by Nikita Eden
“Sounds like they’ve finally given up,” Lincoln yawned after he woke up from a short nap.
“I guess we aren’t worth waiting it out to them. Not that it’s a bad thing,” Audrey looked out the tiny window in the door and watched two dregs amble away from the doors.
“It looks clear enough to head back to the truck,” she unlocked the door and pushed it open.
“We need to get more ammo into the truck bed before we leave,” he struggled to get up.
“I know we’re supposed to, but I don’t think we’ll be able to with your leg being injured,” she didn’t want to push him any harder now that his leg and the opposite ankle were both hurt.
“It needs to be done and I’ll be fine as long as we don’t take long in Carlsbad,” he said.
“Are you sure this won’t be too much for you?” Audrey asked him as he limped to the door with a box of ammunition in his hands.
“Not worse than being smacked around with a stop sign by a Behemoth,” he joked.
Audrey grabbed another gun off of the gym floor and opened the door for him. She made sure the hallway was clear and stayed close to Lincoln. His shoes occasionally squeaked on the linoleum, but there weren’t many dregs around to hear it.
Wanting to avoid attracting another pack of dregs Audrey quickly disposed of any they encountered straggling along with her machete.
She took the box from Lincoln as soon as they got to the truck and lifted it over the tailgate. The cab of the truck was clear, but the seat was covered in the shattered glass.
“Here, take this,” she said handing him the new rifle. “Cover me while I grab more boxes.”
“Okay. I’ll clear off the seat in the cab so we don’t have to sit on broken glass,” he opened the small window in the back of the cab and awkwardly climbed through it. She watched him open the door and start sweeping the glass out.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
She ran through the hall half a dozen more times so she could load the back of the truck with boxes and extra guns.
“I think that’s enough,” Lincoln said in hushed tones.
She nodded and opened the door next to the one they had parked in, “Let’s get out of here.”
Her heart was beating fast when she turned the key. The engine didn’t backfire, but the sound of the truck echoed through the halls.
“They’re coming again,” Lincoln panicked when groups of dregs came around the tanks surrounding the school.
“We won’t be here by the time the make it to the doors,” Audrey pushed the gas pedal to the floor of the truck.
She drove through the gap between the tanks and pushed the truck to go as fast as she could and keep control of it. She watched the dregs swarm behind her in a frenzy while she drove away from Hobbs as quickly as she could.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was mid-afternoon when they finally headed towards Carlsbad. The sun was lower in the sky and looking at the clock Audrey knew they might not have time to go to Carlsbad and head back to Roswell.
Audrey felt a pang of anxiety in her stomach on the long stretch of road between Hobbs and Carlsbad.
“I wish there was a radio station we could listen to right now besides the emergency broadcasting that’s still going,” she said.
Lincoln laughed, “With a morning DJ that’s borderline inappropriate and acts twenty years younger than they are?”
“Oh yeah, that was always the best, having some guy in his forties or fifties that totally gave off the ‘I’m still cool and I can prove it by being ridiculous’ vibe,” Audrey rolled her eyes.
“It would be fun to have something like that,” Lincoln said. He put his feet up on the dash and winced a little before readjusting how he was sitting.
“There kind of is. Did you know someone is broadcasting a radio station in Roswell somewhere?” She asked him.
He shook his head, “No, I hadn’t heard that. Is it any good?”
“They played old popular songs when I heard it last night. I tried to find it this morning, but couldn’t, so it might only be available once in a while,” she watched him closely. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am. My leg is really sore and of course there’s my ankle that’s bothering me,” he shifted in his seat.
“I’m sorry, Lincoln. I wish you didn’t have to come, I could have handled this on my own,” Audrey frowned. “I hate the buddy system.”
“We’ve already gone over this. Don’t beat a dead horse, Audrey,” Lincoln grabbed her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. “It gives me more time to get to know you anyway.”
“What do you want to know?” Audrey asked, welcoming the change of subject.
“I don’t know,” Lincoln shrugged. “Everything. What is your favorite color?”
“Blue,” she didn’t hesitate to answer. “I’ve always liked blue.”
“Not pink, very interesting. If I remember right, I used to think every girl had to like pink,” Lincoln chuckled.
“No, that was just poor marketing at stores. I mean sure, it’s nice to have things in every color, but I ended up having to shop in the boys sections a lot to get my blue fix,” Audrey acknowledged.
“Would you say you’re a tomboy then?”
“No, I just love the color. It got easier when I hit preteen, that’s when stores start putting out more than cutesy outfits in pink, purple, or yellow.”
“That is a plus,” Lincoln looked out his window.
“Yeah, but then there was the underwear.”
“What?” Lincoln sat up a little straighter. “Why are we talking about underwear?”
“Because, it was a plus to have more color options for clothes, but it felt like there was nothing but G-strings, thongs, and underwear with stupid sayings on the butt to wear. It was uncomfortable,” Audrey complained.
“I see, I didn’t think it was that bad for girls. I remember feeling super accomplished going from tighty whities to boxers,” he wiggled his butt in his seat. “So comfortable.”
