"Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world, she took the midnight train going anywhere..." Carey sang as she drove along. She'd discovered the Journey CD in the backseat when she stopped to water the grass and stretch her legs on the side of the highway an hour or so back. "Just a small town boy, born and raised in south Detroit..." Her heart skipped a beat. "Kurt," she said softly as she reached over and turned off the stereo.
She hadn't thought of him in, well, if she was honest with herself, since the day everything went to shit. She knew he was out on tour this summer but had no idea where he might have been playing when zombies showed up and ruined things. She was supposed to take the boys to see him when he swung through Boston in July. Carey sighed and put both hands back on the wheel.
She supposed she should feel bad about not thinking about him but she really didn't. Their divorce had been amicable and he visited the twins as often as he could, but they'd become two people who didn't talk all that much but happened to have had children together instead of friends despite Kurt's best efforts. "I don't even know where he's living, or lived," she told the dangling air freshener. "I know the packages he sent the boys for their birthdays had his address on it but I'll be damned if I can remember where it was. California? Maybe. Or was it Nevada?" Vegas sounded right to her for no reason she could think of. Carey frowned and reached for her water bottle.
Besides, she'd been a little on the busy side for the last while with the zombies and the escape from New York and then her daring entry and incredible exit from Boston. She hadn't spared many thoughts for a ton of other people either. How was Mama Rosa doing? Did the cute boy who always bagged her groceries and always offer to take them out to her car get out alive? What about Maddie or London or Arwin? Were they still alive? Carey pushed those thoughts away. They mattered, she admitted, as did Kurt, but there were two things she'd thought about every minute of every day, two things she was living for right now, two things that mattered, and they were currently making their way across an infested country on their way to a farm in the middle of nowhere.
The song ended and Carey reached over and played it again. "A singer in a smoky room, a smell of wine and cheap perfume," she sang, putting all of herself behind the song instead of only barely singing along. The more she sang, the more cathartic it felt. She hit the notes of the chorus and found her breath hitching in her chest. She took a deep, cleansing breath and let it all flow out of her.
Carey quickly found that it was hard to drive with tears in your eyes so she pulled over and let them out. She turned off the truck and stepped out, ducking back in long enough to grab the shotgun before heading to the front and leaning against the grill. She cried for her boys, her ex-husband, all her friends and family, and finally for herself. When the tears finally ran dry, Carey wiped her eyes and got back in the truck.
"I will find you, boys, I swear it. Don't stop believin'." Carey turned the truck back on and sped away.
Carey had changed the CD a few minutes before she saw the cars laying across the middle of the road. Bon Jovi was playing and she could see them (and their huge hair. Oh how she'd loved that back in the 80s) on stage in her mind's eye. "What is this?" Carey asked herself as she slowed to little more than a crawl. She was about half a mile from what she thought were two cars straddling the center of the road nose to nose. There was the unmistakeable sign of movement around the cars as well.
"You really don't want to mess with me today," Carey said under her breath as she considered her options. She was just about to put the truck in reverse when she saw a little green car appear over the hill behind her. "I passed you a minute ago. Oh hell no," she said as she realized she had been set up and they were now trying to box her in. Reverse was out of the question now, she realized, so Carey gunned the engine and the truck accelerated rapidly.
Three forms materialized at the small roadblock and she was all but certain they were aiming guns of some sort at her as she sped at them. Carey had intended to use the grass at the side of the road as her way past the roadblock but saw that whoever these people were, they'd set up shop in a perfect place. The shoulder on each side dropped away precariously, down into a steep hill on the right side and into a drainage ditch on the left. "If I can't go around you, I'll go through you," Carey said as she made sure her seat belt was fastened. She swore she could feel her pupils dilate as an adrenaline flush coursed through her body.
The gun barrels aimed at her winked as she closed the last few yards and she instinctively slouched down in the seat. She hit the center of the two cars at almost sixty and sent them spinning. She watched as the tail of one of the cars clipped a man who'd managed to get out of the way of the initial crash and flung him head-first down the hill. "Who makes a roadblock out of little cars, anyway?" she asked as she slowed down and looked in the rear-view mirror. "Amateurs."
