The Survivor Chronicles (Book 2): The Divide (20 page)

Riley smiled at him but he didn't see it as he disappeared behind the shirt again. She glanced nervously at Al. "Just keep going Riley."

In all of her many nightmares, and she'd been plagued with them for as long as she could remember, she had never once dreamt herself in this situation. Never once thought she would be driving away from people seeking help as they waved a towel out the window. She'd killed a man and she would do it again if she had to, but this was different.

Karma is a bitch
, she thought. But she didn't wasn't going to
be
karma's bitch when all of this was said and done.

"No," she said. Even Lee poked back out from under the t-shirt as Al dropped his forehead into his hands. "I'm not saying we have to get out of the car and go in after them, I'm not even saying that we'll be able to do anything, but we can't simply just drive away. Not yet."

"Riley…" Lee started to protest.

"We didn't walk away from Al and Mary Ellen; we didn't walk away from Carl, John, and Rochelle. We can't drive away from this Lee."

She'd been so focused on the road that she hadn't realized the truck had pulled up beside them until Al rolled his window down. "What's going on?" Carl yelled.

"There are people inside that building waving an S.O.S.," Al answered him.

"Aren't we all waving an S.O.S!?" John shouted as he leaned across Rochelle.

"There has to be something we can do!" Riley yelled back at them.

She chanced a glance at the truck before focusing her attention on their circular route once more. She rounded the back corner of the building again and came face to face with a line of about ten puss faced maniacs fifty feet in front of them. Carl slammed on the brakes at the same time that she did. Lee smashed into the back of Al's seat shoving him against the dash. They were both cursing loudly as Riley threw the car in reverse and hit the gas. Al pitched backward and the string of words that escaped Lee's mouth would have made the most hardened criminal blush as he struggled to right himself.

Carl kept pace in the truck as they skidded around the corner of the building. She'd been an idiot to keep driving the same pattern, an idiot to believe they could have done anything to help. She turned around in the seat, and draped her arm over Al's seat, as she steered. Carl was right alongside her, maneuvering surprisingly well for only being able to use the side mirrors. She would have crashed the truck into the building already had she been behind the wheel.

She screamed as someone lurched from the shadows of the building and into the path of the car. She tried to hit the brakes again but it was already too late as the bumper caught them in the waist and spun them around. They fell under the driver's side tires and caused the car to thump off the ground. She couldn't bring herself to look as the body spun out in front of the car.

The car squealed back around to the front of the building. She yanked the wheel like she had on many snowy nights in the high school parking lot last year. It spun around in a squeal of burning tires that kicked up smoke around the car. For a piece of crap, the car pulled donuts like a champion. If she ever had a chance for some undamaged road she thought it might be fun to see how the car cornered.

Until then, all she intended was for it to get them as far from this place as possible. She threw it into drive and stomped on the gas again. The transmission groaned briefly and hesitated in protest before finally lurching forward. Carl wasn't quite so rough on the truck as he turned it around and kept pace with the car. She didn't glance back at the building; she didn't want to see if there was still a towel waving out the window. She already knew the horde was still pursuing them as she could practically feel them breathing down the back of her neck.

"Where did you learn how to drive?" Lee muttered as he finally managed to extricate himself from where he'd been wedged in between the seats.

"You're still alive aren't you?" she retorted.

She bumped the car up over the sidewalk and drove down front yards at a much faster pace than the dilapidated asphalt would have allowed her. Grass and dirt kicked up beneath the wheels and pelted the bottom of the car with a rattling ting that set her teeth on edge. She chanced a glance in the rearview but all she could see was the looming grill of Carl's truck. It was strangely one of the most reassuring things she'd ever seen.

"I wish their brains would start to rot like their faces are," Lee murmured as he pulled the t-shirt over his face. "It's not fair that they still possess a fair amount of intelligence in their insanity."

