Desolation (19 page)

They had driven for miles but still didn’t see any sign of
civilization. All they saw was an endless ocean of cacti and rolling hills of
sand.

Jerri habitually reached over, scanning the FM and AM channels
on the radio as she cradled Jacob against her. Nothing came through the
speakers.

Andrew looked over at her and raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve been awfully quiet since we’ve left,” he said as he studied
her face. He glanced down at Jacob and frowned. The baby situation
would complicate things. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t have much to say,” Jerri said, looking down at the baby.
“I keep hoping to find some music or something just to keep him asleep.
I don’t want him to wake up because… well… I’m not good with kids.”

She felt awful for saying it, but it was true; she wasn’t ready to be
a mother. Honestly, she had no idea what to do with the child when they
got to Camp 7. All she knew was that she felt like the child was the only
glimmer of hope left in a feral world full of darkness.

Andrew frowned uncomfortably.

“Don’t talk like that,” he said casually. “You’ll make a great
mother one day.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and
searched the horizon ahead.

Jerri smiled politely, but she didn’t say anything. She felt very
awkward. She was tired of giving into his cordial dialogue and falling for
his charm. She was done with it all.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” Andrew asked.
He was a persistent one, she’d give him that much.

“No,” she answered. It wasn’t exactly true; she had many girls
who she considered sisters due to the close nature of their friendship. She
had one male friend she considered a brother.

They were all dead, just like everybody else she ever loved.
She thought about Mitch and her thoughts mulled over her
disturbing dream.

The jeep rolled on a few more miles and the silence lingered.
Andrew looked over at her and studied her expression.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked.

Jerri sighed and looked over at him. She had to ask the question
that had been bothering her since the night before.

“What’s Lazarus?” Jerri asked as she stared at him sternly.
Andrew looked at her, not all that surprised by the question.

“Why ask?” he responded as he focused his attention back onto
the road. “Was Chris telling ghost stories?”

 

Jerri narrowed her eyes.

 

“He said to ask you,” she quickly responded. “I think you’re
hiding something from me and I want you to come clean with me.”
Andrew frowned.

“There’s nothing to come clean about,” he said. “We heard
reports of some strange subclass of infected that were near impossible to
kill.” He shrugged. “Someone called them the ‘Lazarus Subtype’ and it
just stuck.”

Jerri nodded, even though she wasn’t much for religion.
“That creature in the dorm… You said ‘Lazarus’. Was that one of
them?” she asked.

 

“I think so,” Andrew continued to lie nonchalantly. It came so
easily for him. “I never saw one but I heard the rumors.”

Jerri looked down at Jacob and thought for a moment.
“And what about Alison?” she asked.
Andrew was getting sick of hearing that woman’s name.
“Who?” he asked.
“Chris said to ask you about some girl named Alison…”
Andrew shook his head.
“Never heard of her,” he said. “It’s just a sick man’s ramblings.”
Jerri fell silent again.
Andrew looked over at her.

“Is that all? Are you done interrogating me or can we talk like
normal people?” he asked as he turned his attention back out the
windshield.

“I’m not in a talkative mood,” she said shortly.
“Anything I can do?”

She hated when people asked that. Sometimes, it was best just to
leave her alone and let her work it out her own way. Before she could give
a snarky reply, Andrew slowed the vehicle and narrowed his eyes, leaning
towards the bug-splattered windshield.

“You see that?” he asked, slowing the vehicle.
Jerri looked ahead.

In the horizon, just over a small rise in front of a sandy
embankment, the remnants of a commercial jetliner lay scattered across
the desolate landscape. It had broken apart into hundreds of pieces.
Mechanical debris and suitcases lay scattered out for miles. The fuselage
of the plane had broken in half and laid upside-down, mostly intact;
skeletal remains were still fastened to their seats and dangled from their
seatbelts with their arms over their head. Countless others, mummified by
the desert sun, lay strewn across the sand. The closer the jeep got, the
more gruesome the details became.

Jerri wondered where the plane was headed before it met its fate.
Did it try to land at Sky Harbor in Phoenix and get turned around? Did it
pass over Tucson International? Was it shot down by the military or
overran by the infected mid flight? She was sure it would be a story that
would never be told.

