Race to Refuge (8 page)

I got distracted by helping Joshua, actually. Although I was glad I did. I’d have been completely nerve-wracked if I’d been out here in the woods by myself. I’d have been sleeping in my car with the doors locked and jolting awake at every sound.

“Have you tried it? Just to see?” he asked.

I doubted I would be able to pick up a signal, but I pulled my phone out. And sighed. “Battery is dead. I’ve got a car charger, so we’ll put it on the charger and maybe we can try again when we’re getting gas for the car. I do know how to get there most of the way It’s just when we get to the final leg that I’m not sure about the turns we need to make.”

I was still weirdly reluctant to leave. I say it’s
weird
because at work I’m always a take-charge person. All day long I say, “I’m on it,” when the senator asks me to do something. I’m an action-oriented person. It’s not like me to linger or procrastinate. But I had this tremendous reluctance to face the world again after escaping it so thoroughly.

Joshua somehow seemed to understand. “I’ll help you scout out a place to stop for gas,” he said. “I know I wasn’t much help yesterday with the nap I took.” His expression was chagrined.

“I just admired you for being able to nap, under the circumstances,” I said with a grin.

He returned the smile. “Today will be different. I’ll be a real copilot. We’ll get you to your friends’ house.”

“We’ll get
us
to my friends’ house,” I corrected. And he smiled again at me.

Fortunately, we were still in a rural area for the next thirty minutes we drove. At that point, I don’t think I could have handled another city and another crowd of soulless eyes gazing hungrily at me. The rural areas seemed naturally safer, less-populated, less-likely to have huge numbers of used-to-be-humans around.

But thirty minutes later, we were in dire need of gas. And the rural route highway wasn’t offering any places to stop. I got the feeling that Joshua was biting his tongue, wanting me to reach a particular conclusion myself. Eventually, I did. “I guess we’re going to have to get onto the interstate and then exit off.” The words slouched reluctantly from my mouth.

Joshua’s expression was relieved. “Unless you know for sure that there’s a small town or a gas station up ahead on this road.”

I shook my head.

“We don’t want to run out of gas here. This area is more exposed and it might take us a while to get into a heavily wooded section again. Let’s connect to the interstate the next time we see a sign for it and then we can fill up and get back on this road again,” said Joshua.

A couple of miles up the road there was a sign pointing to the interstate. I couldn’t shake this feeling of dread that I’d had since that morning. Still, I took the exit. There were a few cars there, whizzing by at tremendous speed. Fleeing for their lives, I supposed. I had no intention of pushing the accelerator that hard and burning through the small amount of gas we had left.

“I suppose no one’s worried about being stopped for speeding,” I muttered. “At least the interstate isn’t completely backed up. Which is sort of odd, actually. The roads were already jammed back in Raleigh.”

Joshua said softly, “Maybe that’s as far as the cars could go…Raleigh. Maybe the only cars we’re seeing here on the interstate are people escaping from small communities.”

It made sense. With everyone fleeing the city at once, there were wrecks and complete stops. Those vehicles blocked the exit routes. No wonder they hadn’t made it this far. I’d never seen the interstate this quiet. It lent a very eerie feeling to the road. As if it were the middle of the night … but it was broad daylight.

A few minutes later, Joshua spotted a sign for gas stations at the next exit. “We should probably take it, don’t you think?”

I did, since we were probably running the car on fumes. But I didn’t feel good about it. I squeezed my hands tightly around the steering wheel.

The station was old, but it at least had digital pumps. I pulled into the station and we peered around cautiously from our locked car. Finally, I figured the coast must be clear and pulled up to a pump, popping my gas door, muttering while fishing around, “I guess it won’t let me gas up without swiping a debit card first.”

Joshua stopped me. “Let me fill it up.”

I hesitated. “Do you think this is a safe station? Should we keep driving?”

“I don’t think we really have a choice,” he said. “We probably won’t know how safe it is until we take a look around the property. Besides, I think it would be a good idea to go inside the station and see if they have a gas can or two. It would be nice to have some extra gas on hand in case there
isn’t
a gas station the next time we need to fill up.”

“Okay. But are you sure that you want to go inside?” I still couldn’t shake that underlying fear.

