Joseph looked at Mike who had moved to lean against the panel next to the stairs so he could watch the snow hit the windshield. Mike started to say something and stopped.
“Let's try to get to the other side of Socorro before we stop for the night.”
Joseph shrugged. If their luck held, they'd be lucky to cross the small mountain community before dawn, but he wasn't about to say anything about it for fear of Mr. Murphy.
“In two miles take the exit right,” the slightly digital female voice said. Joseph looked at the darkening sky.
The guys who built GPS really knew what they were doing. World's ending and I can still get directions from satellites.
The downside to GPS, and there's always a downside, it invariably used the most direct routes, the biggest roads with the highest speed limits, all of which leads to big cities, something best avoided at the moment. If you kept your routes shorter, listing intersections of highways you wanted to use, the device remained invaluable for its ability to recalculate routes on the fly. And it tended to keep you from missing exits, even when snow swirled at your windshield.
The whirling snow caught in the cone of light provided by the bus mesmerized Joseph for the last fourteen miles. He nearly rammed the road block set up across both lanes of the highway.
A look of relief spread across the four faces aiming rifles at the bus. No one wants to chance shooting a moving vehicle if they don't have to, especially as the vehicle charges the flimsy barricade you're standing behind. Two of the people behind the barricade, wearing heavy clothing as much for the cold as for protection, stepped through the gap in the recently constructed wall and started toward the bus. Road construction vehicles sat dark and silent near the hastily built barricade. Someone with a sense of strategy planned to use concrete dividers, double stacked, to build a wall across a clearing visible a little further along the road, along the road a quarter mile or so ahead of the first exit for Socorro, leaving a space for vehicles to enter, then across the road and all the way down to the river.
The man and woman approaching the bus held their rifles in what Mike described to Joseph as the low ready. While their friends approached the bus, the other two guards stayed in what looked like deer stands, ready to shoot any potential threat.
“These people aren't taking chances,” Mike said, keeping his shotgun in his off hand. Joseph knew they stopped far too close to the barricade to be able to draw a weapon in any except the most extreme situation. And even then, the two in the deer stands would easily drop him and Mike.
As the pair approached, they scanned down the sides and checked under the bus, looking for any sign that the undead hitched a ride. The woman, her long brown hair pinned by the thick fleece hat she wore, stood back and at angle from her male companion as he knocked on the bus door with one hand. Joseph watched the pair move, even the half glance the man threw over his shoulder before knocking, and decided one of them saw combat, and they had to be married.
Mike kept his eyes on the young man and nodded for Joseph to open the door. Joseph hated the cold. More than that, he hated that Mike blocked the majority of the narrow doorway. Joseph found he couldn't see, let alone shoot around Mike if things went South.
“You have to turn around,” the young man said without preamble.
Joseph started to say something, but Mike held up his free hand, silencing him and giving the impression he wanted to look less threatening to the pair of road guards. “Is the road blocked? I mean besides the wall?”
“Town's closed. Road's closed. Do us all a favor and turn around.”
“Only thing south of here is Las Cruces and that's bound to be deadman's land,” Mike said calmly. “We're not looking to stay; just passing through to another Marine's place out in Arizona.”
“Yeah, that last fucker was just passing through too,” the guy spat. “Smashed his car into a house. Then he and the thing that decided to munch on him decided to munch on the family in the house.”
Mike sat down on the step, being careful to sit in a way he could spring to his feet readily. “I'm sorry to hear about your friends. This wall is a good idea too. But I really need to get to my buddy. Surely you know how that is?”
The guy nodded. “I do. But that doesn't change the fact that last time we let someone 'pass through,' we're still cleaning up the mess. It has cost us lives. Nearly a dozen good people. So just turn around and take a different route.”
“I'm Mike. What's your name?”
“Greg. Knowing my name isn't going to get you into town.”
“Well Greg, you happen to know another road that will keep us away from all the major cities?”
