The Reanimates (Book 2): The Highway (4 page)

The sun was just about gone when we left the store, and we kicked ourselves into high gear. We loaded up and got going. For this chunk of the ride I opted to ride in the back with Drew, which had the plus of being able to keep an eye on Jody and DaWayne while helping sort clothes. Tyreese rode with Trent so Trent could show him what he knew about how to drive the truck. Trent had asked me if I wanted to learn and I declined the offer for now, I know my brain is scattered all the time, I couldn't rationalize taking control over the driving on top of everything else. Tanya rode up front with her husband.

In the trailer we all still felt like we were in one of those rock tumbler toys. I started designing ideas for making things more comfortable. I wondered if creating a hammock sling would help. If it did, I could create several kinds of chairs, including one that can hold the infant carrier and sway instead of bounce off the floor.

The hammock failed. The infant carrier rocked while on the floor so we decided that JJ was probably the most comfortable of us all anyway, his head was well supported in the carrier. After about an hour and a half we were coming up on Barstow.

Barstow

Barstow was hit very hard by the zombie apocalypse. From the freeway, we could see zombies wandering around on the streets, bumping into one another as though they didn't even realize the other was there. It was there, of course, that the freeway was littered with cars that had been abandoned. I wondered when these cars were abandoned, before or after the drivers were eaten.

We finally got to a point where the cars were packed too closely together to be able to squeeze the truck through. If we were going to get anywhere the road had to be cleared. The only way to get past was to move the cars ourselves. We just had to clear the cars from the right lane so the plan was that we would push them off the road into the side ditch. We hoped that this would be easy and a source of supplies that are always needed. Mercedes offered to watch the kids while Tyreese, Tanya, Trisha, Trent, and I started on clearing the road. We put Trisha to looking into cars in the left lane, while we worked in pairs, husband and wife, on the road clearing project.

We moved the first couple cars without incident. It seemed that people got out and ran, and didn't bother turning off the engines. The cars had completely empty gas tanks and dead batteries. We put the cars in neutral and pushed them away. We had found several things in the cars, mostly canned food and bottled water, both highly prized items in our little world. Some cars had a stash of camping gear. One truck had to be owned by a hunting enthusiast and was probably the best cache of goods yet. We found a rifle, boxes of ammunition, a very large hunting knife, and several of those MRE's in a variety of labeled meals, though beef stroganoff was the main meal in the batch. I wondered what could have happened to make this guy leave such a collection of goods. We took all the stuff that was packed into the truck and loaded it on the side of the road where we had started a pile from the other cars. Trent held onto the knife and gave the rifle to Tyreese.

We walked up to a little compact car ready to pull the same move. We thought that it was odd that the doors were shut. The previous ones were left flung open from people fleeing. We were laughing about moving these cars and wondering why our tax dollars didn't include this project. I walked up to the door and was about to open it when I was startled to find there was something in it.

I jumped back when a near skeleton hand slapped against the glass. The fingers were gnarled and looked like branches from a tree. The skin was leathery and cracked along the knuckles, like worn gloves. The hand slapped against the glass trying to get to me. This zombie had been encased in a virtual tomb, unable to operate the car door latch. Her body was emaciated, her hair had fallen out in clumps, but long strands of blonde hair still remained. Her eyes seemed unnaturally large as her face had been otherwise shrunken. Her cheek bones jutted out in sharp angles. Her mouth was open, emitting the ever popular moan. Her teeth were black with rot, several broken from snapping against the other. I figured that there had been people wandering by that she had desperately wanted to eat. I looked at the zombie and actually felt bad for her. She had not eaten at all since converting to her zombie self. I wonder if she thought that maybe she would be fine, that whatever bit her maybe didn't bite hard enough. Maybe she thought that she could get to the hospital and be treated. Whatever her decision was, it didn't seem to work, and now she was trapped. Her eyes were locked on to me, not wanting to lose the prey that stood only feet away from her.

It struck me in that moment how infant like the zombies were in completing tasks. I thought of Drew as a baby and how his coordination was so limited. His problem solving skills were limited to what he could see. I thought of other zombies we had run across. If they saw us they could track us. As long as they knew where we were they would follow, much like if I had hidden a ball under a pillow in front of Drew, he could find it, but if he didn't see me hide it, the interest in locating the ball was not there and he would find a different thing to do. If the zombies didn't see us they kept looking for something better.

