by Maxey, Phil
Need to find a gun and ammo in the city. Must be some places we can quickly stop.
She knew she had longer before the change came for her, longer than Sam or the boy if he wasn’t immune. She needed to use that to at least find some weapons. But convincing the woman to her right would be difficult. Her daughter was running out of time.
Jess looked at the mundane landscape. It reminded her of the moon, but worse. The lunar surface didn’t have mutated people roaming across it…
She kept starting to remember Landon or Josh and immediately stopped it from happening. For soon afterwards came the pain, and there was no time for that. Sam was alive. Sam needed the vaccine. She was going to move heaven and earth to make that happen. It was that simple.
“There’s a pickup behind us,” said Meg, looking in the rear mirror. “Thank God. I thought we were the only ones. It’s speeding up.”
“Don’t slow,” said Jess. “We need to get to Jefferson!”
Meg looked at her. “Look, I get it. We need to get the—”
“I don’t think you do get it!”
Meg eased up on the gas.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to talk to them! They might have news about what’s happening!”
The sedan skidded to a halt on the side of the highway. The old beat up pickup did the same about ten feet behind.
“It’s two men,” said Sam, looking out the rear window. “Old and younger. They seem to be laughing about something.”
Meg pushed her door open, making a point to take the keys with her. “Two minutes and we’re back on the road. That’s all I ask.” She didn’t bother waiting for a reply from Jess and got out. The older of the pickup’s occupants wound his window down, and she walked up to it. “Howdy,” she said, giving a little wave. “You’re the first people we’ve seen out here.”
“Yeah, same for us,” he said. The other man just smiled.
“Have you come across any of the things?”
“Nah, pretty quiet out here. Heard radio reports that there are some in the city.. So it’s just you, the other woman and the girl?”
Meg looked back at the sedan. Tye was too short to be seen. “Er, and a boy. We found him alone. Parents probably dead.”
“Lot of that going around.”
The passenger’s door opened, the tall, bearded man getting out. “Think I’ll pay my respects to your friends, there.”
“Umm, okay.” She looked back to the old man and the barrel of the revolver pointing directly at her chest. He produced a toothless grin.
“Don’t fret. He just want to see if you got anything we want. Then we’ll be—”
Meg lunged for the gun, taking the old man completely by surprise, while throwing the car keys towards the Sedan. “Jess! Drive!”
In the sedan, Jess hadn’t even been watching in the rear mirror. Her mind was a daze of disconnected memories. Snippets of history with her husband and child that played out on a constant loop, whether she wanted them too or not.
“Mom!” screamed Sam, just as a boom rang out from behind their car.
Jess swung around to her left to look through the rear window, when she felt a presence to her right. A man lunged for the handle, trying to pull the locked door open. He then looked across the hood and ran around the front and picked something up. With a smile, he dangled the keys from his fingers so everyone inside could see, then walked to the driver’s side. Jess slid across the seats, grabbing the handle as he unlocked the door and pulled from the other side without any success.
Swearing he stood back. “Open the fucking door! Or your friend is gonna get shot!” He nodded to the other car.
Jess turned around. Meg was standing with her hands up, a man behind her, pointing a gun at the side of her head.
“What are we going to do!” said Sam.
“Everyone stay calm,” said Jess. She looked at the man through the door window. “We got stuff! You can have it! But please let my friend go!”
“I’m only going to say it one more time, girly. Open the fucking door and get out, or my pa is going to put a hole in your friend’s head!”
“Fine!” She glanced back to her daughter and Tye. “Stay close to me when we get out. These are mean men. Just do what they say.”
Jess released her hand from the handle and the man immediately pulled it open. She got out, as did Sam and Tye, the latter two moving close to Jess, and all three backed away from the car and the man.
He ducked inside, pulling out a backpack full of candy. “Hey found some sweets!” he said with a smile to the older man.
“Take all of it,” said Jess. “Take what you want. Just let us go on our way.”
The man dropped the pack with a sneer and walked to just inches from her. “I’ll take… anything… I want…”
“We ain’t got time for that shit,” said the older man pushing the pickup’s door closed while keeping the gun fixed on Meg. “Just our luck to steal a piece of old shit pickup, that breaks as soon as we take it. That guy and his kid wouldn’t have got—”
The old man’s words almost slipped past Jess, until a voice at the back of her mind shouted for her to pay them attention. “Guy? Kid?”
“What do you care?” said the old man.
“Please, who were they?”
“Some cop guy and—”
A concoction of emotion hit Jess, so tangled with fear, doubt and hope that she almost collapsed.
The bearded man looked at the woman and girl who were crying. “Stop your blabbing!” He pulled his fist back, aiming it at Sam’s head and brought it down hard, but it wasn’t the girl’s skull that it impacted with, but Jess’s hand. He looked at the woman with bemusement, as did everyone else then thrust his hand out towards her neck, but she caught that as well, and before the idea that he was being held by someone far stronger than him fully lodged in his mind, she swung him around and placed her hand and arm around his neck, making him crouch back slightly due to his height.
