As the sun began to sink from the sky, she made it to the edge of the town. She hadn’t bumped into any creatures, and that was a good sign. She didn’t see any in the parking lot of the gas station either. It was the town’s most outlying building. It was damaged a bit on the outside, a few bullet holes and shattered windows, but from what she could tell it hadn’t been ransacked. It called to her with the promise of food and other wonders.
For over forty minutes she stayed hidden, watching for any sign of trouble or movement before finally creeping out of the trees. The sound of her own footfalls on the pavement unnerved her. She glanced around, making sure she was still alone.
As Amy approached the glass doors of the station, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did there appear to be no one inside, but its aisles hadn’t been trashed. She started to open the door when she heard a gun being cocked behind her.
“You can put your weapon down now, ma’am,” a voice with a heavy Southern accent ordered. She dropped the .45 to the pavement and turned to see a very large gun pointed in her face. She guessed it might be a Magnum like Dirty Harry used in the movies, but wasn’t sure. The man who held it was young, much younger than she was. He barely looked out of his teens. A mess of thick blond hair covered the top of his head and he wore a pair of filthy overalls over a white T-shirt that had seen better days. His appearance would have been comical if not for the way his deep-blue eyes watched her with such dead seriousness.
“I reckon you ain’t one of
“Amy. My name is Amy… I’m from New York,” she added hastily.
The man laughed. “New York? You’re a long way from home.” He lowered the huge pistol and nodded, as if to himself. “Welcome to Virginia, Amy. We’d best get inside. Most of them things are gone from ‘round here, but there are still a few stragglers left, I think. Best not to take chances, ya know?”
He reached past and opened the glass door for her. She started to head inside again, but he stopped her. “Don’t forget your gun,” he said, grinning and pointing at the weapon she’d dropped. “You may need it.”
She retrieved the pistol and followed him to the back of the station, where he unlocked a massive metal door and ushered her inside.
“Place used to be a restaurant or something,” he said, closing the door behind them. “When Pop and I bought the place, we turned the freezer into a backroom of sorts. We kept the door though. It’s solid steel. Nice place for an office if you get robbed or the world suddenly goes F-ing bananas.”
Amy didn’t laugh at his joke. She was busy eyeing the room. It was small and furnished with a singular desk and what appeared to be a makeshift bunk; food and other supplies were stacked all around the space and packed in the corners.
“You’ve been living here… since the wave, I mean?”
“Yeah,” he said. “No place else to go.” He sat on the bunk and stared at her. “Guess we have a lot to talk about, huh, Amy?”
Hundreds of questions flooded her head, but the first one she asked was, “You said most of the creatures are gone from this town. Where did they go?”
“You mean the crazy people? Don’t know. A group of guys drove into town and rounded them up—only the guys weren’t normal either. The crazies didn’t attack them. It was pretty messed up. I hid and stayed out of their way. Didn’t see much. All I can tell you is that they went south, all together in one big group with the weird guys leading them.”
“What’s your name?” Amy suddenly blurted; it had just sunk in that she was safe, at least for the moment, and in the company of another real human being.
“My real name’s Joseph Hunter, but I prefer Joe.” He stood up from the bunk, and from one of the boxes that littered the room, he produced a bottle of water. “I’m sorry, Amy. I bet you’re awfully hungry and tired from the look of you. Why don’t you help yourself to some food and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch outside. I have some things to tend to anyway. We can talk later, okay?”
He held out the water and Amy accepted it, drank most of it in a single gulp. “Thank you, Joe.”
He nodded and shut the huge door on his way out.
Amy ate a meal of Vienna sausages, Pringles and crackers, then stretched out on the bunk. A smile lingered on her lips even as she slept.
As the days passed, Joe told her the story of the town of Bloomington. Like everywhere else, it had been plunged into darkness and chaos the night the wave struck the earth. Joe and his pop made their way to the church that night with the other survivors, but the holy place hadn’t offered them any protection. The crazies outside attacked it time and time again, whittling down its defenders and their stockpile of ammunition. Then people inside began to change, and the pastor ordered that they be shot.
Finally Joe and his pop got of the church while they still could and made it here to their place of business. As far as they knew, by that time the entire town was crazy except for them. He and his pop had taken shelter here in this backroom, listening to the changed ones pounding on the metal door and howling for their blood. Eventually the crazies must have realized they couldn’t get inside, so they left the station. After that, there had been a few close calls, a few firefights with the mindless kind that couldn’t shoot back, a few narrow escapes when they ventured into town for things that weren’t kept on hand. But they managed, Joe informed her.
When Amy asked where his pop was now, Joe lowered his face into his hands and quietly told her that the old man had changed. “I got him with his own damn shotgun,” Joe told her. “Buried him out behind the station.” It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, and it troubled him still.
Joe imagined before he met Amy that he, too, would go insane, if not from the wave’s effects then from just the pain of being alone. He’d been extremely happy to find Amy on his doorstep. He believed she saved his life by showing up when she did.
She was grateful for him too, and she was happy in this place. In a matter of days, she had invited Joe to share the bunk with her instead of making him sleep on the floor. They needed each other desperately to feel alive, to feel hopeful when they looked in each other’s eyes. Joe wrapped his arms around her after they made love at night, made her feel safe and allowed her to think that someday things would be okay again.
What Joe had said about most of the creatures leaving town had proved true as well. As long as they were careful, he and Amy could venture almost anywhere they wanted, for supplies or to just get some fresh air and stretch their legs for a while. Well armed as they were, they never encountered more crazies than the two of them could handle. All they needed was each other, and together they could rebuild a little piece of the world they had lost to the wave.
16
The conversation with the Freedom had been cut short when its orbit had taken it out of range, but the survivors of Def Con had learned a lot during the brief communication. It wasn’t the real Freedom Station they were speaking to, at least not the one known to the public. The station identified itself as the Freedom II, a military- oriented prototype based on the original Freedom’s design; it had still been under construction when the wave hit. Hank, the astronaut with whom they spoke, explained that the original Freedom had been destroyed by the energy blast and that only the experimental shielding of the Freedom II had kept the station functional enough to save the crew and allow them the necessary time to make repairs. Still, only Hank and one other member of the eight-man crew were left alive, and they wouldn’t last long: they were quickly running out of supplies and were down to one- quarter power. Hank and Toni arranged a time to talk again when the station’s orbit brought it back into range, and they traded downloads of information regarding what they knew of the post-wave world.
Sheena was beside herself. Now she could finally get the data she needed firsthand to see whether the wave’s worst damage was over with. Nathanial, Geoff, Wade and Troy were howling for a celebration. Only Ian seemed reserved.
“It’s a lie,” he informed the crowd gathered in the control room. “There is no Freedom II.” His words cut their excitement like a knife.
“How could you possibly know that?” Sheena asked as Nathanial clinched his fists and almost charged the
