Mad World (Book 3): Desperation (10 page)

“Jake, wait, for god’s sakes, wait a minute!” said DeAndre.

“I have a feeling about this,” Dad said. “I have a theory.”

Jonathan spoke up from the back seat. “At least let us back you up, cover you, protect you. These monsters nearly killed Risa!”

“Yeah, man.” DeAndre had his shotgun in his hand already. “We’ll cover you.”

“Dad, don’t you dare step out of this SUV without us,” I said. He already had the door half open and one leg out.

Swearing under my breath, I grabbed my shotgun and knife and opened my own door. Jonathan jumped over the seatback and scrambled after me, shotgun in hand, knife already in his back holster.

Within less than a minute, we’d all piled out of the SUV, most of us highly trained soldiers, dad in front, the rest of us fanned out behind him in tight formation, shotguns in hand, all pointed at the zombie walking toward us.

Dad stopped right in front of the SUV and waited. The zombie hobbled toward us slowly, now ten yards away. I looked out at the rest of the zombie crowd. They were also watching the lone zombie walk toward us. Looking to either side, I saw the neighborhood we’d been trapped in was otherwise deserted. I wondered about that. We’d been attacked and chased by a far greater number of zombies than were in front of us now. Where had the rest of them gone?

My attention was drawn back to the zombie, it had finally stopped, just  few yards from Dad.

It stood there and looked into Dad’s face and I could see its eyes were just starting to cloud over. It had a freshly killed smell to it, not yet too rotted; its clothes had dried blood on them and were beginning to tatter, but were still had some semblance of repair. Its hair was dirty and matted with blood. It had lost its shoes somewhere along the line, and one foot had on a black sock, while the other was bare and filthy.

Dad looked into its face, his hands at his side, looking as calm as I’d ever seen him. By contrast, the rest of us were all in a slight crouch, holding our shotguns leveled at the zombie’s chest, ready for anything. If that monster made a sudden move, I was certain it would be torn apart by four blasts coming from powerful, high-gauge shotguns.

The zombie stared back into Dad’s face for several minutes. Then, seemingly gathering its courage, it stepped forward and began to speak.

“Puh....”
it seemed to struggle
. “Puh...pl...”
It looked down and then up again. It closed its eyes and then opened them again. And then it tried again.

“Pllleasssee...”
The zombie seemed to choke a bit, then kind of cleared its throat.
“Please. Please hhh...  Please.  Hhhelp.”
it looked into Dad’s eyes, it almost looked like it was beseeching him.

“Plllease hhhelp us.”

Total and complete astonishment. My mouth dropped open.

Dad seemed speechless, and then, “Help you?”

The zombie seemed happy we’d understood it.

“Yesss. Pllease. Please hhelp usss. Nelssson did this,”
it said again.

I looked over at the other zombies and was floored. They were still, for the most part, standing still and waiting. But a few of them had sat down to wait. I had never seen a zombie sit and wait. The ones sitting down were looking down at the ground, at us, or just around the area. They did not seem agitated at all. I had never seen a zombie that wasn’t agitated. This was amazing.

I heard dad speak again.

“What help do you need from us?” he asked.

The zombie looked at him, and its eyes seemed to search for the right words.

“Pplllease… help us. Please. Please help us. CCC.... Cu...”
It seemed to struggle with the word. Then, amazingly, it clearly said,
“Please help us. Please cure us.”

It looked at Dad, then at all of us. We looked back in astonishment.

Clearly, these were not the same zombies who had been chasing us.

Dad remained silent for a good minute or two, searching the zombie’s face for some sign it might be trying to trick him - or, on the other hand, that it might be on the level. Then, he seemed to choke on a thick voice as he spoke, clearing his throat and trying again, finally saying:

“We will try our best. You have my word on that,” before nodding to her and then turning to get back in the SUV. 

The zombie fixed its gaze on each one of us, and we could see the pleading look in its eyes. Then, it started retreating, and so did we, keeping our shotguns trained on it until we got back inside our vehicle.

I know I felt just a little foolish pointing my shotgun at an apparently peaceful zombie, but those two words, “peaceful” and “zombie” hadn’t really coexisted in any sentence I’d ever imagined before.

Back in the vehicle, we were all silent while we watched it rejoin its fellows. Then the whole group of them melted into the surrounding alleys. Within minutes, we were alone, sitting in our vehicle in a deserted street.

It was quiet as a cemetery at midnight.

Not a thing moved, no birds, no cats or dogs, nothing.

Even the wind was silent. In fact, the whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

Finally, Dad put the key in the ignition and turned it, and the engine roared to life. 

As if by agreement, we all remained silent as we slowly made our way back to the highway and drove out of town.

I looked out the windows as we left, but I didn’t see so much as a whisper or hint of any zombies. It was as if they’d never been there
.

Fourteen

We drove on into the evening, leaving the sun behind us as we traveled the lonely road. Dad did not stop again, except to gas up, we ate what we had and drank water from bottles and pushed on into the night. Sometime in the early evening, we passed from Ontario into Québec and the feel of the countryside became not only rural, but farmland. Since it was nighttime, the moonless night was inky black. Out here in the unsullied north the stars shone brighter than I’d seen them in a long time.

