“There wasn’t anything you could do. He made you go.”
Buck snorted with derision. “You still don’t get it, do you?” He shook his head. “All of this? The zombies, my parents, my sister…I could have stopped all of this. I knew what was going on as soon as I saw it. If I had just spoken up and made my dad quarantine my sister. Or made him realize when mom got attacked what would happen to her. But no. I thought it couldn’t be real,” he mocked himself.
“I ignored everything I knew…everything that was right in front of my face and pinned my hopes on my dad getting us to the hospital tomorrow morning.” He shook his head and beat his brow against the dirt road beneath them. “I should have trusted my gut and made him listen to me. Keri might still be infected, but at least my parents would still be here and nobody else would be hurt.”
Skeeter stared at him open mouthed. “Seriously? You’re going to blame yourself based on what? Late night movies?” She punched him hard in the arm. “You need to quit being a pussy and straighten up. There is no way your parents would have listened to you, even if you had threatened them,” she whispered sternly. “You couldn’t have convinced them your sister was a zombie if she had risen from the dead and staggered around moaning ‘bra-a-a-i-i-inz’,” she mocked him back. “If you tell me you invented this zombie plague with a basement chemistry set, then I’ll let you blame yourself. But unless that’s the case, we need to get out of here and I need you to help me keep an eye out for these things.”
Buck kept shaking his head, ignoring her. She punched him again and he twisted his face to meet hers. “Besides, you have the gun, remember? I don’t know how to use one, so man up, big boy.”
Buck stared at her for a long moment, then pursed his lips. “You can be really demanding, you know that?”
“I’m a woman.”
“You’re a girl.”
“And you’re a boy. But I need you to man up like you’ve been doing,” she said more softly. “Seriously, Buck, I can’t get out of here by myself.”
He stared into her eyes and nodded. “Okay,” he sniffed. “Let’s do this.” Buck crawled to the edge of the SUV and stole a glance out from under the car. The coast was still clear, so he waved her out from under it as well. The two made their way farther down the hill, staying along the roadway the entire time.
Skeeter tugged at his arm and pulled him close. “Tell me again why we’re sticking to the road? Isn’t it awfully open?”
Buck paused to catch his breath and nodded. “Yeah, but it leads back to where the concert was. And there were buildings there like a ranger’s office or something. Maybe there will be normal people there, or a phone or…something.”
Skeeter rubbed at her lower legs. “My legs feel like someone is driving spikes into them.”
“Shin splints. You’re not used to hiking up and down these kinds of hills, are you?”
“Are you kidding? I usually sit behind my PS3 console to kill zombies.” She smiled at him and he felt something…different.
“Join the club,” Buck said, glancing around trying not to stare at her. “I suppose there’s a slight chance that someone left keys in one of these cars, but if we do find something like that, as soon as we start it, it’s going to be like ringing the dinner bell for everything with red eyes out there.”
Skeeter nodded, but then shot him a smile. “It might pull some of them away from the motorcoach.” She shrugged.
Buck gave her a grim look. “Somehow, I doubt they were kept out for very long.” He turned away from her to hide the concern on his face. “We split up. You take this side of the road and I’ll take the other. If you find anything, just holler and I’ll come to you. I’ll do the same.”
Skeeter’s eyes widened at the idea of separating, but she said nothing as he broke away and darted across the road, leaving her alone to search her side. She watched him go from car to car, trying the door handles of each one. She went to the closest car and tried the handle. Locked. Staying low, she hurried to the next vehicle and tried it. As soon as she tried the door handle, the interior lights came on, but the door remained locked. She stifled a yelp as she sprinted to the next car.
She kept glancing back over her shoulder to see if anybody had noticed or was approaching the vehicle, but so far, the area was free of dark, sprinting figures, and no screams broke the silence of the night. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding when she lifted the door handle of the next car. Locked. Scooting farther down the line, she tried the next and the next, but both were locked. She was about to consider their attempts an effort in futility as she reached the next car and tried the door handle. The interior lights came on, as did the headlights, and the car alarm sounded in tandem with the vehicle’s horn. She stood in shock as the siren sounded and the lights flashed, and she knew that anything within miles would hear it. Her head jerked toward Buck who was now up and sprinting down the line, trying every car door he came to. She took off at a dead run, following suit.
She finally came to an old pickup truck, and not only was the door unlocked, the
