Chapter 42: Journey

EDWARD

Our group consisted of eight people—Emmett, Rose, Bella, Quil, Katie, Embry, Ben and me. Peter and Tia wanted to come, but we had to leave some of our fighters behind and both Peter and Tia had shown that they could take care of themselves in a fight. Along with Seth and Carlisle who were decent shots, we felt comfortable leaving the rest of our group.

Ben had trouble leaving Angela who was now six months pregnant, but he felt like he had to be on the scouting mission in search of our new home and Angela accepted it. She was one of the kindest, most understanding, people I'd ever met.

We had to take two vehicles- Emmett, Rose, Bella and me in one and the rest in the other. We took two trucks, so that we could gather any supplies that we found along the way.

The first day was pretty uneventful. Besides a few pockets of dead that we had to clear out before continuing, things were quiet. Ben thought it would take us about four days to get to the coast and find the dock marked down in the brochure. In the old world, it wouldn't have taken nearly that long. However, we knew from experience that from here to there we were going to encounter tons of roadblocks in the form of the dead, crashed cars, and possibly other survivors.

As we got further away from the heart of the city, there was a palpable lifting of the depression and hopelessness that had hung over us since we'd lost our home. Having a goal in finding the island had given everyone hope. I was nervous about it because I knew that the chances of finding a safe home on the island was not a sure thing, but it was enough to uplift people.

We stayed in a store on the edge of Camden that night, but none of us slept well as we thought about what tomorrow would bring.

The next morning just after dawn we were back on the road again. We'd been driving for a while when I started noticing something in the truck ahead of us.

Embry, Katie, and Quil were sitting in the back of the flatbed truck in front of us. Embry was showing Katie something about his crossbow and she was leaning close to him, nodding with keen interest.

"Huh…" I said. "Never would have predicted that…"

Bella's eyes followed where I was looking.

"What? He's showing her something about the crossbow," she said in confusion.

"Katie knows more about weapons than most of the people in our group. Arnold told me that her dad was military just like Quil's," I said with a grin. "She's playing it up so Embry will pay attention to her."

Bella giggled, but Emmett was not impressed.

"She's just a kid," he grumbled.

"She's almost the same age as Edward and Bella, nearly twenty, and Embry's our age," Rose said with a fond smile. "That's not a big difference."

Embry didn't look much older than we did. He was slim, but muscular after years of living in this new world's harsh conditions. Unlike Emmett who seemed to sport a constant five o'clock shadow, Embry's face was smooth. He didn't have a baby face though. His features were strong and defined, with dark eyebrows that sloped downwards in a perpetual serious expression. His sandy brown hair was slightly too long, which also made him look younger as it fell across his forehead and curled along the collar of his shirt.

"Embry's oblivious. Look at how serious he is…" I laughed, watching as Embry slowly went step by step through loading and unloading the crossbow so that Kaite could see how it was done.

I laughed harder when I saw Quil try to point something out and without Embry noticing Katie glared at him and gestured for him to shut up.

"Just wait until Embry figures it out. He's going to be a mess. Katie's pretty determined when she puts her mind to something," Rose laughed while Emmett merely grunted. "It's going to be so much fun to watch, just like the Young and the Restless."

Later that afternoon, Embry gestured for us to pull off on the side of the road. The four of us joined the others by their truck where they were talking in a huddled group.

"We're going to need to gas up pretty soon," Ben said. "I think it would be a good idea to pull off at the next exit and find somewhere to resupply before its an emergency."

In agreement, we got back in our vehicles and continued heading east until we saw an exit sign for Chipman. It was a small town, with not a whole lot in it besides a grocery store, town office, a small police station, and a few subdivisions. However, there were vehicles in the parking lot of the Save Easy grocery store, so that's where we stopped.

Emmett and Quil grabbed the two jerry cans and moved quickly from car to car siphoning gas while the rest of us kept watch for the dead or survivors.

It took a while, but Emmett and Quil were able to fill up both of our tanks and one of the jerry cans before Bella's eye caught something coming down the main road that cut through the small town.

"Look," she said, pointing in the direction where we'd driven into town from.

I shielded my eyes and stood for a moment watching what looked like a dark mass that quickly turned ino a large group of the dead.

"Fuck," I swore.

