The Oasis of Filth (7 page)

14

We made great time all the way through to Richmond. But we had to be careful once we got there — last we heard, Richmond was a functional, walled city, like DC. We continued on 95, driving straight toward its heart. As we approached the Route 1 overpass, we saw that the space between the bridge and the street below had been filled in, walling off the entrance. Cars and trucks were heaped along the shoulders of the road, like they had been deliberately swept aside to clear the way. It was impossible to tell if the fortifications were guarded; if anyone still kept up the city’s defenses. Rosa drove ahead. Slowly, carefully.

A blast tore open the ground just ahead, to the passenger side of the RV, with a sound loud enough to cancel out everything else and leave my ears ringing. My nose filled with an acrid smell. Tiny bits of pavement rained onto the RV. Rosa swerved left, more a flinching move than actual defensive driving, sending me flailing toward into the passenger door. The RV wasn’t moving all that quickly, but it was tall and the turn was sudden. For a moment we skittered up on two wheels before thudding back down to the road, Rosa zigging to try to regain control. The RV slammed against a low concrete wall dividing the two sides of the highway and dragged to a stop, throwing sparks.

Rosa turned to look at me. “What the hell was — ?” Another shot missed overhead, cutting into an abandoned car in the opposite lane. There must have been some gas
left in its tank; the car jumped into the air in a fireball explosion, making a low
whump
.

“Go!” I shouted. “Back the way we came! Turn us around!”

With a ripping of metal on concrete, Rosa drove forward. She had to get off the wall before she could turn around. “How far can they shoot?” she asked.

“I have no idea, just keep going!” Somehow she turned the RV around. Another blast, now behind us, lifted our back end. For a moment, it looked like the extra push of the explosion would send us crashing directly into a pickup truck that angled out from the side of the highway.

At the last minute, Rosa swerved. I was sure that I hadn’t taught her anything like that. I think it was just her good instincts. Then she did something even smarter. She drove toward the shoulder, where a large tractor-trailer jutted diagonally into the road. She put it between us and the city wall, buying us the seconds we needed. As I looked back, I saw the barrel of the mounted gun — a huge thing, I have no idea what to even call it — turning to aim at us again. But as Rosa sped away, it didn’t fire.

Maybe we were out of range, maybe we no longer appeared to be a threat, or maybe they just wanted to conserve ammunition. Either way, we lived.

15

We backtracked north for a few miles, passing several exits, before I finally asked Rosa to pull off at an interchange where it looked like we might be able to find supplies. After several wasted stops, we came across a convenience store a couple of turns off the main road that ended up being a great find — a storeroom held food, water, a small can of gas, and something we suddenly realized we really needed: a map. We vowed not to venture into the big cities again.

Using the map, we realized we could skirt around Richmond using 295 — we hoped it would swing wide enough to avoid any future confrontations. It did.

The RV was scuffed up on the driver’s side and the mirror was broken off, but it didn’t seem like we’d have to look behind us for too much other traffic, and we weren’t terribly concerned about having the nicest car on the road. It still handled fine. Rosa had had enough driving for one day, and passed the job to me. Soon, she was napping in the passenger seat while I navigated around Richmond.

The rest of the drive through Virginia was uneventful, except for one moment in a remote, densely wooded section of the highway. Out of nowhere, a zombie ran directly into the road. Rosa startled awake as we clipped him with the passenger side of the RV, no doubt denting up that side of the vehicle, too. She screamed. I tried to defuse the tension. “The way we drive, they may take our license
away,” I said. She just stared at the blood that was dripping down the passenger window next to her.

* * *

Driving into North Carolina seemed like a huge accomplishment. First, we had been in Virginia since the moment we landed the paddleboats coming out of DC. And second, it just
felt
closer to South Carolina, our objective.

Just past the border, I had to pee, so we pulled over and I went to use the small bathroom in the RV. Rosa, seeming morbidly fascinated by the bloody mess on the passenger side of the car, got out to take a look. Afterward, I guessed that the combination of our vehicle approaching, doors opening and closing, and other sounds of human activity must have stirred up interest. A zombie we might otherwise have dismissed as a corpse on the side of the road stood, shook itself free of the underbrush, and made directly for Rosa. From inside the bathroom, I heard her shout. My heart raced, and I fumbled my way outside as fast as possible.

There, my racing heart almost stopped.

A frantic zombie was on top of Rosa, who’d fallen to the street, backpedaling desperately with her elbows and feet, trying for some purchase to get away. The zombie, formerly a dark-skinned woman, perhaps 50 years old, somewhat overweight, scrambled to keep Rosa down, to bite and tear at her.

