Sanctuary (12 page)

Meredith fired the engine.
 

The pickup growled in protest, as if it hadn't been started in days, and a puff of exhaust billowed out the back. Dan rapped on the window.

"All set!" he yelled. "Get out of here, Meredith!"

Dan watched the sun start to set from the bed of the pickup. The breeze was cool against his skin. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cab window, remembering what he'd seen Jed and Marvin do. The image of the brothers slicing the infected was imprinted in his brain like a nightmare he kept reliving. The fact that Tim reported them dead gave him no satisfaction. They were just two more dead faces in the graveyard of his mind.

It felt like days since Dan had slept, though it'd only been hours. His hair was matted with sweat; his clothes were filthy from a day's worth of travel. He'd give anything for an uninterrupted night's sleep, though he doubted that would happen soon.

The nap he'd taken earlier did little to sate his need for rest.

Tim and John were on either side of him, holding the rifles Tim had secured. Every so often, Dan attempted conversation, but for the most part, his words were lost to the wind.
 

Fields whipped past them, the scenery both beautiful and foreboding. Several times, Dan witnessed the infected stalking through the grass or hovering by the roadside. The creatures barely responded to the pickup. It was as if they'd already decided the truck wasn't worth the effort, or that they couldn't reach it.

Dan was glad to be in a vehicle rather than on foot.

A sign for Abbotsville flitted past.
Ten miles
.
As exhausted as Dan was, he was glad to be making progress. His eyes drifted to the sky, as if to conjure the chopper the others had seen, but the horizon remained dim and cloudless, devoid of life. The sun slipped farther into the east.
 

Dan tried to repress his biggest fear—that they'd find no help in Abbotsville, and that darkness would descend before they found shelter. The thought of being outside and alone with the creatures was a frightening one. As if to reinforce his fears, Meredith turned the headlights on.

The pickup hit a bump in the road, and Dan jolted in the pickup bed. He turned around. The road curved. Several houses appeared at the road's edge, dim and lifeless. When he looked back his companions, he noticed Tim's face had darkened.
 

"What is it, Tim?" he asked.

"I thought I saw something up ahead."

"What was it? People? A car?"

"I'm not sure. It was past those houses. Around the curve."

Dan stared between the two front seats, his eyes playing over the road. He raised his hand to rap the glass, ready to alert Meredith. He kept his eyes glued to the road. No sooner had the curve straightened than he saw a large mass of bodies walking away from them, about a hundred feet away. Even in the sun's dying glare, Dan could tell they were infected. The horde swaggered as it moved, limbs and heads cocked at odd angles. A few creatures crawled on hands and knees, as if they were soldiers in a trench, hell-bent on escaping a warzone.

"Meredith!" Dan shouted, banging the glass.
 

She careened to a halt. A few dozen bodies turned in their direction. More creatures spilled from the tall grass at the roadside, as if they'd been hiding in the cover of the landscape, waiting for someone to happen by. The infected had already swarmed the vehicle.

"Turn around, Meredith!" Dan yelled.
 

Meredith reversed, but the creatures had already flanked the vehicle on both sides. Quinn screamed, the sound of her voice muffled by the closed windows.

John and Tim stood in the truck bed, knocking back the creeping hands that were already trying to get up and over. Dan kicked at several as they threw their elbows over the truck bed. The pickup's tires whirred, stuck on a mountain of bodies—both standing and fallen.

"We're stuck!" Meredith yelled from the cab, revving the accelerator.

The infected raked the sides of the vehicle, glaring at the passengers with black eyes and open mouths. Ernie's barks were like gun bursts.
 

"Try driving forward!" Dan cried. His words were lost in the moans of the infected.

Meredith made an effort, but the street was dense with the things. Dan kicked at an infected dangling over the side of the truck bed. It pressed its hands to the floor as if it were an insect adhering to a flytrap. He gave it another swift boot, sending it tumbling backward. Beside him, Tim and John fought similar battles.