It was a group of about sixty or seventy of them and they were cutting off our entrance into the town. We wouldn't be able to move fast enough to get out of the town before they reached us because the other roads were cramped and full of obstacles like vehicles parked or crashed on the street. We'd planned on being able to get out the same way we'd gotten in, but now the way was blocked by the dead.

I whistled catching the attention of the others who hurried over to us.

"We have to let them pass," Embry said in a rush. "Hunker down somewhere and wait them out."

"Where?" Bella asked as she nervously looked behind us at the approaching dead.

The Save Easy's windows were broken and the door hung off its hinges making it a useless shelter.

Then, Embry pointed to the police station.

A place like that would have a basement that probably had holding cells for criminals. If a prisoner couldn't get out, it was logical to think the dead wouldn't be able to get in.

We rushed across the street and into the building, praying that the dead wouldn't destroy our vehicles in the crush of their bodies while we were helplessly stuck inside.

Luckily, the building had what we needed. In the basement which was made of cement, there was a row of jail cells.

Before the dead were upon us, we were able to clear out the zombies trapped in the cells, so there wouldn't be any noise for the herd to hear.

With the door to the basement closed and only a small window high above our heads, we were protected from the dead getting in or probably even hearing us. Even so, we spoke quietly as we waited for the dead to move on.

"How the hell are there so many of them out there?" Emmett asked in a hiss. "We didn't see any on the highway. You'd think we would have noticed them following us."

"That's the problem with driving anywhere. The dead can hear our vehicles since they're the only sounds that can be heard for miles," Rose whispered.

"They'll eventually move on after our scent fades," Ben said with a sigh of frustration. The longer it took us to get to the island was just that much longer before he could get back to Angela.

"I'm going to sleep," Quil said eventually, walking into one of the open cells where there was a narrow cot.

There really wasn't anything else to do, so I went into one of the other empty cells and laid my coat down on top of the bare mattress that had seen better days.

Bella tucked in next to me on the cot, almost on top of me to keep from falling off the edge but there wasn't enough room, so I rolled onto my side and turned her around so I could mold myself around her. Slipping my arm around her waist, I pulled her securely against my chest with a sigh.

It wasn't long before her body relaxed in sleep and I soon followed.

I was in a boat, gently swaying in the sea. The boat I was on was nothing more than a rickety canoe without oars, a motor, anything that I could use to paddle to shore. Then, I realized that there was no shore to row to. I was out in the middle of the ocean, nothing but blue sky and blue water surrounding me. I called for Bella, for Emmett, for Rose, anyone that was nearby, but there was no one. I was alone and I was going to die alone out here.

"Edward?" I heard Bella calling my name and it was the sweetest sound I'd ever heard. I spun around in the boat trying to find her, but she wasn't there.

That was when I saw the white decaying hands reaching out of the water for me.

"Edward? Wake up… It's just a dream."

I came out of the nightmare with a gasp in disorientation until my eyes adjusted to the darkened cell.

Bella was looking down at me in concern, running her fingers through my hair.

"I'm okay," I said, groggily. "It was just a dream. I'm sorry I woke you."

"It's okay," she whispered, nuzzling into my cheek and relaxing against me again.

I laid still wanting her to fall back asleep, but it was a while before my heartbeat returned to normal and I was able to sleep again.

It took almost two days before the dead had wandered off a few at a time. By then, we were well rested, but extremely hungry.

We decided to do a little scavenging in the houses nearby to see if there was any food to be found because our supplies were running low.

It was in one of the bungalows in a subdivision that I came upon an eerie sight. Inside the living room, I found a zombie bumbling around, growling and snapping at nothing with its back to us because it hadn't sensed us yet. From behind, it looked a lot like my father- same height, same dark brown hair, same frame that I inherited from him.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked, coming up next to me.

One zombie was no danger to us anymore, but I was frozen into immobility at the ghost of my father standing there.

Her voice brought the thing into awareness and it turned towards us. For a minute, I thought I saw my father's features staring at me out of the gore, but when it growled and snapped its teeth at us the ghost of my father disappeared.

Before Bella could make a move towards it, I stepped forward and shoved my blade up under its chin.

As it dropped limply to the ground, I stared down at it unnerved.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked again.