“It’s all right,” he said firmly. “This is something I want to do.”

Chicken that I was, I was relieved. I was worried Joshua was in danger, but I couldn’t be more relieved that I wasn’t getting out of the Subaru.

He opened the door and paused for a second. “Mallory, if I tell you to drive on, I need you to drive on.”

I started shaking my head immediately. That wasn’t part of the deal.

“No, please. If I tell you to leave, or if I’m getting attacked in any way, I
need
to know that you’re going to keep going. Keep moving ahead with your plan,” he said in an anxious voice.

I reluctantly nodded. “Just be careful.”

“I’ll fill the tank first, since that’s the first priority.” He climbed out of the car and quietly closed it. Then he filled up the tank completely, his back to the Subaru the whole time. He gave me a thumbs-up when the gas started pumping. We were both relieved that the pumps were still working, since they ran on electricity and we didn’t know what the situation at the power plants was like.

Once he finished pumping, he carefully put the gas cap back on and closed the gas door. Squaring his sloping shoulders, he pulled up to his full height of about five and half feet, and walked to the station.

It was then that I realized I was still clutching the steering wheel with white-knuckles and my heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. I wanted to open the car door to yell at Joshua not to enter, but I was scared to attract those creatures. I sat frozen, mouth dry, staring at the gas station.

Chapter Eleven

Ty

The store looked deserted, but that’s the way I always remembered it being. Dad always used to mutter, asking how Bo could stay in business when it was so quiet here. The big thing I remembered from the store was Bo’s fondness for country music—the cornier and peppier the better. He’d blast it so loud that I wondered the man was going deaf. Sure enough, as I stepped through the door of the store, the country music was playing away.

One thing I’d worried about was that looters might have come to the store and wiped it out before I’d gotten here. But apparently I shouldn’t have worried because the stores were still stocked. This was a place where you could find almost anything—from live bait, to baby chicks, to to old-fashioned candy and soft drinks. The wooden floor sagged and I bet it creaked. That is, if I could have heard the creaking over the country music.

Now all I needed to do was somehow convince Bo that I needed a bunch of stuff from his store. Maybe if I told him that he could put it on credit to Dad? But there was something in me that made me hesitate to call out for him. Where was he? Could he hear the bell ring when I walked through the door? Or was the music really
that
loud?

“Bo?” I called out softly. As I walked and looked around, I felt a tingle up my spine. “Bo?” I reached over and took a baseball ball out of a rack on a shelf. Just in case.

There he was. Directly ahead of me. Leering at me with blank eyes from around a clothes rack. Name on his shirt. Spattered with blood.

He charged me and I swung the bat blindly in front of me. I took a deep breath, focused, and then poised the bat again as I backed toward the door. Bo advanced, moaning softly, stumbling toward me, undeterred by the baseball bat.

That was how the next few minutes went. In slow motion I walked backward to the door, brandishing the bat ahead of me and watching Bo as he kept advancing. When I got outside, I heard the car door open. My eyes still trained on the store owner, I said urgently, “Ginny, stay where you are.”

“No, Ty,” her voice pleaded with me.

I made my voice as calm and reasonable as I could. I noticed that the zombie in front of me didn’t seem to be listening to our conversation at all. Its eyes were trained on me as its mouth worked open and closed. “Ginny, it’s okay. He doesn’t understand us. Listen, I’m going to lead him away from the store. He’s not very fast. I’ll head over to the far end of that field and then run back to the store. I’ll go in through the front door and lock it behind me. Do you think you can drive the car around to the back of the store? Wherever the back door is.”

Ginny’s voice shook. “I don’t know. I can try.”

I backed slowly down the stairs, glancing behind me with each stair I took. “Remember the car is still turned on. So you need to grab the gear stick and move it to
D
for drive and then push real lightly on the accelerator and barely turn the steering wheel. The brake is next to the accelerator. When you’re done, you need to move the gear stick back to
P
for park.”

I knew Ginny would be frantically trying to remember it all. “Okay, Ty.” There was a tremor to her voice, but she sounded determined, too.