That realization didn't help the situation much. There was still a zombie in the car that needed to be moved off the road so we could get through. I turned to Trent who came up to me wondering why I hadn't yet started to move the car.

“Aww, man, I knew this was going to happen.” he said with a sigh. “We had been too lucky before with getting these out of the way free and clear.”

I nodded in agreement. “So, what's the plan on this?”

Trent surveyed the scene. “She's still wearing her seat belt. I bet she can't take it off. I'm going to go over to the passenger door and get that opened up. She's going to lunge at me so I'm going to use that hunting knife I found to take care of her. Then I can just slide the shift lever to neutral and it is business as usual.”

It seemed easy enough. The door had been locked so Trent broke the window. She leaned over the seat, struggling against the belt to try to get a hold of him. In a lunge Trent buried the knife to the hilt through her eye socket. She stopped thrashing about. To be extra careful Trent stirred the knife around a couple times, almost as though he was giving her a lobotomy, just to be sure that she would stay dead. He pulled the knife out of her head and grimaced at all the black gloopy gore that had now coated the once shiny blade. He stabbed it through the passenger seat to wipe it off. He put the car into neutral and we started pushing, glad to be done with this particular car.

After what felt like hours of road clearing and scavenging, as well as killing several more trapped zombies, we were on our way. I rode with Trent for this leg of the journey. We were coming up on one of those little strip malls with a mattress store in it.

“
Trent, let's get off the freeway here. I want to go to the mattress store, I have an idea.” I said suddenly. Trent has known me for a while and seems to trust that my ideas have some value. He still looked at me as though he wasn't sure what the plan was. “I think those memory foam mattresses would be nice back there. We could cut them to fit the floor and bunks so it would be more comfortable back there.”

Trent looked at me with appreciation. He liked that idea after having slept on the miserable flooring. When we got in front of the store we made sure we were clear of trouble. The process went easier than I figured it would. We used mostly twin and full sized mattresses thinking that it would be easier to fit them that way. We also decided it would be best if we didn't cover the entire floor area, if for no other reason than we needed a place to take off our shoes.

When we were getting ready to leave, I noticed a pair of zombies headed our way. I watched them shamble towards us and marveled at them. One was a child, wearing a filthy hospital gown. Whoever tied it on did a great job since it was still attached. On his wrist was a hospital band. His leg had been dressed in hospital tape holding a square of gauze on by just a corner. It was clear that he had been bitten on the leg, a fairly deep bite at that. The adult zombie had a striking resemblance to the child, even in death, and was clearly the child zombie's father. He was bitten on the shoulder. He had no other wounds. It was easy to imagine the scenario that got them to this point. The boy was bitten on the leg and admitted to the hospital when he had developed the fever. He probably had the seizure and was declared dead. His father held his body close to him when the boy reanimated. The boy would have seen him as a steak at that point and laid into the closest bit of food. The nurses would have separated them but it would have been too late. I wondered if they had been wandering together all this time or did they just bump into each other in the search for food. I am the type that likes to assign emotional value when there isn't really any, so I imagined that they had been walking together all this time.

I called Trent over to see the pair. He stood there with a sad look on his face. The boy was probably just a year or two younger than Drew was. I wondered if Trent saw himself in that situation.

“What are we going to do with them?” I whispered.

“
What needs to be done.” Trent replied, with a degree of resolution in his voice. He walked over to Tyreese and got the rifle from him. He fired a shot at the adult and it took him down. He had a harder time lining up the shot, or maybe finding the will to do the deed, on the kid. He took a deep breath and fired. He hit the small zombie dead on. I kept trying to think of the kid as a small zombie. I think Trent was too.

“
We need to go now.” Trent said quietly. I agreed totally.

We drove out of Barstow. Neither one of us had much to say. We just needed to get to a quiet area and be done for the day. When we got to a stretch of nothingness we pulled over. We ate the MRE's and decided to call it a night. The sun had gone down, escaping its view of our section of the world. I didn't blame it.

The night air was cold. We covered up all the gun ports and vents to try to trap body heat. Each family group cuddled up to one another, not just to stay warm, but to feel reassured that even though the apocalypse happened we still had each other.

Scout

The next morning we woke to a heavy frost that had fallen all around us. We slept much better on the memory foam mattresses but we were still a long ways away from a good night's sleep. Somehow that didn't surprise me at all. I think the days of feeling like you had slept properly were just about over.