“No.”
Mike put the shotgun down and pushed it back toward Joseph. “In that case, why don't you do us a favor and shoot us all right here,” he said putting a finger between his eyes.
Greg tensed his shoulders involuntarily pulling the weapon up and inch or two. “What are you saying?
Mike looked the younger man in the eyes. “I'm saying if you plan to send us South, you should do us the courtesy of shooting us, because if we do as you say, we'll be eaten alive when we approach Las Cruces. I personally would rather be shot. Joseph?”
The nightmares from the stormy nights spent at NMMI flooded him all at once. “There's a question there?” Mike half nodded. “Of course I'd rather be shot than eaten,” Joseph snapped.
“What is wrong with you two?”
“Easy. We know what it's like out there. An eighteen hour road trip has taken us something stupid like two weeks. What happened in that house, try to wrap your head around that happening at Roswell. All of Roswell. Probably a minor miracle we made it out of there. Make no mistake, you send us South, you send us to die.”
Greg shifted his rifle. “Not my problem.”
“Then shoot us.”
“No.”
“Why?” Mike demanded, “Because then you would have to live with our blood on your hands? You send us away and we are just as dead as if you shot us. Either way your hands are bloody, so quit acting like a fobbit and shoot us.”
The woman brought her weapon up as Mike's voice rose. Greg shouldered his rifle. For a moment, Joseph wondered at the wisdom of Mike's plan to dare the guy to shoot the four of them. While he really would rather die quickly by gun shot over being eaten and then be a zombie, he still wasn't quite ready to stop living yet.
I wonder how much it will hurt. Or maybe it will be more a white hot flash then its over.
Greg sighted down his rifle for barely more than a second before he let it fall back to his waist. Behind him, the woman uneasily lowered hers as well.
“I won't shoot a Marine looking to get to his buddy,” Greg said, eying Mike.
“So if you're not going to shoot us, how about we work out a way for us to get from here to Highway 60?”
Greg looked at Mike again for a moment. “Highway 60? You plan to use 60?”
“Yeah. Is that a bad thing?”
“No, but you better watch out for snow and slick conditions.”
Mike watched the snow fall in lazy swirls around the pair of guards. Greg pulled a phone from inside his jacket and stepped behind his companion. She stood, silently, scanning Mike, Joseph, and the surroundings. Joseph amended his decision that only one of the pair had served; clearly she stood guard somewhere besides here.
To be fair, this new world is one fast and brutal teacher.
Greg stepped back to his previous place, facing Mike and leaving the woman a clear line of sight to engage if things went pear shaped. “Here's how this is going to work. We are going to board your bus. You” he pointed at Joseph “will drive exactly where and how we say. Deviate and you will be shot, no questions asked. An escort car is on the way here. You will follow it. Do not attempt to stop. When we reach the wall on 60, we will dismount, you pay ten percent of your ammo or two functional weapons with a single full mag each, and you can carry on. That's the deal.”
Joseph balk
ed inwardly at the steep toll. He nearly told Mike to say “Fuck it” and take their chances skirting Las Cruces or using a ranger road somewhere. Mike stood up with a deliberate slowness.
“How about one weapon with two mags and say two hatchets?”
“Done,” the woman said before Greg could object.
“Then come in out of the cold. You did a good thing, Greg,” Mike said, backing up the steps and into the bus.
***
The morning started on a surprisingly even keel. Mike and everyone else woke up stiff and aching from sleeping on the floor and in the seats of the bus. That fell squarely where Mike rather figured it would, and the soreness that accompanied the stiffness stayed with them more than half the day; also expected. The four or so inches of snow blanketing everything fell more in the absolutely unexpected category.
Not that it changes anything. … Man I wish I had a sled.
Snow, aside from numbing toes and giving everything a monochromatic palette, came with the advantage of providing a visual indicator when someone, or more to the point something, had walked through a given area ahead of you. So long as more didn't fall to obliterate such trails, they could avoid being taken by surprise during rest stops for as long as the snow stayed on the ground.