The one time he did stop for petrol, Jonathan and D stood watch with shotguns in hand as Dad pumped fuel into our large double tanks. We saw a few people inside the gas station and we nodded to each other, but that is as far as our interactions went. Gas stations were one of the last businesses to remain in most rural areas, the owners hanging on and persevering, and charging ridiculous prices for the precious fluid.

We passed through three more mid-sized towns on our way to the border crossing south of Montréal, which was more than eight hours away. 

“DeAndre,” Dad said, breaking the silence of the last four hours. “What’s the latest Sanctuary intelligence on Montréal?”

“Well, it’s better than it was last year,” D said wryly. 

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Wasn’t Montréal nearly overrun two years ago?”

Jonathan turned to me. “Remember the slash and burn nobody wanted to do?”

I nodded my head uneasily. DeAndre continued.

“The PM argued with Parliament for months about it. She told them intelligence had reported back with a civilian population of several thousand still holed up in the office buildings and outlying homes.”

I looked at Zach, and he just raised his eyebrows in a ‘Don’t ask me’ look that, if it hadn’t been for my clenched stomach I would have found adorable.

Looking back to Jonathan, he just shook his head grimly and stared out the window at the fields we were passing by.

It was nearly midnight.

DeAndre yawned as he spoke, “Carolyn Deveraux was never very good at appealing to some of the more extreme and militant members of Parliament. They finally got enough votes on their side, especially with the American contingent at them at every chance ... They threw a blast cluster every hundred feet throughout the city proper, and flamed the rest. Took back the city two months ago.” He turned to Dad again. “Intelligence says the city still has a twenty percent saturation level, and that most civilians have fled, but that there might be stragglers who moved in after the clusters.”

Apparently, there was a lot of food stored in warehouses inside the Montréal city limits, and starvation was still a huge issue on the smaller, outlying farms in this part of Québec. Resources like that were an irresistible temptation to those who were at the end of their rope. Desperation drove people to extreme lengths.

“Well, maybe try and find a route around it, I don’t like those odds, not in our situation,” Dad fell silent, in deep thought.

Nodding, DeAndre began searching the map for an alternate route.

After a few minutes, he spoke again. “We can go through Ottawa and cross at Cornwall. I don’t think that will be as much a danger.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Of course, there is always a danger.”

We grimaced. At this point, we hardly needed to be reminded.

___

We had been driving for several more hours, and discussing what had happened back in the town we’d stopped in.

“That was the weirdest, creepiest thing I’ve ever heard of,” I said. “Zombies jumping us, trying to stop us. Actually targeting us.” I looked back at Jonathan. “Do you think they did it because of me?”

A puzzled look crossed his face, then he just shook his head.

“Luke,” Dad was talking up front as he drove. “Whether or not they were after you, well, we’ll probably never know.”

“It does seem likely, though,” said DeAndre. “I mean, what are the odds they just started chasing us, out of all the cars that peeled outta that place, randomly?” He shook his head, mumbling about crazy zombies getting crazier.

“What I am really curious about is how they could tell our SUV had you in it?” Dad said. “I don’t think they could have been the same lot from Thunder Bay, we’d been driving almost constantly, there’s no way they could’ve kept up. Even if they were a different crowd, they may have some kind of instructions to go after you. But how did they know you were in that particular vehicle?”

“Yeah, they came rushing over that hill like they had a purpose,” Zach said. “Like they planned it, like they’d waited for us in the area, and were after us. Why?”

“Why, indeed.” Dad said, his tone flat and determined. “Why Luke at all? Because he’s  hybrid? Granted, they can smell it on him, or rather, his lack of human smell. But why go after him? Why do they want him?”

We were all silent for a while, each of us lost in thought.

“You know what was weirder than that first group of zombies chasing us and wanting Luke?” asked Zach. “The weird zombies
not
chasing us, but instead wanting our help.”

“Oh my god, tell me about it,” I said. “That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. Good freaky, but freaky nonetheless.”

“I have a theory about that,” Dad said.

“You said that earlier,” Jonathan said.

“Well, Jake, spit it out, we’d all like to know,” DeAndre said, laughing.

“I am not too sure about things, but this latest encounter has made it all a little clearer.” Dad half turned to us. “Why would the zombies try to kidnap you, Luke?”

“I don’t know,” I said, puzzled.

“Why did this other group of zombies ask for our help?” DeAndre said. “They’ve been turned, infected and completely turned. How could we help them?”

“I don’t know, but they sounded desperate,” said Jonathan.

I noticed Zach beside me, lost in thought. “You okay?” I asked.

He looked up at me and smiled. “The zombies that overran our town seemed hell bent on destroying us all,” he said. “I remember my dad wondering on it. ’Cause before, the monsters had just attacked randomly, if they got close to us, or humans wandered too close to them. But now…”

I nodded. “They’ve organized. It’s like they have an actual battle plan or something.”

“Or something,” mused Dad.

