"What is that place?" he whispered, pointing to the empty risers and the tall banks of lights suspended in the air on poles that jutted up into the sky.
"That's a baseball stadium."
"Baseball?" the child asked, looking confused.
She knew nothing about child development, had never bothered to pay attention to the mile-markers that marked the progression of a baby to a toddler to a curious young child. When this had all started, he had been two. His memories of that time were probably locked away, lost in the fog of a developing brain.
"Yeah, it's a game that people play."
"Like the silent game?" he asked.
"The silent game?"
"Yeah. We played it all the time. Whenever one of the monsters was outside, Mommy would have us all play the silent game. I was real good at it. Daddy said so."
Amanda just shook her head. "Yeah, it's like the silent game, only there's more people, and they have a ball and a bat."
"A bat?"
"Like this one," Amanda said. She pulled the baseball bat from her backpack and held it out for D.J. to look at. "One person throws a ball as hard as they can, and the other person tries to hit it with this. If they hit it, they run around the bases and score points that way."
"That sounds fun," D.J. said.
"It was never really my sport, but yeah, lots of people liked it."
D.J. fell silent, and they all looked at the field as they passed it, replacing the empty stands with visions of people in short sleeves and shorts, stuffing their faces with hot dogs and washing them down with cool beers in plastic cups. They could hear the crack of the bat as it connected with the ball, though the only sound in the real world was the crunch of snow turned to slush by the rain, their own tired breathing, and the groans of the dead on their trail.
"I think we can get to the highway now," Tejada said.
They all looked over at the highway. The line of stalled cars had thinned out considerably, and they could see a clear stretch of white snow for a mile or so. They rushed through a snowy field, passing under power transformers with dead lines that carried no electricity. It felt good to be back on a road.
****
Civilization was thinning out, or at least, its ruins were. It was hard for Tejada to realize that everything he looked at was decaying, slowly but surely. Even now, the road underneath was going through a process of daily freezing and unfreezing, moisture filling in the empty spaces in the asphalt, no matter how small they were. The water froze and expanded, pushing and cracking the pavement. Slowly, the road would fade away, the bits of broken asphalt washed into the drainage ditches on the sides of the highway until a working car, if you could find one and make it run again, wouldn't even be able to navigate the damn thing. How long until weeds grew up out of the asphalt? How long until a tree planted itself in the cracks in the road and pushed upwards?
Yes, thinking of everything as ruins helped him deal with the fact that the world was dead and gone, that the only thing that mattered was the people around him right now. The dead had dotted the highway ahead of them. They could really move now. His only real concern was the kids that they carried along with them.
He should have said "no" to helping the woman. He should have stuck to his vow not to get involved, not to help anyone else. After the death of Day, he had been sure that the part of him that wanted to help people was dead, but it was still there, glowing softly. Now they had two kids to tow along with them into the end of the world. My God, how terrible this must be for them.
He glanced over at the children to see them chugging along slowly, the boy holding Amanda's hand and the girl Rudy's. If he hadn't sent help after the lady, those kids would be dead. Every time he thought he was through helping others, something bubbled up inside him and overrode his brain. He was sure that it was this part of him that was going to get them all killed. No more helping. No more.
They were hard words to think, even harder to feel. Deep down inside, he knew that he couldn't stop the feeling. He knew that his soldiers wouldn't let him either. They were all trained that way now, trained to help life whatever the cost and to take it when necessary.
Now he had to worry about the kids. They couldn't be out in the cold as long as the adults could. They were small, their core temperatures not as capable of withstanding this chilly weather as long as an adult. He himself was freezing his ass off.
He stumbled on something in the road, catching himself by grasping onto the shoulders of Gregg and Epps. They carried him, and he realized with his hip the way it was, he was more worthless than the children. His hip felt better today, but only incrementally. Two, three more miles, that was as far as they were going to be able to go today. Maybe the weather would be better tomorrow. Hell, maybe it would be worse, but they didn't have the luxury of The Weather Channel anymore. There was no more news, no more sports, no more weather reports.
