“Then I’ll make you a promise,” Maggie said. “Since you are helping me, I’ll help you. I’ll get you to Champaign, Illinois.” She held out her coffee cup. “You may be late, but better late than never. Right?”
“Right.” Malcolm clinked his cup against hers and followed it with a sip. A part of him was uncertain, that maybe he should not have told Maggie about the meeting place. But the reasonable part of his being argued, why should he worry about it? Maggie and the others seemed like good people. If she said she was going to help, there was no reason not to believe that.
ELEVEN – TRAIL BEGINS
Day Nine AR
There were more reasons for staying the night at the Genesis Lab camp other on the advice of Hunter. He felt it would be too dark to travel and there were animals. But Meredith and John couldn’t, with a clear conscience, just leave Harold and the others without helping them in some way. It was wrong. There was an unspoken camaraderie and Meredith and John were the veterans of waking up in a post apocalypse world.
Harold and the others were rightfully confused. They also were sad, heartbroken, and at a loss at what to do. Like John and Meredith, they thought about finding their families.
Other than helping them and staying put for safety’s sake, there was another reason. They were close to Washington, DC. For a reality check, Meredith needed to see DC. She had to and John agreed. Hunter came with them. He didn’t see what the big deal was. John jokingly told him, “I guess when you’ve seen one nuked city you’ve seen them all.”
Hunter didn’t understand the sarcasm.
They didn’t go into Washington, DC, that would have been nearly impossible. The bridges and roadways were crushed or twisted wreckage. But on a hillside, just above the Potomac River, they saw enough.
It was dead.
Even though buildings stood, some of them mere skeletons, nothing was green. Nothing grew. Surprisingly, a good bit of the Washington Monument was still there, blackened, charred and chipped away.
They didn’t stay long. Long enough to see the icing on the cake, the undisputable proof that the world fell apart when they slept.
Harold and the others didn’t come with them. John advised them not to. Not yet. It would be too much of a shock. They, like John and Meredith had to absorb what happened slowly. Taking in each piece of the apocalypse until they got the big picture.
There was also the task of getting them road ready. There had to be transportation, that was part of the project. While Meredith went over what supplies they would need, John sought out the means of transportation. The buildings were still intact, that meant that transportation was around.
He found them. He also discovered they weren’t as tricky to put together as Malcolm made them out to be. Then again, Meredith reminded him that Malcolm souped up the vehicles to make them better, or at least his.
The two man, golf cart vehicles, smaller versions of what John and Meredith drove were covered, they just needed cleaning. The solar battery was sealed in a case, and that first charge was going to take a little longer.
They had all that done by nightfall.
When Meredith woke the next day she wondered if Hunter ever slept. He was still in the same guarded position he held the night before. While John finished up a few things, Meredith brought Hunter a bottle of juice.
“For you,” She said, handing it to him. “Thank you for watching out.”
“Grateful.” Hunter took the bottle.
“Don’t you sleep?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Yes, I did. You did not.”
He lifted his hand to his forehead and mimed staring out. “Must watch.”
“We appreciate it. You are a good man, Hunter.” She laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Ah,” John said as he approached. ‘Flirting with our post apocalypse friend, I see.”
“What?”
“Dainty touch. Big brawny guy. I can tell.”
Meredith laughed. “You’re silly. He’s very nice.”
“Hmm. Yes.”
“Are we done here?” Meredith asked.
“We are. I told them about Champaign and that we are all meeting there. That if we leave, we will leave signs to let them know.”
“Maybe we should wait for them to get there. We are ahead of schedule.”
“This is true and they know the time frame. I told them we’ll probably try to find Salvation. Who knows? But… we need to get moving so we can take Hunter back and make some headway today.”
Upon that, Hunter stood. “No. Hunter go with you.”
“Hunter,” Meredith spoke gently. “We’re going to take you back.”
“No, Hunter wants to go with you. See… world.”
John looked at him. ‘Even if we take you, we still need to go back and let them know we are all right. Your people were kind to us.”
Hunter nodded.
John asked. “Why would you want to leave them? Don’t you have family?”
“Hunter… has no one. See the world.”
“Yes, I heard,” John said.
“Hunter likes Meredith.”
John cracked a smile. “I see. Well, then, who am I to stand in the way of a budding May-December Romance. Very well. We are glad to have you.” John gave a swat to Hunter’s arm and whispered to Meredith. “Look at you having a boyfriend in the apocalypse.”
Meredith didn’t know what to say. She felt awkward and on the spot, and only glanced at Hunter with a smile.
They really had to get moving. And despite John’s wisecracks about Hunter’s infatuation, Meredith was glad to have Hunter along. With the world so unknown, and with the trouble she and John encountered not long before, Hunter was a valuable asset in such a world gone bad.
On the stainless steel prep counter in the kitchen of a corner diner, Nora and a young woman named Marilee, mixed oats and honey to create some sort of granola concoction.
“So,” Marilee spoke brightly with a high-pitched voice. She was young, definitely born post virus. Her blonde hair was blunt cut to her shoulders and the shiniest hair Nora had ever seen. “I was thinking about some joke you told last night.”
“Okay.”
“I laughed.”
“Good.”
“But I didn’t get it.” She paused. “What is a zombie?”
“Oh, wow, you don’t know what a zombie is?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“A zombie is a person that died, that eats flesh, that’s all they know. They are walking dead.”
“Did they have them when in your time?”
“Zombies? No. Just in movies. They aren’t real. We lived in a time where people were infatuated by them.”
“Walking dead corpses that eat people?”
“Yes.”
Marilee waved out her hand. “Well, that’s just silly. I mean, they’re people right. Rotting flesh. That’s what happens. Flesh rots. Who came up with that idea? Dead people eating other people?”
“Some say a guy named George Romero made them famous.”
“Well shame on him.”
Nora laughed.
“What was it like?” Marilee asked. “Living before the virus.”
“It was nice. It was convenient.”
“Things are convenient here,” Marilee said. “Some say you guys had the ability to communicate with the world.”
“We did.”
“Salvation is supposed to have all that and more. They’re supposed to be all high technical and stuff. Gadgets. Is that why you want to go there?”
“No. I want to go there to see if I can find my family.”
“That was a lifetime ago. Older than me. They’ll be old.”
“I still want to find them. Don’t you ever want to go to Salvation?”