Race to Refuge (5 page)

Sirens were still screaming by me as I zipped down the road. And now we were starting to encounter the problems that I’d envisioned when I decided to get the bike to begin with. A huge traffic jam. The ambulances were honking their horns, the police cars’ sirens wailed. I saw a few families that looked like they had half their possessions in the back of their car. And they were all totally stuck in traffic.

I heard a scream behind me…somehow it rose above the cacophony of the racket. I turned to see zombies beating on the glass of a car about twenty yards back. And here Mojo and I were sitting out in the open.

This is where a bike comes in handy. Ignoring the honking horns and some rude words coming at me from open windows, I carefully maneuvered between them all, until I got to the point where I absolutely couldn’t move forward anymore because of an accident that stretched across the road.

I took a deep breath, decided that the cops were all totally stuck in traffic anyway, and moved onto the sidewalk and drove there until I could get through all of the trapped cars and emergency vehicles.

As we finally really started moving, I could feel Mojo start to relax. He almost seemed to be enjoying the ride. I was glad that he didn’t have the big picture of what might be facing us. He hadn’t turned to see what was going on behind us, either. And maybe I needed to take a cue from him.

So that’s how we made it out of there. Driving on the road, driving on the sidewalk, sometimes going off-road. Until we made it to the edge of town where there was a last-stop grocery store. It was the kind of place that was a little off the beaten path. The kind of place that was also out of touch, maybe. It didn’t have a television or a radio, probably. Which was a good thing. It meant that I had half a chance of getting in there.

“Mojo, stay,” I said softly.

His amber eyes pleaded with me to take him in.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. And then I hurried in so that I wouldn’t have lied to him, crazy as that sounds.

The proprietor was anything but on high alert. He was lazily eating a sandwich. I quickly grabbed a few water bottles, some ground beef for Mojo, and some of those ready-made deli sandwiches for myself. Not much room in the backpack and I didn’t need to take up all the space before I got to the sporting goods store.

I paid in credit. Because, the way things were going, nobody was going to make good on their credit card payments in the near future.

I hurried outside and stopped short at the door. Mojo’s fur was up again and he was growling from the bike. He turned his head and gave me a meaningful look. I quickly glanced around. “What is it, buddy?” I murmured. I didn’t see any of the creatures lurching around. But I quickly swung the backpack on my back and hopped on the bike, arms tight around the German shepherd as I started the engine. I believed Mojo. If he thought something was out there, something was out there. I wasn’t going to be stupid. The dog had a huge nose and huge ears, after all.

As we were speeding out, I saw a zombie staggering up a hill toward the store and gave Mojo a quick rub.

Chapter Seven

Mallory

I figured I should use GPS to try to get to my friend’s place in the country. At least, that I should try to use GPS while I still had it. I had a terrible feeling that it wouldn’t be long before we lost the internet and wireless data. There were actual people who kept electrical grids going and cell towers working through electricity. I could remember the first leg of the journey, but wasn’t really sure about how to get the rest of the way there. I hoped when I finally got out of the city a little way that I could pull safely over, GPS the location, jot down the directions, and continue on my way.

The catch in that plan was the word
safely
. Because it seemed to me that, even though I hadn’t spent much time at all at the apartment moving out, conditions in Raleigh were quickly getting worse. Traffic was badly backed up to my right, and glancing over I saw that there was an ambulance that had crashed into a firetruck. There were so many emergency vehicles flying down the road that it was probably unavoidable.

But when I peered closer I saw that the two vehicles appeared to have been abandoned. Abandoned? Or were the occupants chased out? I felt a shudder up my spine and kept driving as quickly as I could. Which wasn’t very fast.

I was still in the city when the sirens got even louder and traffic slower. My breath caught in my throat. There were those creatures…those zombies…lunging through the streets and attacking policemen and rescue workers. The policemen were shooting them, using their weapons right out in the street, and the zombies continued pushing forward, arms outstretched and mouths agape.

