36 Hours (25 page)

Listen: I hear them. They’re following.”

“We’ve got to move,” Les said, standing by my side. “We stay here, we’re dead.”

“Where do you want to go?”

He beamed, “The country. Let’s go the
country
.”

“Austin! Les!” Hannah hollered. “Make up your minds!”

“Country,” I said, murmuring. “That’s back towards 741.”

“Is it bad?”

“Didn’t you see it? It’s a mess. Like drunks stole the road.”

“Navigate it!” Hannah yelped.

Shadows in the fog appeared several hundred feet behind us. “Here they come,” Les murmured.

I opened my door. “Help Ashlie down and
get in here
.”

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Hannah grabbed Ashlie; Les jumped up, and they helped her down. The pulled at the passenger door. “Austin!” I unlocked it. The three of them jumped in. Ash beside me, then Les, and then Hannah beside the window. I ignited the engine. It roared to life.

“Lock yours doors,” I muttered, checking mine. Hannah snapped hers locked. We turned around, driving past an artificial pond, around the house. The infected rushed past where we had been, and pursued the truck. More were coming from the subdivision in spurts of twos and threes. We reached the driveway. Gravel crunched under the tires. Tree limbs dangled above as we turned left on Pennyroyal, heading for 741. They rushed onto the street, giving a chase as we drove past a cornfield to our right and several sturdy houses to our left. They eventually tired and ran towards a house that had several lit windows. My throat knotted. Those in the that house wouldn’t be lasting too long. Hannah craned her neck to make sure they were gone, then leaned back in her seat, exhaling. “They’re so ugly.”

“Hard to imagine,” Les said, “that they were once
people
.”

Silence. A light rain began to fall. The windshield wipers got to work.

“Oh,” Hannah said. “Thanks for getting us back there.”

“No problem.”

No one said anything.
So ungrateful
.

The rain began to fall harder. Lightning flashed across the sky. A car lie in the ditch, the front windshield lying all over the front seat. Red splotches decorated the leather seats, but there was no body. The flash faded, and the headlights carved our way. Lines of spacious houses to our left passed by in a blur; I often drove this road to school. It was odd, though – the tender rain, the soft sighs of the wind, the soft sonnet of the engine. It was so—surreal. So yesterday – no pun intended.

Ashlie leaned forward; we were packed, but no one complained. She turned up the volume; static.

“Why don’t you put on a CD?” I offered. “Dad’s got Zeppelin.”

She shook her head, surfing through channels. Static on every one. Then a blurp, and she passed it.

“Go back,” Les pleaded.

She turned the knob back.
700 WLW
. Bil y Cunningham’s voice came over crystal clear.

Hannah put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh…”

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Hope flared within me. I unconsciously slowed down as we all listened:

… suburbs lost. Only known method of exterminating the infected: direct impact
to the brain. Do not panic. Do not leave your home. Secure yourself and your
loved ones. Secure any available weapons and supplies. Do not go outside. Do
not go onto the roads. No end to the crisis in sight. Outbound communications
have been lost in major U.S. cities on the East Coast. The plague is spreading
quickly eastward. Ohio residents have been ordered to remain in their homes.
Many suburbs lost. Only know method of exterminating the infected: direction
impact to the brain…

It repeated itself. Hope dashed again.

“It’s just a recording,” Les breathed. “Probably just before the station headquarters was… overrun.”

Do not go outside. Do not go onto the roads…

“Ash, why don’t you see if you can find some more stations?”

She nodded and began flipping through them, but there was static on all of them.

“This whole region is lost,” Hannah murmured.

The road dipped downwards and we came to the stoplight. The lights were out; the intersection was barren. I slowly turned right onto the three-lane state route. As we drove towards Franklin, I looked out the back window and could see orange flames in the far distance, the Arlington Mall area. Olive Garden. Barnes and Nobles. Borders Bookstore. ½ Price. Waffle House. All those legendary hang-outs of the ‘good old days.’ How wonderfully sweet it would be to sit down with Les and drink coffee in Borders, reading magazines and sitting on the plump couches, watching the thunderstorms pass through. We’d done that before. It had been a beautiful storm. Lightning danced, illuminating dozens of wrecks and hazards stretching towards the 73 and 741 intersection. I pressed on the brakes and the truck came to a stop. Everyone looked at me, wondering
What?
“I can’t go back that way.”

