Apocalypse Asunder (11 page)

“I know.  I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Here.” Austin said, breaking the wrapping on another map and handing it back.  “Look for yourself.  We’re just north of Ocala, and we’re headed south for Lake Okeechobee.  They teach you how to read a map in school?”

“Sort of.  We learned how to read the globe.” Candice replied as she took the map.

“Same thing.  This is just flat, and folds up.”

“So it’ll fit in your pocket easier.”

“Got it in one girlie-girl.  Pretty hard to lug a globe around when you’re out and about.”

Jessica reached for the GPS she’d stuck to the top of the windshield, but Austin put his hand out and covered the little screen.

“I’ll do it.  I know you don’t like dividing your attention when driving.”

“Thanks.” she said, still trying to force herself to relax.  The interstate was three lanes here, and she wasn’t even going that fast, but she put her hand back on the wheel and let him fiddle with the navigation unit.  Without asking what she wanted, he adjusted the zoom level and scrolled south so it showed what was ahead of them.  Namely, Ocala.  Jessica let her eyes flit back and forth between the road and the screen, frowning at the layout of streets that came up as Austin panned the unit’s focus south along I-75.

“The west side looks settled, but spread out some.” Austin offered after letting her have a good look.

“And is further from Ocala proper.” Jessica nodded.

“Yeah, it looks like most of the core of the city is to the east from 75.”

“I think we’ll the next exit.  Take a look around in that direction.”

“Why are we stopping so soon?” Candice asked, listening to them.  “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“And we don’t want to be hunting around in the dark for a place to sleep.” Jessica replied.

“We can’t get anywhere near where we want to go today anyway.” Austin told her.  “Tomorrow we’ll keep going.”

“Oh.” Candice shrugged.

Jessica sped up some and, after a few miles, saw the signs for the next exit.  Preceding the actual notice were several of the ‘what you can do here’ signs; three of them this time, one each listing gas stations, restaurants, and hotels.

“Hotel might work.” Austin remarked.

“Maybe.  Do we want to park that close to the road though?  What if someone comes by and tries to steal the car?”

“Hmm, I’d have to think about that one . . . but this thing isn’t as easy to break into as a normal vehicle.”

“Why not?” Candice asked.

“Well, for one thing, the windows aren’t windows.  They’re armored, so they won’t break unless you really work them over.”

“We’ll take a look when we get there, see what’s available.” Jessica repeated as the actual exit came up and she drifted right to take it.  Letting her speed drop as she coasted along it, she tapped the GPS to recenter the screen on the car’s position.  A five car wreck partially blocked the intersection at the end of the exit lane, with some bodies laying next to, or half pulled from, the vehicles.

“Those . . .” Jessica said slowly.

“Yeah, I see.” Austin nodded.

Since the nightmare had begun, Jessica had become more inured to horror than she would’ve
ever
guessed possible.  She’d seen all sorts of terrible and stomach turning thing; the kinds of sights that would make a splatter-horror fan cheer in excitement, and made her reach for her resolve.  Bodies were on that unpleasant list, and she’d seen them in all stages and degrees of decay in her travels and scrounging.

Judging from the condition, she’d guess these people had died very early after the zombies had appeared; skin dried and stretched, eyes heavily sunk back in the sockets, and what tissue there was left considerably worked over by the elements.  Since their deaths, they’d clearly been ravaged and snacked on by hungry creatures.

What was making her wonder a little was why there was anything at all left.  She’d seen the remains of zombie meals, and it was typically only bones.  Once a zombie started eating, it usually kept going until there was nothing chewy left.

Unless something distracted it.

“Where’d the zombies go?” she muttered.

“What?”

“That . . . looks like it wasn’t finished.” she said, pointing unobtrusively at the bodies.  “Where’d the diners go if they didn’t finish?”

Austin considered for a few seconds, then shrugged.  “They’re not here now.”

“I can see that.”

“I guess they were interrupted.”

Jessica sighed and turned right, away from the interstate.  There was a sign pointing left that indicated a hospital was in that direction; she wanted no part of whatever had gone on there.  Hospitals had been hit hard in the beginning.  “Well, it’s odd.”

“Everything about all of this is odd.” he teased gently.

She shook her head with a smile and refocused her attention, taking in the surroundings.  He was just reading her mood again, and trying to help ease her mind.  She appreciated the effort, but it didn’t change the decisions that needed to be made.

Two of the hotels were in view; both in bad shape.  One looked like it had been set on fire, and the other had taken a crashed semi-truck right through the center of the building.  She figured there was probably one hell of a good story behind
that
incident, but if anyone was left to tell it, they weren’t here now.  The one that hadn’t burned might have some usable rooms away from where the truck had rammed it, but Jessica decided to hold it as an emergency reserve in case nothing else turned up.

The main road was lined with widely spaced rural businesses, mostly fast food joints and chain stores closer in.  As they got more than a few blocks from I-75, the bigger outlets began to be replaced by assorted independent stores, primarily gardening, and little craft and hobby establishments.

Every building, no matter what its function or supposed purpose, was in bad shape.  No windows were intact, some had suffered fire or crash damage.  A supermarket they passed had a small plane’s tail sticking out of its roof; and a helicopter laying on one side in the parking lot near the building’s main doors.  Even from the road, with only a few quick glances as she drove, Jessica could
clearly
see the large number of bodies and fire damage around that particular piece of unpleasantness.

Based on the look of the roads in the areas beyond the one she was on, she turned south seeking something more residential and soon found herself amid what looked – on the GPS screen – an awful lot like neighborhoods.

