Steel Horizon

Chapter Eight

"You're acting like Walmart being burned down is the worst thing that can—"

I held up my hand to stop him. "Don't say, 'the worst thing that can happen to you.'"

Jude's lip curled up into a half smile, but otherwise said nothing. He probably caught the deadly tone of my voice. I wanted a Walmart—I needed one to keep myself from going crazy. I would even take a Costco at this point. It was one of the few things to look forward to nowadays, and now it had to wait a little longer. But I had to admit, hearing his half-hearted attempt to cheer me up made the day slightly brighter.

Nothing but ashes and rubble were left behind as evidence that Hays, Kansas ever existed, and we didn't stay around any longer than we had to. We were just entering a small section of trees on some backroad, still heading east, when I decided to speak up.

"We should look for another car," I suggested, still irritated by the whole Walmart ordeal. I tried to hide it—I didn't want to act like a child. "They're probably still looking for us and it'll be better to put some distance between us and them."

"We can start looking when we get out of the woods here," he said. "There may be some on the main road."

It had to be close to late afternoon, so we only had a few more hours until dusk. It felt strange traveling with someone, especially someone I didn't know—but it was a good kind of strange. The kind of strange when you go to a place you haven't been in a long time, and you forget what it was like until you're there again. But I still wasn't sure whether I liked it. I was used to being alone. That was what I knew and was comfortable with.

My eyes wandered around the sparse woods near us, seeing nothing but snow and trees. At times like this, I could almost pretend the world was still the same, just like when I stared into the sunsets and see nothing else. I knew I should stop pretending things were fine, but it may have been the only thing keeping me sane.

I was about to look away from the forest when something held my attention. It wasn't like me to wander off the road, but I found my curiosity taking hold, forcing my legs to move in that direction. The snow came farther up my boots, but it wasn't deep enough for it to fall inside them.

"Where are you going?" Jude asked behind me.

"I see something." I didn't know what it was, but it was something. Up ahead, through the thin trees still dormant with winter, I saw a large mound of dirt covered with snow. The unnaturalness of the site kept my legs moving forward, my heart pounding a little harder. I heard Jude call to me again. This time I didn't respond.

The backs of my legs ached as I walked up the small mound, and I stopped at the top, staring down at the scene that laid before me. It was nothing what I expected. I expected to find an old construction site, maybe even some old equipment that was starting to rust with old age.

I wasn't ready to look down at dozens of frozen bodies, piled into a pit that had been recently dug, faces staring at the sky. Faces that didn't stare back. Faces that were expressionless and solid. I stifled a scream, my lungs not even having enough air to breathe. My limbs felt as frozen as the ones I stared down on.

"Morgan?" His voice was closer.

I couldn't respond. I couldn't turn. I couldn't run away. Fear kept my body there, forcing me to look at the mass grave of bodies, flesh and steel together in a horrible array of death. A leg, an arm, another leg; all connected to dead humans I couldn't put names too. Their skin, so pale and frozen, looked crystallized in the afternoon light, too delicate to touch.

"Morgan, what—" His voice stopped in mid-sentence, hanging on the fringe of words and silence.

My stomach twisted and turned, making the whole world spin around me. I couldn't take it anymore. I forced my legs to move despite my muscles protests and walked as far away from the pit as I could. It wasn't long before my knees buckled and I dropped in the snow, hands splayed, bracing myself to the ground.