“Why not?”

“It’s teeming with them. Olde Clearcreek. Clearcreek Plaza. Are you guys blind?”

Hannah said, “We don’t have a choice. It’s the way to the country.”

“Isn’t there any other-“

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Les thumbed towards the Arlington Mall area. “Einstein, do you want to go back there? Do you have
any
idea how bad it’s got to be? Any place where there were people close together is gone. Towns. Cities. Shopping plazas – shopping
malls
. Restaurants. Subdivisions. We have to go to the country. The infected shouldn’t go into the country – they’re sticking around where it’s populated.”

The engine grumbled. Lightning flickered. Rain danced. The windshield wipers sang.

“Austin,” Hannah whispered. “Austin, you know he’s right. Where else are we going to go?”

I felt like I was at a crossroads. I had no idea where to go, what to do. I didn’t know how much longer we had. Clearcreek had fallen in what seemed to be less than an hour. The school – they had opened the doors, and it was madness in minutes. This was like nothing else ever seen before. I stared into the rain, lulled by the rain and wipers, wanting so desperately to go back in time, wanting to be coming home from work to the smell of Mom cooking and Dad watching TV

with a bowl of ice cream. Right then I would have been taking off my shoes and sitting down in the kitchen to the odors of steamed rice and broiled chicken, petting Goldie as he draped one paw over my leg. But no – here I was, in a truck, suspended in a world of bloodshed and chaos, of death and tears, screams and sobs, and it was becoming normal. I wasn’t shocked to see the skeletons of cars lining the streets, many burning; I wasn’t surprised by burnt-out buildings or nerve-racked by driving through peoples’ yards. All took on a strange breed of normalcy. Instead of eating and laughing and worrying about school tomorrow, I was famished, shaking with fear, standing on the edge of an ocean, pondering – how much longer will I live? How much longer till I’m one of them?

One of them?

My fingers tightened over the wheel. Eyes grew colder. I could wreck the truck. Kill us all. We’d never be like them. We’d never fall to-Hannah was grabbing my shoulder, reaching over Les and Ash’s laps. She yelled,
“Austin!
”

I turned my head, eyes glazed. “Yes?”

“What’s wrong with you? Let’s go. We’re cutting across the field, remember?”

Had I blacked out? I shook it from memory and planted on the gas. I meandered the truck between the pillaged wrecks, then took a dirt road into an Anthony Barnhart

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infertile cornfield. The headlights grazed over brown, bent stalks and the wheels jumped up and down as we treaded over the uneven, muddy surfaces. The static from the radio roared.

“Put in a CD,” I ordered.

Ash put in Zeppelin.
Black Dog
.

We drove past a massive cedar; it sat against an intersection, the intersection leading to the YMCA and Dorothy Lane Market and Kids & Tots Daycare. Through a clash of thunder and brazen display of lightning, I could see the wrecks at the intersection. Figures moved between the wrecks, hunched, forlorn. They watched us drive past, then launched in for a chase. I didn’t worry. They were stopped by a rising barricade of steel fencing and barbed wire. They shook the wire and screeched, and we could barely hear them. Ashlie turned up the CD. I smiled.

“Guys!” Les shouted, pointing out the window.

We followed his gaze. Lights burned in the parking lot of Dorothy Lane Market. Hundreds of infected humans milled about the front and sides of the store, banging on the windows, trying to get inside. It horrified me – so many of them! Three hundred, maybe even four hundred of them, filling the parking lot!

And they surrounded the polished, brick-and-mortar building. The large
DLM

sign stood ominously still, a frozen figure from an unknown time. Beams of light hit the windows, coming from the
inside
. Hope burned. Survivors. Trees moved into our view of the Market.

“How many do you think are in there?”

“Probably the customers and workers,” I said. “A lot like Homer’s Grocery”

“Why are they surrounding it?”

“Who knows? Maybe the survivors? A bloodlust?”

