over to the embankment and still held a tight grip as he picked up the small girl. It was when he got to the infant that all his composure ran in floods out of his system. He fell to his knees as he placed the remains of the infant boy in the snow bank. 'God, I don't understand!' he shouted. 'Why would you save them, for this!' His shoulders quaked. Paul gently helped him up.
It was long moments before any of them could speak. It was finally Paul that managed. 'God, I know that I have my doubts about your existence but if you are there, please allow these two children to enter into Heaven's Gate and show your mercy unto their mother. She thought she was doing what was right. Amen.' He wouldn't swear that his prayers were answered, but he felt better for saying it.
Marta was sitting in the passenger seat when Alex finally got in. She kept her gaze straight ahead and did not even acknowledge his presence.
'Three hours in,' Alex thought, 'and we've already lost three people and my wife is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.' The red stain of death faded in his rearview mirror as he put the truck into gear and sped down south and away from this tragedy. All thoughts of Mike were pushed far back into the linings of his brain. It would be far too late to turn around by the time that thought came up again.
That first night they stayed in an old gas station. The glass building was not what Alex would consider an optimum place to hole up, but fueling the truck's tanks with a hand pump had taken almost an hour and he was exhausted. Eddy, and April for that matter, cried for most of the night. This was one of the old school service facilities that hadn't yet figured out that the real money lay in selling tacquitos and slushees. This place smelled stale, like old motor oil and sweat. The Slim Jim beef snacks display looked long empty.
It was cold and the few emergency blankets on the shelves would have a hard time keeping a cat warm. At a time when the travelers should have been huddling for warmth, they were all lost in their own thoughts. Each of them marked out their individual nooks, putting as much distance as they could between themselves. Alex offered to take first watch. Mrs. Devereaux, who had never taken a watch before, told him that he looked exhausted and that she was willing to do it.
Alex couldn't help himself and he didn't mean to be as harsh in his thoughts as he was, but it came out all the same. 'Bitch has a soul.'
Mrs. Devereaux knew that not many people liked her, and to be quite honest that was alright with her because she wanted very little to do with humanity. Her bastard husband had become a cliche, having run off with his twenty-something secretary. 'I knew he was full of shit when he said that Viagra prescription was for us,' she thought bitterly. The last time they had sex, George Senior had been in office. Not only had her husband run off, he had managed to hide all their assets beforehand. She had barely been able to scrape together enough to buy the run-down little town home in Little Turtle. She wouldn't be eating cat food anytime soon but her days of caviar and pearls were long over.
She had never been able to reconcile to the fact that she was now living in the type of housing that her servants had. This wasn't her station; she was above this. She had grabbed as many of her possessions out of her mansion as she could before the sheriff threw her out. Her townhome was crammed full of mink stoles, rare paintings, statues of varying sizes and antique furniture. If she had sold half, she would have wanted for nothing but she had already lost so much she could not fathom parting with any more.
Mrs. Devereaux had no time for religion. Much like Karl Marx, she felt it was the opiate of the masses. It was for the poor fools who had nothing in this lifetime and could only hope for the promise of a better afterlife. She knew better. There was only
'Should have stayed with Michael,' she cackled softly. 'He might be a prickly S.O.B. but he'd keep me alive a lot longer than these buffoons.' That was her last thought before she fell asleep, her head pressed up against the cold glass.
The sunshine was diffused through the grime streaked windows and was further hindered by the bodies that pressed against the outside windows. Mrs. Devereaux let out an involuntary scream as she opened her eyes only to be facing an opaque, rheumy puss leaking eye. Alex was the first to react, Paul was close behind him.
Alex scrambled out of his foil blanket. Ten to fifteen zombies were in a small cluster around the spot Mrs. Devereaux had previously been occupying. 'Oh mi madre,' he said worriedly.
'Whoa, shit,' Paul said, no more alarmed than if someone had burnt his English muffin.
They had learned their lesson in Vona. The truck was parked right up against the store. Anything wider than 5 inches was going to have a hell of a time getting through. With so few travelers now, fitting them all in the cab for emergency purposes would not be a problem. Eddy began to scream uncontrollably, either from waking and realizing his family was no more or because zombies were at the window. The noise seemed to agitate the zombies, who began to bounce again and again off of the windows. The small store began to vibrate from the effect.
'We should go,' Erin said to Paul.
'You're right, this frozen indecision is going to get us killed,' Paul replied.
'What?' Alex asked him.
'This shit. We're sitting here watching zombies trying to break in and we might as well be sitting on our hands. Mike would have someone posted to watch them while the rest of us grabbed anything that was useful and we made our hasty escape. Mike would have stopped yesterday from happening.'
Marta made the sign of the trinity on her chest.
'You can't know that, Paul,' Alex said defensively.
'What were we thinking?' Paul replied, a look of frustration etched across his face.
'We were thinking we wanted to get to our families as much as he wanted to get to his own. We still do.'
'Will we?' Joann asked.
A spider thin crack developed in the pane of glass directly opposite them. 'I think maybe we should discuss this later, Alex said hurriedly. 'Everyone in the truck.'
The service station was now in the hands of the zombies. The small loss should have meant nothing to Alex but it rankled him all the same. He wanted to draw a line in the sand but the tide had already shifted and the beach was covered.
They drove for a couple of miles with the nine of them in the front and the sleeping quarters. Even Mrs. Devereaux somehow found this tangle of humanity comforting. The cold of the night was quickly replaced with the heat of the living.
'I've been thinking,' Alex said. 'Maybe it's time we found something a little smaller to drive. Something a little easier on the kidneys, something we can all take turns driving.'
'Yeah, I won't miss sitting in the back bouncing around like a super ball,' Erin added.
'I wish I had a super ball,' Eddy sniffed.
Erin hugged him tight. 'I'll get you one the next time we stop.'
'Will we still be together?' Eddy asked.
Alex hadn't thought about it much but the kid's question made sense. They would be splitting up again in the next couple of days.
'Are we still planning on once again halving our numbers?' Mrs. Devereaux asked incredulously.
'That's been the plan all along. I don't see why we should change it now,' Paul answered her.
'What of myself, Joann, April and Eddy?' she asked.
'You can choose who to stay with, or obviously you can keep going on.'
Mrs. Devereaux looked over dubiously at Paul. 'Just how long do you think any of us would survive on our own?'
Paul had reached his limit. His stress meter had always ridden a little higher than the national average and
