I wanted Dan to teach us all how to use the firearms, but none of us wanted to stop again while we were making such good time.
While he drove and Lana slept with her head on my shoulder, I stared out the window, amazed at all the space. I’d never really spent any time in the middle part of the country. Seattle had always been my home and it was green, lush, and packed with trees everywhere there weren’t buildings or concrete. People knew how to decorate their yards with greenery too. Here, though, it was brown and so expansive. It wasn’t flat like I’d pictured it; there were plenty of rolling hills and trees, too, though most of these were planted around farmhouses as windbreaks or in towns.
I kind of liked how far I could see. I liked the feeling of unconscious freedom and, when I rolled down the window for a bit of brisk fall air, I liked the smell.
Signs told us we were nearing a place called Mullen and I caught sight of pelicans sitting on a jewel-bright lake … pond, maybe, it was so small … and had to do a double take when I realized that yes, they were, indeed pelicans. In Nebraska?
Lana stretched beside me as Dan slowed the SUV, probably out of habit when he saw the speed limit signs but it was a good thing he had, as there were crowds of them in the road far ahead. I leaned to see around Dan’s head as he slowed more, my heart rate ramping up at the sheer number of them. Where the hell had they all come from? Why were there so many just out and about?
Banners fluttering on light poles next to the highway trumpeted a harvest festival. Apparently the entire population had turned out to party. Either that or they’d managed to attract a buttload of tourists.
“We’ll have to go around, somehow,” Dan said. “Ivy?”
“I’m looking,” she said, the atlas already open on her lap. She studied it briefly, then said, “You sure we can’t just plow through them?”
“Not if we want a working car when we’re done. That many would bring us to a halt.”
I saw the skepticism in Ivy’s eyes and the way Dan gripped the wheel as if pissed off by her questions.
“This thing has to weigh 3000 pounds, probably more with the food and us inside,” Ivy continued. “I’ve hit a deer with my truck and obliterated it. Now, I know my truck was bigger but …”
Dan didn’t answer her, merely stopped and put us into reverse. “Find us a way around.” His tone was low and angry, and I cut my eyes to Lana who raised her eyebrows.
“Just punch the gas and—”
He snatched the atlas from her lap and held it back to us. “Will one of you find us a way around? They’re headed toward us and soon we won’t have any options but to go back.”
“Now listen here, buddy, I’ve been driving my whole life and I don’t appreciate you just dismissing me and interrupting me when I’m talking.”
Hands hit the hood, making us all jump. One of them, with a blood-smeared face and what looked to be a child’s leg in its mouth …
“Oh my god! God!” Ivy pushed back in her seat as if she could get away from the thing leering at her through the window. “Go! Go!”
More hands slapped at us, but Dan punched the gas—in reverse—and we soon left them behind. When it was safe, he put us back into drive. “I don’t want to go back too far, but we may have to. There’s no getting around that crowd in this.” The muscle in his jaw jumped. “That many would stop us like a wall, screw up our tires or axle if we drove over them, and eventually they would pile up underneath us, making it impossible to move. And they could tip us like that,” he said, pointing at another car that sat, overturned, by a billboard. Blood smeared the highway around it as if something terrible had happened to its occupants.
And of course, something had, hadn’t it?
Lana studied the map and said, “We could go around, take Highway 97 South. We’d have to take South Grant Avenue, which curves into Southeast Second Street. Then we’d turn left onto the highway. We could also try taking Second all the way through town. Maybe they’re all concentrated on the main road and we could get around them this way.” She showed me the atlas as if questioning herself, a little freaked by Dan’s outburst, however small it had been.
I nodded. “Looks good to me. Dan?” I held up the map and he nodded sharply, mouth drawn in a tight line as we started forward again.
They were headed our way, their catcalls and hoots and oddball songs making my stomach hurt just hearing them. Why couldn’t they have been normal, groaning zombies? That was terrible enough, but to hear the insanity bubble up from their mouths, knowing it was designed to lure us in so they could eat us, well, it made me want to curl up and cry.
Dan took the left Lana had found and we passed a couple of quaint, tidy houses. The highway that led south was free and clear. “South or try for the other side of town?” he asked, slowing again as we came on the intersection. Far to our right, they were coming, leaving the main road in waves, some tripping over curbs, some crossing into neat little yards, some getting caught up on fences.
The highway was clear, yes, but Second Street looked good too, and it wouldn’t take us miles out of our way.
“Other side,” I said. “Gun it, maybe.”
He did, our vehicle picking up speed, rushing us by a house with colorfully painted tires filled with flowers to our left, a boxy-looking church on the right. We caromed past two intersections and then they were there, swarming
