He had taken the massive Suburban right from a dealership. Brand new, with all the accessories and luxuries possible. He had found keys just lying on a salesman’s desk and tried the doors of all the cars in the showroom. The Suburban had been the last one he tried. He couldn’t figure out how to get the vehicle door of the showroom open, so he had driven out through the plate glass. The tank had been full but was now down to less than a quarter. He had only come a couple of hundred miles since taking it, but he had been forced to stop and find different ways around massive traffic jams on the interstates, had been taking side roads, sometimes driving through yards and fields to get around cars abandoned in the middle of the road, sometimes back-tracking for miles.
It was important that he not stop when driving at night. The creepers were drawn to his vehicle by the movement or maybe the sound, but he didn’t have to go too fast to outrun them. A few times he had been forced to back over them after coming up on a blockage in the road, cringing each time the tires thumped over their bodies, shuddering as his headlights illuminated their struggles to rise on broken limbs.
He had no idea where he was going. His first thought had been to find a place where things were normal, but the more he drove, the more he realized that there was a new normal now, and it wasn’t one he was comfortable with. He had crossed the bridge into Illinois, thinking about heading to Chicago, but he hadn’t gotten far. He had stopped at this convenience store in a nameless suburb area surrounded by soybean fields. Somehow it was easier when the surroundings were unfamiliar in this entirely strange new world. It had been bad to see the empty streets of his hometown in the heat of the beginning of summer, worse to see the creepers roaming in the cool darkness. Lying here was the worst of all, though. His mind would not stop long enough for him to get any real sleep. He would doze and start awake, going from a sleeping nightmare into a waking one. At least when he was driving, he was doing something: planning, acting, executing his plan even with no goal in sight.
He heard the sound for a while before it entered his conscious thoughts. In the silence of this new, strange world he had stopped listening because there was nothing to hear. The sound was insistent, though, and soon he realized it was the engine of an approaching vehicle. He peeled back the cardboard from a window just in time to see a battered Montero go by. The brake lights flashed briefly as the driver maneuvered around four cars blocking most of the two-lane highway in front of his parking lot, dropping a little into the ditch on the side of the road. The motor raced, and then the Montero was past him, disappearing around a slight bend in the road. He sat staring, wondering if he had really seen it. His ears told him he had. The sound of the motor was fading in the distance.
Muttering, “Wait, wait,” he climbed between the front seats and over the console, clawing at the cardboard inside the windshield. He fumbled the keys in the ignition and finally got the Suburban started, into gear, and in pursuit. As he accelerated out of the parking lot, he scraped one of the cars in the intersection in his hurry to follow the Montero. More body damage.
He drove recklessly, taking chances he hadn’t taken before, but the Montero didn’t appear in front of him on the road. Finally, he stopped, rolled down his window, turned off the engine, and listened intently. He heard a motor off to his left and slightly behind him. He started the engine again and backed up to the last cross street and turned left. At the next intersection, he looked left and right, spotted the foreign SUV pulled over halfway up the block. He pulled up across the street and turned off his motor. The vehicle appeared to be empty. He couldn’t decide if it was the same one. Where had the driver gone? He stepped from his vehicle, leaving the door open, and crept across the street.
When he was ten feet from the Montero a head with closely-cropped dark hair popped into view in the driver’s side window. He found himself looking into a pair of wary brown eyes. They both froze. It was a moment before he realized this was a girl. And she appeared to be alone. It was another moment before he realized that she was holding a small pistol pointed directly at him. He tensed.
“I-I’m very glad to see you,” Chase stammered. “I’m not a creeper. You don’t look like one either. I haven’t seen anyone else who wasn’t since I woke up three days ago.”
“Is that what you call them?” the girl asked.
“If you mean the sick people, yeah. Except I think they are more than sick, though. There is something seriously messed up going on, and they’re more than just sick. I think…” He didn’t know how to approach what he thought and make it sound reasonable and logical. She looked at him, waiting, but he couldn’t finish. He shrugged and she nodded.
