Family Reunion "J" (17 page)

She gathered the newspapers and put them in a nearby trash can. Just because the world was coming to an end didn’t mean she would become a litterbug. It was one of her pet peeves; it enraged her to see someone drop their bag of leftover garbage in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. That, and graffiti on road signs, she couldn’t explain it, but it just pissed her off. Ryan had actually cleaned the graffiti-tagged speed limit sign on their road, not because he was altruistic, but because it put her in “a mood” every time they passed it coming home. He was good like that.
I hope you’re okay honey
she offered up as she got back on the Harley. “Surfside Beach or bust!” she said out loud to the empty parking lot. She had about two hundred miles to go; she’d made it to the halfway point.

Danny stirred, which woke Auddy. She had fallen asleep shortly after pouring the sugary drink into him. Auddy felt his forehead; he wasn’t cold and clammy any longer. His eyes blinked open. When he saw her he said, “I must be in heaven.” She laughed and slapped his arm lightly. He tried to sit up but only made it an inch off the table before he groaned and fell back.

Auddy put a hand on his chest. “You stay put mister, I need to look at that shoulder.” She carefully removed the bandage. The wound looked a bit red, but not as bad as it had the night before.

Neither of them knew that he had received a good dose of nanites when the zombie bit him; nowhere near the number of the little biological machines that Dr. Ruegg’s vaccine deployed, but enough to cause most people’s bodies to react, usually in death. Unlike the vaccine, the nanites transferred in a bite were already mutated to the point that the flood of the immune system’s reaction would burn the weakened victim’s body out. In ninety-plus percent of these cases, an accelerated infection would liquefy the wound and kill the person in short order. The nanites still affected the other few percentiles of bite victims, but not in the same way. Danny couldn’t tell yet, but he was about to be taken on a ride that would likely change him in ways that he’d never imagined possible.

“Man, I’m starving, is there anything around here to eat?”

This statement alone brightened Auddy’s smile. If he was hungry, that must be a good sign. “Yeah, actually there is quite a lot of stuff.” She opened the fridge and pulled out a plastic container of what looked like macaroni salad. She removed the lid, stuck her nose down to it, and took a deep sniff. “This smells fine.” Then she opened a drawer in the kitchenette’s cabinets and found a plastic spoon. She fed the entire thing to him.

“That was good. What else do you have?”

He continued to eat almost all of the gun shop employees’ lunches. He had Auddy check his sugar. It was good now, but would rise again shortly from his intake of carbohydrates. “Fix me a shot, set it for four units,” he instructed. Auddy dialed the right amount of units into the insulin pen and waited for it to fill. Only it didn’t fill. She rolled it over and saw that the pen was broken. That was not good, but Danny always brought syringes and other insulin as an emergency backup. She dug through his pack. Her fingers were a little desensitized from the nicks she got from the broken glass in the truck, but she still felt the cold dampness in the bottom of the bag.

“Oh shit.” She looked up at him. The bottle of insulin was broken. It must have happened when she dropped the bag last night.

“What?” he said as he struggled up on one elbow.

“We have to go, we need to get back to the condo. Your insulin pen is broken, and so is the backup bottle. I dropped the bag last night when I was attacked by the zombies.”

“What? A zombie attacked you? When were you going to tell me about all this? Never mind, I should be okay for a while. But you’re right, we need to get back to the condo. You need to gather a few more guns and as much ammunition as we can get, and all the food here.”

Auddy spent forty-five minutes collecting several different weapons and ammo for them, as well as shotgun shells and ammo for their current weapons. Charlie stocked a good amount of prepper freeze-dried meals, which she loaded into the pickup. Then she helped Danny to his feet. “You’re not going to believe me, but I’m feeling a lot better,” he said, standing on his own.

“Yeah, you’re just buzzing on a sugar high,” she said as she got under his good side and helped him out to the truck. Once she had him situated in the passenger seat, she hopped into the driver’s seat. It was then she realized it was a manual transmission.

“Oh crap, I can’t drive this thing.”

“Sure you can, I’ll talk you through it.”

Five minutes later the truck lurched forward, coughing and bucking as Auddy ground the gears trying to manipulate the old four-speed. Danny was laughing while holding his arm and bouncing around in pain from the rough ride. Auddy was convinced that Danny’s sugar was going wacko, but he usually only got weird when his sugar was low. There was no way his sugar was low right now.

When they pulled up to the condo, there sat Winnie on the stairless porch, rocking in her chair, looking a little miffed at being left alone for so long. “Don’t antagonize her,” Danny said when he saw the smirk on Auddy’s face.

She laughed. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

“Well, Christ on a crutch, where the hell have you two been?” Winnie yelled as soon as they got out of the truck. “I was just starting to try to figure out how the hell I was going to get down from here.”

Danny waved up at her. “Sorry, we ran into a bit of trouble. We’re okay, ah, how are you?”

“I’m fine, you idiot, do I look like I’m not fine?”

Danny just shook his head. “No, no, you look fine to me.” Refusing Auddy’s help, he retrieved the ladder and put it up against the porch.

