She raised her hands slowly, speaking with a sereneness she didn’t entirely feel. There was little chance that Anton could do her serious harm; she was more worried what would happen if she was injured and the wolf came out uncontrolled. “Anton, please. Put the gun down. I was just teasing you, ok? I want to see this ‘New Heaven’ place too.”
He didn’t look convinced.
She tried again. “Anton, think. You can’t keep a gun on me the entire time we’re traveling, right? And I swear, I was only teasing. Just put the gun down, before I get hurt. Or you.”
The mention of getting hurt seemed to draw Anton out of his crazed state. He blinked rapidly and looked down at the gun, almost as if seeing it for the first time. Slowly he lowered it and when the barrel was pointing at the ground Nowen allowed herself to relax. Awkwardly he slipped the weapon back into his jacket. When he looked at her again a blush of shame bloomed in his face.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
“It’s ok.”
He shook his head, his fine white-blonde hair waving with the motion. “No. No, I’m not like that. But...but after what I saw in Ft. Collins, I realized...it seems you can’t trust anyone. So I got some protection.”
Nowen nodded. But can I trust you? “I understand. I do. But let’s not point that at me again, ok?”
Anton grinned, his good humor seeming to return as fast as it left. “Gotcha. ‘You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!’, right?”
She looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Uh, never mind.” Anton glanced around the parking lot. “So. Wanna get going?”
In response she walked to the passenger side of the silver car and opened the door. With a little effort she managed to fold her long length into the small black seat and watched as Anton took the driver’s side. The engine started up smoothly and he gunned it a couple of times, smiling widely at the roar, before he put it into gear and they pulled out of the parking lot.
The sleek silver car hummed along Highway 80, leaving Laramie and the Medicine Bow National Forest behind. They were heading east into a beautiful morning with an endless high blue sky overhead, stretching as far as could be seen. Anton put the top down and the wind of their passing whipped Nowen’s long black hair around her head. The tendrils snapped at her skin like snakes, and she drew the mass back into a ponytail and looked for something to hold it together. Anton pointed at the glove compartment. “Check in there.”
She opened the small compartment. Inside was a jumble of pens, papers, coins, and a couple of small plastic bags. She pulled one out and held it up. It had a small amount of dark green leaves in it. From beside her Anton gave a nervous chuckle. “Oh, wow, I forgot I had those. That could have made the trip up here a little easier. Uh, you can take the rubber band off that baggie for your hair. And just put the bag back in there.”
Nowen secured her ponytail and then leaned back in her seat. She watched the rich green summer prairie stream by as they drove. A large highway sign ticked by and she noticed the name on it. “So, we’re going to Cheyenne?” she called to Anton, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the wind.
“To begin with.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning as close to the young blonde man as her seatbelt allowed.
“The New Heaven people said they were going to set up outposts along the way to New Heaven. Cheyenne was one of the places they mentioned.”
“And you need my protection for this short of a trip?” She looked at him as she said this. At her words he clenched the steering wheel tighter and leaned forward in his seat. A mulish look came over his face, and his only response was a sharp nod.
She looked back out her window again. There’s something he’s not telling me. But what? Another thought occurred to her, something she’d missed when Anton was telling his story. She kept her gaze on the landscape as she asked, “Why didn’t you go with the New Heaven people when they left your neighborhood?”
He cleared his throat before he answered. “My mother was dying. I didn’t want her to die alone.”
Perhaps because the wolf’s hearing was more acute than hers, or perhaps because she wasn’t distracted by trying to read the emotions on his face, but to Nowen Anton’s grief-ridden words rang hollow. What the hell is he up to? I believe he’s telling the truth about Zoe, and the other wolf/woman he saw. But everything else? The wolf shifted uneasily. No, we’ll stay with him a little longer. Maybe we can get the location of this ‘New Heaven’ out of him. The wolf bared her teeth in a feral grin. Let’s try the human way, first.
Chapter Five
They reached the outskirts of Cheyenne without trouble, passing only the occasional abandoned car or truck. Once they were stopped for half an hour as a huge herd of cattle crossed the highway. Fencing along both sides of the road had either been torn down or fallen down at some point in the past, and the placid bovines made their leisurely way from one pasture to the next. Herds of horses and pronghorn antelope could be seen dotting the vibrant green prairie and birds were everywhere.
But no living humans.
Once Anton had to swerve around an old pickup that was parked sideways in the middle of the road, and as he drove slowly past Nowen watched the withered form behind the steering wheel turn its head and stare at her from leaf-yellow eyes.
Now Anton slowed as he approached a highway junction. There were more abandoned cars here and he maneuvered through a confusing tangle of vehicles as he drove up an onramp and onto another highway. A sign marked it as 25 North.
Nowen was gazing at the wreckage on the roadway below when Anton cursed and slammed on the brakes. The force threw her against her seat belt and she whipped her head around to stare at him. “What? What is it?” In response he pointed ahead, disgust on his face.
They were at the top of an offramp that led down and around a grassy rise. A highway sign pointed the way to ‘Frontier Mall’. Two eighteen-wheelers had crashed and burned at the top of the ramp, creating an effective block. Other cars were massed behind it, dusty and forgotten.
