Deathly Contagious (34 page)

He slammed the door closed and moved my bag back under the seat.

“Oh, sorry,” I told him. “I forgot I left it out.”

“It’s alright,” he said and pulled the seat belt across himself. “I want to thank you, Orissa.”

“For what?”

“Uh, for saving my life,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh, right. Thanks too. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that all alone,” I told him and smiled.

“I didn’t do much,” he admitted shyly. “Don’t tell anyone, ok?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Tell them what?”

He let out a deep breath and looked down. “That you found me just standing there.”

Had Rider been just standing there? I couldn’t see him; I had no idea what he was doing. “Why were you just standing?” I questioned.

“I gave up.” The words spilled from his mouth as if he had no control. “When I fell behind, I just knew there was no way I could get out alive.”

“You were injured,” I reasoned.

He shook his head. “Even if I wasn’t…”

He looked so ashamed. I wasn’t the kind of person to give up or accept defeat; it wasn’t a feeling I was familiar with but I assumed it was awful.

“Hey,” I said gently. “It was bad back there. Stick anyone in that situation—a tornado, a total blackout, a maze-like parking garage, and a herd of zombies—and see what they do. I guarantee they’d give up as well as fall down crying.”

“You didn’t,” he reminded me.
“No, I didn’t.”

“You’ve been through a lot. How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I asked and twisted to look him in the eye.

“Not give up.”

“There were times I wanted to,” I admitted. “I’d like to say that’s the truth for all of us, mostly because it will make me feel better. This world…is dead. I had to find things to live for.”

“Like what?”

“I promised Raeya a long time ago I’d never let anything bad happen to her. If I gave up and died, she would too. And I had my little group from the hospital to look after.” And then there was Zoe; it still hurt to think about her. I remembered the way she looked at the world. She was so innocent. All she saw was the beauty around her. She had been dying for so long but was so full of life. When she died I promised myself to keep going, to live for her. I shook my head. “And now I have everyone at the compound.”

“Especially Hayden,” he added with a grin.

I smiled back and, for the first time, realized how young Rider looked. He couldn’t be over twenty-one.  “And my grandpa used to tell me that you don’t give up just because something is hard. The harder it is, the more it’s worth it in the end.”

“Thanks,” Rider said. “For talking to me.”

“You’re welcome.  It’s nice, sometimes.”

“Yea, it is.”

Hayden jogged over and dashed inside the truck. He handed me the folded up map and I brushed the raindrops off and put it in the glove box.

“We’ve got roughly five hundred miles to go to get to the Pennsylvania border. It should take about eight hours, give or take. With the weather being this shitty, I’d say give.”

“We’re not driving straight through, are we?” Rider asked.

“No. We want to get away from this place and find somewhere to park for the rest of the night,” Hayden told him.

“Good,” Rider and I said in unison. Hayden pushed the power button on the radio and put the truck in drive. We decided to backtrack just a bit to try and avoid any more roads cluttered with random crap from the tornado. We spent a while looking for another exit and ended up making pretty good time once we got onto the highway.

I unbraided my wet hair and combed my fingers through it. I had remembered to pack a brush this time. Once I retrieved it from my bag, I brushed out the remaining tangles and rebraided my hair in a tight fishtail braid. A circle of water quickly formed on my hoodie from the ends of my wet hair.

The truck was getting warm and it was making me sleepy. I closed my eyes for a minute only to open them when the truck rolled off the smooth road and bounced along the shoulder.

“What are you doing?” I asked Hayden.

“Off roading,” he said, looking over at me.

The truck bumped obnoxiously over the uneven ground. “I can see that.” And I could also see the pile up of cars on the highway. If I had bothered to look before I opened my mouth, I would have seen that we were going around it. Hayden glanced over at me again. His eyes lingered a little too long and he had to quickly jerk the wheel to avoid hitting a sign.

We hit what felt like a pothole in the weedy grass. Hayden winced and patted the dashboard, apologizing to his truck.  He slowed down, easing the truck through another rough patch.

