This seemed to placate Marta somewhat, her glare beamed back over in my general direction, as if this was all my fault, I did what any hapless man would do under the circumstances, I shrugged my shoulders and walked away. Marta may have continued her relentless diatribe on Tommy but just at that opportune moment, her baby squealed in consternation. Tommy looked relieved and pleased with himself. I think he gave baby Vera a psychic tickle, the better to help him out of his predicament. Marta said the standard “Fine” and stomped away. Well stomping may be a little over the top, more like padded away heavily. Tommy caught me looking at him and quickly let the look of satisfaction run away from his features.
“Your secrets safe with me kid, come on.” I told him as he caught up I put my arm around his shoulder.
After a brief conversation with Paul, we (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘he’) determined it would be best if he and his wife rode in the truck for a while. Yeah, big sacrifice. Heated trailer loaded with sleeping bags and plenty of leg room. I was a little pissed to say the least, maybe more envious too. I wanted to stretch out and get some sleep. After the frigid conditions of the past few nights it was going to take a lot of warmth and rest to take out the chill that had settled deep in my bones. Little did I know at the time that the chill I felt had less to do with the weather and more to do with my condition. Well time, as they say, is the great narrator, all things are laid out before her whether you want them to be or not.
CHAPTER 4 
With no general plan in my mind except to put as much distance between us and our previous home we headed North on Interstate 25 and then East on Interstate 70. We’d be relatively safe for a while, east of Denver would bring us into the plains of Colorado and then into Kansas, during the heyday of humanity this was not a densely populated area so the corollary (see I did learn something in the 6th grade that I could use later in life) was that the likelihood of coming across a great brood of zombies would be slight. That was the thought anyway. Getting out of Denver proper was a nightmare. It looked like any natural (or unnatural) disaster movie you’ve ever seen in your life. Cars and trucks, motorcycles and scooters, hell I’d seen a rickshaw a few miles back, were everywhere. It looked more like the world’s largest used car lot than a highway of any sort, that is of course if you took away the bullet casings that littered the ground like so many metallic insects or the blood splattered remains of the zombies that were merely trying to garner a meal or even the thousands of humans that had become, for lack of a better word, Spam, (do you get the reference? Meat in a can?). I know its gross, but that was the only way I could think of it (of them) without blowing chunks. It looked like an all you can eat buffet had opened up right next to a fat camp with a damaged fence. The battle had been savage and quick, with non-infected people clearly on the losing side. This I garnered by the sheer number of cars stuck on the roadway, if people had won they would not have hung around.
At some points I would drive ahead of the truck, scouting out potential routes, other times Alex would need to lead just to push some slag out of the way. For eight excruciating hours we navigated through the worst rush hour traffic known to man, by the time we reached a small town called Bennett, about 30 miles east of Denver I was wiped. Tracy had volunteered on more than one occasion that she would take over driving but I couldn’t get over the sneaking suspicion that she had an ulterior motive. I could see her sideswiping a sign just for a small measure of payback for what I had done to her car. Most likely it was my deep-seated paranoia rearing its ugly head, but then again maybe not. I was paranoid, how the hell would I know. Not once on our 8 hour trek did we spot a living person. Zombies though, that was a different story. There weren’t many of them that we saw, but each and every one turned and walked towards us drawn like a fine metal filament to a powerful magnet.
We stopped at Bennett to stretch our legs, top off our tanks and possibly try to choke down a power bar or two. My brain was completely against the idea of eating anything after witnessing the destruction a few miles back but my stomach wasn’t listening. Travis, Tommy and Henry for that matter had been sleeping for most of the morning. Of that small favor I was thankful. Although what I was shielding them from I don’t know. They had already seen everything we had passed in spades and then some. Bennett looked surprisingly untouched, as if the tidal wave of shit that had hit the rest of the state had completely missed this small oasis. At least that was how it looked. How it felt was a completely different story.
Alex hopped off the big rig, rubbing his arms for warmth, but more likely to ward off the evil that emanated from every corner of this burg. “This place doesn’t feel right Mike.”