Auddy stared at him in wonder. “We need to check your sugar and get you taken care of right now.” Danny ignored her and climbed the ladder with only a minimum of awkwardness. Auddy followed and corralled him in the kitchen. “Go sit on the couch.” It wasn’t a request. Danny gave in and allowed her to test his blood without further protest. The meter flashed
130.
“That can’t be right,” she said, and pricked his finger again. She inserted the second test strip into the meter. It flashed for a minute, then
130
displayed again.

“Huh,” Danny said.

“After all you ate, your sugar should be over two hundred at least. What the hell is going on?” She moved to prick his finger again, but he drew it away. “Aud, I feel fine. We’ll check it again in an hour.”

They spent the next couple of hours moving all their supplies into the condo. They took a large blanket and tied the corners together, making a cargo net of sorts. Auddy would fill it with supplies and Danny would pull it up with a rope to the second floor. He kept telling her to load more stuff in it, claiming his shoulder felt fine. Regardless, she kept the weight down to a manageable level.

Once that task was complete, she sat him down and checked his blood sugar level again. It was at one hundred and fifty, which was fine.

“Man, I could eat a horse,” Danny said. “Let’s cook up some of that stuff we brought back.” Something was not right here. Auddy knew his eating habits pretty well after dating him for two years, and this was not normal. She checked his zombie bite again; it was looking amazingly good.
What the hell?

Danny strung the extension cable from the generator, which they left in the back of the truck, to the condo. They could only plug a few things in, but for now, they could use the electric stove if it was the only thing plugged in. She cooked up a couple different freeze-dried entrees and made some coffee. They all enjoyed it.

When lunch was finished, Danny disconnected the stove and hooked up a couple of fans to circulate the air. They sat drinking coffee and regaling Winnie with what had happened on their trip to the outside world.

The warm wind pushed against Jay as she exited a long turn in the road. Pilot Mountain appeared on the horizon. The peak stood in contrast to the heat, looking like a nipple standing erect on a cold day. The only mountain in view, its rocky cliffs formed a perfectly round protuberance at the top of the mound that rose two thousand feet into the blue North Carolina sky. She silently cursed Ryan for forever ruining the stately view by planting the idea in her head that it resembled a boob. The hint of a smile crinkled the corner of her mouth as the thought came and went.

She was coming up on Winston-Salem, the original twin cities despite Minneapolis-St. Paul’s claim. The coppery red dirt, made famous by James Taylor’s songs about the Carolinas, had blown across the road is some spots. It amazed her how quickly the lack of the daily rush of traffic headed into the city gave way to nature’s effects.

As she came to the top of a rise, she could see something blocking the road up ahead. She brought the Harley to a stop, clicked it into neutral, and removed her sunglasses to get a better look. Two state road dump trucks sat backed together on each side of the four-lane parkway. This part of the highway was under a constant state of repair, and while it wasn’t unusual to see the dump trucks, their current configuration caused her concern.
I should have found some binoculars
she thought as she squinted. “Better safe than sorry,” she muttered, putting her sunglasses back on and turning the bike around. She’d just passed the exit to old Route 52 about a half mile before and knew it paralleled 74/52 all the way into Winston-Salem.

She crossed the median and headed back northwest toward the off-ramp. The red dirt shoulder of the road began to erupt into sporadic little puffs of dust. She was confused at the sight until the report of the rifle overcame the sound of the loud pipes on the bike. Someone was shooting at her, again. She leaned as far forward as she could and cranked the accelerator hard as she went up through the gears. She weaved back and forth over the two lanes, gaining speed as she raced away from the threat. The big Road King was not as nimble as her smaller Heritage had been, but the sheer power was impressive. She looked down briefly to see she was doing over 100 mph. Her heart quickened as she felt the negative g’s associated with going airborne flood her with adrenaline. Her ass came off the seat as she squeezed her knees against the tank, then she stood, putting her weight back on her feet as the bike returned to earth. The landing was surprisingly soft but still jolted her, causing pain to radiate up her right arm into her shoulder. The urge to hit the brakes was almost overwhelming, but she resisted and instead accelerated out of the landing. The Harley responded and propelled her straight down the road. She backed off the throttle and eased down to 60 mph as she crested the next small hill. Everything would have been fine had it not been for the loose dirt at the bottom of the shallow dip in the road that ended her ride.

She felt the front end begin to go wankers on her and knew she was going to go down, and at this speed, it would almost certainly be fatal. It’s said that God gives special protection to children and fools, and however unlikely, Jay’s guardian angel must have had a couple of favors in reserve. Jay knew the only way to slow down quickly was to keep the tires in contact with the road. As soon as the bike was down it would slide for a long way. Unsure of how she did it, the bike righted itself and she applied both brakes in what she thought was the correct percentage—almost. She’d bled off another few miles per hour of her speed before overcorrecting and going over. The last thing she remembered was riding the sliding bike until it went into the median and caught in the grass, sending her aloft. Once again, she got the queasy feeling of flying.