We stretched as we stumbled out of the trailer. The brisk morning air swept over us like a walk in freezer, waking us all up. Tyreese responded as though he had been struck by an iced blanket. I laughed. The kids delighted in wearing multiple layers of their new clothes in an effort to get warm. I followed their example.

We pulled out the barbecue to start breakfast going. We were getting down to instant creamed wheat and oatmeal. We should have loaded more cereal for the kids. "We'll have to hit a grocery at some point." I said, to no one in particular. I was answered with a few wordless nods. Trent looked at me with amusement, as though hitting a grocery would be a walk in the park with a semi-truck.

I sighed and finished my breakfast. After my breakfast dishes were cleaned up I needed to go on my rounds to check on the medical needs of a couple people. Before I climbed in the trailer I went to find Trent. I was falling into a funk and Trent has always been my touch stone. I hated this, there was no reason to feel this down. We were protected and my family was safe. I was trying to count my blessings, I hadn't been shot, I hadn't lost my spouse. Drew was fine. Trent was fine. But still I felt all this pressure and heartache.

Trent was scraping ice off the windshield with a now useless ATM card. Well, maybe calling it useless was a bit of dramatic flair. It was, after all, an excellent ice scraper. I giggled a little that he had grabbed his wallet like he needed his driver's license. It wasn't like he has the special letter on the license saying he could drive this truck. I mentally slapped my head over that, there aren't even any cops to pull us over anymore!

When he decided that he had done just as much good as can be done, he put away the card and put his billfold back into his pocket.

"What's up, Baby?" he asked me. I didn't say a word; I just fell into his arms.

"I just needed a reminder that the world isn't full of shit. That there are good things to fight for. It was easy before, we were fighting to keep our home and our supplies ours. We lost. Badly. So now the complete world for us, the only thing keeping us from being a zombie free-for-all is this here truck. Not the same."

"Stop looking at this like we're bums living out of a car, that's not on the program. We have an actual plan, mainly getting to Idaho, maybe gather a few more supplies that Mom and Kristen and everyone will need to make life better. I don't even know if mom has been taking any of her blood pressure meds. If nothing else we need to get there so you can give her those. The next phase of our plan is figuring out a place that is 100% off the grid. If we set it up right we can make our place so it has never been tied to any conventional road. It will be a place where we will be safe from zombies and people. Stop looking and acting like we gave up our home to be a band of gypsies. That's not how that happened. We are starting over, that's it, and we needed stuff in our new place, so we took what we could. Keep breathing Cali, you'll pull it together, you always do."

Yup. He understood and grounded me.

I went ahead on checking on DaWayne and Jody. DaWayne looked like he would rather be shot again than being bounced around more. We hadn't really traveled with the memory foam padding but I knew it would be minimal comfort in the long run. We just didn't have anything better to offer him. I was excited to see that is shoulder swelling was minimal and that the drainage was almost nothing at all. He moved his fingers around and gripped my hand tightly when I asked him to. It seemed that his nerves were intact. I did a decent surgery! My spirits lifted quite a bit over this.

I moved on to Jody who was feeding JJ. I asked her how her bleeding was and she said it looked okay to her, no huge clots or anything anymore. She stopped JJ's feeding so I could look him over. He was alert, responsive, and a bit angry that his breakfast was interrupted. He had a healthy cry. I smiled over the mewing sound he gave, newborn cries were always my favorite when Drew was born. They were doing well. I was still worried about the impact of all the hormonal shifts and the loss of her husband on her, but that was going to be what it was going to be. I had a friend that would say "It is what it is" whenever work got hectic. I tried remembering this mantra in this new world often.

As I finished checking on people, Tyreese and Trent were finishing getting everything into the truck. I offered to stay back in the trailer so Tyreese could continue to learn about the truck. Trent suggested Tyreese take the wheel this time to really get the hang of it. This definitely appealed to Tyreese. He had a sudden spring in his step.

"Okay! Let's go!" Tyreese said, excitedly.

We all piled into the truck and Tyreese took off. From the feel in the trailer his moves were a little jerky, but so were Trent's, we just noticed it less in his learning curve because we were running for our lives at the time.

We drove for a bit then felt the truck come to a stop. Trent came back and opened the trailer and explained that there was another traffic snarl. I was rather tired of the snarls. Tanya and I got out so we could help with moving the cars around. I asked Tanya if she wanted to buddy up with me, and smiled when she agreed to.

