In the Lone and Level Sands (67 page)

When Derrick spoke, Zoe was just beginning
to notice the more frequent stopped cars and the wavy glimmer
ahead, where the road met the sky and the heat rising off of it
introduced reality to illusion.

“The road should be opening up pretty soon.
What should we do?”

“It’ll probably be crowded,” Zoe said. She
reached into the glove box and found a map of the area surrounding
Chicago. “Looks like the highway thickens for a few miles, but then
an exit leads to a smaller road. I can’t see exactly where it goes,
but it goes in the right direction, at least. We can probably
figure it out from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Derrick said. “We’ll
just have to be ready, in case things get ugly.”

Zoe retrieved her gun from the console, but
Derrick remained focused on the road.

****

The car was stopped. A few hundred yards
ahead of them was a scene of chaos. The highway was completely
packed with cars.

Zombies walked around. Two of the closest
ones, still far away, were fighting over something Zoe could hardly
see. Something red. They pulled it back and forth in what would
have been a humorous tug-of-war had the object in question not been
so red.

“So,” Zoe said. “What do we do?”

“We can probably drive around it,” Derrick
said.

Zoe looked at the map. “No way. This road
becomes an overpass. That’s I-74 down there, and it’s just as
crowded. Besides, it runs north and south, so we don’t know where
it’ll take us.”

“The map doesn’t say where it goes?”

“It’s a local map. We’re already almost off
of it.”

“Let’s stay with this road, then,” Derrick
said. “How far is our exit?”

“Three miles, maybe.”

“Think it’s jammed this badly up there?”

“I honestly wouldn’t know.” They sat in the
stopped car for a bit longer. After a while, Zoe said, “Can we go
back? Maybe find a different route?”

Derrick shook his head. “We’ll never make
it. We’re almost empty as it is.”

The sun was climbing higher into the deep
blue cloudless sky.

“I hate to say it,” Zoe said, “but I think
we’re going to have to walk.”

Derrick sighed. “Yeah. I think so, too.”

Derrick opened the door, unbuckled his
seatbelt, and stepped out onto the asphalt. He leaned back into the
car and grabbed his gun from the console, as well as his bag from
the back seat.

“Hey,” Zoe said. Derrick looked at her.
“Next place we stop, let’s watch a movie, or something. Take a
break, you know?”

Derrick looked at the road ahead, and then
back at Zoe.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Zoe retrieved her things and got out of the
car. She shut the door as she left. Derrick didn’t bother with
his.

****

The sun was hot as it bore down on them. The
traffic jam was becoming clearer and more frightening with every
step. Zoe and Derrick could hear the growls and snarls of the
nearest zombies.

Zoe’s finger rested on the trigger of her
gun, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Derrick seemed a lot more
composed, which made Zoe feel better, a little less scared.

Despite how close they were to the gridlock
(which had broken out of the waves of heat and into full-blown
reality), Zoe saw no sign of the arguing zombies from earlier.
There was blood on the ground, but all signs of them and whatever
they had been fighting over were gone. Things were eerily quiet as
Zoe and Derrick made their way around the first of the cars and
into the jungle of twisted metal and decaying bodies.

When they spoke, they did so quietly, barely
making any sound at all.

“Can you see where it ends?” Zoe said.

“No,” Derrick replied. “It goes at least to
the top of the hill.”

They wove their way through the cars, up the
hill, toward the top of the overpass. The highway below was even
more clogged and even more populated with zombies. They reached a
spot where the cars rested from one metal guard rail to the other,
and stopped.

“We’ll have to climb over,” Derrick said.
“Try to move slowly, and don’t make too much noise.”

Derrick slowly hoisted himself onto the hood
of a red car, which made a series of little pops as the metal bent
in and out. Zoe looked around; a zombie she hadn’t noticed before
stood several rows of cars behind them, but it didn’t seem to know
they were there. Derrick made his way to the other side of the
car.

“All right, your turn,” he said. Zoe
carefully climbed onto the hood of the car. Derrick extended a hand
to help her. She took his hand, and then saw a figure rise from the
ground and loom over him.

