Apocalypse Asunder (28 page)

“Mom?”

“Huh?” Jessica shook herself, realized she’d let her thoughts fall inward, and looked to the sides.  Bridge was still clear.  She smiled and shrugged at Candice, who had the cord ready to throw over.  “Sorry Candy Bear.  It’s probably not very fair, or very clear, of me; but yeah, ‘because’ is the reason I trust Austin.”

“Well I trust him too.  I’m just trying to figure out how he’s different from other people we don’t.”

“Rule Four means people
might
be bad guys.” Jessica said as she took the cord and started the next loop.  “It doesn’t mean they are; but it means they could be.  It’s more dangerous to think someone’s good when they’re bad, than if you think they’re bad and they’re really good.”

“I get that part.” Candice said.  “But—”

“—figuring it out is my job.” Jessica broke in.  “As long as I’m still around, that’s one of my jobs.”

“But I have to learn.”

“You do.” Jessica nodded, though – as usual – that raised a bit of a shiver inside her.  Of the thought of Candice being
alone
out here in the – she cut it off, also as usual.  She’d just do her best, everything she possibly could, until the chances were gone and she was dead.  Until then, she had to do her best.

“The only way I can think of for you to learn is to keep watching and asking questions.”

“Your answers aren’t always good ones.” Candice observed, her tone suddenly surprisingly resembling of Sandra’s.

Jessica turned the darkness at the thought of her dead middle child into a chuckle that didn’t sound
too
forced.  “I know, and I’m sorry.  It’s
because
some of these things are really hard to figure out.  Teaching them is harder.”

“Well, if you can only be good at part of it,” Candice decided as she took the cord Jessica threw back across, “I guess you should be good at the figuring and not the teaching.”

“Why’s that?”

“We’ll be safer.”

* * * * *

Once again, sun on her face awoke Jessica.  Birds were chirping and the wind was gusting just enough to ripple her hair as she sat up and looked around.  The outdoors was not reassuring and welcoming anymore; it only made her feel exposed, vulnerable, threatened.  Even when she was off the ground.  Her first check was of the highway in either direction; but nothing moved that she could see.  Throwing off the handmade quilt that had been appropriated back in Georgia, she rose cautiously to her feet and took another, longer look around.

No zombies had turned up in the night; or, at least, none were wandering about nearby.  That was something, she supposed.  The metal beneath Jessica’s feet depressed, creaking and moving slightly as she turned in a circle.  It was enough to rouse Candice.

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked, sitting up abruptly and staring around wildly.

“Nothing.” Jessica said soothingly.

“It’s morning.” Candice said, blinking against the bright sunshine already hard at working lighting and heating the landscape.

“Yes it is.” Jessica said gravely.

“Did Austin find us?”

“I don’t know.  I just woke up myself.”

“Let’s check the sign.”

“Hold on.” Jessica said quickly as Candice started to scramble out from beneath the quilt.  “Let’s at least pack our stuff up.  Don’t you want to eat something first?”

“We can eat in the truck can’t we?”

“I guess.” Jessica allowed after thinking a moment.  “But it’ll be cold stuff; snacks and jerky.”

“That’s fine.  Let’s go look at the sign.” Candice said eagerly, starting to roll up the quilt.

“What’s the rush?”

“I bet he found it and is waiting for us.”

“Let’s take things a step at a time.” Jessica said, trying to cushion against disappointment.  The quilts they’d been sleeping under were both mostly blue and green – and more or less matched the colors of the trailer – but Jessica wouldn’t put it past Austin to have noticed them atop it if he’d come by.  She was willing to bet a lot of other folks might miss two people asleep on an overturned truck trailer . . . but not him.  He was just too together.  Too good.

“Don’t you hope he’s there?”

“Of course I do.  But he might not be yet, and if he isn’t—”

“We’re going to leave him?” Candice demanded as she got the quilt bundled into a loose cylinder that would fit under her arm.

Jessica bent and picked up the second quilt – already rolled up, since it had been serving as a makeshift pillow for both mother and daughter – and her purse as well.  “What did he say back in Ocala?”

“He didn’t mean that.”

Looping the purse’s strap across herself, Jessica regarded her daughter calmly.  “Now that doesn’t sound like Austin at all, does it?”

Candice glanced down involuntarily, then shrugged.  “No.” she mumbled.

“If he’s not there, we’ll head south like he wanted us to.”

“But—”

“Sweetie, Austin’s a tough guy.  He wasn’t just a soldier, he was a Ranger.  That means he’s been trained to take care of himself in the worst situations you and I could imagine.  He’ll find us, even if we don’t keep waiting here.”

“They trained him to handle zombies?”

“No.  Not zombies.  But all kinds of bad stuff, yeah.  And anyway, you’ve seen a lot of the things he’s done since we met him.  He can take care of himself.”

“Who are you trying to convince?”
Jessica thought moodily. 
“Her, or you?”

Candice looked north, her expression unhappy, but she didn’t say anything else.  Jessica made sure the purse was settled properly, checked that both pistols and their magazines were still in place on her belt and in her pockets, then touched the girl on the shoulder.

“Come on sweetie, let’s go check the sign.  If he’s not there, we’ll have to wait for him somewhere safer.  Somewhere south, like we’ve already discussed.  You don’t want to live out here on top of a trailer do you?”

“No.” Candice said again, still clearly unhappy.  But she followed Jessica as her mother led the way toward the front of the trailer.

Yesterday, as night had fallen, Jessica had found an overturned beer truck a few miles north of where the Florida Turnpike split off from I-75.  She couldn’t tell what had caused the wreck, since the tractor-trailer was the only vehicle there, but it wasn’t going anywhere until it got put back up on its wheels.

