2015-The Plague Years

Chapter 3: A Pair of Runaways

I grabbed Caleb and ran down the road, leaving behind the others. Fuck them for all I cared, they could get eaten by the infected. I sprinted away on aching legs fueled by adrenaline, hate, and a growing feeling of desperate fear. I was scared for Caleb, I was scared for my parents, and most of all I was scared for me. Every pounding step brought a fresh wave of pain. My legs screamed in protest. My eyes were blurred, stinging, unable to see anything in the darkness. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my eardrums, pressing in on my brain. But I ran and I ran and I ran.

I passed out hours later. I was stumbling through the woods; I had lost the road ages ago. I just dropped. I woke up the next morning to the sound of distant gunfire. The crackle of so many rifles fighting off so many infected. I picked up Caleb and walked in the opposite direction. Nothing good could come from being near a battle that size, especially one that I could tell was fated to be lost.

After stumbling through the woods for ages, the gunfire having stopped long ago, I found the road. I stopped to rest and wake Caleb. He had been passed out the whole time. Still breathing, but passed out and probably too hurt to walk for at least a few hours. He woke up quickly, eyes fluttering to life as he looked around. He groaned and it reminded me of just how sore I was. My legs were aching, lungs burning, eyes itching, arms screaming from lugging him halfway across the state, and all my cuts and bruises stung vicously every time my clothing so much as brushed against them. It was the worst I had ever felt. I was hungry and thirsty too, with nothing to eat. My knife sat in my pocket, and made it's presence all too obvious when I sat down on the asphalt and it almost stabbed me in the thigh. Overall, I was feeling pretty shitty. I sat there for an hour, maybe two, just letting my muscles scream and my heart slow down. I calmed down and started to think clearly, considering my options. I could go down the road, where it would appear that everyone had been fleeing from, due to two cars that had been left on the side of the road both facing away. I could go to where they'd been fleeing to. Or I could go back into the woods. Since I wasn't completely insane, I quickly disregarded the last option. Then I considered the road. If I followed the the road to where everyone had gone, there was a chance I would find the place that the evacuation vans had gone, and hopefully get refuge there. But I didn't know if this theoretical evacuation zone was safe, or even if it existed. If I went back, I could find my house. But there was a very large risk of finding the neighborhood still completely infested with diseased people hungry for my freshly tenderized flesh. So I chose to follow in the footsteps of oh-so-many panicked pedestrians and follow the road to my supposed safety.

Hours passed as me and Caleb trudged side by side down the road. We occasionally spotted a blood smear or some other bit of gore on the pavement, which always worried me. That meant the infected had followed the crowd and gotten this far, or farther. But I blinded my fear with hope and naivety. Surely, wherever we were going would be defended. Surely they would have slaughtered the marauding monsters. Surely, surely, surely, I could come up with another reason to bury the nagging thoughts clawing at the back of my brain. I didn't want to change direction, didn't want to think. I was too strung out for that kind of rationality. At some point Caleb spoke up.

"Where are we going?" He groaned at me. I thought about my answer- I didn't want to worry him by saying that I really didn't know. "We're following where the cars went to somewhere safe." I answered him.

"How much longer?" He asked in his whiniest voice. To be honest I couldn't blame him, my feet were killing me. My legs were still sore from the pummeling they had received last night.

"Shouldn't be... much further." I answered, pausing for breath. My lungs were beginning to burn. I was getting tired of having my whole body feel like it was on fire. I may have been lying, I may have been hoping, and to be honest I'm not sure what the difference was at that point.

Caleb paused, thinking. I can't say I know exactly what it was he was contemplating in that 8 year-old head of his, but it led to our parents. "Where are Mom and Dad?' he asked. It was a hesitant question. I think he already knew the answer I had.

"I don't know. They might be where the cars are going." I slowly answered through gritted teeth. Hope, lies, what was the difference? Truth is I've never been the most honest person. Optimism isn't my way of life either. That only leaves one option, doesn't it?

At that point Caleb had stopped talking. He looked thoughtful and very tired. I was happy to let him be that way.  I was getting pissed answering questions I didn't have answers to, questions that even I couldn't lie my way out of. My parents might have been dead. Not even might have been, they probably were. That horde had come straight from the direction of town. My parents had gone grocery shopping in town. And now they might be stumbling through the streets looking for someone to munch on. Pleasant thought, no? So I was pretty damn pissed at life by the time I saw it.

The evacuation truck. Rather, an evacution truck. It could have been mine or someone else's and I didn't care because it meant one thing.

The road we were headed down meant safety. It meant the evac center.