Race to Refuge (9 page)

We rode in silence for a long while as I headed in the direction of our Nana’s retirement home. Finally, I hazarded a look at Ginny, scared to see the damage that whole incident had done. But she looked stronger than I thought. There were tears on her cheeks, but her jaw was set in a determined way that I’d seen before. “Thanks, Ginny. I couldn’t have driven any better back there than you did. You saved my life.”

She gave a choking laugh. “I was paying you back for saving mine at the school.” After a few quiet minutes, she asked in a hesitant voice, “Ty? Was Bo nice? I mean, when he was alive?”

That’s when I heard the guilt in her voice. This gave me a feeling of relief. I could deal with guilt. I knew how to handle that. If she’d shown signs of some kind of PTSD or something, that’s what I wouldn’t have known how to handle. “Bo seemed great—when he was alive. But he’s not even a person anymore, Ginny, and we had nothing to do with that. You didn’t even really hurt him…did you see that?”

She swung her head around to look at me in surprise. “I didn’t hurt him? I mean … I didn’t see what happened. I couldn’t look at him after I hit him with the car. I just figured that I’d killed him. I
should
have killed him, hitting him that hard.”

“You only stunned him. He was just sitting there against the back wall of the store trying to get what remained of his brain together to have another go at me. And you kept that from happening,” I said firmly.

I knew then that Ginny had grown up a lot since I picked her up at the middle school. And I wasn’t sure it was totally a good thing. I wanted to get her over to Nana for better parenting than I could provide.

Hoping to get a smile on her face again, I said, “Hey. I got you some toilet paper.”

She gave me a sideways look and her eyes twinkled briefly.

Then I remembered the other thing I’d shoved into the box on the way out. “And take a look in the box. There’s one other thing in there that I thought you might like. Bo actually had some pretty cool things in there.

Because I’d had to shove things back in the box when I’d fallen, everything was sort of jumbled around and dusty from that red clay that’s everywhere in North Carolina. She rummaged around for a minute and pulled out the one thing that she didn’t really recognize. Then her face lit up. “A solar-powered iPod charger?” She gave me a huge hug.

If something as small as listening to music could bring down her stress level and make her a kid again? I was glad I swiped it.

Chapter Twelve

Charlie

It wasn’t long before carrying a huge pack of looted goods made my back ache. That, and the odd position I was riding the bike in to ensure Mojo was securely on.

Fortunately, I knew a spot that I could temporarily stash the stuff and feel, with any luck, at least a little safe. It was farther from the city, out in a wooded area. It was acres of private property where the family of a friend of a friend of a friend allowed me to hunt some years ago. As I recalled, the area was fairly remote, had a steam running prominently through it, and wasn’t close to any large towns, although there were a few nearby houses. The middle of nowhere.

Long term, I sure didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hanging out at a primitive campsite with Mojo. I was formulating a not-very-concrete plan that involved Mojo and me driving to another remote location. That one was in Virginia, near the North Carolina border. In fact, it might be that it was in
North Carolina
, near the
Virginia
border. I had a good buddy from school who moved there. I’d visited him every couple of years or so. The house was in an unincorporated town. I figured that meant that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of undead wandering around and that I could handle the few undead that
were
wandering around.

Right now, I was just focused on getting completely away from the city and off the interstate. The interstate was still fairly free of heavy traffic and realizing this meant most people hadn’t made it out of town tugged at my heart.

I left the interstate and exited onto a secondary highway where there were no cars at all. I drove on that for a while until we came up on the area where I’d been hunting before. I slowed the bike down and then took it off the highway so it wouldn’t be seen. Mojo hopped off before I did, since the ride had gotten too bumpy for him and I was going so slow. I stashed the bike in a clump of bushes and snapped my fingers softly to Mojo who bounded behind me as we set off into the woods. Getting the heavy pack off my middle aged back was priority number one.

We trudged deep into the woods until we reached an area near a stream with some flat ground. I took the duffel bag off my back and slung it down with relief. I sat down with my back against a tree and noticed one of my hands was shaking. Typical. I get a case of nerves
after
I’ve escaped from the zombie apocalypse. Mojo lay against my leg and immediately fell into a heavy sleep. I envied him his ability to just conk out like that. Sleep was probably going to be elusive for me that night.