“Ah, you’re a boxer man then?” Audrey asked and raised her eyebrows.
Lincoln stared at her and then burst out laughing, “No, I don’t wear boxers, but that’s as far as I’m going to discuss my underwear.”
“Boo, I told you all about my underwear problems and you just brush off my question? Not fair,” Audrey joked.
“Okay, ask me a different question,” he said.
“When’s your birthday?”
“January twenty-seventh. That was an easy one. What’s yours?”
“The seventeenth of July,” Audrey said. “It was actually the day I met you.”
“That’s cool, I wish I would have known. I might have gotten you a gift,” he suggested.
“You let me use your tent. I think that counts,” she reassured him.
“Do you like being on you own?” Lincoln asked.
“No, I would have been a super codependent daddy’s girl if it weren’t for the zom-pocalypse,” she admitted.
“You were a daddy’s girl?”
“Absolutely, my dad was the greatest,” she said quietly.
“Can’t argue with that. It’s sad that he died when he was so close to finding a real solution to the virus problem,” Lincoln said solemnly.
“It wasn’t his fault though. He was just trying to clean up the mess the government made by engineering a virus that was pretty much unstoppable,” Audrey said.
“Did he ever figure out how it worked?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. “He was working in a lab in Utah right before he can home and um… Well, he was working there and the stress was getting to him, so he came home for a weekend and we went to Carlsbad.”
“I wonder if he was one of the people my mom used to talk about,” Lincoln mused aloud.
She stopped talking when her shoulders stared feeling heavy. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and bit her lip.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lincoln
said softly. They drove through a small town that was really just an old rest stop in silence.
“Half way there,” Lincoln said off-handedly after they had driven for half an hour.
“Yup, we are,” Audrey said. “Sorry for being weird.”
“It’s okay, I know what it’s like to lose people,” Lincoln said. “So, do you go into the caves or anything when you go to Carlsbad?”
“No, I actually just go into the town near the caverns,” Audrey said looking out the window. She pushed the gas pedal, anxious to get to their destination.
“I thought you catalogued the mutants at the caverns,” Lincoln pulled his feet off the dashboard. “What do you really do there?”
“It’s really nothing. It’s kind of a personal errand,” she said staring straight ahead at the road. “I used to go down to the caverns, but here was really not a lot there aside from a ton of Howlers and a few of a mutant we called a Gusher.”
“Audrey, you’ve been putting your life at risk making long runs every month,” Lincoln said. “I think if you’re going to put me at risk too I deserve to know what’s going on.”
The wind stung her eyes but she refused to look away from the road, “You can just stay in the car. I’ve taken care of most of the non-mutated dregs that were around Carlsbad the last few months.”
“That’s not an answer I’m okay with,” he snapped at her.
“I promise you won’t have to worry about anything as long as you stay in the car,” she said, her knuckles turned white as she grasped the steering wheel hard. “Just stay in the car.”
“Audrey, maybe we should just go back to Roswell,” Lincoln suggested.
“No! I need to do this and I know you won’t understand,” Audrey clenched her teeth together and blinked rapidly, trying to fight back tears, but they spilled out onto her cheeks anyway. “Just, please, let me do this and stay in the truck.”
Lincoln sat back in his seat and studied her. He didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Alright.”
They drove in silence until they saw a sign saying they only had a few miles left to Carlsbad.
“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked her.
She finally looked away from the road to answer, “I’m fine.”
He asked her again stiffly. “I’d like to know why we’re going to Carlsbad. Will you please just let me know what you’re risking your life for?”
Audrey looked at the clock and considered ignoring his question and driving in silence the rest of the way. No one knew what she did in Carlsbad besides Dean. She had never trusted anyone else enough to tell them.
She looked at Lincoln and swallowed hard before she decided to tell him part of what she was doing because she knew he was right when he said he deserved to know.
“I go to the hotel where my family was.”
“What?” Lincoln asked.
“That’s what I do. I got to the hotel we were at when my family all turned into dregs,” Audrey said.
She glanced at Lincoln quickly. His mouth was open and he looked like he was a mix of angry and surprised.
“You realize how insane that sounds, right?” he asked.
“It’s the same as visiting a cemetery,” Audrey defended herself. “It might be a more dangerous cemetery, but it’s pretty much the same thing.”
Lincoln thought about it briefly, “I still don’t get why you can’t make like a memorial place or something less dangerous like that back in Roswell.”
“It’s personal,” she reiterated. “Will you just trust me?”
Lincoln nodded and looked back out his window, “How much longer does the GPS say we have?”
“Going how fast I am we have about ten minutes,” she said.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
She shrugged, “I don’t know. What do you want to talk about?”
“What do you want to do when Runners aren’t needed anymore?” he asked.
“I used to want to be a teacher when I was a kid,” she said. “I don’t know if I still could with the way things are now.”
“You never know, maybe if you decide to leave Roswell you could still do it,” he suggested. “You said Albuquerque had schools open still.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have a teaching degree,” she told him. “Not even close. I should still be in high school.”