Down a side street, traffic was at a standstill due to an accident or some other jam. I saw a woman dressed in business clothes abandon her car. She’d taken off her shoes and was weaving through the stopped cars and running away, two or three of those creatures following her. The only good thing seemed to be that the zombies weren’t as fast as uninfected people.

I was moving slowly away when I noticed an old man with white hair and a neatly-trimmed beard who was limping as quickly as he could away from a crowd of infected people that was moving toward him. I recognized him as a homeless man that I had seen for years on my way to work and home. Every day I’d seen him and felt a twinge of guilt. I felt bad every day for not helping him, for not at least smiling and looking him in the eye. Despite his situation, he always looked strangely dignified. He always took care with his appearance, wearing threadbare but clean clothes, his white hair usually getting the best of him as it stood up in a halo effect.

I’d tell myself that I was a single woman and didn’t need to get personally involved in helping him. I’d remind myself that I gave money to charitable institutions that helped the homeless. But I always still felt that twinge.

Now here he was, desperately hobbling away from these creatures, his possessions still in the small backpack he always carried. His gaze met mine—frightened, questioning. And I immediately pushed open the passenger door for him.

He stumbled in, swinging in his bad leg with some trouble. He pulled the door shut and I hit the door lock as the zombies reached the car. I pressed my foot hard on the accelerator and the car jerked forward. “Hang on,” I muttered to him. Now was the time to speed. I didn’t think anyone would be handing out tickets. And clearly, we needed to get the heck out of town.

“Thank you,” he said quietly as he set the backpack on the floor of the front seat.

Somehow this made me feel even worse about not helping him in the past. Let’s face it, I’d gotten him out of there to assuage my own guilt for passing him by, for totally ignoring him in the past.

“It’s okay,” I said, sounding somehow irritable. I pressed my lips shut as I sped down the road. Fifteen minutes later, I felt myself relax a little as I saw a relatively clear path out of town. We weren’t going to get stuck in any traffic jams. We were going to be able to escape the city.

“Where are you headed?” asked the old man politely.

I noticed the pronoun he’d used. So he was definitely not making any assumptions that he was along for the whole trip with me. This was a good thing. I’m not sure how Annie was going to take my showing up with a homeless guy in tow. And Jim would be looking at me like I was crazy, too.

“Do you need to drop me off along the way?” he asked, his voice gently understanding. “It’s okay. You don’t know how much I appreciate you helping me escape.”

I shocked myself by saying, “I’m trying to get to a safe place in the country. It’s a house my friends own and they’ve invited me to come. I’ll bring you along, if you like.”

His clear blue eyes were grateful. And with a skill that I, as an insomniac, admired, he fell deeply asleep with a trust in me that was almost childlike.

He didn’t wake up until I stopped the car to check the GPS. It felt like a safe spot. There were no surrounding homes or buildings. I had the doors locked, too. I pulled out my phone and sighed. Maybe the car charger had a short in it, because it was seriously low on battery. I opened the GPS program and carefully punched in Annie’s address with one finger.

That’s when he woke up and gave me a questioning look.

“I’m not exactly sure where we’re headed,” I explained. “I have a general idea of where to head, but I need more detailed directions.” I frowned at my phone, which was moving very slowly.

“Is it pulling up?” he asked.

“Maybe. It sure is slow, though.” I looked at him thoughtfully. “I’m Mallory,” I said, holding out a hand. “Good to meet you.”

He beamed at me, bright blue eyes pleased at going through the old formalities. He held out his own weathered hand. “I’m Joshua,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said a little absently. At long last the directions were pulling up. “I’d better jot these down before I lose all connection.”

Joshua immediately said, “If you’ve got paper and a pencil, read out the directions to me and I’ll write them down.”

I watched as he carefully wrote the detailed directions in a neat print. Then he had me read them back to him as he checked his work for errors. Satisfied, he laid the paper down in the center console. “It looks as if it will take a couple of hours to get there from here. How are we on gas?”

He was touching on one big area of concern for me right now. “We’ve got a little over half a tank. And this car doesn’t exactly go light on gas, either. It’s not a gas
guzzler
, but it definitely can use some up. When we see a station, I’m going to try to fill up,” I said.

