The Book of a Few (32 page)

“
Fucking drive!” I yelled at Dana.

I reached out and gripped the handle on the car door as the monster was crippled by pain. But the beast would not have me live for much longer; it swung down at me again with its other arm. The car door absorbed the blow. The metal of the door was smashed downward nearly four inches and shards of glass scattered about the ground and inside the car as the window popped under the pressure.

The tires of the ‘90s sports car screeched as it accelerated. As we were pulling away, the monster bellowed and gave chase. I pulled on the door one more time to try and close it, but it bounced back open due to the damage. I tried again, but with a slow and steady pressure. Pulling long and hard did no better, and after that attempt I gave up.

I looked behind us, and saw that the beast was still after us.

“
How fast are you driving?” I asked.

“
Thirty-five-ish,” Dana said.

“
That thing moves pretty fast. We’ve only gained half a block of distance between us.”

“
Well,” Dana pointed at the damaged passenger door, “it
is
pretty big.”

“
When we get out of town, we are stopping to beat this door ‘til it closes. I’ll pound it in and use the window if I have to,” I said.

Dana looked back toward the road. “Fuck!”

The car accelerated as fast as it could, but only for a second. From the left, a second giant rushed onto the street ahead of us. With its shoulder, it bashed into the front quarter panel of the car, sending the car into an uncontrollable spin. The trees and houses around us whizzed by until a light pole in the median stopped the car.

My head lashed to the side and the broken car door slammed down onto my arm. I was fuzzy-minded for only a moment; the adrenaline was too strong for me to fall under. Dana was coming around, and so were both of the giants.

I shook Dana and yelled, “Wake up! Drive!”

He shook his head and gripped the steering wheel. The first giant brought a club down on the roof of the car, crunching the roof to only a hair’s distance from Dana’s head. The second behemoth wasn’t more than ten seconds away, and I knew that I had to do something. Dana mashed the gas, and the car’s tires fought the force of the giant and the grit of the curb. I reached and grabbed Dana’s handgun from his waist and shot out of the driver’s side window. Blood ran from the giant’s stomach.

The beast flinched as more gunshots rang through the air. Three men stood on the steps of a home with long rifles to their shoulders. The giant thundered and rubbed one of its clubs against its own wounded flesh, spreading the blood across its chest. It ran toward the three men, and the second giant followed.

Without the beast pushing on the car, it lurched up the median and down to the other side of the road. I watched from my seat as the strangers turned to head back inside their home. The closest giant swung wide and clipped one of the men in the head. The side of his face was crushed, and blood ran from his nostrils as he flew over the black railing of the steps. The second giant stopped at the dead man’s feet and began pulverizing the body. The other two men had closed the door behind themselves, but that couldn’t stop the immense strength that these things possessed. The door was broken through in a moment’s notice, and flashes of gunfire escaped the blanket-covered windows.

By the time we were half a block away, the flickers inside the home had stopped. The giant outside rested on its knees and elbows as it began shoveling the man’s attached hand into its mouth. I didn’t see anything more.

Silence was prominent for nearly ten minutes.

“
We are not going through Las Vegas today, God help me,” I said.

Dana simply nodded.

“
We should find a way around, rather than go straight through it. Let’s not take the chance of running into one of those again or, God forbid, something worse.”

Branden said that punishment has been decided, so sometime today I should find out what it is. The C.V.P.M. is charging me with harboring, assault, and my personal favorite: obstruction of justice. I have no idea how that works out, but whatever. I’ll write more when I know more, so yeah.

——

Okay, this sucks, but it is manageable. Branden and I just got out of a meeting with the Colonel, and boy did he have things to say. He is absolutely pissed off, and his judgment shows it. We have a lot of the same penalties as Casey and his men now. Branden and I are to share a gun while we are in the warehouse, and we are to serve the C.V.P.M. in a couple of different ways.

First, we have to help the community by moving food. We will be unloading anything they bring to the warehouse, as well as loading any food that is going out of the building. Yesterday, the C.V.P.M. started the job by throwing out a majority of the rotted food. Today, we are to help them finish.

The second service is flyer duty. We have a stack of handwritten posters that we are to post around town. Apparently, the Colonel also thinks that Casey had to know that Chester had shot Bruce. The Colonel is going to make him join us, unfortunately for him. But while we are out doing that, we are all allowed to carry our own guns, at least. But I feel like they are sending us out there to get killed more than anything.

The flyers ask for new recruits. They speak highly of how they help out the community by dispatching infected, upholding order, and researching the infection. At the bottom of the poster, it says that if you are in need of emergency food or housing to contact the C.V.P.M. Oh, and there is another four C.V.P.M. guys being stationed here later today. It’s pretty obvious that they are the ones running the show now.

