“Hang on!” I yell, watching a curve approach. Thank God the brakes work.
Ava grits her teeth and grabs the handle above her door.
The truck jumps the gravel and veers onto an old logging road studded with debris. After living on this mountain all my life, I’ve learned it doesn’t matter what road you’re on, there’s only one direction from here: down.
Bumpa-bump-bump-bump
. My head smacks the truck’s ceiling.
We level for a second and Ava screams,
“Put on your seat belt! Roll up your window!”
Good advice. But it takes a monumental effort to follow her instructions while driving the out-of-control truck. She leans over to help me buckle in so I can keep both hands on the wheel, her fingers shaking spasmodically against my hip. We zigzag at the fork for the country club’s service road. I wrestle with the truck, trying to keep it on track. A massive roar goes up from somewhere to our right.
“What the hell?” I turn my head in that direction.
The service road is packed with people. Forty. Fifty. A horde. As the truck passes, they raise their arms. “Rawr”
One man swipes at the truck. Salt-and-pepper hair, argyle sweater vest, and half his intestines hanging over the waistband of his khaki trousers.
“Aggh!” Ava screeches as we slide past, her head swiveling toward the flu people. “They’re all infected!”
In the rearview mirror I watch their arms drop. And then something awful happens.
They shift direction.
That entire zombie crowd veers off the service road to follow us down the logging road. In a couple seconds, they disappear from the rearview mirror, but I seen enough to know they’re trailing us now.
“Go faster, you dumb truck!” I yell. We gotta keep moving, let momentum take us faster, farther. Away from that pack.
Crrr-ack. Crrr-ack.
“Cole!”
Behind us, Mr. Beaver and Bubba bang their meaty, gray fists against the truck’s rear window. Hairline fractures blossom in the glass.
“Search for a gun,” I order. “Under the seats.”
She reaches below, but the truck is bouncing too hard. She unsnaps her seat belt, leaning her arm farther under the chair.
Crrr-ack
. This time, spiderwebs crisscross the entire window. One more good hit and it’ll shatter. They’ll reach in and grab us.
“There’s nothing here,” she screeches, panicked. “What redneck doesn’t carry a gun in his truck?”
At that moment, an embankment slides into view.
“Oh, hell.” I say aloud.
“What?” She sits back up.
“That fork in the road!” I’m hollering now. “At the bank. I can’t turn this. We’re gonna miss the curve.”
“Oh my God!”
The mound of dirt rises directly ahead of us.
“Put on your seat belt!” I yell.
Her fingers fumble with the metal buckle.
Crack.
The rear window shatters, glass spilling into the cab.
Click
. Ava snaps her belt.
Slam.
We hit the berm.
The truck sails through the air like some car-chase scene in a movie. Ava opens her mouth to scream, but it sticks in her throat, her face white with fear.
My elbow slams the air horn. The notes from Dixie echo through the field as we hang in the air. In the truck bed, Mr. Beaver shouts, “
Reeeee-Raw
!” For a long moment, we stay airborne, almost floating above the ground. And then gravity slams us back to earth.
Our wheels slap down in the field, jarring my teeth. Mr. Beaver and his son lose their grip and go airborne—launching out of the vehicle in a tumbled mass. Our truck’s still going, bouncing frantically in a long stretch of brown grass.
“We lost them!” Ava shouts.
I glance in the rearview mirror, but can’t spot Beaver or his son. They must have tumbled into the grass back at the embankment.
“How long is this field?” She has to shout over the din of the wheels banging against rocks and uneven terrain.
“A quarter mile. Half mile, if we’re lucky.”
I’m familiar with this part of the mountain. I hunt deer in this field. The truck’ll keep driving in this grass, but there’s forest beyond. Old growth. Steep with trees. A
lot
of trees. No way I can navigate this truck between those trees.
“We gotta ditch,” I say through gritted teeth.
“What?”
I point to the stretch of forest looming on the horizon.
She unlocks her door.
I fling an arm across her waist. “Not yet! We need more space between us and the Beavers.”
She nods, her face white with terror.
