“Don’t stop!” Nitsy yelled as she slapped the roof of the truck.
Robbie joined her. “Go! Go! Go!”
Nitsy turned toward Thomas whose eyes were in his lap. The boy clearly wasn’t proud of his decision, but he’d saved them. She knew that. Robbie would have never done that to Eggo, and she doubted she would be able to either. Thomas had saved their lives a second time tonight.
The road seemed to smooth out some after passing the deer.
They drove on in silence. She couldn’t believe Eggo was gone. One second he’d been fine. He’d been with them, safe in the back of the truck, and all it took was for him to lean closer to one of the animals. The lice had jumped on him.
“He was bald,” Robbie mumbled. “He didn’t even have hair.”
“It looked like they got into his eyebrows,” Nitsy said.
She touched her own and realized how lucky she was. It dawned on her how close she’d come to death herself. If she hadn’t been face down, buried in a pile of infected teenagers in that auditorium, if the lice hadn’t thought they could get in through her hair, they could have burrowed into her eyebrows as well.
Even now, she was lucky. If Thomas waited even a few seconds longer to kick him out of the truck, they might have dove at her and even though she was missing her wig, she still had strands of hair here and there, some of it constantly coming out of her cap. Then there was Robbie. They could have easily gotten to him.
She leaned her head against Robbie. “We’re going to shave your head.”
“Gladly,” he replied. “My eyebrows too. Maybe even my – can you shave lashes? If you can, I’m shaving them too. My arms and legs too.”
Nitsy noticed Thomas was looking at her boyfriend funny.
“What?” she asked.
“I’ll shave my head, but I ain’t shavin’ anything else.”
Robbie laughed and she started to before remembering the sight of Eggo with panic written all over his face. How could she make jokes at a time like this?
“Eggo would be laughing too, you know,” Robbie said. He’d known exactly what she was thinking.
“He’s going to be out there, walking through the woods, like all the others.” It saddened her, even more, to know his smile would be gone. Her team leader would be wandering around aimlessly, attacking any living thing he came across.
“Hey!” came a voice over the truck’s engine.
At first, Nitsy thought it was Andre trying to get their attention again, but she looked through the rear window and past the front windshield to see two men and a woman standing in the center of the road.
“There’s people out there,” Nitsy said.
“Run ‘em over!” Thomas yelled.
“Are they infected?” Robbie asked.
“I don’t think so,” Andre replied. “They’re waving their arms around like they want to be picked up, not like they want to eat my brains or whatever.” Andre leaned closer to the windshield and said, “Hal?”
28
They were stranded, weighed down with bags full of guns, and they were walking. Hal didn’t like the idea, but what else were they going to do? They’d set out to save the kids at Stonewall Forge, and he couldn’t think of anything better to do now that they were on foot. Walking in the opposite direction would only mean walking toward town, and they already knew what the town looked like. Those things were everywhere. At least out here, they might not be up against many of them.
As long as the damn animals stop coming at us.
Luckily for them, they hadn’t come in contact with any other four-legged bastards since they’d started their stroll.
They’d walked for at least thirty minutes when headlights shone from down the road. As far as he knew, these creatures couldn’t drive. That was good news. Somebody was headed toward them.
Hal was still surprised to see the oncoming vehicle when Grant and Sally threw their hands in the air and waved. They weren’t quiet about it either.
“Hey!” Grant yelled.
Sally was right beside him. “Stop the truck!”
The truck didn’t stop though. It kept coming, and it seemed like the driver was going to roll right over them.
“Get out of the road,” Hal warned.
“He’ll stop,” Grant argued.
“He’s not slowing down,” Sally said.
When the truck was so close Hal could taste the dust coming off it, the driver slammed his foot on the brake and the truck slid to a stop about two feet in front of them. The driver rolled down his window and called out, “Hal?”
Somebody knew his name, but he wasn’t familiar with the voice. It was too damn dark in the cab to get a good look at the driver, so he cautiously made his way around to the driver’s side.
“Get in the back, kid,” the driver said to somebody else in the cab with him.
Two kids climbed out. A teenage boy and girl. They jumped into the bed of the truck and finally, Hal was close enough to see the driver’s face.
“Andre?” he asked.
“Andre,” Sally whispered behind him. It took a few seconds to sink in. “Wait, Andre Andre? The Andre that went missing?”
“Andre, go!” a girl screamed from the back of the truck.
“They’re coming! Go!” another teenager yelled.
“Come on!” Hal yelled at his friends, and they piled into the cab of the truck.
It was a tight squeeze. Hal had to throw a leg over the gear shifter. Sally climbed onto Grant’s lap.
“Please! Go!” the young girl in the back yelled.
Dogs barked behind the truck, and Hal suddenly sensed what all the yelling was about. More of the damn animals were on their way.
Grant slid the rear window open and asked, “Any of you kids know how to shoot?”
“Yessir,” a big country boy replied.
“Take it,” Grant said as he handed the boy a pistol.
“Thank you kindly,” the boy said as he turned around and shot a big black dog that was too close to the tailgate. Any closer and it might have leaped right in the truck.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Andre slapped the steering wheel anxiously, begging the truck to drive faster.
The animals didn’t reach them, but then it looked like Andre was easing up on the gas. The driver checked the rearview mirror, saw the animals getting closer again, and then gunned it.
“What are you doing?” Hal asked.
“I need these sonsabitches to follow us. We need them all close behind.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Sally asked with a whine in her voice.
“So I can kill ‘em,” he said.
Hal looked at the guy he used to go to sobriety meetings with and wondered what he’d been through over the past couple of days. He looked like shit.
“Andre,” Hal said. “Everybody’s been looking for you, man. Where have you been?”
“Workin’,” Andre said as if it were the most reasonable explanation possible.
“Workin’,” Hal repeated and then chuckled. “Workin’ on what, man?”
“My cousin Carl got the infection first,” Andre said. “I saw it happen. Jumped all over his head. He changed. Like how you seen ‘em. And I knew it was some kinda bug that got in the hair. Like little flies or worms or—”
“Lice,” Sally interrupted.
Andre took his eyes off the road for a moment and looked at her. “Hey, Sally.”
“Hi, Andre,” she replied.
“Yeah, like lice,” Andre returned to his thoughts.
He paused and there was a moment of silence.
“Hal, you remember when I told you about my farm?” Andre started right back up again.
Hal had the feeling he should know what Andre was talking about, but he didn’t. Andre, from what he’d heard, was always trying some way to make money. At one point he was trying to burn images of American flags into wood so he could try and sell them to patriotic folks on Facebook. When that didn’t work, he inquired about opening his own gun range. Hal had even heard he was a moonshiner at one point.