In his peripheral vision, Dan saw Tim raise his rifle and fire. The gun blast screamed in Dan's eardrums. Fists pounded on the side of the vehicle like beats in a tribal song. Across from Dan, one of the creatures had gotten over the passenger side, and it shrieked and got to its feet. Dan lifted his gun, but before he could squeeze off a shot, the thing barreled into him, pitching him to the side of the truck bed. Dan wobbled, the hiss of the creatures behind him overshadowing the ringing in his ears. He caught his balance just in time to avoid falling. The creature mushed against him, its teeth inches away. Dan pushed it off him, pressed the pistol into its chest, and fired, giving him enough leeway to pitch it over the side.
 

It fell into a shrieking mound of others.
 

Meredith continued to change gears, alternating between drive and reverse. One of the headlights burst, pitching the road into semi-darkness. Quinn screamed louder.
 

The vehicle began to roll.
 

Dan felt a wave of relief. He continued to fight back the swarm, countering the groping hands around him. But they were clearing the mob.

"Keep going, Meredith!" he shouted.

He glanced quickly at the cab, verifying Meredith and Quinn were still out of danger. They were. When he turned back, he saw something that made his heart somersault.
 

John had pitched over the edge of the truck bed. The man screamed in anguish as he fell.

"John!"

A wave of cold terror washed over Dan. He lunged for the man, but he wasn't in time to reach him. Tim was yelling, but Dan could hardly hear the words.

"I couldn't hold onto him!" Tim shouted. "He fell!"

"Meredith! Stop!" Dan banged on the glass, as if the urgency of his request might save his friend. But he knew it was too late.

Meredith screeched to a halt.

Dan knocked back the bodies, scanning the place where John had fallen, but discerned little more than a mountain of outstretched limbs. He finally spotted his companion at the bottom of the horde, simultaneously being trampled and eaten. John had stopped screaming, his final moments drowned out by the roar of the infected.

"No!" Dan screamed.

He raised his pistol and fired. The bullets hit several of the infected, sending a few of the creatures reeling. But more took their place, tearing at John. The man's body was lifeless, still. The infected shrieked louder, as if the taste of blood had deepened their resolve to get to the others.
 

The window opened, and Meredith's voice rang out from the cab.

"Where is he?" she yelled frantically.

"He's gone!" Dan booted another infected off the side. "We have to leave!"

Tim fired next to him. Another infected fell backward.

"I'm not leaving without him!" Meredith shrieked.

She pounded the steering wheel, shouting uselessly for John. The mob thickened. If they didn't leave, they'd share his fate.

"Meredith! Drive now, before it's too late!"

She didn't answer.

"Now!" Dan barked again, with as much force as he could muster.

Suddenly the vehicle was careening backward, crunching bodies and limbs under its tires. Meredith reversed fifty feet and turned the wheel. Then she drove forward, heading in the opposite direction. Dan crouched down, clutching at the floor to keep his balance. His eyes met Tim's. The man looked like he was in shock. They'd successfully gotten away from the mob, but not in time to save their friend.
 

The vehicle sped off into the night with one less passenger.

How could this have happened?
Meredith was still in shock.

She uttered the words over and over in her head. In the rearview mirror, she watched the bodies of the infected sway in the taillights' glow, like dancers in the street. The remaining headlight of the truck barely lit up the road in front of her. It felt like she was living in a nightmare.

Her brain was functioning several steps behind reality.
 

John can't be dead. He can't be
.
 

She'd seen him just a few minutes ago, swinging his rifle, fighting the infected with as much vigor as the others. For all she knew, he was still back there, waiting for them at the side of the road. Dan must be mistaken.

Meredith swerved to the side of the road and parked. Quinn sobbed quietly next to her.

Meredith opened the cab window, unbuckled her seatbelt, and stuck her head out. "We need to go back! John's still alive," she screamed at Dan, as much to convince herself as to convince him. "He's there, he's waiting…"

"He isn't, Meredith," Dan said.

"I saw him, Meredith. He didn't make it. They got him." Tim crept across the truck bed. "It was my fault. One of them grabbed hold of his rifle, and he tried to hold onto it, but they pulled him over. I couldn't catch him in time…"

"Are you sure he's gone…?" she whispered.