“Get ready!” I shout, easing on the brakes.
The trees are closer.
I pump the brakes harder, but nothing happens.
“Cole,” Ava says uneasily as we barely miss a poplar.
“Truck won’t stop!” I yell. “We must’ve screwed up the brakes.”
Her face is weirdly blank and calm. “We have to jump before we crash.”
I nod grimly. “On three. Try to roll when you jump.” I clutch the door handle. “One…two…”
Chapter Three
“
Three!
”
For a long heartbeat, the ground races past, rocks and orange dirt blurring below me, and then I’m thumping through the tall grass, rolling, flinging my arms up to shield my face.
It takes forever for the sky to stop spinning, for the ground to stop rolling, for the pain to stop coming.
“Ow, Jesus,” I say when the world finally sits still again. “Ow, ow, ow. Sweet Jesus, that hurt.”
I’m staring up at the blue November sky. My brain seems to still be working. I ain’t so sure about my body.
I shout for the girl. “Ava! Ava! Where you at?”
A small voice from the tree line. “I’m here.”
I raise myself slow—just to a sitting position—not sure I can walk.
She’s twenty yards away, acting completely unhurt, bobbing on the soles of her feet. “Dude. Let’s go!”
I take a few heaving breaths. Haul myself upright. Orange dust cakes my clothes, but I don’t spot any tears in the fabric. No bleeding wounds.
“Anything broken?” she asks anxiously.
Shaking my head no, I retrieve my cap from a few feet away and attempt a few weaving paces toward Ava. My skull throbs, hammering in rhythm with each step.
“Reee-rawr!” shouts Mr. Beaver from the other side of the field.
That is
all
the motivation I need. My feet start pounding the remaining distance to the forest; Ava stays hot on my heels.
“This way!” I yell back to her, cutting a hard right, leading us down the embankment and zigzagging away from those things. They’re behind us. I
know
they’re behind us. The Beavers saw which way we went. Gotta throw ’em off our trail. We run hard for thirty seconds before I switch directions.
“Now this way!” I lead her over a path I used for dove hunting when I was a kid. I ain’t been here for years and the trail’s grown over.
“Aaagh!” Ava screams, batting branches and spiderwebs from her eyes. “No spiders!”
Is she kidding? Zombies on our tail and she’s freaking over spiders?
“Just keep going,” I holler back to her. We’re running so hard, I’ve barely got breath to yell. I’m impressed when Ava manages to keep up.
We hit the bottom of the rise, cross the forest service road, and dive back into the woods. Another two minutes and we’re scrambling through the USDA tree farm that marks the end of the maintained land. We fly past a couple of government signs, hop a low wooden fence, and enter the national forest.
Instantly, the old-growth trees canopy above us—their branches bare, except the occasional evergreen or pin oak. The trail disappears, but we’re racing so fast, it don’t make no difference to us. We crash through dead grass and dark leaves. I lose track of time. We run for twenty minutes, an hour, I ain’t sure. We’re sprinting pell-mell now, hauling through the forest with no direct destination. Just
away
from Bubba and his daddy. Away from all those damn things.
I suddenly realize I don’t know where the hell I am. The thought pulls me up short.
“Wait!” I yell, grabbing a pine trunk to slow my momentum.
“No!” Ava says simply and keeps going. She could care less if I’m along. I rush to catch up.
Ava runs hard, pale face flushed, pocketbook swinging with each step.
“Stop a second,” I order.
“No! Keep going! They’re right behind us.” She sounds half hysterical.
I wrap my fingers around her arm and jerk her to a stop. Her eyes are wide with terror. “They ain’t right behind us.” I pant hard for a few breaths. “Did you see ’em walk? They’re slower than us.”
I’m trying to convince myself as much as her. She struggles in my grip.
“And I took a lot of turns,” I tell her.
I watch her face. The fear dials down a notch. I release her arm.
“Okay, okay,” she whispers with difficulty, still panting hard. “It’s okay.” She leans over and puts her hands on her knees, bracing herself. For a full minute, all we do is breathe.
