The Survivor Chronicles (Book 3): The Forsaken (9 page)

"It's ok," Al said. "It will help us get to New York faster and maybe we can ditch some of these guys."

Mary Ellen bit her lip as she recalled how congested and difficult to traverse the highway had been before. She doubted it would get any easier on the Pike. Al eased the truck around a van parked almost in the middle of the exit ramp and onto the highway. She stared at the road unwinding before them in a seemingly endless ribbon of black that stretched as far as she could see. The strangest urge to cry seized hold of her as the nothingness surrounding them engulfed her.

Some of the vehicles on the road had crashed but others appeared to have been abandoned. Some still had their doors open, and as they drove by an SUV with its back passenger side door open, she spotted the baby seats still sitting in the back of it. A lump formed in her throat as she turned away.

She studied the broken trees and homes beside the side of the interstate, but other than the group of people growing steadily more distant behind them, she didn't see any of those creatures out there. They had found a bit of peace in the middle of a highway. Never in a million years had she thought that the words peace and highway would go together, but today they did.

She wrapped her arm around Rochelle's shoulders. She'd never thought things could be good again but right now they seemed about as close to perfect as they were going to get. Tears burned her eyes but she blinked them away before Rochelle could see her cry.

She glanced in the mirror to find the others standing at the side of the truck staring at the broken down town. Smoke rose from toppled buildings as a blaze smoldered in the distance. New holes and canyons marked the landscape but one thing that really stood out to her was the lack of people. She didn't see anyone moving amongst the crumpled homes and businesses that had once stood alongside the highway.

"It's so peaceful, after everything that happened, it's just so peaceful now," Rochelle whispered.

Mary Ellen silently counted her blessings as Al weaved in and out of the cars congesting the road. Carl hit the side of the vehicle with his hand as he moved toward the window and leaned in to speak. "We're going to have to see if some of these abandoned cars have gas left in them. Try finding the wrecked ones or a highway patrol vehicle. We need some new gas cans too."

She nodded and turned to Al. "I heard him," Al assured her as he pulled up next to a three car accident and put the truck in park.

Mary Ellen glanced around her before opening the door and climbing out. "Mind opening the back doors? I don't think my knees can take jumping out of this thing," Carl told her.

Hurrying around to the back of the truck she frowned as she studied the lock on them. She pushed up one side of the latch as Carl leaned over the door and pulled the latch up. The doors gave way with a small pop. "Thanks," he muttered as he climbed out. "First things first, let's get these guns reloaded. Then see if we can find some tubing and something to hold the gas in."

Mary Ellen stood back as Carl pulled the ammunition from the truck. He reloaded his gun before loading the others. She studied the sleek Caddy as it pulled to a stop behind them. "Let's see if we can find another car too. I know I would prefer a seat, that truck is tough on my back," John said as he rubbed at his lower back.

Mary Ellen turned Rochelle away as she spotted a couple of bodies still within the crashed vehicles. "Stay by the truck," she told her before heading toward one of the cars in search of supplies.

The highway may seem peaceful but she did not intend to be stranded out here tonight.

Riley,

Bending down she pressed her hands against the glass and tried to peer into the suped up car's driver side window. The heavy tint on the window made it impossible to see inside though. Shaking her head she stepped back from the car. The tint was irritating but she had to admire the sleek lines of the vehicle. She wondered how fast it would have gone if it wasn't embedded in the back of a truck.

She grabbed hold of the door handle. Before it was even half a foot open she knew she'd made the wrong decision. She slammed the door shut again before she could see whatever was in there that was causing her gag reflex to kick into hyper drive, her eyes to burn, and her nose to wrinkle. Her hand flew to her nose as she took an abrupt step back from the rotten smell of whoever remained in that car.

She blinked back the tears burning her eyes as she turned toward the others. Carl was biting on his inner cheek to keep from laughing as he watched John from the side of a Jeep that had rolled onto its side. She could barely hear John's muffled curses as his feet kicked in the air out of one of the back windows.

Xander was watching her from the edge of the road where he stood with Bobby beside a pickup truck. She shook her head and pinched her nose as she indicated the car. He gave a brief nod and turned away. Al gave up inspecting a car with a flat tire and joined her. "This is some slim pickings," he said.

"It is," she agreed.

They walked down the road together to the next set of cars. Riley opened the door, pulled the visor down and searched the floor and glove box for keys but she came up empty. She retreated from the vehicle and took a step back from it. Al was standing by the hood; his hand was against his forehead as he tried to shade his eyes from the sun beating down upon them. Riley tugged at her shirt as she attempted to peel it from the sweat coating her body.

