“You know what they’re running from,” I said, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. Only those in denial weren’t aware of what was happening.
News reports about a viral outbreak were the reason afternoon classes were canceled. Ashley had the bright idea to drive to Beaver Lake for the weekend and had invited her boyfriend, Stanley Cooper, to come along earlier in the week. Not wanting to be the odd man out, I asked Bryce, although once he knew about Cooper coming along, Bryce would have come whether I’d invited him or not. Especially once Daddy found out Mom was out of town and insisted we stay with him for the weekend. Bryce knew my relationship with my father hadn’t been all that great lately, because Bryce knew everything about me. We had voluntarily tolerated each other since our sophomore year of high school. We traded off doing horrible and wonderful things for each other: He’d taken my virginity and helped me get through my parents’ divorce, I’d wrecked his first truck and given him my virginity. Bryce was fiercely protective, and that is exactly how we ended up at the same college. His protection wasn’t fueled by jealousy. It was more like he was protecting me from me. Bryce worked double duty as boyfriend and conscious, and I had never denied that I appreciated both.
Just like everyone else, we continued with our weekend plans, never truly believing something so frightening and dangerous would reach us all the way in the middle of the country. Nothing ever happened here. The worst thing that had happened to Ashley and me was our parents’ divorce. Other than that, our lives had been fairly boring and worry free. It was a running joke with us. We would listen to our friends’ stories of their brutal childhoods or how they were bullied in high school, how their father was a drunk or their mother was overbearing. Our mom and dad never fought in front of us. Their divorce was a complete surprise.
Another runner bumped the paint. I honked the horn. “Dick!”
“Miranda, maybe we should do what they’re doing?” Bryce asked.
“The Bug is my birthday present. Dad special-ordered it, and he will never forgive me if I show up without it. And, the ranch is two hours away. We’ll never make it on foot.”
Ashley gripped my seat with her perfectly manicured fingers. “M . . . maybe we should go back?”
I rolled my eyes. “You act like you’ve never seen a zombie movie, Ashley. We can’t survive in a city. Dad’s ranch is the best place to go.”
“Why do you keep saying that? It’s not zombies, that’s ridiculous!” she said.
“Viral outbreak. The infected are attacking and biting people. They said cadavers this morning. What do you think it is, Ash? Herpes?”
Ashley sat back in resignation, crossing her arms across her stomach. Cooper pulled her to him again. He wasn’t fooling anyone. His wide blue eyes made it obvious that he was just as frightened as she was, but fear wasn’t the only thing I saw.
“No, Coop,” I said to the rearview mirror. “You’re not getting out of this car.”
“But my mom and my little sister. My dad’s not around. They’re alone. I should try to get to them.”
I took a breath, trying not to think of my own mom. She was in Belize with my stepfather, Rick. That was why we’d made plans to visit my dad at his ranch in the first place. “They live in Texas, Coop. Let’s get to the ranch, get some supplies, and then we’ll go get them, okay?” I was lying. Cooper might have known it, too, but my dad’s ranch was north, everybody was running north, and Cooper’s mother and sister were south. Maybe one day he could try, but we’d all seen enough end-of-the-world flicks to know how this was going to go down: mass chaos and carnage until the population whittled down. That’s when the walking dead would start leaving the cities to find a meal, but by then we’d be settled in and well educated in the art of zombicide. We had to survive the next few weeks first. The ranch would be the best place to do that.
A guy about our age bumped my door and then tripped and fell just out of sight. “Stay away!” I yelled, leaning forward to try to make eye contact with whoever decided to molest my three-day-old car.
Another running, screaming passerby knocked his hip against my side mirror. A woman trailed behind him, but stopped, and then crawled across my hood. I cussed again, shoving the gear into reverse. “We’ve got to get out of here. They’re going to tear us apart.” Just as I turned to get a handle on how far I could back up, from the corner of my eye I saw a flesh-colored struggle in the same spot the first man had fallen.
“Miranda?” Bryce said. “He’s . . . he’s got him.”
I peered over my steering wheel, watching the second man trying to pull his arm out of the mouth of the first. A mixture of screaming and moans rose from their frantic wrestling match.
Bryce put both hands on his forehead just as the first man took a large bite of flesh and pulled away. Blood sprayed the biter’s face, and meat and tendons trailed from his mouth to the arm of his prey.
Ashley’s shrill scream filled my ear, and for a moment, a buzzing noise accompanied a fainter version of what I’d just heard. I looked over at Bryce, and his face paled, his eyes saying everything he couldn’t find words for.
I slammed my foot against the accelerator, only stopping when I felt the back of the Bug hit the car behind us. In the next moment, the gearshift was in drive, and I was maneuvering between a semi-truck and a minivan—both empty. The Bug tossed us up and down as it climbed across the asphalt to the shoulder.
“Don’t stop!” Ashley said. “Keep going!”
We passed more people, unsure of who was running and who was chasing. I saw parents carrying their young children, and pulling along older ones by the hand. A couple of times people screamed at me to stop, begged me to help them, but stopping always meant dying in the movies, and I was barely eighteen. I wasn’t sure how long we could survive, but I knew I wasn’t dying on day one of the f**king zombie apocalypse.
Scarlet
It was a risk, taking the old two-lane highway, but it was the quickest way to my children besides the interstate, and that would be suicide. The Jeep was part of a caravan of cars that had managed to make it out of the city. There were maybe ten or fifteen of us. The silver Toyota Camry in front of me had a forward-facing car seat in the back, and I hoped there was a child in it.
Mile after mile of farmland passed, and then someone at the front slowed. We were coming up on a bridge, and for whatever reason, the car at the front was being cautious. Fear surged through every vein in my body. We couldn’t stop. We had to keep going no matter what was ahead. I might have been in a Jeep, but it wouldn’t cross the river. No matter what, I was going over that bridge.