Open Roads (8 page)

“You need anymore ammo for yours?” she asked, looking back while still leaning over the seat.

“I should be good,” Will said, shaking his head.

He felt a presence behind him and turned to see Holly.

“I wanna ride with you,” she said.

“You need to stay with the others in the van. Besides, I don’t think they have room for me in that car, much less two of us.”

“Why can’t you just ride with us, too?” Holly asked. “I’m with you, I’m not getting bad vibes from them, but you never know. Just ride with us and we can all just follow them up there.”

“That’s why I want to ride with them. If I get the sense that something isn’t right, I can do something to get us out of it before they get us all the way up that mountain. But I think we’re going to be fine.”

Her eyes faced down, signaling to him that she still felt uneasy. He cupped her face in his hands and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead.

“Trust me,” Will said. “It’ll be fine.”

***

Charlie merged onto Interstate 40 and headed east. Claire rode in the passenger seat and Will sat in the back, his sidearm neatly tucked away at his side. The sun sat in the sky, bringing with it a midday’s heat. Grey clouds shifted in the distance, hinting at rain.

“Gotta think these warm days’ll be past us soon,” Charlie said, striking up friendly conversation.

“I’m lucky if I even know what month it is at this point,” Will said.

“Some of the others in our group keep a calendar up-to-date, but I try not to look. It’s not as if it really matters.”

Will smiled. Time to him seemed so futile now. He’d thought he’d have plenty more holidays with his parents, and that they’d be around when he finally decided to settle down and get married, and even have a child. But none of that would happen now, and time seemed not to matter much to him, either. In fact, time was bullshit.

“How many are in your group?” Will asked.

“Including Claire and I, there’s seven of us now.”

The
now
definitely caught Will’s attention, and the next logical question of wondering what happened to the others nearly came spewing out of his mouth. He caught himself, though, knowing that either Charlie or Claire would prod right back if he chose to question how many people they’d had in their group to begin with. Will wasn’t ready to give his own answer back, in hopes that it could maybe come up later for Gabriel, Holly, or Jessica to answer.

Instead, Claire came at Will with another question he wasn’t ready to give a direct answer to.

She asked, “Any idea what in the world caused all this?”

Will chewed on the question for a moment, thinking carefully how he’d answer. He even found himself involuntarily pulling away his shirt sleeve and massaging the bite marks on his arm, before realizing what he was doing and quickly pulling the sleeve back down to his wrist.

“I don’t know,” Will said, lying.

“Gotta be some kind of virus,” Charlie said. “At least, that’s what we think. One of the guys with us is hellbent on thinking that it’s a biological terrorist attack, like ISIS or something. Like maybe someone contaminated our food or water system somehow.”

“Terrorist attack,” Will said. He nodded in agreement and said, “Makes a lot of sense.”

And in a way, it really did. Only Will knew that ISIS wasn’t behind the attack, but that instead it was some sort of supernatural being.

“So is that why you’re headed to D.C.?” Claire asked. “To see if they have any answers there?”

“Kinda,” Will said. “We’re mainly going because that’s where Gabriel and Dylan are from. Gabriel’s the one who wanted to shoot Charlie.”

A nervous laugh came from Charlie. “Yeah, well, glad he didn’t. That his son?”

“Dylan? No. They were in a plane when The Fall happened. It crashed. They were the only two survivors.”

“Damn,” Claire said. “They survived a plane crash?”

Will nodded.

“You said ‘The Fall’,” Charlie said. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s what we call it. I was sleeping when it happened, but apparently everyone who was initially infected just randomly fell to the ground. So, we started referring to it as ‘The Fall’ in our group.”

Charlie had enough awareness to turn on his turn signal before exiting off the interstate, or perhaps it was just an old habit he’d held onto. Will looked outside and saw the sign that said ‘Campgrounds’ and had an arrow pointing to the left, the same direction that Charlie headed at the end of the ramp, again applying his turn signal as a courteous gesture to Gabriel, still driving the van behind them.

Cars were vacant, scattered across the bridge. A truck had even driven into the concrete barrier, its front tires now hanging off the edge, looking down onto Interstate 40. Will had one of those rare moments where he reminded himself that each one of the vehicles he saw along the road represented a life. He’d put himself past thinking about such things, but occasionally the thought snuck up on him. And for just a moment, he wondered if the person who’d been driving the truck had wrecked because they fell Empty, or wrecked in sheer confusion at the chaos around them.

Charlie navigated through the vehicles as if he could have done it with his eyes shut, and about another mile down the road, he pointed to a large billboard.

“That’s where we’re headed.”

The billboard showed your typical asshole American family, complete with a happy husband and wife, a son and a daughter — all white, of course — and a yellow Labrador Retriever. The parents stood in an embrace on the front porch of a log cabin, looking out into the yard as the two children played with Old Yeller, little Timmy rearing back to throw the dog a tennis ball. The top of the billboard read, in big yellow letters, ‘Visit Point View Cabins - Where North Carolina Vacations’. The sign also informed those passing by that they were 15 miles out.

“Looks quaint,” Will said.

Charlie chuckled. “Yeah, it might be just a little different than that now.”

Will noticed how quiet Claire had been. Considering everything that had gone down in the store, he couldn’t blame her for being unsure about him and his group.