“Look out!”

Derrick let go of her when he turned around,
just in time to catch the zombie as it grabbed him. Zoe drew her
gun and fired. The shot rang across the highway. All around, from
between the cars, zombies popped up into view as they heard the
sound, like rabbits in a field. There were far more than Zoe
would’ve guessed.

The zombie on top of Derrick fell to the
ground, dead, but the shot had sealed the interest of the rest of
the zombies. They began to make their way toward Zoe and Derrick in
whatever way they could, not running but more quickly than walking,
tripping over and on top of cars and wreckage, like children moving
through waist-high water.

“Okay, let’s move!” Derrick said. Zoe jumped
from the roof of the car and onto the pavement, and they were
off.

The only immediate path was blocked by
another zombie. Derrick shot it, and it dropped to the ground. He
and Zoe hopped over it as they ran. Another zombie tumbled over the
hood of a car in front of them, but they ran past before it could
find its way to its feet, or theirs.

They hopped over another car, and found that
at the top of the overpass sat an overturned semi. Black treads
told the story of how it had skidded to its current position,
perfectly blocking the highway from end to end, its sideways nose
overlooking the highway below. The girth of the truck had broken
the guard rail in several places, leaving jagged metal pointing
outward on both sides.

“Shit!” Derrick said. “What do we do?”

“Hop the median!” Zoe said. To their left
was the metal guard rail, and across two feet of nothing but a
thirty-foot drop was the guard rail of the other side. A zombie
stood just beyond that, staring them down, making noises, sometimes
reaching toward them, just barely aware that it wouldn’t make it,
but seeming to forget this every few seconds and trying again.

Derrick shot at the zombie, and Zoe took
three shots to clear the space behind them of zombies that were
working their way over and around cars. Zoe and Derrick moved over
to the median.

“You first!” Zoe said. “I’ll cover you!”

The groans and the footsteps were growing
louder. Derrick put one hand on the guard rail, hoisted himself up,
and swung his legs over, grabbing the opposite side’s guard rail.
He pushed himself the rest of the way over. Derrick looked around,
shot at a zombie Zoe couldn’t see, and then turned back.

“Come on!”

Zoe ran at the guard rail. She wasn’t as
tall as Derrick, and couldn’t have made it the same way. She
hopped, placing one foot on top of the rail, and pushed off, tucked
her legs in as high as she could, cleared the other rail, and
rolled on the street on the other side.

Derrick helped her up. The traffic jam
didn’t get much better, and already zombies were making their way
through it and toward them from both directions.

“Look!” Derrick said. He pointed across the
median. On the other side of the semi, the path was still jammed
with cars, but there appeared to be very few zombies at all, and
none close.

“We’ll never make it back across, there’s no
room!” Zoe said.

“We can make it!” Derrick replied.

“No!” Zoe said, but Derrick didn’t listen.
He rushed at the median, jumped, and slammed into the hood of a car
that had broken the guard rail, but stayed on solid ground. He
grabbed the edge of its far side and climbed onto the hood, then
turned around and kneeled down, arms outstretched.

“Come on!” he said. “You’ll make it, I’ll
make sure you do!”

Zoe looked at the approaching creatures,
then at Derrick, ready and waiting for her. She reminded herself
that she was not alone, then rushed at the median.

Zoe hit the car harder and lower than she
hoped, and her feet slipped from the guard rail. Despite Derrick’s
best efforts to catch her, she passed out of reach almost
instantly, her side sliding across the jagged metal of the guard
rail as she fell. Her hands caught the ground just below it,
stopping her fall. Zoe cried out, but she held on.

“Shit! Zoe!” Zoe could feel her legs
dangling, and she imagined that if she fell she wouldn’t die, but
she’d be broken, mangled, completely wrecked. Zoe pushed these
thoughts aside and looked up. Derrick was leaning down as far as he
could, one arm outstretched. “Come on! Climb up!”

The zombies were gathering on the other side
of the gap, pressing against the guard rail, reaching out for Zoe,
some of them inches away.