“You were back at that gas station, weren’t you? I thought something was up when I saw the cardboard in all the windows of your car. You’re the only healthy person I’ve seen besides me who is out moving around. I’ve seen a few people here and there, but they just watched me go by. Everybody seems to be holed up waiting for rescue.” She lowered the pistol and he relaxed.
She opened the door to the Montero and stepped out. He sized her up. She was short, and even with her baggy shorts and too-big T-shirt, he could see she had a very slight build. He couldn’t decide how old she was. She could have been fourteen or twenty, but probably no older. “So why did you turn off? Why didn’t you keep heading down the road?”
She looked up and down the street. He caught himself doing the same. The creepers didn’t come out much during the heat of the day, but he didn’t want to be surprised. “I’m low on gas,” she explained.
He was puzzled. “Yeah? Where are you going to get gas in this neighborhood?”
“I look for houses with sheds in the backyard. There’s usually a gallon or two in cans people use for mowers. That’s the easiest.”
Smart, he thought. He wished he had thought of that. “What do you do if you don’t find enough?”
“I use my Arkansas credit card.” She saw his look of confusion, and explained. “Siphon hose. I try to find cars parked on the street. I don’t get too close to the houses.”
He nodded knowingly. He’d tried to raid houses for food, and there had been creepers in a couple of them. The first time, he had barely gotten away. “Good to see someone else putting criminal skills to use. I stole a brand new Suburban.” He smiled.
“You win on that front. I just stole a used piece of crap Montero.”
They stood there silently, appraising each other. Finally, Chase spoke, “It’s going to start getting dark in a few hours. Let’s see if we can find enough gas for both of us.” She stared at him and he thought she might tell him to go away but then she nodded. Tough chick, he thought.
After combing several blocks of houses and finding a lot of half-empty one gallon cans, they found a house with a lawn mowing service sign and four full five-gallon cans on a trailer in the back yard. They loaded the gas containers into trailer-hitch rack on the back of the Montero and drove their separate vehicles to the convenience store. Chase guessed an hour remained before the creepers started walking. He walked into the convenience store through the plate glass door he had broken earlier that day and grabbed snacks from the shelves and warm Cokes and bottles of water from the silent coolers. They spread an old blanket from the back of the Montero in the parking lot and sat down, cross-legged, facing each other.
Chase looked at the bag of Corn Nuts in his hand. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m getting tired of snack foods.” Sonya, which was what the girl had told him her name was, looked at him and nodded.
“Have you tried to get into a real grocery store?” She tore open a bag of beef jerky sticks and offered him a handful.
Chase took one and bit into it, wincing. All the salty food had given him a canker sore inside his cheek. “Yeah.” He looked away, not wanting her to see the fear he had felt. It rose up again in him as strong as it had been when the creeper had rounded the corner of the aisle right in front of him, and he was sure it showed on his face.
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p; He took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to rid himself of the fear. Then he asked, “So now what?” She looked at him blankly. “I mean, what happens now? I haven’t got a clue what to do next. I can’t go on like I have been, I mean. Do we find a safe place and wait for someone to come save us?” He looked at her and checked her response.
She looked back at him and said flatly, “I don’t think anyone is coming. Where did you come from?”
“Just west of Saint Louis.” He waved his hand back over his shoulder, not knowing if it was the right direction or not.
She pulled the tab on a can of Pringles. “You see anything that made you think anyone is coming to save you?”
He thought back to the miles of empty back-roads he had covered, the emptiness of the daylight hours and the silence everywhere. “No. I started in the suburbs out west, and first I tried to go into the city. I figured that would be where I’d find people in charge trying to sort things out and everything would be okay. Man, was I ever wrong about that. More creepers there than anywhere.” He took a drink of warm water. “Where did you come from?”
