Into the Wasteland: A Zombie Novel: Resurrection, #2

Part I

Demon Inside

1

Sometimes Parker could almost convince himself that everything would be fine.

He, Annie, Kyle and Hughes rode in a Chevy Suburban in the Eastern Oregon outback. No threats of any kind in any direction. Powdered milk and Corn Flakes in his belly. A bubble of warmth surrounding his body, the low winter sun slanting in through the side windows. A ribbon of clear open road slicing through sagebrush prairie, the spicy scent of the desert like a strong whiff of incense.

He rode shotgun where he could stretch his legs as Hughes took the wheel. Kyle sat in the seat directly behind him so Parker wouldn’t have to look at him, with lovely Annie in the back behind Hughes radiating her essence of goodness.

Not an abandoned car in sight, let alone any bodies. No evidence that the human race had been annihilated. No infected anywhere, as if they didn’t even exist.

But Parker sat there in terror and gripped the armrest like a rail on the rim of oblivion as his mind collapsed on itself.

He should be dead. If not dead, then one of those things, the post-human infected that created a near-extinction event using no technology of any kind, not even a stick. Their teeth and the virus alone were enough.

No, that wasn’t quite right. There was one other terrible thing between the virus and their teeth. Their thoughts. The insatiable appetite and the relentless rage of hungry hungry predators.

Parker knew what they were thinking because he had been one of them, the victim of a deranged medical experiment fit for Nazi doctors.

His companions had turned him on purpose.

Annie, bless her heart, was immune. And Parker, in a moment of unchecked aggression and towering asininity, had tried to kick Kyle over a cliff on one of the San Juan Islands. They would have executed him for attempted murder, but instead they strapped him to a chair, injected him with Annie’s blood, then infected him with the virus to see if her immunity could be transferred.

He turned, of course. For days he was one of them, a hungry hungry predator left to thrash out his torment alone, his mind turned into a buzz saw, while they waited to see what would happen.

Three days later he recovered and returned sort of to normal. Annie’s immunity indeed could be transferred. They decided that turning him into one of those things was enough of a punishment, so they let him live.

He wasn’t sure—in fact, he doubted it very strongly—that he had entirely beaten that virus.

Annie couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Just sere brown wasteland, prickly scrub and blue sky. Wide open emptiness like an ocean of land. No trees, no water, no houses, no cars, no nothing.

And this was in Oregon, a state she’d always thought was entirely rain-drenched and forested. She’d hardly seen even a tree, let alone any water, since she and her companions crossed the Cascade Mountains on snowmobiles. Hardly anything existed on the other side of the mountains, which meant no infected, no ruins, no bodies.

Any infected people that had ravaged the eastern sides of Oregon and Washington had frozen to death by exposure to winter. There was no snow on the ground even in December, but a rock-hard frost covered the sagebrush in the early parts of the morning, and the road sparkled as if it had been paved with ground-up pieces of glass. Those things could not last a night out there, let alone two.

This part of the world had been emptied of the infected. It had also been emptied of people.

There were no apparent survivors. At least none who dared show their faces to strangers, and anybody with ears could hear the Suburban coming from miles away without trees to muffle the sound. The silence of the Oregon desert was total.

Somebody had actually built a road through that void. A road that could carry her and her companions clear across the continent, to Atlanta if they could make it that far. To the Centers for Disease Control, if it still existed, where a real vaccine could be made from her blood. And then home to South Carolina, or whatever was left of it.

Charleston, South Carolina’s second-largest city after Columbia, was not the Oregon desert. Hundreds of thousands of people lived there. Millions more lived in Atlanta, which meant millions of potential infected. The southeastern United States could very well look like Seattle. Dead and burned to the ground. A wasteland even more wasted than the Oregon desert that Annie had not known existed.

She sat in the Suburban’s back seat behind Hughes as he drove. Kyle sat next to her and listened to music on his phone as Parker cringed up front in the passenger seat.

Annie worried about Parker. He’d recovered from the virus when her natural immunity was passed on to him—thank heaven they shared the same blood type—but his recovery was considerably rockier. The man wasn’t himself anymore. He had always been keyed up and difficult and aggressive, but now he looked ready to crack.

