Stage 6 (16 page)

There were nods of agreement, and I was glad to see the group morale was coming back.

I happily agreed with Steve, “Alright then. We have a plan. Who should go look for cars?”

Steve replied, “I think for this mission, we want to attract as little attention as possible. Get in, find a car, and come back as soon as possible. Honestly I would like to do this myself.”

I nodded, “Sounds good. And Steve, if they find you- Don’t lead them back here.”

What was implied, but remained unmentioned, was that if he got caught he was on his own. We weren’t going to jeopardize the group. He replied simply, “I understand.”

He opened the door and got out, quickly shutting the door behind him. We all turned to watch him stealthily move towards the nearest cars, and peer inside before moving on. He disappeared behind the cars at some point, and we lost track of him. We waited in silence for a few minutes, almost holding our breath in anticipation. Then we saw him, moving slowly back to us. Quiet cheers broke out among us at his apparent safe success.

He got back and opened the door quietly and whispered, “Alright I found a nice sized car with a good deal of gas left. The keys were in the dashboard, and I almost didn’t bother looking but I’m glad I did.”

I got out of the driver’s seat and opened the door next to Lucy. Yet again I leaned down to awkwardly pick her up, and felt terrible as her legs brushed the door and I could feel her jump in pain.

I mumbled, “Sorry,” into her ear.

She whispered back, “It’s ok.”

My mom obviously had something wrong with her leg, but it wasn’t bad enough to warrant picking her up. She was limping, and Karen and Sarah helped her walk as quietly as possible. Steve guided us towards his find, and we moved as quietly as possible. After ten minutes of painstakingly slow moving, my arms were burning from carrying Lucy. I didn’t let it show though, and pressed onwards until we finally came to the car Steve was talking about.

It was a relatively new minivan, and would do more than suit our needs. We opened the doors as quietly as possible and I gently placed Lucy in a window seat, so she would be easier to get out when we stopped next. My Mom, Lucy, and Sarah (the wounded) sat in the middle row. We opened up the trunk and Steve, Ian, Karen, and Victoria piled into the back. Steve insisted that he was going to sit with Victoria, so Kevin took the passenger side with me in the front. We closed all the doors securely, locked them, and then I turned the key in the ignition. The engine came to life, and I slowly moved past the last trickle of the cars before coming to a clear road entering into the city. I had no idea why the cars stopped right outside the city like that, but judging from construction machines off on the side of the road and massive scrap piles, the city had come by and cleared the abandoned cars off the road. We cruised slowly into the city, and immediately noticed the Infected wandering aimlessly around us. Some would chase the occasional squirrel every once in a while, but for the most part they were barely active. There were cars and other obstacles in the street but we would slowly go around them and avoid any confrontation. We decided it wasn’t worth the risk to search the city, and instead we would continue onwards. In this manner, we passed through the entire city, and using a map found in the dashboard we started moving off towards Caddo National Grasslands. It was now getting dark, and we were feeling pretty safe inside the car. As we neared the Grasslands, getting later and later we saw a store up in the distance right outside a small park.

I stopped near one of them, and asked, “How about we get ourselves some dinner huh?”

There was a chorus of agreement, and our stomachs rumbled as Kevin and I got out of the car.

Kevin asked, “Hey Jack, so I suppose there’s no reason to worry you’re a zombie now? With that in mind, can I have my gun back now?”

I chuckled at his comment, and honestly I thought he had proved himself as one of us trying to save Karen earlier, even if he had hesitated at first. I opened up the trunk, and asked Steve for Kevin’s gun.

Steve looked concerned, but then nodded and asked me, “Hey if you see any worthwhile supplies in there can you just go ahead and grab them? We might as well. Also if you see any baby food, milk or anything, grab that as well ok?”

I nodded and said, “Of course Steve. And Ian, would you mind getting in the driver’s seat? I don’t want to leave anything to chance. No reason to leave a car with no driver just sitting out here.”

