Open Roads Read online

  “There’s only so much you can do up here at night with no power,” noted Scott, the twenty-something year old guy who’d barely spoken a word up until now.

  “Do you guys plan to just stay up here?” Jessica asked.

  Charlie, Claire, and Larry all nodded.

  “Where else would we go?” Larry asked. “Me and the misses aren’t exactly built for travel, especially out there, from the way that Charlie, Claire, and Thomas have described it.”

  “We’ve only been into town and back,” Charlie said. “How bad is it out there?”

  Will looked down, grabbing a twig and twisting it in his hand. “Bad.”

  “You guys don’t want to go out there,” Holly said. “Trust us.”

  “We’d only thought about it a little,” Charlie said. “I think mostly we’d just like to try and find some answers about what the hell is really going on. About what’s causing this.”

  Will could feel the eyes of Jessica and Holly on him without even having to look up. He ran his hand under his sleeve and rubbed the wound on his arm again. He wasn’t sure if these people would believe him or think he was crazy, but he felt, with all the hospitality they’d shown, that they at least deserved to know what he and the others knew.

  So, he told them.

  He began with the experimental Empty at the hospital, explaining to them how the hospital’s survivors had run some test and been unable to find any trace of a virus or infection within it. He told them what he knew about how to kill the beasts, which they’d already found out on their own through trial and error. Then, Will drew in a deep breath as he prepared to drop the bomb on them.

  “We think the reason for the reanimation is supernatural. Something… demonic.”

  Charlie looked upon Will with a blank stare. He cleared his throat. “Demonic?”

  Will nodded.

  “You mean… like those things are possessed by demons?” Marie asked.

  The old man, Larry, chuckled. “And what on earth makes you think that?”

  Holly put her hand on Will’s shoulder and nodded at him, glancing down to his arm. Will sighed, then rolled up his shirt sleeve. He leaned in toward the light of the flames and put his arm out for everyone to see.

  There was a collective gasp as everyone looked down at the bite marks on Will’s arm; then they all seemed to turn their eyes up to Will’s.

  Charlie said, “You got bit?”

  Again, Will just nodded.

  “Don’t worry,” Holly said. “He’s not infected.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I watched a man draw the demon out of him,” Jessica said, breaking her silence.

  The campground survivors looked at Will, their jaws dropped and eyes wide. They looked as if they didn’t believe Jessica.

  “It’s true,” Dylan said. “I was there, too.”

  Will explained all that he knew about what had happened. How he’d gotten into the car accident, then been bitten by a man they’d had a confrontation with, sparing himself the pain of explaining to them who David Ellis was. To the point, it was irrelevant. He moved on, speaking about how he’d been bitten, and then eventually blacked out. Not just blacked out, but passed on. Holly and Jessica listened just as intently, as this was the first time he’d spoken this in-depth about what it had felt like to have died. He had no recollection of being revived by Samuel, the preacher, but used Jessica’s account that she’d shared with him after she’d witnessed the exorcism herself. By the end of it, both Holly and Jessica were in tears, which caused a chain reaction to the children, Claire, and the elderly couple.

  Most of the rest of the evening was spent in silence, with the occasional question or comment coming in. Will felt emotionally drained. He sat by the fire with Jessica and Holly, both cuddled up with him on either shoulder. He felt relieved, having finally spoken out loud about having almost been turned. He wasn’t really sure if the campground survivors believed him, nor did he give a shit. He knew it was the truth, and felt that they’d earned the right to at least know what he and the others knew. These were good people, and like Will and his group, they’d need every advantage possible in order to survive in this hellfire of a new world.

  Will spent the rest of his time outside staring into the fire and reflecting on the last few weeks, trying to pick out as many positives as he could.

  Then, after a time, he finally retreated back to his cabin to get some rest.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The sun peeked in through the window of the bedroom, coming in at just the right angle to shine on Gabriel’s face. He slit his eyes open, groaning and turning away from the light as it blinded him. He wished he would’ve thought better to close those blinds before passing out the night before.

  He looked to the bed next to him and saw Dylan curled up under the blankets. When Gabriel had gone to sleep the previous night, the boy had still been away with the others. Gabriel had decided not to join the group. Every second of his life lately had been spent around the others, and he needed some time to himself to try and decompress from all the anxiety surrounding their situation. The previous day’s talk with Thomas had only added to Gabriel’s eagerness to get home. It had made him much more stressed than he’d already been. So, instead of singing “Kumbaya” around the campfire with everyone, Gabriel had burned a couple of logs in the chimney and sat in the living room, on the sofa, relaxing and thinking about everything from the plane crash to the hospital. But he’d mostly thought of his wife and daughter.

  Gabriel carefully peeled the sheets off of himself and swung his legs off the side of the bed. Dylan didn’t move. He continued to breathe easy, hopefully off dreaming about something happy. The previous night, Gabriel had made sure he had all his things together for a quick departure this morning. He slipped on his pants and shirt, which he had laid out the previous night, picked up his shoes, and crept out of the room, careful not to wake the boy. He pulled the door shut behind him, and noticed that the door to Jessica’s room was open. He glanced inside, only to see an empty bed with the sheets and comforter still neatly tucked under the pillows, up to the top of the mattress. It looked as if she might have slept somewhere else the night before, or perhaps she had just gotten an early start and was somewhere else, inside the cabin or outside.