The virus ravaged his brain for three days and left hideous wreckage behind. Homicidal thoughts kept bubbling up. The impulse to act on them was missing, but the thoughts themselves hadn’t gone anywhere.

For God’s sake, Parker said as he turned around in the front seat and faced Kyle in the back. Would you please turn the volume down on those earbuds.

Annie had barely noticed the scratchy sound coming from Kyle’s ears until Parker couldn’t take it anymore.

Sorry! Kyle said angrily. He turned the volume down, but not by much.

I can barely hear my own thoughts, Parker said.

Annie wondered why Parker even wanted to hear his own thoughts. She knew what he was thinking about. When he was infected he wanted to rip everyone’s throat out with his teeth. He still imagined ripping everyone’s throat out with his teeth. The neural circuits the virus created in his mind hadn’t fired apart yet.

Kyle placed his hand in the exact center of the seat between himself and Annie. She noticed him sneaking his fingers closer to her a quarter inch at a time. If he’d done that a few weeks earlier she would have held his hand—followed by much more in private, of course—but she felt differently about him now

Kyle was enraged when Parker tried to shove him over that cliff, but they had punished Parker enough by infecting him. None of them had any idea if Parker would recover like Annie did, no idea if injecting her naturally immune blood into his arm would have any effect, but they sure knew what the virus would do. If what they’d done to Parker couldn’t be legally defined as attempted murder, it was certainly reckless endangerment. Parker and Kyle were more or less even.

Kyle still wanted Hughes to execute Parker even after Parker’s recovery. Annie found Kyle’s vindictiveness, his bloodthirstiness, repulsive. Maybe she could get past it in time. There were only three men left in the world that she knew of, and Kyle was the obvious choice if she wanted to pair up with one of them. Hughes was terrific, even heroic, but a 250pound black man and former bail bondsman in his mid-forties wasn’t even in the same time zone as her type. Parker was even less so. The man was an angry and impossibly difficult head case. She and Kyle, though, were both in their early twenties. He’d worked in high tech and owned a loft condo in Portland. He was her type even before the world crashed.

Out the Suburban’s window the expansive flat scrubland rolled by. They were traveling at 70 miles an hour, but Annie felt like they weren’t going anywhere. Every mile looked identical to the previous mile and she hadn’t seen a single house in at least the last fifty.

How long does this desert last? she said to no one in particular.

No idea, Hughes said. Never been here before.

Why would anyone have ever been here before? Parker said. "There’s no here here."

There’s someone on the road up ahead, Hughes said and slowed. Parker sat bolt upright in his seat. Kyle yanked out his earbuds. Annie leaned forward and, squinting, made out four figures a mile or so up the road.

Are they infected? Kyle said.

Hard to say, Hughes said, but I don’t think so. They look like survivors blocking the road.

Hughes cut the Suburban’s speed by more than half. The four figures moved closer together into the center of the road. Annie saw rifles in their hands.

They’re tightening up, Hughes said, and it looks like they’re armed. Definitely not infected.

Hughes slowed the truck even more, and when he’d closed the gap to a hundred yards or so, one of them fired a shot into the air. Hughes came to a stop.

Kyle, Hughes said. Hand me my shotgun.

Kyle handed the shotgun to Hughes and kept it low so the men on the road wouldn’t see it through the windshield.

Parker flicked the safety off his pistol.

What should we do? Annie said.

Nothing aggressive, Hughes said. Wait for them to come to us.

A few moments passed, then the four men started walking toward the Suburban. Two aimed their rifles at the truck while the other two kept theirs pointed at the ground.

Everybody be cool, Hughes said.

This is bad, Parker said.

If they wanted to shoot us, Hughes said, all four of them would be aiming at us.

You can’t know that, Parker said and leaned forward, his body coiling with aggression like he wanted break through the windshield and hurl himself at them.

Hughes rolled down his window and waved. Roll down your window and wave, he said to Parker.

The hell I will, Parker said.

Roll down your window and wave! Hughes said. We want them to relax. They have no idea who we are.

We have no idea who they are, Parker said.

Whoever they are, Hughes said, we’re barging into their area.