I shook my head at first, but when she began to turn away I said, "It looks like my dad."

Bella froze mid-step and looked down at it.

"Did he look like you?" she asked, hesitantly.

"I have the same body frame and some of his features, but I mostly look like my mom."

"He is your size," Bella said, gripping my bicep, "but that's where the resemblance ends. It's not your dad, Edward."

"I know," I said, shaking off the eerie feeling that had come over me.

We searched through the rest of the house and found some food, but not much. It had been a single man that lived in the house and it seemed like he hadn't been home often.

One of the benefits of him having a similar height and shape as me was that his clothes were my size. It had been a while since I'd had a new set of clothes, so I went rooting in his things to find something I liked.

When I opened his closet, I was surprised by how many clothes this single man had owned. There were two rows of clothes packed on hangers. However, the majority weren't very practical for the world I lived in. Obviously the man had been a professional because it was full of pressed shirts and suits.

I moved on to the dressers that seemed to have more everyday clothes. I pulled out a couple of pairs of clean boxers, socks, t-shirts and a pair of jeans. I'd gotten over the weirdness of wearing someone else's clothes a long time ago when finding anything clean had become difficult. Yes, there were still shopping malls, but the majority of them were overridden by the dead and not worth the risk.

Closing the bedroom door, I changed out of my filthy clothes. It was heaven putting on clothing that were almost brand new. Most of mine were threadbare and full of holes now.

After I was dressed, I looked at myself in the mirror. In this man's clothes, I looked like a different person, almost like an imposter. However, when I pulled my own belt off my old jeans and put it on along with my gun holster and straps for my knives, I felt more like myself.

I went into the bathroom and grabbed a bunch of the guy's toiletries like razors, toothpaste, and deodorant. Then, I grabbed a blue hoodie that was hanging off a hanger on the back of the bedroom door and went out to join everyone.

"Well, look at what we have here," Emmett said with a whistle as I exited the house and made my way over to the truck. "When did we get saddled with a supermodel? Are you sporting the latest trends, Edward?"

"Shut up, asshole," I said. "You're just jealous that you're too big to fit into most clothes. How long have you been wearing those jeans?"

Emmett leaned towards me and inhaled deeply, "and you smell fresh as a daisy… is that Axe body spray?"

"If you don't shut up, I won't let you use some of it later," I said, which immediately shut him up.

We'd run out of stuff like deodorant a long time ago. For the most part, we'd gotten used to smelling like sweat and dirt, but that didn't stop us from treating deodarant and toothpaste like gold. I hated the gross baking soda toothpaste that Mrs. Cope had taught us to use.

The next day we travelled through Carelton county which was mostly back-roads. We were still low on food, so we hoped that maybe we'd be able to check out some of the farms in the area that we hadn't searched the last time we were here. However, the area had changed so much since we'd come here to scavenge farms for food. Fields were burned and carcasses of farm animals were torn apart and eaten where farms used to exist. The Kirkman farm where we'd encountered the small group of survivors was gone. There was nothing left, but burned grass.

As we passed the Sleeman farm where we'd picked our food, I couldn't help but remember all the people who we'd lost from that trip: Jared, Carl, and Arnold. I missed Arnold a lot.

Now, I could only see the dead wandering the fields at the top of the hill looking for fresh meat that had been eradicated a long time ago.

"Why is it all burned?" Bella asked. "Why would someone light it on fire?"

"Maybe they thought it would kill the dead," Rose said thoughtfully as she looked out at the blackened fields.

Burned and mangled zombies were trying to climb out of the ditches next to the road in order to reach us even though many of their limbs were melted away or stuck together.

"They were wrong…" Bella murmured to herself sadly.

Later that day, Bella and I dozed in the backseat as Emmett drove.

"Eyes open, people," Emmett said sharply.

I sat up immediately and scanned our surroundings.

Up ahead, Ben's truck had slowed down as we approached a traffic jam of abandoned vehicles.

I was on high alert at that point. We'd come this way after exiting Carelton county over a year ago and in the process we'd cleared the road of vehicles. Now there were crashed cars lining both sides of the highway, forcing the two lanes into only one.

"Open the sunroof, Emmett," I said, unbuckling my seat belt and getting ready to stand up so that I could stick my head out the skyroof with my rifle.

