Barely Alive (20 page)

And a job? My mom had been searching for a great job for a long time. If you didn’t strip or deal in Vegas, you made little money in the faltering economy. She had a chance at a job she might not take… something else to add to my shoulders.

I opened my mouth, but closed it. What would I say?

Connie joined us, finally. The moment couldn’t be more perfect.

She’d tucked her hair into her shirt collar. A bit of blood speckled her shoes. She licked at the fingers of her right hand.

“
Hey, how’d you stay so clean?” I handed her a baby wipe when she reached us.

Pure satisfaction filled her smile. She accepted the wipe and cleaned between her fingers. “I don’t act like I’m going to die, if I don’t eat as fast as I breathe.”
Huh.
She took her time. But did she get as much food in? She bent over and did the same to her shoes. Standing back up, she looked at us with her hands on her hips. “Are we ready? I need to look at those papers before this round of meat starts to where off.”

James and I didn’t look at each other.

Connie climbed in the backseat.

I cleaned my left arm, my right. Once the wipes came away from my skin without any pink or red streaks on them, I pulled the new shirt on, the material scratchy and soft on my back. The shirt was a bit snug across my chest. Hey, maybe Heather would be as distracted by my pecs as I was by hers. Not likely, but one could hope.

James kicked the pile of dirty wipes to the median and pulled on his new shirt. Crap, his shirt fit snug, too, and he had a lean runner’s body. The shirt looked better on him.

I scowled.

No words passed between us. What would we say? I didn’t know that I was ready for sorry. I felt it, sure, but I didn’t know that I was ready to discuss it or even own up to it. That’d take a lot more humbling on my part than I wanted at the moment. Plus, he looked better than me. Heather might notice him and that just irritated me further from an “I’m sorry.”

Everyone packed back in the car. I clicked my seatbelt and glanced at Heather. “Is everybody ready?”

A chorus of yeses answered. The key turned easily in the ignition. We were off and headed north. We still hadn’t seen any cars.

“
While you were gone, we got in the trunk. Found two blankets.” Heather held up a bag bulging at the seams with new items. “We’re slowly collecting stuff. There are even two new boxes of matches.” She leaned against the door, the window open beside her, letting the air in to whip her hair around her face. She tucked a stray strand, repeatedly, behind her ear. “Mule deer are pretty prevalent in this area. My dad… Mr. McCain hunted with his friends up here for the racks. More than ten or so get hit by cars and trucks a week. I bet you can find more pretty easy, if you get hungry again.”

“
That’s good to know. Do you know of any hunting spots up north?” James crossed his arms over his chest.

I was chilled, too, by the moving air in the car, but not as much as I’d been prior to feeding. “Hey, Heather, would you mind closing your window, please?”

She sighed and rolled up the window with fast circles of her wrist. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’m dying to get the AC on.” Heather froze when the three of us zombies gasped. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you guys dying?” She coughed, her face red. “Um, sorry, I mean aren’t you guys hot?”

We had just eaten, a lot, and yet the cold wasn’t coming from outside of our skins, more from the inside – like our bones were sculpted from ice. I rubbed at the goose bumps on my forearm. “No. We just ate, so we’re not as cold as before, but we’re still cold.” I felt bad for her and Travis. Sweat moistened their hairline. And Travis had to be worse off with his beard and extra weight. “I know you guys are hot, but the colder we get, the more energy we burn. We’ll have to eat sooner, if we get too cold.”

She didn’t argue, just nodded, but kept her window up. The temperature rose in the car from the afternoon sun pouring through the large rear window. James, Connie, and I welcomed the heat with little sighs of satisfaction. The humans wouldn’t be able to survive if we let the car warm up like an oven, but for one moment it didn’t seem terrible to revel in the conditions.

After a drawn out moment of bliss, I offered. “We can handle the windows down though, right, guys?” It wouldn’t do any good for them to die. Connie and James nodded.