Andrew pulled close to the wreckage and stopped.
“What are you doing?” Jerri asked, panicked.
Andrew turned off the ignition and stepped out of the jeep.

“Relax,” he said, scanning the area. “This crash happened a long
time ago judging by the look of things; probably at the onset of the
pandemic. I’m just going to check some of the luggage. Perhaps I can find
something useful.”
Like a working GPS
, he thought humorlessly to himself.

“I’m staying in here,” Jerri said, brushing her hair back behind
her ears with her fingers.

 

“Suit yourself,” he said.

Andrew walked towards the accident, making sure not to step on
any of the mummified corpses or trip over any of the twisted piles of
metal. The air smelled foul and thick with the stench of rot. Most of the
luggage had fallen apart during the crash and the contents were scattered
across the land. Some of the luggage looked relatively unscathed.

He walked towards one piece of unharmed luggage, a black
Samsonite duffel bag, and unzipped it. Nothing. He moved to the next
one.

As Andrew riffled through the luggage, Jerri stared out the rear
view mirror, bored and hot.

A man wearing a tattered dirty Hawaiian shirt and burnt khaki
shorts lurched towards the rear of the jeep, only about twenty yards away.
His eyes had sunken into his skull and his leathery skin had been pulled
taunt against his skeletal frame. He staggered in awkward gait, one arm
outstretched.

Jerri gasped at the sight of the implausible.

“Andrew!” she shouted. She locked the doors of the jeep and
leaned over the driver’s seat, frantically mashing the horn to get his
attention.

Andrew had walked up to another piece of luggage that looked
promising. Just as he reached down to unlatch the case he heard the jeep’s
blaring horn. He half-turned his head towards the jeep, wondering what in
the hell got into the girl.

A boney hand shot out of the sand and snatched Andrew’s wrist.
Andrew screamed and stumbled backwards, managing to pull his
arm free. His first thought was Lazarus.

The rest of the mummified-looking man emerged out of the
ground, fine granules of sand filling every crack of the corpse’s leathery
hide. He wore a badly burnt business suit and his left arm had been
dislocated; his left shoulder jaunted up unnaturally towards his head and a
piece of bone had torn through his shirt.

Andrew scurried onto his feet and quickly drew his weapon. It
was not what he had first thought; it was clearly some form of an Acexa
variant. How it survived for so long was incomprehensible to him.

All around Andrew countless bodies started to dig their way out
of the sand, clawing and slithering their way to the surface.
“Holy fucking shit,” Andrew muttered, staring at the emerging
dead that surrounded him.

 

The man in the burnt suit swiped at Andrew with his good arm,
stumbling forward in his momentum.

 

Andrew quickly fired a shot into the man’s forehead.

The back of the man’s rotted skull burst open and sprayed the
sand with chunks of gray matter and bits of bone. He collapsed on the
ground, motionless.

The jeep’s horn continued to blare.
“Jerri!” Andrew shouted, sprinting towards the jeep.

A limping flight attendant with a sunken face lurched in front of
him.

Andrew shot the woman in her temple and shoved her aside as
he ran faster, breathing frantically, zigzagging his way through the infected
as they swiped and tried to grab him.

The slow, shuffling horde followed him and made ghastly moans.
More bodies continued to claw their way out from the earth and join in
the pursuit.

“Jerri!” he shouted again as the jeep came into focus.

Two weathered corpses had gathered at the driver’s side door and
bashed against the glass. The man wearing the Hawaiian shirt was at the
rear of the jeep, slapping the rear window. At the front of the jeep, a
mangled corpse wearing a Southwest Airlines pilot’s uniform.

As Andrew approached, one of the men at the driver’s side door
snarled and turned towards him, revealing his yellow rotted teeth.
Andrew shot the man in the forehead and the corpse crumbled
onto the ground.

 

The others around the jeep turned towards Andrew and started
limping towards him.

Andrew fired three shots in rapid succession and took all three
men down, exhausting his ammunition in the process. He holstered his
empty pistol and ran towards the driver’s door.
Jerri unlocked the door and swung it open for him–

Andrew leaped inside, slammed the door shut behind him, and
locked it.

