Green Ice: A Deadly High (53 page)

Mancini felt increasingly uneasy as he neared the border. The tensed line of people and vehicles he’d witnessed when previously crossing the border had simply vanished.

Only a
stream of wrecked, abandoned vehicles lined the road up to the border gates and Mancini slowly drove through the narrow gap between the lanes, nudging cars out of the way. No border vehicles of patrols of guys stood around the gates checking passports. The place was totally deserted.

Mancini thought he’d be relieved to be back on U.S. soil but now he was worried. He clicked on the radio and tuned through the channels until he found somebody talking in an official manner.

“The CDC have advised people to stay in their homes and not to venture outside,” the voice on the radio said. “A cure for the infection is being worked on but has not yet yielded any positive results. Do not attempt to approach the infected or try and reason with them. They will attack the living on sight, which will increase the spread of infection.”

“Fuck,” Mancini spat. He jammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a thin woman
with long straggly brown hair, who was being chased across the road by a hefty man in a white vest, covered in blood and bite marks. They seemed totally oblivious to the speeding truck.

Mancini sat in the idling cab
, staring ahead through the windshield at the wreckage of burning vehicles and mutilated bodies further down the gridlocked San Diego Freeway.

The disease had obviously spread across the border into the U.S. and maybe beyond.
Mancini knew Luiz had produced a cure out there somewhere and he had to find it, or the human race would soon be wiped out. The first place he’d search was the hidden lab in El Segundo, on the outskirts of LA, which Luiz, Ernesto and Jorge originally worked from.

Mancini
realized he couldn’t go back but his route forward was blocked. He’d have to continue on foot for a while. He jumped out of the cab but immediately heard the sounds of aggressive screams and gnashing teeth directly behind him. Before he could turn around, he felt the weight of several pairs of hands grab him by his shoulders, pulling him to the ground. 

THE END