Connie returned her attention to the notes in her lap she’d retrieved from Travis. Her husband leaned against the far window, his eyelids lowering and lifting as he fought sleep.

Heather lowered her window half-way. She fidgeted her hands in her lap.

The scenery out the window had nothing more than sand, even dirtier sand, odd looking bushes and plants, trees that needed water, and mountains in the distance. Oh, and dust. Dust covered everything.

An hour passed. Everyone was lost in their own self-examinations.

The landscape hadn’t changed. Same old browns and grayish-greens. Yuck. I was bored.

In the distance, the shape of an ant zoomed toward us from the opposite side of the highway. The car got closer.

“
It looks like a car is headed this way.” I pointed out the windshield.

Travis leaned forward and grabbed onto the seat. “We have to stop them.”

I glanced at him. “I thought you were sleeping, man.” Okay, yes, he startled me. A second ago, he’d been softly snoring, the next he’s almost leaping over the seats to grab the wheel.

“
You have to stop them, Paul. The only place to go from here is Vegas. We can’t let them reach the city.” Terror filled his voice.

And responsibility for more lives smacked me in the face. The drivers of the car could be a family, an older couple, a group of young people, anybody who meant something to somebody. We owed it to them to stop them. But would they listen and how did we do it?

“
What if they don’t stop? We can’t force them to listen.” I lifted my fingers from the wheel, palms resting on the smooth metal. “Any suggestions?”

James spoke for the first time since our partial discussion outside. “Cross the median and park sideways on the road. Make them stop.” I couldn’t grasp the sullenness in his voice. Was he mad at me or was it something else? I hadn’t done anything outside. Nothing had changed between us since the warehouse. Or maybe I’d worn off the relief we had both experienced at seeing the other one alive and well.

I’d reminded him of what I’d done and the repercussions of my actions.

The median sloped between the north and south-going stretches. Large rocks pockmarked the dirt. Crossing the six feet up-and-down slope wouldn’t be pretty. We were in an old sedan not a monster truck or even a powerfully modified SUV. If we crossed the median, we’d do damage to the car. “We might not make it, if we do that, guys.”

Heather looked at me, her lips pouty and soft. “We have to try. They can’t make it down there, Paul. It’d be like killing them.”

I couldn’t disagree with her. Not when she spoke the truth. Damn, I hated the truth sometimes. Especially lately. It’d be nice if the truth was more like “Hey, Paul, here’s a trillion dollars and Heather wrapped in a saran wrap dress draped across the hood of a 1969 Mach I Mustang.” Oh, yeah, perfect if that were the truth. It’d be awesome.

Sending people into that mess wasn’t my idea of right. We didn’t have time to stop the Nova, walk across the median and hope they stopped as we waved our arms at them. “Okay. Hang on.”

A part in the median would be awesome, a spot for emergency vehicles to turn around, anything. But we didn’t have time to wait. The minivan was close enough I could see the luggage rack on top.

Closing my eyes wouldn’t help. I had to watch the main problem – the rocks. I counted to three and crossed my arms as I spun the wheel. The centrifugal force dragged on us. The tail of the car whipped behind and followed the responsive front wheels down into the ditch, up the incline to the crest of the median. Nothing dragged on the bottom.

Until…

The other side had a larger number of rocks I hadn’t seen from our side of the highway. Every rock and gravel scrape on the bottom of the car jostled the car, filling the cab with screeches and groans.

I winced. Heather reached across the small distance and gripped the top of my leg. Holy crap, not the best thing to do when I needed my full attention.

James and Connie each pressed Travis into the seat, holding him down. Only lap seat belts were in the back and only two at that. Travis gripped his wife’s arm and seemed grateful for the two zombies and their death grips.

We smashed into the bottom of the shallow ditch, the bumper catching on the lip of the pavement. The car paused but I refused to accept it. I revved the engine and the front tires ground against the rocky foundation, finding footage and ripping its bumper from the face as it pushed over the obstacle. The pavement scraped on the bottom, louder and harsher than any of the rocks we’d encountered until then.