“Omaha. And I didn’t see anything from there to here that looked like rescue.” She looked intently into his eyes, and he saw on her face all she must have gone through.
“Omaha? Seriously? Man.” He looked around. “You know, when I started out, I didn’t really go anywhere. I didn’t know where to go after I saw the mess in St. Louis. I’m on this side of the river because I was going to try Chicago next.” He lay back on the tarp and looked up at the red and white aluminum canopy. “I didn’t want to go home. There wasn’t anything there for me, anyway.”
“What about your family?”
“Family might be too strong a word. I mean, I have both parents. Still married, too. But we’re not a family. Dad does, or probably did, his thing, Mom did her thing, and I do my thing. I know I should love them, and be worried about them, but the truth is, I was a lot closer to guys on the football team. I was closer to the team manager than to my parents. I was closer to people at my school, because I sure saw a lot more of them.” He closed his eyes. “And I miss them. I miss those people.”
“Yeah.” Chase sensed movement and saw that Sonya had stretched her legs out in front of her and was leaning back on her elbows. He sat up. They couldn’t get too comfortable. Sonya continued, “You look like a jock. But I would have picked you for baseball or soccer or something. Not football. Not fat enough.”
Chase raised an eyebrow. “Me not fat enough? Look in a mirror. But not all football players are big guys. I could stand to put on a few pounds, but I was probably going to be the starting quarterback next year. Don’t have to be huge for that position.”
“Quarterback, huh? Does that mean you were dating the head cheerleader?” Chase looked at Sonya to see if he should be mad at her. He thought there may have been some bitterness there, but decided to let it go.
“Don’t stereotype me. I mean, I guess I was popular enough, as that goes, but I wasn’t ever going to be elected homecoming queen.” Chase thought. “It’s not like I got nominated or elected or anything to be quarterback. I can throw a football pretty good, and I can remember the playbook. I run well, too.” Chase thought back to the conference with the coach at the end of the season. Coach Parker had told him he had all the tools but he didn’t play with heart. His exact words had been, Son, you got to get the fire in your belly, and you got to get it bad. You got to get it so bad that the people around you get the fire in their belly, too. You need to work on that, and not much will stop you. Chase had nodded and said he would work on it, but he hadn’t really thought about it again until now.
He had been looking around at the growing shadows, but the lengthening silence from Sonya made him look at her. She was looking steadily at him. Finally, she asked, “So, Captain America, what now?”
Chase shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. Keep going, I guess. Find more people? Find someplace safe?”
Sonya pulled her knees to her chest, planted her feet and stood up. “Well, good luck with that. It will be dark, soon. I want to get out in the country, in the open, and lock down in the car for the night.”
Chase looked at her, surprised. “You’re going to take off on your own again? What about you? What’s next for you?”
Sonya gestured down the road. “I’m heading out. I don’t know if there is anywhere safe. But I’m heading to Ocala, Florida.”
“Why Florida? And where is Ocala?”
“That’s the last place I know where my dad was. Ocala is about the middle of the state. My dad’s smart. I think there’s a good chance he’s still alive. Besides, I have nowhere else to go. I have to do something.”
Chase climbed to his feet. “Do you want some company?”
Chapter 8 – Sonya
Sonya tried to sleep, but each time Chase had to leave the road, brake suddenly or swerve she was wide awake again. She didn’t let him know she was awake, however. She had turned in her seat so that her back was against the passenger-side door, and she watched him through slitted eyes. In the darkness, he couldn’t have seen that she was studying him, but she could see him plainly in the glow of the dashboard light.
She wondered if she had made a mistake. She had made it this far on her own. She had almost said no when he invited himself along. Another person would complicate things. Especially a guy. But so far, she couldn’t complain about him slowing her down. With him driving at night and her driving during the day, they would make better time to Florida. And he was an extra set of eyes. He had not had as much trouble as she had lifting the full cans when putting the gas in the car. Most of all, she loved the sound of his voice.