The first section she toured through were trailers; not a trailer park exactly, but lot after lot with a house trailer positioned on it.  Some were ramshackle and untidy, but most showed some thought and care had gone into their positioning and upkeep.  The lower end ones rested on bare concrete blocks; but those were the minority.  The rest tended to have trellises of wood, borders of hedges and bushes, and a few even had low stone walls that concealed whatever the trailer rested on.

There were also a number of zombies.  Not an overwhelming number, but more than a scattered handful here and there.  They were roaming and ambling around in threes and fours in some spots, and twice she saw tight groupings numbering past ten.  As Jessica guided the SUV through the loop of a side road with its tightly spaced cross-streets, she had to weave around a number of interested undead.  At one point there were more than twenty in view.

“There are a lot of zombies here.” Candice remarked.

“Too many.” Jessica sighed.  “Austin, play with the GPS again for me please.  Anything look good further west?  Maybe if we shift over some we’ll find a quieter spot.”

Austin tilted the GPS on its little stand and poked at the screen; changing the screen’s focus to drag it around.  Jessica slowed down as she started running out of room to weave.  Both sides of every street, even the little cross-connects in the trailer-park neighborhood, had drainage ditches that dropped several feet down before rising back up to level.  The driveways all had ribbed culvert pipes beneath them linking the ditches on either side of the concrete slab.

Finally she had to run over a couple of zombies, doing it at less than ten miles per hour.  The SUV’s mass was more than sufficient to knock them down, and its shocks absorbed the bumps as the tires rolled over their bodies without major incident.  The only real concern she had about doing that was maybe breaking the headlights – which were needed if night driving came up – and the sickening, squishy thumps hitting the zombies made.

“Ewww.” Candice said.

“Them be the breaks.” Austin said without looking away from the GPS unit.

“Breaks is right.” Jessica frowned as she straightened back out and kept heading for the main road.

“Ewww.” Candice said again.

“The front grill isn’t set up for ramming, but it’s reinforced.  If you keep the speed down, it won’t be a problem.  And the bumper can take quite a lot regardless.” Austin shrugged, sounding unconcerned.

“Tires?” she asked, mostly to distract herself from the thought of what happened to the zombies after getting run over by the big vehicle.  She’d heard the inventory of the SUV’s assets before, but she’d take any distraction she could to avoid dwelling too much on the horror show.

“Run-flats.” Austin grinned.  “Even bullets would have to work at it to disable one.”

“Reassuring.”

“It’s supposed to be.  Okay, turn right up here, then left when we’re back on Brickton.  Follow that a mile west, and look for Highway-225.”

Jessica looked at the GPS when he turned it back to face her.  He’d set a destination, with a purple line stretching out along the route he’d just described.  The little strip on the bottom of the screen indicated she had a right turn coming up in a tenth of a mile, which was the road leading back to the one that connected to I-75, Brickton Road.

“Why are the ditches so deep around here?” Candice asked as Jessica headed for the turn off Brickton.

“Flood control.” Austin said.

“Floods!” the girl blurted.

Austin grinned.  “Rain really.  Florida tends to get quite a bit of rain when the clouds show up, a lot of rain in a really short period of time.  When that much water falls so quickly, it can be a problem to get rid of.  The ditches are for drainage, so it doesn’t pool on the roads and turn yards into lakes.”

“Georgia doesn’t have that problem.”

“We didn’t usually get heavy rain up there.” Jessica answered as the GPS indicated she was close to the turn north of Brickton.  “Not like what Austin’s talking about.”

“If it rained for, say, most of the day in Atlanta; take that and compress it into a shower that lasts only an hour.” Austin told Candice.  “That’s the kind of rain that Florida usually sees.  It’ll be a nice day, then in the afternoon it’ll switch from sun to clouds to rain in about half an hour.  The rain doesn’t last very long, then everything clears up and the sun comes back out.”

“Weird.” Candice said, sounding puzzled.

“Florida’s not called the sunshine state for nothing.” Austin laughed.  “But even the sunshine state needs rain.  It just gets it really fast.”

Jessica found the turn, then slowed and cleared the destination from the GPS so the screen was less cluttered.  The road pattern indicated another batch of neighborhoods up ahead, and she left Highway-225 and started investigating them.  There were still zombies present, but not as many.  After fifteen minutes of touring through the side streets, she was frowning though.

“Is everything around here a single story ranch layout, or a trailer?” she fretted.

“I didn’t spend a lot of time puttering around in the suburbs when I was stationed in Tampa.” Austin shrugged.  “And we’re still several hundred miles north of Tampa.  I do have an idea if it comes to it though.”

“What’s that?” Jessica asked as she wove around the latest couple of zombies eager to investigate the big black vehicle.

“We could try an attic or roof.”

“Roof?” Candice said in surprise.

“I think I’d rather sleep in the car than on a roof.” Jessica told him with a stern look.  “And how are we going to get you up on a roof in your condition?”

“I was thinking ladder or something.” he shrugged.

“Points for effort, but the roof idea is tabled.”

He shrugged and unfolded the road map.  “Well, assuming you don’t want to backtrack . . . hang on.” Austin trailed off as he found Ocala on his paper map and oriented himself.  “Okay, assuming you don’t want to look somewhere north, we can sort of drift south some.  That’ll keep us moving in the right direction, to the west of the city.

“Either we find something, or we pull over and just sack out in here.  Either way, we’ll be in a good position to get as far as the Tampa-Orlando line you’re worried about before noon tomorrow.  That would give us over half the day to take a look and figure out if continuing south is going to be an issue.”

Jessica sighed with a little frown in place.  She really didn’t want to sleep in the car again, but she didn’t want to be at ground level in a building with doors and windows either.  She remembered . . . whatever it was . . . breaking through the glass back door of her Lawrenceville home the second night of the outbreaks.  Stairs offered safety; they were a single route up and down that could be blocked, defended if necessary.