Genesis Plague (25 page)

W
e skirted Missoula to get on I-90, heading farther east. The
freeway was clogged in spots, forcing me to slow to a crawl and weave through
clusters of abandoned vehicles. The Chevy’s headlights, despite the
surprisingly decent working order of the rest of the truck, could have used a good
cleaning. The left one dimmed out every few minutes, usually when I was
precariously squeezing between two cars stopped next to each other in the road.

It wasn’t pitch black yet,
but in another half hour I was going to have to curb my speed.

There was also the
little problem of sleep. Conny and I were both running on fumes, and I didn’t
know how much longer I could go without nodding off at the wheel.

Looking in the rearview
mirror, I saw that Conny had managed to doze off. Her head rocked gently with
the motion of the truck as I maneuvered around an empty RV. Probably some food
in the pantry, maybe some bottled water.

I had been thinking
like that ever since we found those bodies in the woods. Every car I saw, every
grocery store with broken windows, my first instinct was to calculate what I could
salvage. We were doing okay now, but I could have used something a bit more
satisfying than a cold can of black beans.

I kept telling myself
it was only temporary. I was only going to be uncomfortable as long as it took
to get to Rapid City and find Cassidy – and hopefully, find a lasting cure for
a virus that seemed built to outrun every attempt to shut it down.

The radio in the truck
was either the original, or close to it. Two big knobs and six chunky preset
buttons were the only controls you needed back in the day. I tried the presets
and found only static, then I twisted the tuner knob to see if anyone was still
broadcasting.

Turned out more than a
few stations were up and running. I wondered how long their automated
programming would run. I imagined an empty studio, an empty broadcast booth,
and an empty chair. LCD panels flashed with the changing of songs. Eventually,
if we didn’t get back on our feet, the power would die, and there would be no
more radio. No more television, no more internet – no more electricity. If
humanity survived the virus, could we survive being thrown back to the stone
age? There weren’t enough batteries in the world to last us more than a few
months. Gasoline generators, maybe, but that was another limited resource,
because how do you operate a fuel refinery to get more?

Perhaps the less-industrialized
nations would be at more of an advantage than the ones that relied so heavily on
automation and industrial resources. A Ticuna Indian village along the Amazon
would hardly notice the world had changed, if they noticed at all. If they
could shield themselves from infection, the virus had no impact on their
reality.

Unless all the animals
died.

The cool air blasting
in through my open window had nothing to do with the shiver that ran down my
spine when I thought about the eyeless crows in the bed of the other truck. The
men hadn’t been dead longer than two days. If the crows weren’t already
infected by the time they reached the corpses, that meant the virus moved
exceptionally fast in an avian system, or it had mutated to kill us more efficiently.
The fact that Conny was still alive made me lean more toward the former: the
virus affected animals differently than humans.

Yet if the birds
had
been infected before they found the bodies, the virus could travel anywhere,
even without using humanity as a host species.

I left the radio on a
classic rock station as I picked up speed down an uncongested stretch of road.
Good to know the classics weren’t dead yet.

There was a soft
metallic knocking on the side of the truck. I looked in the rearview to see
that Conny was awake. She had moved to sit with her back to the cab. She held
back her hair to keep it from whipping across her face as she motioned with her
thumb for me to crank the volume.

I twisted the knob on
the radio as the Doobie Brothers gave way to Led Zeppelin. The road before us
was empty, at least for the time being, and for a brief moment I forgot that, sometime
next month, a large portion of the world’s population might be gone.

Sleep would just have
to wait until I found out if there was a cure in Rapid City.

Conny knocked on the
side of the truck again, and I reached forward to crank the music. It was
really blasting now, but she probably couldn’t hear it as well as I could. She
banged harder on the truck.

“It won’t go any
louder!” I shouted over the piercing electric guitar.

She didn’t stop
pounding, so I clicked off the radio and looked back. Conny pointed behind us,
and it took me a second to see the dim outline of a vehicle on the freeway. Its
headlights were off, but it was definitely moving closer.

I gently touched my
brakes just to warn the other car. A second later, the high-beams flicked on,
glaring painfully in my rearview. The car lurched forward, gaining rapidly, and
I could hear the powerful engine growling, even from two hundred feet away.

Conny crouched low as she
made her way to the passenger side of the truck. I was going about sixty, but
that didn’t stop her from pulling a move straight out of a movie action
sequence. She leaned over the cab and stuck one of her long legs in through the
open passenger window.

“What the hell are you
doing?!” I shouted.

I didn’t want to slow
down, because I was starting to get the feeling the driver of the car behind us
had something other than a simple conversation in mind.

Conny followed her
first leg with the other, then she grabbed the top of the doorframe and lowered
herself inside. She plopped down into the passenger seat.

“Always wanted to do
that,” she said, smiling.

“You’re crazy!”

She didn’t argue as she
opened the glove box and pulled out a face mask. She slipped it over her mouth
and offered me the box. I shook my head.

Conny shoved the box
into my hand.

“In case we crash,” she
said.

I suddenly remembered
Hawaii, and the car wreck with Levino and Grayson. Levino hadn’t been infected
until the accident, when Grayson’s blood spattered the interior of the vehicle.

I slid the mask over my
mouth and pinched it down over the bridge of my nose. Next thing I knew, Conny
was cracking open the cylinder of the .38 revolver and inspecting the rounds.

“They might not feel
like chatting,” she said.