Lincoln shrugged his shoulders, “Do you really think degrees mean much of anything anymore? I mean, sure for doctors I’d like to know where they were trained and who trained them, but teaching could be people reading things from books and testing others with it. Isn’t that all there is to it anyway?”
“I wouldn’t know, I never went to school to become a teacher,” Audrey poked him in his arm. “What will you do?”
“I was going to be in the Army for the foreseeable future, but I don’t know if that’s going to still be a thing,” he said. “I know there isn’t an organization like that now. Everyone is more concerned with getting their countries working again. We’re all too busy and weak to fight wars, not that that’s a bad thing.”
“No, that’s not a bad thing,” Audrey concurred.
They drove into Carlsbad and Audrey slowed down. She stopped at a stop sign and didn’t move when Lincoln started laughing.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
“You’re stopped at a stop sign,” he said.
“Of course I am! It’s a stop sign,” she flicked him on his shoulder. “It’s the law to stop at a stop sign.”
“Okay, drive on,” he didn’t stop laughing, but she drove until she got to a road called Canyon Street. She turned and drove for a few minutes at a slow speed.
“It’s right here,” she said pulling into the parking lot of a small motel.
Most of the windows in the buildings had been broken out and most of the doors were broken, missing, or boarded up.
“And you want me to just sit in the truck and wait?” he asked her, raising his eyebrows.
She nodded. “The room is on the second floor. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She left the keys in the ignition and grabbed the second bag she’d brought out of the truck bed.
She climbed the steps to the second floor and stood in front of the faded green door. The yellow drapes had been pulled closed over the window so she couldn’t see inside the room.
She pulled her travel papers out of a zipped up pocket and unfolded them. She pulled a small keycard out of the papers and slid it into the door lock, she pushed down on the handle when the light turned green. Butterflies danced around excitedly in her stomach when the door clicked open.
A low snarling sound came out of the dark room. She could see the furniture clearly in the muted afternoon light, but she couldn’t see what she was looking for.
Audrey flipped the light switch and dim yellow light flooded the room.
“Hi Dad,” she whispered when a dreg, that used to be her father, stood up in between the two queen sized beds and walked into the middle of the room.
He was still her dad, but not how she remembered him. He still wore the plaid pajama pants he was wearing the day he’d changed. The knees were torn now and his white t-shirt was missing a sleeve and had a gaping hole in the middle that revealed tight grey skin clinging to his rib cage. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in and his lip curled above his teeth.
She wanted to hug him. She wanted to be held and comforted by him, but she knew she couldn’t act on what her emotions wanted because of the danger, but he was still her dad.
He snarled at her and she quickly took the pack off of her back and pulled out sandwich bags full of raw ground beef, “I brought this for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more.”
He tried to walk to her, but stopped when the belt around his ankle that was tied to the bed pulled tight.
Audrey threw the bags at his feet and watched as he knelt down to devour the meat that wasn’t as fresh as it had been that morning when she took it from her freez
er at home.
“I wish you could talk to me,” she said to him. She sat on the floor by the door and stretched her legs out. “I miss you all the time.”
She watched as he ravenously scarfed the meat down. When he was done eating she stood up to leave.
He hissed at her and she crossed her arms over her stomach, “I’m sorry I don’t have any more this time. I promise I’ll bring more when I come back.”
He walked towards her again, growling and gnashing his teeth, stopping only when he had to pull at the belt around his ankle.
She stared at him wistfully and took a step toward him.
Suddenly, he lunged forward. Audrey heard a snap and he fell onto the ground in front of her. He started scrambling toward her and stood up, stumbling on his broken ankle that had slipped through the belt loop. He hissed at her again angrily.
“Dad!” She shrieked backing away from him, tripping on the door jam. “Lincoln!”
Lincoln saw Audrey fall and then a greyed face appeared in the door way over her. He leapt out of the cab and grabbed his ax out of the truck bed.
“I’m coming!” he yelled when she shrieked.
He hobbled up the flight of stairs and saw Audrey struggling to stand up, the dreg behind her was limping on an obviously broken foot.
Lincoln went to swing at it with the ax but Audrey’s squeal stopped him.
“No! That’s my daddy!” she cried. “Please don’t hurt my daddy!
“What?” he screamed at her with only a split second to push the creature back onto the walkway instead of hacking at its body.
“Don’t kill him! That’s my dad!” she said again, sobbing on the floor. “That’s my daddy.”
Lincoln looked at the dreg that was trying to stand up again, “You come here to actually see your dad? He’s not dead?”
“No,” she said watching Lincoln push him back with the end of the ax. “I could never do it. Not to my dad. My mom and brothers were already gone because other people killed them at the Caverns, but I couldn’t do it to him.”
“This is insane,” Lincoln muttered. He pushed the dreg into the room he’d seen it come out of. “Why shouldn’t I kill it right now?”
“What do I have to do to convince you to leave him alone?” Audrey pleaded, grabbing onto the railing so she could stand up steadily.