 

A horde of over a hundred corpses lurched from the plane
wreckage towards the jeep.

 

“Are you okay?!” Andrew asked, eyes frantically searching Jerri’s
body.

 

“Yes! Yes! Just go! GO!” Jerri shouted, pounding the dash with
her open palm, screaming.

 

The horde was just a few feet away from the jeep, ready to
entomb it.

Andrew turned the ignition, half-expecting it not to start.
The engine started without protest.

Andrew threw the transmission into ‘D’ and took off, leaving a
long plume of dust in his wake as he drove up the embankment.

The infected horde followed after the jeep for a few feet and,
once the jeep disappeared over the other side of the hill, stopped their
pursuit.

Moaning, the entire horde fell to their knees and started to
burrow into the sand, clawing into the earth with their bare boney hands.
30

A
ndrew and Jerri remained speechless as the jeep trekked across
the desert for countless miles. Jerri slowly rocked Jacob side-to-side in her
contemplative stupor.

“They were burrowing,” Andrew finally said to himself. It
challenged everything he thought he knew about their behavior. “The
bastards were burrowing… hiding from environmental exposure… They
should all be dried husks… but they were burrowing.”

Jerri was startled by the sound of his voice and looked over at
him.

“They operate off of basic instinct right?” she asked.
Andrew nodded gloomily.

“Self-preservation is as basic as instincts get,” she replied, looking
out the window. “During the outbreak I heard stories of shamblers
knocking away weapons and staying clear of fire.”

“They waited though,” Andrew muttered.
Jerri blew a lock of hair out of her face and looked over at him.
“Hm?” she muttered.

“They waited,” he repeated. “That’s the part that really bothers
me. They waited until I was in the middle of them before they came
topside. It was like… well, an ambush they cooked up to trick prey.”

Jerri looked back out the window.

 

“What, so you think shamblers are capable of cognitive thought
now?” she asked halfheartedly, amused.

 

Andrew shook his head.

 

“Perhaps on some herd mentality or…” he felt ridiculous. “I
don’t know. It was weird. Okay? It was weird.”

 

“What do you propose we do? Go back home?” she asked.

“We have to be careful,” he said as he wiped the sweat off of his
brow. “First that stuff back at the dorm and now this? We may not
understand the course of infection as well as we thought.”

“Even hiding underground… They’ll still rot and turn to dust. It’s
all a matter of time,” Jerri said as she stared at something in the distance.
She thought she saw something… but the desert can play tricks.

“True but you saw the intelligence they demonstrated.”
“The supposed ambush you mean? That could just be a
coincidence,” she mused.

 

Andrew snorted.

 

“I stopped believing in those the day I met you,” he said. He
looked at her out the corner of his eyes, watching her reaction.

Jerri rolled her eyes as she stared out the window. She felt like he
was getting ridiculous with his over-the-top attempts at flirtation and she
couldn’t wait to ditch him and go her own way.

Andrew frowned, stung by her reaction.
Jerri squinted as she stared out the window.

“Road,” she said in an apprehensive tone before Andrew thought
of something to say.

“What?” he muttered.
“
Road
,” Jerri repeated, pointing ahead.

Andrew scanned the horizon and saw the interstate just over the
other side of a sandy embankment, enshrouded by the desert haze. The
interstate looked devoid of any vehicles and didn’t have any high-mast
street lights so it blended in almost perfectly.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. The jeep was nearing empty and
he knew that if they didn’t get to Tucson soon, they’d be in trouble. He
expected Jerri to say something,
anything
at that point.

Instead, she remained quiet and stared out the window.

Andrew became increasingly unsure how to approach her and
bridge the awkward disconnection he felt ever since the morning. Since
the change in her attitude happened seemingly overnight, he wondered if
she knew about Chris… He didn’t see how; she was snoring at the time.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as he thought about Chris.

He never would have taken him along if he knew the man
harbored such deep resentment against him over an
accident
. He always
assumed Chris was a friend; someone who enjoyed his company and
looked forward to his random late-night visits. It wasn’t until their
altercation during the night that he realized that the friendship Andrew
perceived was just smoke and mirrors.