Ian agreed, and climbed out to switch seats. I grabbed my shotgun out of the trunk, and put my jacket back on. I reached into one of the pockets to feel the reassuring handful of bullets lying in there. I made sure to reload my shotgun with as many bullets as it could take, and flipped the safety off. I handed Kevin his gun and stood back cautiously. He smiled as he took it, and felt its weight in his hand.

He then looked at me questioningly and asked, “Let’s go?”

I recognized the jibe, as I had often fallen into the habit of saying ‘let’s go’ lately.

I grinned and replied, “Let’s go!”

We had our guns at the ready, not knowing what to expect. We silently moved towards the little convenience store first, and I opened the doors to hear a terrifying “ding” from the automatic door sensor and the lights flicked on. I froze, waiting for any Infected to hear it. Nothing. I cautiously moved into the store, shotgun ready to be pointed at anything that moved. Kevin split off around the corner, and crept around so we could both check out the store from different angles.

We met at the end of the store without incident, and I asked, “See anything?”

He shook his head and replied, “Nope. So what do we get?”

I looked around the store and shrugged, “Anything that looks useful I guess.”

I opened all my jacket and pants pockets up, and stuffed them with bags of snacks and candy. Kevin appeared looking similar, and we crept outside to the car.

We opened the trunk and un-loaded all the stuff, and Kevin said to everybody, “You know what guys? It’s dark, and that store still has electricity. There is lots of milk, drinks, and snacks and stuff in there. I propose we stay here for the night, locked up in the car where Infected won’t look for us. We can move all the snacks and stuff in here in the morning, but for now we can have a good dinner.”

There were cheers of encouragement, and Ian drove the car around out front the convenience store. We split the food we found, -mainly beef jerky and chips- among us and made sure all the doors and windows were closed as tight as possible. Everything was locked up, and we all got as comfortable as possible. We set up a basic watch schedule during the night, but our minds were elsewhere. We were going to be free of this plague in the morning. It was all looking up. I fell asleep with this comfortable thought.

I awoke with a start, as Steve shook me and said, “Jack! It’s the afternoon! We were fools to sleep this long!”

I looked around groggily to see everybody else just now waking up as well, and I asked, “Well what’s wrong with that? Nothing happened did it?”

He shook his head and said, “No but that’s not the point. We didn’t even set an alarm! Have we learned nothing from all that has happened??”

I replied, “We were all just very tired Steve, it won’t happen again.” I said to the group, in a louder voice, “So are we ready to escape Texas!?”

There were cheers and Steve excused himself to grab some milk and supplies from the convenience store. He came back out, hopped in the trunk with the stuff, and I turned the car onto the road and took off. We followed the main road around the Grasslands, and it was unnerving to imagine all the Infected animals and such peering out at us from the hidden forest. We came across a deer once, which stared us down from the middle of the road. Obviously in the grips of the Infection, it pawed the ground looking at us as I drove very slowly around it. It wasn’t long before we saw the signs of the containment up ahead, with small make-shift buildings and various assorted barbed wire and other tools of containment spread out for as far as the eye could see. There were even machine gun turrets at some places.

I slowed the car to a stop and asked, “Well guys, what’s the plan?”

Steve answered immediately, “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get through on a main road like this. The best bet we have is going off onto the gravel a ways to the left, and try and get between any main roads. They’ll probably only have a few guys set up there. But something I’ve been thinking about, these aren’t Infected. Are we prepared to kill, to murder the human guards to get past them? Opening up the way for Infected to get into the rest of the Country?”

We were all still, as the implications of what Steve said hit us. I hadn’t thought about that, I always assumed we just had to make it here and sneak past somehow.

I turned the car off the road and said, “Well first let’s see if we have to make that decision. If it comes down to it though, I don’t know.”

I drove in silence for a while, going over the bumps in the dirt and shaking the car around extracting little “mmpphs” of pain from the injured in our car. I tried to drive as gentle as possible, but after all I was driving across hills at some points. Consulting the map somebody found under one of the seats, we managed to aim straight at the border to Oklahoma. I stopped, and turned in my seat to face the group.

