by Sarra Cannon
He expected some ugly retort or for her to snatch her arm away, but instead, she swiped at her eyes and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know I’ve been really hard on you since I got here, but I do appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I’m sorry you have to leave your home.”
Crash didn’t even know how to respond to that. Karmen being nice and saying thank you? Maybe it really was the end of days.
“I got your back, Blondie.” He flashed her a smile and winked.
She let out a huge sigh and pulled her arm away. “Nice,” she said. “Better than Barbie, I guess. I’ll see you in the truck. You coming?”
Karmen turned to the girl and she looked up, nodding. She’d been staring down at the rats, almost as if she was shocked or sad she’d killed them all the way she had. If it hadn’t been for her, though, Crash wasn’t sure how they would have survived it.
He still wasn’t sure what to think about the attack. Were the rats just infected and searching for survivors in packs? Or had they been sent, just like the super-zombies?
He didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to stay behind to find out. If they got out on the road and kept moving, they’d be a lot harder to track. He hoped, anyway.
Anything had to be better than staying in one place where they were sitting ducks for anyone who wanted to harm them.
The two girls left the apartment, and Crash walked over to his desk and stared up at his monitors. He’d spent so much time and money putting this system together. It sucked that he had to leave it behind like this, but they were just things, right? He doubted people had been looting computer equipment, so maybe once they found a new place to settle down, he’d be able to go out and scavenge for another great system somewhere.
For now, he unhooked his two best laptops from the mess of cords under his desk and slipped them into a leather messenger bag. He didn’t even bother bringing the chargers. He didn’t need them anymore.
Stepping over the bodies of the dead rats, he made his way back to his bedroom. There wasn’t much he wanted to take with him. He’d packed a couple changes of clothes, but other than his computers and the food and water he’d stored up, there wasn’t a lot more he cared about.
He grabbed the tattered copy of Catcher in the Rye and a photograph of his mom from his nightstand and slipped them into his bag with the computers.
Crash walked back down the hallway to the door, and with a final glance at the place he’d called home, he gave a quick salute and walked away.
Getting out of Washington D.C. proved to be a lot easier than getting in had been. For one, they had a military-grade vehicle that could off-road way better than her mom’s van. Second, there were several routes out of the city, and Crash had done his homework. He’d used video surveillance and reports he could find online to determine the best path, taking them north up the Anacostia Freeway. There was only one brief section of I-95 where he had to take them off the road and ride on the bumpy shoulder for a few hours.
Cars were lined up for miles in an endless traffic jam out of the city. Parrish saw glimpses of half-eaten faces inside cars. Some rotters were still trapped inside, beating against the windows but strapped in with seat belts that would hold them for possibly years before they gave out.
She didn’t see any survivors.
Parrish wasn’t sure what she was expecting, really, but she was surprised there was no one else on the road. There had to be survivors somewhere.
Had they all just locked themselves away in their houses for now?
Crash had told her that the earlier days—the days when she and the others had been safely tucked into their quiet suburban neighborhood—had been rough. Panic had taken its toll and people had starting looting grocery stores, Walmarts, gun stores and the like. A lot of the survivors who ventured out during those times had either been bitten or murdered.
Others had decided to wait this thing out as long as they could. They’d gathered whatever supplies they could get their hands on easily and, like she and Noah and Karmen had done at first, they’d boarded up their windows and locked themselves away from the rest of the world. Praying for a cure.
But there was no cure. And all the good men who were working on one were dead. Including Noah’s father.
Parrish shuddered and leaned her head back against the seat as the Humvee bounced along the shoulder at the edge of the traffic jam. She’d been geared up to fight their way out of the city, but as they broke through the line of traffic and settled back on the main highway, D.C. fading in the rearview, she dozed off and started to dream.
The dream was familiar—almost more of a memory, really.
Deep blue water stretched out in front of her for miles, the boat under her feet rocking gently back and forth in the waves. In the distance, a small island came into view, filling her heart with hope for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Is that Baltimore?”
Karmen’s voice woke Parrish and she opened her eyes. The dream had felt so real, it was difficult to come out of it and be plunged back into the nightmare of reality.
“What’s going on?” Parrish asked.
Karmen had scooted toward the front and put her head between the seats. She pointed just ahead and Parrish saw what she’d been looking at.
Smoke billowed up in the distance like a wall of darkness beyond the trees.
“What is that? Another fire?”
“Holy crap,” Crash said. “Baltimore must be burning, too.”
“The whole city?”
“It looks like it,” he said. “If I had to guess, D.C. will probably look like this before too long.”
As they drove, smoke seeped into the Humvee from the outside. Parrish lifted the top of her shirt to cover her mouth and nose.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
Crash shook his head and threw the vehicle into park as the outer limits of the city came into view. He stared ahead, his jaw slack.
The city was on fire, alright. Even from a distance, she could see the flames devouring everything in sight. Tall buildings had toppled to the ground. Homes were completely destroyed and turned to ash. It was scorched earth.