I eased away from the staircase and backed toward the large field with Bo stumbling toward me. “Tell you what, why not get started now while I’m here. First, close that car door and crack the window just enough so you can hear me over the motor.”

Ginny gently shut the car door so as not to attract attention to herself. Bo still eyed me hungrily. She rolled the window down a little ways and I slowly walked her through putting the car in gear with her foot on the brake (that part was important and I’d forgotten to tell her the first time). I sagged with relief as Ginny eased the car forward.

“That’s right, just coast,” I said louder since now I was at the field and Ginny was driving away. “Then drive to the back of the store and push slowly on the brake and put the car back in park.”

Once Ginny had coasted around to the back of the store and I didn’t hear any crashing sounds, I kept focused on Bo and his arms reaching toward me. He didn’t look as badly decomposed as you’d think a dead body would look. Maybe he’d just recently gotten infected. That didn’t make me feel any better since it meant that maybe other zombies were still hanging around.

Bo lunged at me every now and then so I held the bat in front of me like a lion tamer holding a chair. We continued slowly like this as I backed out across the field until the country store was in the distance. I was conserving my energy for the big sprint.

When I felt like I’d have a strong head start, I bolted toward the country store, running as fast as I could. Bo gave a surprised grunt and started lumbering after me. Panting hard, I glanced back over my shoulder. There was no way on earth that he was going to catch up with me. But that wasn’t really what I’d been worried about all along—I really was worried that he’d finally reach me when I was loading up the car with all the stuff from his store. Although I guess it wasn’t really
Bo’s
store anymore, since it wasn’t really
Bo
anymore.

I stumbled up the stairs of the store, looking for a way to lock the door behind me. Bo didn’t have a bolt lock, I realized, feeling frantic. Where would he have put his keys for the deadlock? I looked around me, head swinging from side to side. Did he have them on him? My stomach had a sinking sensation.

Finally, I spotted them near the cash register and partially covered by a magazine called
Country Living
. He must have been reading it before he was attacked. I swiped the keys and, hands shaking, locked the deadbolt. I glanced out the window and saw that Bo was about halfway across the distance to the store.

I ran in the storeroom, yanked out some boxes, and started pulling things off the shelves. I skipped the kitschy country stuff and went right for the weapons, which were locked up behind the cash register. And yes, the key was on the same keyring. I grabbed a tomahawk (although I wasn’t excited about the idea of getting that close to a zombie), another sleeping bag and tent, a bunch of seeds of different kinds (and here I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I hoped the sheer volume would make up for any errors), lighters, a hand-crank flashlight/radio combo, gas cans, and even Ginny’s toilet paper for being such a good sport. I was heading out when I spotted something I didn’t recognize and I spared half a second reading the label. When I saw what it was, I smiled and threw it in the box. The only thing I didn’t see was water or water purification and that was really our biggest need. I craned my neck, searching high and low, feeling my heart thud in my chest. Finally, I gave up. Bo had returned to the front porch and the sounds of him pounding on the door made my blood run cold.

I didn’t even know where the back door was, but I figured there had to be one, right? I hefted the box, shifting it slightly to make it easier to carry. Then I hurried to the back of the store. I saw the storeroom I’d gotten the boxes from, a small restroom, and then I did see another door that looked like it might go outside. I tried it … and an alarm went off. I guess Bo had it tied to the alarm system to prevent shoplifting. My heart jumped into my throat.

I stumbled outside with the box and Ginny was there in the car, face white, eyes huge. I heard the car doors unlock and I ran to the van. Glancing to the side, I saw him at the same moment that Ginny screamed my name. Bo was already around the side of the store, growling fiercely. I was almost to the car when I tripped over a root and went sprawling. A sick feeling came over me as I scrambled up and tried to stuff everything back in the box. “Ginny, lock the car doors!” I yelled.

Bo was almost on me when I heard the car engine rev into life. Ginny must have laid a foot on the accelerator powerfully hard, struck Bo full-on, and he smashed into the wall of the store. He was only stunned, which just went to show how un-human he had become. I focused on the box and my feet this time, taking advantage of Bo’s efforts to regroup, and shoved the box in the car. Ginny scooted over into the passenger seat and I jumped in the driver’s seat again and we took off.