The morning fog was thick. Taylor was glad for it. It was like having a security blanket; a cocoon that obscured anything dangerous that lay outside its confines. He could see the road twenty yards ahead and then it was swallowed up by the haze.
“You just let me know when you need me to drive,” Carl said. “I’m not feeling too bad.”
“I must have hit my second wind because I’m not doing too bad at the moment. But I’ll let you know.”
Carl switched on the radio, toying with the dial. “Still nothing.”
“I don’t get how it spread so fast.
“Not if you were where the original outbreak took place,” Tina said. She yawned into her hand and leaned forward. “We know about it ahead of time when it happens someplace else first.”
Carl said, “So you’re saying you think it started here?”
Tina shrugged. “Maybe.”
“That still doesn’t explain much. Like what’s
“Or how it originated,” Tina said. “Anything that affects so many people that rapidly has got to be airborne.”
“Maybe it was a meteor.” Carl twisted around in the seat so he could look at Tina, both hands holding onto the barrel of the shotgun. “Crashed and gave off some kind of alien radiation.”
“You said you heard about it on the radio. Was it a local station?”
“Denver.”
“Well…if it was radiation than it had a pretty big radius. I think we would have heard about the impact.”
“I was joking.”
“Oh.”
Taylor met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “He does that.”
“So it’s happening in the States, maybe the whole world. It almost has to be spread through the air. And it spreads
“Sixteen hours,” Taylor said. He glanced in the rearview mirror again, this time seeing past Tina and out the back window. He could see the sun low in the sky, a hazy orb whose brightness was muted by the fog.
Carl said, “Does it sound like rabies?”
“Going only off the symptoms, they mimic a lot of those found with rabies,” Tina said. “But nothing else really fits. Being airborne, the rapidity of the infection, traveling in packs. I guess it doesn’t have to add up. This is something different. Normally, a disease or virus doesn’t mutate that fast. It almost makes me think…”
“What?” Carl asked. “Finish what you were gonna say.”
“Well, it just makes me think that maybe it was manmade.”
“Terrorists?”
“Could be. People have been worried about something like that for years. But it could just as easily have been an accident. That’s not as rare as you might think. It doesn’t matter how many precautions you take to prevent them, people still make mistakes. I’m just glad they’re afraid of water.”
“The place we’re headed has lakes. Two small ones and a bigger one.”
“Do your parents have a boat?”
“Yeah. It’s just a small fishing boat. Can seat five or six tops. I didn’t think to check to see if they took it with them or not,” Carl said.
“Pray they did. I wish I knew where
Taylor felt a stab of guilt again. It was another opportunity to lay the truth on her, but he remained silent again. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. The more he thought about it, the more telling her seemed like the right thing to do. From what he had gathered in a short amount of time, Tina was about as level-headed as you could get, but telling her that her father was one of
He said, “Maybe he’ll find a way to contact you,” and, despite his good intentions, he still felt like a total slimeball.
“Look!”
Carl shouted this so loud and so suddenly that Taylor nearly lost control of the car, instantly wide awake. “What?”
I-80 was visible from the highway. Carl pointed to it and said, “Right there. Don’t you see them?”
Taylor squinted in the direction of the Interstate. “How can you see anything through the…”
But then he did
“You see them now, huh?”
He answered with the briefest of nods. His foot touched the brake and gently brought the Escort to a halt, and he shifted into park. Opening the door, he exited the car and stepped onto the road.
Tina said, “What are you doing? Are you insane?”
Carl opened his door. “They’re a ways away. Far enough that we could take off before they ever got close to us.”
After some hesitation, she got out of the car and joined them.
The highway was on higher ground than the Interstate. They watched from a small hill, looking downward at the mass. It was impossible to know how many of them there were. Carl thought it was as many people gathered in one place as he had ever seen before. Taylor had taken him to a Def Leppard concert years ago when Carl was still in high school, and he had been awestruck by all the people packed into the stadium. This was worse.
“Do you think they’re normal?” Tina asked. “The way they’re walking, I can’t tell.”
“No. They’re not normal.”
“How can you tell?”
“Trust me. They’re not.”
“Where do you think they came from?”
“I don’t know. But I’d like to know where they’re going,” Taylor said. “They have to be heading somewhere.”
“So many of them.”
“Hundreds?”
“
“None of them with homes anymore,” Taylor said. He almost sympathized with them, but it merely a transient emotion. “All of them homeless.”
After that, there wasn’t much else to say.
“Do you think they know where they’re going? Like they have a destination in mind,” Carl said. He had taken