Anton cursed again and slapped his hands down on the steering wheel.
“What’s wrong?” Nowen asked.
“What’s wrong?! The road is blocked!”
She looked at him silently.
“That’s where we need to go! The mall! That’s one of the places the New Heavenites mentioned as an outpost!” Anton shouted.
The wolf’s hackles rose. Nowen spoke as calmly as she could. “Well, then, just drive down the road to another turn-off. I’m sure there’s more than one way to get to this mall.”
All the anger seemed to rush out of Anton and he slumped forward, dropping his head into the shelter of his raised arms. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. When he spoke, there was such pain and weariness in his words that Nowen truly believed him.
This time.
“I’m just tired of being afraid. I want normal again, you know? I just want to get to this New Heaven and have all these problems go away. I just...” his voice trailed off. Nowen turned away from his anguish and looked out the open window.
And saw something that made her heart skip.
Drawn by the sound of the sleek silver car’s engine, Revs were rising from among the massed cars like strange new flowers growing from radioactive soil. Their heads turned and locked on the car, and Nowen could hear the soft moans coming from their mold-colored throats.
She reached a hand out behind her and grabbed Anton’s arm. “Anton, you need to raise the roof of this thing. And the windows, too.”
“What?” he snuffled.
“Revs, Anton.” She heard the metal ‘clink’ of his seat belt being unfastened and then felt him move up behind her. His warm breath touched her ear, and she automatically flinched away.
“Shit!” he whispered.
“Right. So let’s get going.” she whispered back.
Anton slid back into his seat. The windows rose to meet the red fabric
top that covered them. The Revs moaned louder now, an undulating wave of noise. They were moving towards the car, and Nowen could see that even the mass of the wrecked trucks wouldn’t keep them away. “We need to go. Now.”
Anton grunted in agreement and threw the car into gear. The tires squealed and fought for purchase on the ground.
And then the engine died.
“Fuck!” Anton whispered.
Nowen kept her eyes on the approaching Revs. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know! Car won’t start!”
Behind her Nowen could hear the jingle of the key chain as Anton tried to get the car going. In front of her the leading edge of the Revs, a group now thirty strong, were making their staggering way around the blackened hulks of the trucks. She rolled the window down part-way and listened to the sound of the horde, praying that she wouldn’t hear what she was dreading to hear.
The car’s engine roared to life. Anton whooped and with a harsh lurch they sprang forward, racing down the highway and away from the Revs. The blonde man thumped the steering wheel with a large fist as Nowen watched. “Ha!” he shouted gleefully, “I knew this was a good car! And look! We can take this off-ramp and head right to the mall!”
Nowen swayed in her seat as they sped down the sloping, curving ramp. Anton slowed down only when abandoned cars and trucks began to dot the road, and they drove in silence through the remnants of humanity’s last, desperate grasp for survival.
Vehicles were everywhere, parked or wrecked or smashed in the road, on the grassy verges, on the median. Some of the vehicles were still occupied, withered mummies leaning dead-eyed against closed windows or tracking their movement with a jaundiced gaze. There weren’t many bodies in the street but bones scattered here and there could be seen. Revs were here, a spare handful that wandered aimlessly through the eternal parking lot the highway had become. Like their brethren they fixed their eyes on the passing car and started trailing them.
Nowen’s window was still halfway down, and other than the faint, low moaning of the dead all was silence. Even the scavenging birds had left this graveyard. The absolute lack of noise was disturbing. She liked silence, but the quiet here, in the midst of mankind’s creations, was something wrong. It was a quiet of things missing, things taken away, rather than the quiet of nature moving in its endless cycle of life. She shivered as a deep and hungry longing for her forests and mountains swept like an avalanche over her.
She glanced at the young man driving next to her. His white-knuckled hands gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel and he stared straight ahead, his wide eyes shimmering with tears. She said his name.
Anton blinked. “I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s just,” he paused and drew in a shaky breath, “seeing it all. I mean, I saw the news reports, and the Fluxers, and I passed some bodies on the way up here, so it’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever heard of what happened. But, you can’t help but keep hoping you know?” He gave her a look she couldn’t read. “You think, ok, sure, Loveland is overrun, but surely Denver is ok. And then it’s ok, Denver is overrun, but surely Fort Collins is ok. And then, when you see that Fort Collins is nothing but the dead and undead, you start to think, ok, maybe Laramie or Cheyenne is ok. Not so many people live there, maybe they managed to control the outbreak...it’s like getting punched in the stomach over and over. You can only take so much before it becomes easier not to hope.”
Nowen nodded slowly, trying to see the world from the viewpoint of someone who remembered how things used to be. “And that’s why New Heaven is so important to you?” she asked.
He shifted uneasily in his seat. “Well, yeah. Anyway-hey!” He pointed at the windshield. “There it is - Frontier Mall.”
