The Long Way To Reno (9 page)

            I
had to look for some cover. A reliable vehicle with darkly tinted windows.
Hopefully with keys inside, so I could use the heater. A motorized sound made
me still – I thought I was hearing things until I realized that the sound
I was hearing were moving vehicles.

            I
turned, scanning the line of cars. I saw dust flying from down the hill, near
the train tracks. My heart felt like it was going to burst when I saw the
military Humvees. I was instantly filled with hope and life and exaltation
because the
military
was here. They were safety, home base! I could hop
in with them, and they’d be useful with guns, and get me to where I needed to
go.

            I
maneuvered through the line of cars and waved my arms, running off the crowded
freeway to catch their attention. I felt so freaking relieved when one of them
in the lead vehicle waved back and signaled that they were pulling over to get
me.

Chapter Five

There
were five vehicles. These armed soldiers had other civilians with them – shell-shocked
people in various states of dress, some wrapped in ugly grey blankets. Their
voices were loud when they greeted me, and the vehicle that allowed me in was
driven by a guy blasting rock from portable speakers. They had four other
civilians in the back. As the female soldier helped me in, I immediately
recognized one.

“Oh
man, how
awesome
, you made it!” Harley exclaimed, practically yanking me
into the vehicle to make me sit by him. The soldier shut the doors, rapped on
the ceiling. Told me to buckle up while at the same time helping me remove my
Fubar as I struggled with it. Before I could answer Harley, I had to thank her
for helping me. She looked at my weapon with some amusement before giving it
back and taking a seat near the driver and passenger.

“I
was hoping you got away,” Harley continued, looking at me with wide eyes and a
big grin. It looked like he’d made a trip to Walmart, too. I remembered seeing
the mechanic’s jacket in the men’s section. But I saw the collar of the Halo
shirt I’d given him peeking out from his flannel. He also had a gun I
remembered seeing in the hunting section sitting across his lap, along with the
backpack he’d loaded in the warehouse. This guy was a survivor, I guess. Just
like me. I felt better, now, just seeing him.

I
removed my sunglasses, and he winced. “I did. After
this
happened.”

“Ooh,
ouch…oh, that looks…do you need ice?” he asked.

Before
I answered, I looked at the others. There was an older man sitting across from
us, wearing flannel pjs. A high school student with scene hair, tight skinny
jeans and an Elmo sweater. A portly woman in a nurse’s uniform. All of them
exhausted, shocked and trying not to pay too much attention to us. The girl had
been crying – her makeup streaked down her plump cheeks. I wondered if I
should share my removal wipes to her, then remembered Harley asking me a
question.

“Oh,
I iced it back there. I took some ibuprofen, too. Did you, like, run into those
chicks anywhere?” I asked. The rock music being blasted up front was a
background to the driver’s screechy voice as he sung along. Looking at the
soldiers, while fully decked out in uniform, they looked cheered and upbeat.
They spoke loudly over the running motor, bad music and the repeated thumps as
tires rotated over railroad ties. I bounced uncomfortably in my seat and realized
why the women had their arms crossed over their chests.

“After
that, I didn’t see anybody else,” he muttered. I wondered how he survived. “I
thought they got to you. But when I finally got in there, they were fighting
amongst each other. One of them had a gun. I left when the Rabid caught up.”

“I
was able to get that gun. But then I dropped it…” I trailed off. I didn’t want
to talk about what I did. I clutched tightly onto my vest.

“The
cop, right? I wanted to get it so bad, but things were moving way too fast.”
Harley looked at me again. Winced. “Is that…is that your only injury?”

My
scalp hurt. My stomach hurt. I had various aches and pains all over and my
knees were hurting. My feet were sore from walking miles in new shoes. I had
blisters. I was cold. I think I had to pee, now. But I didn’t want to say all
that. I shrugged and nodded.

He
looked relieved. Seriously, what was he going to do if I said all that? He
looked at the others, and smiled at them. The girl smiled back. The old man
huffed and stared out the windshield. The bench seats were crammed so close
together that my own knees pressed against the seat ahead of me. The female
soldier laughed suddenly to some joke we didn’t hear, and her buddy looked as
if he remembered they had other people in their vehicle. He climbed onto the
seat between the old man and his comrade, lifting his sunglasses from his face
so that we could look directly into his face.

I
think I fell in love at that moment. He was very handsome – and from the
shape of his face and neck, very muscled and manly. My loins may have quivered,
but it had to be from the constant vibration the vehicle was making with the
railroad ties. Bright blue eyes, thick, high arches of eyebrow, cheeks plump
with too many protein shakes and manliness – a tight smile that suggested
his bulk was muscle, not fat. Jesus, I didn’t want to be obvious, but this guy
made me
very
happy I was where I was. I quickly ran my fingers through
my hair, fixing it hastily to look a little put together. Hoped nothing was
smeared as I ran my fingertips around my eyes, satisfied that things were still
in place. I think Harley rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t looking directly at him
to be sure.

“Hey
guys, just to let ya’ll know, “ he had to practically shout to be heard, and
his breath smelled like the minty gum that was visible as he spoke, “we’re
cruising it at forty miles an hour. We probably won’t reach Reno until, like,
later tonight. Once the ships come out, we have to camp somewhere in Mustang.
We’re probably going to take a detour through Virginia City just to get around
the mess on the freeway. Creep into the city from the side.”

“Ridiculous,”
the old man cut in sharply. I managed to look away from handsome soldier boy to
glare at him for the interruption. “Why not drive into Sparks? Into Wingfield
Springs from the mountains? These vehicles, they are equipped for off-road,
aren’t they?”

