He wore a black do-rag on his head, so I couldn’t confirm with his hair, but his eyebrows were reddish brown, the exact color I’d remembered his hair having been. He also had a goatee with hair the same color and several days’ growth along his jawline. The eyes were the definite giveaway, but so were the broad jaw and full lips.
I swallowed, trying to find my tongue, and I finally pushed out some words. My voice must have sounded soft, because I could barely hear myself. “Kevin Savage?”
His cool eyes assessed me for just a moment before he said, “Yeah.” I thought I could see a glint of recognition in his expression, but I wasn’t sure. “Do I know you?”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t make those muscles move. In fact, I felt some weird rush of adrenaline begin coursing through my veins, and I tried like hell to stop my hands from shaking and to keep my breathing steady. “Yeah. Nina—Davis.” I had been Nina Hardwick for more years of my life than I’d been the maiden Nina Davis, so it was hard forcing my tongue to say it. “Well, that was my name. Winchester High?”
He nodded but his eyes were still distant. “That was a long time ago.”
I nodded too. I’d been a senior in high school thirty years earlier, to be exact, so yes. It was a very long time ago. I looked different—my hair was darker now, and I wore glasses. I had fewer freckles and more lines on my face. My eyes, though—they hadn’t changed a bit. I tried to come up with a response and could think of nothing intelligent to say. It didn’t matter anyway, because Larry once more demanded our attention as he again neared Main Street. The traffic lights there were flashing yellow and Larry slowed the truck, looking back down the road that had been blocked. There were more police vehicles that we hadn’t noticed, because their lights hadn’t been on, but Larry forced us to look when he said, “What the fresh fuck is all this shit?”
I couldn’t tell if they were detaining the non-infected, but it certainly appeared to be that way. It also could have been looters, but there was no way for us to know since we hadn’t been there. Vera said, “I don’t know why you care. Don’t we need to get gas?”
“I’ll be doing that, woman, but I’m wondering if maybe I need to go into work.” It was then that I remembered that Larry worked for the Sheriff’s Office and he loved this shit.
“They’ll call you if they need you, old man.”
I could see by the way Larry’s jaw rippled that he wanted to say something more, but he instead accelerated the truck again so we moved through the intersection. It was only a few blocks from the highway, but I was afraid of relaxing. My mind rushed back to thoughts of my aunt and I decided to try calling her again once we were out of the city limits.
Larry glanced back and said, “Name’s Larry Dingel, by the way, and this is my wife Vera. You met Nina already?” Savage nodded but said nothing else. “Maybe we can drop you off at the gas station and you can call somebody to pick you up?”
I looked over at him as he said, “I don’t have anybody to call here. I was getting ready to leave town.”
“Shit.” Larry kept his eyes on the road and sighed. “I know it’s not the best solution, but you can hang with us for the day, and when we get back, you can stay at our place and the two of us can see if, tonight and tomorrow, we can get your bike back in driving condition.” He glanced back once more to make eye contact with the man beside me. “That work?”
Savage’s expression was wry. “Don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“We always have a choice, friend. I can drop you off anywhere you’d like, if you’d rather.” As though it were an afterthought, Larry said, “We’re goin’ to Chipeta Springs—Nina’s got an aunt living up there she’s worried about and we’re gonna make sure she’s okay. After that, anything’s game.”
Savage scowled and then turned his head to look out the window. Well…he was not the Kevin I remembered. Then again, maybe he had always been this way, but I’d been all googly-eyed and thought I was in love…and so I no doubt had seen him through rose-colored glasses. I pondered that as I looked at the back of his head, and a forgotten fact rushed through my head. Why I remembered it at right that moment, I’d never know, but I recalled him telling me he was mostly deaf in one ear. I never would have guessed it had he not said anything, and I couldn’t recall the context of when he shared that information, either. It was just…a thing I remembered.
