She was my older sister, but Daddy had always said I was the strong one. Ashley didn’t give me a choice. When our parents split, Ashley became a different person, like a sweater you put in the wash and it never fits or looks the same. She wasn’t the giggly, carefree girl I grew up with. Instead she was wounded, overly emotional and cynical. When she leaned up to show me her eyes, her blond hair fell forward, the long, stringy strands hovering over her lap. She was still sobbing, most of her face blotchy and wet.
“What if there’s soldiers waiting at Fairview, too?” Cooper said, stuttering over his words.
Ashley’s voice surged, in a half hum, half groan. “I want to go home, Miranda. I want to see Mom!”
“Fairview won’t have soldiers. The only reason Anderson had those idiots with guns is because of the armory,” Bryce snapped. He was clearly more than annoyed with Ashley. As if the loud sobbing wasn’t stressful enough.
“What do we do?” Ashley said. “It’s going to be dark soon. I don’t think we should be out at night.”
I looked to Bryce. “She has a point.”
He didn’t necessarily agree, but he didn’t argue. I pulled back onto the road and drove a few more miles until we came upon an old farmhouse. I turned into the drive, nearly taking out the formerly white, rusted mailbox.
The Bug’s new brakes squeaked o a stop. We all stared at the house, waiting for someone to open the door, or greet us, or try to eat us. I reached for the door handle, but Bryce grabbed my arm.
“I’ll go,” he said. He pushed open the passenger door and slowly walked up to the side of the house.
I glanced around. There were no vehicles, but there was a barn. Maybe they had parked there, and it only appeared deserted. Two cars traveling west on Highway 11 caught my eye: a silver car and a black, four-door Jeep Wrangler. For half a second, I focused on the child in a car seat. She was passing by in slow motion, holding up a teddy bear, oblivious that the world had gone to shit around her.
“Oh my God,” I said, turning to watch them drive past. “Oh my God!”
“What?” Ashley cried, instantly panicked.
“They’re headed straight for Anderson. They’re going to be killed by those crazies on the bridge!” I opened my door and stepped out.
“Bryce, let’s go! We have to stop them!”
“We can’t save everyone that heads that way,” Ashley said, gripping my headrest.
“But there’s a . . . there’s a baby in the car! Bryce!”
Bryce turned to me with a frown, holding his finger to his mouth.
“But . . . ,” I said, watching them drive out of sight. And then they were gone. I sat back in the Bug and shut my door. “That’s on us,” I said, my eyes meeting Ashley’s in the rearview mirror.
“Hurry up, Bryce,” Cooper whispered, mostly to himself.
Bryce took one look inside and turned on his heels, jumped off the small, concrete porch, and sprinted to the Bug. He slammed the door and pointed to the road. “Go,” he said, out of breath.
“What did you see?”
“Go! Go!” he yelled, pointing.
I stomped on the gas and pulled back onto the highway. “What?” I said, safely back on the road. “What did you see?”
Bryce shook his head.
“We should turn around.”
“No.”
“Try to warn that family about the bridge.”
“No.”
“Didn’t you hear me, Bryce? There was a baby in the car! We should turn around!”
“There was a baby inside that house, too!” he yelled. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and then spoke again. “Trust me. If they’re killed on that bridge, they’re better off.”
I watched Bryce for a moment, and then returned my focus to the road. All color had left his face, and sweat had formed along his hairline.
“What did you see?” I said quietly.
He looked out the window. “You don’t want to know. I wish I could unsee it.”
The next miles were quiet as we made our way to Fairview, but it wasn’t hard to tell when we’d reached the city limit. More infected roamed the streets than I had anticipated, alone and in groups. We were almost through town when I slammed on my brakes.
“What?” Bryce said loudly, slamming his palm against the dash.
A woman was running down the street barefoot, carrying a little girl in one arm, and pulling along a boy, maybe nine or ten, with the other. She wore a red dress with white polka dots, and her hair had mostly fallen from her low, dark ponytail.
“Bryce,” I said.
“I see them.”
The woman stopped at the corner church, and helped the boy climb up on top of the air-conditioning unit, bravely passing a large group of infected. She heaved the boy onto her shoulders, and then pushed him up, allowing him to climb onto the roof, and then held up the little girl. He pulled her up safely, but she was reaching for the woman, crying and drawing the attention of the mob of bloody horrors pounding against the front of the church. Several of the dead ones broke away and ambled in the woman’s direction. She was struggling to climb, but the boy waited, bent over and holding his knees, encouraging her.
It was then that I saw a trail of blood running up the side of the white wood of the church. Someone else had already gone in that way. Someone that was probably infected.
“We’ve got to help them,” I said, determined this time.
“Look,” Cooper said, his hand stretching between my and Bryce’s seats. He pointed to the church. “The windows are boarded! There’s people in there!”
Bryce looked to me. “It seems like a good place to wait out the night.”
I watched as the woman barely made it to the roof before the dead reached the unit she’d been standing on.
I breathed out the breath I’d unconsciously been holding. “Okay, but how do we get in? How do we get them to let us in?”
“They’re not very fast,” Cooper said, gesturing to the woman on the roof. “She ran right past them.”
“I’m not going out there with those things walking around!” Ashley wailed. “No way!”
I looked around the Bug, making sure we’d have no surprises, and then noted the position of the sun. “We can’t make it to the ranch before dark. There are already people inside there. They probably have guns, and water—”
“And a bathroom,” Cooper muttered.
Bryce nodded. “We have none of those. We’re going in there. We just have to find a way to distract them long enough to get inside.”
“You guys get out here. I’ll drive past them and lure them away, ditch the Bug, hide, and then double back.”
Bryce shook his head. “I’ll do it.”
“Look!” Ashley said.
The woman was trying to open the window, but was having trouble. Suddenly it opened, and she held back her children, shielding them for a moment until she recognized whoever was standing on the other side. A tall, scruffy man ducked through the window, and helped the mother and children inside. He walked over to the edge and took a look at the frantic pack below. They were clamoring over each other, trying to get at the people on the roof.
“Look at them. They can’t climb,” I said, surprised.
Bryce stepped out of the Bug and waved his arms. “Hey!” he yelled.