The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval (28 page)

Carl nodded toward him and the woman turned to face him. The left side of her face was a large bruise; her features were swollen and distorted. It looked as if she was having a bad reaction to a bee sting. He didn’t know who she was, but the look of sympathy on her face was enough to confirm what he had already known deep in his heart.

He inhaled sharply, releasing it on a harsh breath that irritated his raw throat. Reality seemed to crash back over him, the fresh wave of heartache pierced the strange veil that had been enshrouding him. The eardrums that had been unwilling to process any noise were suddenly filled with the screams and tears of the dead and dying. The static of the TV was harsh, grating on his over sensitized nerve endings.

It was anarchy within the building, people pushed and shoved past him. The potent, metallic scent of blood filled his nostrils. There were other smells too, smells he couldn’t even begin to place. They weren’t smells he’d ever thought he’d encounter on another human being.

Carl was watching him warily; the girl seemed just as troubled as John stopped before them. The woman had already turned away, distracted by another maimed student being led in by a security guard.

“We should go,” John said. Carl’s shoulders slumped. Relief filled his gray eyes as he nodded eagerly. “There’s nothing for us here.”

“We’ll go.” Carl was no longer speaking some sort of cartoon language as turned on his heel and pushed past the weeping students by the door. John followed silently behind, not feeling quite as vacant, but certainly not feeling anything like the human being he’d been only five short hours ago.

His life old life was over. A new one was beginning.

CHAPTER 20

Mary Ellen

Foxboro, Mass.

The road was clogged with cars, some of which had been abandoned either due to lack of gas, damage, or the inability to move the larger ones through the mass obstructing the roads. People trickled down the battered highway, though most of the road had faired the destruction of the quakes fairly well.

Absently, she flipped the visor down against the blinding sun. It did little good. She lifted her hand against the glare of the massive orb that seemed exceedingly bright and a lot angrier than normal. It was not yellowish, or even orange, but a vicious shade of red that she had never seen before. Al handed her a pair of reflective sunglasses that were far too large for her, but they helped to shade out the harsh sun a little.

“Is it just me, or does that look wrong?”

“It looks wrong,” Al confirmed; his head was turned toward her and his hand was out against the harsh rays. “But not much has looked right today.”

“That’s for sure.”

She steered around an overturned truck and the group of people sitting upon it. They appeared to be taking a break as they passed a jug of water between them. Despite the stifling heat of the day, a chill crept down her spine as the group eyed the car far too intently for her liking. She found herself praying, something she hadn’t done in years, that there would be safety at the end of this road. That the stadium would offer some sort of reprieve, some sort of shelter. Prayed that even if her daughter wasn’t there they would at least be granted a little break from the constant turmoil, and movement, they had endured for the past five hours.

Five hours. It felt more like five days. She thought she’d like to sleep for five days, at least. She rubbed her right eye absently beneath the glasses, it felt unusually gritty.

Her eyes narrowed, she lifted the glasses as she studied the air around them. It seemed foggy, perhaps smoggy or even smoky, but she hadn’t seen any more fires since they had left the area of Rochelle’s camp behind.

It’s just the heat of the day, she told herself.

She dropped the sunglasses back into place. She wasn’t at all convinced that it was just the heat of the day. If she had learned anything today it was that nothing was as it seemed, and even the most innocuous of things could be dangerous.

She didn’t like the foggy air, the red sun was beginning to frighten her, but there was little she could do about either and she was too exhausted to stress about it right now.

She swerved around a group of people who tiredly lifted their heads to watch the car go by. There were a lot of people on the road, but there weren’t as many as she had expected. Was this it? Was this the majority of the survivors around here? She wasn’t overly familiar with the area but she knew it was well populated. Perhaps there was somewhere else that people were looking to take shelter. There was a mall somewhere nearby, and probably other places for people to go, but even so she had expected thousands upon thousands, but there were only hundreds littering the road.

A flare shot into the sky, causing her to jump as it burned hotly before disappearing. “That’s always a good sign,” Al murmured.

They passed by restaurants and bars, car dealerships and hotels. It seemed as if people had taken up residence in some of the hotels as they mulled around the parking lots. Billboards came into view as they drove over top of a hill. One, for some new movie, swung precariously back and forth over the road in the breeze created by the slow moving vehicles. Two more billboards were securely intact; another had crashed over a fence and into a pond.

Signs for parking began to appear; advertisements for upcoming events decorated the roadside. Finally, the stadium area came into view. Though there were some fractures in the parking lots, some of the fencing had toppled, and a few stores and restaurants looked a little worse for the wear, she was relieved to see that it was mostly intact. The stadium itself appeared to be completely unharmed.

People flooded the vast parking lots, but it appeared that the gates had been moved around and reorganized to control the flow. Al rolled his window down, leaning out as a voice boomed over the land. His hand grasped hold of the roof as he pulled himself half out of the vehicle.