Of course snow completely covered the door and buried the windshield too heavily for the wipers alone to clear. Mike employed the telling power of the blanket of snow as soon as they woke. A quick look out an window not covered in snow, revealed no foot prints in the immediate vicinity. With the shot gun ready, he told Joseph to open the door. The stillness would have inspired poetry from Robert Frost.
He had them stop in a large, flat basin valley with ski worthy mountains rising up on each side of the road. Sparse vegetation, covered in snow, offered little cover for any zombies approaching; people determined to hide and willing to lie in the snow would have been another matter. Nothing moved. The cold air carried the scent of the snow and nothing else.
Joseph had the bus creeping along the snow covered road about thirty minutes after they took time to eat and relieve themselves on the side of the road. The blanket of snow that told them clearly if anyone had passed through the area recently made driving safely decidedly more difficult that Joseph would have liked. It hid the road from view. Fortunately the road was the only relatively flat and clear path in the area. Low scrub, the rise of mountains and the almost imperceptible drop at the edge of the black top gave the road a discernible shape amongst the even white.
The snow forced Joseph to drive barely faster than idling. Drive too fast and he would lose control or not be able to see the faint outline of the road. Too slow and the bus could sink in the the soft powder.
All morning clouds hung low overhead, subduing the harsh morning sunlight to a muted gray. By noon, Joseph had driven a paltry one hundred twenty miles. The clouds grew steadily darker. Wind out of the Northwest pushed the bus around the road.
“Mike, we need to stop,” Joseph said with a note of authority in his voice.
“What's up?”
“This just isn't safe,” he said. “Between the snow on the ground and the wind picking up, I can't promise I won't lose control and roll this thing.”
“What? This thing has to weigh near ten thousand pounds--”
“True, but there's no weight on the drive wheels. Only reason we haven't slid more thus far is the fact that we agreed I'd keep the speed at forty-five or less. So far we've been doing a lot less. More like ten.”
Mike screwed up his face in the “I'm thinking” way Joseph learned to recognize. He drove on in silence for a few minutes, briefly fighting against a particularly strong gust of wind. Snow started falling. All at once, large, fat flakes, dropped like a thick blanket in that singular way that snow starts without any ramp up or preamble. Even without headlights to reflect in a blinding sheet, the snow cut Joseph's vision to a few hundred feet. He eased off the gas and let the bus slow its already crawling pace.
“I guess that rather settles the debate. Let's pull off the road and stop,” Mike said, leaning over Joseph's shoulder.
“We can't just pull over anywhere. We'll get stuck. Plus I don't think we have enough fuel to leave this thing idling all night again. Not if we want to actually make Hanse's place.”
“You're kidding about us getting stuck, right?” Mike asked.
“Have you never driven in snow?” Mike shook his head. “Mike, I'm not sure how we haven't gotten stuck as it is. I mean there were a good four inches on the ground this morning, we don't have chains or sand and snow plows aren't running. When we stop, or as we keep driving, snow will keep building up on the roads. If it gets too deep or too soft, we'll sink. And we don't have the power to push our way out. Plus we would have to literally dig our tires out of the snow.”
“Won't we still have to do that if we stop?”
Joseph didn't say anything for a few minutes. Snowfall hid the road completely for a moment. “Yes. We probably will have to dig ourselves out if we stop, but at least once this storm passes, we'll be able to see what the hell we're doing.” In a momentary lifting of the snow veil, Joseph saw the curve in the road and eased into it. The snow swirled on the wind and dropped as heavily as before.
“Can we make the next town? Maybe find an empty parking lot on the outskirts somewhere?”
“Maybe you missed the part where I said we can't idle this thing over night again. We don't have the gas.”