The four men stopped a few dozen feet from the truck. Turn around, one of them said above the sound of the Suburban’s idling engine.

Hughes placed both his hands outside the window and stuck his head out. We’re on our way to Idaho.

Can’t let you drive through town, the man said.

Annie didn’t see a town anywhere, but there was a slight rise in the road ahead just barely obscuring what lay beyond.

Where exactly are we? she said quietly to Kyle.

I think the town up ahead is called Rome, he said. It’s just a dot on the map.

We understand, Hughes said to the men outside. Is there a way around?

Annie rolled down her own window. Can we get out for a second? We haven’t seen any other people in weeks.

Nobody said anything at first, but the four consulted with each other and two of them nodded. Okay, said the first. Out with your hands up. Leave everything in the truck.

All four stepped out unarmed. Parker was last. Hughes’ shotgun and Parker’s pistol were right there on the front seats within easy reach, but not easy enough if the four men opened fire.

The frigid dry air felt like a sandblaster on Annie’s face and hands.

We haven’t seen anyone for a while either, said the first man.

Name’s Hughes, Hughes said and stuck out his hand.

Ed, the man said and warily shook Hughes’ hand. Nobody else introduced themselves. Where y’all coming from?

Seattle area, Hughes said.

Ed raised his eyebrows.

Seattle is gone, Annie said.

It no longer exists, Kyle said.

Ed flinched.

Whole thing burned to the ground, Hughes said. No government left to put out the fire.

Jesus, Ed said.

Yeah, Hughes said.

Portland? Ed said.

No idea, Hughes said. We’ve been on back roads the whole way. You’re the first people we’ve seen.

How’d you get over the mountains? Ed said.

Snowmobiles, Hughes said.

Ed stuck out his jaw and nodded. Why Idaho?

Actually, Atlanta, Annie thought. So the Centers for Disease Control—if it still even exists—can put my naturally immune blood under a microscope. She wouldn’t dare say that out loud to a single person for any reason until they got there.

Because Idaho isn’t Seattle, Hughes said.

Ed nodded.

We need to get through here, Parker said.

Nobody goes through town, Ed said. You can go back the way you came a mile or so and turn right onto the Old 10 North Highway. It will put you back on 95 after you’ve cleared us.

Why not just let us through? Parker said. We’re not here to rob you. We didn’t even know you were here.

We don’t know you people, Ed said.

We don’t know you either, but we’re just driving through, Parker said.

It’s okay, Hughes said. The Old 10 North Highway, you said?

Back that way about a mile, Ed said and gestured with his head. You’ll want to turn right.

What the hell’s so special about your town that you won’t let us through? Parker said.

Parker! Hughes said. It’s fine. We’ll go around.

We make everyone go around, Ed said. It’s not personal.

Annie noticed Parker’s hands shaking and the muscles twitching near his left eye. The men on the road noticed it too. One of them pointed his weapon at him.

"You going to shoot me?" Parker said. He looked like he was ready to charge them.

Parker! Annie said.

Easy now, Hughes said to no one in particular.

Fucking nutjob, Kyle said. Get back in the truck before you get us all killed.

Annie placed her hand on Parker’s arm. He snapped his face toward her and snarled. She flinched and stepped back.

All four men, including Ed, now trained their rifles on Parker.

Hughes wrapped his arms around Parker and dragged him to the truck as Kyle opened the front passenger door. Sit your ass down in the truck, Hughes said, or I’m gonna make you sit your ass down.

Parker sat his ass down, and Hughes slammed the door shut on him.

The men on the road lowered their weapons.

Annie thought about Parker’s pistol sitting there on the passenger seat and Hughes’ shotgun on the driver’s seat.

Sorry, Hughes said. He’s had a rough week.

Haven’t we all, Ed said.

We’ll get out of your hair, Hughes said. Happy to go around. I’d make everyone go around too if I were you.

Ed nodded.

One question first, Kyle said.

What’s that? Ed said.

You said you turn everyone away on this road. How many people have come from the other direction? From Idaho?

Nobody comes from the direction of Idaho, Ed said.