  He didn’t find her around anywhere, and after putting on his shoes, he opened the front door of the cabin and stepped outside.

  The morning was cool and calm. Somewhat to his surprise, nobody was in the courtyard, making him wonder if he was the first person to have awoken. Maybe Jessica had slept at Will and Holly’s. He glanced over to their cabin, and decided to head over.

  As he approached, he saw a note taped to the front door. He moved up the steps and squinted his eyes to try to start reading it. The wind blew, causing the piece of paper to wave, and Gabriel grabbed it to keep it still.

  Ran an errand with Charlie and Scott. Be back soon. - WK

  An ounce of sweat tickled Gabriel’s cheek, and he snatched the note off the door and crumpled it up in his hands. His blood boiled.

  Gabriel marched down the steps and stormed back to his cabin.

  ***

  It had seemed like it’d been years since Jessica had done this. Since she’d sat down by a body of water and watched the sun rise. The house she grew up in had been located in a subdivision that had its own private pond. She’d spent many mornings sitting on a pier out there, writing in her notebook and watching the sunrise before heading to school. This morning, she’d walked through the wooded area on the other side of the cabins and followed a narrow, dirt path back to a small pond. She had, of course, carried a gun with her, but was thankful that the short journey and the time alone had been peaceful.

  After days on the road and with all the hell she’d been through, she found herself becoming almost jealous of the survivors at the campground. They had it made up here. They had shelter, an endless supply of firewood, a remote location that would be diffic
ult for the Empties to navigate to, and were only a short drive away from a small town where they could go and get the supplies they needed. The only downside was that, eventually, they’d likely rob the stores of anything useful to them, and that’s assuming that no one else wiped it out first. They’d have to find another way to find food when that happened, but still seemed a way’s away from that reality.

  In addition to bringing a gun down to the water with her, Jessica had also brought the notebook which Sarah had given her at the hospital. She’d already filled many pages with her story since The Fall, and was now to the point where she was recording thoughts and memories from the past twenty-four hours. She picked up the notebook, opened it to the place where she’d previously left off, and started writing. She wrote about the previous night, where she’d gathered around the fire with her friends and the campground survivors. She wrote about how she had been contemplating staying here when the rest of the group left to head to Washington later in the morning. For many reasons, she’d considered it, assuming that Charlie and the others would allow her to stay. Not only did she see the place as somewhere to survive away from danger, but she also found herself falling more and more for Will. She couldn’t explain why, and she couldn’t show him, but it was happening. And every time he kissed Holly, she fell deeper into a confused state of despair.

  As she put away her notebook, she brought her knees up to her chest and looked out onto the pond. A fish jumped up, disturbing what had been a calm blanket of water. Jessica smiled, breathing in fresh air all around her.

  She allowed herself another twenty minutes of basking in nature before she stood up and began to make her way back to the cabins, all with a sigh.

  Upon emerging from the shadow of the trees, she came around the backside of the furthest cabin and looked across the way to see Gabriel marching down the front steps, his bag on one shoulder, a rifle over the other. From his stern facial expression, he didn’t look very happy. She shifted to a quicker pace to catch up to him.

  “Hey,” Jessica said. “Will back yet?”

  Gabriel threw his bag into the back seat of the van and then turned back to face her.

  “Where the fuck did he go?”

  His tone took her aback. “Um, I don’t know.”

  “Selfish asshole,” Gabriel mumbled.

  “What’s your problem?” Jessica asked.

  “My problem? My problem is that he keeps making all the decisions as if he’s the one in charge. He’s not. We make decisions together, it was decided from the get-go. He can’t just run off when we’re supposed to be leaving this morning. It’s bullshit.”

  Jessica stood there, staring blankly back at Gabriel. While she did somewhat agree with him about it not being the smartest decision for Will to have left that morning, it was much more important to her that the group not have a divide. If they were going to be together in this in order to survive, everyone needed to keep a level head.

  Seeing that Jessica was speechless, Gabriel became tired of waiting for a response. He scoffed, slammed the door to the van, and moved past her, bumping shoulders on the way by as he stomped back to the cabin.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The sky was clear, promising a gorgeous day. As they reached the bottom of the mountain, Will reached his hand out the window to enjoy the breeze.

  Before they’d gone to bed the previous night, Charlie had mentioned a camping retailer a couple of exits down from the Home Depot. Charlie felt good about the prospect of there being generators there, but when he and Thomas had gone to the store before to scope it out, they hadn’t even exited off the interstate. The parking lot had been overpowered with Empties. Even though Thomas had wanted to give it a go, Charlie had refused. They’d only had one rifle and a couple of handguns with them, all of which belonged to Thomas, and Charlie had felt like they wouldn’t stand a chance. Now, with more firearms, Charlie had decided he wanted to try again. Charlie had wanted to ask Thomas to come along, but he had been MIA all evening while others sat outside by the campfire. He’d even knocked on Thomas’ cabin door that morning, but to no answer. Will had told Charlie that he wanted to go under the radar, as his group might have tried and stopped him from going — specifically, Gabriel. But he felt that they owed Charlie for bringing them into their camp, especially after holding him and Claire both at gunpoint. The only person who’d been awake when they left the camp was Scott. It took some convincing on Charlie’s part, but he’d been able to convince Scott to come with them.

