The road ran west-east, with the barricade on the eastern side blocking the approach to the bridge over the river. A bus was parked diagonally across the road, leaving a car-width’s gap. On this side of the bus was a police car, while beyond, she could see a string of cars and small trucks parked along the roadside. In the gap, flagging her down, was a police officer. Seeing the uniform, a bundle of tension finally left her. She’d wondered what had happened to the police, but here they were, on the outskirts of the city. Normality was being restored.
More than that, as he walked towards her truck, she realised she knew the officer. It was the younger cop who’d been outside the hospital. What was his name? Herrera, that was it.
She wound down the window and leaned out. “Is Sergeant Wilgus here?” she asked, before the officer had a chance to speak.
“Sergeant Wilgus?” Herrera repeated, sounding confused.
“You don’t remember me? I was at the hospital. The sergeant sent me home to get a few hours sleep. When I went back, it was on fire. Isn’t he here? What happened to him?”
Officer Herrera looked at her, then turned to look beyond the bus. There, an officer in the uniform of a state trooper was leaning over the window of a bright pink, mud-splattered runabout.
“You were at the hospital,” Herrera said, though without any sign of recognition. “I… yeah, I don’t where the sarge is. I haven’t seen him since then.” He turned around again as a yell came from beyond the bus. The state trooper was ordering the passengers out of the car.
“Is there a plan?” Olivia asked.
“What?” Herrera asked.
“An official plan?” Olivia asked. “I want to help, to be useful. Where’s the temporary hospital being set up?”
“What? What hospital?” Herrera said. “There isn’t one.”
Beyond the bus, the trooper had drawn his gun.
“What’s going on?” Olivia asked.
“Go,” Herrera said. “Before Vevermee stops you. Turn around and just go. Now.”
At the pink car, the trooper fired through the driver’s window, before switching aim and firing into the backseat.
“Go!” Herrera said.
But Olivia had already thrown the truck into reverse. She spun backwards, across the intersection, skidding the truck around. She drove east, along Bertrand Road. In the rear view mirror, she thought she saw the trooper striding towards Herrera, but then they were both lost to view. At the first turning, she headed north. When she saw stalled cars ahead of her, she sped up and kept going without stopping, without slowing, driving unfamiliar roads, just to get away.
Keeping to back roads, and avoiding any town large enough to have a name, she drove north and west, wondering what she’d just seen. An execution? A robbery? Why were they stopping people from crossing the river?
The road gave her no answers, and asked very few questions. She saw no people, no livestock, no other traffic, and no more roadblocks, though she saw a few homes which had been hastily barricaded. Passing those at speed, she barely slowed until she came to a station wagon driven off the road. The doors were closed, the front buried in a ditch, but there was movement behind the dirt-flecked windows. She stopped fifty yards beyond the crashed car, picked up the pry-bar and, after the briefest hesitation, the pistol, and got out.
She’d slowed because the station wagon was the same colour as Nora’s. But where hers was an ancient relic verging on being an antique, this vehicle was simply old. Two battered brown suitcases dangled over the left side, hanging from the rope which had been holding them to the roof, and which ran through the slightly open passenger windows. But it was the movement which had caught her eye, which had brought her to a stop. A hope, after the police roadblock, after the truck driver, after the hospital, of finding someone else alive. A hope that was dashed as she drew nearer. The figure was moving, but it was no longer alive. A teenager in acid-wash jeans and a blood-drenched hoodie, with blond-tipped hair and gore-flecked teeth, snapped at her as she approached. He was alone in the car. Now. There were… remains on the passenger seat. A woman. A mother? She backed away. The seatbelt held the zombie in place. He was no threat, and she wanted no more violence.
She returned to the truck and drove away.
By the time her headlights shone on the weather-cracked warning signs marking the turn, the shadows had risen to meet the cloak laid by night over the troubled world. The axle rattled a protest as she drove off the road and up the rutted unpaved lane, but she unapologetically drove onward, beyond the blasted stump and around the bend, until she was out of sight from the road. She switched off the engine, and sat, in the dark, listening, looking towards the road for any passing lights.
During her back-and-forth, side-to-side search for the turn, while a guilty sun quickly snuck below the horizon, a few distant pinpricks of light had appeared, marking buildings for her to avoid. Now, in the distance, she saw another, resolving into a pair as the vehicle approached, accompanied by the protesting growl of a stuttering engine. She reached for the bag in which she’d hidden the gun, watching the white lights approach, but not letting go until the red taillights had vanished beyond the trees. Still, she sat, for five minutes more, until she was sure she was truly alone. Gun in hand, with the pry-bar in the bag over her shoulder, and the truck’s keys in her pocket, she set off on foot.
The cabin was exactly where she expected it, a dark, and obviously empty, shadow among the settling darkness. It wasn’t as if she’d really expected to find Mrs Mathers here, but the smallest part of her had hoped. By feel, she found her way between the two raised-brick vegetable beds, and to the front door. It was padlocked. But the key she’d found in the envelope fitted the sturdy lock perfectly.