Carey slowed further as she waited to see if the other car was going to come after her or not. She pulled the truck across the road and put it in park. She leaned out the window and watched the car stop at the wreck. A person got out and looked the scene over and seemed to be thinking about giving chase. Carey revved the engine, figuring the sound would be more than loud enough to carry to the small gathering. She knew she was asking for trouble but didn't care. Her blood was up.
When it became clear that she wasn't going to have any company, she put the truck back in gear and continued down the highway. As she got up to speed, a heavy vibration began to shake the steering wheel in her hand. Far from an expert in car-related things, she still knew that was a very bad sign. The truck still drove more or less straight and wasn't coughing any smoke so she figured she could ride it for a while yet. She wasn't sure how this was possible since a look at the front of the truck through the windshield showed metal that was torn and bent in all sorts of directions. "American steel," she said as she patted the dashboard.
Carey drove on for another hour before the shaking got too bad to handle. She found the nearest freeway exit and steered the truck down the ramp. She stopped at the bottom and looked both ways and saw absolutely nothing but fields in each direction. Randomly choosing left, she drove on, keeping the speed under twenty to keep the truck steerable. Carey finally saw a few buildings and gave a short sigh of relief as she approached them.
She chose a house and pulled the truck in its driveway. Carey got out of the truck and walked to the front of it to inspect the damage. The grill was gone, the hood was buckled, and lots of parts that she couldn't name were dangling by their little wires. The bumper was split in almost half, she saw as she squatted down and looked at the now-visible undercarriage. That was a mess. Carey wasn't sure how the truck had managed to get her as far as it had with as many mangled parts as she saw.
Carey patted the hood affectionately as she got her bag out of the truck. She stood by the house and listened to the neighborhood but only heard the ticking of the engine. Satisfied she was alone for the moment, Carey walked around to the back door and broke in. She strode into the house and put the gun down on an oak table and took the tactical vest off. Carey was instantly a few degrees cooler.
Feeling comfortable enough to only walk around with the pistol, Carey began to explore the first floor of the house and quickly found that it had at one time been full of kids. Crayon drawings and report cards covered the refrigerator and there was an assortment of small, colorful plates and bowls stacked on a shelf. She was reminded of the set of Power Ranger glasses that someone had given her when the twins were young. "They loved those stupid things. Zack refused to drink out of anything but the Red Ranger for a year. Wasn't he the one that ended up doing porn?" Carey laughed to herself.
She was about to leave the kitchen when she saw a pitcher half-filled with a lime green liquid sitting on the counter next to a bunch of Kool-Aid packets near it. There was a dusting of white powder around the pitcher and the packets. Looks like they ran away before they got to finish their Kool-Aid, Carey thought as she put her finger in the powder and tasted it. She wrinkled up her nose when it tasted more like chalk than drink mix or sugar. "What the hell? I wouldn't drink this either," she said as she wiped her finger on her pants. "I guess the kids tried to make it or something," she muttered as she licked her sleeve to clean her tongue off.
She finished her explorations and walked up the steps, hoping to find a the mom's room full of clothes that were her size. She pushed the first door she found open and saw it was a child's room. She was about to close the door back when she caught a glimpse of the bed out of the corner of her eye. Carey turned back into the room and walked over, not able to take her eyes off of the lump on the mattress. There was a boy, five or six years old if she had to guess, laying peacefully before her. His arms were folded over his chest and there didn't seem to be a hair out of place. "Please, oh please just be sleeping," she said, putting a hand on the boy's chest and waiting for the slow rise and fall of breath. There was nothing and Carey slowly withdrew her hand. She took a shaky step back and bumped into a small table, knocking a large cup to the floor.
She bent down to pick it up, out of respect for the boy's final resting place, when she noticed a dried green film along the bottom of the glass. Everything clicked into place for her at that instant. Carey put the glass back on the table and backed out of the room. She closed the boy's door and checked the next, fully expecting to find the exact same thing.
