The Last Legacy (Season 1): Episodes 1-10 (17 page)

My stomach grumbled at seeing the food, but I quickly shut the bag and put it near my feet. I stared out the window. Colder months were coming soon, and I knew we’d have to find shelter and warmer clothes. The boots I wore were three sizes too big for my feet, my jacket a windbreaker. When the snow came, I’d be screwed.

The two-lane road was paved smoothly, hardly any bumps or pot-holes. We were in a nicer area with large houses so I figured as much. The trees flashed by in blurs of color, the dense woods unforgiving with the light. Oranges and reds began to pop up among the green leaves, showing the change in season.
 

Around fifteen minutes later of driving, we found a junction for route ninety-one. Jim slowed the truck down to a near stop and faced Scarlet and me.
 

“This will lead us to New Haven. We have to find route nine after that. There should be a sign around here somewhere,” Jim said as he hunched over the steering wheel.

I scooted towards the right window that faced the highway. I rolled down the window and looked out, checking the sides of the road for any signs. Most of them were covered by stray limbs of the way-too-large oak trees.
 

Jim drove the car at crawling speed, probably no more than five miles an hour. We passed two signs for diners and one for a McDonald’s. I wasn’t a big explorer in my life prior to the bombings so I wasn’t familiar with this area. When I did escape from my house, I tended to go north.
 

“I’m going to get out and see if we can find an exit.” Jim put on his blinker, it clicking in the quiet car, although it was completely unnecessary.
 

He turned the car towards the entrance ramp, still moving slower than normal. He pulled to the top of the ramp, and my jaw nearly dropped.
 

Hundreds of cars lined both lanes of the highway, a complete gridlock. Not even the emergency lane appeared accessible, random cars parked at strange angles jutting out.
 

I leaned between the two front seats to get a better look through the windshield. The vast amount of cars was something I had never experienced before, and that said something, since from age four to nine I lived in Los Angeles.
 

“Shit,” Jim muttered. He threw the car into reverse, and I fell forward, landing on the center console. He put his arm over the passenger seat head rest, pinning me down, and looked back. The car spun around, moving faster than it had all day.

“Wait!” Scarlet yelled as she clung to the dashboard. “There’s a person over there.” She pointed out to the sea of cars. With my face against the console, I couldn’t see much, but I craned my neck, trying to see what she saw.
 

“We’re not stopping,” Jim said through gritted teeth. He pulled his arm off of me, and I sat up, rubbing my neck. He gunned the gas, trying to turn the car, but with others in the way, it wasn’t as easy as he probably expected.
 

“We need to stop.” Scarlet’s voice took on a tone that I hadn’t heard before in her—even when she was pissed at me. Her eyes were glued to something near the front of the car, but I couldn’t see what. I sat back, but something in Scarlet’s neck ticked. Shit was about to go down.
 

She glanced over at Jim, then back at me. Her face drew together in a scowl as she bit her bottom lip. I pulled in a deep breath, preparing myself. But I had no idea what the hell was going on. And then she snapped.
 

Reaching between her and Jim, she tugged at the stick shift, throwing the truck into neutral. Jim pressed the gas, revving the engine and making a loud sound, but not moving. She pulled at the door handle, but it was locked.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jim slammed on the brakes, jostling me forward. My head slammed against the back of Jim’s seat. Fire burned up my nose like I had just been punched in the face. I screamed at Scarlet to stop.
 

I reached forward to hold her back, but she moved faster. She tugged at the door and swung it open. Her red hair waved behind her. She sprinted up the entrance ramp without a glance back at us.
 

“Scarlet!” I didn’t know what the hell to do, but she couldn’t be alone out there. Jim swore under his breath as he bashed his hand against the steering wheel.

“Don’t you dare go after her,” he growled as he spun around in his seat. His blue eyes flashed with anger. My mind raced. There had to be eaters where she ran to. She couldn’t be alone.

I grabbed my handgun from the back of my jeans and jerked towards the door. In one motion, I yanked it open and jumped down from the car. I heard Scarlet’s yells, but I couldn’t see her yet—cars blocked my line of sight.
 

 
Following in her footsteps, I jogged up the ramp. I looked over my shoulder as I heard loud steps. Jim gained on me, much faster, but I pushed on. He wouldn’t let me help her, and she needed this for whatever reason. I had to help her.

As I maneuvered around a parked Honda, I finally saw what made Scarlet snap. A man stood on top of a green Subaru hatchback. At least a dozen eaters surrounded him, shaking the car and clawing for his legs. The eaters’ voices were like pure agony, cries of torture.
 

At my arrival, the man looked from the eaters to me. His eyes clashed with mine, holding me and catching me off guard. They widened instantly. He waved at us.
 

“Hey!” he yelled, his arms flailing at his sides. He smiled, hope written all over his face. “Help me!”
 

Scarlet appeared in the back of a light blue truck, two cars beside the man. Her head whipped from side to side. I stepped forward to help her save this man, but Jim grabbed the inside of my elbow, holding me back. I couldn’t move. He pulled me back, pinning me against his body.
 

“Let me go!” I yelled at him, pushing against his arms with my hands. The man hadn’t moved.

“You are not risking your life for someone you don’t know.” I looked up at Jim, my brows furrowed in confusion. If we weren’t saving people, then what was the point of living? We had to have hope. We had to save others.

“You did it for me.” I wriggled in his grasp, but his hold stayed firm. I kicked at him; yet he held me tight with no emotion on his face at all.
 

“And that was stupid.”

“Scarlet!” I yelled for her as she jumped from dead car to dead car, getting closer and closer to the man. She turned towards us, her eyes full of tears. She shook her head and hardened herself, her body visibly changing.
 

