Carey had raced across southern Illinois as fast as she safely could in the tow truck, fighting the urge to stomp the accelerator through the floorboard nearly every mile. The difference between prudence and recklessness was less than an ounce of pressure on the gas pedal.
Knowledge of her kids, all three of them now, being somewhere in the vastness ahead of her spurred her on. She'd crossed almost half the country with no idea of whether they were dead or alive or worse. Carey had pushed herself beyond anything she thought she could ever do without knowing one way or the other. Now that she knew, the drive was even stronger. They were ahead of her. Somewhere. Carey was going to find them no matter what, be it walking on the side of the road or sitting at the table in her sister's house.
The question of whether Jo would be there crossed her mind for the first time. The house and farm had been a nebulous idea until that moment and Carey found she had no answer. Jo was tough and loved her land but she was also pragmatic. If she needed to get the hell out of there, she would and wouldn't think twice about it.
She hadn't talked to Jo in...at least as long as it had been since she talked to Kurt. "Wow," she said as the realization hit her. "It doesn't feel like it's been that long. Won't that be a fun conversation when I get there. 'Sorry, Sis, been too busy to call. Hope you don't mind if I crash on your couch until the zombies all melt. Oh, and my boys are coming, too. Or maybe they're already here. Have you seen them?'" Carey shook her head. All that could wait until she got there since there were still a few hundred miles between her and the middle of nowhere.
Try as she could, Carey couldn't push thoughts of being a piss-poor sister from her mind. The two of them had been almost as inseparable as Zack and Cody and it ate at her as she thought about all the times they'd spent together over the years. The time they'd ran off to Chicago and met Kurt's first band. That spring break the year before when she'd held Jo's shoes while she puked in the ocean. The time when...was the bridge still there? Carey leaned low over the steering wheel and looked out. Sure enough, it was still spanning the Mississippi. She smiled as she began her approach. Memories could wait until she got across the river.
A short time later, Carey blew her bangs from her forehead as she stood at the edge of the ruined bridge. She had weaved her way through the traffic hoping to find there was still a way to cross and wasn't happy with what she found. "You have got to be kidding me," she mumbled as she looked at the sliver of roadbed that connected the two halves of the bridge. An unbidden laugh escaped and surprised her. "Great."
She stood at the precipice for a few long moments before adjusting all her gear to hang evenly across her body. One deep breath turned into two but Carey stepped onto the small walkway before it could become a third and fourth. After a couple of steps Carey had to quash an urge to dash across the distance and damn the consequences. "Easy, girl. Slow and steady," she said as she reached the halfway point. Panic disappeared as she saw the faces of her boys, clear and defined for the twins and hazy and indistinct for Anthony, in her mind's eye.
Her legs began to shake the second she reached the other side and Carey sat down hard on the concrete. She let out an exaggerated sigh and laid on her back. "Never, ever again," she announced as she waited for her body to relax. "I'll swim across next time."
After a few minutes, she rose and dusted herself off. Daylight was burning and she didn't want to waste any more of it than she already had. Carey turned her attention to the cars that were sitting nearby and walked over. She saw more than a few sets of keys but the cars were blocked in. Naturally. She continued on and soon found a red Neon with the back windshield broken out that she could maneuver through the others without too much trouble. Her gear tossed in the passenger seat and shotgun on the floorboard, Carey carefully drove off.
She yawned as the miles disappeared behind her. Her watch told her that it was going on midnight but she couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Carey was passing the outskirts of some little burg in the middle of Missouri that she'd already forgotten the name of and wanted to make it another few hours before she called it a night. Kansas City was maybe two hours away if she was able to keep making such good time on the highway. She knocked on the faux-wood dashboard just in case she'd jinxed herself.
Carey didn't quite make it but she was close when she finally pulled off I-70 to find a room to crash in for the night. She chose a hotel and cruised into the parking lot with her lights off, circling the building once before she pulled under the large carport in the front. She stepped out carefully and grabbed her belongings and shoved the keys into her vest's pocket. "Just in case," she said with a smile. She hadn't seen anyone all day but this would be a poor time for someone to wander by and steal her car while she slept.
Her shotgun slung over one shoulder, Carey pushed the door open with the nose of her pistol. She greatly preferred the stopping power of the shotgun but it wasn't feasible to use it with her Maglite. Her hands were crossed at the wrists like she'd seen in many police dramas, gun in her right hand aiming at where her left hand illuminated with the light. She opened the door to the stairwell and started climbing.