Mike's head rocked backward with his eyes closed. Joseph knew the signs of frustration. He felt it himself. Nothing about the last two days had gone right. Not even close. Of course during a zombie apocalypse what could one expect?
“We need a hotel, a house or something. Somewhere that will have electricity or a fire place,” Joseph stated the obvious.
“I need time to think. How far can you drive in this?”
“Safely? I'd rather not. As far as I have to, I guess. But the sooner we stop and get in doors, the safer we'll be.”
Joseph hated giving bad news to Mike. He'd always hated bearing bad news, but in the last two weeks bad news usually meant danger and possible death. Not to mention yet another delay getting them to Hanse's place.
At this rate, the guy may not let us in just for taking our sweet time getting out there.
He had to chuckle at that because if he didn't he would surely break into despair. Mike looked at him with a quizzical expression. As Joseph started to answer, they passed a road sign the snow hadn't covered yet.
“Do you like camping?”
Mike shook his head. “Where the hell did that come from? We're trying to figure out where to stay warm during a snow storm, and you ask about camping?” His tone carried the question 'Did you get hit in the head or something' with it.
“Yes. Well, not really,” Joseph said. Mike sat down on the bench seat caddy corner to Joseph. He watched the former business intern turned survivor carefully. Mike had seen Joseph prove resourceful a couple times now. He recognized his friend probably came up with a half formed idea that would keep them alive and possibly comfortable through the snow storm.
“Luna Lake Camp Ground is about 40 miles from here. It's longer than I'd like to be driving in this, but it might be a good place.”
“Not sure if you noticed, but we don't have a tent to be camping in. I thought you wanted to get us out of the bus and somewhere warm?”
“Yup. Camp grounds, especially in National Parks, tend to have a general store on the grounds.”
Mike jumped in. “And with it being off season, no one is likely to be anywhere near the place. That's a much better plan than I thought.”
“Right. That's settled then.” The bus slewed as snow filled the treads of the tires and a gust of wind blasted them. Joseph wrestled the bus back onto the road and out of a fishtail. “So how do you feel about camping?”
Chapter 15
What Condition My Condition was In
Braeden put one foot in front of the next. For some
people each step he'd taken represented a small victory. He walked out of what was left of his hometown nine days ago. The irony of the most outlandish headline in news history being the first absolutely true thing aired killed Braeden for the first day or so. But really within the first moments of being attacked by something that could shove its arm through shards of glass or be lit up like a Christmas tree by a Molotov cocktail without blinking, such thoughts really stopped mattering to him.
Strangely the morning after being attacked at the bar, Braeden suddenly remembered his parents' phone numbers and the phone number of a girl he never remembered to call. He could picture her, but couldn't think of her name. Not that either mattered. He didn't have a phone.
That first night, he honestly thought Jerry had a drink of something that had spoiled or something when his bar-tending friend told him the dead ambulance driver tried to attack him. Seeing the things trying to get into Tavrish Tavern, quickly changed his mind. Jerry's state as they fled the bar truly worried him.
***
Adrenaline and exercise are about guaranteed to purge the effects of alcohol from your system and finish its efforts to dehydrate you. Braeden found himself very unhappy about this fact. Then he remembered that he also torched one of his nicer shirts and zombies tried to eat him. He sincerely wished that he hadn’t walked off a perfectly good drunk.
Neither of them said more than twenty words in the two hours they’d been walking. Partly because they didn’t want to attract anything that may have been nearby. Seriously though, what do you say after leaving a bar you torched with honest-to-god zombies eating your friend inside and setting a couple more ablaze in the parking lot using Molotov cocktails?
Jerry walked with a single-minded determination that Braeden didn’t know his friend possessed. Then again if he had someone to lose, he might have been as single-minded. Braeden had only himself to lookout for, something he’d become very good at over the years. It just about cost him his relationship with his parents, and did cost him a year-long relationship with a girlfriend—He hoped she was alright, but she’d made it very clear she never wanted to see or hear from him again.
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