“You’re doing good,” Cole said.
“Yeah?” Fiona said.
“Very good.”
“Maybe you should drive…”
“You’re doing fine.”
Besides, I want to keep my hand on the Glock, he thought but didn’t add.
“I should tell you something,” Fiona said.
“What is it?”
“I don’t have a driver’s license.”
He looked over at her.
She met his puzzled expression with an almost embarrassed grin. “I mean, I know how to drive and everything. Clearly. But, well, I never took the time to get my driver’s license.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I? I don’t even own a car.”
“Still, why wouldn’t you want to have one? Don’t you need identification?”
“I have a passport.”
“You have a passport but not a driver’s license?”
“Yes. So?”
“It’s—”
“Shit!” Fiona shouted, cutting him off.
Cole’s eyes snapped back to the windshield just as the Grand Caravan swerved off the sidewalk and into the street. A tall figure in a baseball jersey and jeans had jumped out of one of the storefront windows at them, and something long and metallic thwacked! off the side of the minivan as Fiona drove past it.
Cole glanced out his side mirror just in time to see one of the red taillights exploding and showering the darkness with light, before going out.
“What happened? What was that?” Fiona asked. “Did he get us? Did he get us?”
“No,” Cole said. “Just a light.”
“Which light?”
“One of the taillights.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Better a taillight than us,” the Voice said.
Cole agreed, and said, “Better one of the lights than one of us.”
“I concur with that statement,” Dante said from the back.
Cole glimpsed a figure hiding behind a white Ford as they drove past. The man—or it might have been a woman; it was difficult to tell with only the moonlight to see with—raised himself up from the ground just enough to follow their movements.
He saw things in the streets that he thought might be more crazies, along with figures moving across the rooftops of buildings around them. They were always alone—solitary killers searching for victims, and wary of each other.
Cars flashed by in front and to both sides of them. The minivan just barely avoided striking a parked semi’s grill, then grazed the back bumper of a red truck. It ran over something round and lying on the street that felt more than just a pothole.
Other than that, Fiona was doing an amazing job. Certainly way better than someone who didn’t even have a driver’s license. But she was also hopped up on adrenaline. He could see it in the way she gripped the steering wheel, the almost viselike focus she looked out the front windshield with.
“Slow down,” Cole said.
“What?” Fiona said.
“Slow down. You’re going too fast.”
She looked down at the speedometer in front of her. “I thought you wanted me to go fast.”
“I want you to keep moving, not run us into a brick wall. Or a parked semi.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.” She slowly eased her foot off the gas. “Better?”
“Yes. Now keep your eyes on the road ahead. Let me look everywhere else.” Cole glanced back at Dante. “Make sure the doors are locked.”
“They are,” Dante said.
“Sure?”
“They are,” Zoe said.
Cole nodded and turned back around.
Whump! as the tires ran over something else in the street.
“Shit,” Fiona said, and angled them back onto the sidewalk.
They hadn’t gone more than a few seconds when—
Whump!
Then, less than ten seconds later—
Whump!
“Oh, Jesus,” Fiona said. “Those aren’t garbage bags, are they?” Then, when Cole didn’t answer her fast enough, “Cole? Those aren’t garbage bags, are they? Are they?”
“No,” Cole said.
“I think I’m gonna throw up.”
Whump!
“Stay calm. You’re doing great,” Cole said.
Whump!
“Oh, Jesus,” Fiona said.
“Focus,” Cole said.
“I—”
Whump!
Fiona’s face paled noticeably, even in the semidarkness of the front seats.
“Fiona,” Cole said.
“What?”
“Focus.”
“Right,” Fiona said. “Focus.”
“You can do this.”
“I can do this.” Then, as if to convince herself, “I can do—”
Bang! as something struck the hood of the minivan.
“Jesus!” Fiona shouted. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Cole said. “Stay on course.”
“But what was that?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you stay on course, and keep us moving. Whatever you do, keep us moving.”
Day 3
Chapter 22
He could see the highway in the distance. It was a lot closer than he’d thought when they initially took refuge for the night. There was maybe half a mile between them and the path home, but the impassable nature of the roads between where they were and where they wanted to be might as well turn that half a mile (give or take) into ten—maybe more—miles.
But it was right there. Right there. And all they had to do was reach it and…then what? They’d be stuck on the highway anyway. Twenty miles to Bear Lake in that sea of stalled steel, aluminum, copper, glass, rubber, and God knows what else cars were made of these days, was going to take more than a day. Two days. Three.
A week?
Too long. Even one more day out here, while Emily was over there, was too long. Too damn long.
“That’s the spirit,” the Voice laughed. “Give up before you’ve even given it the ol’ college try! What would The Gipper say?”
Not much. He’s dead.
“I think he might still call you a pussy from the grave.”
