“So where do I fit into that scenario?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but we’ll figure it out.”
CHAPTER 11
WILL
They only stopped once so Ray and Leo could take a leak. Natasha didn’t move from the back of the truck, and neither did Will. He opened one of the MRE bags they had shared with him and spooned out some meat loaf.
“Mississippi, huh?” Natasha said.
He nodded.
“Which part of Mississippi?” she asked.
“South.”
“Where, south?”
He chewed slowly, enjoying the taste. Natasha never took her eyes off him the entire time.
“Hattiesburg,” he finally said. Then, before she could ask anything else, “We took I-59 down before switching over to the I-10. We were originally headed for New Orleans, but it was too big, and you know what that means.”
“The creatures…”
“Yeah. So we headed west instead, looking for someplace smaller where we could get lost.”
“You found that along Route 13?”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s a pretty obscure road. I wouldn’t even know it existed if I didn’t live in Dunbar all my life.”
“We had a map and we were looking for a quiet place. Route 13 is pretty desolate, which was what we thought we needed.” He took a sip from a refilled bottle of water. “It worked for us. For a while, anyway.”
“I’m surprised you guys never went into Dunbar.”
“We had everything we needed, brought most of it with us. Maybe we’d have to start looking for more supplies eventually, but we never got that far.”
“How long were you there?”
“A couple of months.”
He wasn’t sure if he had been convincing enough, because Will didn’t look up at her as he spun his tale. But when Natasha finally took her eyes off him and watched the others coming back from wherever they had gone to do their business, he figured he had probably done a decent enough job.
“I’m sorry about your daughter,” Will said.
She didn’t reply.
“Leo told me about her,” he continued.
“Leo talks too much,” she said.
“I heard that,” Leo said, climbing back into the truck.
“You were supposed to,” Natasha said.
“He understands, Nat,” Leo said, settling in across from Will. “He’s lost someone, too, remember? We all have.”
Natasha didn’t respond. Instead, she closed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest and pretended to go to sleep. Or maybe that was just her way of letting them know she wasn’t interested in this conversation anymore.
“You lost someone?” Will asked Leo.
The older man nodded. “I guess you could say I was luckier than most. Some friends, but no family to lose when everything went tits up.”
Leo opened another bag of MRE and sniffed the contents before peering inside. He must have liked what he saw, because he produced a metal spork from his pocket and devoured the food with a flourish usually reserved for starving homeless people.
Ray climbed up behind them and walked to the front, where he banged on the cab window. “Let’s go, guys! We’re losing daylight!” He glanced at his watch. “We’re cutting it close. I don’t like it.” Ray banged on the window again. “Drive faster!”
“Fuck off!” Olsen shouted from inside.
The Ford started up and they were moving again a few seconds later. The truck began picking up speed, and although he couldn’t see the speedometer, Will guessed they were topping off at around sixty miles per hour, judging by the speed with which the concrete barricade was flashing by in front of him.
Too fast. We’re going way too fast.
He wanted to get to Song Island as soon as possible, but he also remembered all the accidents and ambushes he had endured on the road in the last year. Of course, he didn’t expect someone with a rocket launcher to pop up in front of them, but the possibility existed because Josh’s soldiers had free rein of the state’s armory. The machine guns up and down Route 13, including the one perched on the roof of the truck’s cab right now, were proof of that.
“Ray,” Will said.
Ray looked up from a bag of jerky. “What?”
“We’re going too fast.”
“So?”
“There could be hazards on the road. Barnes is going too fast.”
Ray smirked. “Relax, Mississippi. You want to get down there before sunset, don’t you?”
“He’s right,” Leo said. “Tell them to slow down.”
“Jesus Christ, what are you two, grandfathers?” Ray said. “Keep your diapers on. There’s nothing on the fucking road. It’s been a year since the end of the world, for God’s sake.” He looked at Will. “And besides, you got all the way over here from Mississippi just fine. We’re not even going that far.”
Will was hoping Leo would press the issue — it would have been better coming from him — but the older man had already gone back to eating his MRE. Nearby, Natasha had opened her eyes and was staring at him intently. There was something about the way she was eyeballing him that made him think he hadn’t really thrown her off the scent at all.
He leaned out and looked up the highway. It was flat and empty, with no vehicles other than theirs for miles in any direction. No wonder Barnes didn’t see any problems with going sixty miles an hour along this stretch of road. Maybe he was worried about nothing; maybe Ray was right, after all.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
He was expecting it. He had turned all the possible scenarios over in his head and how he would react to each one, but as mentally prepared as he was for it to happen, the how still caught him by surprise. It was worse for Natasha, Leo, and Ray in the back of the truck with him, because when the tires blew, no one was ready for it.
At first there was a loud series of popping sounds, like small explosions ringing out one after another underneath them. Then the truck spun, and Will imagined Barnes inside fighting for control of the vehicle. Olsen might have even screamed. Or it sounded like someone was screaming behind him, the voice slightly muffled by the wall between them.
Will went from looking at the divider wall behind Leo to staring back down the highway as the car skidded off course, tires screeching as the brakes clamped down and the stinging smell of burnt rubber filled the air. A moment later, the front bumper dug into the concrete and the F-250 was no longer on the highway.
That was when Will leaped out of the truck. It wasn’t anything he had planned, but he was already being flung anyway by the vehicle’s chaotic flipping momentum, so he decided to stop fighting it. His one hope of surviving was to get far enough from the tumbling vehicle not to get caught — and dragged — underneath it.
Then he was sailing through the air, the wind rushing against his face, grinding metal filling his ears. He blocked the noises out and curled his body inward, doing his best impersonation of a flying human ball, just before he slammed into the highway on his right shoulder. The pain lanced through his body as he tumbled once, twice, and three times before unfurling his legs and arms in an attempt to stop his momentum.
He finally came to a stop on his stomach and was turned in the right direction, allowing him to see the truck as it rolled down the highway on its side, roof and undercarriage taking turns digging gaping divots in the concrete pavement as it went. Pieces of the F-250 flung wildly into the air around it, falling back down to earth just as the vehicle — or what was left of it — rolled one final time and…settled. It had left large chunks of glass and aluminum and metal in its wake, along with thick bloody swaths from bodies it had dragged.