On every side, the woods stay quiet—the only sounds are birdsong and our labored breathing.
“My mom.” Ava groans suddenly. “And Dad.” She pulls a sparkly, pink phone from her purse. She pushes buttons, frowns, then tries again.
I shake my head, trying to breathe without my lungs convulsing. “No service out here.”
She actually laughs. A bitter, humorless sound. “No service. Of course.” She takes a huge gulp of air like she’s trying to get a grip on herself. I wonder if she’s about to cry. God almighty, I don’t wanna deal with no crying girl.
“So…the flu,” she says. “It’s here.” She stares around at the trees, glowering like they’ve personally offended her.
I manage a nod. “It’s here.”
“H-how?” Her voice wavers. “It was in China.” She pauses, continuing only when I don’t respond. “I know people died, but…but it was overseas. And the quarantine…and the travel restrictions.”
“Didn’t work, I reckon.” My heart won’t never get back to a normal rhythm.
“So this could be everywhere. The cities. Towns. Glenview.”
Her words twist my gut in a knot.
My dad and Jay. Are they okay? Do they know the flu’s here? Please God, let ’em be okay.
“And who gave it to the Beavers?” Ava rambles on, her words full of tears. “It’s so remote here.” She studies the trees again, like she can’t really believe she’s here.
“The country club,” I tell her. “No road, but zombies could walk across the ridge easy enough. The place would’ve been packed for Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t call them that,” she snaps. “It’s…it’s…rude. They’re…they were…people.” The last word is almost a sob.
“Fine,” I huff. “I’ll try to use the politically correct term from now on.” Jesus. I can’t believe this is really happening.
“So, that…that crowd of…of infected on the road,” she says. “That’s where they came from? The country club?”
I nod.
“Do you think they’ll follow us, too?”
It’s bad enough picturing the Beavers hot on our trail. The thought of another fifty, sixty zombies gives me a fit of shivers. I decide not to mention I saw them change direction and start following the truck. I hope we lost them a little further down the road.
“Maybe we should keep moving,” I say, setting off again. “Those things are slow, but we don’t want to give ’em a chance to catch up.”
Ava follows, staring into the woods around us, almost like she’s seeing the trees for the first time. “Do you know where we are?” She hugs her jacket tight around her torso and stares at the bushes like they’re alien objects.
“Yes.”
It ain’t an outright lie. Have I been here before? No. Could I point to this spot on a map? Not in a real specific way. But I know we traveled west and we ain’t hit the river yet. That means we’re in a particular locale I don’t visit often. And there’s a good reason for that. A damn good one.
This is a bear preserve.
But right now, bears sound tame compared to zombies.
Ava struggles to keep up with me. Where I march easily through blackberry thorns and brambles, she has to stop and untangle herself every time. She seems almost hesitant to touch the bushes.
“Move!” I tell her. “They’re just brambles. They ain’t gonna jump out and bite you.”
“Says you.”
“Just bust through.” I’m growing more nervous and irate by the second. She was so fast out on the open trail. Now she’s slowing us down.
A few minutes later, Ava slows even more—this time to check her phone. “Does anywhere around here have service? We need to call for help.”
“Maybe after we get out of this holler.”
“What the hell is a holler?”
“God almighty, did you spend your life in a box?”
She gives me a shrewd look. “In a way, yes. Just tell me how long until I can call my mom.” She sounds close to tears again.
“At least an hour.”
She mumbles something about “backwoods” mixed in with a bunch of cuss words. She’s so busy swearing and staring at her phone, she stumbles with almost every step. The ground here is rough and stony, pocked with tree roots—the kind of place where you gotta keep your eyes on the path.
“If you don’t pick up the pace,” I tell her, “it’ll be two hours before you can call your mama. If we don’t get eaten first.”
“Fine,” she gripes. “I’ve got a better idea anyway. I’ll send a text and the phone will hold it until we get service. That way, I won’t have to keep checking.”
“You’ll drain your battery faster constantly searching for a signal.”