2

As they took the old highway around the dot on the map called Rome, Annie wondered why on earth no one had come from the direction of Idaho. She doubted everything was fine in the direction of Idaho.

Hughes drove the Suburban past fallow fields that must have been irrigated in summer, across a small metal bridge over a sad little river, and back onto the main highway not ten minutes later. The scrubby wasteland resumed. The road ahead was empty and clear.

Stop the car, Parker said.

Annie noticed that both of his hands shook uncontrollably. He was going to crack.

What now? Kyle said.

Stop the car, I need to get out! Parker shouted.

Hughes stopped the truck. He didn’t bother pulling onto the shoulder. Nobody would hit them. There was no other traffic.

Parker flung open his door and ran into the desert.

Jesus Christ, Kyle said. I told you we should have left him back on that island.

Annie let herself out.

Just let him be, Hughes said.

Seriously, guys, we should just leave him, Kyle said.

Annie ran after Parker, dodging sage brush and the occasional rock. Parker! she shouted.

He stopped next to a boulder a few hundred feet up ahead and placed his hands on his knees while he panted.

Annie slowed to a jog until she reached him. You okay?

He was still panting, though not from running. He was hyperventilating. His hands were still shaking. His eyes darted in every direction as though someone were shooting at him and he needed to figure out which direction the fire was coming from.

Talk to me, Annie said.

He sat on the boulder, put his head in his hands, rocked forward and backward and moaned.

Parker, what’s going on? she said.

He looked at her and opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t.

Good grief, she thought. He’s having a panic attack.

What are you thinking right now? she said.

He stood up and spun around as if something had startled him from behind. He was in full fight-or-flight mode, but he had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Nor did he have anything to hide from except whatever was going on in his head.

You’re having a panic attack, Annie said. She’d never had one herself, but her sister Jenny used to have them in college. Annie spotted the symptoms the way other people spotted skyscrapers.

At least his panic didn’t put him in fight mode, she thought.

Sit down, she said, and breathe slowly.

He sat on the rock, still hyperventilating and unable to speak.

You’re not in danger, she said. If you slow down your breathing, it will slow down your mind.

He slowed down his breathing, but his hands still shook.

Can you talk? she said.

He shook his head. Then he gasped, nodded, and said, I think so. He was coming out of it now.

What’s going on? she said.

I’m a monster, he said.

You aren’t a monster, she said.

I can’t get these thoughts out of my head! he said. He put his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands.

What thoughts? she said. She knew, though, exactly which thoughts he was talking about.

Oh God, he said.

Thoughts of biting people. Killing people. Flashing images of ripping out throats. But they were just thoughts. Mental images. Leftover fragments of the infection, soft-wired into her head and his. They weren’t impulses. They were memories of impulses. Parker didn’t want to bite people or kill them any more than she did. Otherwise, he’d do it instead of freak out about it.

You’re not going to hurt anybody, she said.

She wondered why he was having such a hard time dismissing the harmless images in his mind, but he reminded her as if on cue.

I tried to kill Kyle, he said.

She flinched. He had bigger problems than she did. Much bigger problems. In addition to PTSD, or whatever it was, he had real trouble with aggression and anger—a dangerous combination.

I’m going out of my mind, he said.

You’re having an anxiety attack, she said. You don’t want to kill anybody and you’re not going crazy. Just breathe slowly.

He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

She gave him a couple of moments and he seemed to settle down a bit more.

Better? she said.

He nodded cautiously. A little, I guess, he said.

Annie knew it would take a while before his body and mind fully calmed down. A few more minutes at least and possibly hours.

My sister used to have panic attacks, she said.

Is that was this is? he said.

I’m pretty sure, she said. You’ve never had one before?

He shook his head.

Perfectly understandable, she said, after what you’ve been through.

I can’t get these thoughts out of my head, he said.

I have them too, she said. But they’re just thoughts. Ignore them and they’ll fade.

You turned me into a monster.

And you recovered.

This is recovery?

This is anxiety, she said. Look at me. Listen.

He looked at her and seemed to be a little afraid of her.

You know what kind of people don’t feel anxiety? she said.

He shook his head, terrified.

Psychopaths, she said.

