The kid was in the back seat sniffling and moaning. Jess stopped the car after a number of minutes to check on him.
He suddenly didn’t look much like a kid anymore. There were coloured patches under his eyes and a general weariness that seemed to make him look much older than he really was. He had been holding his wrist tightly to his shirt, which was now saturated with a small circle of blood about the size of an apple.
“Let me see,” Jess said.
The kid fought having his arm removed from his shirt.
When Jess got a look, he found that most of the bleeding had stopped. There was a definite gash – mangled and ugly but it looked entirely possible that the kid would survive.
Jess was on his knees before the kid. His knees hurt. He squeezed them with his hands, which still wouldn’t stop shaking. Jess spotted the flask that was passed around earlier, under one of the seats. He gave it a shake and the sound of liquid could be heard inside.
“Thank God,” he said.
“What?”
The kid was half lying down and couldn’t see what Jess was doing.
“Oh, nothing kid. I’m just happy we got away from that Roscoe guy. What a nut.”
Once back in the driver seat, Jess started the van and unscrewed the lid of the flask. There wasn’t much in there but it was enough to calm his nerves.
The road behind them was barren, although he knew it probably wouldn’t stay that way for long. He drove looking in the rear-view as much as he did the front windshield. The kid moaned constantly, almost like a quiet cry - trying to stifle it.
Jess found a checkered shirt among other things behind his chair and tied it around the kid’s wrist.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s it matter? I’m dead.”
“No, you’re not. You’re breathing. You’ve almost stopped bleeding.”
“Probably because I don’t have any blood left.”
“Oh sure you do. You’ve got something like six litres in your body. I don’t even think you’ve lost one.”
“Then why do I feel so cold? Don’t you feel cold when you’re dying?”
“Only in the movies, kid. It’s freezing outside. You’re probably in shock. You were just attacked. We were almost shot!”
The kid still looked nervous and stared at the roof of the van while trying to control his breathing.
“You’re going to be okay kid, I’ve seen lots of people in worse shape than you make it out okay.”
“You have?”
“Oh, sure,” Jess said. The fabric that he had tied around the kid’s wound wasn’t yet saturated with blood - a good sign, Jess thought.
There were large blades of grass off to the side of the road, almost four feet tall by the looks of it. The grass and swaying cattails further in were all coated in a light layer of ash. The wind was whipping everything around, blowing the ash like whirlwinds of snow until a calm period came and the ash again floated down, making the scene outside their window look all too Christmas-like.
The kid just stared – fear frozen on his face.
“This was a long time ago, but I was driving a subway car one day when I saw a kid on the tracks in front of me. When I say a kid of course, I mean someone just a bit younger than you. Every once in a while we’d hear about teenagers who would break into the tunnels and go spelunking their way down dangerous subway tunnels for a kick.”
The kid sat up a little, listening to the story.
“So just like most days back then, I would start around 6 am, gunning the train as fast as I could for about a kilometre at a time. It was like a game to a lot of drivers. See how fast you can push it for that minute, try breaking your own record, and compete with your colleagues – anything to break up the boredom. I pull out of one of the stations in the east end and I see the kid in front of me, in the middle of the tunnel with his hands out, as if he can stop the train from smashing into him.
“I couldn’t stop in time. I pressed down as hard as I could on the brakes, and sent all the passengers flying off their feet. I ran down to the back-end of the train, and went out the back door. There was screaming under the train. Horrible screaming, but at least I knew he wasn’t dead yet. All I could picture was the blond hair and red cheeks of a kid who was in a spot he shouldn’t have been. So I crawled under the train for about three dozen meters until I came upon him. He was on his back, screaming in pain. His shirt was covered in blood and I thought he was going to die in my arms. But then I noticed that the fingers on his one hand were severed at the knuckle.
“He had ducked just in time but his hand went under the wheels of the train. It was a horrible scene, and something I will never forget, but the kid made it out alive and is doing fine today.
“And you? You’ve just had a little accident yourself. You’ll make it out okay, you’ll see!”
The kid flicked his hair from out of his face and looked at his nails, seeing how long they had become.
“That was a good story,” he said. “But at least that kid had hospitals with doctors in them. You and me, we’re just driving until we run out of gas.”
“Nah, we’re gonna make it kid.”
“I don’t know, I don’t feel so good. Hey Jess, can you do me a solid?”
“”What?” He was trying to clean the windshield with the wipers but there was no cleaning fluid to help. The wipers stuck in places as ice built up on the glass. The temperature seemed to be dropping rapidly.
“Kill me if I die?”
“What do you mean kid? You’re not going to die.”
Jess looked back through the little window and saw that Daniel had mustered a weak smile.
“I know, I know. You’re very confident even though the world has gone to hell. But you know what I mean. I don’t want to come back as one of those monsters.”
“Alright kid. If it comes to that, I’ll take care of it.”
The darkness of the night was so thick that it swallowed everything up and he had to drive slowly. He came across an abandoned vehicle every so often and even if he was proceeding slowly it came upon his vision without much warning. They weren’t far from the apartment now. Another hour maybe, at the rate they were going,
There were two half-filled water bottles in the holding areas between the seats. He unscrewed the cap of each and brought the opening to his nose. They smelled like plastic worried that the bottles had long ago begun to break down, contaminating the water inside. He put them back in the cup holders, thinking that at minimum they might be useful for cleaning in the future. The flask of vodka sat in the now vacant seat beside him, but he decided that he would wait until he checked the apartment before succumbing to that temptation.
Just another hour.