She ignores me. “
Mom
,” she says, swiping her fingers across the face of the phone, “
Do not go home. Flu people there. I’m okay. In woods with Cole. Where are you and Dad?
” She presses a button. “Send. Message failed. Retry? Yes.”
She gives me a satisfied look.
“And the battery starts to drain,” I tell her.
“Thank you Mr. Phone-expert, Mr. Hiking-expert, Mr. Everything-expert. You keep yelling at me to shut up—now it’s my turn to tell you to close your mouth and let’s get a move on.”
I’ve never had a girl tell me to shut up before, and I don’t like it.
But I got bigger things to worry about right now. The woods might be desolate this time of year, but they ain’t completely empty. Probably still a few hikers and hunters roaming around. Maybe even some hardcore rafters. What if they got bit? I could fight off one or two. But a whole group? No way. Best to keep my ears sharp—outrun ’em if we can.
We walk carefully, moving as fast as possible without making a racket in the piles of leaves.
Ava startles at every noise. Every squirrel. Every snapping branch.
All these sounds are familiar to me. My ears are tuned for something else. For that strange low growl I heard back at the copse. Or the rumble of a bunch of footsteps. Or big ole’ “Reee-rawr” from Mr. Beaver. I keep close watch on the lowering sun. We’re headed due west, but I make a correction that’ll take us toward the river.
Unfortunately, Ava notices. She puts a hand on her hip, accenting her skinny arm. “You don’t know where we are, do you?”
I shrug. “I’m not—”
She cuts me short, cussing for a solid minute, like a trucker. “Let’s be honest here. We’ve got no plan, no clue where we’re going. If you knew how dangerous it was for me out here—”
She breaks off.
“It’s dangerous for both of us, darlin’. Trust me, I get that.”
“We should have waited at my house,” she whines. “Then we wouldn’t be totally lost in the forest.”
For some reason, this pisses me off more than anything she’s said. “We are not lost! If you think I don’t know these woods—” I turn to block her. “Maybe I shoulda left you in your house.”
She stops abruptly. “Why didn’t you? I would’ve been safer there.”
“With all those zombies?”
Ava’s eyes blaze. She steps closer, poking a finger in my chest. “The
infected
followed
you
to my door! I would’ve been fine. I could’ve stayed there until my parents came back.”
“Your parents ain’t coming back!”
She glares at me for a long moment, rage boiling behind her eyes. Then she raises her hand and shoves me hard in the shoulder, effectively pushing me out of her way. “You just know everything, don’t you?” For a little thing, she sure packs a hard wallop. She strides off, leaving me behind.
I stand in the middle of the woods, staring after her in shock. My shoulder stings, but I don’t dare touch it. There ain’t no way in hell I’d give her the satisfaction of turning to see me rubbing my shoulder.
For a full ten seconds, I consider leaving her ass here. Just walk in the other direction and be done with her. I’ll yell after her,
Good riddance! You go your way, I’ll go mine.
But the words don’t come. Whether she realizes it or not, that would be her death sentence. Reluctantly, I take a few slow steps, following her deeper into the forest.
…
I can’t believe I shoved him.
What the hell is wrong with me? Am I having a genuine panic attack?
It’s just…my mom, my dad, when he said they weren’t coming back. What if I never see them again?
And the woods. Ohmygod. I’m in the woods. I should
not
be here. The thick trees seem to press in on me, weighing heavy against my chest, their branch-arms dangle threateningly, filled with wasps and bees and biting ants and—God, I should not be here!
But Cole was right. If I hadn’t left with him, I wouldn’t have lasted an hour. I imagine myself trapped in a corner of my house, those things closing in.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
Why does it feel like every breath is trapped in my lungs? Calm. I must be calm. Like the doctor says. Deep breaths.
Screw it, who could take deep breaths at a time like this?
We push hard. At least, Cole does. Once he catches up to me, he takes the lead again and I stumble along behind like I’m drunk or clumsy or something. To be honest, I can’t see for all the tears clouding my vision.
“Go faster,” Cole hisses over his shoulder.
How can I go faster? I can’t breathe.