Kyle sat in the back seat and huffed as Annie and Parker walked out of the desert and back toward the vehicle. Too bad the bastard hadn’t kept running, he thought. Then they could have left him.

Annie gestured with her hands as she spoke to Parker, but Kyle couldn’t hear what she said through the rolled-up window and the sound of the idling engine.

Parker nodded as Annie spoke. She placed her hand on his shoulder and he closed his eyes, seeming to melt.

That motherfucker. Annie hadn’t touched Kyle once since the incident on the island, but she was supposed to be his.

Nobody spoke as they drove across the state line into Idaho just south of Boise, and Hughes heaved a sigh of relief. Another state cleared, first Washington and then Oregon. Getting to and crossing the Cascade Mountains had been a bitch and a half, but everything since then could not have been easier.

Aside from the men outside the small town of Rome, they hadn’t seen anyone, infected or not. Hughes doubted many infected could still be alive anyway, at least not in this part of the country. Not in December. Daytime temperatures were warming above 30 degrees Fahrenheit, but at night they dropped into the teens.

The landscape looked like a wrinkled, dun-colored sheet emptied of everything but the defunct relics of a dead civilization. Telephone poles and wires for landlines that no longer worked. Electrical pylons no longer pulsing with power. The occasional house out in the desert, dark and silent and seemingly empty. Gas stations with broken windows. Looted convenience stores.

No apparent survivors.

There had to be some, though. Most of the inland American West was so sparsely populated that the virus could not have spread everywhere. That dot on the map back in Oregon could not be the exception. Hughes needed to make damn sure they avoided as many big dots as possible. Survivors were almost as dangerous these days as the infected, and he had to get Annie safely to the CDC in Atlanta.

They weren’t going to save the world. The world was already gone. But they might be able to save a tiny scrap of what’s left of it.

The plague had started in Russia, and Seattle was North America’s viral insertion point, its ground zero. Atlanta was on the opposite end of the continent. No city was farther away except Miami. Maybe—maybe—cities in the eastern part of the country held on a little bit better since they knew what was coming before it could get there. The virus must have taken weeks, if not months, to spread from Seattle to the east coast after air traffic was grounded. There might have been enough time for the government to build a ring of steel around the CDC complex. For all Hughes knew, the virus hadn’t yet reached the east coast, but there was no real chance of that. Not after spreading to Seattle from Moscow.

Parker, Hughes said. How far are we from the turnoff to Mountain Home?

Parker shuffled the map and scrutinized it.

Hughes wanted Parker to be navigating, not because Parker was better at it than anyone else, but because the man needed to think about anything than whatever was driving him crazy.

Should be just a couple miles ahead, Parker said. Maybe five minutes. We’ll turn right and go straight for a mile or so, then make a right onto 78.

They had to skirt Boise. Hughes had never been to Boise and wasn’t sure how large it was. He knew, though, that it was large enough to be in horrendous condition regardless.

From Mountain Home they could take Route 20 almost all the way to Wyoming without passing through a single town inhabited by more than a few hundred people.

Hughes loved their ride—a dark blue 2015 Suburban. Impeccable condition aside from the blood-stained dent in the fender. 355 horsepower and 383 pounds of torque. 130-inch wheelbase. Rearview camera and parking sensors. Room for seven passengers, which left plenty in back for their gear. And they had plenty of that. Food. Water bottles and hand-pumped filters so fine they could suck water out of a drainage ditch if they had to. Winter clothes. Sleeping bags. Blankets. Four-season tents. Enough of an arsenal to take out hundreds of infected. Night vision monocles, maps, two compasses, four flashlights, crowbars and hammers for hand-to-hand combat, first-aid supplies including anti-biotics and pain-killers, and a rubber hose to siphon gas from parked cars.

Annie napped in the back while Kyle played some kind of a game on his phone. He powered it with a small fold-out solar panel charger they’d taken from an outdoor store back in Washington.

What are you going to do when that thing finally breaks? Parker said.

There are thousands of brand-new phones in unopened boxes all over America, Kyle said. The solar charger might not ever break down, and even if it does, I’ll find another one.