I turned, flung open the tire compartment at the rear of the RV, and grabbed whatever I could. It was a small jack for replacing a flat tire. I didn’t care. It was metal and heavy. I hefted it, and ran.

My only thought was:
Let her be okay
. Skidding up behind the zombie, I cocked my arm and hit the thing as hard as I could. The zombie woman didn’t just fall, she was launched to the side of Rosa in a splatter of blood and gore. I stopped, looked at the zombie, ready to do it again. She didn’t move. Given the state of her skull, I figured she’d never move again.

Rosa was up on her elbows, looking down at herself. She was incredulous, shocked. No, horrified. Following her eyes, I saw why. Her shirt had a vertical tear, and under that it was clear that the zombie had slashed her across the belly.

As she slowly looked up at me, anguish in her eyes, the zombie’s blood and her own continued to mix in the wound. It felt like the cut continued down into my core, my soul.

A tear opened between us, and the part of me that Rosa had become was ripped away.

16

She lived. We had no idea if it would be for long or for short, but damn it, she was alive. We would continue south, come what may. The journey took on even greater urgency. Where before, I had come along on this quest for The Oasis out of duty to Rosa, now it took on much more serious weight. I began to feel that I had to get her to The Oasis or she would turn into a zombie in front of my eyes. It was all I had to hold on to; they might shun us, they might have no way to help her, hell, they probably didn’t even
exist
, but there was nothing else. No other option.

We had a good-sized first-aid kit in the RV, and I patched her up, wiping everything as clean as I could. But it was a pale comparison to what we’d known for the last 10 years. Life in DC was infinitely more sterile than the half-assed roadside clean up I was able to provide. Still, it would have to do.

Now I thundered down the highway, willing us to get to our destination as soon as we could. We tore through North Carolina — it was nothing but a blur to me. Rosa faded in and out of consciousness. The biggest concern I had was Fayetteville, which was the largest city near the highway, a potential bottleneck, possibly even a walled-off dead end. But we raced past the city like it was a ghost town. How many hundreds of thousands of people had lived in Fayetteville? I guess most of them were dead now. The futility of my every move felt like an anchor around my neck.

I’d reviewed the map we found, and knew that around Florence, South Carolina, I had to finally get off 95 and head west on Interstate 20. That would take us right past Columbia. I hoped not too close.

In the end, we covered hundreds of miles in a blink. We probably were the noisiest thing in the entire (former) state of South Carolina. From any other vantage point, I must have looked insane. Perhaps even diseased. I was driving as fast as possible down highways blasted with potholes, a never-ending boneyard of cars in various states of disrepair, rust, collision damage, fire damage. And our luxury RV was zipping in and out of lanes, trying to make time.

Interstate 20 was a blur. I guess we were wide enough of Columbia to avoid trouble, or maybe we came and went so fast they didn’t have time to react. Rosa got a little better; at least she woke up. I could sense the pain and fear clearly etched across my face, knew she could see it, but she looked oddly calm. Like all was well, all was at peace... or perhaps, all was coming to an end.

Using the map, Rosa, her voice a whisper, guided me into an expanse of lakes and parks along the South Carolina–Georgia border. My heart dropped again, seeing the large swath of green on the paper map — it seemed impossibly huge to search. Even if The Oasis was there, could we find it in time for them to do something for Rosa? But studying the lakes, parks, and roads, she had a hunch, and directed me to Hickory Knob State Park, and damn if she wasn’t right. We found them. Because they weren’t hiding from anyone. The compound was right there, on the shore of Clarks Hill Lake. Makeshift but solid-looking walls blocked off the road. As we pulled near and stopped, dozens of people came out. They met us beside the golf course. Some people were even out playing golf. The idea was absurd, and knowing nothing of the game, I looked at them like they were from another planet. I saw that some of the people approaching us were carrying guns, but for the most part they all just looked curious. A small girl waved in welcome. They were alive. They were just people. And they were right where Rosa had said they would be. I turned and beamed at her, in awe of her brilliance. In the entire wide world, she had found The Oasis.

Rosa and I hugged, sobbing, for a long time.

17

They could tell right away that something bad had happened to Rosa. She was pale, her breathing shallow, and the large wrap of bandages on her stomach was seeping blood. Strangely, they didn’t do what we expected; they didn’t shut us out, shun us, run us away. Rosa had the disease and we all knew it, yet the people of The Oasis did...
nothing
.

A young woman stepped forward. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“DC,” Rosa said, her voice weaker than I was used to hearing.

“Well, you’re here now. We don’t live that way, the way they do in the cities.” No declaration of arrival to the hallowed Oasis. “I’m Caroline.”

Rosa stretched to shake Caroline’s hand, but winced in pain from the injury to her mid-section. Caroline turned to the older man next to her. “We need to see Harvey,” she said.

