Lana was squeezing my hand so hard it hurt. I patted her with my free hand and whispered, “Ease up,” then said, “We aren’t from here. We’re trying to get home.”
He grunted. “Been on the radio about the curfew.”
“We don’t have a place to stay.” I didn’t repeat the out of town part because I didn’t want to piss the guy with the weapon off. “We just want to get out of Omaha and on the road.”
His steely eyes took me in, then he bent to look at Lana. “Either of you been bit?”
“No. We’ve been in the car all day trying to get around all the wrecks. Is the city quarantined?”
He didn’t answer, just straightened and spoke into his handie-talkie. “Two females, said they’re unbitten, wanting to head out of town.” The radio squawked and a voice came through, the words undecipherable to me. He put a hand on the car and leaned over again. “We’ll have you pull through, check you both for bites, and then you can get something to eat at the fire hall. You can decide from there if you want to stay or get on the road, though I’d advise you to hole up with us for a while. Especially if you don’t have supplies. Might be this’ll blow over in a few days.”
He didn’t sound like he believed that.
Lana scootched closer so she could see him. “Our boys are in Seattle with their grandparents. We want to get back to them.”
I wasn’t sure underlining the fact that we were lesbians was the best idea, though he’d probably figured that out by Lana’s death grip on my hand. I hoped he wasn’t one of those people who liked to be dicks just because or worse, who were dicks because their religion insisted they had to be.
“I have a kid in Arizona and one in DC.” His voice roughened. “So far the news from out east isn’t good.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I truly was. Not knowing was the worst part. Not being able to call and hear the boys’ voices. At least we’d gotten some texts through. From the gravel in his voice, I guessed he hadn’t been so lucky.
“Captain Hart? One of them coming around the corner. A runner.”
Captain Hart straightened, the shotgun snapping up to his shoulder. From what I knew about shotguns, they weren’t great for anything long range. He’d have to let the runner get close to fire and that was risky business.
I caught the figure in the rear view loping our way and shifted the car into reverse.
“What are you doing?”
“Contingency plan,” I said, waiting tensely as the thing got closer.
It was singing, the words punctuated with each slap of foot on pavement. “Polly. Wolly. Doodle. All the. Day!”
Boom!
The crack of the shotgun startled me. Lana twitched, her hand squeezing tight again. When I looked back, the runner was down but his mouth was still running. “I went to town, singing Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day!”
Boom!
His face dissolved.
I shut my eyes but it was too late. The image was seared into my memory.
“Go on,” Captain Hart says, quieter than before. “I hope you get where you need to go.”
I did too.
I pulled the car around the barrier and into a parking lot they had blocked off in all but two directions. A younger man in a firefighter outfit directed us where to park and led us to a tented area where an exhausted nurse inspected us both for bite marks. She was respectful but thorough, and I was feeling prickly when she finally gave the okay for us to enter the hall itself.
A few dozen people sat at tables and sat on the floor, either on blankets or sleeping bags, and a few on mattresses probably moved from the firefighters’ sleeping area. The smell of onions and seared meat filled the room and my stomach growled happily even as I crowded Lana at the sight of all those people.
Too many people.
If one of them was bitten …
But no, the nurse had checked us and presumably all of the others in here, so I shouldn’t worry that the classic zombie movie trope of the hidden bite had happened here. Surely no one would be that stupid.
We got in line where a cute guy in a hairnet served us potatoes and chopped steak with onions, and green beans. A hearty meal and when I said as much, the guy said, “We were having our fundraiser when this shit went down. It’s why we had so much food. Lucky us, huh?”
“Yeah. Thank you.” We took our plates to a half-empty table and enjoyed every bite of the fundraiser meal. Lucky us indeed.
“This is unreal,” Lana said. She’d only eaten a quarter of her food whereas I had cleaned my plate and was contemplating licking the juices off. “So many people. That’s a good sign, right? That so many of them are okay?”
She was thinking of the boys and I wanted to believe that it was good, too, so I didn’t remind her that Omaha was a city with a population of almost a half a million people, not counting all the suburbs. I had to remind myself there was a curfew. Maybe a lot more survivors were in their homes waiting this thing out. Maybe it had only seemed like all of Omaha had turned into monsters because we’d been rather stressed out and terrified since this whole thing started.
An older woman with long, stringy hair sat down with us, her lined face friendly. “You gals just got in, I see. Come from inside the city?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
“I was headed through. Some yahoo cut in front of my truck and all hell broke lose. My cab tipped clean over, left me spilled out all over
