I cursed and gave her a shove. “Keep going. I’ll drag his ass with us, but if he slows us down, we leave him. I’m not watching you die because of him.” I made sure she was running before dashing back to her ex, cursing him all the way. “Come on, Rod. We have to get out of here.”
“I think we should wait for the police,” the man said, his eyes on the quartet headed our way. “I couldn’t get through, but it’s only a matter of time. And you can’t just leave your friend in the state she’s in.”
“Run, damn it!” I yelled at Rod and grabbed his arm, tugging him along with me. It propelled him into a shaky, drunk man’s jog. “Come on!” I tugged again and then got behind him and pushed. The quartet had reached the car and one of them opened up the door, setting April free.
“Rod!” she called, her voice tremulous.
Rod stumbled to a stop. “April? Honey?”
“It’s not her, Rod. She bit you, remember? Let’s go.”
He jerked his elbow away from me and started toward her. 911-guy was trying his phone again, his glances getting more and more frantic as he looked between it and the advancing people. “You guys need to know I called the police! They’ll be here any second.”
“Help!” screeched one of the women. “Oh, please help!”
“Hungry,” said the man.
911-guy stumbled into the wall as the little girl pressed her body up against him.
Then he began to scream.
The scream knocked Rod out of whatever trance he was in. He did an about face and took off. I caught up to Lana because she’d stopped to watch when she heard the screams, and then I nudged her. “Let’s get out of here. Please.”
She nodded shakily and we were running again.
I didn’t know where we were going; I just knew we had to get away from that little girl and that horribly screaming man.
4
Now
She can’t get the image of the little boy out of her head, can’t get rid of the sound of his plaintive cries either. Part of her insists she go back to check on him, to verify he was one of them. Part of her whispers that she has just murdered a little boy by leaving him by himself in a world filled with teeth and hunger.
Even as the battle rages within her, she doesn’t turn around. She knows better even though guilt gnaws at her. She once wasn’t the type of person to leave a little boy alone in the middle of nowhere. She once was the type of person to save those who were abandoned and lost.
Not anymore.
She’s not sure who she is anymore. Before, she was absolutely sure of herself, of her place in this world. Now, all she knows is death, fear, and the endless hunt for food and gas. All she knows is this seemingly endless stretch of interstate bookended by piles of snow. Without humans to dirty it, it sparkles pristinely in the late afternoon sun.
Up and over a steep incline and she has to slam on the brakes. A mob clogs the road on just the other side of the rise, hidden by the mountains’ shadows and her own inattention. Her forehead bangs against the steering wheel, not hard, just hard enough to draw a bit of blood.
She focuses on the pain to keep from panicking.
The howls begin immediately.
“No!”
“Please!”
“I’m so hungry!”
The voices rise and rise, digging under her skin, ripping through her dissociation. “Go away,” she says, her voice thick with unshed tears.
A young woman presses her face against the glass of her window, her eyes desperate, pleading.
And bone white.
“Help me,” she mouths. Tears gather in those dead eyes and spill over her dusty cheeks, leaving tracks in the dirt. “I’m alone.”
She’s new, she thinks. New and so young. Perhaps seventeen? Sixteen? Similar in age to Jackson and Tucker, certainly.
Are they still safe with their grandparents or are they wandering the streets with white eyes and gaunt cheeks, begging the living to feed them?
She eases her foot off the brake and the truck jerks forward. She bumps a few out of her way. “Sorry,” she whispers, her knuckles white on the wheel. “Sorry,” she says again as the tires bump up and over one of the unlucky ones, though she wonders who is unluckier. Them? Or her?
The truck makes it another fifty miles before it sputters to a stop. She’s beyond the ability to care about it, isn’t even surprised. What’s one more setback in this never-ending shit storm of setbacks? Months’ worth of setbacks?
She looks around quickly, then grabs her pack and jumps out. There is a full gas can in the back and though it’s a pain to lug, it comes along with her, that and the rolling suitcase full of MREs she found at an army surplus store a while back. The suitcase makes noise but there aren’t any of them around right now, so she drags it behind her as she runs.
She knows the noise of the truck will have alerted them and they will be coming.
She’s on the outskirts of Coeur d’Alene, the absolute worse place for a breakdown. They could be anywhere waiting for their next victim, their next meal, and she knows nothing of the town. Her best bet will be to find a car and get the hell out, but she knows better than to count on it being that easy.
A cute tan and green manufactured home sits off the highway a few hundred feet, its front door wide open. It might be a lure or it might mean it’s empty. She doesn’t risk it; instead she picks up the suitcase and dashes around the house to the detached garage beside it. The side door is also open, and she pulls the knife she has strapped to her belt free before counting to ten and poking a cautious head around the corner.
No car, just junk. She looks over her shoulder at
