Yue punched the button to automatically lower the back door and shoved LeBron around the truck. He looked back at her to see what the hurry was. He’d seen Bart shoot the surger charging at them. That quick glance backwards showed him a line of surgers bouncing towards them faster than should be possible. The sound wave of their ferocious cries reached him as he looked curdling his blood. He whirled around to go where Yue was shoving him. When he whirled around, he hit the side of the truck with his splinted hand.
Yelping in pain he scrambled to the door and jumped in. Yue climbed in directly behind him. She’d barely shut the door before Drew was rocketing them down the road. The surgers barreling into the side of the police car like rams. How they’d made it across the road impossibly fast like that was unfathomable to everyone in the truck. Drew jerked the wheel to the right and an old paper coffee cup from Dunkin Donuts basically exploded throwing coffee all over his lap. A middle-aged man with a face blistering from a horrible sunburn slammed his head into the driver’s side window. The window rocked inward but didn’t shatter. The surger tripped and flipped back into the road.
Another thump where one of the surgers tried to jump headfirst into the big SUV and wound up split apart on the cow catcher mechanism. A splatter of blood flew up onto the windshield. Drew fumbled around to find the windshield wipers and get the window cleaning spray shooting out. The wipers smeared the scarlet fluid all over the windows before finally getting sprayed off. It left a fine red line where the wipers didn’t reach. Behind them the surgers turned and sprinted after their taillights. One of them keeled over with an exploded heart. It’s feet still twitching trying to catch up with the truck. Not a single thought of self-preservation firing off in its rewired brain.
“It’s getting dark out.” LeBron announced spinning back around to face the front.
“We’re only about ten miles from where we just Grand Theft Autoed this ride. We’ve still got some time before it gets too dark.” Drew said. The headlights had already come on since they were set to auto. Yue of course hadn’t missed that little detail.
“The truck thinks it’s dark. Why don’t we pull in over in that park?” She asked. “I need a place to get everybody bandaged and medicated. I don’t feel like doing it with those things ripping the truck apart around me.”
Drew almost argued some more before realizing he really had no reason to be arguing. It wasn’t like they had an appointment to get to. The only thing on their current itinerary was basically ‘try not to die’. That high priority task pretty much busied out every day on their calendars. It was the kind of mission he could really get behind. Yue was probably right with the slow and easy approach being the best. With those thoughts in mind he cut across the grassy median and down the dirt road leading to a park featuring multiple baseball diamonds.
There was a gate across the road leading into the park that was locked with a chain and padlock. The gate had an aluminum closed sign dangling off it. Drew felt like the people in charge of the security for the field should be fired. There was no fence or anything to keep him from simply driving around the gate. There were some short hedges, but it wasn’t like Drew was super worried about the paint job on their new cop mobile. He drove through the hedges then followed the road to the furthest parking lot and put the Expedition in park.
Yue shuffled around checking on everyone’s injuries. She proclaimed Drew to be pretty much healed as long as he didn’t pick at the big scab forming on his forehead. Assuming he’d pick at the big scab she went ahead and put a new bandage around his head to cover the big gash and keep it clean. She told LeBron to stop whacking his broken finger against stuff every five seconds or he was never going to heal. She saved their dad for last since he was the one that she was most worried about. She realized she was treating everyone in sort of a reverse triage. She wondered if that was to try and build up her courage to check on her dad’s wounds.
Her fears were realized when she took off the bandage on his shin and saw the angry red lines leading out from the wound. Bart was burning up. They’d scored about thirty thermometers in the U-Haul load from the drug store but none of them had made it into the supplies they’d ended up with in the Traverse. Not that they really needed one to tell that Bart was seriously sick. He accepted the news with good grace. He knew he was burning up with a fever already and knew exactly what those red lines meant.
“Listen up kids. I know you’re going to want to try and save me but if the antibiotics Yue is pumping me full of aren’t doing the trick my time may be fast approaching.” Bart said looking around to make sure