I fished my cell phone from my pocket, relieved to see the thing still had some charge left. I wasn’t sure how great my reception was going to be, and was surprised to find it wasn’t too bad. There must have been a cell tower somewhere nearby. I scrolled through my contact list to find the name of my Army buddy. More than anything, I was desperate to find out more about what was going on. I was a nightly news junkie and I always read the paper. I listened to network news. I had CNN on my phone. CNN’s website was already down, which was kind of disturbing. Maybe it was just overloaded with traffic?

If there wasn’t any official news available, I was willing to get my news straight from a reliable source. I dialed Steve and prayed he’d answer. I thought I might go crazy not knowing the big picture of the epidemic.

I felt a wave of relief when Steve picked right up. “Charlie?” he asked with some surprise. “You okay out there? You …made it out of town?”

My stomach flipped. “Yeah, I made it to a safe place in the woods. Safe right now, anyway. Why? Is Raleigh especially bad?” I knew Raleigh was bad. I knew it when I saw how light the traffic on the interstate was.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Good to hear your voice, man. I thought you were a goner, for sure.” There was shouting in the background.

I said, “Hey, I know this isn’t a good time to talk.”

Steve snorted. “There ain’t gonna
be
a good time to talk. Besides, the infrastructure is probably going to take a hit soon and this might be our only chance. Figure you’re trying to get some inside information, right? I wish I had it. I can tell you that we do not have this thing, this plague, under any kind of control.”

My heart sank. “So you haven’t been able to cut off and quarantine Raleigh?”

“Raleigh?” Steve’s voice was sad. “Dude, it’s all over the place. All over the US, anyway. And sure to soon be around the world since people are trying to escape by flying out and then they’re turning as soon as the plane goes up. There doesn’t seem to be much intel on what this epidemic is and they’d like to put a label on it, since
zombies
don’t sound scientific, you know?”

“I know,” I said absently. I couldn’t get over how fast this was spreading and over different places all at once.

“It’s basically some sort of plague that’s highly contagious. Most of the time the victims turn immediately, but sometimes it takes a few hours. Nobody knows why. And the ones that
don’t
turn immediately are a real problem because they end up becoming part of an uninfected group, turning, and then attacking the uninfected. In our briefing, the brass was saying maybe some sort of disease that’s been dormant for a millennium or two and has reawakened. And it’s just like the zombie movies you’ve seen … shoot ‘em in the chest and they just keep coming like a bad horror flick. But if you shoot them in the head? You got ‘em.”

Good to know. Although I was hoping I could hide out and avoid the whole head shot thing entirely.

“What’s the official response been like?” I asked.

“Lousy,” said Steve. “The local authorities were all slow to respond today. Overwhelmed. Clueless. Some cities are trying to solve the problem by setting up checkpoints to keep citizens in their towns. This hasn’t exactly go over well with uninfected people who are trying to escape. So lots of stories of the police losing it today and gunning down desperate people. The citizens who were forced to stay in the towns felt like sitting ducks. Naturally, this created a panic. People stampeded other people trying to get out. Really awful stuff.” His voice was heavy.

“When did the National Guard and the military get called in?” I asked.

“There was delay with that, too. The municipalities were just so shocked by the whole thing that they didn’t take the next logical step of immediately calling in the big guns. They should have done that at eight o’clock this morning. Although I’m not sure that we’re all that much help. We’re too late for containment (which just goes to show how fast this thing is spreading), but we’re trying to create safe areas, some camps where it
is
safe. We could quarantine people trying to come in to make sure they’re not infected and then we allow those people in.”

I said, “Any hope for some kind of immunity or vaccine or something?”

“Nada. And even though it’s early, it’s such an epidemic that something needs to be developed like yesterday. I guess somebody in a lab somewhere is working on something, but who knows how long that’ll take. Hold on.” He spent a couple of minutes listening to someone and then barked out orders to another group. “Sorry. Okay, I’m back. But listen, I probably gotta go.”

