Dead Highways (Book 2): Passage Read online

  We skirted along the edge of the woods, careful and quiet. I kept a close eye on the infected walking the highway as well as looking out for any that may still be wandering amongst the trees. I didn’t need the flashlight anymore, so I shoved it into my pants pocket. No longer blocked by tall trees, the moon provided enough light to raise my comfort level a few notches.

  A quarter mile down the highway I stopped, knelt down, pointed. “There. Isn’t that Ted’s Jeep?”

  “I think so,” Peaches whispered.

  Beside the Jeep, a few clicks up, was the Mack truck I had remembered.

  However.

  “Where’s Robinson’s car?” Peaches asked.

  Just what I was wondering. Robinson had left his squad car in the grass just off the highway, in front of Ted’s Jeep. It was no longer there.

  I sighed. “Dammit.”

  “Could they all fit in one car?”

  Robinson. Ted. Bowser. Aamod. Naima. Jax.

  “Would be a tight fit, but I suppose they could.”

  “Or … what if…?”

  I glanced over at Peaches. “What if what?”

  “What if some of them didn’t make it back?”

  I sighed again. “That’s a possibility too.” I looked back out at the highway, at the now empty spot in front of Ted’s Jeep. “How about we get a closer look?”

  As we came into line with the Jeep, we stumbled upon the first of the bodies. A female. She had her head down in the wet grass, bullet holes in her back. A few feet away lay another female face down. I counted at least three more bodies leading up to Ted’s Jeep, all of which had numerous bullet holes in them. Despite the fact that I was reasonably sure the infected wouldn’t have used weapons, as they had shown no desire to in previous encounters, I turned each of the dead over just to be sure none of them were our friends.

  “That’s a lot of bodies,” I said, kneeling down next to the Jeep. “Some were definitely Aamod’s work. So maybe they did make it out whole.”

  “Not completely. They left us.”

  I noticed something along the front of the Jeep. I leaned out to get a better look.

  “What is it?” Peaches asked.

  I leaned back, rested my head on the passenger door. “Someone is sitting up against the front bumper.”

  “Someone? Who?”

  I shrugged. “How should I know? I don’t recognize them. Doesn’t matter anyway. Whoever they are, they’re dead now.”

  I checked Sally’s magazine, counted how many bullets I had left.

  Four.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  I slipped the magazine back into the gun. Olivia woke up and fussed a little.

  “Gotta keep her quiet,” I whispered. “Now is not the time.”

  “I’m trying my best. What do you want me to do, reason with her? She’s a few days old.”

  “Just … I don’t know … do the best you can.”

  I didn’t have any useful advice. She was right, and I was frustrated.

  I glanced back over at the person sitting against the front bumper and, in a state of shock and awe, watched as the head moved up and looked around momentarily before resuming a resting state.

  I tapped Peaches on the shoulder to get her attention, and then whispered in her ear. “They moved.”

  She quickly pulled away from me. The icy look on her face could have scared off a hungry polar bear.

  “But you said…”

  I put my left index finger over my mouth, which meant shhh, not so loud darling.

  I whispered not-so-sweet nothings in her ear again. “I know what I said. I was wrong. They’re alive.”

  This time she appropriately whispered back in my ear. “We need to get out of here.”

  I nodded. “Peek around the corner and tell me if you see anyone.”

  While she peeked, I kept my eyes on the sleeper four feet to the left of me, making sure he didn’t move again.

  Peaches was about to whisper something to me, and then went back for a second peek, like she wanted to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

  “There’s more,” she finally said.

  “More?”

  “More people in the road, between the cars.”

  “How many?”

  “Four that I can see.”

  “Sleeping?”

  She shrugged. “Or dead.”

  Before I could wrap my brain around what any of that meant, Olivia started fussing again.

  Fantastic.

  Peaches rocked her, calmed her down, but this time the sound was enough to get the person at the front of the Jeep to do more than simply raise their head. They slowly turned and glanced around the corner at us. It was a man, I now saw, a salt and pepper-haired, goatee wearing, construction worker looking dude.

  I raised Sally, but that didn’t dissuade him, as he crawled around the Jeep and lunged at us. The bullet I sent twisting through his forehead, however, stopped him instantly—but not without a price.

  Confucius say, loud noises bad.

  Peaches peeked around the back end of the Jeep. “Jimmy, they’re waking up.”

  “How many?”

  “All four of them.”

  Fantastic.

  And I now had only three bullets left.

  “Stay down and follow me.”

  I crawled over the guy I’d just shot and looked around the front of the Jeep. Not seeing any infected, I scurried out, hunched over to keep a low profile, and stopped beside the Mack truck. Peaches followed, slower than I would have liked, but she also had a baby to tote around. As we sat against the side of the truck, two infected passed behind it going toward the Jeep.

  We continued around the front of the truck and nearly tripped over another infected man just waking up. He grabbed my left wrist and tried to pull me to the ground. I had Sally in my right hand, and almost did to him as I had done to the other sleeper. A head shot. An instakill. But then thought better of it. If we were gonna have any chance at escaping, we had to be as stealthy as possible. So I smacked him on the top of the head with the butt of the gun until I felt his grip on my arm loosen and his head go limp.