Al glanced anxiously back at Lee before briefly meeting Riley's gaze. She refused to think about the fact that she may have just left Lee's only chance at survival behind with those people in the building. She drove across one more front yard before bouncing back onto the street. She hoped that they'd be able to get enough time and distance to shake off the nut balls for good, or at least a few minutes of reprieve.

They bounced and jounced over some ruts before she was able to navigate back onto some front lawns. "Maybe they'll all die off soon enough," she mused. "I mean how long can they last?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they did drop and come back to life," Lee told her.

"Thanks for the optimism."

"Hey you're the one hoping that a portion of the human population dies soon."

Riley winced, he was right, it was an awful thing to hope for but even still she found herself unable to shake the thought. There were billions of people on the planet; she wondered how many were now ravenous, cannibalistic, eating machines.

She didn't think there would have been any saving those people even if all the hospitals were open and fully functional. They had to get Lee some antibiotics
now
, they might be able to stop whatever was happening to him, and no matter how much he denied it she knew there was something wrong with him.

On the next road they began to leave behind the more residential areas of town for the less settled outskirts. Trees pressed closer against the sides of the car. Small homes passed by before a few stores began to reappear. She pulled into the rather large parking lot of an ice cream parlor and parked the car.

"I think we have some time," she said as she grabbed the keys and hopped out of the car.

"What are you doing?" John demanded as Carl parked beside her.

"Getting some antibiotics, Lee isn't feeling too well."

"I'm fine!" Lee shouted from the backseat but he didn't sit up again.

Riley exchanged a look with John as she hurried to the trunk. She smelled Carl's cigarette before he strolled around the back of the truck toward her. "What's wrong with him?" he asked as Riley opened the truck.

"I don't know. He says he's fine, but he looks like he's been drinking for a week straight, he's hidden under a t-shirt, and he has a headache," she whispered.

Carl inhaled his cigarette as he stared at the lid of the raised trunk. "We all have headaches Riley."

Her hands were shaking as she grabbed one of the bags and began to paw through it for some antibiotics. "He's not right Carl; I can feel it in my bones. He wasn't right when he woke up this morning either. It can't hurt for him to take something just in case."

Carl seized hold of her hand as she wrapped it around a bottle of Amoxicillin. "But it could hurt for him to be in the car with you if that's the way you feel."

She blamed her rapid blinking on whatever particles were still floating in the air. "I'm not…" she swallowed and straightened her shoulders. "I'm
not
giving up on him. This could work and I may just be overreacting anyway, right?"

"Yeah, you're right." Carl pulled the butt from his mouth and stomped on it before pulling out another one and lighting it. "That was crazy back there."

"It was," she agreed.

John appeared on Carl's other side as she slammed the lid closed. He glanced nervously around as he held the gun before him in a two handed grip that caused the muscles in his arms to stand out starkly. Carl shook his head at him. "We should get out of here before those things catch up," John told them.

"I could use a few minutes to stretch my legs and rest my eyes," Carl informed him.

Riley walked over and tapped on Lee's window. He didn't pull his head out from under the shirt as he rolled down the window and held up his hand. "Take some of these," Riley told him and handed the bottle over.

He grunted as he took the bottle and turtled his way out of the shirt for long enough to open the bottle and dry swallow a couple of pills. Al climbed out of the car and stretched his back; he glanced into the backseat before joining Carl. "Any other day and this place would be packed," he said as he eyed the quaint little shop. The only damage that appeared to have been done to it was a crooked wooden sign with
Carly's Cones
painted in red.

"I wouldn't mind some ice cream," John said.

Rochelle grabbed hold of the passenger side window as she leaned out of the truck. "There's someone on the radio!" she shouted.

They exchanged brief looks before all of them hopped forward at once. "What are they saying?" Carl threw his smoke away before he reached Rochelle's side.

Riley froze as words began to tumble from the radio in a jumbled rush that she had a difficult time deciphering at first. "I don't know if anyone can hear me, I don't know if anyone is out there, but if you are I pray there is hope for you still. There is none for us." The radio crackled as the male voice briefly died out. "Betsy was sick when she woke up this morning and I can feel it coming over me. My head, well it feels like someone's tapping on it with a hammer, and I can barely move my neck anymore."