Heather muffled her scream.

James cursed.

Hell, I made it!
and roared into a parallel parked position exactly across the south highway. I blew out the breath I’d held, a whoosh into the piercing silence of the car. I inhaled, assaulted by the stinging scent of gasoline mixed with muted oil, odors you weren’t supposed to smell inside the car. I turned toward the backseat. “Get out.”

Connie and James opened their doors. Shook up, they still recovered quicker than Travis and Heather who staggered from the vehicle with their hands to their heads. I reached behind the seat and retrieved the microscope and the bags as well as Heather’s collection on the floor in the front. Arms full, I pulled the load out of the car and left the door open.

The fumes chased me. If I was human I would’ve passed out.

I rushed past them as they waited on the north side of the car only twenty feet away. “Get going. We need to get further.” I jerked my head away from the car. “Come on.”

They just stood there, watching me like I’d lost it.

The car idled. Gas fumes hazed the image of the blue old car. I didn’t want to watch. Oil dripped under the front tires – the car bleeding after I’d run it through hell.

“
Run, damn it!” I yelled at my group’s disbelieving faces.

I’m sorry
, I thought to the Nova.

The group responded, almost too late. They moved ten feet closer to me before the car exploded.

Fumes and oil mixed with the sparks of the old V8 engine.

The part of me that loved cars groaned, pissed at the waste. The other part of me, worried about the humans traveling toward Vegas, accepted the loss as a sacrifice to accomplish the goal my friends had given me.

Travis and Heather fell to their hands and knees as the blast blew them down.

Friends. In the middle of the end of the world, I’d found friends.

I helped Heather and Travis up, their palms bloodied and black from the dirt. Heather’s knees were red and raw, but no blood dripped from her legs.

Connie stepped toward the fire, mesmerized by the flickering orange and red, the black swirls and clouds. Oh, and the heat. It had a collar on my insides, too. I wanted it – more in that moment than anything else I could think of obtaining – even my sporadic wet dreams about Heather and hot cars.

I wanted that heat. James wanted that heat. Connie wanted that heat.

But thankfully, Heather and Travis wanted us more. They pulled on our arms and dragged us further into the cooler air.

The van’s arrival distracted us enough to remove the final vestiges of the desirous flame’s hold.

An older woman and man rushed from their doors. Red and orange polyester bowling shirts flapped over the elastic waistbands of their jeans.
Marv
and
Eleanor
were embroidered in bright yellow cursive over their left breasts. The woman’s pin-covered visor pushed on her maroon-dyed curls. An armadillo pin caught my eye, circled by one of the garish locks hanging over the visor edge.

Marv’s buzz cut didn’t detract from his appearance. He was a good looking old guy. I wouldn’t mind looking like him at his age – like an older Zack Efron – no matter what anyone said, Efron got the girls and wasn’t that the goal?

Eleanor worked her over-bright salmon colored lips around teeth that looked too big for her mouth. “Are you kids okay? How terrible.” She fluttered her hands over her broad chest as she looked from us to the fire and back. “Were you guys heading toward Vegas or away?”

Marv chuckled and reached out his hand to Travis. “Don’t mind Eleanor. She’s a bit nosy, but in this case, she’s wondering if you need a ride into town. Our daughter lives down there.” His smile faded and worry pinched at the sides of his slightly yellowed eyes. “We’re going down to check on her.” He brushed at the bottom of his shirt. “Had to leave a perfectly good game of strikes to do it, if that tells you anything.”

“
We’re leaving Vegas, actually.” Travis shook the outstretched hand. “I’m sorry your daughter is there, but you have to turn around.”

“
I can’t do that. They said on the news that the city is burning. The Strip has gone up in flames.” Marv dropped his hand and wrapped his arm around his wife. “We can’t take the chance that she’s still okay and not do anything. She’s our daughter.”