  At the bottom of the mountain, Charlie followed the same path that they’d come before to head up to the campsite. He turned onto the interstate, heading East.

  “How far down is it?” Will asked.

  “Just a couple of exits,” Charlie said.

  “And exactly how many of them did you see out there?” Scott asked, thinking of the Empties.

  “If I had to guess, probably thirty or so,” Charlie said. “I drove by once more two days ago, and the parking lot was practically vacant. Maybe they’d all gone inside or maybe they’d left, I don’t know. Wasn’t going to risk it to find out.”

  “Well, thanks for waiting to bring me with you,” Scott said, a nervous tremble in his voice.

  “Hey, you didn’t have to come,” Charlie said.

  Will said, “Don’t worry, Scott. If it looks to be dangerous, we’re not going in.”

  A couple of miles down the road, after maneuvering around vacant cars and a small horde of Empties, the large outdoor store came into view, it simply being called Outdoors Unlimited. The parking lot appeared to be calm from a distance. The only thing Will saw outside the store were some boats and some camper trailers. A camper could be something for the group to consider snagging from the place when they hit the road again, though Will wasn’t sure if the amount of gas it would eat up would be worth it, especially considering how scarce they’d found fuel to be.

  Charlie took the exit for Parker Avenue, turning toward Outdoors Unlimited at the end of the ramp. The store took up a large plot of land, and the only other business nearby was a gas station, which Charlie informed Will that they’d already checked for fuel. Other than that, the land was open. People either took this exit to get gas, go buy shit to camp with, or continued down Parker Avenue for apparently some time before they’d likely hit civilization again.

  The front of the store came into view, and it was clear that most of the glass on the front of the building had been shattered. Shopping carts lay sprawled on the sidewalk outside the store’s entrance, and many of the parking spots remained occupied by vehicles.

  “There’s likely to be Empties inside,” Will said.

  Charlie nodded in agreement.

  Will said, “Kinda hard to believe there’s any campers left out front. You’d think this place would have been completely raided by now.”

  “Not a lot of population in this area,” Charlie said. “Only gets busy around here during vacation season. During school, it’s dead.”

  “That’s why me and my buddies waited to come down now,” Scott said.

  Now that they could see the entire scope of the store’s lot, Will saw the few Empties that loitered outside. One of the weapons that they’d brought with them was a machete that belonged to Thomas. Will reached to the floorboard and grabbed the weapon.

  “See if you can pull up beside that one so I can take it out with this,” Will said, pointing toward one of the creatures just up ahead.

  With two hands on the grip of the machete, Will leaned out the window as Charlie lined the vehicle up so they’d pull in beside the beast.

  Will said, “Be sure to go in with some speed.”

  The creature snarled as the SUV came up beside it, and Will let out a warrior’s grunt as he reared back the machete, timing his swing perfectly. He’d closed his eyes halfway through the blow, but felt the blade connect with the creature, muting its snarl. Blood shot up onto the side of the SUV. Charlie and Scott reacted from inside the SUV with victorious
cries, and Will looked back to see the headless body spill over onto the ground.

  “Let’s get the other two so we can head inside,” Will said.

  They took out the next Empty almost verbatim to the way they’d destroyed the first. When Charlie went for the drive by the third creature, it moved at the last minute and got clipped by the front of the vehicle. Will still swung, nearly throwing himself out of the truck with all the momentum he’d carried through the swing. Once Charlie had confirmed Will wasn’t going to fall, he stopped the vehicle.

  “Here,” Charlie said, asking Will for the machete. Will handed him the weapon and Charlie stepped outside.

  The creature lay on the ground about fifteen yards back from the vehicle. Its right leg was twisted around, having been caught by the front end of the SUV. It still tried to stand, reaching its decrepit arm out toward Charlie. Charlie kicked the thing’s hanging limb out of the way, pulled back, and swung the blade down across the beast’s throat. Its arm dropped as blood sprayed up, and then settled to a pour onto the concrete. Charlie turned and headed back to the vehicle.

  “Nice swing,” Will said as Charlie reloaded into the driver’s seat.

  Smiling, Charlie said, “Golf team in high school.”

  “You don’t look like a golfer,” Scott said.

  “Yeah, neither did Tiger,” Charlie said.

  Will laughed. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find us a generator.”

  Charlie drove to the front of the store, and with the windows down, they could hear the snarls from inside.

  “Pull to the side,” Will said.

  Veering away from the shattered front of the store, Charlie pulled the vehicle around the side of the building, parking in a vacant handicap spot. Will pulled the rifle from the floorboard, confirming it was loaded. He tossed extra rounds into his coat pocket.