From Omaha to where she had picked him up, there had been silence. She could turn on the stereo and listen to CDs, but she hadn’t grabbed any of her CDs, and the guys next door had listened to a lot of weird music. College stuff, she guessed. They had one good CD, and that was a best of Credence Clearwater Revival. She wondered why they had it. Her dad loved Credence, though, so it made her too sad to listen to it. And there was no radio. She had tried all the stations, and there was almost nothing. Almost nothing. Way up on the dial, she had found a voice, a mechanical voice, which kept saying, “This is the correct procedure. Beginning activation plan 237. This is the correct procedure. Beginning activation plan 238.” She had listened through activation plan 277, but then she had gotten a little freaked out and put in a CD by some band named Django Django.
They had started out driving both vehicles. She had thought she wanted some space, and she wasn’t completely sure about him yet. He had taken the lead, and she had followed. They started south, but had bypassed the connection to I-55. The cars on the interstate had been bumper to bumper, and the median was full of cars as well. Some of the people in the cars appeared to have been fleeing St. Louis, and others were fleeing to St. Louis. Sonya tried to imagine what kind of level of panic would have caused such a thing, and wondered how she could have missed it.
He had led her back across the Mississippi on the bridge at someplace called Chester, and then to Highway 67 going south. Night fell. She thought they went too far west again before going south, but the highway he chose was surprisingly clear. A few minutes after they passed through a wide space in the road called Fredericktown he pulled to the side and she pulled in behind him. He walked back, warily looking into the darkness around them. When she rolled down the window, he said, “I need gas.” For a moment, she felt protective of the gas she was still carrying. That gas would get her a long way down the road toward Florida, toward her father.
Finally, she said, “Okay. Listen, I need to know if you are serious about going all the way to Florida with me. Are you in? Because I’m trying to make a decision, and if I choose wrong, then that would slow me down, maybe even stop me.”
He looked evenly at her. “I can’t say what’s going to happen next. If we were to find a safe place, I might not follow you that far. But I will tell you this: Righ
t now, seeing you, another normal person, is about all that’s keeping me from losing it.” He turned his head to the side and appeared to be studying an open field. “So yeah, I’ll go to Florida with you. The creepers don’t seem too fond of sunshine, and Florida is the Sunshine State, right? Or maybe it’s the Orange Juice State, I can’t remember. Either way, I’ll stick with you as long as you want me around.” He turned back to look at her. She made up her mind.
“Okay. We sleep here tonight. In the morning we load my stuff in your vehicle. Switch the rack over. We empty the gas cans into your tank. I’ll siphon out what’s left in here, and we check any cars we come to until we fill all the cans again.” She looked at him as threateningly as she could. “If you think once about taking my gas and ditching me, you better think twice. I will shoot you.”
He smiled. “Agreed. And thank you.”
He had talked while she drove most of the day. Sometimes he talked about himself, about his life…before. Sometimes he wondered aloud what was going on and why. He had a few ideas about the what, but only brushed over the why before nights of driving and sleepless days caught up with him and he fell asleep. Sonya watched his head bob for a while before she pushed him over so he was leaning against the door. Now that he wasn’t looking, she smiled. She decided to like him.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about some of the things he had said. He had wondered about the why of everything happening. She hadn’t once. She had only tried to deal with the situation. Until she was safe, until she knew what had happened to her father, what was happening was horrible, but knowing why it was happening didn’t change the fact that she had to deal with it.
She knew the creepers weren’t just sick. It went way beyond that. Before she had learned to stay off the interstates, she had been surrounded by a mob of the creepers while sleeping, and their pounding on the Montero had brought her to horrified wakefulness. She had started the Montero and driven over them, then backed up over them again when she found her way blocked. In her terror she had done circles, running over the same bodies again and again. She saw horribly mutilated bodies struggling to rise, to pursue her, and she had known they were much, much more than sick.
After Everything Else (Book 1): Creeper Rise Page 5
