink down so far inside of you that when you pull that trigger, you know that you are not taking a life, rather you are preserving one. Yours. Or perhaps two. Ours.”
She nodded, her eyes drifting over to the window where she watched the passing scenery with little interest. For awhile, she stopped talking to him. He didn’t blame her.
They somehow managed to get through Lexington without getting beaten, robbed, or killed, but the Jeep had seen better days. Fortunately it was built like a tank and reinforced where it mattered most.
“We have two choices,” he said breaking a long haul of silence. “We can take it slow and stick to the backroads all the way to Leighton’s school, or we can take I-75 and hope that it’s not so bad.”
“What are the pros and cons?”
“One of the pros of staying on the interstate is that it’s away from most residential areas, which will hopefully keep us out of sight and out of mind. We’ll see some people, I’m sure, but they’ll likely be looting the cars and trucks. Or maybe they’ve already run through them and there’s nothing left to take. I don’t know. But another plus is that there will be plenty of cars, which means plenty of vehicles from which to siphon gas. Trust me, with this gas hog, we’ll need all the gas we can get.”
“What about the cons?” she asked, fixing her wind-whipped hair.
“I know they’re there, but I can’t give you any for certain. Mainly, I worry about the cars being packed too tight and us not having a way around them.”
“What about the backroads?”
“We run into the risk of multiple ambushes,” he said.
“Do you think people would really try to ambush us if we stuck to the backroads?”
“I can’t say for sure about the residential areas,” he said, “but we can’t be in places where looters and anarchists congregate.”
“Which are where exactly?”
“Anywhere there’s a place to rob and the strong likelihood of people like us passing through.”
“Because some cars work, even though most don’t, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I say we stick to the Interstate,” she said.
He nodded, thinking the same thing.
They spent the better part of the day fighting through dead and somewhat congested traffic. Fortunately, the Jeep’s bumpers were reinforced and the tread on the tires was fresh. He had to push more than a few cars out of the way so they could nudge by. And just like he’d said to Faith earlier, there were people looking to loot that which hadn’t already been plundered.
By divine guardianship, or sheer luck alone, these vagrants were flaccid and uninterested in them. That didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about them. He was. Faith was worried, too. At least he assumed she was worried because she was holding the SHIELD like she was ready to go at any minute.
It was when they entered the outskirts of Highland Heights that Colt realized they were being followed. A rather large man on a motorcycle was keeping pace with them. Colt kept an eye on the rearview mirror. He was hanging back, just far enough to maintain a line of sight. A sick feeling crept into his gut. Why was he following them if not to attack? If he was just keeping up, what—or who—was he waiting for?
With one eye glued to the rearview mirror and the other locked on the road ahead, he decided it was time to make some new decisions.
Colt pulled over a few miles up the road, sliding into the empty space between a dead big rig and the car in front of it. Shifting into reverse, looking over his shoulder, he backed up against the big rig, then said, “Give me the carbine.”
Faith handed him the Ruger with a fresh magazine. He kicked open the door, quietly shut it, then ran down the far side of the rig, moving fast and staying low.
Down the highway and worming his way through the dead traffic, the guy on the motorcycle keyed a walkie talkie and spoke into the mic. The second he came within an acceptable range, Colt stood up, aimed the Ruger, and fired.
The man’s head jolted sideways, the front wheel of his bike turning hard. He crashed into an abandoned car, his body laying there lifeless and bleeding. Colt ran to the bike, snatched up the walkie talkie, listened to a rough male voice saying, “Bill, you there? Bill?”
He keyed the two-way and said, “Bill is dead. If I see you, you’re dead, too.”
“Who is this?” the voice asked.
“Just a guy passing through. Or maybe I’m the guy who will end you like I ended Bill. It’s your decision, bud. Make it a good one.”
There was silence on the line.
Nothing.
He ran back to the Jeep and said, “Get the SHIELD ready, keep your eyes peeled, and stay down for God’s sake.”
They had only driven half a mile when a bullet pierced the windshield and slammed into the headrest only an inch from Colt’s ear. He ducked down but stayed the course, willing to tuck tail and run if need be to stay alive. Fortunately, no more shots were fired.
When they finally pulled into Northern Kentucky University, it was to a huge sigh of relief. They’d finally made it! Now, if they could pick up Leighton and get up to Columbus, that would be a big mark in the win column. Regrettably, the campus looked barren, devoid of most of its former life.
“What if she’s not here?” Faith asked.
“If she’s not here, then she likely left a note,” he said. “Let’s not give up hope just yet, we just got here.”
Faith nodded, looking like she was feeling better already.
Chapter Nineteen
Colt McDaniel
Colt parked the Jeep, then felt better when he saw a few more people out and about. But the closer some of these people got to them, the more he and Faith saw the desperation that lay naked in their eyes.
