“Well, reanimated migration patterns being what they are…”
“Damn it, Liddie, stop thinking like you’re still in the CRS just for one second and think about who this man was. Because that’s what he was. A man. With a family, probably. Look at all that stuff in his wallet. Don’t you see any story there? Can’t you picture this man maybe going on vacation to Las Vegas or something? Maybe he had his girlfriend with him. Maybe they were going to elope, get married in some cheesy little chapel where the guy doing the ceremony is an Elvis impersonator. Anything like that, because whether any of that is true or not, this man had a story. It’s a story that got cut short. But what if this guy in Illinois is the reason I became a Z7? What if he can do that again? That means this man’s story could have started up again, but now it won’t. And because of that, excuse me if I’m going to take a moment to mourn him, because this man could have just as easily been me.”
He took all the contents of the wallet back from her and carefully placed each one back where he had found it except for the driver’s license. Then he folded the wallet back up, put it back in the reanimated’s pocket, and got to his knees to dig a hole next to the body with his hands.
“Edward, don’t do this,” Liddie said.
Edward turned to her with a look of genuine anger. “Look, at this point I really don’t care if—”
“You’ll rip your hands up if you try to dig like that,” Liddie said, and Edward’s expression softened. “Let’s go back to the van first and see if there’s anything we can use as a shovel.”
They were able to pull apart a couple pieces of plastic from the interior of the van. They made terrible shovels and the grave ended up being only a foot deep, but it was enough to satisfy Edward. He added in what pieces he could find of the other reanimated, although neither of them could stomach doing that for long, and placed them next to the body. They then covered it up and used one of the makeshift plastic shovels as a grave marker. As a final gesture Edward leaned the driver’s license next to the marker. It wasn’t the kind of memorial that would last long enough for anyone else to ever find it, but for now at least they could both see that this was the final resting place of Timothy North, whoever he may have been.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Even though their route took them right past Salt Lake City, they didn’t try to go in. Considering the shape the van was in after the accident, they figured that stopping anywhere they didn’t have to might result in a whole lot of unwanted attention. It didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem, considering they thought they were in good shape until they at least got through Wyoming. They had enough fuel to go for a while, and they’d bought enough extra at Zappy’s that, as long as they ate sparingly, they would have enough until the morning. It was still a risk, considering the onboard map said there wouldn’t be any communities on their route after this until they reached Laramie, but Liddie told Edward it was a risk they should take. After all, Salt Lake was a mid-country city with a reputation for taking matters into their own hands, and if they recognized Edward as the Z7 they certainly wouldn’t wait for any official authorities to pick him up.
Neither of them noticed the first problems with the van until they started through the Rocky Mountains. Edward thought he heard the engine cough a little, but the noise didn’t repeat for long enough that he almost started to think it was his imagination. As the roads became steeper the noise occurred more frequently. By the time they had nothing surrounding them but large ledges of rock on one side and steep drops into pine forests on the other, they both knew they were in serious trouble.
They pulled over for a while for Edward to take a look under the hood, but that didn’t do them much good. Edward only had a very basic idea of how to fix a car, just enough that he had been able to keep his family’s car going long enough for payday to roll around so he could get someone else to fix it properly. Even that much knowledge wouldn’t help at all here, though. For starters, the van didn’t have anything in the way of emergency tools except for the spare tire and a jack. Vehicles like this had never been intended to go out this far from civilization, way beyond the motor pool and the CRS’s own mechanics. And even if they did have things to fix it with, Edward wouldn’t know where to start. This thing was fifty years beyond anything he had ever messed around with, and many of the components and gadgets under the hood were completely unrecognizable to him. Liddie couldn’t help out, either. All her expertise had been in administration, with a little bit of knowledge for scientific equipment. This kind of thing had always been done for her. At no time in her life had she even needed to change a flat tire.
Even with so little idea of car mechanics between them, it was obvious to see what had happened. From somewhere under various wires and tubes Edward pulled a putrid green finger, and it looked like there might be other pieces still in there. When they’d smashed the zombie, not all of it had ended up on the road and windshield. Some of it had gone through the front grill or under the severely dented hood. Edward took some time removing everything he could find, but several of the auto parts looked like they had been worn or broken from sharing their already cramped space with rotting body parts.
They briefly debated what to do. There was nothing else they could do but continue along and hope none of the damage was severe enough to strand them before they got to Laramie.
Through most of the Rockies, Edward thought fortune had smiled on them. It wasn’t until they started coming back down again out of the mountains that the simple engine coughs became more like burps, and soon were accompanied by groans and screeches. Liddie winced at every noise.
“How much further do we have until Laramie?” Edward asked when the first barely-noticeable tendril of smoke appeared at the edge of the hood.
“Thirty miles,” Liddie said. “Or at least I think. Whatever’s happening with the hood, I think it’s messing up the computer system, too. The map keeps shifting on the screen.”
Thirty miles. Edward nodded. They could still make that. Even if the van broke down before they made it there, it should still be close enough that they could walk there. Or at least he could walk there. Unfortunately, Liddie might be a different story. The land around them was mountainous with very little else on the landscape except grass and the highway. There weren’t many places she could go for cover if zombies were around, and with night approaching again she might not see them coming. He could try keeping them away, but he still didn’t trust his strange little pheromone ability enough to test her life with it. Even worse, they’d been eating and drinking sparingly all day. That didn’t leave them with a lot of energy to head out for another thirty miles on foot. Edward was pretty certain he could manage if he had to, since the CRS had tested his abilities to continue on for a time without food or water, but again Liddie didn’t have that advantage.
“Just keep going,” Edward said. “Maybe we can still make it.”
In response, the van made a very loud and unhappy thump from under the hood. The smoke immediately got much worse.
“Shit,” Edward said.
“Keep trying to go?” Liddie asked.
“That depends,” Edward said. “Does this model of van have any known tendency to explode?”
“Um, there might have been a recall at one point…”
“No, you know what? It’s probably much better if I don’t know. Looks like this is all she wrote. Pull over.”
Liddie pulled over to the shoulder and killed the ignition. There was a noise like something breaking under the hood. Edward seriously doubted that anything would happen if she tried turning the key again.