The headlights grew
brighter in my rearview as the pursuing car sped closer.

T
he Chevy threatened to veer off the road when the car slammed
into our rear bumper. Tires squeaked as I jerked the wheel away from the
shoulder. Conny quickly buckled her seatbelt after being jolted against the side
of the cab.

“They definitely don’t
want to chat,” I said, watching the rearview.

Conny stuck the revolver
out of her window and fired a round into the air over the pursuing car. The
driver veered left and backed off, keeping pace from behind instead of trying
to overtake our pickup.

“That may have done the
trick,” Conny said.

She was proven wrong
when a bullet hit the side of our truck, sinking into the paneling with a
metallic
thonk
. We both crouched lower in the cab as I swerved back and
forth across the road. More bullets hit the tailgate. One cracked the corner of
the rear window.

Conny was about to fire
back when I shouted, “Save it! We’ll need every bullet if they run us off the
road.”

She looked back hesitantly,
then nodded.

“What do you think they
want?” she asked.

I had been trying to
avoid asking myself that very question.

“Maybe they’re hunting
for supplies.”
Or maybe they just want you
, I don’t add. But when I looked
over at Conny, I could tell she was thinking the same thing.

It wasn’t that I would
naturally expect the worst from humanity as soon as the shit hit the fan, but
it was a simple fact that if you removed all consequences, certain people would
take advantage of the new system.

“Just hold on to that
gun,” I said, “and only use it if you have to.”

Conny looked back.
“They stopped firing.”

A moment later, I saw
why.

A pair of high-beams
switched on ahead, on our side of the freeway. The car drove right for us. The
one trailing our pickup drifted back. In the bright light of the oncoming high-beams,
I could finally make out some details of the car behind.

A wide, custom metal
bumper was welded over the grille – a bumper that had been crunched and
reformed from numerous impacts. Painted on the black hood were at least a dozen
icons of small, bright red cars, all with X’s crossing them out.

The car ahead of us
showed no sign of slowing as we maintained our collision course.

“Paul…” said Conny,
showing the first hint of nervousness since we got into this mess.

“No choice,” I said as
I pressed down on the gas pedal. “I know I said to save the bullets, but I need
you to fire one as close to the driver as you can.”

Conny scooted closer to
the window. She gripped the revolver firmly and rested her hand on the
passenger-side mirror, squinting as she aimed.

The Chevy’s motor
rumbled as I pressed the pedal to the floor. The oncoming driver flashed his
high-beams quickly in the final seconds before impact.

“Now!” I shouted.

Conny fired instantly –
and missed. She pulled the trigger twice more, and the last shot hit the
windshield of the other car. They veered one way and I swerved the other. My
driver-side mirror ripped off in a burst of sparks as we missed each other by
an inch.

“Woo!” I yelled. “Nice
shot!”

The car squealed to a
stop behind us as it was passed by our initial pursuer. Soon both cars were
back on track and on our tail.

“We can’t keep this up
forever,” said Conny.

She was right. First of
all, I was wasting more gas with all of the acceleration. Second, if the
drivers of those cars had made it their mission to run down cars on the
freeway, they likely had full tanks and could run circles around us all day.

A road sign briefly
flashed in my headlights: intersection with Route 12, just up ahead. It was
probably where the main road picks back up from I-90 and headed toward Helena.
There was bound to be a network of roads around the city, and more roads meant
more of a chance to lose our pursuers.

The off-ramp was just
ahead. I slowed down until the two cars behind us were almost on our bumper,
then I picked up speed. Just when the off-ramp was almost past, I jerked the
wheel and veered off the freeway.

The drivers in the
other cars had been anticipating the move. With a quick squeak of their tires,
they followed us off the ramp and onto Route 12.

I watched my rearview
as the headlights split apart and approached from both sides. The engines were
far more powerful than the Chevy’s. The cars effortlessly pulled even and
slowly pressed in until their side panels were scraping against ours.

“Paul, look!” said
Conny.

The road was blocked
ahead. An overturned semi covered both lanes. A sedan had hit the truck after
it flipped, burrowing itself halfway into the tanker.

There wasn’t enough
room to pass on the left, between the semi and the concrete median. I would
have to go right, onto the shoulder.

Gunshots cracked from
behind and a bullet hit the rear window. Shards of glass sprayed into the cab.

“They want to end it
before we get there,” said Conny.

“We’re going
off-roading.”

She reached up and
grabbed the safety handle as we rapidly approached the semi.

“Hang on!” I shouted as
I slammed on the brakes.

The two cars shot past
us. I swerved off the road to the right and drove onto the grassy shoulder to
avoid the semi. The other drivers compensated quickly and veered away from the
truck in time. As I passed the overturned semi, one of the cars swerved for us
and rammed his bumper into the back of the Chevy, spinning us wildly. My
headlights streaked across a line of trees as the truck spun to a stop in the
grass.

“Gogogo!” shouted
Conny.

But the other cars were
gone, their tires squealing back in the direction from which we came. The
Chevy’s motor rattled anemically as I tried to coax the truck back into gear.

I cut the engine and
twisted the key to start it up again, but all I got was a low electric hum and
a rapid
clickclickclickclick
.

Conny reached over and
squeezed my arm. I followed her gaze to the road. A group of men emerged from
behind the wrecked semi, each carrying a rifle and a pistol. They approached
the Chevy slowly, guns at the ready.

Conny gripped the
handle of her .38 revolver as the men surrounded our truck.