Meredith stared from Dan to Tim. Both men nodded. She clenched her eyes shut, tears streaming down her face. Then she closed the window and buckled her seatbelt. Quinn leaned against her. The little girl cried silently.

Meredith dried her face with her shirt and shifted into drive.
 

The pickup rattled and groaned beneath her. She could still hear the distant moans of the infected, and she pictured them feasting on John
.
Feasting on the man she loved.
Stop it, Meredith
.
If she envisioned the scene any longer, she'd lose it completely. She focused on driving, immersing her body in the task, trying to figure out the next turn.
 

Memories of John came rushing back.

They'd had a tumultuous year together, but over the past few days, they'd grown closer than they'd ever been. She recalled rescuing him from the furniture store, tending his wounds at the movie theater. The battle they'd had at her farm. They'd survived all of it together.

The thought that John had been taken away didn't seem real. It was as if he'd magically appear next to her, ready to continue to Abbotsville.
 

She stared out the window, her brain barely able to process the surroundings.
 

A few times, she spotted creatures roaming in the grass in the setting sun, like animals that had been freed from captivity, grazing in the wild. In just a week, the world had passed from the governance of man to the oversight of the infected. Somehow she'd accepted that.
 

But how could she accept this?

Quinn had stopped crying, and she lay silently in Meredith's lap, as if she'd expended the last of her strength. Meredith thought back to the chopper she'd seen, to the expression of hope on John's face. They'd shared that hope together.
 

She couldn't let it die with him. She needed to press on.

She gritted her teeth and drove. They'd already backtracked several miles. But Abbotsville wasn't far. When they got there, they'd find help. She repeated that mantra in her head, pushing the pickup truck harder. She needed a goal. Something to take her mind off what had happened.

Soon she'd reached a cut-through road, and she veered down it, slowing just enough to make the turn. The tires keened as she changed direction. A few more houses flitted past.
 

Quinn sat up.

"Something's wrong, Aunt Meredith," she said, pointing at the console.

Meredith glanced at the dash. The truck was lit with the glow of emergency lights. Although Meredith didn't understand all of them, one of them stuck out to her: "Check Engine." Quinn was right.

"Crap. Not now," she whispered.
 

The vehicle slowed. Meredith pumped the gas pedal, but nothing happened—the engine had ceased. She wrenched the steering wheel, barely muscling the vehicle onto the shoulder as it coasted to a stop.

All at once, the area was consumed by quiet. Without the hum of the motor, the landscape seemed deathly still. The truck's lone headlight burned into the darkness. Meredith glanced at the side of the road, certain the shadows would reveal the dripping mouths of the creatures, but the landscape was dark and impossible to discern. The wind kicked up from behind them.
 

Meredith tried restarting the engine, but the key clicked uselessly in the ignition.

"Dammit," she whispered.
 

"What are we going to do, Aunt Meredith?" Quinn stared at her with frightened eyes.

Meredith glanced at her companions in the truck bed, who were already aiming their guns at the dark fields.

"I don't know, honey," she said. "I just don't know."

Dan stood with his hand on the lip of the opened hood, Tim next to him. They'd located a flashlight in the vehicle's glove box, and they shined it over the engine. Quinn stood nearby, clutching Meredith. Meredith was silent and somber.

They tried starting the vehicle several more times, but it wouldn't turn over. When they looked underneath the car, they discovered fluid leaking in several places. The vehicle must've been damaged in their run-in with the creatures.

"I wish one of us was a mechanic," Tim murmured.

"I know enough to get by, but this is beyond me," Dan said. "Even if I knew how to fix it, I'm sure we'd need parts, and I doubt I'd be able to do anything in the dark."

Dan took a step back, canvassing the area. The road was deserted. Grassy, unkempt fields surrounded them in all directions. Despite the quietude around them, he couldn't help but picture the horde they'd just escaped. He looked over at Quinn, remembering her asthma attack the night before.