They were probably expecting her to cry, maybe even say a few words. But no one else was saying anything, though Carly and Vera cried quietly over Ted’s grave while Danny stood slightly off to one side and patiently waited. She did think about crying, but it never really happened.
Her eyes felt numb, like the rest of her body. Her soul.
Finally, mercifully, they started back down the hill. She was grateful to grab what she could find of her things or dig out of the rubble. She tossed them into the back of the Tacoma truck that Will had found as a replacement and climbed into the front passenger’s seat. The others would drive with Danny in a Dodge Ram, another vehicle they had salvaged from the streets. Without Luke and Ted, they didn’t need as many vehicles. It occurred to her that they were really just minus one person, since they had picked up Lara yesterday and lost Ted and Luke today.
Luke. She was supposed to be crying, bawling her eyes out for him. It was what they expected. Will and Danny and the girls. She caught Will watching her from time to time, the look of concern on his face so clear he might as well be wearing a sign that read “Everyone keep an eye on Kate. I don’t think she’s doing very well.”
Not that he would have been wrong.
She felt great relief when they finally started off in the trucks, though she had lost all enthusiasm for the idea of reaching Starch, Texas, and hidden in its woods, Harold Campbell’s mysterious, life-saving facility. Or as Luke used to call it, the “bomb shelter.”
Will took the feeder road and merged back onto Highway 59, heading north. “Two hours, worst-case scenario,” he announced into the radio.
“That gives us five hours to find shelter if Harold Campbell’s fabled Land of Oz turns out to be more fable than actual land,” Danny said through the radio.
“It’s there,” Will insisted.
“I’m not doubting you, chief, I’m doubting Harold Campbell.” Then he added, “And I’m doubting you a little bit, too. Wait, did I just say that out loud?”
Danny, joking again. Because Danny always joked, even when the world was crumbling around them. It used to be comforting to her. Now, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
Will was watching her closely again. “You okay? You haven’t said a lot this morning. Does your head still hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Luke’s dead. Ted’s dead. And I can’t even force myself to cry over their deaths. I’m just fine, Will, why do you ask?
“Kate,” he said, in that voice that let her know he wanted her to keep talking.
She wasn’t in the mood for it, though. “I’m fine. I really am.”
We’re all going to die. What does it matter if I’m fine or not? We’re all going to die.
Like Luke. And Ted.
And Donald. And Jack…
They drove the first thirty minutes in silence, and for a while she almost managed to trick herself into thinking they were on a Sunday drive through the Texas countryside. The air was filled with birds, all the usual sounds of humanity replaced by nature, with only the unwanted noise of their truck engines to ruin the mood.
They reached Starch, Texas, faster than she expected, but then, there really wasn’t a whole lot of traffic out here. Starch was a town off Highway 59, connected to civilization by a feeder road that was under construction. The lanes looked haphazardly thrown together, as if the person designing them hadn’t really given it much thought. In usual traffic, it would have been a pain to maneuver around, but there was nothing usual about today.
They passed a Texas state patrol car parked along the shoulder, its doors open, blood-splattered window and driver’s side seat visible in the sun. Along the unfinished sidewalks there were discarded hard hats, construction equipment, and vehicles. They passed a charred human body, not the white skeletal remains of a dead ghoul exposed to the sun. She couldn’t help but wonder how it had burned. Had the person done it on purpose? Chose painful death by fire over turning? Could she summon that kind of courage when her time came…?
They took a small highway — little more than asphalt on an old country road — off the main thoroughfare and were almost immediately swallowed up by walls of trees on both sides. The “hub” of Starch, Texas, was a long stretch of road crisscrossed with smaller streets. Houses and RV parks flanked them, then a church, what looked like a community center, and a house with a big poster on the front lawn advertising the services of a lawyer.
They came up to a four-way intersection, where they found the city courthouse on one street corner. The courthouse was also the city police department, essentially a two-floor building next to a fire station and a post office. She saw several purple-themed signs reading “Pirates Proud” before she realized Pirates were the local high school football team’s mascot.
A left turn took them over a railroad track, then past more houses and RV parks. She saw an impossibly large number of old trucks and boats sitting in front lawns, some rusted over and probably unusable now. The farther they went, the fewer homes they encountered. Most of the roads curved and twisted at odd angles, and after five minutes of driving, the houses on the sides of the road seemed to get older and more spread out, until there was just one house — if they were lucky — for every minute of traveling.
“How much farther?” Danny asked through the radio.
“Almost there,” Will said. “The facility was designed to take advantage of Lake Livingston. Campbell paid off some Texas law legislators and got permission to build a small hydro dam as part of the facility. The idea was to use the lake as an unlimited power source.”
“That must have cost him a pretty penny.”
“It’s a good thing he had lots of pretty pennies to spare.”
They went down a spur road that curved up and down, then left to right without rhyme or reason. The trees were becoming more constant now, rarely giving way to a house or farm. They drove along the stretch of road for about ten minutes, and the road was so empty they rarely saw any signs of civilization except for the occasional hurricane fencing. She imagined Starch, Texas, probably looked like this even without the end of the world bearing down on them.
Finally, Will slowed down. “We’re almost there, ease up on the throttle,” he said into the radio.
Will slowed down even more as they came up on a man-made dirt road on their left leading into a large wooded area. The sign read: “Route 19.”
They had passed a dozen roads with a dozen signs like this one, and each time Kate had wondered where they led. Sometimes she saw a house not far from the road, but other times the roads just kept going before turning left or right.
Will turned into the dirt road, easing the speedometer down to five miles per hour. Almost immediately, the truck started bouncing and she was thrown around by the unpaved road underneath them.
They were surrounded by trees. Towering, centuries-old trees. She had never seen so many big, old trees in her life. Not that she could really concentrate on the view. The road was simply miserable, and she remembered what Will had said, about not wanting to bring an injured Luke here yesterday. He was right. Luke would have bled out a minute after they turned into this Godless stretch of road.