“They
are, but we’re headed to Carson,” he said, and he said it in a way that
suggested he’d said this before. “There are emergency camps set up where I said
we’ll hit, and we’re dropping all of you off with one of them. Once you’re
situated in those camps, we’re on our way. Sparks is out of the question. It
was pummeled, man.
All
of Reno and Sparks was pummeled. The freeways are
destroyed, so we have to use the side roads.”

I
stilled. No way. Why would aliens take time out of their Earth-conquering lives
to pummel a small city like Reno? Home of the thousand casinos, quickie
divorces, scummy outdoor festivals? I felt panic touch me, inch its way to my
throat. My parents had to be okay. They just had to be -! God…I hope they
didn’t try to use the freeway.

He
looked at me, then winced. Snapped his gum. “Want some ice? Hey, Sandy, got
some ice for that?” he then asked before I could answer, referring to the chick
in uniform.

“Yeah,
I – girl, what the hell?” Sandy then asked, removing her sunglasses to
look at me with bright hazel eyes. She had freckles all over the place, and her
lips were huge – but I already decided she was a good person because she
was in uniform. “You get that from an infected?”

“Rabid,”
Harley interrupted. He looked proud to have spoken up and said, “We named them
Rabid. Because it’s almost as if they got rabies.”

“You
ran into them?” the nurse asked, speaking up suddenly and looking at us. I
noticed that this information had grabbed everyone’s attention. “Is that why
you’re…armed?”

 “Hey,
what?” the driver hollered, wanting to be included. He turned his music down.
We were finally nearing USA Parkway.

“These
two ran into the infected!” the passenger – I looked at his namebadge.
His last name was Benson. The driver had to adjust his rearview to look at us.

“You…you
guys haven’t?” I asked, looking at them with rising trepidation. The other
survivors chimed in with their encounters.

“Nah,
man, not yet!” Benson shouted over raised voices and shared stories, while
Sandy recovered and bent down to rummage underneath her seat. “We only got the
reports! We didn’t see anything but the footage of the bombing!”

It
didn’t make sense that alien invaders would storm Earth to destroy hickville
towns like Fernley, and scummy places like Reno.

Sandy
had already snapped and activated an ice pack, and handed it to me. As I held
it to my eye gingerly, Harley looked as if he were going to help in some way,
so I gave him a dirty look to make him back off. Benson observed this while
Sandy put the First-Aid kit away.

“Are
you guys together?” he asked curiously.

“We’re
co-workers,” Harley said, before I could. “We worked at the same place when the
Rabid started…eating people.”

“How
could you guys have not seen them, yet?” I asked, bewildered to that. “They
were
everywhere
. It started from people hacking up a lung to just
– tearing other people apart.”

“The
aliens were guiding them to do this,” Harley interrupted quickly. I looked at
him with annoyance, but I guess I didn’t seem so threatening with an icepack
over my face, because he kept talking. “They were ushering the Rabid to
attack.”

“Huh,”
Benson said, Sandy hearing the last of this and snapping her own gum. “So, this
place…what was this place you guys worked?”

Harley
told him. Then he added, “It was pretty crazy.”

“I
was expecting to be laid off, soon, not eaten,” I muttered. Benson looked at
me, then down at the Fubar on my lap.

“That’s
a wicked weapon, girl,” he said with a grin, amused at the thought of me
wielding it. “But you’re way too beautiful to have gone through all that
trouble, so it looks like I’ll be watching over you
personally
from now
on…”

I
fought the urge to blush and preen. Harley shifted beside me with an impatient
wiggle and said, “So am I coming to understand that she and I are the only ones
that encountered them? What’d you mean by bombing?”

“The
cities were bombed last night, early morning, by these ships. By the time the
space agencies caught wind of their arrival, they’d already broken through the
atmosphere,” Sandy supplied. She was a ginger-blonde – it was all tucked
underneath her helmet. I had no idea what branch these guys hailed from, their various
colored badges bright against decorations of black and blue. From the naval
base? But wouldn’t that mean they’re sailors? How did that work on land bases?
“They shut down all communications satellites.  No cellphones, no
Internet. Countries couldn’t contact each other to warn each other. They
started from both coasts and worked their way in. Millions were either killed
or missing by the time we headed out from base.”

“What
ba –“ I tried to ask, but Harley interrupted again. Probably if I elbowed
him, I’d cause some serious internal injury, so I resisted.

“So
then how are you people handling this?”

“Evacuating
civilians, for one. We’re to rendezvous in previously designated areas here in
Northern Nevada, camps set up for statewide disasters following this year’s
terrorist attacks,” Benson supplied.

“Do
you guys know how to defeat them?” he asked, and all of us waited for the
answer.

Benson
looked uncomfortable, looking at Sandy. She didn’t know what to say either, and
I hope that the powers beyond these two had a better answer than a shrug.

Harley
sat back, a heavy exhale leaving him. The old guy started to complain over a
lack of answer, so the two turned to answer him and each other. The driver had
finally turned his bad music off and was straining to pay attention to the
tracks and to us. He looked as young as they did. A bad feeling hit me, then,
and I lowered the ice pack to my lap and tried to calm myself down.

“We’ll
be okay with these guys, at least they have the bigger guns,” Harley said to
me, and his breath smelled of gummy bears. He squinted at me, and I wondered if
this was a normal thing for him. “You can get to your parents’ faster. Maybe
they were evacuated into one of the stations they’re going to drop us off at.
Where did you say you lived?”

I
told him.

His
eyes searched my face, apparently noticing that I’d cleaned myself up. He
smiled in amusement – I had to admit, he did have this goofy sweet smile.
One that made me smile back, and it grew awkward once I realized that the examination
had turned into something else. I made myself look away at that time, feeling
it weird that there was a Moment between us. I just barely got to know the
guy’s name.