What she’d cared about though was the location, and the fact that it was possible to get up on top of the trailer.  The location was lightly wooded beyond the shoulder’s waist-high grass, which had allowed Jessica to pull the pickup far enough off the road, through the trees, that it wasn’t readily visible from the interstate.  With the truck and its supplies as safe as she could figure out a way to make them, she and Candice had slept atop the truck where nothing could sneak up on them.

At the front of the semi-truck, Jessica tossed the quilt down to the road and motioned for Candice to do the same, then clambered down onto the tractor portion.  Turning, she held her hands out and was able to help her daughter come down from the trailer without falling.  From there, it wasn’t that hard for her to hop lightly down to the pavement and again assist Candice.

“Come on!” the girl insisted, taking a step toward the back of the trailer.

“Wait.” Jessica said sharply, looking around as she walked over to the quilts.  “Carry these for me.”  Her right hand was on the Taurus, but she didn’t draw it yet.  “Stay with me.”

“But—”

“Rule Two.”

Subsiding, Candice came back and picked up the quilts, and followed as Jessica walked cautiously along the trailer.  She angled out well away from it, leaving plenty of room between it and the two of them, so she had good visual angles.  But nothing lurked and nothing appeared to molest them.  Jessica circled around further at the back, checking the far side of the truck as well, before refocusing her attention on the back of the trailer.

Big letters nearly half a foot high were written on it, using lipstick from Jessica’s purse.  Finally, a use for the otherwise useless tube of makeup she hadn’t bothered to throw away yet.  They spelled out ‘Austin’ in cakey red pigment, with a smaller arrow pointing downward.  On the pavement, stuck under the edge of the trailer and weighted with a handful of gravel and a pen, was a folded candy bar wrapper.

Candice bent down and picked the note up and looked at it for a few moments before moving her eyes up to Jessica.  The woman could tell instantly by the way Candice’s expression fell that nothing had been added to it, but she took the wrapper from her daughter and looked it over herself anyway.

“Austin, it’s Jessica.  We’re nearby.  Add something to this note to make me believe it’s you, then go north a couple of miles.  We’ll find you tomorrow on the road.”

The words on it were the ones she’d written the previous day, with nothing else added.

“He’s okay.” Jessica said as she finished confirming her suspicion.

“I know.” Candice said, though she was starting to sound less sure than she had yesterday or the day before.

Jessica looked around again to make sure nothing was approaching, then reached into her jeans pocket.  Producing another candy bar wrapper, she smoothed it out against the trailer and used the pen to write a different note.

“Austin, it’s Jessica.  Going south.  Planning to get past Tam/Orl and head for the lake Candy can’t say.  If we don’t find a place there, I’ll leave another note on something along the road that ends up at the south edge of the lake and keeps going.  Its number is three times the backup you gave me.”

She looked around, then re-read the note, then signed her name and added one more thing.

“Be careful.”

Folding the note, Jessica put it at the base of the trailer and weighted it down with the gravel again.

“Will he find it?”

“He’s got lots of middle names, remember?” Jessica said as she stuck the pen in her purse and looked around again.  “Smart and tough and a bunch of other things.  But we can’t keep hanging out on the road like this.  Come on, let’s get going.”

Though she took it carefully and warily, nothing bothered them during the short trek through the trees to the pickup.  Jessica triple checked in and around it before they got in, but everything was in order.  It didn’t take her very long to get it back to the road, where she stopped and poured eight gallons from the gas cans into the tank before getting underway.

Yesterday she’d spent some time examining the map, and thinking.  I-75 snaked along the western portion of the state and eventually went right into Tampa before following the coast through other areas that looked heavily settled.  The Florida Turnpike was a toll road that split off from I-75 and headed directly to Orlando, to the southeast.

Jessica had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near either city; she didn’t trust they weren’t crawling with zombies.  Orlando especially was a tourist city due to the multitude of amusement and theme parks that were located in and near it.  It might not be Atlanta, but considering the outbreaks had started on Labor Day weekend . . . she didn’t imagine it was much of a stretch to assume there could have been hundreds of thousands of people there who were now hungry, unfussy eaters roaming around Orlando.

As she’d discussed with Austin, the ‘problem’ as she saw it was there was a line of towns and civilization that stretched between both cities; right across the state.  More or less tracking along I-4, which connected them.  But she’d had time and motivation to check the roads on the map carefully, and had decided on a course of action.

If she took the Turnpike, after about twenty-five miles it intersected US-27.  She’d still be fifteen or twenty miles clear of even the vaguest definition of the Orlando suburbs, so that should be safe.  And once she made it to US-27, assuming the route stayed clear, she could follow that right down to Lake Okeechobee.

There were several things she liked about this plan.  It had been discussed with Austin, so he’d find it plausible she was headed there.  The road had a convenient ‘code’ she could use to describe her route to him in a way that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone else who might find the note.

And, most importantly of all, US-27 looked to be her best bet for tiptoeing through the Tampa-Orlando line she was so worried about.  Midway between the two cities was another one, Lakeland, that looked fairly big; but -27 would stay clear of it to the east.  She wasn’t a tactical expert like Austin, but as far as she could see, -27 was the obvious choice considering her concerns.

If they got past I-4 okay, -27 only had half a dozen or so little bitty towns between the Tampa-Orlando line and Okeechobee.  None of them looked large enough to be a real problem; and regardless, the map seemed to show a lot of room to detour and dodge around as needed once they were south of I-4.

Jessica wasn’t counting on no problems; but she wasn’t necessarily expecting any major ones either.  Not as long as she took things carefully and kept her eyes open.  She hadn’t been paying close attention to the pickup, but it didn’t seem to get terribly bad gas mileage.  Better than the SUV had anyway.  With what she had left in the cans liberated from the SUV, she expected to be able to drive straight through without having to fool around at a gas station.