I looked off into the distance, at the dark countryside. This part of Québec was all farmland, with a few small towns along the way, all clustered around the highway. Looking out the window, my eyes rose to the starry night as I stared out the window. Everything looked so deceptively peaceful. Dropping my eyes down to the countryside once more, I sighed. At this point, I had no doubt that, should we stop again, we’d have a very good chance of being set upon by murderous hordes again. I turned to the front seat again.

“Dad, how much longer to Boston?”

“I think we should hit the border in about seven to eight hours. We just went through Rouyn-Noranda, and next up is Val-d’Or. Boston should be another six to seven hours after we cross the border.”

“I hope the border doesn’t delay us too much,” DeAndre said, looking at the map.

I looked behind me. “How is Risa doing?” I asked Jonathan.

“Slightly better,” he said, looking down at her and checked her vitals again. Risa’s color was slowly returning.

“She looks better,” I said.

“I’ve given her something to stave off most infection, and the I.V. really helps,” he adjusted the cord and checked the intravenous line going into her arm. Looking up, he smiled at me. Hope rose in my chest for my big sister, hope that she would survive the horrible wounds that had been inflicted upon her. Hope that we would get back home to my mother with the antidote in time to save her. Hope.

___

We all settled down as the night grew longer, and Jonathan and DeAndre dozed off. Zach soon fell asleep against my shoulder, and it made me smile. I looked down at his face in the shadows and studied him. He was totally relaxed in sleep, dark lashes brushing against tanned cheekbones. Full lips slightly parted, goshdarnit but I wanted to kiss those lips.

We drove on into the inky blackness of midnight. After fighting it for a few hours, yawning, I finally fell asleep to the sound of our heavy tires on the asphalt highway.

Dozing for several hours felt good, helped me get a second wind for the last leg of our journey.

My sleepy brain slowly came awake to the whispering conversation coming from the front seat. DeAndre and Dad talking quietly in the front seat.

“I don’t care what we come across, what kind of scene or strange occurrence, I want to drive right past it and on through to Boston as fast as we can,” Dad was saying.

“Hey, you’ll get no complaint from me,” D replied softly. “I can’t stop thinking about Alyssa and Risa. I want to get to that doctor as fast as possible. And I tell ya, after everything we’ve been through, the hell Alyssa and Risa have experienced, I am expecting no less than a miracle from this Doctor Carroway.”

“I don’t know what to expect, but I’m hoping for a cure in time to save them both,” Dad whispered.

“I’m worried we’re running out of time,” DeAndre said. “I mean, look how much trouble we’re having just getting to Boston, we’re going to need a fast, trouble-free trip back home if we’re to get back to Alyssa in time.”

I stretched and yawned, looking out my window. It was light outside, maybe an hour past dawn. How long had I been asleep?

“Uh…” I said, rubbing my eyes awake.

“Oh! Didn’t know you were awake, Luke,” DeAndre smiled back at me. “Sleep well?”

“Yes, how long has it been?”

“We’re almost to Ottawa; you’ve been asleep almost six hours,” Dad said.

“That would explain the sunshine and my need to pee,” I mumbled.

Laughing, Dad said, “Well, we’re due for a pit stop anyway.” He pulled the big SUV to the side of the road. The barren countryside looked deserted as far as I could see. Unbuckling my seatbelt, I nudged Zach beside me. DeAndre and Dad grabbed their shotguns, hopped out, and scanned the area.

“Hey, wake up, sleepyhead.”

Yawning and rubbing his eyes, he sat up and looked around, blinking. “Whaatzerpening?”

I chuckled and hopped out of the vehicle, dropping to the ground. I was soon around the backside of the SUV and had my pants unzipped and felt that relief feeling of emptying my bladder after a long night. My eyes scanned the highway in the morning light, taking in the fields and nearby trees. Man, I thought. Desolate. Abandoned. Not so much as a birdsong. No squirrels ran around, no insects hummed. It was lifeless. It was like the planet was slowly dying. I finished and zipped up as Dad and Zach came to stand beside me.

“It’s like being on the moon. Nothing is alive here.” I shook my head.

“The zombies are multiplying. And for a while now, they’ve been eating anything and everything, even dead carcasses and roadkill. Insect nests, birds, rodents, anything, really,” Dad said.

Zach stood silently beside me and took my hand in his. I squeezed it lightly, and we all just stood there a few minutes, just looking at the dying landscape. It was depressing - if things could get any more depressing after twenty years of zombie plague infestation.

We were soon back on the road again. The highway ran alongside a river to the east, and beyond were more hills, with trees peppering the countryside. Looking out the window at the land go by, I noticed the first signs of civilization as we neared Ottawa. A few farms, a small gas station. Several bars. All looked deserted. We drove on, and after a while saw a few people in cars go by. They looked at us with unfriendly eyes. It made me shiver with foreboding.

I was daydreaming, half aware, looking out the window. We had been on Route 105, and had come to an intersection and were turning right onto a road called Chemin Maclaren. There were homes on our left and in front of us on either side of the street. The trees were thinning out on our right, and there was a wide, grassy field beyond where … Wait a minute. Something caught my eye through the trees. It looked like fire, and movement. I sat up, looking harder. As the road went alongside the large field of grass, I saw something - something I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing
.