At the end of our meeting, I decided to ask the Colonel a question. I wanted to know if Joey would be coming back to the warehouse since he’s innocent. He shrugged and said, “There’s nothing I can do about that.” I take it that means Joey is already dead. It’s not that I want him back; he
is
a waste of resources. It’s just sad, really. But his death is also a clear indicator of what would have happened to Chester if he had been captured. As disgusting as it is, I hope that Dr. Milaka gained something from Joey.

It wasn’t until we hit Nevada that the desert surrounded us, and I’ve never seen a desert in person before now. I’m not accustomed to seeing empty and unused land. I’ve only ever grown up around fields of produce and woods where there is nothing else. Here, it’s different shades of oranges and yellows with very little green. It’s an odd but invigorating experience to be able to look as far as the hills will let you.

We stopped at a truck stop just before Las Vegas. If we were to navigate
around
the city, Dana would need a map since he only knows one way to get to Newberry Springs. Clearing out the interior of its four infected was a bit of a challenge. Either we fought weak or they fought strong. It was probably harder for us because we didn’t have clear minds; we were worried that a giant would be around.

I talked to Dana about how we should still burn the bodies, even though we are away from home. It would be horrible if someone else were to rush inside the store for shelter, stumble over one of the bodies, and catch the infection. Dana felt that it would attract attention, and it wouldn’t be worth it with our limited supply of gas. But I still think we should have burned them.

We sifted through the layer of trash on the floor in search of the map we needed. With a cigarette resting between my lips, I rummaged through the shelves underneath the checkout counter. I pulled my findings up onto the counter to show Dana. One map was of California, another of Arizona, and a third of Nevada.

Dana walked to the counter with an armful of yellow cream-filled-cake-fingers and pointed at a map and said, “That one.”

Even though we only needed the map of Nevada, I did grab all three maps just in case we had to take an even larger detour due to obstructions or emergencies. Afterwards, I searched about for another pack of smokes. I had been smoking quite a bit since Omaha and only had seven cigarettes left. But because they are worth as much as gold nowadays, I couldn’t find any. Makes me wish I had gotten my hands on a carton early in the Silence.

After we felt that we had found all that we were going to, we headed out the door. Back in the car, I unfolded the map we needed and began scanning.

“
Where exactly is Newberry Springs?” I asked.

Dana leaned over the center console to get a closer look at the map. “It’s roughly two hours past Las Vegas. So we aren’t very far away, really. We will get there today.”

“
That’s good. I can’t wait to get back home, honestly.”

“
Oh yeah, why so eager?”

Using a sigh to buy myself time, I took a moment to bring my thoughts and feelings into words that I felt would best explain myself.

“
I would rather be a captive of the C.V.P.M. and hope that they treat me all right than be off in a foreign place with this never ending tension that I could be killed at any time. I would trade slave work for this any day.”

Dana didn’t acknowledge my answer. “Well, our best bet to get to Newberry Springs without going through the heart of Las Vegas would be taking some country road off Las Vegas Boulevard. From there, we’ll get on Lake Mead Boulevard and another road. We’ll be taking all the side roads ‘til we hit Highway 582. Then we are going to have to cut through Henderson to get on 95 heading south. From there on is nothing but country until we get to Newberry.”

I watched Dana’s finger trace the route as he spoke so I could get a clear picture. We were avoiding a mass majority of Las Vegas, for sure. To completely avoid the town and its suburbs would require us to backtrack and go completely out of the way. I understood that this was a compromise I would have to settle on.

“
Essentially we’re trimming the corner of town. We’ll be all right,” Dana said.

We started off a little rough by passing our first turnoff by accident, forcing us to pull a U-turn. Afraid that it would set the tone for the rest of the trip around Las Vegas, I took control of navigating us. Dana wasn’t able to handle getting us there safely by himself. Keeping on the lookout for any danger ahead was a hard enough task for one man.

I like how the roads weave and cut through the red-sand hills. Even though the only things alive are small shrubs that speckle the open land, I find the sightseeing enjoyable. In Iowa, the roads simply bob up and down the hills. Corn or beans surround you on every side for miles at a time. The repeated scenery and lack of interesting landmarks or change makes riding through Iowa quite dull.

We just passed this exquisite-looking casino on the outskirts of town. The palm trees were like beacons in the desert. A huge curved wall, serving as a sign, seemed welcoming enough. Not to mention that this is the only place I’ve seen so far in Nevada to have full, lush, green grass. Must have been a nice place.

CHESTER: (Whispering.) It’s two in the morning, I think, and I can’t sleep.

(The flick of a lighter, sizzling sound of burning tobacco.)

CHESTER: (Exhaling.) I almost died.

(Pause.)

CHESTER: Fucking Henderson. We were in Henderson and some people pushed a car down a hill and right in front of us. Dana tried to avoid it, but we crashed into the side of a store. Car was destroyed.