Bill’s foot came up reflexively from the gas pedal and he turned to stare at him. “What did you say?” His mind not sure that it registered correctly.
“The Army mans are there to kill the zombie mans,” Jason repeated. “They’ll probably kill the other people, too.”
“How can you know something like that?” Bill asked. “You couldn’t know something like that,” he stated as he turned his eyes back to the road and hit the gas again.
Richard leaned up from the rear seat. “We might want to avoid all of the roads that have park entrances, Bill.”
“He can’t know that,” Bill repeated, staring at Richard through the rearview mirror. “Can he?”
Richard sighed and shook his head. “Jason is…special,” he answered. “Sometimes he’ll say something out of the blue that makes no sense, then a day or so later, things come to pass, and you realize, what he says did make sense.”
“Like what?” The hair on the back of his neck standing up at the idea.
“I dunno, Bill. Just…things,” Richard said as he flopped back into the seat.
“Like what?” Bill asked again.
“Like, one time he said something about a train going boom. Then the next day, the Santa Fe derailed. Big chemical spill. Had to evacuate a town.”
“Okay, well, that’s just coincidence,” Bill said, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“There have been others,” Richard said, sighing and staring out the window.
“Like what?” Bill asked again.
“Like I can’t think right now, okay?” Richard spat. “My mind is in other places.” Bill shot him a quick glance at the sudden outburst, then turned back to the road. “Just avoid the park if Jason says we need to. Trust me on this one.”
Bill felt a sudden chill and turned the heater up a little. He glanced down at the little boy sitting next to him and couldn’t figure out what it was about the kid that suddenly gave him the heebie-jeebies, but he felt like somebody had just walked across his grave.
“Anything else we should know about?” He faked a smile.
“Just watch the road,” Jake said as he pulled his seatbelt on and made sure it was tight.
Bill noted the action and pulled his own seatbelt on. He glanced up in the rearview and nodded to Richard. “Put your seatbelt on.” Richard nodded slowly and went through the motions. Bill continued to watch the road for the next couple of miles, but Jason’s warning kept replaying in his mind. He leaned toward the boy and whispered, “That was sort of vague, don’t you think? Care to share a few details?”
“What’s ‘vague’ mean?” Jake asked, big blue eyes boring into him.
“It means you didn’t give me much to go on. I could use a little more meat on the bone, son. Give me something with a bit more detail to it. Give me specifics,” Bill urged. “Like what exactly am I supposed to be on the lookout for?”
Jason nodded at him. “Zombies.”
Bill turned a glance to the kid who was still fiddling with something in his hands. “Zombies?”
He turned his attention back to the road just as the headlights shone on two figures running toward them in the road. Bill cut the wheel hard to the right while trying to slam on the brakes. The car hit one of them nearly head on and the Jeep slid around, hitting the other running figure with the rear door before sliding into the ditch and rolling the little SUV onto the driver’s side.
The Jeep slid into the ditch, burying its nose into the soft soil and driving the side of the vehicle into the berm of dirt that made the downhill side of the ditch. Once the vehicle stopped moving, Jason looked out the windshield and saw dirt and grass on Bill’s side and stars on his side. Something wasn’t right, and he wished that grownups would learn to listen, instead of questioning everything.
Bill sat in the muted glow of one headlight shining into the ditch and tried to lift himself up from the driver’s door of the Jeep. He could hear Richard muttering curses softly in the backseat of the Jeep as he unbuckled and fell against his own door. Bill unbuckled his seatbelt and began to open the front roof panels for the second time tonight. As soon as he loosened them, he crawled out into the unwelcomed scent of freshly plowed earth and cut grass.
“Jason, undo your seatbelt,” he whispered back inside.
“We should wait here while one person goes to get my car,” Richard said from inside the Jeep.
“What? Why?”
“All three of us out on the road?” Richard glared at him. “With a kid? We’d be fodder for those things.”
“And sitting here in a wrecked Jeep wouldn’t be? Do you really think they’d stay out for long? They’d break out a window and make pretty quick work of whoever was inside.”
Richard stared at the windows and then looked at Jason who simply nodded and began crawling out the open roof. He paused and turned back, “Come on, grandpa. We’ll make it,” he whispered.
Richard nodded and began crawling over the center console to the forward sunroof. “We’d better hurry. It will be sunrise soon, and then we won’t be able to hide anywhere.”
As if in answer to his statement, one of the figures struck by the Jeep began dragging its twisted body toward them, growling and clacking its teeth. Bill went to the rear of the Jeep and pulled open the twisted rear door. He pulled out the tire tool and met the crawling ghoul as it dragged itself across the road.
“I’ve had about enough of your kind,” he muttered as he brought the tool down on its head.
Major Chappell stood by while the people in the white space suits ran their tests and hurriedly moved about the tent. She looked about the busy makeshift lab, but couldn’t discern one person from another. She grabbed the closest of the white-suited