I pointed to an S3 dragging itself along the road. The lights of the cars must have caught its attention; it raised a rotten hand and hissed. Hayden jerked the wheel and ran it over, its head popping like a grape under the big tires.

We drove for an hour and a half until we found an abandoned farming town. It was too dark to get out and explore.  The rain picked up again, pinging rhythmically off the roof of the truck. We pulled into a parking lot of what looked like a closed Wal-Mart.

Ivan pulled the Range Rover close to the truck, its lights shining in the opposite direction as ours. As far as we could tell, this place was completely desolate. In pairs, we wandered away to pee. Hayden promised he wouldn’t watch but said he didn’t want me out of his sight. He still felt guilty for losing me in the garage. When we got back to the truck, I helped Wade go through the Rubbermaid bin our food was kept in. We picked out what we thought was a good combination—applesauce, peanut butter, crackers, and yogurt covered raisins—and passed it out to our friends.

We ate, made sure our guns were loaded, and got situated to sleep. Normally I would never volunteer to take the second watch but after the garage incident I was tired. I moved into the back and stretched out, pulling a sleeping bag over my body. Since it would make sense to have three sleep while three were on the lookout, Hayden and Brock also settled down for a not comfortable at all, half a night’s sleep.

Five hours later, we were woken to switch. Country music softly drifted from the truck’s speakers. Hayden drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. I rolled down my window and took in a deep breath of cold, night air.

The rain had ceased but the wind was still constant and strong. The air smelled fresh; I had always loved the scent of rain.

“I should have brought a book,” Hayden sighed.

“Yea, this is a little boring,” I agreed.

“It’s not like I could read it,” he added and surveyed the surroundings.

I nodded. As dull as zombie watching would be, it was something we took seriously.

“What’s your favorite animal?” he asked suddenly.

“A hawk. Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s a lot of normal stuff about you I don’t know.”

“Oh. Black is my favorite color, dandelions are my favorite flower. I’m a Scorpio, have bitchy identical twin cousins on my dad’s side that I haven’t seen since I was twelve, stopped believing in Santa when I was eight, don’t get poison ivy, and used to have a slight obsession with fire.”

“You don’t get poison ivy? I’m jealous.”

“Yea. I remember playing in a patch of it when I was just a kid. My mom freaked out and took me to the hospital thinking I was going to have some horrible, allergic reaction. When nothing happened, the doctors told us that not everyone is bothered by it.”

“You don’t want to know the parts of my body I’ve gotten poison ivy.” He smiled and shook his head. “I like blue, don’t care about flowers, don’t know my zodiac symbol, have more cousins and second cousins than I can count. I think I believed in Santa until I was twelve—don’t judge. I still have a slight obsession with fire. And I don’t think dandelions are really flowers.”

“Yes they are.”

“They are weeds,” he insisted.

“Whatever. I still like them.”

“Why would anyone
like
them? They’re a pain in the ass.”

I folded my leg underneath me. “They’re the first plants to come up in the spring and the last to die in the winter. They’re tough; you can spray the suckers with weed killer and they still won’t die. They grow anywhere; in a lush lawn, a dry patch of dirt or a crack in the sidewalk. Even when they’re dead, they’re still cool looking and offer entertainment. Don’t tell me you never wished on a dandelion and then blew the seeds off. Plus, they’re yellow and cheerful and pretty much completely edible.”

“That’s an interesting take,” he pointed out.

I shrugged. “I suppose.” I turned to face Hayden. “When is your birthday? I feel like that’s something I should have known a long time ago.”

“July 3rd,” he told me. “Though it’s not like it matters, right? We can’t really celebrate it.”

“You’re a Cancer.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you liked astrology.”

“I don’t really,” I explained. “It’s interesting, I suppose. It pissed my mom and stepdad off when I took that interest in it.”

Hayden nodded and smiled at me.  I shook my head.

“I did a lot of stuff to piss people off. All I really did was piss away time I could have spent with them and doing other things.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over the past,” he said gently and leaned over the center console. He put his hand on my cheek and kissed me. “I’m gonna risk sounding incredibly girly and lame by saying the past made you who you are today. And I think that girl is pretty awesome.”