Yeah, well, that’s his prerogative.
Just to reach the feeder meant barreling through enough abandoned vehicles to…make the minivan useless by the time they reached the elevated road. If they could even get close enough to sniff the entrance and escape more attacks by crazies along the way, which wasn’t a given.
Because they were out there. He couldn’t see them, but they were out there.
Waiting for the right moment to strike.
Waiting…
“Your pessimism is really starting to bring me down, buddy,” the Voice said.
But it was the truth. He knew it, and he knew that the Voice knew it, too, because it knew everything he did. That was how this worked, after all.
“What now?” Fiona was asking him.
Cole shook his head, not sure how to respond.
He was crouched at the edge of the rooftop, which gave him a nice view of the highway and the dead city surrounding them in the almost sensational glow of morning sunrise. Or it would have been sensational if he wasn’t looking at a graveyard, which was what the city was from up here. There were only the occasional flickering of movements in the varied colored ocean of glinting metal and concrete, either animals that had come in to feast on the bodies or crazies taking the opportunity to attack each other.
“Better them than us,” the Voice said.
Amen to that.
The smell was getting worse. Or maybe it was just worse because he was high up and couldn’t escape the sweltering stink. In a few days, it would be practically impossible to breathe in the air without choking on the stench of death. It was already bad, and they were only two days into…this. Whatever this turned out to be.
“The end of the world,
” the Voice said.
That was certainly a good guess.
“What do you think it is, then?”
I don’t know.
“Any guesses?”
None.
“You do know that I can read your thoughts, right?” the Voice said.
Cole ignored the Voice’s mocking and focused instead on Fiona, standing next to him.
“It looks dead,” Fiona was saying.
“What a choice of words!” the Voice said, laughing.
“I’ve never seen it this quiet,” Fiona continued. “And the smell…” She shivered and wrapped her arms across her chest as if she were cold, even though it was warm.
Too warm, and that was going to make the stink even worse in the coming days.
He hadn’t seen how bad it was last night when they finally pulled off the sidewalk and roads and into the alleyway. They’d escaped into an antique shop through a side door, Cole expecting crazies to attack at any second and ready for it with the Glock.
But they hadn’t been pursued into the alley. He didn’t know why. Either they’d been lucky to pick a building that wasn’t crawling with crazies, or—
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, buddy!” the Voice had said, and Cole hadn’t.
The shop’s front door and windows were covered with burglar bars, which was one of the reasons Cole had chosen it in the first place. They wouldn’t keep someone who was determined enough to get in out forever, but they were better than every other option they’d driven past. Inside, the place smelled abandoned, until he realized that was just the product of all the refuse of society stacked on shelves and piled in corners. Which was to say, the place smelled like an antique shop housing old things people no longer wanted and only a select few would ever go out of their way to search for. What clinched the shop as a viable refuge was the lack of evidence that someone had died inside; the place hadn’t seen a soul since its doors closed, however long that had been.
The only other way in or out besides the heavily-gated front entrance was the side door they’d come through. The minivan was squeezed into a narrow corridor on the other side of that metal door now, and Cole, with Fiona’s help (and Ashley, who sorta lent a hand) had barricaded it with a pair of heavy steel shelves. Like the front door and windows, their extra efforts wouldn’t keep someone who was really determined to get in out forever, but it was good enough. Besides, Cole was counting on the crazies trying their best to limit their noises and not attract the attention of other predators.
All in all, he couldn’t have asked for a better spot to regroup. A part of him had wanted to drive right through the night, but it was pretty clear very early on that that wasn’t going to work. Either they would run into something unmovable by accident, or they’d cross a crazy that had more than just a baseball bat. Caution, then, was the smart move, even if it killed him to lose another day.
“Can we really drive through that?” Fiona was asking him.
Too many things, he thought but said, “We have to find another way around. Get to the highway somehow. Maybe another feeder that’s less congested to reach.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“No, but the downtown roads are all laid out pretty much the same. We’ll use the smaller roads, pick our way through the side streets until we can find an easier path to the highway. If we have to, we can use the feeder roads all the way to Bear Lake.”
“Would that be easier?”
“No. I don’t think any of this is easy, or that there’s an easier option out there. But it’s doable. And right now, that’s good enough.”
He was about to turn around when he caught something in the corner of his eye and glanced down, then across the street.
A man in a white shirt was peeking out from the mouth of a dark alleyway and at him. The crazy was well hidden, and Cole wouldn’t have noticed him if the sunlight hadn’t reflected off a long, shiny metal object clutched in the man’s hand.
When he was spotted, the crazy stepped back—and disappeared into the alley.
“You saw that?” Fiona said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.
“Uh huh.”
“There’s more of them out there, aren’t there?”
“Yup.”