Riley glanced nervously back at Lee who was still hidden within the backseat of the car. "It's the same thing that happened to Greg before… before the seizures. Betsy's already progressed into the seizure stage and after that… Well after that it's a downward spiral through the rabbit hole and into a world of madness. Maybe if someone can hear me, you'll know, you'll know when it's coming and you can find some way to save yourselves. Maybe, just maybe there is no saving any of us, but I choose to believe there is. I choose to believe this is not the way we
all
go out."

Despite the heat, Riley's flesh was covered in goose bumps as the voice broke off again. "I don't know if anyone can hear me, I don't know if anyone is…"

"Turn it off," Carl commanded when the voice started over again. "Just turn it off."

Rochelle's hand was shaking as she leaned over and clicked the radio off. The ensuing quiet was even worse than the frantic words. Riley swallowed heavily as she wrapped her arms around her middle. She couldn't bring herself to look back at the car again, she simply couldn't. Carl held her gaze before he turned toward the car.

It's a downward spiral into a world of madness
, the man had said. Riley already felt as if she was going a little mad and she knew it was only the beginning.

CHAPTER 16

Carl

Franklin, Mass.

Carl lit another cigarette as he stared at the car and shifted the gun in his hand. "It could just be the flu or perhaps he is overtired. I'm just overreacting," Riley muttered but she still wouldn't look at the car. "His neck is sore, big deal, it's not like we've all been comfortable these past couple of days. Right?"

"Sure Riley," John assured her, though he made a face at Carl behind her back and shook his head no.

Carl frowned at him but he couldn't deny the fact that he agreed with John. The nicotine wasn't having its desired effect as he tossed aside the butt and lit another one. He had no idea what they were going to do; killing strangers that attacked them was one thing, but this…

But then, Lee
was
a stranger. Carl didn't know his middle name, didn't know what his favorite color was, or if he preferred dill pickles to bread pickles. He didn't even know how old the kid was, but Lee had stood there yesterday and helped to defend him when he'd never asked for it. That made him more of a friend than many of the ones that Carl had known every detail about over the years. When the chips had been down, and Carl had needed their help, most of those friends hadn't been around.

There was a part of him that was tempted to leave Lee behind but that part was quickly squashed. Maybe tomorrow he wouldn't make the same decision, but today he wasn't willing to leave
anyone
behind. He glanced around the woods and back at the truck. "John why don't you drive the truck and Al can ride with you. I'll go with Riley."

"I'll go with you and Riley can ride in the truck," Al volunteered.

Carl would have preferred Riley out of the car, especially if something had to happen with Lee, but it wasn't an option. "Not with your hand. You won't be as quick with a gun, and if we get in another sticky situation you won't be able to shift the car fast enough."

Al opened his mouth to protest but closed it again. "Yeah, ok."

"I'm not entirely sure where we are anymore," Riley told him. "I'm pretty sure we're still in Franklin but I lost track of the areas I'm familiar with."

"Rochelle can you grab me the map?" Carl inquired.

Rochelle emerged from the truck and handed him the map. He opened it up and placed it on the hood of the truck. He glanced at the woods again before smoothing the pages out before him. "I think this is where we were last, so I'm going to assume we're in this area here." With his finger he circled a wooded area on the page.

"Or we could be over here," John pointed over his shoulder at another area of the map about ten miles in the opposite direction.

"Now you figure out how to read a map," Carl muttered.

John shrugged. "I'm right?"

"Yeah," Carl admitted as he stepped away from the map and cupped his hand around his lighter and cigarette. There wasn't much of a breeze, but years of trying to fire a lighter outside had engrained the habit of protecting the flame in him. He tapped his foot as he surveyed the woods and inhaled deeply. He hadn't looked yet to see how the cigarette cartons in the back had weathered the storm, but the way he was puffing them down he thought he'd better see soon.