The Strong Will Survive

Chapter Forty-Five - Lilith

 This mystery was getting more and more intricate. First the entire situation with Lydia...us getting kidnapped...and now this? Finding out that KC had been being tracked this entire time?

Something was incredibly wrong with this situation. Even more wrong than us being kidnapped.

I thought back over the past apocalyptic months. So many months of the zombie virus wiping out most of America. Where had it even come from?

Before I could follow this train of thought too far, Benji grabbed my hand. "Come on!" he ordered, pulling me after him.

I followed my friends as they hurried through the aisles of cars. "Too bad we can't take one," I sighed.

KC halted in her tracks, her face a mask of sudden thoughts.

"KC, no," Jared said immediately.

"What? What are you going to do?" I asked anxiously, glancing between Jared and Kc. "It's probably a stupid idea."

"Seconded," Benji volunteered from in front of me.

KC ignored us all entirely, raising her leg and swiftly kicking through the side window of one of the many cars. I flinched as the glass shattered into the vehicle.

KC was already carefully climbing into it. I cringed at the thought of all of the sharp glass shards awaiting her and hoped she would be more cautious than she usually was.

"Are you trying to disable the car's tracker?" Jared asked in a tired voice. He was used to this kind of thing by now.

"Yup," wheezed KC as she contorted her body to slither into the backseat.

"Now what are you doing?" Jared raised his head to the car garage ceiling in a Lord, give me strength pose.

"They're not gonna put the tracker in the front of the car. Well, probably not. Not if they're anything other than cliche bad guys - ahah!" she suddenly cried triumphantly.

"Oh, thank god," I breathed in relief. She had obviously found the tracker.

A steadily blinking piece of machinery flew out of the car and landed on the ground next to Jared. He quickly stomped on it several times, utterly obliterating it.

KC swung open the passenger door of the car to get out in a more dignified fashion than she had entered. "Help me clean out this glass," she ordered. I rolled my eyes, but stepped forward and used the sleeves of my shirt to pick up the shards of glass gingerly, mindful of their wickedly sharp edges.

Finally, we had cleaned out all of the glass pieces - that we could see, at least. KC climbed into the driver's seat. Jared sat carefully in shotgun, glancing around to make sure the sear was clear while Benji and I took the backseat.

Grinning, KC glanced over her shoulder at us and reached across Jared to open the glove compartment and pull out the car keys.

"They are not smart," Benji noted gleefully.

"You got that right, crazy kid," KC replied with a chuckle as she revved the engine.

Suddenly, there was a clanging sound from behind us and I whirled around to find a few beefy guards starting to run for the car. "Go, go, go, GO GO GO!" I yelled, my voice raising in volume with every "go."

KC didn't need to be told twice - well, six times. She spun the steering wheel and soon, the car was in the driving lane.

It was like a parking garage of death. While there weren't traps or something as extreme as that, there were guards, and all of them, of course, saw us passing. Soon, we were being chased by several cars at once.

"We are in an honest-to-god car chase," Benji informed us in a dazed voice. I glanced over at him, worried he was going into shock. His eyes were faintly glazed over and I swallowed nervously.

"Put on your fricking seatbelts!" KC screamed as we barreled up a ramp. I saw why - we were headed for a gate that was quickly closing. We were never going to make it in time.

KC was going to ram it.

I buckled in faster than I ever had before and looked over to find Benji struggling with his. It had locked because of how fast he had grabbed it, and now wouldn't move any further.

I reached over, moved the belt slowly backwards, and then pulled it slowly forwards, even as every muscle in my body screamed at me to hurry up, for crying out loud!

I finally got Benji strapped in and pressed my back into the seat mere seconds before KC smashed the car through the now closed gate.

The impact tore the breath from my body and snapped my head forward. I recovered quickly, luckily, looking at my friends to make sure they were all okay.

The airbags hadn't deployed by some miracle, but there was a fissure slowly spreading across the windshield. That wasn't stopping KC, however - she was still barreling at her previous speed, now down a dirt road leading to the highway.

Behind us, another smaller car burst through the opening we had created, the only vehicle little enough to fit through. The chase was on once more.

"KC!" I yelled. "We know New York. Maybe they don't as much." I hoped that she was following along with my line of thinking so I didn't have to waste any more breath - we knew where the rubble and dead cars were from our months of living in the Costco, but perhaps the thugs following us didn't. After all, they had been residing in a cave complex all this time. If we could weave into the minefield of wreckage, it was much more likely that they would crash rather than us.

"Good idea!" KC replied, slowing ever so slightly to turn onto the highway and then increasing our speed to what it had previously been.

"We shouldn't go straight to the Costco," Jared said warningly.

"They already know where we live from Lydia," Benji pointed out.

"So, what? We can't go home?" I demanded. I was so scared of losing the Costco that it took me a moment to realize that for the first time in all of these months, I had referred to the superstore as "home." It would have been a bigger moment for me, but I was a bit too preoccupied with the matter at hand to concern myself with it.

"I don't know," KC replied, shaking her head slowly. "Let's just drive until we can get them to crash. Then we'll figure everything else out."

I sighed dejectedly. Losing the Costco would present a problem if we needed food or clean water, but surely there were things in other stores and houses in the city. After all, not all of them could have been looted, especially seeing as NYC was where the apocalypse had gotten its jump start. Plus, it wasn't like there was anything we needed other than that at the Costco. Lydia, Reggie, and Daisy were somewhere in the cave complex behind us and the journal was either still on the hospital floor or with Dr. Morte.

Maybe we would have to relocate, for our own safety.

I rested my head against the headrest of my seat, closing my eyes. Benji reached over and took my hand gently, and I smiled slightly.

It didn't matter if we had to relocate. We would all be doing it together, after all.