Chapter 8

After two days of relative peace, I said goodbye to the green hut and continued east. Although I didn’t want to leave, I couldn’t convince myself the cabin would survive the next breach. I couldn’t imagine anything would. Each breach was more potent than the one before, and I doubted the sixth would break the trend.

Small brooks, rugged hills, and snapped trees—in every direction, the world appeared barren. Outside of a few Bluebirds and Canadian Geese, I didn’t come across anything larger than skittering rodents and insects.

The area was scenic once, or at least that’s what the road sign told me. While walking close to the byway, I found signs for a cliff face used for ice climbing, an RV rest stop for hiking, and a maple syrup farm. Now, the brown lake beside the light gray road was anything but scenic.

The beasts flipped cars, and scabs lit most of them on fire.

Besides creating a funnel, I couldn’t think of any reason a scab or a person would destroy a standing building or a car, but it didn’t matter. Nobody would use them anyway. Old gas made it hard to rely on vehicles. Some dirt bikes and trucks still worked.

There was no reason to linger in such a desolate area. The longer I did, the more I wanted to hand myself over. Just turn myself in and forget about everything else. Little dictators like Alton Greer were smart. They understood people’s need for safety and their desire for normalcy. If they provided a fraction of what they promised, people would follow whatever they said. Somewhere, Alton created a community with an army of scabs collecting survivors.

A village of 100, maybe even 1,000. I could picture Alton putting the useful ones to work; the others became entertainment. For all I knew, they became food. Mindless scabs probably ate anything. What would he have people do? Grow food? Repopulate? I didn’t see a point. Maybe he didn’t want to let go of the power he once held.

It wasn’t smart to assume anything, and I didn’t know if Andy was telling the truth, but it busied my mind while I walked.

Each night, I closed my eyes and replayed the scenes of my favorite novels, filling in the blanks and writing the endings I wanted. I starred in all the movies and plays I had ever seen. I even headlined the piano concerts I attended for the music course I took.

During the days, I danced to Lia’s voice down the roads. A waltz with the crown prince, which twisted my knee, and a slow dance at the prom. The other students voted me queen and made way on the floor for my dance with the king. Jealous girls gave me dirty looks and spread rumors.

When I paused for breaks from my dream world, I took in the sights and thought about how they formed. Winding rivers cut valleys through the rock. How did they do that if the mountains were still growing? Did they stay the same while the ground rose?

Silly questions ten-year-olds knew were absurd. I tried asking genuine questions, but whenever I delved into what the answer might be, my mind locked, and my body froze. It was almost like I had a limiter, and my switch triggered a shutdown.

On the edge of my mind, vague images were slipping away. They were fuzzy moments in time with my family that I almost remembered—fleeting thoughts I would never reach, no matter how fast I ran. Almost like part of me was disappearing.

When I sang, I hated my voice. I lost the flexibility I had as a child, and I was never the dancer I thought I was. Why did I care about dancing? I wanted to be better than Lia at something. Something that earned me more than a “nice job, honey” and a pat on the back.

My chance would never come. Who would praise me now? I didn’t deserve praise.

I probably fast-tracked my life to a desk job, marriage to a mid-level manager, and divorce once one of us had an affair. Every step was like slogging through mud, and I wondered why I should bother going forward. I let Lia down, and she hated me now. Our stitch unraveled a little more every day. Lia didn’t want me anymore.

Somewhere in my haze, I lost track of the days and found myself under an overpass. Narrow steel beams cased in concrete spanned the road I stood on. Underneath, black and red spray paint from the “Golden King” warned people the bridge was his turf. The ramp told me I discovered what I was looking for.

To the north, Canada, to the south, New York City. I made it to the highway, the Northway, and climbed the hill to the double lanes. I thought I had gotten used to the burn in my legs from hiking, but the slope was steeper than I thought.

I paused on the roadway, pointed my left hand to the east, my right hand to the west, and walked. At first, I walked, then sprinted, balanced on the cracked white line, and spun until I became dizzy. Each time after my head stopped spinning, I pointed my left hand to the east, and my right hand to the west. Yes officer, I had a bit of wine, but that was with dinner hours ago.

The highway seemed endless from where I stood, straight and uphill without stopping. I wasn’t sure how far Albany was. I didn’t see any signs, but I couldn’t imagine it being much over 100 miles away. Probably a week to walk there if I didn’t have to worry about anything. Unfortunately, I didn’t believe the world was so kind.

I had carelessly wandered down the roads since I left the hut, but there’d be scab patrols on the freeway for sure.

There were no good options for survivors. Anybody still alive would want to avoid the forest. It was dangerous, and the detours around mountains, rivers, and swamps made the trip longer than it needed to be. The highway wasn’t any better. Even if Alton Greer was just a made up boogie man, handlers would still prowl with their pack of scabs.

On the slope down the hill, cars, trucks, and the occasional motorcycle littered the roadway. Something flipped most of them, and the rest looked smashed from a massive pileup, but nobody burned them. I always thought the people who died were the lucky ones. Staying alive was hard.

People needed a reason to live. That was Grandma and Grandpa’s answer to why they never retired. They told us people who retired to their gardens didn’t live long. I never gave it much thought as a child, but it made sense the longer I walked.

Lia and I would have dried up and baked in the sun like the highway bodies—bare bones that smelled no different from the dirt on either side of the pavement.

I searched through the vehicles full of desiccated corpses, looking for anything of value. Survivors, scabs, and animals had long since picked the remains clean, but they didn’t take everything. On the passenger side of a gray sedan, the body of a teenager still wearing his seatbelt had a pair of high-cut hiking boots strapped to his feet.

I ignored his hollow eye sockets that stared accusingly. His feet were slightly larger than mine, but the boots were new, minus the stains from decay inside. Items such as shoes became currency. If someone had a department store in their fortress, they’d be new-world billionaires.

After poking through a few cars, I snatched a duffle bag and filled it with clothes I found, then changed into a loose-fitting pair of gray jeans and a black, long sleeve shirt. Decay from the bodies stained some clothes, but otherwise, they were in excellent condition. A few shirts, a heavy hoodie, and three pairs of shoes that didn’t fit me—they’d be suitable for trade.

I wanted to search more, but I could only carry so much before it became an issue, and I had been on the highway for a while. My life didn’t lack excitement, so I didn’t want to add running from scab biker gangs to it. As long as I didn’t stray too far, I could always find a new pile of junk cars.

After shuffling through the waist-high weeds towards the woods, I picked a few orange daylilies to mix with a handful of purple fireweed. A bouquet wouldn’t help me survive, but small things kept me sane. Tossed in the air and caught, I imagined myself fighting the other women for the grand prize of a future marriage.

My friend's sister released butterflies after her ceremony. And the cherry cordials inside the mini bell jars were an excellent wedding favor. But the flower arrangements stole the show.

Some girls didn’t care about flowers. They died quickly, and their leaves flaked off. Boys complained they cost too much and only gave them out on Valentine’s day. Everyone had their reasons, but I loved them. Dorm rooms with small windows and gray skies half the year could get to anyone. Flowers brought the room to life and fought against the damp musk of the ancient buildings.

The ground turned into a carpet of crisp, brown leaves that crunched under every step. I scanned the forest for any tracks or creatures that could kill me and ducked behind a maple tree. The helmet limited my field of vision, but I couldn’t afford to remove it.

I had played enough. From here to the bunker, the trip would become more challenging. Along the way were large towns and small cities, wide rivers and huge lakes, amusement parks and canals. There were plenty of places to hide. Eventually, I’d come across other survivors, and not all of them were friendly.