“Just one thing. Is there anywhere I should be heading? Anywhere good to go? Anywhere safe?” I asked.

He sighed. “Knowing you? I’d say head out to the woods and either lay low there for a while or else go somewhere out in the country to a well-fortified house. ‘Cause I don’t see you meekly hanging around in some camp for rationed food, supplies, and stuff. That would drive you nuts.” He broke away to speak to someone again and when he returned to the call, his voice was grim again. “Take care, Charlie. Watch your back.” He clicked off.

It sounded worse than I’d hoped. I’d hoped to hear that the epidemic was moving slower. I knew it wasn’t, though. Not after that patient turned on me in the ambulance. No, it was spreading fast and it sounded like the authorities today had been slow to contain it. By the time they
did
try to contain it, it was already too late. Now I knew there really wouldn’t be a safe spot anywhere. I needed to watch my back in the woods, in rural communities, and anywhere else that Mojo and I went.

My stomach growled and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Had I been so wrapped up that I hadn’t realized how hungry I was? That wasn’t like me. When was the last time that I ate? When had Mojo last eaten? The German shepherd opened his eyes and watched me as I rummaged around in the duffel bag. It had been a while since either of us had eaten a meal. I pulled out food from the backpack and offered it to Mojo first. I shook my head in amazement as the dog waited for me to eat first. Like he wanted to make sure that I had something to eat, myself, before he ate what I’d given him. You couldn’t beat a dog for loyalty.

After Mojo and I had eaten, exhaustion hit me like a Mack truck. Between first-day-at-work nerves, unexpectedly encountering the zombie apocalypse, and a busy day of looting, I couldn’t be tireder. I hesitated. Was it even worth putting the tent up tonight? Trying to figure out new equipment as the sun was rapidly setting? I felt like I was tired enough to crash out in the open on a tarp, so that’s all I pulled out of the duffel.

Once I curled up on the tarp near a clump of bushes to keep me from feeling so exposed, Mojo loped over and lay down at my feet: head up and a watchful expression on his face. I realized that while I was sleeping, Mojo was planning on keeping a lookout. I fell asleep with a faint smile on my lips.

Hours later, I woke to growling and sat straight up, heart pounding. For a second, there in the pitch dark, I wasn’t sure where I was. Then I remembered and was even more on edge. Mojo’s fur stood on end and he emitted a low warning growl as he trained his eyes into the dark distance. There was no moonlight and it couldn’t have been darker.

I fervently hoped it was a deer or an opossum or maybe an owl that was worrying Mojo. The dog wasn’t used to being outside—he always slept with me at home. Or, at least, he’s slept with me since my divorce. My ex-wife wasn’t too enamored with sharing a bed with Mojo. Or, actually, with me for that matter.

Although I hoped it was an animal, I felt an overwhelming gut feeling that it wasn’t. I didn’t think Mojo would be concerned about an animal unless it came right up to us. Mojo was too smart for that. I think he was trying to warn me about something else.

I slowly rose to my knees and then stood up. This had felt like a safe place. It
should
be a safe place. But I knew that my friend’s friend’s friend’s (whatever) family lived here and they had a nearby neighbor. What if the mail carrier had attacked them, or even an infected local cop? It could be anybody. I turned on a flashlight since I couldn’t see in the dark as well as Mojo. I wanted to better illuminate whatever danger we might be in. I reached for the duffel bag for the gun I’d loaded last night before going to sleep.

But it was too late. A few yards away now, I could see them. The family who’d graciously invited me to hunt on their land was now prepared to hunt me on it. Their hollow eyes stared hungrily at me and their arms reached out, swiping at the air. They moaned as they came.

Chapter Thirteen

Mallory

Joshua had only been in the gas station for a few minutes, but it felt like hours had gone by. That’s because my mouth was so dry and my heart pounded so hard that I felt stress pouring out of me, dragging the time out. Finally, he reemerged from the store, clutching a gas can. His eyes were huge and worried and he waved at me to drive off.

“What?” I asked frantically. I put my window down a little. “Come on, Joshua! Let’s just get out of here. We’ll find another gas station. This place is creeping me out.”