Embry, Katie, and Quil were standing up too with their weapons drawn.

Bella squeezed up through the sunroof with me, so that she could keep an eye behind us as I looked forward.

None of us spoke as we scanned the area for possible attackers. That was when I noticed that there were shadows huddled on the other side of the vehicles, clearly the shapes of crouched people.

"We can see you behind the cars, assholes," Embry shouted. "We're heavily armed and we know how to use them. Back away and let us pass."

We got no response from that, but the shadows didn't move. The fact that they hadn't opened fire was a good sign.

"We're not interested in anything you have and we don't want a fight, but we will defend ourselves. Just back off and we'll pass on by," I called out.

We heard whispers coming from behind the vehicles and I prepared myself to fight. However, after a few minutes, the shadows quietly slid away into the grass on either side of the road which rustled as at least six or seven people crawled away.

I was shocked that they left so easily. That number of people could have easily taken out our vehicles and probably us as well before we'd noticed they were there.

We waited for a few minutes, anticipating an attack. However, when nothing came, we carefully drove past the cars, never taking our fingers off the triggers of our guns.

Even when we were out of gun range, we continued watching down the highway, waiting for an attack.

"Look," Bella said, but I already saw in the distance the little ant-sized figures scurrying out of the grass and opening the vehicles.

"Here we go," she said apprehensively.

Both of us tensed, waiting for the vehicles to start, but to both of our surprise they didn't.

"Aren't they coming after us?" Bella asked in confusion.

"I don't think so," I said, watching as they hurried from vehicle to vehicle. "I think they're just like us. They're looking for supplies to survive."

We'd become so used to equating survivors with danger that I sometimes forgot that there had to be others out there like us. Others that just wanted to survive.

We continued down the highway for the rest of the day without any other trouble. We could see small clusters of dead in the distance but as we got further away from Camden and into the countryside, there were less and less of them.

Near the end of the day when we were stopped for supper, I caught the scent of the ocean for the first time as the wind changed direction and wafted into my face. It was a distinctive smell that I couldn't quite describe, but it brought back memories of my childhood.

"Can you guys smell that?" I asked, an eagerness rising inside of me.

Everyone paused in their talking and took a collective indrawn breath.

"Is that..." Rose began, her own eyes glowing with anticipation.

"The ocean…" Quil said and then let out a whoop of excitement.

It took us a while to settle down from the nervous excitement that we were experiencing, but eventually we decided to just sleep in our vehicles. We didn't want to have to go off road in order to find a place to sleep.

It was too cold to sleep out in the open, so we squeezed like sardines into the back of the truck. Emmett, Rose, Bella, and I tried to sleep while the other vehicle took turns standing watch for the first half of the night after which it would be our turn.

"Jesus, Edward…" Emmett growled. "Watch where you jab your elbows."

"Shut up," I growled.

Emmett and I were back to back with Bella and Rose in our respective arms, but I just couldn't get comfortable. "You take up too much fucking room," I couldn't help but whine as I pushed back against him. I just wanted to sleep.

Bella pulled me closer to her and farther away from Emmett.

I couldn't sleep, but I kept myself still, trying not to jostle anyone else. Everyone else's breathing evened out and I was envious that they were able to fall asleep so easily.

However, I quickly realized that Bella wasn't asleep either.

In this position, Bella and I were wrapped around each other with every part of our bodies touching. In other circumstances, I would have been in heaven, but not now.

As if sensing my thoughts, Bella burrowed her face in my neck and nipped and sucked on the skin under my jaw in the way she knew I liked.

I bit back a gasp as her lips moved up my neck and jaw, until she reached my ear which she nipped.

For a minute, I let myself enjoy the intimacy of the moment, but then she rolled her hips against me, grinding herself against my crotch.

I pulled my head away from her and glared.

She giggled quietly and a smirk was plastered across her face.

When she made a move to burrow her face in my neck again, I leaned my face down so that my cheek was pressed against hers.

"Don't you fucking dare," I hissed in her ear.

I was mortified by what she was doing, especially since it sort of turned me on and she knew it. It had been a long time since we'd been together in that way and I'd been craving her like a drug.

Thankfully, after a couple more hip rolls, Bella relaxed with a smirk on her face as I tried to relax my body which annoyingly had a mind of its own about what it wanted to be doing right now.