“Let her go!” she shouted to the older man, who was holding Meg tight to him, the gun leaving a mark on her check.
“You dumb ass, Jay! Letting a woman take you like that!”
Jay struggled, but the woman’s grip was like a vice with no give.
She tightened her arm around him. “I’ll break his neck! Let her go! Then put the gun on the ground and get back in your shitty pickup!”
Anger and frustration flowed across the old man’s face. “Go on, get!” He pushed Meg forward, but rather than walking away, she calmly turned, holding her hand out.
“Gun?”
“She’s strangling me, pa!”
The old man’s faced tightened in rage and he handed Meg the pistol.
She pointed it back at him. “Let him go, Jess.”
Jess pulled the keys from his hand then released her grip and he sprung forward, whirling around at the same time. “I’ll fucking end you!. If I see you…” He noticed Meg now pointing the gun at him.
“You were told to leave,” she said.
He shook his head and with Clint, started to walk back to the pickup, but Jess ran forward. “Wait. What did you do with the guy and his son?”
“We just left them on the road!” said Clint. “Didn’t harm a hair on their heads!”
Jess took a step forward, making Jay do the opposite in the other direction, almost falling over his feet. “How long ago!” she screamed.
“I dunno. Maybe an hour?” said the younger man.
She looked at Meg with desperation. “We have to go back!”
“What about getting to the vaccine?”
“What you talking about, a vaccine?” said Clint.
Jess looked down in thought. “Someone should go and see if they can get it.”
“Well, that has to be you darling,” said Meg. “You’re the only person who has any idea of where it is.”
Jess nodded with tears in her eyes. “Can you find them? Can you promise me that?”
/> The old man was beginning to understand the transaction that had just been made and quickly moved to get inside the pickup, but stopped on Meg walking towards him, then pointing the gun in his direction.
“Looks like you’re going to have to find yourself another vehicle,” she said.
“I’m old! You can’t leave an old man out here!”
She waved the gun in his direction, each motion making him step further back from the vehicle. Jess moved to the Sedan, grabbed Meg’s pack and quickly gave it to her. She then leaned closer and whispered something to which Meg nodded.
Meg offered her the gun. “I’m not sure you need it… but you want this?”
Jess smiled, shaking her head. “You’re better with them than I am.”
Sam looked at the two men standing in the road. “What we going to do with them?”
Meg snorted, standing half in the pickup. “Let the things have them.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
10: 40 a.m. Kansas Turnpike, western approach to Kansas City.
A tear streamed down Jess’s cheek, as muddy fields covered with a smattering of snow passed by. Her right hand was clasped around her daughter’s left, and it had been that way for most of the journey from their encounter with Clint and Jay. She hoped Sam didn’t notice how her fingers and wrist were thicker.
The shock of having a gun pointed at her, hardly registered in Jess’s mind, instead only one word had replaced the grief filled memories of Landon and Josh.
Alive…
“Umm…”
“Yes?”
“That was kind of amazing what you did with that guy… I mean… like, he was a big guy…”
Jess searched for a plausible explanation for something she herself did not understand. “Oh, umm I took some martial art classes when I was at university. I guess it all came back to me when I needed it.” She smiled at her daughter then turned back to the highway, hoping it was enough.
Sam nodded as silence returned to the car. Her mother had told Tye to go with Meg, and Sam knew why. She was going to change at some point. It was just a matter of when. But the boy might be immune. No reason to put him in danger. Even though they did not discuss it, she agreed with her mother’s decision. “What will we do if there are lots of the things?” she said with a nervousness to her voice.
Jess held up the road atlas. “I had a quick look of alternate routes through the city.” She passed it to Sam. “But double check, and find me other options if the highway is blocked.”
Sam set about doing just that as Jess continued scanning the landscape, which now included advertising boardings perched within trees, offering discount haircuts and lodgings.
They slowed as they approached a stationary car in the other lane. The windows were dark. Something clung to the inside of them, blocking any view of what lay within the blue compact.
No words passed between Jess and Sam and Jess pushed down on the gas, leaving the abandoned car in the rear mirror.
They moved below an overpass and more cars and trucks sat ahead of them, some with their doors open. Jess weaved between them, her foot ready to accelerate if anything should jump out from inside one of the vehicles, but all appeared empty. A space opened up and they picked up speed, both sighing in relief to be on the open road again.
Sam looked down at the thick set of printed maps. “We could take the four-three-five, coming up. Takes us south of the downtown area, and then use small roads to move east. Will add a few more minutes, but might be safer?”
Jess nodded, steering into the right lane. “Sounds good. Let me know when we need to head east.”
Sam continued studying the pages. “Will do…” She looked up. “I’m sorry for how I was… before. I… was angry at you.”
