“Yeah. The same scenario played out around the world. They appear to be unstoppable in large concentrations.” Breyna sipped her soda as Sam drove to a Walmart parking lot for the night. He and JR ate as they spoke.
“Sam, do you still believe we can survive this? Tell me we’ll be okay.”
“If I told you I’m positive we’ll make it, I’d be lying, and you’d know it. We’ll do the best we can but there are no guarantees. It’s going to take determination, quick thinking, and hard work to exist through this. We can do that barring bad luck.” Breyna ate half a burger and some fries, then relaxed and fell asleep against JR.
They spoke for another twenty minutes as Sam reassured JR they had a strong chance for survival “You and Breyna can have the bed in back. I’ll be alright here.”
They stopped at Hanna’s Corner Café the next morning for an early breakfast. Fueling took another fifteen minutes, then JR drove. It was seven when she entered the highway going north.
Sam said, “We’ll be in North Platte, Nebraska, in about five hours. Then I’ll drive, and you can play with Breyna. A lot of Highway 83 is two lanes with sections of four lanes here and there until we get to North Dakota where it’s mostly four lanes.”
Sam held Breyna and answered several of her endless questions until there was a break. JR was solemn when she said, “Promise me you won’t let me become a zombie. Kill me first, please. The thought of infecting someone else sickens me; I’d rather die to avoid the transition. Please don’t let it happen.”
Sam nodded. “I promise, and I expect the same from you.” He paused for a long beat. “Traffic is going to increase substantially now that the public throughout the country is officially aware of the danger. Everyone with the means to travel will be jamming the highways to escape the imminent apocalypse. Conditions are going to get nasty in a hurry as more people flee. We’re on one of the main north/south routes to the Canadian border. Get ready for the worst actions of humanity. Fear will make people who are normally docile turn pushy and aggressive; that’s a given. If we’re involved, we’ll try to back away if the situation allows it.”
JR’s speech was barely audible, “The only positive thing the announcer said last night was the information of how to stop a zombie by destroying its brain. I suppose the military and police finally figured that out. I pray the remaining authorities and citizens can stop the surge of undead before they kill everyone all the way to the northern border.”
“Too bad they didn’t relay the information months ago when it was put out by the websites I listened to, ”Sam said.” That may have stopped them at the ports of entry. But that’s typical of the damned partisan politicians. They won’t pull together even when the country’s total destruction is possible. Even the social networking websites were complacent by removing videos and pictures of the zombie destruction as fast as they were posted.”
JR braked hard to let a pickup pulling a long trailer pullover in front of them. “That driver was in such a hurry he misjudged the distance to a lone, oncoming car. He almost clipped the front of our truck. You probably noticed traffic has increased in the last hour, and people are driving too aggressively for their own good. There’s going to be a lot of wrecks from here on. The way most are driving it’ll be major crashes out on the highways and serious fender benders in town.”
Sam added, “When that happens tempers are going to flare, and people will be hurt or killed. Be extremely careful when driving to not piss off other drivers. Many already take issue with us driving below the posted speed limits while they run ten to twenty miles an hour over it. I imagine that last driver cut too close to us on purpose to show his irritation at having to change lanes to pass.”
“You still don’t think we could run five or ten miles an hour faster to keep from making enemies?”
“It’s a risk I don’t want to take. Just ignore the ones who honk and give us the finger; don’t let them goad you into reacting back at them. Some of these fools pulling big rigs or driving motorhomes are running at eighty and ninety miles an hour to reach the border before others. We‘re in front of the undead and ahead of most people this far north who were just informed of the crisis. Getting to the Canadian border twelve or so hours later is better than crashing and being injured or killed. Traffic heading south is almost nonexistent, so most of the fast drivers can just speed around us as if this two-lane section is a four-lane highway. Even if we drove the speed limit, we’d still be slower than those idiots.”
JR started to comment, but Sam interrupted her and spoke over Breyna’s storytelling. “Look up ahead on the right. I’m sure that motorhome out in the field flew around us earlier this morning. It had to be doing eight-five or ninety.”
“My God. It looks like a tornado hit it the way it’s scattered out across that field. I bet everyone in it died.”
“They either died or they’re alive but horribly mangled. People are