True enough, Hughes thought, but Kyle wouldn’t be able to download any new music or games from the Internet. Kyle was stuck with the music and game collection he had.

I thought you wanted to live simply, Parker said. Wasn’t that your big dream? Simple living and farming on some remote island?

Simple living, Kyle said, does not mean living without any music. People have been listening to music for thousands of years.

At least their conversation was civilized, if a bit testy. Hughes thought the hatred between the two just might gradually dissipate. A little bit. Maybe.

They’d have plenty of time to either work things out or kill each other eventually. Plan was to get to the Missouri River in Eastern Iowa before heavy snowfall made travel impossible, then set up winter quarters and ride it out until the ice thawed. Then they could travel downriver on a boat, Huck Finn-style, to the Gulf of Mexico and approach whatever’s left of the state of Georgia by sea. Once they established winter quarters in Iowa, Parker and Kyle would either resolve their differences or tear each other apart.

In the meantime, they didn’t talk much, which suited Hughes just fine. And since Annie was asleep, Hughes felt ensconced in a bubble of silence where he could think his own thoughts for a while.

It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience. Parker’s mind was spinning out of control, but Hughes was becoming more ruthlessly pragmatic and logical by the day. He had to. His survival depended on it.

His wife Sheila had basically killed herself. She’d been morbidly depressed for years before the infection came, too depressed some days to even get out of bed, and she gave up entirely when those things ravaged Seattle. She let them have her. She all but invited them into the house by opening the curtains in the living room window and standing there like bait, beckoning them to come inside and put her out of her misery.

Five of them burst through the window.

They also killed their son Tyler.

Hughes couldn’t understand. Not at the time. Sheila had crawled into a howling black place and stayed there. It was as if the darkness tempted her with the promise of relief and salvation. All she had to do was keep crawling deeper and deeper, and it would finally, mercifully, lead her to oblivion.

Hughes understood now. The blackness called to him too. In his mind’s eye, he saw a dark portal. All he had to do was crawl in. The pain was out here in the world. It would only follow him into that portal so far before he could leave it behind and let the blackness envelope him like warm womb. The pain of losing his wife and his child, the pain of Seattle burning so thoroughly to the ground that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find where his house used to be, the pain of a future so bleak that he could only comprehend it in horrifying brief flashes—he could leave all that behind and dwell forever in a place where none of it mattered.

Unlike Sheila, Hughes had the strength to resist. The dark portal was not in his face. It was off to the side. He’d have to travel a ways to get to it. On good days, the dark portal was on the other side of the horizon. He’d have to walk a long way to get there. He might even have to drive to get there.

On bad days, it was closer.

He would not go there. As long as he stayed clear of it, he wouldn’t feel anything. No happiness, but not too much pain either. Just flatness and logic and single-minded determination. Get Annie to Atlanta. Right now.

Annie woke and stirred in the back seat. Where are we? she said.

Idaho, Kyle said.

Amazing, she said.

Why’s that? Parker said.

Just two days ago, she said, we hadn’t even made it to Oregon yet.

I have to admit, Kyle said, that since crossing the mountains, this has been easier than I expected.

Plenty more mountains ahead, Hughes said.

I can’t believe how empty this part of America is, Annie said. I’ve never seen anything like it. Home is nothing like this. Nowhere in the South is like this.

We could hit Wyoming as soon as tomorrow, Kyle said. And Nebraska a day or two after that.

That’s the middle of the country! Annie said.

Don’t get cocky, kids, Hughes said. We’re not there yet.

Hughes took the Suburban onto Route 20 at the seemingly empty town of Mountain Home, Idaho, bypassing Interstate 80 entirely. Bandits and other predatory sorts could be on the freeway. They could be on any road, really, but they would more likely roam interstates than backcountry byways, and besides, Interstate 5, which ran up and down the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, had been so clogged with abandoned cars that it was impassable. Idaho was far less populated than the urban corridor between Seattle and Portland, but still. Hughes saw no upside to taking the interstate. Route 20 crossed Idaho just as efficiently, and it did so through such a sparsely populated area they’d be practically sneaking across.

The next state over—Wyoming—was the least populous in the entire country. They could probably walk across the damn thing without running into anybody or anything.