  “Go back to sleep,” I said, like the budding action star I was, and then motioned for Peaches to follow me to the other side of the truck. We went, still hunched over, right into the path of two more infected.

  Fantastic.

  “Should we try to make a run for it?” Peaches asked.

  No way.

  Not even if she didn’t have Olivia on her arm. Not even with these fancy, multi-colored, New Balance running shoes on.

  At best, four or five infected knew of our presence. If we started running, the number could grow to a dozen—to fifty—to a hundred. In no time, we’d be chased by an unstoppable horde, with nowhere to go. I certainly didn’t want to run back into the woods, and the nearest town was at least ten miles away. I couldn’t run that fast, or that far, and it would only take a few of them having better endurance than us to seal our fate. Everyone who has seen the movie Zombieland knows the first rule of surviving is cardio, and mine sucked.

  So with that, I said goodbye to the three remaining bullets as they left Sally and made a home in the bellies of the two infected. After, the gun went click. The slide stayed back. Thankfully, the infected dropped to the pavement, wondering what in the hell just hit them, bleeding and clutching their new wounds.

  Now what?

  I looked up at the big Mack truck next to me with the driver’s side door open.

  A moment later, we were climbing inside. I locked the doors, ducked way down, and cautiously peered out the windows to see if anyone had seen us.

  Peaches carefully crawled into the back. “There’s a bed back here,” she whispered.

  My eyes felt swollen from lack of sleep, yet sleeping was the last thing on my mind.

  “Just stay quiet,” I whispered back. I still held Sally tight in my hands, finger around the trigger, even though she had no love left t
o give.

  I waited, sure that one of the roaming infected would figure out where we had went, and then we’d be trapped, surrounded, as they ripped the doors off their hinges, or more likely, just waited us out. But no one ever did. Many passed by, noticed their buddies dying on the ground, and then went about their business.

  Onward.

  Somewhere west.

  I climbed into the back with Peaches and nestled down into some trucker’s home away from home. The bed smelled like feet, and it was dark back there, but for once I was happy having little light.

  Let there be darkness, for a while.

  Let it protect us.

  Let it keep us hidden.

  Let us live through this night.

  Peaches fed Olivia, and before long, the two of them were bundled together, asleep. I told myself I’d stay up, watch over them, but at some point sleep took me. All the while, Sally never left my hand—my one and only.

  My security blanket.

  When I woke the next morning, I was covered in sweat. No, I hadn’t had a nightmare. The sweat was the result of the morning sun blasting through the truck’s big windows, gradually increasing the temperature inside the cabin. It had to be close to ninety degrees. To make matters worse, the cabin smelled less of feet and more like shit—like hot, steamy, nose-plugging shit. And I had a pretty good idea who crapped themselves during the night.

  I lightly shook Peaches. “Hey, time to wake up.”

  Peaches sat up, crossed her legs. “What time is it?”

  I checked my watch. “Almost eleven a.m.”

  “Wow, we were asleep like—”

  “Six or seven hours.”

  She rubbed her eyes, smiled lightly. “I’m still tired.”

  “I couldn’t sleep one more minute in this heat.”

  “I guess I’m just used to it, ya know, missing the occasional power bill.” She lifted Olivia up and sniffed her diaper. “Looks like somebody needs a change.”

  “While you do that, I’m gonna go up into the front … see what I can see.”

  I climbed up into the front seat, ducked down, and looked around for infected. Unfortunately, the coast wasn’t clear. A steady line of people, at the rate of about one every thirty seconds, passed by the truck.

  Peaches stuck her head in between the two front seats. “So...”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “No. But if we stay here, we’ll die of heat exhaustion. We have to make a move. Take our chances.” I looked back at her. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?”

  “Olivia needs formula. She’s getting low.”

  “How low?”

  “Like she might have enough left for one or two bottles low. But I remember seeing a daycare place on the way to Ted’s house yesterday. They might have some we can take.”

  “Where was it? Before or after we got into the accident?”

  “Before. It was in that neighborhood though, on the corner. I can’t remember the name, but there was a sign in the front yard. One of those home daycare places, I guess.”

  “We’ll look for it,” I said, peeking out the passenger window at Ted’s green Jeep. “You think maybe the rest of them went back to Ted’s?”

  “Could have figured we’d go back there looking for them.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Probably there right now.”

  I nodded. “Then we better get going.”

  “The keys are in the ignition. Can you drive this thing?”

  “I don’t know if it’ll even start. The door could have been open for a day, maybe longer. Same with most of these cars. Could be a lot of drained batteries. And even if I could drive it, I’d prefer something with a better turning radius. We need to go back the other way. We’ll just take Ted’s Jeep. They probably left it for us, don’t ya think? And we know it’ll start.”

  Now all we had to do was wait for the right time to make our move. The good news was Ted’s Jeep was right beside the Mack truck, just a few yards away. The bad news was we’d likely be seen by at least a few infected once we hopped out.

  Peaches gathered Olivia and came into the front seat, readied herself for departure.

  I unlocked the passenger door, kept my eyes on the side mirror.

