But Vin was right. They needed to survive. They deserved to cling somehow to the hope that they could have a normal life. A cure, a reversal, was possible, although her nurse’s training informed her otherwise. The chances of there being a cure soon after the first outbreak hovered around zero. If Atlanta, home of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had gone dark, there was little hope, at least in America.
She wondered what was going on in China right now. In the wee hours of the dark morning. Had this zombie wave hit there, yet? The crawl on the TV said, “Zombie Apocalypse Sweeps World,” or something to that effect. It definitely said “World,” though the anchor said nothing about outside America. Or did he? It was only an hour or so ago, but she found it difficult to remember.
Everyone looked so haggard: only Janice wasn’t bloody with clothes ruined. At least Janice and Jize had managed to keep their eyeglasses blood-free and unbroken. How long would that last?
They did however have blood splatters on their shoes; even Janice’s shoes were bloody. Maybe they all should get a new pair.
All of this was on her mind as they passed by the crashed Beaver County Sheriff patrol car.
Nothing special there.
Pools of blood scattered around the police station. A great slaughter had occurred here—a battle the zombies apparently won, as there were no bodies in sight. Handguns were strewn throughout the intersection. The police had put up a barricade of patrol cars surrounding the station, but to little effect. One crashed patrol car stood apart from the others.
Jize’s instinct was to protect his hands, plus, he’d promised to keep one hand holding Emily’s, so that left one hand to pick up a gun and put it in his pocket. He wanted to find a clean one. But he also wanted to check for ammo, and he couldn’t do that while holding on to Emily.
As luck would have it, he found one. He and Emily waded through some puddles of blood behind the barricade, and he picked up a handgun. He grabbed it by the handle, keeping his hand away from the trigger as much as possible.
“Let’s see if we can find someone who can help us figure out if this one is loaded.” Jize was talking more to himself than to Emily. He scanned the scene with his eyes. “It looks like we’ll have to wait. Everyone is occupied.”
“Maybe the man in the sheriff’s car can help?”
Jize looked around again. She must mean Alexander. She would have called Vin Charming. “Mr. Williams is not in a sheriff’s car.”
“Not him.” Emily pointed at the crashed car. “Him.”
Jize narrowed his eyes. All he could make out was a deployed airbag, but now that he looked carefully, there might be a body in there after all.
Chapter Seventeen
Day Seven
Jocelyn had looted the shoulder shotgun holster from Aaron’s body and tied her scabbard with her scabbard belt on the opposite side. Wearing it with the sword and shotgun firmly in place, she put her backpack on over them. It was awkward, but she verified that she could draw her weapons with it on.
She walked up the mountain toward her car, and soon her back was sweaty. In the strong sunlight, she judged the temperature to be around sixty degrees. The whole idea of a zombie apocalypse, if real (she had serious doubts now about what was real and what wasn’t given her present condition), had begun to sink in. Gone was any semblance of a normal life. She became sick to her stomach at the prospect of having to face zombies, or draugar, and kill them. An overall sense of dread permeated every fiber of her being.
She was drained, anxious, and frightened.
When she reached the cabin, still hot and sweaty, she took off George’s baggy clothes and put on blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt covered with a gray UCSD sweatshirt. Though dirty, they at least fit and had no bloodstains on them.
She picked up a key fob off a nail on the wall and walked out to her car—a rental hybrid she had filled with gas in Beaver Park, the nearby ski resort town. She clicked the fob to unlock the doors, expecting a beep.
Silence.
She tried again. Silence once more.
Over and over, she hit all the buttons on the fob several times. Nothing.
She tried the doors, but they were locked.
Fearing the worst, she extracted a physical key from the fob and attempted to unlock the door with it. It opened. She got behind the wheel but did not get the little greeting sound she expected.
Then she put her foot on the brake and hit the start button.
Nothing.
She hit the start button several times, but nothing happened. She tried various buttons, but none of them responded.
The battery was dead.
And AAA was not an option.
Shit.
If you were a girl with a clinical mental illness in the middle of nowhere without medication or a vehicle, where would you go?
The best path to Colorado Springs lay to the south, but to the north was Beaver Park, only ten miles away and big enough to likely have a pharmacy. She got out her road atlas, and none of the towns to the south were as big in font size (the bigger the font, the larger the population). In fact, the closest cities larger than Beaver Park were Colorado Springs and Denver. If she walked to either city, it might take a week or longer. And maybe she could find a car in Beaver Park? The more she thought about it, the more sense it made to go north to Beaver Park, before heading to Denver or Colorado Springs.
So north to Beaver Park it was. She carried everything, including her whetstone, plus the road atlas, back down the mountain.
Once back at George’s house, everything there looked useful to Jocelyn, yet she could only bring either