“It’s been burning for a while,” she said.
“Days, at least. Maybe longer,” Crash said.
“How many people do you think lived there?” Noah asked, leaning forward.
“Over 600,000, I think,” Crash said, the number bringing tears to Parrish’s eyes. “I don’t think there’s any way to tell exactly what happened, but whatever it was, there wasn’t anyone still alive here who was able to put it out once the fire got started.”
“I hope some of the survivors got out,” she said. She thought again of New York. How many big cities would be lost completely to fire or other disasters over the next few months? With no fire departments to keep it contained, all it would take was one building going up in flames to take down an entire city.
She thought of all the survivors in the big cities, holed up in their homes or apartments. They’d made it through the virus just to be burned to death in their own houses? She couldn’t even imagine it.
Maybe it was for the best that Zoe was gone.
As Crash started rolling again, she took it all in as best she could through the thick smoke that hung in the air for miles.
Everyone in the Humvee covered their mouths as Crash navigated around the burning town. They were all quiet, watching the destruction but unable to fully comprehend its meaning.
Until Crash slammed on breaks.
“What?” Parrish asked, staring at him. Why had he stopped?
She followed his gaze and peered through the dense smoke, her eyes growing wider as the outline of rotters appeared.
Hundreds of them, fleeing the city.
“Turn around,” Parrish yelled. “Get us out of here.”
Karmen leaned forward to look out the front windows and screamed. There was a line of rotters ahead of them, making t
heir way through the smoke.
“Already on it,” Crash shouted, putting the vehicle in reverse and pushing down on the gas so hard it thrust her forward.
Something thudded against the back of the Humvee and Karmen screamed as her head banged against the metal side of the vehicle.
She spun around in her seat. Rotting hands clawed at the small window in the back of the Humvee. She scooted down the bench to get a closer look and gasped.
“We’re surrounded,” she said. “They must have just come out of the woods behind us. They must have heard the sound of the engine.”
“Shit,” Crash mumbled. “Everybody hold on.”
Karmen grabbed the canvas loop above her head and pressed her feet hard into the floorboard as he turned the wheel and gunned it. Crash took them off the highway and into the grass on the shoulder. It was tough to see exactly what they were up against because of the smoke, but the line of rotters covering the road extended out toward the woods and there didn’t seem to be any way around them.
Crash stepped on the gas and plowed into the bodies. Some of them were still on fire. Some of them were barely more than skeletons. Rotters flew up on the hood of the Humvee as Crash moved through them. The vehicle bumped and jerked as they ran over the bodies of the undead. Others clawed at the sides of the windows and doors as they passed.
Karmen kept her eyes open against her will. She needed to see what was going on in case they got stuck and had to fight, but she wanted to just shut it out. These were images she really didn’t want invading her dreams later.
Crash jerked the wheel of the vehicle, barely missing the back end of a semi’s trailer that had turned over and was blocking most of the road and the shoulder. He traveled beside it, continuing to plow down the bodies of the dead. He had to go across the median and up onto the other side of the highway to get around the truck, but as soon as they made it back onto the road, he slammed on the brakes. There was no way through.
Cars spread out across all four lanes and into the median. There were wrecked cars piled up on the far shoulder all the way to the treeline. In the smoke, it was hard to see any way out of this, but they had to do something. The rotters were banging on the outside of the Humvee now that they were stopped, and Karmen could hear their hungry groans. If they didn’t move soon, they would be overwhelmed by them.
There was no telling how many rotters were out there. It could be thousands for all they knew.
“What do we do?” Parrish asked.
Crash gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. “I don’t know,” he said. “We could try going back the way we came and finding a way around, but if we get stuck somewhere in the middle of that horde, we’re screwed.”
“Well, we can’t go this way,” Karmen said. “And the longer we sit here, the more likely we are to get stuck.”
“Do you think you could use your mind control to clear a path?” Crash asked, turning around in his seat to meet her eyes.
“You could do it,” Parrish said. “If Crash drives slowly and you switch to sitting up front, maybe you could connect with the ones in front of us and get them to move out of the way.”
Tears spilled down Karmen’s cheeks and she shook her head. “I can’t do it. There are too many of them,” she said. “I’m too scared.”
Parrish grabbed Karmen’s face and forced her eyes upward. “You have to or we’re going to get trapped here,” she said. “You can do this.”
Parrish unhooked her seat belt and climbed into the back. She pushed Karmen forward.
“Get up there,” she said. “You have to move.”
Crash turned the Humvee around, slamming into a group of rotters behind them. “It’s now or never,” he said.
“Okay,” Karmen said. She wiped her tears from her face and climbed into the front seat, buckling herself in. God, she really didn’t want to do this. What if she got them all killed? What if she couldn’t do it?
She leaned forward, concentrating on the group of zombies just in front of the truck. Any time she’d used her powers in the past, she’d only been focusing on one person at a time, not a whole group.
She didn’t even know how her powers worked. How was she supposed to do this when she didn’t even understand exactly what she was doing?