She snickered at me and for a moment I wanted to throttle her.

"Whatever the fuck you guys are doing over there, just stop it." Emmett interrupted the silence. "Rose and I aren't into voyeurism, you freaks."

Bella laughed out loud and I heard Rose giggle too.

"Speak for yourself," Rose said in a fake sultry voice.

"What the fuck, you guys," Emmett growled as Rose laughed louder.

I was extremely embarrassed, so to get back at Bella, I pinched her hard on the butt.

With a loud squeal, Bella pushed me away from her so that my elbow hit Emmett in the ribs.

"I'm getting some air," Emmett growled, shoving me back to Bella and crawling out of the back of the truck.

Rose sighed into the darkness.

"Well, we have more room now..." she sighed. "Wanna fool around Bella?" she asked in an exaggerated sexy voice.

"Jesus…" I growled as they burst out laughing again. "It's too fucking late for this shit…"

After I had the chance to calm down, I smiled, starting to find the humour in the situation and rolled onto my back.

"How the hell did Emmett and I get saddled with perverts for wives?" I asked trying to sound grouchy. "Slim pickings, I guess…"

This caused the two of them who had quieted down to break into cackles of laughter.

It had been so long since I'd heard Bella laugh, let alone the rest of our group. Having something to strive for in finding the island gave us hope again which made us almost giddy with excitement. It almost felt like we were simply on a road-trip.

It didn't take long for us to fall asleep now that we weren't cramped together, so I was startled when I was shaken awake.

"Your turn on watch, freak," Emmett growled, but there was a twinkle in his eyes that made me smile.

We got up early the next morning just after sunrise. Ben predicted that we'd reach the ocean later that day.

As I leaned against the truck next to Bella eating my breakfast, she tilted her head up to me so that she could speak quietly.

"Look at Embry," she murmured so only I could hear.

I looked around for him and found him sitting on the side of the road with his shoulders hunched.

Every once in a while, he would look around with slightly wild eyes as he ate his breakfast.

I stood up, worried about what was upsetting him.

"Wait," Bella snickered under her breath. "Everything's fine."

Just at that moment, Katie walked over to Embry and sat down slightly closer than she usually did. If I hadn't been looking for it, I would never have caught it. As she reached into the bag of dried sweet potato that Embry was eating, she rested her other hand on his upper thigh as if to brace herself. Embry choked on the food that he'd just swallowed and flushed deep red.

"You okay, Embry?" Rose called out in a sweet voice.

"Fine… Good… I'm fine…" he said hoarsely, clearly flustered.

Standing up, he hurried to get into the truck and away from Katie.

I looked at Katie in curiosity and saw a small smile curl her lips.

"Yep… He's in trouble," I whispered back to Bella.

I heard the ocean before I saw it. The sound of crashing waves at high tide was loud, drowning out all other sounds

Looking down at the ground, the grass had that greyish tinge that I always associated with the ocean. It was coarse and tough, growing in patches so unlike the groomed bright green grass of lawns.

Then, the trees opened up and the great expanse of the ocean appeared with the graceful arc of sand and rocks lining it.

There was a collective gasp from our group as we took in the majesty of the ocean.

I was the first to step forward passing through sand dunes until I came to stand on the clay-like sand of the beach that quickly surrounded my sneaker-clad feet.

I closed my eyes and I could almost hear my mother calling me and the laugher of my father as he helped me dig in the sand to build castles. In my hands, I could almost feel the plastic bucket and small shovel we were using to create the towers of sand.

It was the feeling of Bella squeezing my hand that brought me back to the present.

I looked down at her and she smiled tugging me forward where the others had already gone.

We walked along the ocean shore, no-one speaking a word as each one of us was hypnotized by the crashing of the waves that turned the silver water murky as it swirled up clouds of sand.

However, our moment of peace inevitably disappeared with the reality of the new world.

Ahead of us, there was a dark mass floating in the water. As I got closer, I recognized it as the shape of person. The force of the undertow pushed the body to shore and then out again as it floated on the surface of the waves.

It was a zombie, a woman. Her wet and tangled brown hair was plastered across her face like a spider web, covering her pitted rotting flesh. Her shirt which was a mottled brown was bunched up around her ribs showing the black wounds that probably killed her.