The road pulled up from the valley floor and took them into scrub-covered mountains that looked like potatoes halved lengthwise, set down on their sides, and dusted with powdered sugar. Snow only coated the tops, and even there it did so thinly. This part of Idaho, like the Oregon desert they had just been through, was chalk dry. A land that receives little rain also receives little snow, even in December.

Gonna be dark soon, Hughes said.

It’s only three o’clock, Kyle said. We still have an hour and a half before sunset.

It’s four o’clock, Hughes said. We crossed into Mountain Time and lost an hour.

Shit, Kyle said.

We’re making amazing progress, Annie said.

With no infected or jammed-up roads slowing us down, Hughes said, we’re driving as fast and as far as we would on a road trip when everything was still normal. Back then we could cross a state a day, easy.

A gas station appeared ahead along with a couple of small, run-down houses. Hughes eased off the accelerator, though he saw no movement in any direction. No one stood in the road with rifles. No infected ran toward the Suburban. Town seemed to have no name, if it was even really a town.

Stopping for gas, Hughes said and pulled up next to a parked Chevy Nova on the side of the building. The pumps wouldn’t work—no electricity—so he’d have to siphon whatever gas was left in the Nova. It was a classic model from the ’70s, but beat to shit. God only knew when was the last time somebody drove it.

He turned off the engine. He and Parker stepped out, Hughes with his Mossberg pump-action Persuader and Parker with his Glock. They looked at each and scanned the area, listening for the sound of any movement, even sounds made by an animal. Hughes heard nothing. No sound at all. Not even wind.

The mountains of Idaho were much colder than the Oregon desert, and the Oregon desert had been cold enough. Hughes’ exposed skin burned. His lungs protested the air, his eyes stung and his ears hurt.

Parker was sweating as if he was in Miami in August rather than the frigid north in December. He pointed his weapon at everything—including the Nova, some bushes around back, and even the gas pumps as if they might be threatening—with his finger inside the trigger guard.

All clear, Hughes said. You can relax now.

Parker didn’t relax. If a squirrel startled him, he’d probably shoot it. The guy was set to pop if an acorn fell out of a tree.

Kyle stepped out of the vehicle and handed Hughes the yellow rubber siphon hose.

The light in the sky faded almost to twilight as Hughes popped the gas cap off the Nova and dropped the hose into the tank. Kyle popped the gas cap off the Suburban. Hughes sucked on the dry end of the hose until a split second before he sense the gasoline would hit his lips, then placed the hose, now gushing with gasoline from the Nova, into the Suburban.

It went dry in just over a minute.

Not even a quarter tank, Hughes said. But we have almost half a tank now, so we’re okay. We’ll just have to stop again early tomorrow.

Should we sleep here? Annie said, still sitting in the Suburban’s back seat.

Hell no, Parker said and wiped sweat off his forehead.

Outside town, Hughes said. Who knows what still might be slinking around here.

Hughes had insisted they never drive at night unless fleeing a scene. Their headlights could be visible as far as fifty miles away in the open desert and would surely attract any surviving infected—if any miraculously still existed out in that cold—or, more likely, troublesome survivors. The Suburban made plenty of noise during the day, but it could only be heard from two or three miles away at the most.

So they drove a dozen or so miles from the town with no name and parked next to a fence built with axe-split wood as twilight faded to dusk. Kyle pulled sleeping bags and blankets out of the back and passed them up front.

Parker took first watch, Kyle would take second. Hughes fell asleep almost instantly, but woke again later to the faint sound of gunfire out in the blackness.

3

In the morning, Parker woke to the sound of clanking and rattling. He opened his eyes, his neck sore from spending yet another night in a car seat, and saw Annie setting up a camp stove on the roadside to make coffee.

The sun was about to come up and Parker saw the landscape of Idaho as if for the first time. The bare mountains on each side of the valley looked like desiccated bodies wrapped in leathery skin. No one lived on that land in any direction. Aside from the road, the only evidence humans had ever even set foot there before was the wood and wire fence next to the road, but where were the cows? Eaten by the infected, or simply long gone?

Morning, Annie said when she saw that he was awake.