Larry took his time driving down Main toward where the highway intersected it, and—seeing continued states of disorder around town—I started worrying about my kids. What if Boulder and Golden were in the same disarray as Winchester?
They would be fucked.
My mother hackles went up. If I could have, I would have wrenched the steering wheel out of Larry’s hands and turned left down the highway instead of right. I had no weird intuitive feelings about the kids, though—something inside me assured me they were most likely okay. It was just a mother hen response urging me to be the helicopter parent I’d never stopped being. My Aunt Lou, however…something in my head and heart pulled at me, warning me that something was seriously wrong, that she needed me. So I took my phone out of my purse and started texting Tanner and Kyleigh in a group message. Kids, please text me back and let me know if everything’s okay. Going to see Aunt Lou. I decided that after I called Aunt Lou, I’d call the kids if they hadn’t texted me back by then.
And then I looked out the front of the vehicle, just past Larry’s head, and there was the intersection ahead, half a block away. We’d fill up the truck with gas and then get on the highway, and I’d be able to see my Aunt Lou in an hour or less and allay my fears.
Larry slowed significantly at this intersection, probably because it was always one of the busiest in town, and getting in a wreck would ensure that we wouldn’t escape what was clearly becoming mass panic. It wasn’t just that the infected had grown out of control, seemingly overnight; it was that everyone else was so worried about it that they were behaving like animals. I had a fleeting thought, that maybe pressure turned us back to our basest selves. I had to hope that the four of us would maintain level heads.
The thoughts were gone as Larry pulled into the large gas station. The first thing I noticed was the lack of cars. Ordinarily, this particular gas station was packed with vehicles and sometimes people had to wait a few minutes to fuel their cars. Today, though, the place seemed deserted. Larry pulled in anyway and drove up to a pump, but as he opened his door to get out, a group of people descended upon the truck like proverbial flies on shit. It was scary how quickly they swarmed. Larry pulled a credit card out of his wallet and started to pull the nozzle out of the pump but thought better of it, jumping back in his truck before the first one of them reached the truck and began beating on the metal with his bare hands. “What the fuck is going on?”
Yes, they were infected, and they seemed to be moving in groups. I didn’t know for what purpose, but they appeared to be organized, working together, and that scared me more than any other possibility.
I was now very glad we were leaving town but wondered what we’d have to come home to later that day.
Chapter Fourteen
“Post Apocalyptic Party” – AxeWound
LARRY DROVE UP the mountain, and everyone in the truck was silent. Ultimately, we’d avoided all the gas stations, because they were all turning out to be hubs of potential danger. We thought we could maybe drive into Chipeta Springs for gas, but we decided to go the back way to my aunt’s so we could avoid traffic. After we got on the highway, Larry found the county road that took a bit of a roundabout way but ensured we’d be farther away from civilization and, we hoped, the chaos.
After that decision had been made, though, we sat quietly, pondering all we’d just seen.
Later, though, Larry switched on the radio and pressed the seek button. I was relieved, because I’d been consumed by my thoughts. I’d tried calling my aunt several times and couldn’t even get a busy signal. The line was dead. That meant I couldn’t even try ca
lling my kids…but it didn’t stop me from trying, just the same. I hadn’t had a response to my text message to them either, so I was worried, thinking of all the horrible possibilities. I knew, from past experience, that my imagination was always worse than the truth…but, in this instance, I knew there were probably horrors I hadn’t envisioned.
Larry was growing irritated that the radio wouldn’t catch a signal, but I was sure it was because we were getting farther away from civilization. Vera finally swatted at his hand and said, “Keep your eyes on the road.”
Larry grumbled but let her take over. After a few seconds, she found a signal that was, for the most part, clear. “…Officials at the World Health Organization have declared the spread of the so-called zombie virus a pandemic. Major U.S. cities are suffering its effects as large chunks of their population become infected, grinding industry and trade to a virtual halt. Schools and government agencies have closed in response to the outbreak, and citizens are calling for the resignation of CDC director—”
Vera flicked the button, causing the radio to seek a new signal. “Depressing shit,” she said, as if that explained it.
