The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 12.

"Could you specify, please, exactly where we're going, Misty?" Janice asked as I shouted out another direction change. It was two days later, and darkness was bearing down upon the looming city of Coon Rapids, Anoka County, Minnesota.

    "Coon Rapids," I said, glancing at my phone.

    "Yes, I can see that," Janice speculated as we whizzed down the main street, trying to ignore the random clusters of zombies that glowed fluorescent pale against the glare of our headlights. They had become a regular occurrence as we had slowly integrated into more densely populated areas. However, it never put a damper on the chills that they gave me, especially at night, where it seemed they materialized out of nowhere from the darkness. Driving, driving, driving. That's all it had been for nearly six hours, and not a single normal person had we seen. The only sign of life came from the movements of the dead. Yes, I was totally laughing at the irony. Please note the sarcasm.

    It still felt weird calling them zombies. It still felt weird that my entire family was dead. It wasn't painful anymore. It was just numbing, and terrifying, and unbelievable. It had now been almost three days since my entire world had been turned upside-down. Earlier this morning, Paul and Janice had finally agreed to pack up the essentials and check out Anoka. Zooming within the county lines, we had discovered that the more exact place of choice, was Coon Rapids. 5 hours and 30 or so minutes later, Leo and I had lost count of the clusters of sporadic dead, walking and laying, that we had encountered along the way. Luckily, it wasn't face to face yet.   

    It wasn't like in the movies. They didn't have jaws ripped from their faces, dangling by limp strings of sinuous flesh, nor did they have large pieces of flesh hanging half-way off their faces. There was nothing drastic about their appearance that indicated they were dead or not. If anything, that made them more terrifying than in the movies. In fact, we had, at first, nearly stopped to see if the wandering "people" were lost, until we got closer and realized, by there strange, sluggish and dazed mannerisms as well as pale appearance and slightly torn clothes, that they were probably like my parents: "Zombies". Ever since then, we had concluded that these "wanderers" were living, they could get along by themselves without the help and endangerment of ourselves. All four of us were internally reflecting on the fact that if we had stopped to check on the lost "people",  then we would probably be dead. Nobody said it out loud, however, because to say that would be to admit that there was definitely something going on beyond our small town. Something serious.

    Leo and I had paused in the middle of our discussion when Janice asked "exactly where we are going". The truth was, I didn't know how to reply. I stared at the screen of my phone. Once you zoomed in, our destination pointed at an enclosed circle between two large roads, and a very dim stroke of white. The one downside to this map, was there were no labels, and the area between the two dots, our place and our final destination, was not charted out road for road. The only reason I had known it was Anoka County, was because I recognized the outline of the county's shape. It wasn't until we stopped at an abandoned gas-station and picked up a road map, that we were truly able to navigate our way to Coon Rapids, where we predicted the dot was pointed upon looking back and forth from my phone to the large map that Leo had splayed out on his lap.

     Right on cue, Leo eyed my phone and then the map. He squinted and used his forefinger to steady his gaze up the length of the main road, working his vision through the impending shadow that loomed over the stitching of roads on the map. The large shadow was due to the flashlight he had cradled between his shoulder and cheek.

     "Well it appears that we should turn right at Hanson Boulevard eventually. Along that road, it appears on Misty's phone as if that road pulls up to the side of some circle thing, but on my map, that little circle thing doesn't even exist, neither does that little road." Leo pointed at my phone, where the dim stroke of white ran perpendicular from Hanson Blvd.