“Out the front and hope to hell we run faster than they do?” Ivy still had her hand on the door, and I wondered if she was going to risk it. Wasn’t sure why she would. She didn’t have a ride and she had to know we weren’t going to follow her out there.
“What if we get caught out there? What if more of them pour over that wall?”
“There’s a side door.” This from Owen’s father. He was holding his sleeping child, his hair askew, dark circles under his eyes. “If you’re leaving, I’d like to come along.”
I didn’t have to look at Lana to know she was mentally yelling at me to say no. But how could I? Say no to this man who’d lost his wife, who became a single parent after one horror-filled night? “Do you have your things together?” I asked, studiously avoiding my own wife’s eyes.
He turned slightly to show the pack on his back.
“Okay great. Let’s check out the side door.”
Ivy followed the man and Lana tugged my arm. I stopped, dropping my chin to my chest, still not looking at her. “Sorry,” I said.
“A guy and a kid? Are you crazy?” she whisper-hissed. “We can’t save the world, Dee.”
“What if it were Tucker or Jackson?”
Her eyebrows shot up, the skin underneath reddening. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is leaving that man and his son here when we have the means to get them out.” I sidestepped her and followed Ivy and the man to a spot just to one side of the door. There was a window and if I pressed against the wall and looked hard left, I could see the tailgate of our borrowed car.
The lot around the backside was empty.
More gunshots rang out.
“We need to get out of here now,” Ivy said and this time when she put her hands on the door, she also pushed, charging outside in a rush, followed closely by the man. I held the door for Lana, who didn’t look any happier with me. Her mouth was set into a grim line and she didn’t even thank me for holding the door for her as she brushed past.
That was all right. She’d forgive me eventually. As long as I didn’t get myself killed.
I checked behind us as we jogged to the car. Nothing behind us, though I saw another of the crazies crawl over the barricade and fling itself to the ground. Then another. Had they been piling up all night waiting for their chance to overwhelm us? Was I giving them too much credit for strategizing?
“Dee!”
I jerked my attention to the fence beside me and flinched back when one of them hit it, fingers curling through the links. Another one slammed against the chain link beside the first and began to climb.
Fuck. They could climb.
I mean, I’d known it, watching them throw themselves over the barricade, but it almost made sense they could figure out how to climb up and over the bus and the firetrucks, but a fence?
Apparently, a fence.
I ran to the car, hitting the fob as I went. The door locks clicked and we scrambled in, Lana and I in front, the man, Owen, and Ivy in the back. They buckled themselves in as I started the car, my hand not quite shaking as I shifted into drive and eased us toward the back of the lot where a rolling gate blocked our exit.
Before I could say anything, Ivy jumped out and pulled it open, then frantically waved us through. The crazies on the fence heard the commotion. The one halfway up the fence kept climbing, the other started running for us, for Ivy, who was tugging the gate shut.
“Hurry up!” Lana screamed.
Ivy had left her door open and she leapt in, slamming it just as the crazy hit the car, its mouth open in a snarl. Owen cried out, his little boy’s voice shrill with terror as I goosed the gas and we bumped over a pothole-ridden alley to the road beyond.
“You got that gate all the way shut, right?” I asked as we put the fire station behind us.
“I think so.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror, hers wide and frantic. “Oh god, I think so.”
I slowed, debating whether we should turn back when Lana said, “Drive. It’s too late now if she didn’t.”
I looked over at her, at her fear-filled eyes, thinking of all the people we’d left behind, the ones who would be killed if the gate wasn’t shut, if they got in.
“Go, Dee.”
I went. But the gate weighed heavily on my mind a long while down the road.
15
Then
Three hours into our trip and we were down to a quarter tank of gas. Despite car wrecks and small mobs of crazies, we finally got out of Omaha and the open road made travel much easier.
So far, we hadn’t seen anymore living people.
Owen had fallen into a fitful sleep, punctuated by sobs when he got to a particularly terrible part of his dream, which happened with alarming frequency. His father—Dan—looked about as haggard as a person could get and we all encouraged him to sleep. “We’re safe in the car. Nothing will get him or you,” Lana told him. And so he slept, his head leaned against the cool glass, his face drawn into a frown.
“What are we going to do?” Lana asked, her eyes on the gas gauge as if watching it would make it move back up to full. “We’ll have to get out of the car and …” She opened the glove box and rifled through it, then closed it with a snap. “No gun.”
I hid my grin. “We should have stolen a mobster’s car.”
She glared at me. “This is not funny, Deena.”
It was my turn to glare, though without any heat. “It is hilarious under the circumstance, Lana Banana.”
“If we don’t get gas, we’ll be stranded. If we get gas, we might die.”
“We won’t die.” We’d passed Fremont and