“So, how do you two know each other?” Will asked. “Friends? Couple? Brother and sister?”

The last suggestion got a small laugh out of the two, considering Charlie’s light chocolate skin and Claire’s a-typical suburban white girl appearance, complete with the blonde hair and blue eyes.

“New friends,” Claire said.

“So, you guys met after The Fall?” Will asked.

Charlie peeked at Will through the rearview mirror, and replied with a very shortened, “Yes.”

Pain lay behind those eyes in the mirror, and Will felt as if he might be stepping over the line, prying too much. Just like he didn’t want them doing to him. Charlie clearly had his own newly acquired memories that he was trying to block out.

“Sorry,” Will said. “Wasn’t trying to get too personal.”

Charlie sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “No, it’s okay, man.”

Claire reached over and rubbed Charlie’s shoulder, as he fought off tears.

“My,” Charlie said, hesitating to start. He took a deep breath and started over. “I’d had the trip up here planned for months. It was supposed to be my wife and I’s ten-year anniversary getaway. I’d saved all my PTO over the last year and a half for this trip.” He stopped again to choke back tears.

“Man, you don’t have to talk about this,” Will said, feeling guilty that he’d ever even asked.

“Really,” Charlie replied. “It’s okay. I need to.”

Will rubbed the scruff on his face and nodded at Charlie through the mirror.

“That morning, we’d decided to go hiking. That was the main reason we came up here. Desiree grew up in these parts and had done a lot of hiking as a kid. We’re from Atlanta, and while it’s a real active town, it’s flat. Myself, I would have rather had gone to the beach, but I knew this is what D would have really wanted.

“Anyway, I got up and made her breakfast — french toast, her favorite. We sat out on the back porch of the cabin, sipping coffee, eating our weight in maple syrup and carbs, and looking out toward our mountain view. God, it was so beautiful. We spent a couple of hours just taking in the scenery. I work in I.T., so I sit in a cubicle most of the day and don’t exactly get to see these kinds of things.

“After that, we drove ten miles or so to Rabbit’s Run; it’s this really difficult hiking trail. God forbid D just want to do something casual and relaxing. I remember, we reached—”

Charlie had to stop in order to gather himself. The tears really came now, and Claire rubbed his shoulder again.

“Do you want me to drive?” Claire asked.

Charlie shook his head. “I’m almost done.”

He cleared his throat and continued.

“We hiked all the way to this waterfall. I’d never seen one in person, at least not like this. It scaled what had to be fifteen stories high. I just stood there next to her, basking in God’s amazement and wonder. I wrapped my arm around my wife, and we put our heads together. Neither of us said anything; we just looked at the water comin’ down and the mist it created.

“I smiled at her and turned around to leave. I said something to her, and at this point, I really don’t remember what. All I remember is hearing the thud behind me and the splash in the water.”

Charlie wiped his eyes and sniffled.

“When I turned back around to see what the noise was, Desiree was face-down in the water. I—”

Charlie bawled now. Nothing could keep him from crying his eyes out, and Claire hovered her hand over the steering wheel just in case Charlie had a lapse in judgement.

Will found himself at a loss for words.

“I’m so sorry, man.”

Charlie sniffled and forced a smile into the mirror. He shrugged and said, “Hey, we’ve all lost somebody, right?”

Yeah,
Will thought.
We have.

CHAPTER NINE

As they rode up the steep incline, all that surrounded them were trees. Birds flew overhead, and Gabriel even had to slow the van once to avoid running over a rabbit. For at least a few moments, the world felt like the world again, as opposed to a playground for undead, evil spirits.

A sign off to the side of the road read: Point View Cabins - Just Ahead.

Gabriel had driven quietly for most of the trip. He’d remained uneasy about following these people up here. For one, he was getting tired of detours, regardless of how necessary they were. Add on to that the fact that they’d just held these two people at gunpoint, going as far as physically assaulting Charlie, and Gabriel stirred in his head the distinct possibility that they were headed straight into a trap. The one upside was that neither Charlie or Claire had a way to alert the rest of their group that they’d be coming, so some kind of surprise ambush was, more than likely, out of the question.

After a sharp turn, the cabins came into view. Dylan shot up in the back, leaning in between the front seats.

“That’s where we’re going?” he asked, a kind of excitement in his voice that Gabriel hadn’t heard.

“That’s where we’re going,” Gabriel replied, matter of fact.

“Cool!”

The place wasn’t exactly what Gabriel had expected. When he and Katie had gone on a cabin vacation a few years ago in Vermont, they’d gone to a more remote location — a single cabin with a hot tub and a gorgeous view. This place was more like a campground. There were two rows of identical cabins, each with its own gravel pathway leading up to a short set of stairs connected to a small front porch. The cabins themselves looked big enough to only hold a small family in each one. It was the kinda place you’d come if you didn’t want to spend a lot of money renting a place more secluded, especially if you planned on spending more time outside of the cabin than inside. The recreation area surrounding the cabins gave plenty of reason to be out in the open air. Picnic tables sat in the open, along with enough charcoal grills to make the entire area smell fabulous on a summer’s evening. A few people who sat at the tables stood up, and appeared to be calling to others. This made Gabriel at least slightly anxious, and he took hold of the gun at his side.

As they approached the campground, Gabriel noticed something that finally took him away from the mirage of a vacation dreamland.