I didn't know much about Tanya. Here we were, living with each other for a long time and I didn't really know much about her other than she was married to Tyreese, mother of 2 teens that I had become quite fond of, and that she had a green thumb. She was quiet and reserved. I was trying to figure out what I could ask to break the ice, something that would let me know more about her.

"So, how did you and Tyreese meet?" I questioned, figuring that was safe enough of an ice breaker. I wanted to know more about her but I didn't want her to think I was prying or anything. We had started pushing cars out of the way, and we needed a topic to help make this go faster.

"Oh, well, I was nineteen and I worked as a waitress at this little bar. Tyreese would come in here and there, before long he was sitting in my section. I asked if there was anything he needed, not even really looking at him as I was asking. I had pulled out my pad to write down his snack order, so once I was ready to write I looked up at him to find he was just staring at me. I got a little self-conscious for a moment there while he was staring at me. I wondered if I had something in my hair or on my face or something. Anyway, I was just standing there getting more and more nervous feeling and finally asked him why he was staring at me like that. He said, and I'll never forget this, he said that he found me. He had dreamed about meeting this woman that he had never met but was going to spend forever with and that I had been that woman that was in his dream. He said that the white wedding dress was going to look glorious on me and he couldn't wait till he was standing at the altar watching me walk to him in real life. Now, I just laughed at him thinking this was a rather dramatic pick up line. He asked me out and I said no. Every day for a couple weeks he was there. If I wasn't working he told another waitress to tell me that he had come in looking for me. When I was working he would sit there, always ordering up something just to have an excuse to have me walk over to him. Lord, the bill he would rack up in a night! It's a wonder he still could afford a place to live. My boss adored him. So anyway, after 2 weeks of this, I finally agreed to go out with him. A year later we were married. Had our reception in that bar. Wanna know the funny part? I had purposely not shown him any hint of what the dress looked like. The night before we got married he handed me a paper. It was a drawing of the dress he saw in his dream. It was exactly my dress. When I was walking to him on the wedding day and he saw it, I could see as I walked down the aisle the big tears rolling down his cheek and this huge smile plastered across his face. I was who he dreamed of. I was his happily ever after. And you know, I may not have had a dream about him, but he is my happily ever after too."

I smiled. "That was a perfect story. I'm kind of stuck in an awww loop right now. That rocked."

"Yeah. When I start feeling down or whatever, I think of that. Makes it better."

We came up on a mini-van and were about to start pushing it out of the way. I opened up the driver side door after we checked to see if it was empty. I noticed something sparkling on the seat from under a paper. It was keys. I picked up the paper and started reading it out loud to Tanya.

"Hey Wanda, the traffic got really bad here, think it will be easier to just walk. I know you're coming up behind us. If the traffic clears up, one of you guys take the van and find us. We won't be far off the road. Love you, Dad."

I tried to not think of the people involved with this road. I tried to not think of the terror that everyone had gone through. This note reminded me that real people were here, once upon a time. I wondered how long Wanda's dad walked along the road. I wondered if Wanda ever came. I stopped myself right there. I didn't want to think of the dead people. I slid into the car, put the key in the ignition, expected nothing, and was surprised as all hell that the thing lit up on the first try. It was full of gas. I looked over at Tanya and had a sparkle in my eye.

"Tell me, how much does DaWayne hate riding in the back of that no suspension truck trailer?"

"I can't use the language that he would, and has, about the truck. I'm a Christian woman, but suffice it to say he hates it."

"Think a mini-van would be a smoother ride?"

That's when she got what I was thinking; we could use this van to transport some of the people, like DaWayne and Jody and the baby. "Cali? I already knew I loved you, but this is above. This will make all sorts of a difference."

"Well then, Tanya, let's drive this over to the truck and show the boys what we found."

When we drove over to Trent and Tyreese, they looked at us almost with confusion. "Hey babe. Look what we got." I said, feeling rather proud of myself.

"I see it. How much gas does it have?" Trent asked, with some skepticism coloring his tone.

"Full tank, and has keys." I responded, a bit smugly. "Tanya and I are thinking that this will be an excellent transport car for our injured people who are having a hard time in the trailer. I'm thinking that it would be awesome to use it as a scout car when we need to go off into a town but don't want to announce it with the roar of a semi-truck. I'm thinking convoy, baby."

Trent grinned. He loved this idea.