The mall was a long, sand-colored building. Store names were displayed on the outside walls, and several restaurants shared the massive parking lot. Nowen could see the expected abandoned cars spread out through the lot, but as they drove into the lot itself she could make out a mass of vehicles at the far end of the mall from where they were. Surprisingly there were no Revs visible but she spared only a passing thought for that unusual occurrence, all her attention fixed on what was ahead of them.
The sight was eerily reminiscent of the refugee center she had seen a few months earlier. This area looked better prepared, with massive concrete dividers topped with razor wire arranged in three concentric circles around a grouping of vans, trucks, and campers. An enormous sign, black letters painted on a white piece of plywood and attached to a light pole, read simply “New Heaven”. As Anton pulled up to one of the dividers Nowen could see that the v-shape where each divider top angled away from each other had been filled in with concrete.
Anton put the car into park and rolled down his window. “All right! Look at this place, it’s like a fortress!” he said.
“Where are the people?” Nowen asked as she studied the collection of vehicles.
“Well, maybe they’re busy. Or inside the trucks or something.”
Nowen just looked at the young blonde man.
He frowned and turned the car off. Dead silence rushed in to fill the void left by the rumble of the engine. “Let’s go see what’s going on.” He shoved his door open and stepped out; Nowen did the same.
Anton cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted a greeting. Nowen flinched at the sudden sound and looked around for Revs. Again she saw none, and now she began to wonder at the lack of them. A slight breeze, hardly more than a puff of air, blew across her face, bringing a scent that was both familiar and unpleasant. She closed her eyes and concentrated both sets of senses, hers and the wolf’s, on deciphering the odor.
She could hear Anton calling again just as she identified the scent. She opened her eyes and grabbed him by one heavily muscled arm. He looked at her angrily and she said, “I smell blood. Relatively fresh blood. And death.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t think there’s anybody alive here.”
Anton stared at her for a moment before shoved brusquely past her. “Whatever. I’m going to go find someone. You stay here and commune with nature all you want.” He stomped away, following the curve of the outermost circle of dividers.
Nowen took a deep breath and shoved her own anger down. Idiot. I should just let him go off and get killed. She sighed heavily and walked after him.
At what looked like a point halfway around the circle’s circumference a gate had been installed between dividers. Tall, made of metal, and topped with more wire, it looked impressively impregnable. But it swung open easily at Anton’s touch, and Nowen followed him through the gate with a deepening feeling that something was terribly wrong.
Two more gates, staggered at different intervals from each other, were again easily passed. The smell of blood, death, and something else that Nowen couldn’t place, a scent of almonds, was overpoweringly strong now and even Anton seemed to sense it. In a silence that was overshadowed by the stillness from the vehicles around them they maneuvered between two large vans and finally stepped out into the open space. Anton drew in a shaky breath and turned away. Nowen could only stare, feeling the faint hope she didn’t even know she had die. Dead, as surely as the people who covered every square inch of the parking lot in front of them.
Chapter Six
The heat had begun to work on the bodies and in their swollen and sun-darkened state it was difficult to tell male from female, middle-aged from elderly. The children were easy to determine.
The corpses lay on the ground in no particular order and no particular style. Some lay on their backs, some on their fronts, some curled on their sides and cradled in their own arms. The clothes they wore told of long journeys traveled - without exception they were all road-worn and ragged.
Nowen prodded the arm of a corpse that lay near her, a body with wispy white hair and a pair of cat-eye glasses strung on a colored ribbon. The skin split open like an over-stuffed sausage at her touch a
nd dark, rancid liquid spilled out. From behind her Anton made a choking sound. She moved out into the mass of bloated bodies, looking at one or another randomly. Something’s weird, here.
She crouched down beside a body wearing faded overalls. The man was face-down and with care she eased him onto his back. A thick, gassy odor, redolent of spoiled meat, rose from the body and Nowen had to turn away, fighting the urge to vomit. Holding her breath she examined the dead man.
“Anton! Come here.” she called.
“No thanks!”
“Get over here. I want to show you something.”
“I’ve seen dead bodies before!” Anton shouted, but moved up next to her anyway. “What?”
“What killed these people?” she asked.
The young man dropped into a crouch. He held a hand over his nose and mouth, and his voice was muffled when he responded. “Fluxers. I mean, Revs. Whatever.”
Nowen waved her hand over the body. “No, look - no wounds.”
“Gunshots?”
Nowen shook her head slowly and stood up. “Wouldn’t there be more blood, if these people had been shot?”
Anton straightened and turned in a circle, one hand still clamped over his face. “Yeah, right. And if they were shot, none of them look like they were running away, so they just stood there...and took it?”
Nowen started picking her way through the bodies, heading toward the far side of the circling dividers. “This whole thing is strange. You’d think there’d be more flies at such a feast. Or scavenging birds.”
Anton hurried up next to her. “I think they’re dead, too.” At her questioning look he pointed back behind him. “Back by the entrance we came in through there were three or four dead crows.”
Nowen stopped in her tracks and looked. Now she noticed the small drifts, here and there against the bodies or the vehicles, of feathers and beaks and scaly legs. What the hell happened here? The wolf seemed as confused as she was.
Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) Page 3