When we got close enough, the dead woman twitched her head and tried to lift it as she sensed our presence. Her mouth opened filling with water only to have it rush out again as she raised her head enough to snap at us.

Her movements were strangely sluggish, like the weight of the water was too much for her body to fight against.

The whole scene was quite disturbing, but I didn't know why at first because I'd seen plenty of decomposing zombies. But then I looked around us and noticed that besides the horror in front of me, the beach and the ocean fooled me temporarily into thinking that the apocalypse had never happened.

Katie walked over to it and without a word slammed her blade down into its head. She stood there for a minute just staring down at it. Then, Embry walked up next to her and draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her away from the dead thing.

Instead of leaving it there, Emmett and Quil grabbed it and dragged it out of the water and into an outcropping of trees, getting rid of the evidence that the world had fallen apart.

"I think I see a dock down that way," Embry said, pointing down the beach.

"What are the chances that we'll actually find a motorboat," Emmett said.

"With our luck there will probably be nothing there," Quil said blandly.

The heavy sand pulled at my feet as we walked down the beach. It would be impossible for us to run in this, so I looked around nervously for any dead or even worse humans.

It was a dock, but as Emmett had predicted there were no motorboats only kayaks and three rowboats.

I looked at them sceptically and then at the ocean where I could see the island in the distance.

"That's a fucking long way to row," Embry grumbled glaring out at the water.

"We'll there's nothing we can do about it, unless we want to keep walking. The brochure doesn't show anything about other marinas, but it's possible," Ben said.

"Luck hasn't been on our side so far," Katie said. "I doubt walking further down the beach is going to be any better than this."

"Okay," Ben said. "Let's take the two rowboats."

"Why don't Edward, Rose, Bella, and I take one boat and the rest of you take the other. That way we can divide up the rowing between the five of us. I don't think our women-folk have the brute strength," Emmett said with a hint of his jovial personality coming through in his faint smile.

"I'm starving," Bella said. "Let's eat before we get out on the water."

"Not out here in the open," Ben said. "Let's go over to those sand dunes. That'll give us enough cover."

We sat down in the shade of the trees that sheltered a sand dune and hauled out our lunch. Just like when I was younger, the free sea air made hungry, so I tore into one of the granola bars that we'd found.

I was halfway through it when I felt the sand shift next to me, covering my opened back of dried fruit that was lying next to me.

I glared at Emmett who was sitting next to me.

"What the hell, Emmett," I snapped.

"What?" he asked in confusion.

Before I could respond, I heard the moan.

A hand suddenly burst out of the sand right where my bag of fruit had been resting

"Holy shit!" I yelled, scrambling away from it.

The others followed me as other forms began moving under the tall mound of sand that we'd taken for a sand dune. I could hear the moans quite clearly as the dead began to claw their way out of the sand.

"What the hell is this?" Emmett growled in disgust.

The bodies were burned and covered in sand that was clinging to their bodies.

Ben, Quil, Katie, and Embry lunged forward and began stabbing the zombies in their heads soon enough finishing off the moving corpses.

"How the hell did they get under there?" I asked in confusion. The ocean would not have piled that much sand on top of them.

"I think someone tried to cremate and then bury them," Ben said, looking down at the corpses thoughtfully. "This could have happened before people knew how to kill them."

We all nodded because it was probably true.

"Well, I guess that puts an end to lunch," Emmett said. "It's time to start rowing."

Getting the boat past the breakers wasn't easy. Once Emmett, Rosalie, and Bella were situated in the boat with Emmett manning the oars, I pushed the boat out into the water. The bottom scraped against the sand as the waves crashed against the boat making it wobble and thrust back against me. The waves slapped against the side of the boat splashing back into my face stinging my eyes with salt water. However, once I was thigh-deep in the water, Emmett was able to propel the boat forward, so I leaped into the boat and settled into the stern.

Pointing the boat towards the island, we began the long trip to our possible new home.

A:N/ This chapter is shorter than usual, but it's the right place to stop in their journey. I loved writing this chapter. I spent a lot of my teenage years taking road trips with my friends and spending our days on the beach. Minus the floating zombie. I hope you enjoyed it too.