"Shit!" she yelled as the beam showed her a zombie on the landing a few steps up from her. She hadn't heard it but it had certainly heard her coming up. It lunged and she fired twice, catching it first in the hip and then in the side of the head. The zombie fell and her hands immediately went to her ears as the deafening noise was echoed back repeatedly. "Not quite top-five dumbest thing I've ever done but it's close," she whispered as her hearing slowly returned.
The zombie most likely hadn't been in the stairs since the outbreak so that meant that there was an open door somewhere above her. Possibly with more zombies waiting for a late-night snack. Carey gritted her teeth. Hunting zombies in a dark hotel was the last thing on her list of things she wanted to do tonight but it needed to be done.
She passed four doors that were stuck open before she made her way to the eighth and final floor. Carey walked softly around the hallways, checking every room that wasn't closed. "Pretty sure they can't figure out how doorknobs work," she said, "so they can stay in the rooms til they fall apart for all I care." She methodically worked her way down floor by floor.
It wasn't until she reached the fourth floor that she found anything. She had taken one step around a corner and saw a group of small zombies at the end of the hall. "Oh no," Carey whispered as she realized they were just kids. One of them saw the light and jerked its head around. Like a cat looking at a laser pointer's light. It saw her and moved much quicker than she thought possible, the other two following right behind it.
"I'm so sorry, little guy," she yelled. It was definitely a boy, Carey saw. He was dressed in a stained baseball jersey and grungy Nikes and she had to swallow hard before she could shoot him. She dropped him with one bullet just below his buzzcut and then fired on what she assumed was his older brother and sister. "Fuck." She leaned against the wall and looked at the ceiling and tried not to cry. She never thought she'd ever shoot a kid, zombie or otherwise, and it hurt her.
One floor later, she was done with her inspection and chose a room overlooking the hotel's front lawn. Two luggage carts were turned into a barricade for the outside of her door and she moved the dresser against it on the inside. She was satisfied with her preparations and laid down on the bed. Carey told herself that she'd take her boots off in a minute but was asleep before she could.
Zack was slowly walking through the rows of corn in her dream. She had just pulled up to the farm and was barely out of the car when she saw him. "Zack!" she yelled, knowing it was him by the way he walked. She left her bag on the hood and ran to him. Her arms were open and she was about to wrap him in a long-delayed hug when he turned around. His eyes were blank and he snarled at her. "No!" she screamed as she tried to pull back but it was too late. Her son's dead arms grabbed her and pulled her into his own embrace.
Carey lurched awake and nearly threw herself out of bed when she felt Zack's teeth on her. Her heart was pounding and her eyes jumped around the room before she calmed herself down enough to realize it had only been a dream. She ran her hands back through her hair and shivered. "No. That is not how it's going to end," she said. "No way." Carey checked her watch and saw that she'd been asleep for a grand total of six hours. Sunlight was already poking through the edges of the curtains and she was still tired but she knew there would be no more sleep for her. She was too close and that dream was too real.
She dressed and loaded up her supplies, wishing for the umpteenth time that she could get a decent cup of coffee, and headed downstairs. A Pepsi would have to do for her morning caffeine fix and she shot the lock off of a vending machine and grabbed two bottles. Carey stepped out into morning fog and the sound of crickets and moved quickly to the car. She looked around before getting in, making sure there weren't any surprises waiting for her, but saw nothing. Satisfied, she climbed in and started the engine.
Carey paced herself across the rest of Missouri and began picking her way through the giant snarl that was Kansas City. "That's it, I'm stealing a helicopter next," she said as she drove down the edge of the highway, two wheels on and two wheels in the grass. The drive, not all that smooth in the first place, now reminded her of a vibrating bed in a cheap hotel. "Or a car with shocks that actually work. Either one."
It was after noon before she made it through the mess, having had to backtrack twice and take one of the smaller roads that encircled the city. Carey pulled back onto 70 and continued west into steadily darkening skies. The clouds looked like bruises and they seemed to be racing over the flat land. Rain began falling shortly before she passed Topeka and it soon falling faster than the wipers could wipe away. Carey pulled the car over beneath an overpass to wait it out.
She must have dozed at some point because when Carey opened her eyes the dark clouds had passed and there were nothing but blue skies ahead of her. She yawned and stepped out of the car to stretch her legs. The air had taken on the eerie stillness that comes after a storm and she didn't hear so much as a single cricket or see a lone bird circling overhead.
"Let's go, girl. Home stretch. Another hour or so to go and you'll be there. Maybe two hours if the traffic gets bad again." She squatted down to flex her knees and walked back around to the driver's side door and got in. Carey sprayed gravel as she pulled back onto the highway and spilled her drink as the car slewed around.