I had to admit it to myself. I was no news junkie. I’d always loathed the news and the fear it instilled in people just because they tuned in. Now, though, I really wanted to know what was happening, because I felt so out of touch with the people I loved. There weren’t many of them I was worrying about—my aunt, my kids—but thinking about them made me think about my parents as well. More people to worry about.
I was painfully aware that Savage shifted in his seat beside me. It was snug behind the front seats, and I felt nervous. All those stupid teenage emotions had come flooding back just by seeing his face—the adoration I’d felt for him, the lovesick way my muscles would turn to mush when I’d look at him, all the dreams I’d had about him…for years. Yes, years. All sorts of things I’d forgotten about, repressed, buried, stuffed deep inside myself surfaced, and not gently, like a string might slowly rise to the top of a serene lake; no, instead, it was like the waterfall of a raging river, crashing over jagged rocks with full force, and it was palpable.
Yes…I was having a hard time breathing.
What made it worse was his cold reception. Granted, I wouldn’t have expected a joyful reunion, not under these circumstances, but a little friendliness wouldn’t have been unwarranted. I noticed him out of the corner of my eye leaning slightly forward. “I’ve been kind of out of it the past couple of days. What the hell happened?”
That question was all it took for Larry’s eyes to light up. The radio kept pausing on different numbers, spurting static while it remained there until it would move on to look for another possibility. But now that Savage was going to rely on Larry to bring him up to speed, Larry took the opportunity to switch the radio back off and began telling him all about the past few days.
There was a lot I didn’t know, but it was hard for me to concentrate on his words. When I managed to tune back in, Larry was saying, “A lot of folks are convinced that the CDC was fucking around with some virus that already existed or trying to create some kind of germ warfare shit and it got away from them.” He blinked a few times. “I have to admit it’s not necessarily unlikely.” Savage shrugged but said nothing. “It’s not like our government has never been guilty. Anyway, you probably know there were a few cases here and there but it just escalated the last couple of days.”
Vera muttered, “I wonder why.” She looked out the side window. “What are your conspiracy theory experts sayin’?”
Larry smirked and nodded. “You really wanna know what they’re saying?” Vera nodded, and it felt like a challenge, one that Larry had no problems taking. “They think it’s because the weather has been warmer this week. You know how we had cold weather the last few weeks since it all started, but then there was some weird warm weather—not just here in Colorado but nationwide—and the guys you call nuts, dear, think warm temperatures have something to do with it.”
Savage didn’t give away if he was buying any of it or not, but he said, “It would explain why it took off in the south first.”
“Yeah, but why did it go completely off the rails today—and all at the same time?”
We all fell silent then, as if we were pondering the answer. After a few minutes and several more miles, Larry asked, “So why you been out of touch the past couple of days, man? I know it’s none of my business, but I been glued to the news since this shit started.”
Savage’s face looked like concrete as he gritted his teeth. Ah. It was definitely a sore spot. “I was burying my mom.”
That was like a punch in the gut. I hadn’t thought about that woman in years, probably decades, and just the mere mention of her made memories rush into my head. The nurturer in me then wanted to grab Kevin around the shoulders and hold him closely, trying to give him comfort, because I knew it would kill me to lose my mother.
His eyes were steel but they seemed to soften a little when he saw my expression…and that softness reminded me of the first time I met the woman who’d given birth to him.
Chapter Fifteen
Past
“Rainbow in the Dark” – Dio
IT HAD BEEN some party…a friend had had way too much to drink. I hadn’t known it at the time, but his parents were abusive. They didn’t do much beating nowadays, but if he was drunk? He was a target.
That was why Kevin had insisted upon taking him to his house. There he and his mom could keep an eye on him, make sure he was safe, stayed alive.