She wasn't disappointed. There was a slightly older boy laying just like his brother, arms crossed, hair perfectly in place, and seemingly a smile on his slack face. Carey saw another glass with the same dried gunk at the bottom and she leaned against the wall. She left the room and found a third, this one with a little girl dressed in Dora pajamas. One more door to check, Carey pushed it open and found a woman with a bottle of pills in her dead hands laying half on and half off the bed.
"My God, she Jim Jones-ed them," Carey said in disbelief. "Sent them to bed with a belly full of Kool-Aid laced with sleeping pills." She shook her head and leaned against the wall. With a huge sigh, Carey left the room and pulled the door closed behind her. Whatever was in this house was staying in this house. Everything was tainted.
Carey slipped the tac vest back on and grabbed her bag and shotgun and left the house of death as fast as she could. One more minute in that place and she would vomit. As she walked aimlessly down the street, she tried as hard as she could to put herself in the woman's position and found it was impossible. "I don't care how bad it looks, I couldn't do it," she said aloud. That didn't mean that she couldn't understand, distantly, why the other woman had done such a terrible act.
Would she want her sons to become infected? To become flesh eating monstrosities? Of course not. But could she knowingly kill them herself before it happened? Would that be an act of kindness or murder? "Murder. Pure and simple," Carey said. "In a world like this, taking an innocent life is the ultimate wrong." As black and white as that statement was, Carey couldn't ignore all the grey that swam around its edges, grey that she wouldn't be able to fathom until or unless she was placed in that situation. Terrible visions of her twins stumbling after her danced around the corner of her mind.
"Fuck me, I need a drink." Carey turned her mind away from dark thoughts as she saw a darkened bar a block over and across the street. She shivered involuntarily as her mind gave one last attempt to return to the deadhouse. She crossed the street and stopped outside the small tavern's door with an ear pressed against the wood. Silence. Good. Carey pushed and the door swung open.
The interior of the building reminded her of all the bars she'd wasted her early years in. Faint smells of spilled beer, old tobacco smoke, and sweat reached her nose and she drank them in. She walked behind the bar and pulled a glass from the rack and took stock of what she had to work with. Surprisingly, there was quite the assortment. Her mind ran through a list of drinks she'd learned to make over the years before settling on her old stand-by. "One margarita on the rocks, hold the rocks," she said as she poured some off-brand of tequila and triple sec into her glass. She filled it the rest of the way with the mix and took a long drink. It wasn't cold but that didn't matter.
Carey was slightly astonished at how quickly she'd emptied the glass and how good it tasted. "Bartender, I'll have another," she said softly as she made a second drink. "Give me a shot, too. Patron if you have it." There was no Patron but that didn't stop Carey from pouring herself a shot. She pounded it down and felt the burn as it traveled through her throat and into her stomach. Carey suddenly remembered back to the first time she'd ever been drunk.
I was at Amy Perkins' birthday party, shethought, and it was a big deal because her mom said she could invite boys. We cut the cake and had ice cream and then went into the basement to dance and be loud. Man, her mom was clueless." Careysmiled. We were listening to Depeshe Mode and someone, that redheaded Jimmy kid I think, spiked the punch bowl. Somehow I ended up letting Scotty Westbrook feel a boob and he came in his pants. "Oh, those were the days. Those were the days." Carey finished her drink and briefly considered taking the bottle of tequila with her. She chose not to and walked out of the bar, feeling much calmer than she did when she came in.
"Depeshe Mode? What were we thinking?" she laughed to herself as she made her way down the sidewalk. She looked over the cars along the side of the road and walked closer to see if any of them happened to have their keys still in the ignition. She knew she'd have an easier time finding a set of keys hanging on the wall in someone's house with the car sitting right outside in the driveway, but she didn't want to go into another house now. She felt gooseflesh pop out on her arms as she thought about the dead children.
"No, I'll walk first, thank you very much," she thought as she walked past a neighborhood and kept checking cars. She had walked almost two miles and saw the first signs of the fields that surrounded the small town in the distance but still had no luck. She frowned and stopped, pondering her next move.
