Alive

Chapter 11: Splitting Up

We barreled down the road in the fire truck, hitting bodies and tree branches until the bumps couldn't tell any of us which was which. Doug gunned the engine and the truck lurched slightly to the side, as he steered as quickly as the truck would allow on the winding, too-thin road. The screams rose and fell behind us, new attackers coming out of the treeline on our trail, daring to catch up to us.

A man ran out into the middle of the road, screaming rabidly with his arms flailing and then extended out in front of him as if expecting to stop the barreling fire truck that turned him into a fly on the windshield, or under it rather. His body rolled into a puddle of mush, neck, and limbs snapping like twigs under the all-mighty power of the truck. He gave one last garbled sound from his throat, anger fading from his eyes in the rearview.

I didn't have to hear it to see it. Their voices were burned into my brain. They all made the same sounds, angry shrieks and screaming, much like growing up at home, but almost equally nonsensical before they were taken out. Maybe that's what was satisfying about killing them, and I wanted to do it in the most violent of ways. I suppressed the smiles that Doug did nothing to hide, not so discreet as he laughed and hooted with every crunch.

There was a time that I made no effort to hide my violent inclinations as well, but I thought that I had wanted to put all of that behind me now. I guessed not. Ann squeezed my hand tighter when Dane began to wake up. He had slipped in and out of consciousness and appeared to be in shock. It was only a bullet graze, but I knew from experience, they hurt like hell. My face burned in shame at the want of violence coursing through me moments ago, and I looked to see if there was something I could do to help.

I looked above and saw that there was a first aid kit on the closed-off shelf. I pressed a rectangle button and it opened revealing a first aid kit. I pulled it out and opened it. There was a strip of gauze and bandages, the big kind that would fit over large wounds. There was burn ointment, which I thought would come in handy considering how much bullet wounds burned. I applied some onto his wound and he screamed.

Then Dane passed out again. I kept my head down as everyone looked at me and finished with a bandage and gauze. I picked out a safety pin from a plastic pouch in the red box and secured the gauze. Satisfied, I pocketed the rest of the contents into my backpack. I drank from a water bottle while Doug barreled down the road and across a bridge. The moon shone so bright it revealed the road ahead, and so Doug had turned the headlights off as we exited the forest.

We didn't know where we were going. All that mattered was that we got as far away from those things as possible. The other side of the bridge revealed an open field, mansions plotted around here and there.

"Doug, I think we should stop and stay in one of those," I said pointing.

He looked up at me from the driver's seat, not slowing down an inch, and grinned broadly.

"Of course you would want to stay in a mansion," he said.

"Yeah, who wouldn't?" Darcey laughed.

"I just want you to stop before you careen us over a bridge going at this speed," I said, as casually as I could manage.

I peeked out the window at the expensive fountain and huge mansion. It had to be five stories or more. We were racing down the road at over a hundred miles an hour.

"Careen? Is that like one of your fancy cafes?" Doug said. "Whatever, we'll stop and look inside. Maybe there are rich mutants in there!"

"Yeah, but money doesn't matter anymore," Blake pointed out.

I thought that money was no object to Doug, that he wanted to make it rain something else. We stopped outside of one where there were no cars and got out. I turned my head up toward the mansion until I thought my neck would snap. It was dark through the mansion. Before I looked up, I could have sworn that a light had been on, a nearly imperceptible glow behind the blinds. I could have imagined voices from the inside.