Her parents had taken her to Florida during summer break when she was twelve. They'd intended to explore the state and go to all the parks. They'd spent more time trying to get inside, and away from the oppressive heat, than they had doing anything else. She'd sworn she'd never go back there in the summer again, but now, standing on the side of this road, she knew she would have taken a hundred summers in Florida over this as steam rose from the baking asphalt.

She tried not to think about the fact that there was almost no way they'd ever be able to grow anything in this hostile environment. There was no way that
anything
could thrive anymore she realized as she closed the door on the car. That was something they could attempt to figure out later though, when they weren't stranded on a highway. Besides, she was sticking to the possibility that any day now they would wake up to find the weather stabilized again. It didn't seem likely but then it hadn't seemed likely that lava would run through her hometown or that she would see someone commit suicide right before her eyes either.

"There was a girl." She glanced over her shoulder to where Donald, Mary Ellen, Peter, Josh, and Rochelle had moved in the opposite direction in search of supplies. "With Donald. She ah... She killed herself Al."

Al's hand dropped to his side. The lines in his face seemed even deeper as he turned toward her. "You saw her do it?"

Her gaze drifted toward Xander as he jogged across the road with Bobby to join Carl and John. She started walking with Al again to the next set of cars. "We all did."

"That had to have been awful."

She didn't think those words were enough to cover what it had been like, what it still felt like. She'd never be able to get the image out of her head or understand what had driven Debra to do what she did. Had Debra really believed the words that she had spoken before ending her life? Is that what had driven her to pull the trigger? Riley shuddered at the thought and wrapped her arms around her middle as her stomach began to twist. That woman had only been feet away from her when she'd killed herself and yet none of them had been able to stop it. They'd been helpless to save Debra and she still felt helpless now, a feeling she was struggling to shake off.

"It was," she agreed as she stopped next to another car.

Peering in the windows she was relieved to see that this car was empty. She popped the trunk latch before leaning inside to search through it. She came up with a few lint balls and a couple of hairy breath mints but nothing she would eat or that they could use. Pulling down the glove box, she sorted through the papers before slamming it closed again.

Frustration was beginning to fill her as she leaned out of the car and rested her arm on the roof of the vehicle. Her breath hissed out of her, she jerked her arm back as she swore she heard her skin sizzle from the contact. Across the street John was finally emerging from the Jeep with the help of Carl and Xander pulling at his legs. He was grinning like he'd just struck gold as he held up a gas can, a set of jumper cables, and a cooler. Riley couldn't stop the smile that tugged at her lips as John continued to happily wave his finds in the air and did a dance as he turned in a circle.

Al shook his head and slammed the trunk closed. "That kid."

"He kind of grows on you," Riley said as they continued down the road.

Carl took the cooler from John and popped it open. Judging by the curl of his lip, and his recoil, there was nothing salvageable within. Carl tossed it back into the Jeep and jogged across the road to them. "Any luck?" he asked.

"Nothing so far," Riley told him as she stopped next to another car. She searched through it but this one only offered her a bunch of coins and an overflowing ashtray that the heat of the past few days had done nothing to help the smell of. She withdrew from the car before the oppressive scent made her vomit.

"I was telling Al about Debra," she said as she continued down the road.

"Who's Debra?" Bobby asked from the back of a pickup he had climbed into. Shading her eyes she tilted her head back to look up at him. One hand was on his hip while a six pack of beer dangled from his fingertips. John leaned over the side of the truck and tugged one of the cans free of the ring.

"That's going to be more skunked than Pepe Le Pew," Bobby informed him.

"It is," John agreed but he popped the top on it anyway. "But it's my birthday and it's kind of a tradition."

"I think that's a tradition I would break this time," Xander said as he moved past him.

John made a face but he began to chug the beer. Riley guessed he was about halfway through it before he pulled it away, wiped his mouth, and lifted it to the sky. A pang stabbed her heart as she realized this tradition involved someone that was no longer with them. Unexpected tears burned her eyes as she ducked into another truck and pushed the bench seat forward.

John was tossing the empty beer can into the back of the truck when she reemerged empty handed again. "I hate to say it, but we're most likely going to find stuff in the cars that still have bodies in them," Carl said. "Anybody with any brains would have taken everything of use that they could with them."

Riley glanced back at the suped up car and shuddered. "Some of them may have been sick and not thinking clearly when they abandoned their vehicles; maybe they wouldn't have thought to take any of their stuff with them."

"Maybe."

"So," Bobby said as he jumped out of the back of the truck and strode toward them. "Who was Debra?"

"A woman that was with Donald when we found him. She killed herself, but not before spouting off some crazy stuff," John informed him.

Al stopped walking as his eyes drifted back to Riley. She found she couldn't meet Al's gaze, she'd been trying to figure out how to broach the subject with him, or if she even wanted to know any more answers about what Debra had been talking about. She thought she might actually prefer the alien theory to the idea that there were four horsemen riding around killing people because God had had enough.