“Do you have any food? Because we’re really hungry,” a gaunt young girl asked, picking up her pace as she neared them.
She had a male friend in tow. He looked a little skittish, like he was hanging back so as not to scare them. The girl appeared to be shaking, however, her skin extra pale. Either she hadn’t seen the sun for years, or she hadn’t eaten in a while. Or was she coming off drugs? Colt couldn’t tell.
Faith shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart, we don’t.”
“I know you have something,” she said, ignoring Faith’s soft tone. “Please, can’t you just spare something?”
“Why don’t you go home?” Faith asked.
“I don’t even live in this state,” she said, manic. “We just need the power to come back on, you know? Because it’s cold, too.”
“The power is not coming back on,” Colt said indifferently.
The skittish guy started walking at them fast, like something in hi
m had snapped and he could not stop the change.
“Give us some food!” he shouted.
Colt assumed the sudden mood swing was this kid’s desperation talking, the kind of high-anxiety hysteria that caused frenetic people to do stupid things.
“We don’t have anything,” Faith said, stern. “I’m sorry.”
The kid avoided Colt and headed straight to Faith instead. Colt pulled his weapon out, stepped in the kid’s face and said, “You need to back off now. We are as desperate for food as you are, but are you desperate enough to lose your life?”
“I am!” he screamed.
Colt shoved the kid with force. He fell down in the dirt, landing on his side. Knowing he’d just assaulted a student was one thing, but seeing this kid looking like a lunatic was another thing entirely. He sat there like a petulant child, his eyes tearing up, his face scrunching into what could only be described as the ugly-cry face.
“We just…we’re so hungry,” he sobbed.
The girl went to his side, holding him and glaring at them both, as if they’d done something wrong.
“You need to get up and get going,” Faith said.
The girl looked at the Jeep like she had to get inside. Colt was worried that the back window had been broken out. Inside, there were food, blankets, weapons, and ibuprofen, along with a lot of other miscellaneous survival items. The last thing they needed was to get hijacked by a couple of zombie crackheads.
“Look at the Jeep again,” Colt warned, pointing the gun at her. “Go on, I dare you.”
“I wasn’t looking!” she screamed.
“I saw you.”
“We can look at whatever we want!” the kid on the ground wailed. Snot bubbles were blowing up and popping in his nostrils and he didn’t even seem to notice, much less care.
“Come on, Andy,” the girl said, standing up and taking his hand. “These people are EVIL!”
“I don’t wanna go,” he said, pushing her hand away like a toddler throwing a fit. “My legs hurt so bad.”
Colt rolled his eyes and said, “Get up, kid. Quit being a pansy.”
The kid stared at him like he was shocked out of his mind at such a statement. “Where’s your heart, man?”
“In my shoe, now get your ass up and pound sand before I put you down and call it a mercy killing.”
“Shoot me!” he said, throwing off the girl’s hand. “Shoot me! I want you to!”
Colt put his gun away, grabbed the kid under the arm, lifted him up, then shoved him in the girl’s direction to get him walking. The both walked away, the girl later turning to flip them off and scream foul curses their way.
“You need to stay by the Jeep,” Colt said when the two of them were finally gone. “We can’t afford to lose our stuff. Certainly not to a pair of super freaks like that.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Faith mumbled. “Can you at least be quick? Just grab her and hurry back out?”
He nodded, then said, “Violence first, humility later. Stop being so damn nice.”
She frowned, then nodded.
Wasting no time, he jogged toward the dorms thinking the longer he left Faith out in the open, the more he risked her not being there when he got back.
Colt burst into Leighton’s dorm, trotted down the hall, then stopped as an awful feeling suddenly spread through him. In the dimly-lit hallway, he saw a body laid out in front of his daughter’s dorm room. Is he dead, or sleeping?
He approached cautiously, seeing that it was, in fact, a dead man. The smell was atrocious, the obvious giveaway.
Holding his nose, his eyes starting to water, he stepped past the body and pushed Leighton’s door open. Inside, the room was a mess, things torn apart.
That sinking feeling intensified. He looked around for a note, but didn’t find anything. That’s when he saw a box with the flaps pulled open. He lowered the flaps to see who had sent this, and that’s when he saw Leighton’s name written in the familiar cursive.
“Walker,” he mumbled.
Had his brother sent Leighton a package like the one he’d sent Colt? It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that Leighton was gone and he was pretty sure he knew where she went. Or maybe he was just making excuses to leave because it smelled so bad he wanted to puke.