A long bang rang off, immediately drawing my attention. The man had fallen backwards. His head hit the chipped green paint of the car. I watched the panic riddle his body as he jumped back up, shuffling to his feet. But he was too slow. Too many eaters surrounded him.
 

The eaters weren’t fast. But as the man struggled to get to his feet, he was left isolated and vulnerable. The first eater grabbed onto his calf and tugged it towards its face. Its nails dug into the skin, causing blood to spill.
 

Scarlet sobbed from her high vantage point as she watched the man get eaten alive. She shook her head and cried into her hands, her body shaking. Instead of pushing Jim away, I clung to him, pulling him closer to me rather than away.

The man’s leg ripped from his body as an eater tugged. Two more clutched onto the leg, biting into it. With his leg gone, the empty space it once resided emptied of blood, covering the normally green car in thick redness.
 

He wasn’t dead, though, and that was the worst part. He cried and screamed as he suffered a torturous death. A swift end would have been easier to watch. This? This was downright wrong. This man was being ripped apart alive.
 

“Help me!” he yelled, his voice gargling and strained. His cries quieted as he struggled to hang onto life. I wanted to save him, but even I could see that it was a lost cause.
 

An eater on the opposite side of the car grabbed the man’s body from behind. His scream muffled as the eater dragged him from the hood of the car to the ground. The eater bit into his shoulder like a hamburger, dining on human flesh as if it was gourmet.

My entire stomach twisted in pain as tears clouded my vision. I couldn’t look away, yet the image of this man literally being eaten alive tortured me. The eaters had no emotions at all. There was no hope for us. We were going to die, just like the man—I knew it.
 

Society couldn’t bounce back from this. Jim had been right all along. We had nothing to look forward to. Those eaters—those monsters—weren’t human. And any sense of revival I clung to evaporated.
 

“Don’t look,” Jim said as he turned me towards his chest. I didn’t realize I was crying until Jim’s shirt darkened where my face laid. I clenched my fists in Jim’s shirt and tried to tune out the crying of the man. He refused to stop despite the fact that soon he’d be reduced to nothing.

When the man fell silent, I knew that he was finally gone. I hoped that he went to a better place, but I’m not so sure what I believed in anymore. How could I believe in a greater power when people getting eaten was normal now?
 

“Let’s go. It’s going to be dark in a few hours.” Jim turned me towards the car and held my hand like a child. It fit since that’s exactly how I felt—a child who was just told that Santa wasn’t real, or that dreams don’t come true. Everything I believed in had vanished.

Scarlet stomped by us, her posture rigid and cold. We stopped in front of the truck, but I couldn’t move. I felt like an eater—dead inside, unable to make decisions. Jim grabbed the back door, but stopped me, holding my head between his two hands. His gaze roamed over me from top to bottom, and then he let go abruptly, walking to the front seat and slamming the door.
 

I turned and looked one last time behind me towards where the man once stood. My hope had died there. I could just barely see the eaters around his car, all covered in blood from their chests down. They still clawed at the car, their fists beating against it. With a shake of my head, I got in the car.
 

“Fuck you,” Scarlet said as she crossed her arms in the front seat.

“You were being reckless.”

“You were being inhuman,” she spat back at Jim.
 

“Think whatever you want. But I refuse to risk myself for a lost cause,” Jim said as he started the car.

“We could have saved him if we moved faster!” She pointed towards the pack of eaters still lingering, her voice shaky and high.
 

“And then what?” Jim cocked his head to the side as he turned the car around slowly, the urgency gone. I settled into the back seat, my arms over my chest as I watched the two argue back and forth.
 

“The more people we’re with, the safer we are,” Scarlet said with snark. Her voice lifted at the end, nasally as if she was purposely sounding childish.
 

“And the more we have to feed. And the more we have to protect. It’s called survival of the fittest. That man put himself in that position. It’s not my job, or yours, to save him.”

“So you don’t give a shit about human lives?” She leaned against her window, staring Jim down.
 

“I only care about myself,” he stated without the slightest hesitation. My stomach spun again. I didn’t know if it was because of what Jim was saying or the image before.
 

“Can you stop the car?” I asked even though we were barely moving. Jim glanced back at me through the rear-view mirror and did what I asked. I pushed open the door and vomited onto the pavement. My stomach contracted as bile spilled out of me.

When I leaned back in the car, it was silent.
 

“Just go south.” Scarlet stared out the window, her head resting on her hand against the seatbelt. Jim didn’t say anything back. He just drove.
 

The sun fell, and it moved too damn fast. We hadn’t made it far on the back roads, and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure we were still heading south. My body ached; my stomach growled. I needed something to fix my sour mood, and I refused to fall asleep like Scarlet had. Jim needed to stay awake, so I did, too.
 

There wasn’t much to see outside. More trees and overdeveloped housing units. I wanted to understand Jim—his motives, what made him tick. I figured that since we were on the road, safe, it would be a good time to ask him some questions. We hadn’t come across any trouble since the man on the car. All the eaters we passed walked solo.
 

“Want to play a game?” I asked. He looked in the rearview mirror, his sharp eyes meeting mine with confusion.

“A game? What kinda game?” Jim asked.

“Twenty questions?” He snorted and glared at me. “What’s so funny?” I asked him back, my voice showing hurt.
 

“I think it’s funny that you want to play a game in the middle of a war.” He paused, and I considered his words for a moment. It did sound a bit ridiculous. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to get to know him. We’d all die soon anyway, so why not die with people you trusted? “What do you wanna know so bad anyway?”