How were they ever supposed to escape that?

"What kind of stuff?" Al asked.

Xander's arm brushed against her shoulder as he stepped beside her. She leaned into his chest and took solace in the fact that he was there to touch. Her fingers brushed briefly over his shirt and back as the simple act of touching him helped to ease some of the anguish Debra's death had inflicted upon her.

"She started talking about the apocalypse and horsemen and death riding a horse. It was... Well it was just one of the creepiest things I've seen and we've seen some creepy crap recently," John answered. Riley did a double take when she saw he had another beer in his hand. "Then she blew her brains out."

"John," Carl said as he leaned out from the back door of an SUV.

John shrugged. "Well she did. Crazy right?"

John's gaze pinned Al, he seemed to be seeking some reassurance that it
was
crazy. Al's frown deepened as he tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Sounds like it was from Revelation."

"That's what I said." Carl shut the door on the vehicle and stepped away.

"Great so we've confirmed it's Revelation," John said.

Riley grimaced as he took a long swallow of what had to be piss warm beer. He crumpled the can in his hand and tossed it into the back of an empty car. "Let's just avoid horses from here on out," Bobby suggested but though he tried to smile, it faltered as he shook his head and walked toward another vehicle.

She glanced back at where they had left the car and truck. She'd expected the others to be far enough away so that she couldn't make out their features, she was startled to realize they hadn't made it nearly as far as she'd thought. Exhaustion was really starting to wear on her. She rubbed at her cheeks and eyes as she attempted to revive herself a little.

A bed, or even a floor, sounded like a great thing right now, but she still turned away and forced her feet to move onto the SUV that was closest to her. Peering in the window, she felt her stomach drop as she spotted the man in the front seat with his head bent forward. She knew Carl was right, but even so she wasn't about to start searching the vehicles with people still in them unless it became absolutely necessary.

She turned away and made her way toward another pickup. Her arms shook as she placed her hands on the open tailgate. Heat radiated into her palms, and she tried to lift herself quickly into the truck to spare her skin. The events of this day had left her far more drained than she'd realized though as her muscles protested the movement and it took all she had to pull herself into the bed of the truck.

The adrenaline that had propelled her through the grocery store and houses was fading away. She was tempted to just sit and let the others continue onward but then she thought that was probably how Debra had felt in the end. Perhaps all Debra had really wanted was to sit and rest, to have just a minute of peace again. Riley didn't want to ever truly understand how Debra had felt at the end, but she knew simply sitting here was a good way to start down the path that could possibly lead her to Debra's destination.

With a groan, she pushed herself up and forced her feet to shuffle toward the metal toolbox taking up a good chunk of the truck bed. Kneeling down she popped the lock up on the right hand side of the box and leaned over to look in. She lifted a tarp out of the box but that was all that it contained.

Tossing the tarp back inside, she moved to the other side of the box and unlocked it. A sigh of relief escaped her and she almost let out a shout of joy as she spotted the red gas can tucked neatly within. The sight of it was better than the time Santa had brought her the bike she'd been hinting, asking and finally begging for, for Christmas.

Two cans, they were up to at least two gas cans again now. She grabbed hold of it and went to pull it out of the box but it gave her more resistance than she'd expected. Liquid sloshed within it as she reached in with her other hand and pulled it out.

"There's gas in there?"

She turned as Xander rested his hand on the side of the truck before quickly pulling it away. "Yeah."

"Strange."

Riley leaned forward and peered through the back window into the front seat of the older model truck. The dashboard had yellow bits of stuffing sticking out of the cracks in it, the material on the ceiling was hanging down, and the awful dice hanging from the rearview mirror looked as if someone had actually tried to use them in more than a few games. She hadn't been paying much attention when she'd first climbed into the back of the truck but now she noticed the holes and flakes of rust that speckled the bed.

"I'm guessing it was more than a gas problem that stopped it," she said.

Xander leaned over to look in the window. "I'm going to say you're right. Nice dice." He stepped back and held his hand out. "I'll take the can."

The quaking muscles in her arms were relieved to hand it over. He met her at the end of the truck and helped her climb out of the bed. Riley spotted the others gathered around a cluster of vehicles that had crashed into each other and nearly barricaded the entire highway. There was a strip on the right hand side that they would just barely be able to drive the truck through.

"Bet you this brings back some memories for you," she heard John say as she and Xander walked up to where the others had gathered. She didn't know what John was talking about until he stepped back to reveal Carl searching through the backseat of a police car. Carl said something that she couldn't make out, but she knew it hadn't been friendly as John chuckled and shook his head. "Easy killer."