She opened the door, stepped inside, and froze. There was barely any light, but something was wrong. Very wrong.
She’d been to the cabin twice. Once, on a weekend that had only lasted one night, when Mrs Mathers had wanted to remember the times she’d spent there with her husband. The second time had been to clear it out. Jenny had come with them then, with one of her daughters, Carly. They’d packed almost everything, and taken it back to the garage at Nora’s house. Ultimately, most of the boxes had ended up where Olivia had found them, in the den. Except the cabin was clearly full of furniture. Beneath her feet was a rug, not the bare boards she’d swept and scrubbed despite Nora saying there was no point.
Olivia picked her way around the furniture to the light fitting on the wall. A pull of the string, and nothing happened. Of course not, the generator wasn’t on. She wished she’d brought a flashlight, a phone, a candle. Candles! Mrs Mathers always kept a stock of them in the cupboard above the sink. Bumping into a chair, then another, then a table, she’d made her way through the living space into the semi-separate kitchenette before she remembered cleaning out that cupboard, too. It wasn’t empty now.
The candle was obvious by its shape, as was the box of matches. She lit one, and froze. By the match’s flickering light, she could see the rest of the kitchen. The framed prints on the freshly plastered and painted wall. The new-for-the-cabin countertop. The cheap, but matching, kettle, toaster-oven, and microwave. The glass cabinet filled with crockery, all imprinted with a cartoon squirrel-farmer.
The match burned low, singeing her fingers. With a hiss, she waved it out. She lit another, this time lighting the candle. Taking a saucer from the cupboard, she dropped a little wax onto the plate, where it landed on the squirrel’s nose, and held the candle there until it remained fixed. By its light, she began a proper search.
An hour later, with three more candles lit, she set a match to the ready-laid fire, collapsed into the armchair, and stared at the flames. Mrs Mathers hadn’t just given her a cabin; she’d given her a home, complete with furnishings, with crockery, with soap and toilet paper in the bathroom-annex outside. Most importantly, with food in the kitchen cupboards. Enough food for months. Two. Maybe three. More than long enough to last until the nightmare was o
ver.
Nora’s parting gift had saved her life. And if things had been a few inches different, it would have saved Nicole’s, too. Quietly, watching the fire, Olivia gave in to grief, weeping until, exhausted, she slept.
22nd February
Chapter 9 - Win or Lose, You Can’t Beat a House
The Cabin, Michigan
According to Mr Mathers, he’d won the cabin in a poker game. According to Mrs Mathers, he’d lost.
Over the years, he’d extended the main room, adding the kitchenette to the northern side, the bedroom to the south. What he’d overlooked, and why it had remained Mr Mathers’s cabin for the first decade of their married life, was the bathroom. A cement-floored shed had, finally, been built to the north of the cabin, which stored a shower, toilet, and the generator. A complicated valve and handle system theoretically fed grey-water from the shower into the toilet cistern, but it had never worked properly. Instead, cistern and washing-water tank alike were filled by hand, usually with water brought from the city, though there was a well another fifty yards into the wood.
Olivia made gathering water her priority for the morning, losing herself in the exercise as she ran through the events of the previous two days. Fear, panic, and shock had tainted her view of it. The news on TV and radio hadn’t helped. That state trooper had probably been shooting zombies, not people. Just because she’d not seen the National Guard in South Bend didn’t mean they’d been derelict in their duty. It was the same reason there’d been no fire engines at the hospital, and few staff. People had been redeployed to other, larger cities. Or to smaller, more easily controlled towns. Yes, that was probably it.
Probably.
What was undeniable were the undead truck driver and that zombie in the back of the car. The infection had certainly reached Indiana. The radio had said it had already spread across the world. She was inclined to believe it. Yes, she’d made the right choice. Better not to be in South Bend right now.
She hauled up the rope, and decided that tomorrow’s task was going to be devising a better way of collecting water. And filtering it, she mentally added as she scooped the larger leaves from the bucket before pouring the well-water into the brand-new, bright red, plastic container that had come with a funnel attached.
“It’s for gasoline, isn’t it?” she murmured to herself. Of course it would be. Which presented another problem. The generator powered the small water-boiler. She hauled the container back up to the concrete-floored annex to inspect the generator.
Staring at the gauge didn’t make fuel magically appear in the tank. Nor did it make a full fuel canister magically appear in the corner of the room. The multitude of labels all clearly stated the generator burned gas, just like Pete’s truck, but she’d also need that fuel to get back to town when the crisis was over.
Uncertain what to do next, she retreated into the house, put some of the last of the milk into a mug, and had opened the microwave door before remembering there was no power. Sighing, she went back into the main room, laid and lit a fire, then waited for it to take. The milk went into a saucepan, to which she added some of the powdered coffee, all the while thinking of the old but reliable coffee pot she’d liberated from the store.