Zoe had no footing, only her hands clamped
around the cement edge, her now-aching side dripping blood onto the
highway below, where zombies had gathered and were reaching up as
if to say, “Let go, we’ll catch you!”

Zoe tightened her grip with her left hand,
then thrust her right hand up as high as she could. She closed her
eyes, knew it was her only shot, but before she could imagine
herself missing and falling, she felt Derrick’s hand clasp around
her own.

“Come on!” Derrick said. He began to pull
Zoe up.

The zombies on the other side of the median
pushed, and one of them fell over it, grabbing for Zoe’s legs as it
went. Zoe didn’t look down to see, she just let herself be thankful
it had missed her.

As soon as she could, Zoe reached her feet
onto the concrete she had been holding on to for dear life only
seconds before. Derrick held her there, and she caught her breath
for a moment before climbing onto the car with him.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I will be,” Zoe said. She looked at the
wound in her side, clearly visible through a tear in her shirt. It
was bleeding, but not badly. “Let’s get off this highway.”

They climbed off of the car and onto the
pavement. The zombies on the other side of the median gathered
where they could, groaning and grasping, an utterly futile effort
that didn’t stop a few more from being pushed over the edge.

The jam went on for a few hundred yards, in
which Zoe and Derrick found little opposition. Finally, the gaps
between cars grew from just big enough for a person to just big
enough for a minivan. Zoe and Derrick found the nearest car with
gas and keys, got in, and drove the rest of the way through the
jam. Twice they had to get out and move a car out of the path, but
after that, things went smoothly. They reached their exit, took it,
and once again found open road.

****

Derrick made the popcorn while Zoe cleaned
up in the bathroom. He had repeatedly asked through the closed door
if she needed him to get her anything, and she had assured him she
was fine.

They had stopped at a small house a little
out of the way. They weren’t as far out as the houses near the
woods had been, so they covered the windows with comforters and
thick blankets and locked the entrances before doing anything
else.

The wound wasn’t very bad, but had bled a
lot. Zoe looked at it in the bathroom mirror, her arm raised as she
cleaned the wound with toilet paper. There was some peroxide under
the sink, which she applied to it before wrapping it with
gauze.

Zoe looked at her shirt. There was a tear in
it, the surrounding area had been soaked through with blood. She
didn’t have another shirt on her, so she put the old one back on.
Finally, she stepped out of the bathroom.

“You okay?” Derrick said from the
kitchen.

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “I’m going to see if I can
find a shirt that fits me.”

“Okay.”

Zoe made her way to the first bedroom. She
took one look at the Star Wars bedspread and moved on to the next.
It was a girl’s room, but the clothes were all big and baggy. Zoe
put the wardrobe in her mental “maybe” pile, preferring less baggy
clothes, as they were less likely to be grabbed by zombies or get
caught on things.

She got to the master bedroom and found only
men’s clothes. They had chosen the first good house they’d seen,
and apparently picked a motherless home.

Zoe went back to the boy’s room. She assumed
whoever had once lived there had been twelve years old at the most,
but his clothes fit her better than the baggy ones from the girl’s
bedroom. She found a Spider-Man shirt that fit well, put it on,
then headed into the living room. Derrick was sitting on the couch,
a big bowl of popcorn in his lap, already half-eaten.

“Spider-Man, huh?”

“It fits,” Zoe said. “What are we
watching?”

“Well, there are a lot of kids’ movies
here,” Derrick said. “And a few movies for Dad, but I don’t think
you want to watch those.”

Zoe looked at the shelf full of DVDs.
Derrick shoveled more popcorn into his mouth.

“Donnie Darko,” Zoe said.

“Do what now?”

“…Donnie Darko. You’ve never seen it?”

“Never heard of it.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope,” Derrick said. Zoe grabbed the case
from the shelf and put the disc into the DVD player. Derrick turned
off the lights, and the two of them sat down on the couch.

“What’s it about?”

“The end of the world,” Zoe said.

“Sounds great. I could really use a few
hours outside of reality.” The movie started to play. “You all
right?” Derrick asked one last time.