“You ready?” Crash asked. He looked over at her and reached out to take her hand.
His skin was clammy and cold, but just knowing she wasn’t alone in this gave her the strength to push ahead. She had to at least try.
Karmen squeezed his hand and nodded. “Let’s go,” she said.
Crash winked and put his hands back on the steering wheel. “I’ll take it slow,” he said. “Do your thing.”
Behind her, she could hear Parrish pull her sword from her bag. They were ready in case Karmen couldn’t pull through, but it was up to her right now to save the group.
If they had to go outside and fight through this large horde, they were as good as dead.
Karmen clasped her hands together and took a deep breath. She stared at the group of rotters directly in front of the truck. They reached up onto the hood with their decaying fingers, leaving small trails of dark blood along the green paint.
Karmen locked eyes with one and in her mind told the old man to move. She imagined him stepping to the side, pushing the others of his kind backward, away from the Humvee.
Two seconds later, he did it. The old man who’d been clawing at the truck closed his hungry mouth and stepped backward.
One down, a bajillion to go.
Karmen breathed in and out, ignoring the smell of smoke that filled her nose. She could do this. She had to.
She focused on the next small group in front of the Humvee, but her heart was racing so fast she could barely breathe. She tried to command them to move, but nothing happened. The truck rocked back and forth as the horde grew closer and began beating on the sides of the vehicle.
“I can’t,” she screamed. “It’s not working.”
“You have to try,” Noah said. “Please, you can do this.”
She tried again, but couldn’t focus. She attempted a deep breath, but it was as if her lungs were closed for business.
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.
A warm hand gripped her arm, nearly burning her with its heat. She tried to pull away and jerked her head to the side to find the girl inches from her face.
“I can help,” the girl said. She reached up and took Karmen’s hand in her own, the heat of her skin painful to the touch.
“You’re hurting me,” Karmen said.
“Focus,” the girl said harshly.
Karmen’s stomach lurched and she pressed her lips together, trying not to throw up. There was something about this girl’s touch that repulsed her. For the first time, Karmen noticed that the girl’s hand was badly burned, her skin scarred and wrinkled. But it wasn’t the appearance of her skin that had turned her stomach. It was something dark about her touch. Something sinister.
“Karmen, I know you’re scared, but we need you to try to focus,” Crash said. “If we don’t get out of here now, we’re all going to die.”
Trembling, she closed her eyes and nodded her head.
“Focus on the heat,” the girl said. “Let the fire fill you from within. I know it hurts, but it’s who you are. Embrace it.”
Bright red flames erupted behind Karmen’s eyelids. She imagined herself stepping into them, letting them consume her body.
And suddenly, the power seized her. She opened her mouth and gasped, air filling her lungs as her veins pulsed with energy.
She opened her eyes and stared at the huge horde of rotters in front of them. She imagined a wide path opening up, rotters stepping to the side. She commanded them to obey her, reaching into their rotting minds and forcing them to listen.
She had never felt more powerful in her life, and it both excited her and scared the crap out of her.
A flame ignited on the road in front
of the Humvee, shooting forward in a straight line down the asphalt. Rotters backed away, stumbling over each other to avoid the flames.
“Go,” Karmen said.
Crash nodded and took a deep breath, a smile on his lips as he punched the gas.
The flames died as they drove through the middle of the horde. Everyone cheered, but Karmen couldn’t celebrate. She pulled her arm and hand away from the girl, briefly meeting her eyes.
The girl smiled, but there was something in her eyes that chilled Karmen’s soul. Something that left her feeling uneasy and sick to her stomach for hours.
On the other side of the smoke, they caught their first glimpse of survivors. A cluster of people, soot smeared across their faces, sat on the rails of a track that crossed the road at the edge of a small town. They looked tired and beaten down. Hopeless.
Crash pulled over toward them.
“What are you doing?” Karmen asked, rousing from her sleep. She’d been mostly out of it ever since she’d used her powers. “Why are you stopping? What if they’re infected?”
“They’re not infected,” Parrish said. “They’re just tired and dirty and probably hungry.”
“I don’t think we should stop,” Karmen said, crossing her arms in front of her chest and turning away.
Parrish shook her head. Was there no end to that girl’s selfishness?
She gave her a pass since Karmen had just saved their lives, but how she could turn away from the first survivors they’d seen in weeks was unreal.
Crash parked the Humvee a few yards shy of where the group was sitting. He opened his door and one of the adults in the group, a tall man who looked to be in his fifties, stood and walked toward them. Noah opened the back door for her and she jumped out.
Karmen and the girl stayed inside.
“Hey man, you guys doing okay?” Noah asked, shaking the man’s hand.
He shrugged and squinted toward the direction of the smoke billowing up around Baltimore’s city limits. “We spent the last twenty-four hours trying to get away from the fire, but we finally had to stop and rest. We lost our car back a ways and had to trudge through the woods to get to someplace we could breathe again.”