I said, “The guards have no doubt been told to shoot anything on sight. I really think the best thing for us to do, is to send one or two of us up there to scout it out. See where our best bet is at getting through. We WILL bring our guns, and if they discover us, we’ll have to defend ourselves.”

Nobody objected, and I began to ask for volunteers when Steve cut me off and said, “I’ll go. I’m the best qualified person for the job, and besides I don’t know if I want to put you in that position Jack. You may think it’s easy, killing the Infected when they’re running madly for you with blood dripping from their mouth, but what about when they’re just human Jack? What about the lives they have, their dreams, their families depending on them? No, I’ll go. You guys wait here.”

Steve gently handed Victoria to Sarah and told her something I couldn’t hear, and then hopped out of the trunk. He shut it securely, and began to creep towards the fences up ahead. As he got closer he dropped to an army crawl, and was hidden in the tall grasses. He disappeared, and we didn’t see him until a few minutes later when he popped out of the grass only twenty feet away from us.

He jogged to the car, got in the trunk and then said, “I can’t explain it, but I don’t see anybody at all up there. I checked further, to see if maybe they have snipers trained on the barricades but I don’t see any evidence of people being here for a long time. I went ahead and cleared a path through so you can go on ahead.”

I cheered and said, “Guys I think our luck is turning around! What a break!”

Everybody broke out into smiles and whoops as I drove the van up to the barricades, and went through the small clearing Steve had made. We came out the other side, I drove for a bit to find the main road and then I pushed onto it.

There was quiet for a few seconds, and then Lucy yelled, “We made it!”

I laughed and yelled back, “Whooooooo!”

We all started shouting and shaking each other’s hands, and I smiled knowing that we had made it through. The whole nightmare would never be forgotten, but it was finally over.

Ian asked, “What do we do now? Just go to the nearest town? How do we start our lives over?”

My Mom genuinely laughed, for the first time in a while and told Ian, “I don’t think we have to think so far ahead. We are ALIVE! Let’s celebrate!”

I drove a bit on the state road 70, and our spirits dampened a little as we saw the roads empty and completely devoid of life. There were abandoned cars every mile or so, and we thought this looked almost as depressing as the traffic jam we saw earlier.

Kevin, always the realist said, “Well this makes sense right? I mean think about it, Texas is under a massive quarantine from a deadly mysterious virus. No doubt there are going to be some strange circumstances near the border, we’ve only been out of Texas for less than an hour. Let’s wait to judge.”

We all nodded, but there was no cheer. Instead we were all hunched over in our seats, straining to see the outskirts of the next town, which the map said should be called “Bennington.” We came upon it, and drove into town slowly, only find to our increasing distress, that there were still no signs of life.

We drove through town, and Steve asked, “Maybe they evacuated places near the Texas border?”

Kevin replied quickly, “Yeah... but that would imply there was a chance the quarantine would fail.”

And suddenly, as I turned a corner of the town we stood staring in shock as Infected of all manners roamed the streets and buildings with abandon.

My Mom slowly started to repeat the words, “No, no no no...”

And Karen held a hand over her mouth as tears came to her eyes.

I said hoarsely, “The Infection must have spread past Texas. That’s why we got through the quarantine so easy...”

Horrified, we could do nothing but sit and watch as Infected searched and roamed through the streets. Victoria started crying, and Steve hurriedly shushed her.

He then said, “Well there’s no use agonizing about it. What’s done is done. It doesn’t matter how it happened, but it DID happen and we need to plan accordingly. First, we need to find out where to go next. We need information desperately. How far spread is the Infection? Are there other sa-”

Steve was cut off as Lucy pointed and shouted, “Look! Look at the window up there by the mall!”

We all strained to see what she was pointing at, and I quickly saw the object. It was a person. Well a group of people actually, and they had stretched a banner with all manner of things taped to it, obviously designed to get our attention.

Ian asked, “Can anybody see what it says?”

Steve moved around quickly and took a pair of binoculars out from his ever-important bag. Ian took them, and peered out.