Looking down on the floor, he saw something that caught his eye. Horror shot through him. He stood there paralyzed, barely able to gulp. On the floor, he saw Leighton’s hearing aids. He bent over and picked them up, hoping they were her old hearing aids. They weren’t. They fell from his hands as he stood there, shocked and suddenly very scared for his daughter.
Seconds later, a fresh wave of that God-awful, gut-clenching stink hit his nostrils. Fighting to hold down his stomach, he hurried out of the room, glancing briefly at the man with the bashed-in skull.
The second he got outside, Colt sucked in a giant breath of fresh air. That’s when he saw Faith standing in front of the Jeep. She was stuck in the middle of four or five adult males.
She had the SHIELD out, but the guys were trying to intimidate her, not even concerned that she was carrying.
Colt reached for his gun and broke into a run. His eyes were on one male particular—a large kid with a letterman jacket. He was calling her all kinds of names, telling her she wouldn’t shoot him so just give him the damn gun already.
A few of the guys turned and saw Colt running toward them. Colt wasn’t having any of it. He set his aim on the kid harassing Faith and fired two rounds into him.
The others bolted.
“Get in the Jeep, Faith,” he barked. She did as he said, terrified and shaking. “Are you okay? Did they touch you at all?”
“I…I…” she couldn’t finish that thought.
“It’s okay,” he said, taking her hand. She jerked her arm away and got very quiet. “What was that for?”
“You killed that kid!”
“What were they trying to do to you?”
“They were just hungry,” she said, looking away and wiping her eyes.
“Everyone’s hungry, dammit!” he roared. “You can’t save them all. Focus on your damn kids, Faith! And protect our shit!”
“I am focused!” she screamed.
He started the Jeep, took a deep, stabilizing breath, then calmly said, “I need Niles’s address.”
“Is that where she’s at?” she asked, cold.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, did she leave a note?” He shook his head. She asked, “What did you see in there?”
“Nothing much, just that some of her stuff was gone, meaning she got out on her own, willingly.”
Without another word, Faith fished a slip of paper out of her purse, then handed it to him. He read the address, then said, “I don’t know where this is.”
“Just go to Melbourne, it’s through Silver Grove. I can get us to his parents’ house from there.”
“You’ve been there before?” he asked.
“Twice with Leighton.”
They made their way to Alexandria Pike/US-27, then turned left onto Industrial Road heading into the land of endless trees. A few miles up, Colt spotted a truck that looked pushed off the side of the road. Across from the truck, on the other side of the street, it looked like inclement weather had torn up a number of trees.
“Is this where the tornado hit, do you think?” Faith asked.
Colt drove them past the torn up trees and the truck, maintaining his speed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something happened here, though. But I don’t want to see anymore bad things. I just want to find Leighton.”
When they finally reached KY-8/Mary Ingles Highway, the drive was eerie, overly quiet. When the town of Silver Grove came into view, Colt knew why things had changed. The town looked like it had been burned down and abandoned.
Faith remained quiet, even though her eyes had filled with tears and her lips were trembling.
They cruised past a burned-up car lot, then they drove by several buildings that looke
d torched. A tax preparation store, a hair salon, a corner store. And then they saw the charred bodies.
“My God,” he said.
Roasted corpses were everywhere, like they’d been rounded up and set aflame together. Once they caught fire, it looked like some of them had tried to run, but not very far.
“These monsters burned down the whole damn fire station,” he said.
“Those poor people,” Faith said about the dead.
The building was torched right down to the bricks, but even the bricks were blackened by soot. It was a difficult sight to behold.
“Poor people is right,” he replied, barely able to stomach the sight of the massacre. He took her hand and she didn’t shake him off this time. “We’re going to find her, Faith. I promise.”
“Do you think we should stop and look through them?” she asked, even though she clearly didn’t want that.
“Let’s check with Niles’s family first,” he said.
When they drove into Melbourne, Faith recited directions from memory, but she was so shaken that she lost track of where she was momentarily. Colt had to backtrack here and there, looking for different streets that better fit with Faith’s memory. Unfortunately, there was no one to ask for directions. Not a single soul to be found.
“I remember now,” she said, one of the streets jogging her memory. “Turn here, it’s at the end of the road. Rather, it’s at the end of the road where it curves to the left.”
When the Bennington’s home came into view, Faith started to cry again. She was not a woman who cried often. In fact, she was a strong woman who would have refused to cry had this day, and the things they’d seen, not been too much to stomach. She’d seen enough violence for a lifetime, maybe even two lifetimes.
Looking at her, Colt was thinking that if she didn’t get that hard inner-layer built up soon, she was going to crack.
They pulled into the driveway, saw more dead bodies, these ones less crispy and shoved out of the way.
“They’re like the creeps we ran into back in Lexington,” Faith said.
“Must’ve been one hell of a shoot-out,” he said.
