Zero

Chapter 15

Chapter 15 

The car comes to halt for what seems like the hundredth time today. Getting over the bridge at Lake Charles was bad enough and then driving around Lafayette to avoid the crap we hit in Houston. We had to stop every hundred feet or so to push cars out of the way so the van could squeeze through. Thankfully, with the slope of the bridge crossing Lake Charles, it wasn’t all that hard. Thank you, gravity.

Braces hops out of the mini and climbs onto the roof of a nearby car. After a minute of looking, his shoulders slump and he climbs down. He stands in the open door of the passenger seat, not bothering to get back in the car.

“There’s a good sized group of the dead not far ahead.”

“We’ll drive through them,” Atlas suggests.

It’s what’s we’ve been doing all day. Going through Houston was especially bad. We couldn’t stay on the highway through the city. It was too packed with cars of people who were attempting to get out when they called for an evacuation. Most of them didn’t make it.

Braces described it to me before, what it was like when the world went to hell. It’s one of the few things I’m thankful not to remember. The outbreak happened slowly and then all at once. At first it was like any scary sickness threatening epidemic, I guess. People were told to stay in their homes, avoid public places. School in affected cities were closed.

But people don’t like to be told what to do. So they continued with daily lives believing they wouldn’t catch this virus.

Then people who were declared dead started coming back. But they were violent and unresponsive to doctors. They weren’t talking, they weren’t doing anything except trying to eat the people helping them. Braces thinks they kept it under wraps for as long as they could, not wanting to insight panic. Someone must have leaked what was happening though because all the major outlets started reporting zombies.  They’re slow, so we drive past them pretty easily without worried of being too held up.

By the time the public understood this was more than just a bad flu scare it was already past the breaking point. Cities were being evacuated too late. The creeps may move slowly, but if you’re sitting in traffic that could last for dozens of miles and a horde wanders up on you, you’re shit-out-of-luck. Hence the abandoned cars filling the highways in and around Houston – and every major city, I presume.

We drove through the downtown of the city instead, which was eerie. Creeps were everywhere, but most didn’t notice us, those that did followed for as long as they could, but we were moving a lot quicker than they could. There were a couple times when a good sized group was ahead of us, but Hunter is a surprisingly quick thinking driver. When we cleared Houston, tension caused by the empty city left the car and we actually began to have what Squirrel described as road-trip fun.

Except for having to move crap out of the way and weave slowly through congested roadways, the drive since then hasn’t been too bad. Nicer than the alternative.

I lean forward to get a better listen to the conversation. Braces doesn’t seem thrilled by Atlas’s suggestion. He frowns.

“Don’t think that’ll be happening,” he says.

I pull out of the seatbelt and climb through the middle between where Birdie and Atlas sit. They both give me looks as I crawl across Atlas and pull open the back door. Braces is disappointed by something and I need confirmation. I need to see for myself what I’m sure he’s thinking. Out of the car, I walk over the same small, red car Braces climbed on and do the same. When I stand on the roof, my stomach falls.