“It’s true, then,” she said to the flames. “You really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
The roll of bills she’d taken from the trucker, plus the couple of hundred dollars she’d taken from Pete, amounted to more cash than she’d ever had before. Would anyone be selling gasoline? Except that was the wrong question. Was anyone within driving range still selling it? And would they sell her more than she’d use driving Pete’s truck there to get it? Maybe. But in a few days, the generator would have guzzled all she’d bought, and the money would be gone, too. Then she’d have no choice but to rely on the open fire. And rainwater, too, until she’d cleaned out the well. It hadn’t rained in a couple of days, though. It hadn’t snowed, either.
A stray gust caused the windows to rattle. She pulled the chair a little closer to the flickering flames. The cabin was already close to freezing. More firewood was the answer. At least she had an axe and a saw. She had a chainsaw, too, but that brought her back to her fuel problem. The stack of pre-chopped wood was already considerably diminished. Replenishing it would be her job for the afternoon. After she’d boiled the milk for her coffee.
She stirred the saucepan, and tested the contents. Barely warm. She reached for another log, and paused. When had Mrs Mathers cut the wood? Or had she bought it, pre-cut? But why? Why had Mrs Mathers done any of this? Why set the cabin up like a home?
While waiting on the milk, a slightly more thorough search of the cabin turned up an envelope, containing the title deeds, in Olivia’s name, and the details of the realtor who’d sold Nora’s house. And that, Olivia thought, was the real point of the furnishings. Mrs Mathers hadn’t really expected her to live here, but to sell it, as seen, to some banker or executive who wanted to escape a concierge lifestyle. She didn’t know how much the cabin would have fetched, and didn’t want to think about it now, but that only left her to think about the hard work in her immediate future.
Calling it café-au-lait didn’t make the lukewarm milk-coffee taste any better, nor did drinking it make her feel any more refreshed. Leaving the fire burning low, she trekked back to the truck, then down to the road, checking that the vehicle truly was out of sight, but really just putting off the inevitable. She returned to Pete’s truck and turned on the radio. The signal struggled to make its way through the trees, but she listened to one crackly station after another, and felt increasingly reassured. The only specifics she heard were that the infection had spread everywhere. But she knew that, first hand. She was far more interested in the talk of deployments, of strategic positioning of troops and police, of call-ups and lockdowns. It was just talk, just rumours, discussion between the lonely DJ and the unresponsive airwaves. A relayed list of official instructions issued by the government would have been preferable, more reassuring, and though it was absent now, it would come. The nightmare would soon be over. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a month. But soon.
It took two hours to clean the guttering, and redirect the downpipe into the red-plastic jug. A proper water barrel went onto her mental shopping list. For the rest of the afternoon, her body sawed wood while her brain wondered how she might redirect rainwater directly into the shower’s water cistern. At dark, with no answers, blistered hands, and enough wood for a week, she retreated inside.
“There we have it, Nicole,” she said as she relit the fire. “I’m crossing off lumberjill and plumber from the list of careers to pursue.” She sighed. “Not that I won’t still have to learn how to do both jobs if I stay here.”
Dinner was pasta cooked in tinned tomatoes. Edible, but thoroughly unappetising. As night drew in, the temperature dropped. The windows rattled. The door shook. She wedged blankets around the frame, and the upturned table against that, telling herself she was simply keeping it closed, knowing she was really adding a barricade of her own against the impossible horrors she’d witnessed in daylight. She added another log to the fire, and spent long minutes debating whether to light a candle as well.
“No,” she said. “Better save them.”
It would get easier. Maybe. But tomorrow, she’d see about finding some gas. The longer she left it, the less likely she was to find it. And if there really was none to be found, at least then she’d know. Besides, it was that or spend another day sawing wood.
23rd February
Chapter 10 - No One’s Special
Michigan
Shivering awake in the freezing dark confirmed two things for Olivia: that Nora had left her the cabin to be sold, not to be lived in, and that electricity was a damn good thing. Wrapped in a nest of blankets, she stirred the saucepan of canned pineapple and dried oats, and wished for fresh pastries. Even stale ones. Bananas. Oranges. Potatoes. Lights. Music. Books. She already missed them all. The future truly wasn’t goin
g to be like the past, and certainly not like her daydreams of life at the cabin with Pete, but at least it was nearly spring; things would get easier. She could make them so, in time, and with effort. Well, she had the time and she wasn’t afraid of hard work.
By daylight’s first glimmer, she trudged down to Pete’s truck. The road beyond ran north to south, parallel to and a mile away from the highway. With Kalamazoo fifteen miles to the east, when she came to a westbound turning, she took it. One eye on the odometer, keeping her speed to twenty, she altered her plans. The cabin had seemed remote while she stood on its creaking porch, but it was only a hard day’s walk from Kalamazoo. While not as big as South Bend, tens of thousands had called that city home. Any who fled west might spot the smoke from her cabin’s fire. Her fingers tapped a frustrated drumroll on the steering wheel. The cabin had seemed so promising. She’d woken up thinking of all the things she had to change, fix, and adapt, but she’d been willing to embrace the challenge. But now, once more, her plans had come crashing down. If it wasn’t safe to stay there, she needed the fuel even more, and she needed a destination.
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 7