My heart swelled at this young man caring so much about the welfare of someone he hardly knew, and he carried the boy, dead weight and all, and placed him on his couch where his mother tended to him until she was sure he’d be all right. She and Kevin had a small conference just inside the kitchen. The look on her face was serious as she asked him questions.
When she returned to the living room where I and my other handful of friends stood, worried about the passed out boy in our group, she greeted us warmly and asked if we wanted some hot cocoa. After all, it was cold out there.
She was truly one of the sweetest women I’d ever met. We all chatted in the living room until she called us back in the kitchen for cocoa, and the woman had gone overboard, making the most elaborate mugs of hot chocolate I’d ever enjoyed. She placed a cinnamon stick in each one and then asked if we wanted whipped cream on top…which, of course, we did. It was sweet and chocolaty and decadent.
I hadn’t noticed at the time the special attention she was giving to me. Looking back now, I imagine Kevin had told his mom about that one girl…or maybe she’d just picked up on it. It was hardly a week later that I completely blew it to smithereens for good…but at least I had a warm memory.
Chapter Sixteen
Present
“Nothing Comes Easy” – Godsmack
“YOU SURE WE can get to Chipeta Springs this way?” Savage seemed to be talking a little more, now that the unpleasantries were out of the way, but I felt nothing but cold coming off him.
That was a shame, because inside I had such warm feelings for him. Things hadn’t worked out for us, for whatever reason, but I’d always believed my whole life that things happen for a purpose. We might not know what that reason is, but I had to believe it. Well, I didn’t subscribe much to the higher power bullshit I’d bought into as a kid—I’d had too much shit rain down on me to believe anyone in the universe gave a crap—but I did trust that there was an interconnectedness in the universe, one of meaning, of purpose…and even if that was bullshit too, I had to believe in something. It was often all that kept me going. To think that there was no reason for any of it, to just live and die and be reabsorbed by the earth—that was too much. I generally had a positive outlook, even when times were bad, but it was fueled by the inner belief that I was there for a reason.
Even if that reason didn’t quite match my dreams.
Larry’s voice pulled me out of my nostalgic trance. “Yeah. It’s the lo
ng way, but we’ll avoid all kinds of shit this way, because houses are few and far between out here.”
“How’re we doin’ on gas?” Vera asked.
I could see Larry’s brow furrow through the rearview mirror. “Not great. We won’t have a choice but to gas up in Chipeta Springs before we leave.”
Another worry to pile up on the heap, but I couldn’t dwell on it any longer. Instead, I considered the man beside me. He really hadn’t changed that much in the decades since I’d last seen him. He had a few lines around his eyes and his skin no longer had the quality of a teenage boy. Oh, and the facial hair. He’d been clean shaven in high school, but he was scruffy now, and there were a few stray gray hairs in the mix on his face. He was still a good-looking guy, though, and my psyche remembered all the emotions I’d attached to him.
I was staring, even though it was more a sideways glance, and he looked over at me. I was caught, and so I knew I should say something. I grabbed onto the first thing I could think to say. “You act like you don’t even remember me from high school.”
His face was stone. There was no reading it. “High school was a lifetime ago. Do you remember it?”
Did I remember it? Almost like it was yesterday. Sure, some memories were fuzzy and lots of insignificant events had faded into nothingness, but the shit that mattered, the accomplishments I was proud of, the moments I had emotional attachments to, the big lessons I’d learned—it was all there, vivid and on the IMAX screen in my brain. There was no escaping it.
That hurt—not that he didn’t remember much but that he didn’t remember me. At all.
Was that selfish or egotistical? Maybe. But it was more a realization, a virtual slap, that I had never meant as much to him as he had to me. He might have wanted to pursue me at one moment in time, but when he’d perceived what he thought was rejection, he’d moved on—pushed me out of his head, out of his heart, and I was ostracized from his memory as well.
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