Parker groaned and rubbed his neck. His chest tightened up and his face flushed. There it was again. That free-floating feeling of doom. It came over him every morning the instant he remembered who he was, where he was, and what had recently happened to him.

Nearly every moment of every day he felt like he’d snap. He felt as if everything—the mountains, the road, the truck, his companions, and, worst of all, his own mind—was gearing up to attack him. Paranoid didn’t even begin to describe it. How would he fare if he were in actual danger, if a pack of infected came at him, when just sitting there in the truck made him panicky?

He wanted to stop, to stay right there in Idaho by himself where he couldn’t hurt anyone, but he’d sworn an oath to Annie and to the others. She was the most precious person alive, and he would guard her with his life to the ends of the earth.

Kyle stirred in the back seat as Hughes walked the perimeter, shotgun in hand. Neither said good morning to Parker.

We’re already almost a third of the way across Idaho! Annie said.

Let’s keep it down, Hughes said quietly. Gunfire last night. No telling who might be around here, who or what they were shooting at, or what they might want to shoot at today.

Gunfire in the middle of the night in Nowheresville, Idaho. God, Parker thought as the warm feeling of dread spread to his feet and his hands. Even the safe parts of the world were still dangerous. How could the others be so flippant and casual?

I saw the map, Annie said, this time with her voice down. Looks like we can drive across the entire state on this road and hardly pass a single sign of civilization.

Town of Fairfield is up ahead a few minutes, Kyle said. Maybe that’s where the gunfire was coming from.

Didn’t sound like it came from up ahead, Hughes said. Sounded like it was off toward those mountains.

At night? Parker said. What were they shooting at? He imagined a cluster of tents attacked in the dark by a band of infected. Hungry hungry predators like himself. He slapped his own face so hard his cheeks stung.

Kyle stepped out of the truck and handed granola bars to Hughes and Annie and left Parker to find his own breakfast. Parker didn’t care. He had no appetite anyway. He’d hardly eaten for days and was surely dropping weight fast. He’d been trying to shed pounds for years and couldn’t pull it off, not even after the end of the world and the end of mass food production. He was losing pounds now, though, that was for damn sure. He finally had what he needed. The anxiety diet.

You know, Annie said, things are going to change when we get to the Midwest and the South. She poured water into a pan and ignited the camp stove. Parker envied her ability to carry out routine tasks with apparent peace of mind. It’s a lot more crowded. There are cities, towns and farms everywhere. You can’t drive across entire states without running into thousands and thousands of people.

This is the easy part, Hughes said. Even Iowa is gonna be complicated.

Not as complicated as Louisiana and Georgia, Annie said. The infected aren’t going to freeze to death down there.

Parker scoffed. Then what the hell are we even doing? he said. If the South is overrun with those things, why are we even going there?

Because the Centers for Disease Control isn’t in Minnesota, Annie said.

For once in my life, Kyle said, I actually agree with this asshole. If we find a functioning hospital before we freeze, get shot, or are eaten alive, we should stop. Since when is the CDC the only facility that can study Annie’s blood and make a vaccine? We can’t save the world if we’re dead.

Parker nodded at Kyle with gratitude. But the moment of peace and civility was shattered when he imaging ripping Kyle’s throat out with his teeth.

Good God, were these horrible thoughts ever going to stop?

What’s the point of surviving the infection if the virus left its cured victim with the mind of a maniac?

Annie hoped to reach Wyoming by sunset, not because Wyoming was anything special—though she had never been there and wanted to see what it looked like—but because she could cross another state off the list. After clearing Wyoming, she’d be almost halfway to Atlanta.

Which was actually most of the way to Atlanta. How hard would it be to float down the Missouri River? Even after reaching the warmer part of the country, the infected couldn’t reach them on water. They wouldn’t be in any actual danger until they got off the boat and headed toward Atlanta by ground. Atlanta was a five-hour drive from the coast—from Mobile, Alabama—in normal conditions. And they were not going to find normal conditions.

Less than a minute after resuming their drive, the desert gave way to dry farmland. Annie saw a sign on a giant mobile irrigation system that said, Rain Rental. It didn’t rain much in Idaho. Not in