“Al!” she cried, trying not to chuckle at the spectacle of the older man leaning out the window like a golden retriever enjoying the ride. She shook her head as he slid back inside.

“I didn’t catch it all, but the general idea is no weapons,” he informed her.

“Well, that’s a good thing.”

He continued to frown as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He glanced into the backseat, his frown deepening as he studied the contents. “I suppose so, but I’m not ready to give up what we have. Drive past the stadium. Maybe we can find a place to hide the car.”

Mary Ellen was desperate to get into that stadium, but she bit back her argument. She trusted his instincts, they had gotten them off of that school roof, and they had made it this far. She wasn’t about to start doubting him now. She drove past the main entrance of the stadium, which was even more crowded than the areas by the newly erected stores, hotels, and restaurants.

They made a right at a set of streetlights that had gone completely dark. She drove down the constricted road, passing by small homes that were either dark, or crumpled from the events of the day.

“Pull in here.”

Her head tilted as she stared up the long driveway Al had indicated. She turned into it though and climbed the hilly drive that wound behind the house. She was halfway up the drive when she realized the back half of the cottage style house was gone, crumpled beneath the weight of a massive white pine.

“Perfect,” Al muttered.

Mary Ellen eyed the house warily. She was fairly certain that if anyone had been in there they would have fled with the intrusion of a tree into their kitchen, part of a bedroom, and what appeared to be the remains of a bathroom. She steered the car around the tree. Thanks to the angle at which it had fallen, and its size, she was able to pull underneath a few of the branches and park there.

The doors scraped against the branches, needles shed around her as she shoved the door open. She had to stoop to avoid being entangled within the limbs, but she still had sap and needles in her hair by the time she managed to extricate herself. Al had grabbed the keys and locked the doors; he was holding them loosely in his fingers as he slammed the trunk and surveyed the house and yard.

“If it’s discovered at least they won’t be able to steal the car or get into the trunk. The guns and most of the supplies should stay safe,” he said.

She nodded as she worked to free a tangled twig from her hair. Al broke off from her as they passed a large wooden fence. She followed as he pushed the door open to reveal the underground pool sheltered by the fence. Mary Ellen hurried toward it, eager to clean some of the dirt and grime from her arms and legs. She knelt at the side and splashed the chlorinated water on her face, and over the scratches and cuts that marred her dirty skin.

Though there was debris from the trees floating in the pool, it thankfully wasn’t scummy and the chlorine would have killed off any germs in it. She didn’t think it would have bothered her if it was filthy though. It felt good to wash some of the grime off. She scratched at the sap clinging to her, but for the most part her skin only became redder and the sap clung stubbornly to the hairs on her arms.

Al opened a door to the pool shed; a beach ball fell out as he disappeared from view. Mary Ellen finished cleaning herself the best she could and rose to her feet. She peered into the pool shed, her eyebrow quirked as she took in the vast array of pool toys and supplies packed into it. Al pulled a flipper down from one of the shelves, dropped the keys inside and returned it to the shelf.

“Good hiding spot,” she commented.

“Let’s hope so.”

“If anyone thinks to look in that flipper for the keys they deserve the car.”

He smiled wanly as he nodded. “You’re probably right.”

She waited as he took some time to clean himself in the pool too. It wasn’t a far walk back to the stadium and it only took them about a half an hour before they made it to the main roadway entrance. They floated into the parking lot toward one of the long lines winding through the spaces, and spreading toward the railroad tracks and Route One. There were more people filtering down the road, and it seemed as if a fair amount were already inside, but even still she felt there should be more.

“How many have died?”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken the question out loud until Al turned toward her. “More than we’ll ever know,” he muttered.

She pulled the glasses from her face. She’d forgotten she was wearing the bulky things. “Ever?”

He glanced around the cramped parking lot, his eyes narrowing briefly on a group of men in camouflage patrolling the area. Some had rifles resting against their shoulders; others were wearing them strapped to their hips. Mary Ellen thought she should feel more relieved to see some form of military and authority. For some reason it only caused her anxiety to grow.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off about this whole thing, something wasn’t right. Or perhaps it was only because this was the first good thing she’d seen in so long that she couldn’t accept the fact that it might actually get easier from here on out.

“It just seems as if nothing will ever be the same.”

“But the quakes seemed to have stopped,” she pointed out. “We’re away from the ocean, maybe things will get back to normal. It’ll be awhile of course, but eventually it will have to, right?”

He tilted his head back to look at the sky. The hideously awful, hazy sky. She shuddered; she didn’t like to think about what they might be inhaling. “Maybe,” Al sighed.

He didn’t believe it, and neither did she.

They crept steadily forward in the line. For the most part people remained stunned into silence, but every once in awhile the muted sound of weeping or an angry shout would pierce the air. The announcement against weapons, and some sort of list repeated continuously. Mary Ellen had the gift of selective hearing from years of listening to Larry blather on, and quickly tuned it out.