“Or,” Hannah said, “they’re drawn there out of distant memory. It’s a place they knew. They’re drawn to it. It’s on their subconscious, and their subconscious is controlling them? I don’t know.”

“Sounds good to me.”

A line of trees rose before us, blocking the way to the Spice Racks neighborhood. Had to find a way around. I drove off to the right. We jostled around inside the cab, sardines on a harbinger for Hell.

“I wonder if they saw us?” Ashlie spoke. “Saw us driving through the field?”

“They didn’t give chase, so I guess not,” Les answered.

“No. Not
them
. The survivors. In the windows?”

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I offered up a silent prayer for them. Then a prayer for everyone still alive. Was I supposed to believe in God with all this happening, with the world falling apart? I don’t know if believing in God or a deity or a superpower found any credibility now, but while every part of me silently, vehemently loathed God and his ‘good and perfect plans’ for us, another part surrendered to Him. If anyone was going to get us out of this one, it was Him, and
only
Him. The line of trees converged with a line of trees coming before us, forming a thick wooded forest. I let the truck run idle. “Now what?”

Hannah opened her door.

“What are you doing?”

“None are around,” she said, stepping out.

“So? What are you doing?”

She stared at us and crept away, around beside the truck, and knelt down. She clasped her hands.

I rolled my eyes. “Not
now
. Is she crazy?”

Les hissed, “Pray inside the truck, Hannah! He can still hear you!”

Ashlie slapped him, glared at me. “What’s wrong with you guys?” She jumped out, kneeling beside her, joining her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

Les answered, “Well, we want to live, for one thing.”

I opened my door, cold wind and rain hitting me.

“You too?”

“I’m keeping watch,” I said, and my feet splashed in the mud. I manhandled a curse, then climbed into the bed of the truck. As I scanned through the darkness, heart racing, looking for the slightest trace of movement, I found it more than ironic that I was standing tall in the middle of a field during a thunderstorm. Yet I’d rather be electrocuted than fall into
their
-My ears perked. Les leaned out the passenger side. Hannah and Ashlie stopped praying. It floated across the field, through the faint drizzling sighs of rain.

A guttural yell.

But not one of them.

It came across us, louder:
Wait!

I bent down, picked up the axe. We stared into the darkness. Les stepped into the showers.

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It came again, bouncing over the rutted field, desperate, frantic, winded.
Wait!

Wait!

“Les?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Get in the truck. The keys are in the ignition.” The truck was still on. The bed rustled. “Hannah, Ash, get inside. Go if they come. I’ll stay in the back. I’ll be fine.”

Everyone crowded inside; rain mat ed down my hair, ran down my face, sparkled on the axe blade.

Les leaned over the steering wheel, foot hovering over the gas pedal. An outline in the darkness, wheeling cries:
Wait! Wait!

Did the infected talk? No! Why was I worried? Another survivor! I clenched the axe tighter. Instinct scorched me, hollering,
Swing the axe, you can never be
too careful…
Wouldn’t his screaming attract attention? The figure grew louder, stumbling across the field, half-tripping over partly-buried stalks, blindly flailing about, drenching his boots and jeans in stark mud. He was big, but not fat – buff, muscles rippling under a soaked checkered shirt. One hand waved through the air; he held something long in his other hand. Lightning flashed; beads of light coiled across the field, burning into the forest, yet not piercing its inky depths; the ground seemed to undulate with the flash, and the guys’ eyes burned a victorious white; on the other side of the field, dark shapes leapt and clawed and beat at the wrought-iron fence. The man was alone. The flash vanished, and everything dropped into an untouchable gloom.

“Wait!” the man panted, running up to the truck. I still held the axe. I saw what he held – a shotgun. He leaned the barrel up against the truck and, breathing hard from exhilaration, looked up at me. His face contorted. What did he expect? Without a doubt probably
not
a teenager. I said nothing. He leaned against the truck. His arms were shaking; he turned to the side and vomited al over the field.

My throat shook. “Who are you?”

He coughed so rasp that it sounded like his insides were being shredded. He then rose up, back cracking. “Who are you?”