It was late but not yet dark. There was enough moonlight to walk by and still keep watch. Carey turned back to look at the small burg. Sleeping in a house or a garage or even a tool shed was better than sleeping in a field for a variety of reasons. She turned back to the outskirts. Every mile she traveled now was one less she'd have to travel tomorrow.
"Shit," she muttered as she started back toward the rows of identical houses. Common sense had won out. Carey made her way to the first side street and turned, checking the houses she passed for garages. She found one and walked up its driveway, pausing by the house momentarily before shaking her head and heading for the smaller outbuilding. A quick tug on the rolling door's handle revealed it to be locked and she walked around to the side door.
Carey smashed a pane of glass from the door's window with her elbow and reached her hand inside and unlocked the door. She pulled it open and had to stop her hand from involuntarily reaching for the light switch. She peered into the gloom and saw a car wrapped in a dust cover and rack after rack of tools hanging from the walls.
"What were you working on in here, Mr. Mechanic?" Carey wondered aloud as she grabbed the bottom of the dust cover and began pulling it off the car. As the car was revealed, Carey could only whistle. Sitting before her was a fully restored classic Dodge Charger, painted orange and only missing the Confederate flag on the roof and 01s on the side. Her mind instantly started playing the Dukes of Hazzard theme song and she couldn't help but run her hand over the roof to make sure it was real. "Kurt had one of these. Can't say his ever looked quite this good but it's the same car."
Carey walked around the car and smiled as she thought about Kurt for the second time that day. "Last time I was in a car like this I ended up with twins," she said as she started looking around the garage for the keys. She pulled out her small flashlight and panned the beam around the wall. Having no success in the obvious spots, she walked over to the work bench and began going through the doors.
"Come on, I know you're in here somewhere."
She found them a minute later, laying under a Chilton guide. She picked them up and got in the car, hoping that it would start. "It would be anti-climactic to find the keys and then have the engine not working." She turned the key and was greeted with a low rumble as the engine turned over and into life. "There we go." Carey goosed the gas pedal and the car surged against the brake with its power.
Now knowing that her ride for the next day worked, Carey turned the car off and climbed into the back seat. She yawned once and curled up into a ball and was asleep before she could do more than wish for a blanket.
The first thing she realized when she woke up the next morning was that neither of the Duke boys was laying beside her and she frowned as the last remnants of her dream floated away. The second thing she noticed was that it was raining hard. Carey twisted around and looked out through the back glass and through the side door. Her watch said it was already after nine but the heavy clouds made it look more like dusk. She stretched and crawled out of the back seat and stretched again.
Carey yawned as she looked at the rolling door. It wouldn't open from the outside so there were locks. But where? Her eyes roamed the sides of the aluminum door before settling on two small locks, one on each side. She frowned as she foresaw another long search for keys since she was taking this car, one way or the other. "Or we can just do it the Zack way," she said as she noticed a hammer sitting on the workbench.
It took a total of five swings to break the locks off their housings. Carey tossed the hammer back on the bench and bent down, grabbing the bottom of the door and lifting. It rolled up and revealed an ugly sky and torrential rains. "Perfect," she said sarcastically, turning back to the car and loading her supplies. She had just gone to the rear of the car and was sipping from a water bottle when she heard a familiar moan.
"Oh hell no," Carey exclaimed as the lone zombie took its first step into the garage. Her eyes told her that it would every likely cut her off if she went for the shotgun in the car so she scanned the walls for another weapon. She grinned as she found a salt-crusted metal grain shovel. It was in her hand in a flash and she took two steps forward, choking up on the handle like a baseball bat. The zombie reached out a filthy hand to her and she hit it, spinning the thing around sideways. It righted itself and advanced again.
Carey never was much of a baseball fan. She'd taken the twins to a couple of Red Sox games every year they'd lived in Boston but she didn't like it, barely able to hide her utter boredom as the game moved along at a snail's pace. Zack would watch every inch of the field at once while she'd occasionally study the backsides of the players. Cody would rattle off an impressive stat or two while she would look dreamily at Derek Jeter's charming face whenever the Yankees were in town.