We continued on again until it was dark and getting late, Joshua dozing on and off as we went. Finally, I pulled to the side of the road. It was a very quiet road and we hadn’t passed many cars along the way. And on this even smaller road, I hadn’t seen any other motorists.

“I’m thinking we should stop for the night. Unless you’d like to drive, Joshua?” I asked. I still could hardly believe I was being so trusting. The old me would have been worried about allowing Joshua to take control of the car.

He smiled gently at me. “I wish I could help out with the driving, but the truth is that it’s been a number of years since I’ve driven. Maybe in an emergency, I could help in a pinch, if we were really desperate. But now…why don’t we just set up camp? You look as if you could really use the rest and you won’t get good quality sleep sleeping in the car.”

“Although at least in the car, I’ll feel safer,” I added.

He nodded. “Although I’m guessing the threat here would be very small. We don’t seem to be around any cities. Finding a safe place to bed down is one area where I’ve had a bit of experience.”

I flushed a little at not having figured that out for myself. “I guess you’d have to be an expert.”

“And I’m also very good at pitching a campsite,” he continued. He opened the car door and stepped outside. He seemed to be listening very hard. Then he stuck his head back inside. “I think the coast is clear.”

He thoughtfully studied the things in the back of my car. Then he took the small backpack he’d brought into the car with him and took out a plastic tarp that had been carefully folded up. Using sticks and the tarp, Joshua carefully constructed a makeshift tent in no time at all.

I smiled at him, giving muted applause when he was done and he smiled at me. “You know, Joshua, that’s a very useful skill to have. Unlike being a government aide. I have a feeling my skills aren’t going to translate very well to this situation.”

“Like my skills wouldn’t translate to yours,” he said, spreading his hands out.

“So, maybe I need to be thinking about more camping-related equipment,” I said. “Tarps appear to be very useful.”

“They could at least help you on the way to your safe house,” he agreed.

I studied him again. He always spoke so deliberately. He never included himself when talking about Annie’s house. Was he wondering if my friends would share my hospitality? Maybe it was something I should wonder about, too. Although I think Annie and Jim trusted me.

Joshua interrupted my thoughts. “It might also be a good idea for you to learn how to hunt. And maybe to grow a garden.”

I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the fact that this could potentially be a long-term crisis, despite the fact that I’d put most of my possessions in my car. I was still dressed in work clothes, for heaven’s sake, although I’d traded out my heels for flats in the car. Squaring my black pencil skirt, crisp white blouse, and sensible jewelry with hunting and farming was hard for me to do.

Plus there was the squeamish side of me that never really liked to acknowledge where my food actually came from. It wasn’t that I was a
vegetarian
. I wasn’t. Except for sometimes … sometimes I’d hear a news story about food processing or something and it would mess me up for weeks. Then I
would
be a vegetarian.

“I’m not sure if I’d make a great hunter. And I’d have to do a lot of research to figure out how to grow crops,” I said. I caught myself. “I’m not sure about how I’d get that research done, either. No internet, right? And I probably can’t exactly pop over to the library.”

“I’ll show you how to do some easy hunting,” Joshua said. His voice was urgent.

I gave a sort of startled laugh. “Right now? But we have a car full of food, Joshua. I don’t think I’m hungry enough to even eat whatever it is that we might kill.” The word
kill
sat uncomfortably in my mouth and I hoped another vegetarian streak wasn’t coming over me. “Besides, I don’t even have any weapons.”

Earlier today, confiding in a homeless traveling companion that I wasn’t armed against would never have happened. It was funny how quickly he’d had earned my trust.

But Joshua was oddly insistent. “This type of hunting won’t rely on weapons. It’s a snare used to trap small animals. I think it’s important for you to learn. There won’t always be a car full of food. You should save that food for a more needy time where maybe there isn’t food we can quickly capture.”

He seemed almost distressed in his concern that I learn this technique, so I quickly said, “All right, Joshua. I’m sure you’re right. Show me how it works.”