“For?” Jess drove to the right, following the road as it swept away, sloping downwards. She caught sight of more vehicles on the route they had just exited.
Sam looked down. “I don’t know… I know it’s not your fault. I just couldn’t help but be angry, and you were the only person left I could be that way with…”
Jess smiled, grabbing and shaking her daughter’s hand briefly. “You are right to be angry,” she glanced right. “Maybe not at me, but for what’s happened over the past day. You shouldn’t have seen what you did…” She swallowed as sadness started to swill around at the back of her throat. “But, we’re alive and so is your dad and brother. And soon, after we have found the vaccine, we will all be back together, and we will find a place to hide out for the remainder of the time. Just another four and a half days.”
The road became a decline, allowing a view for a few miles. A mass of white trucks and trailers which the highway dissected, sat on both sides, and further were hints of warehouses.
“Do you think things can go back to the way they were?”
Jess searched for a good answer. Words that would give her daughter hope, something to look forward to, but it would be a lie and she had never lied to any of her children. “I don’t know… But as long as we’re together, then we can make our life as normal as possible, right?..”
Sam nodded then realized her mother wasn’t looking at her, but past her to a small lake, half frozen over, a few hundred yards from the highway. Something was standing there. Human shaped but the size was wrong for the distance. Too big. It remained still, a dark form, watching.
They came to a bridge, within a landscape of spidery brown branches. Lumps of ice bobbed upon muddy waters, reflecting a largely monochrome gray sky above. It looked like a landscape of hell to Sam, and even though she didn’t know it, her mother was thinking something similar.
The bridge continued over train lines. A freight train with cars that continued to the horizon sat motionless below, but both of them refrained from commenting. Neither of them wanted to taint their hope with the sense of stillness that pervaded the hills and fields they were driving through.
They continued south for a few miles before vehicles starting appearing in the opposite lane. A column of traffic that lacked any inhabitants. Hundreds of cars, trucks and vans waiting, frozen in time, many with their doors open or the windshields laying in fractured pieces on their hoods.
Sam wanted to ask her mother where were all the people had gone. It was the obvious question, but she feared the answer. Instead, she looked back at the maps. “I think we should take the next exit. After a few intersections, we should end up on ninety-fifth street. Takes us all the way to the other side of the city, and then it’s a straight run to Jefferson.”
Jess followed her daughter’s directions, quickly coming to roads with sidewalks and malls sat behind parking lots. There were more vehicles as well, equally as devoid of life as every other they had seen.
They were close to the city’s suburbs, and the lack of life was reflected in the fear building in Jess’s stomach. They had seen the effect of the virus when trying to escape Denver, but since then they had just witnessed small population centers, split between hundreds of miles of countryside. It was easy for Jess to imagine that people still existed. Right? They had to. But as they drove deeper into another big city, the true horror of what had transpired over the past twenty-four hours could not be denied.
The muscles in her leg tightened. She wanted to push down hard on the gas, but then she equally couldn’t shake the feeling that they were not alone in the silent city. And the slightest of noises would shake the things from their slumber. That just out of sight, were creatures even more inexplicable than they had already seen. A whole city of them. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?
They arrived at a junction as a light rain started to hit the windshield. Each of the multiple lanes from the four compass directions were chock full of vehicles, but that’s not what caught Jess’s and Sam’s attention for in the center was a car wreck. It hadn’t been caused by a collision, but rather an expansion. A red pickup had been dismantled in an explosion of something from within its cab, and pieces of the former vehicle were now strewn across the da
mp concrete.
The sedan bumped over a part of a seat, a dashboard and luggage as Jess steered to the east.
Sam couldn’t hold her thoughts any longer. “Where are the things?” Her words came with an urgency.
Her mother swallowed. “Out there.” Her comment lacked any direction, but they both looked to where they were heading. Deeper into the city.
The road was flat and straight. That was good, and there were only a peppering of vehicles.
Jess pushed down on the gas and watched the speedometer increase until they were pushing eighty.
Office buildings with proudly presented scientific sounding names, parking lots and beige faded lawns slid by. They reminded Jess of her own former company’s compound of structures, some of which were underground. The industrial park they were moving through soon gave way to small wooden homes closer to the road. They almost moved past too quick to notice, but Jess caught a glimpse of a few open front doors.
Sam coughed, but before Jess could react, she sat back up. “I’m fine. Just a tickle in my throat. I’m fine.”
Jess’s heart returned to just a light thundering in her chest, and she focused again on the four lanes in front of them, steering left… then right… around what vehicles had been left behind.
They were doing ninety now, the buffeting of the wind loud enough to be distracting, but that was okay because at that speed it would only be a few more minutes before they were leaving the built-up areas. Jess’s grip on the steering wheel was assured, her view a hundred yards ahead of them, seeing any obstacles seconds before she needed to move into another lane. So it was her daughter that saw the first of the forms emerging from small groups of trees, and from behind stores and motels that were flashing past.