She wasn't sure who's swing she most resembled, but was sure Zack could tell her, but she started low and ended high. The face of the shovel caught the zombie in the chest and sent it flying backwards. It stumbled into the corner before righting itself and charging at her. Carey readied her hands and let them go a second time, catching the zombie head this time. She heard the distinct sound of teeth breaking as it sprawled back out into the rain. It rolled over on its belly and began pushing itself upright. Carey dropped the shovel and retrieved her shotgun.
"Strike three, asshole," she said as she pulled the trigger and removed its head. Carey pushed a new shell in the shotgun and put it back in the car. She gave the garage one last once-over, looking for anything that might be of use on her trip but came up empty. She shrugged and got in the car, buckling up before starting the beauty up.
Carey revved the engine several times before easing the car out of the garage. She flicked the lights and the wipers on and checked the gauges. Everything seemed to look good so she stepped on the gas, nearly fish-tailing as the power in the old car caught her by surprise. Carey got it under control and steered the car onto the main street and headed for the highway.
She was on it a few minutes later after picking her way through a small pile-up near the on-ramp. The rain was slowing her down, she figured. There was nothing but empty road in front of her but she couldn't risk gunning it and seeing what the car could really do on the unfamiliar and slick roads. Carey settled in at a comfortable forty and drove on through the rain.
She passed the next seven hours behind the wheel, passing in and out of heavy storms and stopping only for a call of nature and a fortuitous fill-up. She'd run the tank down to barely over the red E and was planning on driving until it quit when she passed a pickup truck on the side of the road with a bed full of red plastic gas tanks. She saw it as she drove past and stomped on the brakes, hoping that she might be starting a run of good luck. Carey put the care in reverse and backed up the hundred feet until she pulled even with the truck.
She got out and walked to the truck's tailgate and hoped. She picked one up and smiled at the weight. Carey put it back down and looked around, ready for any sign of trouble. She'd long ago learned that anything this good and easy was likely too good to be true. She opened one of the containers and took a sniff and her nose wrinkled slightly. "I don't know why this is here or what happened to you," she said almost reverently to the empty truck, "but thanks for the gas." Five minutes later, tank full and another refill sitting in the trunk, Carey was back behind the wheel again.
She'd passed out of Pennsylvania and was well into Ohio by late afternoon. The rain had picked up again and the sky had darkened. Her hand was tapping on the wheel in time to Guns N' Roses when she passed a sign stating she was less than twenty miles from Columbus. "I am officially almost halfway there," she said. She was thinking about how much quicker she'd been able to move once she'd gotten herself out of the crowded Northeast and into less densely settled areas "Oh, Jolene, if you're still on the farm, you will not believe the stories I have to tell you," she said just as the front tires hydroplaned.
"Shit shit oh shit," she screamed as she fought for control. Carey turned the wheel hard to the right and then back again and found herself in a circle of over-correction. The back of the car slewed around and she slid off the shoulder of the road backwards. Jumbled and bouncy visions of onrushing trees filled the rear view mirror and she tried to spin the car around to gain some sort of control. The tires had just caught a bit of traction when she slammed into the stand of trees. She splintered and exploded the first few but hit the center of a massive old oak and came to a very abrupt stop.
Carey's body was tossed like a rag doll against the restraints during the impact. Her head snapped back when she hit the tree and then everything was thrown forward as the car spun sideways and came to rest against another another tree. The last things she saw before she slipping into unconsciousness was the spidered glass of the windshield and the cherry scented air freshener.
I'm just going to go ahead and stop saying that chapters will be up by a certain date because something always comes up IRL and makes me miss my deadlines. Sorry about that. If I ever say it'll be up by Monday or whatever, just go ahead and add three days to it. Aside from that, I don't have much to say except that, yes, I happened to be watching a lot of Dukes of Hazzard the last few days while playing late night nurse to sick kids. Fun. Oh, and look...I can post two chapters at once, too!