“They’re just waiting for us.”
“Us, each other… Whatever they can target.”
“This is insane.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said, before turning and leading her across the rooftop.
Fiona followed. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Do you really think we’re going to make it to Bear Lake?”
“Absolutely,” Cole said, without missing a beat.
The antique shop was two stories high, with living quarters on the second floor and the store on the first. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs; only one of the bedrooms was being used for its intended purpose, while the other two had been converted into storage for the shop’s extra inventory.
Even as Cole climbed down from the rooftop access, he could already hear Dante’s wheelchair moving across the polished wooden floorboards to meet him at the bottom.
“Anything?” Dante asked even before Cole could see him.
Cole climbed down the rest of the way with Fiona behind him.
“It looks worse from up there,” he said.
“That’s possible? It looked pretty bad last night. And this morning from the windows.”
“Trust me. It’s worse from up there.”
“On a scale of one to ten…”
“Seven,” Cole said.
“I was gonna go with eight,” Fiona said.
“Not too bad, then,” Dante said.
“It’s pretty bad, Dante.”
“I mean, ten is bad. Seven or eight?” The teenager shrugged. “Not as bad.” Then, to Cole, “So, no way around it?”
“Maybe, but it’s going to be the long way from now on,” Cole said.
“Probably for the best.”
“How’s Zoe?”
“She’s doing better.” He nodded up the hallway. “Inside the bathroom with Ashley.”
“And the kid?”
“She’s a trooper, that one.”
“Should I be doing something?” Fiona asked. “All this standing around doing nothing is driving me crazy. Which is ironic, because that used to be my favorite hobby.”
“You can head back downstairs and see if there’s anything we can use,” Cole said. “Just be sure to stay away from the windows as much as you can. We didn’t get here undetected last night, and they’re already out there, but let’s not give them something to key on.”
“Don’t wave a fresh slab of meat in front of the hungry tigers?” Dante said.
“Something like that.”
“What am I looking for, exactly?” Fiona asked.
“Weapons, food, essentials. Anything we didn’t find last night when we did the quick search, that we can use.”
“You wanna come along and help me look, sport?” Fiona asked Dante.
“You gonna drag me back up here later?” Dante asked.
“Um. Pass.” Then, almost blushing, “Sorry.”
“No worries. I’ll check the bedrooms and closets again. People usually keep the good stuff in their dressers, right? And there’s all those boxes we didn’t hit last night.”
They split up, Fiona going downstairs by herself while Dante wheeled toward the first bedroom. They both looked as if they had a mission to accomplish. That was good. Cole hadn’t really expected either one to find anything worth finding, but it was always a good idea to keep people busy. That way they had less time to freak out and cause him headaches.
As for himself, Cole headed to the bathroom at the end of the floor. The door was closed, but he could hear Zoe talking with Ashley inside.
He knocked.
“It’s open,” Zoe said.
Cole peeked in. “Am I interrupting?”
Ashley was sitting on the sink counter, her legs dangling as she hummed some pop song that was always on the radio before everything went to shit. Something about high school love affairs. Zoe was wiping her own chin with a wet rag, getting off the last of the blood speckles that neither Cole nor Fiona had managed to completely remove last night. There was no electricity or working plumbing in the room, so Zoe had to make do with one of their bottles of water.
For someone who’d been stabbed in the shoulder with a katana, Zoe looked remarkably pain-free. Then again, the codeine he’d given her, from Dante’s aunt’s medical bag, probably had a lot to do with that.
Zoe had been inside the bathroom all morning checking on her wound. That required taking off her shirt, and though he’d told her to let Fiona help—she would have been uneasy around him—Zoe had insisted on doing it herself.
“Hey,” Zoe said, throwing the rag into a waste bin. “See anything good up there?”
“Depends on your definition of good,” Cole said.
“Something that won’t get us killed.”
“In that case, no.”
“And here I thought our luck was turning around.”
“Whatever gave you that crazy idea?”
“My mom used to tell me that anyone can be a pessimist, but it takes some serious courage to always look on the bright side of things. Serious courage. Either that, or a total lack of understanding of reality. I still can’t figure out which.”
Cole chuckled. “Your mom was probably onto something.”
“Maybe.” Then, “Where’s the others?”
“Fiona’s downstairs, and Dante’s checking the rooms again.”
Zoe turned to her daughter. “Wanna go help Dante, sweetie?”
Ashley saluted her mom, then hopped off the counter and squeezed past Cole into the hallway. Cole looked after her, before returning his gaze to Zoe.
She had turned around and was leaning against the counter, suddenly not looking as spry as just a few seconds ago.
“She was being ‘spry’ for the kid,” the Voice said.
Looks like it, Cole thought.
Fall of Man (Book 1): The Break Page 17