There was a thin black wire coming from below the temperature console that housed the radio and temperature gauges. He picked it up and found that it was a charger for a smartcard. After all this time, he had Orson in his jacket but let him sleep, thinking that like everything else it too was probably out of power and his solar chargers weren’t going to recharge it without the sun. His jacket had an inner pocket that was a snug fit for the smartcard. He pulled it out and tried to insert the end of the wire, which was shaped like a small prong. It fit and made a beep before lighting up.
“Hi Orson.”
“I was beginning to get worried.”
“Or as well as you could manage.”
“I humbly thank you sir, a truth’s a truth.”
“Alright pal. Can you try calling the kids and Toni?”
The speaker beeped angrily, rejecting the attempt.
“I’m having very little success dialling anything. I’ve even tried the RCMP and the local police.”
“We’re not far away now. Why don’t you take a nap?”
“Yes – I’ll reserve power for when you might need me next. I’m happy to be back working with you.”
There was a large bus turned on its side up ahead. It was a greyhound – one of those luxury-type behemoth vehicles that escorted people from one side of the country to the other. It had overturned at a bend in the road. Jess had to maneuver into the gravel by the ditch to make his way around.
Creatures were on the other side of the bus, eating away at carcasses that seemed nothing more than unidentifiable skeletons with very little meat or flesh left to pick at.
The monsters perked up at the sound of their approaching van and stood up. Their movements were uneasy, and they swayed towards him like an inebriated fool in need of help. There were at least four of them, the nearest a heavy-set man with a thick brown moustache. He was also missing an eye – just a thick dark red mess where the orb should have been.
Jess had a solid plate of metal and glass between him and the creatures advancing but he still stepped on the gas, racing away from the scene before letting them get within arm’s reach.
The gas light came on. Looking down the road Jess noticed that more and more apartment buildings were starting to pop into view, meaning that he was moving deeper into the heart of the city again.
He was nervously excited, hopeful that he would find his family in good health. He pressed down heavily on the gas pedal, dodging the dead cars that littered the avenue.
“Jess.”
“Yes Orson, what’s up?”
“I was just a little curious so I was checking as many signals as I could and I picked up a GPS signal that seems to be moving with us.”
“English Orson, not techspeak. What are you talking about?”
“I think there’s a second GPS unit in this vehicle that has been transmitting our location.”
Jess looked behind them with the mirror again and saw something moving in their trail. It must have been a vehicle, for two small lights followed them around corners and up and down hills.
“Daniel, you should get your seatbelt on.”
As it got closer, Jess saw that it was another van, just like the one they were driving. He jammed gas pedal down as hard as he could. Looking in the side mirrors he saw that it was rapidly gaining on them. They were jolted momentarily out of their seats as the other van collided into them from the back end. It felt like their van was lifted off the ground. Jess lost his composure briefly - his feet lost the pedal and the van started to turn towards the ditch. He righted the vehicle with a powerful swing of the steering wheel only to see that the other vehicle had pulled up alongside them now. The driver had familiar long brown hair flowing behind him and brandished a gun raised in one hand.
The van seemed to rock suddenly, which was followed up by a loud bang. Jess turned to see that the window of his door suddenly had a circular fissure in it like a spider web.
His raised his head just quick enough to see three cars stopped in the road up ahead of them. Roscoe went straight into them and out the other side. The other van seemed to careen on two side wheels for a moment and then collided with a guardrail presumably designed to stop such out-of-control vehicles from plunging down into the valley.
Jess didn’t stop to find out what was to come of Roscoe. He slowly drove around the pileup and then hit the accelerator until the scene was but a small dot in his mirror.
He looked down at his arm, which suddenly felt hot. He peeled open his jacket and saw blood underneath, soaking his shirt.
“My name’s Daniel,” the kid said from the back. “Daniel McCluskey Junior. I don’t want to die!”
“Okay, kid. Okay! Roscoe’s gone. Orson, can you see if you can hack or jam that GPS signal.”
“Working on it.”
As Jess drove on, he discovered that the noises had drawn creatures from the nearby ravine. There were several at the side of the road, moving towards them. There were also a few other survivors as well, looking to thwart those with vehicles. It was difficult to tell them apart at first, since even the survivors were not in great physical shape. But they shouted and screamed and were generally faster than the walking corpses. He considered stopping for one, until he saw that the woman’s face was covered in hideous blisters. The shock of the sight caused him to continue on and she walked slowly after the vehicle with her arms outstretched as though she could reach out and grab them. Daniel had disappeared. Hiding in the back was less furnished but generally more blanketed from what was happening around them. The kid didn’t seem overly eager for a front row seat of the lunacy they were evading. The windows barricaded, the back of the van was largely dark.
Jess had to watch for blockades and traps as he drove along. As a result, his driving speed had slowed to that of a man on a bicycle.
The car ran for a good 10 minutes with the gas light lit on the dashboard. When it gasped in thirst, it did so with some large clanks, as though rocks were rolling around inside the engine. Jess rolled the vehicle to a stop at the side of the road and woke Daniel from an exhausted sleep. They started out on foot as Jess saw a plaza up ahead with various cars parked out front. The apartment that had earlier seemed so close was now again a speck on the horizon. He was sure they could have spent the night feeling fairly secure inside the van but he was hungry and didn’t want to wake up to a trek with an impoverished pang in his belly and an injured youngster as a companion.
While the sword had been lost somewhere in the earlier commotion Jess was able to retrieve a crowbar from the back of the van. It was heavy in his hands and would be sure to bring anything living or dead to its knees with a strong swing or two.