As she drove on, Carey realized what a good idea it had been to stop when she had. Houses and buildings had been flattened and their debris strewn all over the road and the surrounding fields like toys. Carey slowed down to steer around a large unrecognizable hunk of twisted metal. "Wow," she said under her breath, "looks like I missed being in the remake of Twister by about ten minutes." Carey looked around for a flying cow even though the wind was still.
As she drove, she crested a small hill and saw that the path of the tornado had roughly paralleled the interstate for miles and crossed it more than a couple of times. Carey whistled as she took in the sight. A random thought popped into her head. Could a zombie survive being tossed around in a tornado? "Maybe survive is the wrong word," she said, "since they're already dead. Sort of. You know what I mean."
Carey realized that she was talking to herself and sighed. Aside from missing her children, the lack of contact with other humans that weren't either homicidal or batshit insane was the worst part of the world ending. She hadn't had a decent conversation since...well, she had to think about that for a minute. Since she left the remains of that Army unit back in New York. How long ago was that now? "A long damn time ago," she said. "After we're done hugging and crying our eyes out, me and the boys are going to have a good, long talk about anything and everything under the sun. I don't care if it's about a pimple or their favorite cheese. We're going to talk."
The traffic had thinned to almost nothing by the time she reached her exit and Carey wasn't certain if that was good or bad. Good, everyone got out before they were infected. Bad, everyone was still roaming around the farmland waiting to greet her with rotten teeth. Carey unconsciously looked at the shotgun for reassurance. She still had a rather large supply of shells and figured there would be plenty of opportunities to get more.
She pulled off the highway and settled in for the drive through mile after mile of flat land. Jo didn't live that far off of 156 but it was far enough for Carey to begin to fidget as she drove. She could all but smell the cow shit from Jo's neighbor's farm now. Once she turned off of the county road and onto what was a road in name only, gravel began bouncing around the undercarriage. "Sounds like I'm being shot at," Carey said as she slowed down to reduce the noise and any chance of detection.
Carey continued on until she saw the last turn appear in front of her. "There it is," she said as she rounded it and the farmhouse came into view. She felt a mix of triumph and apprehension as she turned off onto the driveway. She'd made it, crossed the country, but what was waiting for her inside? Could she shoot Jo if it came down to it? "Damn right," she said as she slowed the car to a crawl and circled the house.
Carey pulled the car around back and shut it off. She got out and listened as hard as she could but the only sound that reached her ears was the gurgling of the stream that ran a few dozen yards away. She hefted the shotgun and started walking around the house, having decided that she'd make sure there weren't any neighbors around before she ventured inside. She'd just came around the back of the house when she heard a growl.
"Spot?" Carey said as she took another few steps. The doghouse was back here somewhere, she remembered. "Spot?" she called again as a giant black mass woofed and came out of the doghouse with its tail wagging. "Good boy," Carey said as the dog sauntered over and waited to be petted.
She squatted down and rubbed his head and scratched right behind his ears, just like she always did when she saw him. Carey smiled as she remembered her boys both riding on the monster dog's back when they were six. Spot, to his credit, put up with them in exchange for a generous amount of treats and whatever theyhappened to drop from the dinner table. Carey stood up after a few more rubs and started for the house, Spot right on her heels.
"I don't suppose Momma's inside is she?" she asked. The dog's head turned when she said it but Carey got no other answer. She shrugged and walked up the steps to the back door and pulled the screen open. Carey cracked the wooden door an inch and listened. Like before, she heard nothing and Spot nosed the door all the way open and stomped inside.
Judging by the dog's reaction, Carey figured the house was empty but didn't want to take any chances. She went room by room and found the place to be as empty as she expected. Once the house had been cleared, Carey set about trying to find any evidence that would shed light on her sister's fate. There was no blood, no signs of any struggle. A bit more searching revealed two cardboard boxes with a few canned goods in each. Carey's lips turned down in a frown. That could be good or bad. Jo had either taken the good stuff and took off or she had only gathered those few cans before she had to leave.
"Or maybe she's been out scavenging and that's what she found on her last trip," Carey said, her mind not wanting to commit to the worst case scenarios. Unfortunately, none of the three ideas had any more basis in fact than the others. Carey sat on the arm of the couch and tried to decide what she'd do next. No boys, no sister. Just an empty house and a dog.
"I guess I'll wait. They must have been slowed down on their way."
Almost done, guys. Sorry this one is short but it's a set up for the end. There's going to be either one long chapter or two shorter chapters and it's over.
Thanks for reading.