“I hope you live,” said a young voice. It was the little girl who had waved to us.

“Eva, shush,” said Caroline. Turning to us, she added, “Kids overreact.”

Behind them, the gate blocking the road rolled open. For a brief moment, I thought I had just traded one walled city for another, and wondered why. I felt a moment of fear. It wouldn’t be the last.

“You’d be better off driving up,” Caroline said, looking at Rosa’s bandages. I nodded. Caroline and two others climbed into a pickup truck just inside the gate. It was the first time we’d seen another moving vehicle on our trip. The oddness of it struck me.

Back in the RV, it seemed almost like a victory lap — one last moment in our home on wheels. I hoped it wasn’t a last moment for Rosa entirely.

At the end of a small spit of land jutting into the lake, the road blossomed into a wide, sweeping loop. Inside the loop a huge building loomed, austere brick with wide, white-paned windows opening on the lake. Additional smaller buildings, similar in style, with brick and large windows, stretched off to the side, and there were even tennis courts and a pool. I felt like I was in a dream, seeing the way they lived out here in the wild. Around the grounds, individual homes made neat rows; these had the appearance of being built more recently. Outside the looping drive, tents appeared scattered through the woods. I assumed we weren’t the only stragglers to find our way here. There was a parking lot at the end of the road. Several well-maintained cars and trucks were parked there, but many spaces remained open. The pickup parked in one of them. Caroline guided us into another space, and she and her friends helped Rosa out of the RV. Together we all walked to the large main building.

It was called the Hickory Knob State Park Lodge, and we were told it offered 76 rooms and its own restaurant. The restaurant was bustling as we walked in, although people turned and stared at our unfamiliar faces. My first impression of the building being a huge home for one important family — heightened by the sense that we were being taken to their leader — was way off. This was more commune than palace.

Nevertheless, we
were
taken to their leader, Harvey. He was an older, rather disheveled man, with a comb-over hairstyle to hide his mostly bald head. Ten years into the disease, and small vanities still prevailed. His natural posture seemed to be a sort of half-stoop, accented by a heavy-set build and sloppy, rumpled clothes. He stood up from a tiny, plain desk in the small office behind the lobby counter, walked over to us, and put out his hand. “I’m Harvey,” was all he said.

The place was... well, it was filthy. We had grown used to a certain amount of unclean on the road, but still held ourselves to the sterile standards of the city.
Stay clean, stay alive.
But not here. If this was The Oasis, it was The Oasis of Filth. I was stunned. Rosa seemed too ill to care, but I saw it. It was so different from our lives behind the wall, even from our lives in the RV, that it was shocking. Things were
not
pristine. Things were
not
scoured clean. Had we just traveled hundreds of miles, risked everything, only to expose ourselves to the disease here? But these people. They looked healthy, even happy. How did they do it? They must have some answer.

“We need your help,” I said.

“Hold on, now. Where’re you from?” Harvey cocked his head.

“She’s been infected.”

I swear he rolled his eyes. “I know. Where are you from?”

“DC. Come on! She’s infected!”

“And you brought her here anyway?” Harvey asked.

What else could I say? “I thought The Oasis was her only hope.”

“You were probably right. And stupid as hell.” Harvey was crass, but seemed to be very smart. I stared at him. Was this wise, or the stupidest thing I’d ever do?

“Help her,” I finally said, tilting my head down as a wave of exhaustion set in. His eyebrows raised.

“You think we
can
help her?” he asked, eyeing Rosa’s condition, her bandages tinted pink.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I... I have no idea. But there has to be some reason. A reason why I met her. A reason why she knew you were here. A reason we got here when we did.”

Harvey scoffed. “I haven’t found much of life works with reason.”

“But you can help her?”

He paused. “Probably... but you have to do it our way.”

“I don’t know of any other way,” I said.

One last sweeping look, to judge me, I guessed. To judge
us
. Then his expression changed. He became very businesslike. “Then we should move quickly. She won’t last.” Harvey turned to look at the people around him. A glance, a nod, then they were all set.

They took us back outside, led us to a private cottage. Its front porch was made of wood, knotty and comfortably worn, and held rocking chairs that begged to be used in the afternoon warmth. We stepped past all that. The front door was open.

We walked inside. Rosa coughed, stumbled. She ended up on her knees on the floor. I moved to help her, but was held back. The cottage’s lobby looked like it was wrapped completely in plastic. Two people grabbed my arms from behind and dragged me away. I saw Rosa, seemingly unconscious, being carried in another direction.

“Rosa!” I shouted. She was taken into a room with bright lights. The door closed and she was gone. I figured I would never see her again.