"Hey play this." Jarred hands me a CD.
"Where did you even get this?" I say as I try to look at the disc and the road at the same time.
"Doesn't matter, play it." he says.
"Wait! Jarred where did you get this?! James I swear I'll kill you!" I say trying to eject the disc.
James who was in the passenger seat of the large SUV flinched.
"I kept it because it's nice, you're good." he absentmindedly smiled.
"Brooke this is you?" Lucy looked at me surprised.
"I told you she could sing." Collin said pleased.
"James take it out please." I say defeated.
"Nah." he says then looks out the window. "How do you plan to get past the zombies.?" he
looks at me with realization of his own question.
"We'll see when we get to it." I say speeding up.
The city looks dead. Literally it dead. The lights in all the houses are out, street lights are flickering. Trash cans have been knocked over. I take the closest exit out of town and there they are.
"Hold on." I say and grit my
teeth.
I slam on the gas and plow through the line of zombies. Three re-dead bodies lie on the ground behind the SUV, well part of them anyway.
"That is disgusting." Jarred doesn't even try to hide his enthusiasm.
I look over at James who is cringing.
I focus back on the road and plow through a few more zombies.
Brooke: 7. Zombies: 0.
"I think we'll be good for a while.." I say making note of the clear road.
"So Brooke 7, Collin 1, everyone else? Zilch!" I say.
"That's no fair you have a car!" Jarred says.
"Your name is spelled like jarred!" I say laughing.
"Its original, thank you very much. Hey and turn that crap off." he says looking at the radio smiling.
I smile back. "you can always get the live version."
"Keep smoking, we'll see." he says and winks.
"Alright, I'm going to sleep." Mrs. Evans says.
"Me too, Lucy." Jarred says.
She shakes her head and smiles.
Collin leans up between James and I. He looks at James, who looks at him, then to me. James's eyes follow.
"Breaking the ice. James if you hurt Brooke again I will literally feed you to the zombies." Collin says with only a slight hint of joking in his voice.
"Goodnight." he says and smiles.
"Then there were two" I say to James.
"Not unusual for us." he says with a wink.
I ignore his comment and focus on driving. The more I do that the harder it is. Just driving north is way too hard to focus on. The scenery barely changes for miles. Every once in a while we pass a zombie but never a live person.
"Brooke, we're getting low on fuel." James says in his sleepy voice that once had the power to make me do just about anything, still probably could too.
YOU ARE READING
The Infected
JugendliteraturBrooke Collins has lost her family in a car crash. Now she must live with her best friend Collin Evans. It's not long until she learns what really happened to her family and the rest of the world. "The Infected" are growing in numbers and it won't b...
