“JEFF. WE HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!” Megan spit out the words as she attempted to turn the key in the ignition with shaking hands.
“Just one more second! I almost have everything!” Jeff grunted as he tried to grab hold of more than his hands could manage. Cans and bags of chips spilled onto the ground as he shoveled what he could into the van. A buzzing sound filled the air, and the van jolted as the engine turned over. Jeff recognized the noise and saw the automatic door beginning to close. He also saw Megan fumbling with the gearshift.
Dropping what was left in his hands, he dove through the closing door and heard the sound of metal on metal and squealing tires as the van shot away from the entrance of the drugstore. He grabbed an armrest and held on tight as Megan whipped the Odyssey around the parking lot. There were several loud thumps as the infected were pushed out of the way. The minivan bounced erratically and then corrected, stable again on four wheels. At least one of the bodies had fallen in front of the vehicle, and Megan did not stop as they rolled over it. The side door finally clicked shut, and the buzzing noise disappeared.
Swinging the steering wheel frantically from side to side, Megan avoided the larger clusters of bodies attempting to grab for them. Several more stiffs were knocked to the side as the van swerved out of the parking lot, hitting the small ditch surrounding it and popping up onto the street. Everything Jeff had just tossed on the seats scattered to the floor and went rolling around the cargo area. He joined the supplies and landed ass-up on the floor. From his vantage point, he could see nothing and had a hard time crawling back to a sitting position.
“Calm down, Megan! We’re going to crash!” he tried to yell over the still-squealing tires and revving engine. Jeff could not hear his own voice as he grabbed hold of a seat to pull himself up. The van finally straightened out, and the disheveled man was able to slide into the front passenger seat. He was barely settled when Megan slammed on the brakes, nearly sending him through the windshield.
“Enough!” Jeff yelled, this time loud enough for her to hear as she gunned the engine and wrenched the steering wheel around to weave in and out of the stationary traffic. Megan jumped at the sound of his voice, but her eyes did not move off the road. She slowed slightly but retained her death grip on the steering wheel as the van darted around stalled cars and lunging bodies. As they moved farther away from the intersection, the cars remained an issue, but there were fewer ghouls to dodge.
“Ease up just a little bit,” Jeff tried again, placing a hand on Megan’s shoulder. She viciously shrugged it off, and he acted as if she had slapped him, backing away slowly. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He leaned down and picked up the.357, which had fallen to the floorboards. “If NASCAR ever gets rolling again, I’ll be sure to sign you up.”
It did not elicit the smile Jeff had hoped for, but the intensity in Megan’s eyes seemed to drop a notch. Holding the wheel steady she reached over, and pulled her seatbelt on, which made him relax a bit more. Her driving was steadier as they weaved in out of the clog of vehicles and headed down the road. A random path of destruction continued from structure to structure, but the vehicles were starting to thin out as the survivors moved on.
The duo was silent as Megan continued to dodge the occasional persistent plague victim. She clipped a couple at first, but the few figures on the road were getting easier to avoid.
The sloping hood of the van had several sizeable dents in it that were splattered with something that looked far too thick and runny to be blood. Jeff was staring at the new paint job when the minivan swerved again, and he heard a muffled thud as another body went spinning off into a ditch, pirouetting as it was knocked away by the hit. He watched, fascinated by the creature’s single moment of grace before it fell and disappeared from view.
“Sorry,” Megan whispered. Jeff cocked his head to the side, unsure of what he had heard. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, glancing at her passenger for a moment.
“Screw that. You did great,” he smiled, relieved that the tension between them was broken. “I meant what I said: you drove this puppy like a pro. I would have probably smashed into one of those wrecks back there.”
Megan didn’t share the smile, but her chest puffed up slightly. They sat in silence for the next few minutes, content to look out the windows. As the van crept along, they saw fewer corpses, less of the infected, and a stretch of road with no more wrecks or abandoned vehicles.
“So?” Megan said after a while. She waited for Jeff to look at her before continuing. “Gallatin then?”
He nodded. Gallatin was due east and out toward the country. The town was a mirror image of Milfield, except it was smaller and still held onto its rural roots. There were plenty of trailer parks, farms, and big undeveloped plots of land out that way.
Jeff stared out at the surrounding landscape, which looked deceptively normal. The woods were a bit thicker along the stretch of road they were driving, the houses more spread out. As long as he didn’t look too closely, it was easy to pretend things had gone back to the way they were before the virus paid the world a visit.
They went over a rise in the road, and the daydream was shattered. The trees fell away and they were moving past another neighborhood no different from any of the others the two refugees had seen before. It was a mishmash of damaged properties and those left untouched. Several of the infected were milling about and turned to look as the vehicle rolled by. The sad wretches tried to follow but never got close, and Jeff watched them disappeared in the rearview mirror.
He gave brief directions to Megan. They would take one of the less-traveled routes with the hope that it would not be too congested with stalled traffic. It would lead them directly to Gallatin.
Jeff fiddled with the radio as they rolled along. He began with AM, pressing ‘seek’ and letting it run through the static. It lapped the entire band with no results. He switched to FM and repeated the process. There was nothing, not even an automated emergency broadcast. Those messages had been looped to play over and over, nonstop, when all the live broadcasts had vanished. Even the recorded voices had disappeared off the airwaves.
Megan reached over to turn the radio off. Jeff had already sat back and was staring off into space. He barely noticed when the hiss of static disappeared.
He snapped out of his trance a few minutes later when Megan slowed the car and turned left. The intersection was clear of traffic, though several cars and eighteen-wheelers sat on both sides of the road. There were huge crease marks on many of the vehicles, as if something like a bulldozer had pushed them out of the way. As he looked, he spotted no heavy machinery in the area. There were a few sideways skid marks on the asphalt, but no other hints as to what might have happened.
As they left the crossroad, Jeff dismissed the damaged vehicles and their possible meaning from his mind. He closed his eyes and began to drift off. It felt like only a few seconds later when he heard the van slowing to a stop.
Lifting his head, he glanced at Megan and then looked out his window to see what she was staring at. He was about to shake his head and tell her it was a bad idea to stop there when he saw the expression on her face. He looked a bit more closely at the building near which they were parked.
It was a small brick-fronted church with a wooden sign out front. There was little ornamentation to the edifice itself. The roof was pointed, and several long, narrow windows faced the road. A small indentation in the building served as the entryway, with its glass double doors still intact.