“Stop, before I barf,” I teased and leaned over to kiss him again. We asked each other more random questions, just like old times, until the sun came up. The six of us got out of our cars, stretched, and ate breakfast before hitting the road again. We stopped for lunch another five hours later.

I hadn’t paid attention to where we were, but I knew we were somewhere in Ohio. We built a small fire to heat up lunch.  I mixed water in with a two cans of chicken noodle soup and stuck the pot in the fire.

“Why can’t we go farther than Pennsylvania?” I questioned.

“It’s too far,” Brock immediately answered.

“But we’re pretty far now,” I brought up. “And if we want to canvass the whole country looking for survivors, then, well, shouldn’t we look everywhere?”

“Do
you
want to be that far from home?” Ivan asked.

“Of course not,” I told him. “I don’t
like
being as far away as we are now. But I know that in order to get stuff, we’ll have to keep going farther and farther out. The same with looking for people. There might be a lot of people out east.”

“When we get the orders to go that far, then we will,” Wade said simply.

“But that won’t be for a long time,” Rider said, seeming like he was trying to soothe himself; after last night I think he was ready to go home and not think about leaving for a very long time, let alone venturing out as far as the east coast.

Not wanting to start any sort of argument, I nodded. It still seemed odd to me. I more than understood not wanting to be far from the compound. A lot of bad shit can happen close to home. And when it happened far away our chances of getting an injured comrade back in time was extremely unlikely. I shuddered when I thought of what could have happened if Hayden was shot in Texas.

Thinking of Texas reminded me of the weird symbols painted on the doors. I had forgotten about it with everything that had gone on since our discovery of the odd marks. I couldn’t help but feel like there was something very obvious in their meanings that we dumbly overlooked. Part of me wanted to go back and check it out while the other part didn’t want to invest my time and energy in something that might forever remain a pointless mystery.

Ivan and Hayden debated what should be done over the walkie talkie as we drove northeast. One possibility was finding a place to bunker for the night since none of us wanted to spend another night in the car. But that would require us to stop fairly soon so we’d have time to find a safe area, check it out and prepare a place to stay for the night. Finally it was decided we would set up camp in the daylight, rest then spend tomorrow looking for survivors in a fifty mile radius of our campsite.

We drove down a street filled with old, ostentatious houses that had a gazillion windows and huge doors. I’d be the first to admit I was curious to go inside the historic mansions, but I wasn’t about to spend the night in a place with that many breakable glass panels.

“Oh!” I exclaimed when a nicely restored, green and white Victorian came into view. Unlike the last Victorian house I stayed in, this one was huge, inviting and welcoming. The best part about it was that the first story windows and doors appeared to be carefully boarded up.

“That’ll work,” Hayden agreed and radioed to Ivan. We patrolled the street for a while longer before stopping. When we didn’t see any zombies, we pulled up to the house and got out, weapons at the ready.  We went around the house inspecting the boards.

“They wanted to come back,” Brock said, meaning the homeowners. “Who ever put these up did a good job. It’s sturdy; it would take a lot to pull them apart or bust through.”

“That’s great and all,” Wade agreed. “But how do we get in? I’d hate to break any of the boards and give the zombies a place to crawl through.”

I took a step back and looked at the covered porch. “I’ll climb up, go downstairs, and go through the garage.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Hayden immediately objected.

“Come with me then.”

“I will,” he insisted. It wasn’t easy hoisting ourselves and our weapons up onto the roof of the porch. Hayden broke a small, oval window and waited. “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered and stuck his head inside. “Or smell rotting.”

He stepped through the window and told me to wait there while he checked it out. I counted to thirty before going in.

“Way to wait,” he said and rolled his eyes.

“I wasn’t gonna let you have all the fun,” I told him and smiled. We were standing in what I could only describe as a small loft. Behind us and to the left was a characteristic Victorian tower filled with floor to ceiling paned windows. The loft connected to a circular hallway that was open to the foyer below. On either side of us were bedrooms, each with their own walk in closet and bathroom. A lucky child named Lucas, as the letters above his bed spelled out, had lived in once.