I wanted to agree with him and tell him this felt like we had just stepped into the door of the biggest surprise party ever given and we were still waiting for the shout of ‘SURPRISE’ to come. An expectation hung in the air, it was palpable, it was overbearing, it was just plain creepy. But even after all those emotions were churning in my head there was only one thing I wanted to know. “When the hell did you learn how to drive that truck?”
Alex stared long and hard at me, like I’d lost my marbles and now he was wondering why he had decided to hitch his cart to mine.
“Listen I know this place feels like a tomb Alex, my nerves are taut and I can feel my spinal fluid quivering. I want to get some gas and get the hell out of here. I was just curious.”
“You’re nuts Mike, I’ll give you that. I feel like I can barely breathe because of the weight of this place and you want to talk banalities.”
“Hey I take offense to that, at least, I didn’t bring up the weather.”
“You would have given enough time.”
“Yeah you’re probably right.” I sighed. “That still doesn’t change the fact that when I met you, you didn’t know how to drive the damn thing.”
“Fine, you crazy gringo, I’ll stand in this damn ghost town just a little longer so that I can explain to you that I had Carl give me a few lessons while I was securing the plow. I had him do that because I was afraid the wall was going to give exactly like it happened, all of a sudden and without warning, and I was afraid that Carl would be nowhere in sight and we would be stuck on this giant paperweight with nobody to drive it.”
“Now was that so hard?” I asked as I ripped the wrapper off of a granola bar. “Alex.” I started and from my tone he knew I was going in a serious direction. “Where are you planning on going?” Alex wasn’t dumb. He caught my meaning of using ‘you’ and not ‘we’. He looked deep in thought, there was a conflict roiling within him. Sure we were fast friends, but Alex had stronger bonds elsewhere, as did I.
“I’m thinking Florida.” He answered almost apologetically, as if I held any sway over his decision-making. “I might still have family there. Any chance you’d be going that way?”
I shook my head slowly. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t go. Florida, the sunburn state.”
He smiled at my crappy joke. I loved him even more. “I have to go home (meaning the Northeast), if..” I swallowed hard, “ If my family is still alive, I want to be with them.”
Alex nodded solemnly. “I agree.” He said softly.
“And on top of that Tracy wants to go and get her mom.”
“Her mom? Where is she at?”
“Yeah her 79 year old, widowed mother that lives on an old farm by herself in North Dakota.”
“Mike, come on man, why are you going to go on a fool’s errand. We both know what you’re likely to find.”
“You tell her that Alex and I’ll give you fifty bucks and a case of beef jerky.”
“Write to me and let me know how the weather is.” Alex said as he walked away to see if he could find a switch to power on the pumps, or a hose of some sort to get gas out of the ground tanks.
“Yeah real nice.” I shouted to him. I was halfway through my power bar when the back of the tractor-trailer hatch opened. I almost choked on the piece in my mouth when I saw who was getting out of the back.
“How long are we staying in this little shithole?” The voice bellowed, from the second largest man I had ever seen in my life, next to that crazy bastard Durgan, who was now so much Zombie Chow. SOMETHING O’Henry, aka Big Tiny, aka BT. He was looking right at me while he asked the question. “You gonna answer or what?” We had picked up the guy while we were making a food run to the local Safeway store. He’d been trying to get into a pissing contest with me ever since. I did the only prudent thing I could think of, I turned and walked away.
“I’m talking to you Talbot!” He yelled.
“Yeah I figured as much.” I said over my shoulder. “I just don’t feel like listening.” I’m not thinking that was the right answer, I heard or more like felt the ground shake as he hopped off the back of the trailer. The train was coming I had about ten seconds until contact. Luckily I was saved, sort of.
“Dad!” Travis yelled, and this wasn’t a warning about BT coming up behind me. Travis was on my right side behind the gas pumps, from his vantage point he couldn’t see the little melodrama that was playing out. I turned to