  “Anyone coming?” Peaches asked.

  “Yeah. A woman and a small child. Duck down until they pass.”

  I considered going when they were three car lengths back. Neither the woman nor the child looked like they could pose a giant threat to us, even if their infected minds made them believe they had super powers. But still I’d rather take my chances with one person over two. As terrible as it may sound, I was hoping to see a child walking by themselves. That would give us the best odds. What came next, however, was almost as good.

  It was an old man, hunched over, walking slower than my grandma.

  “Now,” I said, and threw open the passenger door.

  Fifteen seconds later, we were in Ted’s Jeep heading back east.

  “I don’t think he even noticed us,” Peaches said.

  “Probably can’t see further than ten feet in front of him.”

  Peaches laughed, even though I wasn’t really joking. Without my glasses, I was basically blind too.

  “I’m just gonna head back the way we came. Let me know if you see this daycare place.”

  It felt great to be out of that stuffy cabin and out in the open air. I wanted to close my eyes and relax, feel the wind whip across my face, but damn if I didn’t have to keep my eyes on the road. The last time I was behind the wheel, I’d crashed my grandma’s Buick, and that was with my eyes open.

  Not long after we left the highway, we came upon the daycare. Peaches had been right about there being a sign in the front yard—white, with dark blue lettering.

  The Baby Brig.

  Whoever thought up that name was probably voted most likely to fail at business in high school. I didn’t remember passing this Baby Brig place at all. Then again, I was a man, which meant I usually had tunnel vision.

  The front door was open, but we knocked anyway, calling out if anybody was home. No one called back. Satisfied, we went inside and explored the daycare.

  What a mess. Dirty, dirty, dirty, would be the best way to describe it. Not the type of place I’d want to drop my kid off, unless I hated them and wanted them to suffer. Maybe The Baby Brig name wasn’t so inappropriate after all.

  Peaches found a supply closet pretty quick, refilled Olivia’s baby bag, and then we were on our way. It felt weird having everything go as planned. How often had that happened over the last few days? We found the stuff without any problem, and didn’t have to kill anybody to get it. Nor did we have to run for our lives. Hell, we practically strolled back to the Jeep—like it was just any other day.

  Two miles down the road, that comfortable carefree feeling came to a screeching halt, in the midst of yesterday’s wreckage. I pulled up next to my grandma’s Buick. It looked just as I’d remembered it—like an ugly car with a busted up face.

  “Why did you stop?” Peaches asked.

  Because I was confused. Dead bodies lay all around.

  Only.

  Not as many as before.

  I opened the door and got out of the Jeep, walked around to the other side.

  Peaches opened the passenger door and leaned out. “Jimmy, what are you doing? I don’t think we should stop until we get to Ted’s.”

  “Don’t you see this?”

  Peaches picked up Olivia and got out. “See what?”

  I slowly crossed to the other side of the road and stood over one of the bodies.

  “Oh God,” Peaches said, as she came up behind me. She turned away, revolted. “What happened to it?”

  The body belonged to one of the two men responsible for strangling Luna to death in the ditch. Robinson had killed him shortly after. Quick shot to the back of the head. The bullet wound was still clearly visible, but
the rest of his body had been mangled and eaten nearly down to the bone. Something had gotten its fill on this guy, and he wasn’t the only one. I scanned the rest of the street, counting six more bodies, all of them left in a similar pillaged state.

  “It looks like they were eaten,” I finally said, stating the obvious.

  “You think animals did this?”

  “It’s certainly within the realm of possibility,” I said. “But what happened to the other ones?”

  “What other ones?”

  “The other bodies. There was three times as many yesterday as there is today. I know it. I’d never forget. What happened to them? Did somebody move them? Did they get up and walk away?”

  The Walking Dead theme suddenly began playing in my head.

  “I-I don’t know, Jimmy. I don’t know. Maybe … maybe someone did move them.”

  “Why though? Why would someone move them?” I looked back down at the stripped remains of the man at my feet. “Where is the other guy who killed Luna? He was right here?”

  “Are you sure he was dead?”

  I sighed. “Pretty damn sure, yeah. But … hold on a minute.” I glanced between the two houses where yesterday Diego had chased a young boy. A young boy like us, not infected, that he had killed in cold blood. “Follow me.”

  I marched down the ditch between the two houses and into the open backyards. Swing set in one. Old, beaten up doghouse in the other.

  “Jimmy, where are we going?” Peaches asked, clutching hold of Olivia. “I don’t feel safe here.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, turning toward the house on the left.

  She was right, as usual. It wasn’t safe.

  But still, I needed to see for sure.

  I had to.

  “Thank God,” I said.

  The body of the young kid Diego had killed still lay face up in the kitchen. He hadn’t magically disappeared, like the others outside on the street. The murder weapon, a simple steak knife, remained in his chest at the last point of entry. The large pool of dark red blood surrounding his upper body was so thick it looked like syrup. His face was gray and emaciated—his eyes open and empty. He looked stiffer than Pee-wee Herman at a peep show. Luckily, the bugs hadn’t found him yet, but the scent in the house made me want to barf up last night’s meatloaf a second time.